THE YOUNG KHEDIVE ABBAS
1892 to 1893
The year 1892 opened with an event which was to prove a turning-point in
Egyptian history, one where a new opportunity was given to our
Government of making a fresh start in the direction of that National
Government on constitutional lines, which Lord Dufferin had promised and
which might have enabled England to withdraw her army of occupation in
agreement with the Sultan, and the Powers of Europe, but which was once
more unfortunately let slip, mainly through Sir Evelyn Baring’s fault,
who misjudged the character of those with whom he had to deal, and found
in it only an opportunity of taking the reins of Government at Cairo
more completely into his own hands. On the 7th of January of the new
year the Khedive Tewfik, still comparatively a young man, suddenly and
unexpectedly died. He had been ailing for a few days at his country
palace at Helwan, and no one had at all foreseen what was to happen. In
the common view of native Egypt he was supposed to have been poisoned,
the memory of such doings for political reasons being still strong in
the popular mind, though, in fact, it was a natural death hastened only
by the mistake of the doctors called in to attend him.
“_9th Jan._ 1892.—Yesterday at eleven o’clock Mutlak (our Bedouin horse
rider), came to me and told me that the Khedive was dead, and
immediately afterwards Mohammed Nassr the Berberi porter repeated the
news, ‘It is Husseyn Pasha the Prince,’ the latter said, ‘who has done
it, I was in his service, and he is a son of sin, _ibn el haram_.’ On
the roof, old Ali, the plasterer, who is a Halimist, and had just been
to the station at Matarieh for gossip, remarked with a wink to me, ‘Are
you not going to the funeral?’ and he went through the pantomime of
drinking a cup of coffee (meaning he had been poisoned). This morning he
tells me about it more precisely. ‘It is the Dowlah that did it (the
Sultan’s Government). Mukhtar had advised Tewfik many times to try a
change of air, for the air of Egypt did not agree with him, but he would
not listen.’ I asked the old man whether he meant that Mukhtar had had
it done. ‘Oh, no,’ he said, ‘they have sent somebody on purpose from
beyond the water’ (from Stamboul). It certainly looks suspicious. They
hurried on the funeral with extravagant haste. Tewfik died at 8 p.m. on
Thursday, and was buried the next afternoon, Friday. The palace
physician gave his certificate that the death was a natural one; no
European doctor examined the body. It takes us back to the good old
times.
“For the interests of the Egyptians I cannot pretend to be sorry. I was
talking on Monday to Mohammed Moelhi, and we agreed that it was hopeless
to look for any improvement as long as Tewfik was on the throne; he
would never consent to a reconstruction of the National Party or work
with the Constitution; latterly he had gone over very much to the
French. Of the _prince héritier_ Abbas, Mohammed said he was very anti-
English, though too young to have fixed opinions. A Constitution might
be possible with him if strongly supported for a few years by England.
Lord Salisbury will have his hand forced, to make a settlement of the
Egyptian question, and I am glad of it, as the English Liberals cannot
be trusted to protect native interests here, and would probably hand
over the Protectorate in all but name to the French. I have not seen any
European yet, so do not know how Baring takes the event.”
“_10th Jan._—Went in to Cairo to see Baring, and had a few minutes’
conversation with him. I suggested that on the accession of the new
Khedive there might be a general pardon and amnesty. He said, ‘Perhaps,
but not for those in Ceylon.’ ‘Why not?’ I asked. ‘I understood from you
that it was Tewfik’s personal unwillingness that stood in the way.’ He
answered, ‘Anyhow, it cannot be done. They (the exiles) have got nothing
the matter with them, and they only want to go to Cyprus.’ Again I
asked, ‘Why not to Cyprus?’ But he would not hear of it. We talked about
the Khedive’s death, and he told me he had had an inflammation of the
kidneys, and passed no water for forty-eight hours; he blamed the
doctors. ‘The Khedive,’ he added, ‘always had a very bad _entourage_.’
“Lunched with the Tennants. They had been to tea with us on the last day
of the old year, and Margot had been very charming and very amusing.
“Then to Helwan to see Minshawi Pasha, and hear his version of the news.
‘Ah,’ said Minshawi (he was living in a villa close by the Khedivial
palace), ‘if you had only come to see me a week sooner, we should have
had the pleasure of making Tewfik angry.’
“_20th Jan._—Dr. Abdel Razak Bey came to see me. He had been with Salim
Pasha a day or two ago, who was one of the late Khedive’s two doctors.
Salim had told him that what the Khedive died of was in reality a
stricture. Abdel Razak speaks highly of the young Abbas as well
instructed and intelligent, and we discussed the new situation Tewfik’s
death must cause for the Egyptian National Party.”
Abdel Razak had been one of Arabi’s personal friends, and one of his
most level-headed advisers, knowing Europe well, and speaking English as
well as French, a rare accomplishment at that time. By his advice and
that of Sheykh Mohammed Abdu, who formed a favourable opinion of the
young Khedive Abbas, who now succeeded his father, I decided that the
time was now come for me to make my peace formally with the Egyptian
Government. As long as Tewfik was alive it had been difficult for me to
do this. I had taken too prominent a part in the revolution, and had
denounced Tewfik too openly after it to make it possible for me to take
any step towards a reconciliation or pay my respects to him by calling
at the palace. But it was now thought by my friends that I should do
well in asking an audience of his successor, and I consequently asked
Baring to present me formally to Abbas, as was the custom in the case of
other Englishmen visiting Egypt. In pursuance of this resolve I find in
my diary:
“_1st Feb._—Went into Cairo with Anne and lunched with the Barings, and
was taken by Baring afterwards to call upon the Khedive Abbas at the
Abdin Palace. It is rather more than eleven years since I had paid just
such another visit to Tewfik with Malet. When we were shown in to-day we
were met at the door of the room by a little young man in military
undress whom I took to be an Aide-de-Camp, but who turned out to be
Abbas himself, a quite unmilitary figure of proportions which made him
look like a woman dressed up in man’s clothes. He has, however, a very
good manner in talking, and a pleasant smile, with brown eyes, and just
a tinge of russet in his hair. He reminded me much of his grandfather,
Ismaïl, and has just the same sort of French accent, talking French well
but not perfectly. He showed no sign of shyness, and treated Baring with
easy politeness, without any sign of special deference; me he treated
with considerable amiability. We talked a little about the brigandage in
the neighbourhood of his Koubbah Palace and Sheykh Obeyd (the two places
are within three miles of each other), and then about petitions, and
then about certain receptions and ceremonies, nothing at all
interesting, but I thought he showed considerable intelligence, and
there was a slight touch of sarcasm in his talk reminding me very
especially of Ismaïl. I shall be surprised if he does not give Baring
trouble. He is said about here to be very anti-English, but Baring will
not hear a word of this, though I expect it is true.” So far my journal.
My recollection, however, goes further than this. It is that Baring’s
manner on this occasion was very abrupt, like that of a schoolmaster to
a schoolboy, and that on our way back from the palace I remarked to him
that I thought the Khedive would not bear driving with any but a very
light rein, his answer being that it was necessary to treat Orientals
firmly; also I warned him he would have trouble.
“I have written to Sir William Harcourt to tell him of Tewfik’s death
and my impressions of Abbas, and to urge him to push forward
Constitutional Government in Egypt.”
We left Egypt soon after this and were back in England by the middle of
April.
The summer that followed, like the last, I devoted more to literature
and society than to politics. My daughter Judith was now being brought
out in society, and though I did not attend many of her balls and
parties, it was a distraction for me from serious work. There is very
little of my diary connected with politics until the middle of August,
when the general elections took place, which resulted in a moderate
triumph for the Liberal party, and Lord Salisbury’s retirement from
office in favour once more of Gladstone. In the meanwhile there are a
few entries in my journal worth transcribing:
“_9th May._—Called on Lady Gregory, and found her sad in her widow’s
weeds. Sir William died during the winter.
“I have finished ‘Griselda,’ and the Arabic ballads, and ‘The Stealing
of the Mare,’ and am publishing an article on Lytton as a Poet in the
‘Nineteenth Century.’
“_18th May._—Riding in the park I was joined by Frederic Harrison, who
told me he had been converted to Islam as a living religion, and offered
to support my candidature if I would come forward as a Mohammedan at the
elections.
“_19th May._—To lunch with Sir William Harcourt. The old man was very
communicative both about Egypt and about Ireland. As to the former he is
for evacuation, but is sound about not giving the country up to France.
He asked me about the Soudan danger, about which I reassured him; then
as to whether it would not be possible to occupy the Suez Canal only. I
said I thought it would be quite possible. He would not hear of allowing
the Sultan to intervene. I told him that it would be easy to constitute
a Liberal native Government and retire. He seemed surprised to hear that
the land tax had not been reduced. ‘As to justice,’ he said, ‘justice is
only a question of personalities in any country.’ Next we discussed
Ireland. He said, ‘I am afraid there is no doubt we shall be in office
after the elections, and then our troubles will begin. The Irish are
impossible; they are split up into four sections, and there is no leader
among them to treat with.’ We went through the various prominent men in
the Irish party, and he asked me about Dr. Walsh and Dr. Crook, also
about Persico’s mission, and the politics of the Vatican. I gather from
him that the Home Rule Bill will be no simple matter, and that he is not
personally much interested in it. He spoke severely of the individual
Irish leaders.
“_20th May._—To the Frederic Harrisons. We had a long talk about Egypt,
and agreed that the best chance of getting an honest policy of
evacuation would be to prevent Rosebery’s returning to the Foreign
Office. Harrison thinks that Rosebery will either not join Gladstone’s
Ministry, or make it a condition that the _status quo_ in Egypt should
be continued. On Ireland he is quite pessimistic, considers Home Rule
for the present a lost cause, and the G.O.M. destined to retire from
public life discredited. Morley would follow him, and there would then
be a reconstruction of the Liberal party under Rosebery, Chamberlain,
Harcourt, and Randolph. He thinks, nevertheless, that Ireland would some
day or other get its independence, while I maintained that the tendency
of progress was towards the amalgamation of nations, not their
separation. To this he said, ‘You know we, the Positivists, believe that
in the next century there will be one hundred and fifty separate States
in Europe,’ but Mrs. Harrison dissented, and I should fancy that his
faith in the Comtist prediction is not very solid.
“_23rd May._—I am staying at Babraham with the Adeanes, and went to-day,
with Adeane, to Gogmagog to see the pictures of the Godolphin, and other
Arabians, and the former’s grave. The original portrait of the
Godolphin, which is there, is of a second-rate Arab, with a heavy head,
lop ears, and a drooping quarter. It is difficult to understand that
race-horses should have sprung from his loins. The view from Gogmagog
over the plain is grand, but the house is mean, though beloved of its
ducal owner. In the afternoon to Audley End, a stately place, but
unfortunately cleaned up, plate glassed, and adorned in recent years.
“_24th May._—Dined with Philip Currie in Connaught Place, Mrs. Singleton
doing the honours. I sat between Mrs. Algy Grosvenor and Oscar Wilde.
Beyond Oscar Mrs. Singleton, then Godfrey Webb. There were also Lady
Ducane and a daughter, Lady Sykes, Lady Baring, just made a peeress,
O’Connor[4] and Trench, diplomats, and three or four more. Oscar was in
good form, and he and I, Philip and O’Connor sat up till half-past
twelve talking when the rest were gone.
“_25th May._—To a meeting at Lord Cowper’s, respecting a memorial for
Lytton. Lord Salisbury was present, and made an inappropriate proposal
(as I thought) that the monument should be placed in the India Office.
Alfred Austin opposed this on literary grounds, and I seconded him,
asking that the Committee should first try for a place, however small,
in the Abbey. I am quite sure this would have been Lytton’s own wish,
for he cared far more for his position as a poet than for all the rest.
“_4th June._—Took Judith to lunch at Hammersmith. Morris in good talk,
told us he had never in all his life been owner of a dog, and did not
care for pets—thought he might perhaps make friends with a horse, if he
had the time and opportunity. He showed us round the printing press,
where his Golden Legend sheets were hanging on strings to dry, the
printers being away for their Whit Saturday afternoon.
“_5th June._—Whit Sunday at Crabbet. Staal the Russian Ambassador came
to lunch with his wife and daughter. He is of all foreigners the man
with whom I can talk most intimately, for we were fast friends thirty-
three years ago at Athens, he then thirty-seven, I eighteen. Now he is
seventy, I fifty-one; yet we talked just as of old, and I doubt if we
feel much older. He was never a young man, even in those days.
“_7th June._—To Mark Napier’s at Fulham. Mark was in his shirt-sleeves,
working at the building of a steam launch he is constructing with his
own hands in the upstairs drawing-room of Little Mulgrave House, a
beautiful room of the last century, full of china and _bric-à-brac_,
perhaps the most incongruous building yard ever chosen. The difficulty
will be to get the boat out of the window when finished. A large
circular saw stood in the dining-room downstairs. [The boat was safely
launched, nevertheless.]
“_20th June._—Breakfast with George Wyndham and Sibell. George and I
discussed the prospects of the General Election. He says the most
optimistic Tory calculation is 14 majority, while Loulou Harcourt and
the Liberals count on 100 for their majority.
“_5th July._—At Kelmscott Manor. I came here yesterday. Morris in fine
spirits, and inexhaustible energy over his new hobby, the printing
press. He is beginning a Chaucer, and there is great discussion whether
it is to be printed in single or double column. I am much in favour of
the single column. Burne Jones is to do illustrations. I forgot to say
that I was at Merton last week with the Morrises, when we saw a brother
of his, working in the dye vats there, a dreamy man in workman’s
clothes, with his shirt sleeves turned up, and his arms blue with indigo
to the elbows. I asked Morris about him, and he tells me that having
begun life with a good fortune—he had a country place in
Herefordshire—he has gradually fallen in the world, and after trying one
thing and another to get a living is now glad to be employed on weekly
wages. He lives at Merton, and is quite happy, indeed he looked so,
dipping wool all day in the vats, in a shed open on to the garden. It
is, perhaps, the nearest thing to a conventual life which can be found
in the lay world. We walked to-day in the meadows by the river.
“_6th July._—The elections are going not too well for Gladstone, and
though he will probably get a majority, I fear Home Rule is doomed.
Ireland will never have a chance again. On all other grounds I am glad,
and so is Morris, but politics are a weary thing. I read him part of
‘The Stealing of the Mare,’ which he approves, and advises me to
publish, though he says nobody will read it; and he read us some of his
own Scandinavian translations in return.
“_13th July._—Mark Napier has got into Parliament, I am glad to see.
Gladstone’s majority will now be 50 or more. Lord Salisbury, George
tells me, will meet Parliament, and will not retire till a vote of want
of confidence has been passed. Gladstone’s personal majority in
Midlothian only 650.
“_19th July._—Gladstone has now a majority of 46 in the new House of
Commons. I have not voted at all in this election, or taken any part.
“_23rd and 24th July._—Meeting of the Crabbet Club, those present were:
George Wyndham.
George Curzon.
Nigel Kingscote.
Charles Gatty.
Theobald Mathew.
Godfrey Webb.
Loulou Harcourt.
Charles Laprimaudaye.
Harry Cust.
Hubert Howard.
George Leveson Gower.
Dick Grosvenor.
Mark Napier.
George Wyndham performed a wonderful feat, writing a long poem in a most
complicated metre, and full of excellent things in hardly more than an
hour, between sets of lawn tennis. Cust wrote another under like
conditions, so full of wit that we nearly gave him the prize. George
Leveson was also good. The tennis handicap was won by Hubert Howard, the
laureateship by Mathew. Hubert won the cup through Grosvenor’s
magnanimity, who having the last set in hand suddenly found himself lame
and retired. Cust is interesting, and of great abilities. George Leveson
a delightful butt, and cause of wit in others with untouchable good
humour. These occasions are the salt of life.
“_26th July._—To Hamilton Aïde’s at Ascot to meet Lady Brooke, the Ranee
of Borneo. She is, or rather has been, a fine, fair woman, and is now
perhaps thirty-seven, living in England away from her husband, Aïde
tells me, because he prefers other wives. I have had a good deal of
conversation with her about native races and European civilization. I
have sent in my proofs of ‘Esther,’ finally corrected, with five of the
sonnet-stanzas cut out. George Wyndham thinks the poem will not greatly
suffer, though he regrets it.
“_1st Aug._—Dined at the Gerald Balfours, Betty charming, and a very gay
evening, the other guests being Lady Frances Balfour, clever, but with
much of her father’s assertive manner, Eustace Balfour, Alfred Lyall,
and Margot Tennant, the conversation all the evening very brilliant, but
it is useless trying to reproduce it. I sat on a sofa with Margot, she
with a fan made of an eagle’s wing. I have sent a letter to Sir William
Harcourt about Egypt, the moment seeming to have arrived.”
There are many other interesting entries of about this date, but they
are none of them quite germane to the subject of this volume, unless it
is the following, which illustrates the growth among ourselves in
England of those doctrines of supermanity and imperial selfishness which
we have since ascribed to a German origin, and denounce among the prime
causes of our war with Germany in 1914. It was at the time a surprise to
me as an avowal by a man of personal amiability of ruthless principles
which I found later to be common enough among my ultra imperialist
friends.
“_5th Aug._—To Cromer with Anne and Judith, Betty Balfour also
travelling with us with her children. We are staying with Frederick
Locker in his wife’s villa. Gerald Balfour joined us in the evening.
“_6th Aug._—Sat in the garden with Betty looking over her father’s
papers (some of which she has a design to print) and talking about him.
Gerald is a very pretty tennis player, and has been at hard exercise all
day at it and golf. I like him better now that I know him better.
“_7th Aug. (Sunday)_—Drove with the Balfours and Conny Lytton to
Blickling, where we lunched. On the way we had a grand discussion about
patriotism, Gerald maintaining that patriotism was the imperial instinct
in Englishmen, who should support their country’s quarrels even when in
the wrong. This of course is not my view. Gerald has all his brother’s
scientific inhumanity in politics, and it is a school of thought
distinctly on the increase, for it flatters the selfish instincts of the
strong by proving to them that their selfishness is right. Blickling is
a perfect place with a very lovely garden, Lady Lothian doing the
honours of it, and showing us all round. There is a small herd still of
the wild white cattle, ten cows and a bull, with some calves. They were
brought originally, Lady Lothian told us, from a park near Manchester,
which became engulfed in the town smoke, a herd then of forty cows (the
cowkeeper said twenty), but they were almost all destroyed at the time
of the cattle plague, some years since, three cows being at one time all
the stock left. Then they got a bull from a herd that had been drafted,
and so gradually have restored the breed. Its characteristics are well
marked, white with black muzzles, and the ears inside black; the bull
was very fine. The herd is tame enough now, being driven in every
afternoon to be milked, and the calves are brought up by hand in sheds.
“Constance, Lady Lothian, I knew as a very pretty woman thirty years
ago, with her invalid husband (elder brother of my friend Schomberg
Kerr), of whom a fine portrait exists by Watts. On our way home we
renewed our argument as applied especially to the Irish. ‘They ought to
have been exterminated long ago,’ said Gerald, ‘but it is too late now.’
He is confident, however, of defeating Home Rule by Constitutional
means.”
Gerald’s argument, I recollect, was based on an application to
interracial politics of Darwin’s law of the selection of the fittest, or
rather of what is an exaggerated interpretation of that law. Those who
put forward this view forget that Man by the abnormal development of his
reasoning powers and his invention of lethal weapons, has put himself
outside the unconscious working of the natural law. Darwin is in no way
responsible for this application of his doctrine, as is clearly seen in
the sympathy he shows with the backward races of mankind, especially in
his “Voyage of the Beagle.” Though individual strives with individual in
the natural world, there is never a combination of a whole species or
race to make war with and destroy a feebler race. This was my argument
with Gerald. Three years later he was appointed by Lord Salisbury and
his brother Arthur, Chief Secretary for Ireland, and proved a kindly
ruler while in office there, being by nature an altogether amiable,
kind-hearted man, but infected, as so many of our Imperialists were
beginning to be at that date, by the politico-scientific doctrines so
crudely preached in Germany.
On the 7th of August I started on a driving tour, the first of many such
I made in after years, taking the northern road as far as Streatley,
then crossing the Berkshire Downs westward, and travelling over grass a
quite uninhabited country, “as desolate as parts of Mesopotamia, and in
the bright sunlight very beautiful, coveys of young partridges running
here and there tamely in front of the carriage, and so as far as
Chilton, where I had the good fortune to find entertainment at the
rectory house of the parson, Morland, a worthy man, living alone in that
lonely place and glad to see a stranger, a hospitality rare of its kind
in civilized England, and so on to Kelmscott, where I stayed a couple of
nights. I found there my friend John Henry Middleton, the Cambridge
Professor, an old ally of Morris’s, and intimate in former days with
Rossetti. Middleton had been a considerable traveller in out-of-the-way
places, and he narrated to me in detail what I had already heard him
tell, his experience in Morocco with a Moorish magician. This is his
account of the incident:
“He was travelling in 1879 about half way between Tetuan and Morocco,
and one evening an old man came to his camp mounted on an ass, with a
boy as servant. The man said he was a magician, and proposed to perform
three wonders; the first to throw a ball of twine into the air, the
second to make a plant grow, and the third to show the face of a person
thought of, in a globe of ink. It was already late, and the performance
was put off until the following morning—the magician remaining the night
in the camp, and in the morning when the tents were struck he was
invited to give his performance. It was an open place, uninhabited, and
without trees or bushes. Middleton chose the ground at some little
distance from where the camp had been. The magician first took from his
wallet a large ball of string, large enough to need both hands to lift
it, and having made a long incantation he tied the end of the string to
one finger of his left hand, and then with a great exertion threw the
ball upwards, which unravelled as it went, and, growing less and less,
disappeared in the air. He then let go of the string’s end, which
continued to hang from the sky. The magician and his boy sat at a little
distance, and Middleton went to the string and pulled it downwards, as
you would pull a bell-rope. It stretched to within about two feet of the
ground, but he felt the resistance strongly from above, so much so that
he cut his fingers with the string, the mark remaining for several days
afterwards. The five men whom he had with him also touched the string,
three of these were Moors, one a Berber, and the other an interpreter.
It was clear daylight at the time, about half an hour after sunrise.
When they had all satisfied themselves that the string was suspended as
it appeared to be, the magician came forward, and in his turn pulled it,
when it fell down from the sky in coils on the ground; he then rolled it
up again into a ball, and put it back into his wallet.
“The magician next took from his wallet a seed, and when Middleton had
chosen a bare place, planted it in the ground; he then asked for some
palm branches which they had with them, and which had been cut the day
before, and he made an arched covering with them over the seed and
heaped horse rugs upon the hoops, and then sat apart and made
incantations. At the end of a few minutes he invited them to undo the
covering, and there, in the ground, a plant was growing, set firmly in
the earth, the first time a few inches high, but when he had covered it
up again and built the hoops higher, it at last became three feet eight
inches high. Middleton measured the plant, found it firmly rooted, and
cut off and kept some of the leaves; the nature of the plant seemed to
resemble that of the Indian rubber tree, and it had some fifty leaves.
It was fresh and healthy though the weather was very hot, it being the
month of October. In the third incantation Middleton was made to look
into a globe of ink. He desired to see the face of a friend, but instead
saw persistently and very vividly a certain landscape he knew well on
the river Severn, near Tewkesbury. The magician when asked whether he
could climb the string and disappear in the air (like the magician Marco
Polo tells of), stated that his grandfather had had the power, but that
he himself was unable. Having been rewarded, he mounted his ass and rode
away. Middleton believes that the manifestations produced were mesmeric,
certainly no trick. The leaves of the plant he kept for some time, but
lost with other things in a shipwreck on his way home.”
Middleton had known Kelmscott Manor in the early days when Rossetti and
Morris first took the house together at a rent of £60 a year. The
Tapestry Room, which is now the sitting-room, used to be Rossetti’s own
room, and it was there that he wrote his poetry. Rossetti, he tells me,
was addicted to loves of the most material kind both before and after
his marriage, with women, generally models, without other soul than
their beauty. It was remorse at the contrast between his ideal and his
real loves that preyed on him and destroyed his mind. It is touching to
see still on the table at meals napkins marked with the initials D. G.
R. His ghost seems to me to be present in all the rooms. From thence I
drove on to Stanway, where I found Arthur Balfour, to whom I narrated
Middleton’s experience in Morocco, which interested him greatly. We had
a pleasant time there, and I found Balfour most agreeable, glad to be
relieved of office, Salisbury having just resigned.
“_16th Aug._—It is announced that Rosebery has taken office after all as
Foreign Secretary under Gladstone. This will neutralise any good that
might have come of a change of Government to Egypt. Rosebery will
continue to represent the Bondholders. Gladstone has made up his
Ministry, every one of them Whigs. Asquith and Lefevre are the only two
who are at all advanced, the rest quite of the old gang, only one
surprise. Houghton is to go as Lord Lieutenant to Ireland, a triumph for
the Crabbet Club!
“From Stanway on to Batsford, which is now Bertie Mitford’s. He
inherited it about five years ago from his cousin Lord Redesdale, and
has spent a vast amount of money pulling the old house down and building
a new Victorian Tudor one. He has also laid out the grounds with
elaborate rockeries and a multitude of trees and foreign shrubs,
stabling on a vast scale, a stud of shire cart mares, the most
interesting feature of the place. I remember Bertie as a very good-
looking youth, three or four years older than myself, with a great
reputation for ability, much talent for languages, and a player of the
_cornet à piston_—this was in 1858. We went up for an examination the
same day, he for a clerkship in the Foreign Office, I for the diplomatic
service.”
Thence (_18th Aug._) on to The Glen, where I found John Addington
Symonds staying in the house, and where I stayed ten days with Margot
and a number of young ladies, a very delightful time, of which my diary
is full, but again this is not the place for it.
From Glen I went to Saighton, where one incident occurs which deserves
transcribing:
“_2nd Sept._—After luncheon we drove, George, Sibell and I, three in a
row, in a dog-cart to Hawarden, George having been especially invited
there. We were to meet the G.O.M. at the new library he has constructed
in the village, a terrible building of corrugated iron overlooking the
Sands of Dee. Inside it is conveniently arranged, and must be an
advantage to the inhabitants. We were met there by Mrs. Drew, who told
us her father would come presently, and leaving George and me took
Sibell off with her to the castle. While waiting in the library I was
glad to find little Maud Gladstone whom I had known as Maud Rendel, and
with her we whiled away the quarter of an hour we had to wait. The
G.O.M., when he arrived, was very cordial with George, but not as I
think with me. He talked about his books in the absorbed way he has,
going on, without paying the least attention to the person he is
speaking to, especially if it is his wife and she ventures to interpose
a remark. The ladies invited me to go back with them, and I walked with
Maud, leaving George and Mr. G. to follow. She showed me over the house
when we arrived, Mr. G.’s ‘Temple of Peace,’ and the rest which I knew
from Margot’s description. There were but few old books, and the modern
ones were very mixed in character. I looked through the poetry shelves
and found the usual volumes of Tennyson and Browning, etc. ‘In Vinculis’
was there with the leaves cut open, but not the ‘Sonnets of Proteus,’
which I had given him in 1884. Presently Miss Helen Gladstone came in,
the head of Newnham College, and I had some talk with her and found her
agreeable in an austere way. Then the G.O.M. arrived with George, and we
all sat down to tea. I sat by Mrs. Gladstone, good old soul, who
speedily thawed to me, while the G.O.M. still went on talking about
books. He had got a rare edition of the Prayer Book and made it his
text, with interludes of discussion, about the various qualities of tea.
I asked him what ‘N. or M.’ meant in the baptismal service, but he could
suggest no explanation. From that he went on to the revised version of
the Bible, which he called ‘abominable’; it was not the first duty of a
translator to be accurate but to render the spirit of the book. This the
revisers had missed. ‘You see,’ interposed Mrs. Gladstone, in the tone
of one anxious and apologetic; ‘he is so conservative, and yet people
say of him, etc., etc.’ ‘He has the spirit of reverence,’ I said. ‘Ah
yes,’ she exclaimed, beaming, ‘that is just it; you have said exactly
what is true.’ But the old man paid no attention and went prattling on,
talking of all things in the same absorbed way, apparently without sense
of their proportion, and for talking’s sake, heedless of our remarks,
until at last he settled down into a ‘Quarterly Review’ article and said
no more. That, I fancy, is his common domestic life.
“Mary Drew’s little girl Dorothy was there, running about without shoes
or stockings, and the Spitz dog which Margot had described to me and
which had brought in a stick with it to the drawing-room, but I did not
notice that Mr. G. paid attention to either. He did not impress me much
with the matter of his conversation, impressive as it was in manner. All
he said was essentially commonplace. Once he corrected George for
pronouncing ‘_mythological_’ short as ‘_mithological_.’ Meanwhile Mrs.
Gladstone gave me an account of an adventure Mr. G. had had two days
before with a cow in the park. ‘It was a strange cow,’ she said, ‘which
had got in by accident and found itself in Mr. G.’s path as he was
walking alone, and when he would have driven it out of his way, it
turned on him and knocked him down. It stood over him but did not gore
him. This,’ said Mrs. Gladstone, ‘was very unusual in a cow. He tried to
rise, but at first he could not, for he had not the breath, but
afterwards he managed to get behind a tree and the cow trotted away.’
Poor old soul, she touched me with her devotion for him. Of himself I
carried away the mixed impression I have had of him before, one of
disappointment at finding less than I should have found to worship.
“Hawarden House, the modern castle, is one of the end of last century,
very comfortable and nice inside with no great pretension to
architecture—outside it is a poor castellated gothic structure. The old
castle, which stands in the grounds a little way off, and to which I ran
up after tea, is a very interesting ruin. On the whole, we agreed, as we
drove home, that we had enjoyed our visit, and that the pilgrimage had
been well worth making. The G.O.M. saw Sibell to the door himself, with
Mrs. Gladstone and the others. The younger men had been out shooting
meanwhile in the Park.
“_3rd Sept._—Travelled in the train on my way home with Frank Villiers.
He has just been made Private Secretary to Rosebery at the Foreign
Office, and professes great admiration for him as ‘a statesman without
personal ambition.’ We discussed the Egyptian question pretty thoroughly
and the release of Arabi. With regard to evacuation he said that
everybody was agreed it would be dangerous and impossible to hold Egypt
permanently. Baring had been doing what he could to prepare things for a
withdrawal of the troops, but he could find no _men_ among the Egyptians
capable of carrying on reforms. Baring had told them at the Foreign
Office of my idea of having a Fellah Ministry, but could not get capable
men. He would be very glad if he could find them, but where were they? I
said that I had given Baring the names of suitable Fellah Ministers, but
that he had told me the late Khedive would never consent to employ them.
I was at one with Baring as to the kind of reforms wanted, but disagreed
with his way of carrying them out through Englishmen. It could have no
other result but to make evacuation more and more difficult. ‘You may
wait ten years,’ I said, ‘and you will find no better occasion to
evacuate than the present. I mean, of course, if you really wish it.’ He
assured me over and over again that that was their policy and their
desire. About Arabi he was not encouraging, but I am to call Rosebery’s
attention to the matter.
“_15th Sept._—At Crabbet. I have seen Countess Hoyos several times. She
rode here one morning, and I have been twice to tea at Paddockhurst
(their country place in Sussex, two miles from Crabbet). Her daughter,
just married to Herbert Bismarck, she tells me, is supremely happy,
having tamed her Bismarck to a point which could not have been believed.
He had been a great _coureur de femmes_, women mainly of the baser sort,
and she has touched him to an ideal love. He is forty-three, she twenty,
a beautiful romance.
“I have had an answer from Rosebery, that is from Villiers, of a most
civil kind, but with the usual official evasion of my questions. Sir
Wilfrid Lawson has also written.
“_17th Sept._—A letter from Margot. She has been paying visits with her
political admirers, Haldane and Asquith. She describes all in a few
words as well as such descriptions could possibly be.
“Lady Lytton was here to-day with her girls to say good-bye before
starting for the Cape. Meynell also, and his wife. After dinner he,
Meynell, gave me a most interesting account of Cardinal Manning’s last
days. Meynell was the old man’s confidant in his many disappointments
and vexations. The Cardinal’s mind had grown large in the later years of
his life, and his view of the Catholic Church, and of Christianity,
comprehensive of all sects and creeds. He was at odds with his fellow
bishops in England, who looked upon him as unorthodox, and worried him a
thousand ways, and he had no one of them all for a friend. His last
hours had been troubled by the worries of his clergy. There had been a
dispute between two of the Bishops, which he had referred to Rome, and
which caused him great annoyance, and when he was taken ill the Bishop
of Salford (Herbert Vaughan, afterwards Cardinal Vaughan) was
unfortunately staying with him, whom he specially disliked. His old
servant Newman had died, and there was no one to take care of him. He
refused to believe that he was dying, and had a strong desire to live,
and Vaughan was hard on him in his insistence on certain formalities
demanded of a dying Archbishop, then having got his way Vaughan left
him, and he lay all night alone, and was found next morning insensible
and dying, his fire out in the grate and no one with him. Truly death is
bitter even to the righteous.
“Meynell told me also of a new movement within the body of the English
Catholic clergy, of the most revolutionary kind, especially among the
Capuchins, and that the Cardinal in some measure sympathized with it. A
movement of the widest sort, rationalistic and mystic, which embraced
all forms of religion and repudiated the finality of any doctrine of the
Church, a kind of positivism and creed of humanity in which Plato, and
Buddha, and Mohammed were alike canonized as saints, and Christ himself
hardly more than these. He assured me that such doctrines were widely
held by the younger priests, and that some of their most zealous and
able exponents were to be found among our monks at Crawley. It was no
heresy, he said, and the General of the Capuchins who had come from Rome
to put it down had gone back converted. This sounds to me altogether
incredible, but he promised to send me the writings of the new creed in
print.” [This was the first word I had heard of the Modernist movement,
afterwards so notorious.]
Mr. Meynell tells me that I unintentionally misrepresent the views held
by Father Cuthbert and his friends. “Not one,” he says, “of that fervent
group of young Franciscans but fixed all his hope and all his faith on
the doctrine, fundamental and final, of the divinity of Christ.”
“_18th Sept. (Sunday)._—Meynell’s talk has done me good. It opens to me
a view of a religious position, not absolutely illogical, in which I may
still be loyal to all my ideas without quarreling with the Catholic
Church. I mean to talk the matter over with Father Cuthbert, the young
Capuchin at our Monastery, whom Meynell speaks of as the leading light
of the new doctrine.
“_22nd Sept._—Lunched at the Travellers’ Club with Frank Bertie, whom I
had not seen for years, and we had much talk about men and things of a
past generation. He tells me Evelyn Baring is seriously ill with eczema
in Scotland, one of the plagues with which Moses afflicted Pharaoh. I
hope it may determine him to let the Egyptians go. Philip Currie was
also there and Sanderson.
“_26th Sept._—Margot writes that she’s starting a paper to be called
‘The Petticoat,’ in collaboration with Betty Balfour, Mrs. Horner, Mrs.
Singleton, and other women friends.
“_27th Sept._—On a visit to Frampton, a very pretty place with a house
of the early eighteenth century, the period I like best for domestic
architecture. Our host, Brinsley Sheridan, is a typical country
gentleman given to sport; his wife, a Motley, sister of Lady Harcourt,
with two nice daughters, and there are sons, but all the boys are at
school.
“There is a Miss Fetherstonhaugh staying in the house who showed me
letters she had received from young de Winton from Uganda, written in
the mixed missionary and fighting language one is familiar with in
Gordon’s letters to his sister. These people believe they have a mission
from God to establish the British flag, ‘the dear old Union Jack,’
throughout the world and to maintain it there with fire and sword.
Pizarro, no doubt, wrote in the same strain from Peru, when he destroyed
the beautiful old world of the Incas. Truly ‘civilization is poison.’
Weld Blundell also is staying here, a clever man with much knowledge and
a close reasoner, with whom I have been discussing Eastern questions.
His view is the commercial Imperialist one held by all English civilians
who have spent their lives beyond the Suez Canal, that of seizing and
keeping markets. We were to have gone to Malwood, but Sir William
Harcourt has been summoned to London on the Uganda question and our
visit is deferred.
“_1st Oct._—Lunched with Morris at Hammersmith and his Icelandic friend
Magnusson, with whom he translates his Sagas. It is curious how much
alike the two are physically—short, thick, sturdy men of the pale-
haired, blue-eyed type. Both, too, have the same socialistic views, only
Magnusson is much more professorial in his way of talking and less light
in hand than Morris.
“Our ministers have taken courage and Uganda is to be evacuated. The
‘Daily Telegraph’ has a deliciously naïve article in expostulation:
‘Uganda,’ it says, ‘was a few years ago a naked people, now they are all
decently clad . . . but there is a tendency, wherever English authority
is relaxed among them, to revert to their old terrible habits.’
“_6th Oct._—Tennyson died this morning at his house on Blackdown. Much
speculation as to his successor.”
On the 12th Oct. I paid my now annual visit to Gros Bois, the party
there being made up of the Gustave Rothschilds, the Comte de Turenne,
Lord and Lady Castletown, and the Talbots, and we had our usual
shootings.
“_14th Oct._—Coming home Wagram entertained us with episodes of the
French game laws. He remembers three poachers having been shot dead at
various times in the park, two by himself and one by the keepers. In his
own case the man had first fired on him. In the third case the poacher
was unarmed; in none was any inquiry made. He and the keepers buried the
dead men quietly where they fell. The last of these three events
happened as long ago as 1863 and ‘Nobody,’ he said, ‘knows now where
they lie but myself; the keepers who helped to bury them are all dead;
it has kept poachers most effectually away. _En plaine_ (meaning the
open fields) one does not take justice thus to oneself, but inside the
Park it is best to do so and say nothing.’ Wagram is a fine survival of
the old sporting days in France, against which the revolution declaimed.
. . . What is pleasant in the sport here is Wagram’s familiar way with
his men; they are all devoted to him.
“_16th Oct. (Sunday)_—An excursion to Ferrières. We drove over all of us
in a private omnibus, changing horses on the road. Castletown and I on
the top, the ladies inside. I find Castletown a well-informed man, more
interesting than I had at first imagined. He saw a great deal of the war
of 1870-71, being with the Prussians at the battle of Champigny in this
neighbourhood, ‘when,’ he says, ‘if Ducros had only pushed on another
two hours he would have broken the Prussian lines and effected his
sortie.’ Castletown was with the Prussian headquarters staff and knew
how anxious they were. He was also with Chanzy in the south, running
great risks of being shot as a spy. We talked, too, of Ireland and
Egypt. He is a strong Unionist, but a fair one in his reasoning, and
would be a Nationalist if there was hope of a complete separation.
“Ferrières (which is the principal country seat of the Rothschilds in
France) stands in splendid woods through which we drove for some two
miles before reaching the château. The house itself is disappointing,
‘_une commode renversée_’ as Bismarck called it when he slept there
during the Prussian occupation. It is surrounded with grounds _à
l’Anglaise_, a fashion which I like less than the old French gardens.
Inside it is like a monstrous Pall Mall Club decorated in the most
outrageous Louis Philippe taste, a huge hall lit with a skylight and
horribly overdone in its furnishing and upholstery. In the midst, a
pathetic little old woman in black, Madame Alphonse Rothschild, in
perpetual mourning for her departed beauty. It grieved me to remember
her in the days of her glory; and when she picked some carnations from a
vase and gave us each one, I asked for a red one and reminded her of how
I had seen just such another in her hair nearly thirty years ago (it was
in 1863) when I saw her for the first time being dressed in a mantilla
for a bull-fight at Madrid. A faint smile illumined her gray face an
instant but evidently without recognition of me, and she relapsed into
her little old woman’s talk about her dogs and birds. Presently we were
joined by a pretty little young woman, her daughter, Madame Effrusi,
also in black, a very attractive little creature who showed us round the
grounds, with the aviaries and menageries, and entertained us with
pleasant talk. This gave colour to a rather colourless afternoon and in
spite of its architectural monstrosities I have carried away a pretty
recollection of Ferrières and the two little quite diminutive
gentlewomen living there.
“_17th Oct._—To-day we made another expedition, there being no shooting,
to the Château of Vaux le Vicomte. We drove to Brunois, thence by train
to Mélun, where we lunched at the Grand Monarque, and on in a fly to
Vaux. Vaux is without exception the most splendid dwelling-house it has
been my lot to visit. There is nothing in England to compare with it,
not Blenheim, not Castle Howard, hardly Hampton Court. It is what
Versailles ought to have been and failed to be, the ideal of all that is
great and sumptuous in the French Renaissance style, and at the same
time not too vast, a house to live in, not merely a palace for show. Its
present proprietor, one Sommier, a sugar merchant, bought it a few years
back for £100,000, and has spent another £100,000 on restoring and
furnishing it, all fortunately in the perfection of good taste. His son,
a plain youth with yellow hair, rather ungainly, but with good voice and
manner, received us on the _perron_, and showed us over everything
sensibly and with knowledge. One feels happy, sugar or no sugar, that
this architectural gem has fallen into such reverent and understanding
hands. It had been offered to the Gustave Rothschilds, who fortunately
let it go by. It is now being carefully put in order, the square mile of
garden brought back from the waste into which it had fallen, statues and
vases replaced, and water let in to the ruined _pièces d’eau_; this is
real restoration, not a stone has been scraped, not an idea improved on.
When one looks at a creation like this, dating from two hundred and more
years ago, the talk of modern progress in the nineteenth century sounds
childish. From Vaux to Ferrières is as great a descent in the
intellectual work of man as from Shakespeare to Mark Twain.
“Coming into the hall this evening for dinner, I saw a grey-headed man
entering at the opposite door, whom for a moment I took to be Leighton,
but it proved to be Carolus Duran, and he tells me he has been several
times taken for Leighton. Duran (or M. Carolus, as he prefers to be
called, Berthe says, on the pretext that he is of Spanish origin, his
real name being Durand, of a cotton-spinning family at Lille) is an
excellent specimen of the French _artiste_ and _homme d’esprit_. An
exceedingly good talker on a variety of subjects, art, poetry,
languages, music, and his own heart. We drew him out on every one, and
on every one he said things worth remembering. He talked of the Chicago
Exhibition and the prospects of painting in America. Most American
artists, he said, had been his own or Meissonier’s pupils. Art was a
matter of education. The Americans would learn it in time. In poetry he
declaimed against Victor Hugo, and exalted Musset, citing corresponding
passages to Musset’s advantage. ‘All great poets,’ he said, ‘are
exponents of their own country’s genius and ideas, not of any other
country’s (see Shakespeare, Molière, Dante, Cervantes), this, although
they are also for all mankind.’ He did not think much of Byron, but
quoted Goethe and one or two Italians. He told us he was Spanish, and
had learned Spanish entirely by ear and with a perfect accent, but his
quotations hardly bore that out. His Italian accent was better. On music
he seemed to talk well, adoring Wagner, Berlioz, and Beethoven, and he
sang snatches of Malageñas in illustration of his ideas on oriental
music. Lastly about his own sentiments and feelings he was very
eloquent. ‘J’aime la mer comme on aime tout être capricieux et qui vous
fait souffrir.’ He regretted his ‘vingt-cinq ans,’ and would have
nothing to do with ascetically avoiding pleasure. At the same time he
assured us that he now made no more declarations of love, seeing that he
was fifty-four. ‘You do this,’ Lady Castletown said, ‘out of timidity?’
‘Non,’ he answered, ‘c’est par pudeur.’ That seemed to me a pretty
_mot_. On the whole an interesting man.
“_19th Oct._—To Paris and called on Lord Dufferin at the Embassy, who
was in the same room that Lytton used to work in. He was very charming
to me, asked me to give him a copy of my new book for his ‘Helen’s
Tower,’ a library where he has got together 400 volumes presented by
authors, and which is named after his mother. I asked him to help me
about Arabi’s release, and he spoke nicely of him, and promised to say a
word in his favour next time he should have an opportunity. On the
general question of Egypt he also volunteered some remarks. He said that
on the whole policy of retaining or abandoning a Mediterranean influence
no responsible person would be willing to give an opinion uncalled for;
but that, if Egypt was to be evacuated, there was only one way, namely,
to build up some sort of self-government. He was especially opposed to
Turkish rule, and had always intended, in the settlement he made, that
the Government should be in the hands of the native Egyptians, not the
Turks. He had devised his ‘Constitution’ for Egypt with that idea. He
was not one of those who thought popular government foreign to Eastern
ideas. On the contrary the East has been the home of Councils and
Mejlisses; and he had always been of opinion that, if you could put
Egypt to work _in vacuo_, there was nothing to prevent success. He had
been glad to see that Baring recognized the help rendered him by the
Councils, and he had written to tell him so. We then discussed how the
power of the Councils might be increased, and also the safeguards
against interference from Constantinople. He talked with so much
interest that his servant had to come in and remind him that he had an
appointment to breakfast somewhere, and so it ended. I have written a
sonnet for his book, ‘Helen’s Tower.’ Back to London in the evening.
“_24th Oct._—Lunched with Amir Ali and his English wife. They seem happy
together, and have two children. He gave me much Indian news, said that
the Hindoos, especially of Patna, were in communication with Russia, and
that if Russia took possession of Persia, Asia Minor and Afghanistan,
there would certainly be a rising in India; the Mohammedans have
separated themselves entirely from the Congress party.
“Dined with Sheffield at the Travellers’. Talking about old times, when
he first went with Lyons as private secretary to Paris, the people at
the Foreign Office had told him to note carefully every word of the
Emperor’s, as all he said was of political value, but after a few
interviews Lyons perceived the emptiness of the Imperial reputation.
Napoleon III’s conversation was that of ‘a man threatened with softening
of the brain.’ Fleury came to them and explained that the Emperor was
often in this state, having over indulged himself with women, remaining
helpless in bed for two or three days at a time, incapable of attending
to anything, and with all the affairs of the Empire left in the hands of
his wife. This was in 1867. Claremont (the military attaché), Sheffield
says, sent report after report to the Foreign Office predicting a
collapse of the French army if there should be war, but nobody paid any
attention. He told me that he had been invited by Frank Lawley to a
dinner of reconciliation between Gladstone and Labouchere. It ought to
be amusing, but what an absurdity political life is! [The Honourable
Frank Lawley had been Gladstone’s private secretary a good many years
before when Gladstone was Chancellor of the Exchequer, but having been
found speculating in Consols his career was put an end to, and he
remained a broken man, not only politically but socially. Public
morality has strangely altered since.]
“_26th Oct._—Lunched with Labouchere, who was as usual most amusing. He
told me the whole story of his correspondence with Gladstone about their
not asking him to join the Cabinet. ‘The best of the joke is,’ he said,
‘it was not the Queen at all who prevented it. I arranged with Gladstone
I should lay it on the Queen, and that he should then lay it on himself.
It really was Rosebery. At the Cabinet Council about Uganda Rosebery was
in a minority of one for retaining Uganda, but Gladstone weakly
consented to his putting in the clause granting a three months’ respite,
and Rosebery at once got up an agitation in the press. ‘He is an
ambitious young man,’ Labouchere said, ‘and wants to be Prime Minister,
playing the part Palmerston formerly played with the help of the Tories
against his own party. We shall have to join against him, and get up a
cry Delendum est Rosebery.’ [This is precisely what happened, and not in
Rosebery’s case only, but afterwards in that of his understudy, Sir
Edward Grey.]
“_3rd Nov._—Dined with Esmé Howard, and went afterwards to hear a
lecture by Captain Lugard at the Geographical Society. Lugard, a little,
thin, dark-faced man, not unpleasing, but his lecture terribly dull. The
theatre crammed, for the agitation got up for annexing Uganda grows
daily. Philip Currie was there.”
The question of evacuating or retaining Uganda was one of critical
importance with the Liberal party, for it involved the whole question of
extending, or limiting British Imperial responsibilities in Africa. Our
military party was working its hardest, helped by the Tory opposition in
the House of Commons and secretly by Rosebery at the Foreign Office,
against Gladstone and the Radicals for the extension, and eventually
succeeded with the results we have seen.
“_4th Nov._—‘Esther’ is out. I have sent copies to Gladstone, Morley,
George Meredith, William Watson, and Knowles.
“To Sir William Harcourt’s, whom I went to see in Downing Street. I
found him just going to a Cabinet Council, and in high good humour.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘will you go to Egypt as Commissioner to effect the
evacuation?’ I said, ‘Yes, if you will recall Baring.’ He chuckled, ‘It
is not Egypt alone they want us to swallow, but the whole of East
Africa. Rhodes was with me yesterday, and showed me this map’ (pointing
to one on the table), ‘where you will see the territories he has
grabbed. He has put up a telegraph already as far as Niassa (? Nyanza),
and means to carry it on to Uganda, and then to Cairo. He has offered to
run Uganda for £25,000 a year, though he admits there is nothing to be
made of it commercially. You know I am not much in favour of these
things myself, and am for keeping out of Mediterranean politics, but
there are others’ (meaning no doubt Rosebery) ‘who won’t dance to the
music.’ I said, ‘I think you ought to make up your minds on the general
policy, and either go in for an African Empire, or leave it alone. If
you shilly shally first one way and then another you will get into just
the same mess that you did in 1882.’ Then we talked about Egypt.
‘Baring,’ he said, ‘has sent in a memorandum, in which he says that the
whole country is becoming English, and so it is to remain, the Khedive
has lost his popularity as he has become too European.’ _I._ ‘Yes, he
has brought back a Viennese woman with him from Vienna.’ _He._ ‘What,
only one? Baring says everything is going splendidly, and he, Baring
seems to have his horses well in hand, it would be a pity perhaps to
meddle with him.’ _I._ ‘Yes, I have no doubt Baring has and is driving
merrily, but even a timid passenger when he finds the coach is going to
Brighton when it ought to be going to York, may be excused for taking
the reins. He will drive you merrily on to annexation.’ _He._ ‘I would
ask you to luncheon, but Waddington (the French Ambassador) is coming,
and I am afraid your views are too well known. Come on Tuesday.’ And so
it is arranged.
“Later to Hammersmith, where I found Morris at his work, but pleased to
see me. ‘It is all a lie,’ he said, ‘about their having offered to make
me Laureate. Bryce came to see me and talked of it, but it was only on
his own private account. I was fool enough to tell Ellis, and he told
his son, who must needs repeat it at the National Liberal Club, and so
it got into the papers. I fancy from what I heard if they don’t offer it
to me they will offer it to Swinburne, but perhaps he won’t take it.’
_I._ ‘It is five to one he will take it.’ _He._ ‘That’s about the
betting, but Theodore Watts declares he will refuse. That’s perhaps all
the more reason.’
“_5th Nov._—A note from Margot, ‘_au grand galop_,’ asking me to
luncheon at her sister Charlotte’s. Their paper is to be called
‘Tomorrow, a Woman’s Journal for Men.’ I was shown the title-page. It is
to come out every two months, and they expect it to run for a year. They
are in straits for a political leader writer, and I suggested Lady
Gregory.
“_8th Nov._—Lunched at 11, Downing Street, with the Harcourts. Great
joking by Sir William about the ‘Souls’ journal. I suggested as a motto
for it, _solus cum sola_, with an armorial coat, bearing two flat fish
osculant _all proper_. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘it is their bodies that I like,
and now they are going to show us their souls all naked in print, I
shall not care for them. Isn’t that so, Sophy?’ (to his niece, Sophy
Sheridan, who sat next to him, pinching her arm.) He went on to
politics: ‘We have drawn out a bill this morning,’ he said, ‘which will
destroy all temperance in England for many years to come. We asked Arch’
(the agricultural labour member) ‘how many parishes in England would
vote against public-houses, and he said with conviction “not a single
one.”’
“_22nd Nov._—Crabbet. Two young monks of the Capuchins at Crawley called
on me some days ago—Father Cuthbert and Father Angelo de Barry—to
interest me in a project they have of founding a working order of St.
Francis instead of the old begging one. Father Cuthbert, who had already
spoken to me vaguely of his ideas of Church reform, sent me to-day a
note by Father Angelo, setting forth the scheme, and asking help for
them to get to Rome and lay it before the Pope. I gave them the money
they wanted, £50, with pleasure, for it seems to me a good and timely
undertaking which may well lead to noble things. [The poor young men
went to Rome, but, as was to be expected, came back with a flea in their
ears. They were the leaders of the Modernist Reform Party in their Order
but could not get a hearing at the Vatican. They very honourably
returned to me the journey money.]
“I am leaving England for Sheykh Obeyd. A trouble to me is the apparent
failure of ‘Esther.’ It is not reviewed, for which I care little, but
even my friends are silent about it, and several of them disapprove.
Only from George Meredith has a letter of high approval come, and one
from York Powell at Oxford.”