Chapter III: Cromer Begins to Make Mistakes (2)

“_3rd April (Easter Sunday)._—Dined with the Mufti, and discussed the affairs of Islam. He told an amusing story of an episode which had happened to him while an exile at Damascus. There was in London at that time (1883) a certain Rev. Isaac Taylor, who had conceived the idea of bringing about a union between the English reformed Church and Islam upon a basis of their common monotheistic creed. In this he was encouraged by the old Persian, Mirza Bakr, who carried the idea to Syria, and made Propaganda for it, to a certain extent obtaining Mohammed Abdu’s sympathy, who, with others, drew up a letter to Taylor, which he signed with two more of the leading men of the Damascus Ulema. Taylor was of course delighted, and had the letter at once published, as being the general opinion of the Mohammedan learned of Damascus, and arguing from it that the union between Christian and Moslem was on the point of accomplishment; and as such it came to the knowledge of the Sultan. No names had been mentioned in the published version, but the Turkish Ambassador in London was at once telegraphed to, and ordered to find out those of the five signatories, and thus, without suspecting the danger, Taylor let the Ambassador know, and all five were expelled from Syria. Abdu, however, before leaving Damascus protested, and had the opportunity of arguing the matter out with the authorities, and it transpired that the reason of the Sultan’s alarm had been the idea that if England should be converted to Islam the English Sovereign would _ipso facto_ become the most powerful personage in it, and the Caliphate would naturally devolve on Queen Victoria to the Ottoman prejudice.

“_5th April._—Lunched with Carton de Wiart, who gave me a deal of information about official doings, not much to the credit of the English administration [I do not transcribe them here]. Cromer, according to him, has become very slack and careless since his new marriage, and no longer takes the trouble to master the details. He is largely under the influence of his Secretary, Boyle, who, in his turn, is under the influence of the Nimr brothers, the Syrian editors of the Mokattam newspaper, who provide him with the bulk of his information on native affairs. Cromer at the same time has become very obstinate, and nobody dares contradict him. I asked him about the Khedive, and he confirmed to me all that Abdu had told me about his speculations with Cassel, and he gave me a curious instance of His Highness’s lack of the sense of what is due to his position where money matters are concerned. It appears that on the property he bought some time ago from the heirs of Halim Pasha there was a certain disreputable house let at a high rent, the payment of which was much in arrear. It was desirable to close the house, but the Khedive, in his eagerness to get in the money due, kept it open to its frequenters for six months on his own account, putting in a man from his Daira (Estate Office) to receive the profits. Cassel’s is a very bad influence for him, as he encourages him in all his irregularities.

“He talked also about Cromer’s quarrel with Gorst. Cromer disapproves his intimacy with Cassel, and had been also displeased because the Khedive went to Gorst’s wedding. Gorst has left Egypt now, but in Carton’s view will return at the end of a year or so, and get Cromer’s place. I also went with Cockerell to the Museum, and had an interesting talk with Maspero.

“_10th April._—We have left Sheykh Obeyd for England. Yesterday I wished Mohammed Abdu good-bye. He has written a letter to Tolstoy which Anne is translating for him into English (see Appendix). News has come of the Anglo-French Agreement about Morocco and Egypt. I have been long expecting it. As to Egypt the terms might have been worse, for the political status is untouched, but it will be a bad day for Morocco. Here there will be a rush of speculators, and Abdu has given me the detail of the 100,000 feddans conceded to Cassel.

“_15th April._—We landed at Genoa on the 14th, and came on the following day to Turin, where we are staying at the Palazzo della Cisterna with the Duke and Duchess of Aosta. On landing, I found a copy of the ‘Times’ containing Cromer’s annual report with a long despatch from Lansdowne explaining the Anglo-French Convention. Cromer’s report is in the usual First Chapter of Genesis style, and nobody would guess from it what wars and rumours of wars there have been at Cairo. Cromer publicly laments Gorst’s departure, and no hint is given of the Khedive’s misdoings, or of any of the tragi-comic events of the winter. Yet Cromer would doubtless be indignant if it were said of him that he was not a scrupulously truthful official narrator.

“Lansdowne’s despatch is a very important document, as it puts all the dots upon the i’s of the Convention. It is clear now that the two Governments understand it as a division of spoils, not quite yet complete, but to be so in the near future. The French are to have the same footing in Morocco that we have taken in Egypt, and as certain clauses in the arrangement are to last for thirty years, the final partition of Turkey is evidently foreseen in it, and so the permanent incorporation of Egypt into the British Empire; at least this is how I read the despatch and Convention taken together. One thing is clear, viz., that the Anglo-Egyptian Government will now have a free financial hand for both spending and borrowing, and that the old economy will be abandoned in favour of a forward financial policy on the Indian model. Egypt will be run for the Soudan. The best one can say is that Egypt might have been annexed, or formally protected, and that the chapter of accidents still remains open to prevent this last misfortune. For Morocco it hardly could be worse, seeing what French methods are.

“Poor old Queen Ysabel of Spain is dead at the age of seventy-three, and is to be buried at the Escurial. It is just forty years since I first saw her at Madrid, but the recollection of her and her Court remains a vivid picture in my mind, while so much else is forgotten. It gives me the image of a great, fat, colourless, blue-eyed, good-humoured woman, with arms like rounds of raw beef. Beside her, her husband Don Francisco de Assiz, a little stiff man in a much embroidered coat, and the two royal children, the Ynfanta, a thin anæmic girl of thirteen, and her brother, the little Prince of Asturias, a child of six (he afterwards was King), all four personages sitting on great gilt chairs in a row, having their hands kissed by a long procession of Spanish Grandees and Officers, the child fast asleep. We of the Diplomatic Corps had to stand just opposite the throne and watch the _besa-manos_ for an hour or more together, thus it is all photographed upon my memory.

“_16th April._—We are at the Palazzo della Cisterna, which has been thoroughly furbished up since I was here three or four years ago, but it is still a somewhat gloomy house, as few of the windows look out on open spaces, and many are filled with opaque or coloured glass. We have been given, however, a cheerful apartment of half-a-dozen small rooms looking out on some chestnut trees in their first leafage filling the square acre plot which is the Palace Garden. Here blackbirds are singing gaily, though the day has turned to rain. We were handed over on arrival by the porter, a splendid apparition in scarlet, to the Marquese de Torregiani and his wife, Lord and Lady in waiting. He a Florentine brought up as I was by the Jesuits at Stonyhurst, she an American who has never been in America. These have made us very comfortable. The Princess is looking her best with her two boys, Amadeo and Aymon, charming children, with pretty manners, and talking already three languages, Italian, English, and German. French they have not been taught as they are expected to pick it up naturally later from their parents who talk it _en intimité_. The Duke was not at luncheon as he is still crippled by a broken leg, but he was wheeled in afterwards. In appearance he is altered greatly for the better, as he no longer affects the coiffure of the Emperor William, and he made himself very agreeable talking of horses and travels, and the Japanese War, as to which I was glad to find we were agreed.

“Another naval smash has befallen the Russians. Admiral Macaroff blown up in his Flagship the Petropaulowski.

“I have been reading Lafcadio Hearn’s books lately which have increased my interest in the Japanese. His explanation of Buddhism is I suppose as lucid as is possible, though it passes European wit to understand it entirely. He makes out the case well between Buddhism and the monotheistic religions, but not I think as between Buddhism and materialism, the latter occupying far sounder metaphysical grounds. The weakness of Buddhism lies in this, that while accepting the eternity of matter it insists also on the eternity of mind. This may or may not be the truth, but it is a mere theory resting on no evidence or probability. The Buddhist doctrine of the composite nature of the soul is just as much a fancy as the Christian one of the soul’s simplicity. Both exaggerate the importance of mental phenomena, which as far as our experience goes are confined to an infinitesimally small fraction of the material universe, and only seem of importance to us, because in ourselves they so strongly predominate. The idea of a soul as something possible, apart from an organized body, is a superstition like all the rest, and when expounded by the Buddhist teaching, and put to the test of practice becomes equally unthinkable, whether it is complex or simple. To me as a pure materialist the soul cannot be logically distinguished from sensation, and when the organized body ceases finally to feel in death, the soul also ceases. The Buddhist theory of the transmigration of souls, of being born again to a series of new lives, rests on a fallacious reading of what birth is as well as what death is. It is just as much a mistake in physics to suppose the soul enters a new body at birth as to suppose it leaves an old one at death. Birth is simply the continuation of an organic form by its dividing itself into two. In the case of a tree this may occur by a seed growing up, or more simply by a branch bending down and taking root. The seed, however, and the root are in reality portions of the parent body extending and multiplying itself. Peg down a branch of a lemon tree and you will see it sprout; sever the branch and you have two lemon trees. Or again in the case of sexual generation of two bodies prolonging themselves together. There is no real solution of continuity, no real beginning of a new body. Death is simply the wearing out of the original organism, or of such part of the organism as has failed to multiply or extend itself. If there are no offshoots from the parent stem the whole organism perishes. If there are offshoots it continues to be alive in these. The Japanese idea of Mr. So-and-so’s child dying, and its soul being recreated in the womb of Mr. What’s-his-name’s wife is to ignore the physical reality that the new infant is no new organism, but a joint continuation of his two parents. There is no room for Mr. So-and-so’s child’s soul to creep in. Thus the whole doctrine of transmigration is to my mind absurd. We have had great discussions on these points with the Princess who is interested in Buddhist philosophy.

“_18th April._—The Princess has given me a Buddhist catechism to read, and I have been much interested in it, though it seems to be almost as dreary a religion as our Western Christianity. Both take the same dark view of life in this world, that it is an evil thing, and that we are to reject all happiness if we are not to be more miserable, consoled only by the dim prospect at the end of it of an unreal bliss in Heaven or in Nirvana, of which there is no visible certainty. I would rather believe in the Mohammedan heaven if I could, which at least is a tangible possibility of happiness, but annihilation, of which there is much more inherent probability, is, after all, more comforting than either of them to those who have lived; an eternal, dreamless sleep without waking. I have it in my mind to write a short treatise in development of this thought, to be called ‘The Religion of Happiness.’

“In the afternoon there was a grand parade of all the Duke’s horses in the royal stables, which have been made over to him by the King, and which are kept up as no stables are that I have ever seen. He must have quite forty animals, most of them English weight-carrying hunters in the prime of life, and obtained at high prices, with as many men in livery to look after them. He cannot spend less than £10,000 a year on his hobby. In the morning we had been to see the two children ride in the riding school, which they did wonderfully, considering their age. They are courageous boys, thoroughly well brought up, and with the prettiest manners in the world. The Duke has been most amiable, going the round of the stables with us himself, wheeled in his chair.

“At dinner to-night I was interested to meet the Marchese di Guiccioli, grandson of the husband of the famous Contessa of Byron’s days. I should have liked to ask him what view the family took of this episode, but refrained. He told me his family had left Ravenna early in the last century, and had since lived in Venice. He is Prefect here in Turin at the present moment, an intelligent man with much manner of the world, reminding me a little of Sir Henry Layard, and like him, a good talker. After it we discussed French poetry, especially Victor Hugo’s, and the Princess quoted several of the best pieces of the ‘Legende des Siècles.’ In the morning she had taken me to the studio of the sculptor Canonico, to see a bust he has made of her. It is good, better than anything we could get done in England. Canonico is an intelligent young fellow, much absorbed in his work, and talking fluently about it. He has done several excellent busts of children, and two of our gracious King and Queen, rather painful performances, and a terrible Pietà on a gigantic scale for a cemetery, as is the taste just now in Italy.

“_19th April._—We left for England, and crossing Mont Cenis in floods of rain, reached home on the 20th.

“_21st April._—The news is that Winston Churchill has just seceded from the Tory party, and has been invited by half-a-dozen constituencies to stand as an independent Free Trader at the elections.

“_23rd April._—At Park Lane I found both Sibell and George Wyndham, and took George to lunch with me at the St. James’s Club. In Ireland he has got into slack water with his Land Purchase, and his Catholic University scheme is tied up. He wants to see Redmond, and I am to arrange a meeting between them in Chapel Street. He has acted on my suggestion about Somaliland, and has got the Prime Minister on his side and also Arnold-Forster, and the war for the time is stopped. They have not, however, yet withdrawn all the troops to the coast, nor made a final settlement on my plan with the tribes, but he is working for both and hopes to manage it. The chief obstacle lies in the Foreign Office, which began the war, and does not like acknowledging a failure. From this we passed on to India and George Curzon and the Japanese War, where we are at one. George is getting sick of office, and longs to be away writing poetry. He recited to me a sonnet he had just made, a very good one, and told me as a great secret that he had been asked by Rowton’s executors to write Disraeli’s Life, but has been obliged to decline, as he cannot spare the time. I asked him why his party should wish to stay in office for another year? He said there were two or three things they had to finish first, the re-organization of the army and the reconstruction of South Africa, then they would be glad to go.

“_26th April._—Saw Redmond at the House of Commons. The Land Purchase, he says, is going on well, more estates sold than the Government have money for, but it was lucky they got the Bill through last year, as this year it would have been impossible. He gave me the history of O’Brien’s secession from the Irish Party. I found him not very keen about meeting George, though friendly towards him. ‘Wyndham,’ he said, ‘may be quite ready to do everything for us, but he has no power.’ I asked about the King, who has just gone to Ireland. ‘We all think him friendly to us,’ Redmond said, ‘and perhaps we may get Home Rule through him. But I don’t myself believe that we shall get it except indirectly, and a bit at a time. Meanwhile all is going well.’

“Elsa Wagram is engaged to marry the Prince de la Tour d’Auvergne.

“_4th May._—Saw George and arranged with him about a lunch with Redmond next week. He tells me he believes he has succeeded now in getting a final end put to the Somali Campaign. There has been a last splutter there, the bombardment of a small seaport, Illig, but the army is to be withdrawn, and the occupation of the country to be confined strictly to the Coast towns. This is something accomplished. Strict orders have been sent out to Swain the Consul General, that he is not to interfere with the tribes.

“The victory of the Japanese at Yalu is now fully confirmed. We talked also about George Curzon and the Tibet War. My relations with George Wyndham are very pleasant ones now, as he consults me on all his political affairs, and as Arthur Balfour consults him I am beginning to have a practical influence on public events.

“_9th May._—Yorke Powell is dead, which grieves me. It is only a day or two since I heard from him. He was the most sympathetic of men, and my memory of him runs back to 1863, when I first met him, he being a boy, with his mother in the Pyrenees. They were friends of Madame Bertrand de Lis at Madrid, hence our acquaintance. He was fond of Spain and France, and the East, and of much else that I loved. I lose much by his death. I have written to George in the sense of our conversation of yesterday, urging him to get the Tibetan expedition withdrawn, now that Russia has been so smashed up in Manchuria, proposing also a scheme of settlement for Egypt.

“_10th May._—Dined with Lady Gregory, Yeats, Gilbert Murray, and Robert Gregory. Yeats is just back from America, where they have made a great fuss with him, and he takes himself very seriously in consequence. Though doubtless a man of genius, he has a strong touch in him of the charlatan, and his verse is thin stuff, not so good as his prose. Gilbert Murray is worth ten of him as a poet, and is bringing out his ‘Hippolytus’ this month at a London theatre. I walked home with Murray as far as Hyde Park Corner. I like him, though he is rather dry in his talk, a sayer of the obvious rather than of the exquisite, the antipodes in this to Yeats, who is brilliant in conversation and full of affectation, while Murray, in spite of his poetic gift, is dull. Yeats talked to me about getting George Wyndham to grant them a patent at Dublin for their new theatre. This I readily agreed to see to.

“_11th May._—Lunched in Park Lane. George promised at once to befriend the Abbey Theatre as I was sure he would. Then we got on to Eastern politics. George told me he had been adverse all along to the Tibet expedition, and would be glad to stop it now if he could. On all these matters he declares Arthur Balfour to be quite sound, and he explained to me the standing Committee in the Cabinet on Foreign Affairs, and how well it was working in the way of preventing Departmental extravagances. I told him there was one thing that needed reform more than all, that was that instead of promoting an official who had caused an unnecessary war as they always do, he should be punished. I am glad to see him taking an interest in foreign affairs, and if he could one day be Foreign Secretary, my life’s hopes would be fulfilled.

“_18th May._—I have been reading Herbert Spencer’s autobiography, an astounding document, one of those that console the least of us that he is not a great man, comic too, and reminiscent of Happy Thoughts, and the author of ‘Typical developments.’ Burnand must have known Spencer to have written it.

“_30th May._—To the Lyric Theatre with Cockerell to see Hippolytus. I expected to find it dull, and perhaps vulgar, in spite of the beauty of the poetry as translated by Murray, but it was all the contrary. I have never seen a tragedy like this, not even Salvini’s Othello, or Annunzio’s Francesca da Rimini. Hippolytus stands upon a higher and nobler plane. It has dramatic effects one does not dream of when reading it, not that the acting was more than moderately good. Most of those on the stage were amateurs, and rather clumsy, but I think this added to the effect. Even the few professionals were sobered into a kind of good taste. With the exception of Theseus and a nurse nobody was vulgar, and the messenger (Granville Barker), who recites the catastrophe, was admirable. Everybody enunciated well, a thing more necessary in verse than prose, and the chaunting chorus seemed to me in its place. The slow movement for the first act is an artistic preparation for the rest, and throughout it is the piece that enthralls, no cleverness of the actors. Compared with Shakespeare the superiority lies in the workmanship quite as much as in the tragic atmosphere. The piece has an ordered sequence no play of Shakespeare’s possesses. There are none of Shakespeare’s vulgarities, his appeals to the gallery, his wearisome Elizabethan jokes. The rhymed verse, too, I find more effective than blank verse, at any rate than the very best, and a vast amount of Shakespeare’s is mere wind. The climax of Hippolytus is tremendous, the catastrophe the most powerful thing in dramatic literature. At the end of it we were all moved to tears, and I got up and did what I never did before in a theatre, shouted for the author, whether for Euripides or Gilbert Murray I hardly knew. Nobody cared to call for the actors, this I consider the most complete feature of the triumph. Percy and Madeline were there with Dorothy, also Carlisle, sitting almost next to me, and his son-in-law Roberts, and Mackail, and his wife. Murray with his family in a stage box, and a full house behind us. When it was over I went to tea in Belgrave Square.

“_31st May._—To Cambridge on a visit to Browne, whom I found with Sheykh Hassan Towfik, the recently installed Arabic tutor. With Sheykh Hassan I had a long talk in Browne’s rooms at Pembroke, and found him a most interesting man, who had already gained much influence with such of the undergraduates as were studying Arabic for employment in Egypt. (His sudden death a few days afterwards was a great misfortune.) Then on to Babraham where I dined and slept.

“_6th June._—Lunched with George and Sibell, he very full of the Montem at Eton, to which he had gone on Saturday, an honoured guest with George Curzon. The pair are to be given Doctor’s degrees at Oxford. ‘I like honours and dignities,’ said George. He talked, too, with enthusiasm about Rodin and Paris, from which he had just returned.

“_7th June._—I have it from the same source from which I originally heard it, that Eldon Gorst is certainly to succeed Cromer at Cairo in two years’ time. I wrote to Mohammed Abdu to tell him this, and of the probability of a new régime being started at Cairo.

“_15th June._—Dined with George Wyndham, and among others Dunraven, a pleasant party, with much talk about Ireland. Both George and Dunraven enthusiastic in their praises to me of William O’Brien. Who would have thought it possible fifteen years ago, and to me, but Time has strange revenges.

“_17th June._—A large dinner in Park Lane. I had some talk with Lord Percy after dinner about Arabian matters, he being Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs. He is an intelligent young man, but without genius it seemed to me, or special wit, inferior for instance to Winston Churchill. There were also at dinner Lord Manners, a Dowager of Westminster, Percy and Madeline Wyndham, with Dorothy, Charles Gatty, Paget, a young Mahaffy, and Hugh Lane. George much bored between two dowagers.

“_20th June._—Madeline Wyndham’s birthday dinner, always to me the pleasantest of anniversaries. Each guest’s name, there were twenty-two of them, was written on a card with a heart and wings. I had some talk after dinner with Bendor about South Africa and the land he bought there three years ago. It consists of 60,000 acres close to the Basuto frontier, and he is letting it in 300 acre lots to farmers he is bringing out from England. He has six thoroughbred stallions there from the Eaton Stud, and spoke in high praise of the Arabs, wanting me to go out and see it all.

“_24th June._—To see Dr. Andrews, of the Natural History Museum at Kensington, who showed me fossil bones of primaeval horses, and other ancient beasts, also the new Okapi stuffed. It is a miniature Giraffe, striped on the hind quarters like a Zebra. Andrews is a queer, rough little man, but a good fellow, who knows his trade, and mocks at conventionalities. Lunched afterwards with Amir Ali and his English wife. He has retired from the Indian service, and is domiciled now permanently in England, bringing up his children at schools and universities as Englishmen.

“_28th June._—To Yeats’ Irish play, ‘Where there is Nothing,’ a very poor piece, without either wit or sense.

“_30th June._—Gave a scientific luncheon to Andrews, Lydekker, Cockerell and his scientific brother from America, to discuss the origin of the horse. This we did pretty thoroughly, deciding that it was quite possible the Arab was a separate wild breed, that there might be aboriginal wild horses in Africa, and also on an island in South America, Chiloe. Lydekker considers both the existing Prevalsky horse and the Tarpan to be wild breeds, though probably crossed with feral stallions. Andrews believes that a heavy horse of the shire type existed once wild in the Thames valley. All agree, I think, that the origin of the wild horse was multiple. Andrews attaches much importance, as indicating a separate wild origin for the Arab, to the depression found in their skulls to receive the tear gland as also to the high setting on of their tails level with the croup.

“_2nd July._—Good old Watts is dead, full of years and honour. His pictures this year at the New Gallery were almost as good as ever they were, and he was well and in good spirits down to a few days before his end. He was a great painter—on the whole the greatest in England since Reynolds.

“Another death is that of Stanley, the explorer, who has left £135,000, got by doing dirty work for the King of the Belgians on the Congo, a charlatan, who has had the cheek to express a wish he should be buried in Westminster Abbey.

“_6th July._—Lunched with Margot, at her house in Cavendish Square. On the doorstep I found myself with Coquelin père, to whom Margot gave an effusive welcome. We had an amusing meal, Margot making her little girl Elizabeth recite some verses of Stevenson’s about a butterfly, which the child did prettily, dressed up in a Velasquez costume with stiff hoop and petticoat. Coquelin good-naturedly suggested that ‘perhaps Mademoiselle would be shy,’ but Margot would not hear of it, ‘There is no shyness,’ she said, ‘in this family,’ nor was the child at all embarrassed. Coquelin then gave a little entertainment of his own, imitating an Englishman’s account of him, Coquelin, in absurd Anglo- French.

“_13th July._—Lunched with George. He is dying to be out of office, and live an irresponsible life away from politics, which he declares to be an abomination. He says that I am the only person who has learnt the secret how to live. We are to spend next Saturday to Monday together in Worth Forest, where I have seen deer lately. They seem to have come originally from Buckhurst, where the Park fence had been allowed to get out of repair, and they have spread themselves over the whole Forest district as far west as Shelley’s Plain and Leonardslee, a distance of some twenty miles, and are to be found in small herds in all the great woodlands. It is a reoccupation of the Forest by its ancient inhabitants (not by strangers), where they do no harm, and so are preserved by everybody, except the German Count Münster at Maresfield, who complains that they interfere with his _chasse_. This comes of Harvey Pechell’s snobbery in bequeathing Maresfield, an old Shelley property left him by his wife, to the Prussian Ambassador, because he had been socially polite to him.

“_16th July._—George has been with me in Worth Forest occupying a tent we have pitched. He declares he will take five years holiday after the General Election. We have ridden all over the Forest in Tilgate and Smith’s Charity, talking always of past days, and the glories of the Crabbet Club, and devising schemes of an ideal life in woods, with a pleasant society of men and women on Boccaccian lines, which we are to call the Fellowship of the Holy Ghosts, but George returns to his parliament to-morrow.

“_9th Aug._—Went by appointment to see Winston Churchill at his rooms in Mount Street. He is astonishingly like his father in manners and ways, and the whole attitude of his mind. He has just come in from playing polo, a short, sturdy little man with a twinkle in his eye, reminding me especially of the Randolph of twenty years ago. He took out his father’s letters which I had left with him six weeks ago, from a tin box, and read them to me aloud while I explained the allusions in them, and gave him a short account of the political adventures of the early eighties in which Randolph and I had been connected. There is something touching about the fidelity with which he continues to espouse his father’s cause and his father’s quarrels. He has been working double shifts this session in Parliament, and looks, I fancy, to a leadership of the Liberal Party, and an opportunity of full vengeance on those who caused his father’s death. I promised to let him see extracts from my diaries of 1884-1885.

“Mary Milbanke is with me at Newbuildings. She is much enlivened and improved by her trip to the West Indies last winter. I am very fond of her, having acted as a parent to her from the time she was a child.

“_14th Aug._—Fernycroft. I drove here, starting on the 11th, with Miss Lawrence and the two boys, Alfred Kensett and Harry Holman, taking tents and camp equipments with us. We went by Fernhurst and Midhurst, and nearly had an accident going up the steep hill at Holly Coomb, for we were overloaded, and it was only by putting the four horses we had been driving in pairs together with the four in hand harness we had with us that I managed with a rush to get at full gallop to the top. There had been heavy rain and the road was much broken up by it, and it was touch and go whether they could do it. Holly Coomb is a romantic place with great oak woods, where they used to boast in former times that they could kill a woodcock every day of the year.

“I have had a long talk with Meynell, who is staying here, about Roman politics and Catholic prospects. He tells me the true cause of quarrel between the Vatican and France is that Combes has all along intended to do away with the Concordat, and that Merry del Val is young and imprudent. The first quarrel raised by Merry as to the French President’s visit was so ill-chosen that it raised protests everywhere in the Catholic world and so had to be abandoned. The other quarrel has been forced upon the Pope. The Bishops of Laval and Dijon had two or three years ago been denounced at Rome, the one for immorality with a Carmelite Abbess, the other for being affiliated to a Freemasons’ Lodge. He had been seen in plain clothes coming out of a house where the Masons were holding a meeting, and at Rome his action was connected with the story of there being a secret plot, supported with much money, for the dissemination of Masonic ideas among the French priesthood. Young men had been educated for the purpose in the seminaries, and it was supposed the Bishop was one of them. On being summoned to Rome the Bishop refused to go and declared a higher allegiance to be due to the French Government. He is now excommunicated. As to the other’s immorality it has been condoned whether proved or not, and he has been given an archbishopric _in partibus_ at Rome and thus made his peace. Meynell thinks it will lead to a rupture of the Concordat. The French Government mean to appropriate the churches in France and lease them back to the Catholic communities, but Meynell doubts whether these will be disposed to pay a rent reckoned at £2,000,000. I am inclined to think that the quarrel will eventually be of advantage to the faith, but Meynell doubts.”

Here follows an account of a driving and camping tour ending at Clouds. My arrival there is thus described. We had camped the night before on the down above Wylye.

“_5th Sept._—We had arranged that I was to wait in camp till nine for George Wyndham who was to ride from Clouds in the early morning; and sure enough at 8:30 I heard the sound of galloping hoofs and presently a view holloa and they arrived, George and his son Percy, both bareheaded, and with them Dorothy, and I gave them tea in my tent. It was a joyous meeting on a joyous morning, for George has cast his official cares to the winds and is in his most expansive mood. Then we all went on to Clouds, my four horses pulling double with the excitement of the galloping outriders. There are two terrible hills on either side of Hindon, and these we raced up at a gallop, the team going gallantly and out-pacing the riders, all except George, who was well mounted and led the way. What a morning! We spent the day discussing the Japanese victories and international questions and building by-laws and religion. The elder Percy was curious as to the exact extent of my beliefs. He asked me whether I believed in nothing at all supernatural. I answered ‘Yes, I have a small belief in the evil eye.’ This was hailed as a great pronouncement.

“_6th Sept._—A day of galloping on the downs to Whitesheet Castle, and this afternoon I read them my version of Lebid’s ‘Ode’ and my play ‘Fand.’ I am satisfied with ‘Fand’ and believe it has even acting capabilities. We had some discussion what to call it, a drama or what, George maintaining that it should be called a tragedy, because it ends in the hero going back to his wife.

“I asked him about Somaliland and what instructions had been given to Swain. He told me he had pressed my views of pacification by blood payment, and had no doubt Swain’s instructions for peace had been stringent because all the military men were furious against him. As to Thibet, Lhassa is to be really evacuated, another triumph of our joint influence. We also talked about Egypt. I gave him my views of a new régime there based on Mohammed Abdu’s letter. He said they were quite aware that the present state of things at Cairo was unsatisfactory, but the great obstacle to any change was Cromer, who was entirely satisfied with all as it is. George had met the Khedive Abbas at a dinner party in London, where the Khedive had treated him with obsequious politeness. This had given him a contempt for him.

“_8th Sept._—George has left us, and with him the life of the party. He is egotistical but not, I think, selfish, monopolizing attention to his own talk and his own ideas. Some people resent this, but on me it has a stimulating effect, rousing me to repartee; thus I am always happy in his company, almost as his mother is who adores his self-glorifications, which are a schoolboy’s in simplicity.

“_10th Sept._—Left Clouds. On my way back through Wilton I passed the statue which has been put up there to George Pembroke. It is on a colossal scale but very like him. It feels strange that I should have known him as a boy.

“_17th Sept._—Chapel Street. To-day I signed the settlement, making over Crabbet to Judith, thus ending my reign there after thirty-two and a half years of it, though I still retain the Lordship of the Manors of Worth and Oram, with Worth Forest, Springfield, and Newbuildings. It is rather a leap in the dark but has not been taken without reflection. George also signed the settlement and also Eddy Marsh, as witnesses. George starts to-morrow, with his son Percy, for Frankfort in order that he may learn German. He is a charming young man and George is immensely proud of his good looks. For himself, his one thought now is to get back to poetry.

“_18th Sept._—Dined with old Philip Webb at Caxtons and discussed Tolstoy’s ideas with him which I quarrel with on two points. (1) His belief that the world is improving in the direction of justice and (2) His view that religion of any kind makes people unselfish.

“_23rd Sept._—Anne has left for Egypt. I am to follow in six weeks. Herbert Bismarck is dead; his wife, Maggie Hoyos, was a nice, simple girl when I used to go and see them at Paddockhurst, some fourteen years ago. I see in the papers that she threw herself on her husband’s coffin at the funeral; their marriage had been a very happy one.

“_28th Sept._—Dined in Belgrave Square, George being with us, having returned from Germany. He has just published a letter in the ‘Times’ repudiating a programme put out in his absence by Dunraven of a kind of Home Rule for Ireland. I know this kind of Home Rule to be in accordance with his views, but he gets out of the difficulty by declaring, that it is absolutely contrary to those of the Unionist Party, a distinction which has so far escaped the criticism of opponents.” This was the first mistake made by George Wyndham in his management of his Irish policy and the beginning of great trouble for him, though he did not at the moment foresee it. His short run to Frankfort was the first real holiday he had taken during his three years at the Irish office, and he had given orders not to be disturbed during his absence by having letters forwarded to him. He was consequently unaware until his return that Lord Dunraven, with whom he had been acting in concert, had launched their scheme of ‘Devolution’ on the world and without due reflection he had written his letter to the ‘Times,’ an unfortunate blunder which cost him his political career.

“_1st Oct._—Sir William Harcourt is dead, the last of the great 1880 Liberals. I am sorry he did not live to see the return of his party to power and the revival of the Harcourt earldom in his own person. He lived just long enough to inherit Newnham. The last I saw of him was some three months ago when I found him in his carriage in Green Park and exchanged a few words with him. He was always pleasant and kind to me and allowed me full liberty of laughter and plain speech, though he never, I think, quite forgave me my gibes at ‘Paradise Lost.’ (I had called Milton once ‘a bombastic windbag.’) This was touching a sacred subject to him, but perhaps I exaggerate the incident. Politically he was straighter than most of his fellow politicians, and when he condoned the Jameson Raid at the inquiry, I believe it to have been out of loyalty as a Privy Councillor to the Queen. His domestic life was very beautiful, and at home he was adored.

“_10th Oct._—Alexandre de Wagram is here for a day or two’s shooting. To-day our last beat was the Sprinks Plantation, where we got seventy- two pheasants, all driven high overhead. The light happened to be favourable and the shooting very good. For myself I got twenty-five birds down at one stand with only thirty cartridges, the best I ever did in my best days.

“_13th Oct._—Oliver Howard and his wife arrived here last night having gone to a wrong station and wandered in flies for several hours. She is a very pretty but rather captious little person, which perhaps accounts for Oliver’s going to South Africa.

“I am working out a scheme of small holdings here with a bungalow cottage and ten acres each at moderate rents, in pursuance of an article I published on the by-law tyranny in the last ‘Nineteenth Century Review.’

“_24th Oct._—An extraordinary incident has occurred. The Russian fleet issuing from the Baltic, and bound for Japan, has at midnight attacked the English fishing fleet on the Dogger Bank, sunk one or two of their craft, killed two fishermen and wounded others. The newspapers treat the affair as a mistake, or panic on the part of the Russian officer in command. I do not take this view. The Russian aristocracy is immensely irritated just now against us English and is in the condition of mind when a man slaps another’s face, without regard to the consequences. I am a man of peace, but under the circumstances were I in Arthur Balfour’s place, I would stand on no ceremony, but should order out the Channel fleet, and bring the Russian squadron into Spithead. The commanding officer was in all probability drunk at the time, but that is no excuse. [I wrote in the same sense to George and he answered me briefly thus: ‘Many thanks for your letter on the North Sea outrage; it was a shocking affair. We cannot contemplate the high seas of the world becoming a vast imitation of a running camp poker saloon.’]

“_29th Oct._—The Russian Government has given in, thanks to the firmness of our Cabinet. The Russian officers are to be submitted to an International Inquiry, and punished if found guilty, and in the meanwhile our Baltic Fleet is to stay where it is at Vigo. Arthur Balfour has certainly managed things dexterously and well. Whether the punishment will be very real I doubt, but the main object is already accomplished, that of showing it is impossible to do these things with impunity.

“_2nd Nov._—With Madeline Adeane to see Bernard Shaw’s new play, ‘John Bull’s other Island.’ It is a roaring burlesque, the most amusing I ever listened to. I laughed till I cried, sitting in the uppermost tier of the gallery, for we could get no other seats. Shaw has certainly made an epoch on the English stage, using it also as a platform for his political fancies. In this play he hits all round, making all the Parliamentary parties equally ridiculous, including the Irish.

“The arrangement of the Dogger Bank affair turns out less rosy than Arthur Balfour announced it to be. The Czar has declared publicly his belief in the torpedo story told by the Russian officers, and the Russian Fleet, with its Admiral Rojesvenski, has left Vigo for Japan. It will probably end in our having to pocket our slap in the face, and perhaps in having the torpedo story saddled on us in history.

“_11th Nov._—I leave to-day for Egypt, after having taken all my male servants down to Shipley to vote for Turnour, the Tory candidate.”

At Gros Bois from 14th November to 20th November.

“_17th Nov._—The great talk here at Gros Bois is of General André’s resignation, a matter of domestic politics. They take no interest here in the Baltic Fleet outrage, or much in the Russo-Japanese War, Wagram being convinced that Russia must win in the end, otherwise it would mean an invasion of Europe by ‘_les jaunes_.’

“This was a sad visit. On the 18th I went with Wagram and the rest of the family to a memorial service he has performed monthly at Boissy for poor Berthe, where she lies under her cold pyramid which marks the family vault, though Wagram is preparing for her a less dreary resting place outside in the sun hard by. Wagram had brought his little bunch of violets, and we both prayed for her, but alas, what matter, she does not know. ‘Though the Heavens and the Earth be broken, she shall not arise, nor waken out of her sleep.’

“_20th Nov._—La Tour d’Auvergne is here, and Alexandre came to-day from Saint Cyr, which he has joined for the Army. He was proud of having driven his motor the distance (forty kilometres) in as many minutes, it being the best and straightest road he says in France, and with the fewest villages. We were taken out shooting as in former days, and killed eight or nine _faisans vénérés_, with a number of the common sort. These _vénérés_ have been thirty-four years wild at Gros Bois, having escaped from their pens during the Prussian War and multiplied greatly, but Wagram complains that the length of their tails has suffered. Formerly the birds measured as much as 2 metres 10, whereas now they seldom reach 1 metre 80. Otherwise they have flourished exceedingly, we must have seen at least forty on one beat. They are somewhat puzzling to shoot, as they are very sudden and irregular in their movements, coming through the woods with a great noise and flourish, and, when you expect it least, perching on the outer trees and chattering like parrots. Thus many birds are missed.

“_22nd Nov._—Venice. With Button Bourke, to see the sights, he doing _cicerone_ with considerable knowledge. I was pleased to find that the loss of the great tower is really a gain to St. Mark’s, which one now sees in its true proportion. The tower dwarfed it, and it is best away. St. Mark’s is, I say once more, the most beautiful church in Europe, and the most interesting. By good luck I find Tintoretto’s great ‘Paradiso’ picture taken down from its place where it was difficult to see, and set in a good light on a gigantic easel, so that one can examine every detail. It is a really splendid thing. Button has been now two years living at Venice, and already has the ways and language of the ‘oldest inhabitant.’ He occupies a little house in San Giacomo dell’ Orio, where there is a large garden in which he stows the odds and ends of outdoor sculpture he buys for the London market, a business by which he makes a scanty living and which makes him happy, having found in it a vocation in life. He is, as always, a delightful companion.

“_23rd Nov._—Lunched with Button and his chief friend here, Horatio Brown, who has taken on old Rawdon Brown’s work at the Venetian archives. I remember old Rawdon Brown when I was here with Anne thirty years ago. Both are interesting men. I told Button the story of the Gorst intrigue at Cairo, and he gave me in return the latest Egyptian news which he got from a friend in the War Office, namely, that Cromer has been in correspondence as to the withdrawal of the Army of Occupation. Cromer has declared himself ready to do without any English regiment beyond a Corporal’s guard at Alexandria. He says he can rely absolutely on the Egyptian troops, that the English garrison is not wanted, and that he declines to pay for it. The London War Office, however, insists on keeping it on in Egypt, as they thus make a saving of English expense, the cost of the army being put upon Egypt.

“_28th Nov._—After a stormy passage I find myself once more at Alexandria and Sheykh Obeyd. During the voyage I read Frederick Harrison’s novel which he has just published, a strange mixture of historic fact of the most interesting kind, and melodrama of the most conventional. The romantic episodes will not, I think, redound to Harrison’s philosophic fame, for it is naïvely unreal, but these take up but a few pages, and might as well have been omitted altogether, while the historic background is vigorous and well told, only, as in every historical novel, the parts that are true ought to be printed in sober type, the parts untrue in red. As it is we don’t know what to make of the cream-coloured Arabs and the coal-black Barbs, which would seem to have been borrowed from Disraeli. I must write to him about it. The Creevy Papers is another volume of good gossiping value.

“Here at Sheykh Obeyd things change slowly. The city creeps gradually nearer us, and the old distant view of Cairo, which was so beautiful, is half shut out by new houses. The garden remains, as always, an unchanging refuge.

“Mohammed Abdu has given me an account of all that has happened during the summer. The chief incident has been an escapade of Sheykh Ali Yusuf’s, in which the Khedive has been mixed up. The Khedive, ever since his first visit to London and the acquaintance he made with our King, has taken to a life of amusement with ladies of doubtful character, and has surrounded himself with boon companions. Sheykh Ali Yusuf, whose connection with the Court was originally a literary one, but who is a pleasant fellow, has been adopted into this set, and, though no longer young, has put on the garments of youth in the Khedive’s company. Among other ladies honoured by His Highness was a daughter of the Sheykh El Saadat, whom her father from mercenary motives had not allowed to marry, though she is now twenty-seven, his high position as head of the Moslem nobility putting it into his power to exact rich presents from suitors for her hand, to whom he afterwards refused consent. The young lady, however, has been furious at the delay, and through the connivance of the Sheykh el Bekri, who had married an elder sister, the Khedive had made her acquaintance, and seems to have wished to establish her with Ali Yusuf. Ali Yusuf was therefore put forward as a suitor, his suit being supported by Abbas, but the old game of preliminary presents and then delays was the only result, and Ali Yusuf getting tired of this, arranged with El Bekri and the young lady that she should elope with him. Now elopement is a quite unheard of thing in Islam, and bears the character of a theft, inasmuch as it is stealing a man’s daughter without paying the customary dower, and the scandal caused in Ali Yusuf’s case has been everywhere immense, nor has it been made less by Lord Cromer’s having ultimately settled the dispute by advising the young person to return to her parents. Mohammed Abdu tells me that the Khedive’s position at Constantinople is that of being made use of by the Sultan as a spy for him on what goes on in Egypt, and for this he has lost his popularity.