A VISIT TO TUNIS AND TRIPOLI
My winter’s journey this year began with a visit I had long designed to
pay to my cousin, Terence Bourke, in Tunis, where he had bought land in
the neighbourhood of Bizerta, and had made his home, having also the
position there of unpaid British Vice-Consul. He was a younger brother
of my old ally, “Button,” who figures so conspicuously in my former
volumes, and, like him and all the Bourkes, was gifted with extreme
natural ability for dealing with men and generally for affairs. Terence,
by this special quality, had made for himself an exceptional position in
the regency of Tunis. He had learnt to talk Tunisian Arabic perfectly,
and had acquired an influence with the native Tunisians of all classes,
unrivalled by any other European. Of all the men I have known who have
had dealings with the East, and whom I have seen engaged with them in
conversation, I place him first in his power of making friends with
them, for he has what Englishmen so seldom possess, an inexhaustible
patience equal to the Oriental’s own, which enables him to sit as they
do, hour after hour, conversing with them, and show no weariness however
dull their talk. This is a great power, and through it he has always
been successful in acquiring their attentive sympathy, and in obtaining
from them their confidence and help. I have often thought that if our
Foreign Office had had the wit to name Terence its Ambassador at the
Sultan’s Court, Abdul Hamid would have remained to this day the ally of
England, instead of its obstinate enemy, but that is a kind of
intelligence seldom found in Downing Street. This is my diary of my time
with him.
“_21st Oct. (Sunday)._—Arrived after a smooth passage at Tunis. The
weather still very hot here. Terence met me on the quay, and we came
straight up to his house in the Moslem quarter, a lovely old tile-
encrusted bit of _bric-à-brac_ as one would wish to live in. One enters
by a side door in an arched passage, through which the street passes,
and by a steep, tortuous stair to the upper floor. One has to stoop to
pass into the apartment, and finds oneself in a marble _patio_ with four
pillars, supporting a dome open from above, the walls partly tiled,
partly in white marble, and the woodwork of the roof painted in red and
green. From this central hall, which is about 20 feet square, the rooms
branch off, the house being roughly speaking, though not exactly, cross-
shaped, with stair and passage leading to the harem at two of the
corners. The furnishing is simple and Oriental, but without pretence.
Terence keeps one young man as house servant, a porter and two women, a
widow and her sister, whom being in poor circumstances, he took into his
house through kindness, Moslems though they are, without offence in the
neighbourhood, and who are his servants, strong, able-bodied women who
go silently about the rooms with arms and legs bare and unveiled.
“After an excellent breakfast, Terence took me to the bazaars, which are
more beautiful and more purely Oriental than any I have seen, and then
to the Bey’s town palace, built, but on a large scale, in the same style
as his own little house, which I have just described. In contrast to all
this we then passed through the French quarter, mean, noisy, and with
stinks beyond description, whereas the Arab town is sedate and clean and
quiet. I have never anywhere seen a contrast so entirely in favour of
Islam. Tunis has recently been made a seaport by the French, through the
device of banking up and dredging a State canal, across the shallow
lagoon which divides Tunis from the sea, just as the Suez Canal crosses
Lake Menzaleh, it is difficult to understand with what commercial
object, as there is not sufficient space inside for many ships to lie. A
better plan would have been to make the port at Goleta, the site of
Carthage, which is near the sea, and is already connected by railway
with Tunis.
“_22nd Oct._—Drove with Terence to the site of Carthage, where Cardinal
Lavigerie has built an unsightly cathedral and monastery, with a
_buvette_ attached to it for pilgrims to the shrine of St. Louis. St.
Louis died here on his last unfortunate crusade and, Terence tells me,
is venerated as a saint by the Moslems as well as by the Christians of
the district, who affirm that on his death-bed he made profession of
Islam. He is known to them as Sidi Abu Saïd, and they show his tomb at a
village of that name hard by. The waiting room, nevertheless, of the
monastery is adorned with huge cartoons in illustration of his victories
and death as a Christian saint, coloured in the vilest form of French
ecclesiastic art. The gasconading of these pieces is worthy of
Lavigerie, an ambitious prelate who pushed himself into public notice,
with the aid of French Chauvinism, intending to become Pope. This,
however, was not in the decrees of Providence.
“From Carthage we went on to Marta, a summer seaside residence of rich
Tunisians, and lunched with Drummond Hay, our Consul-General, and his
family. They are moving in a few days to Beirout. With Hay I had much
talk on North African affairs. He tells me the French are trying to work
their frontier round by Merzouk to the south of Tripoli, where they are
beginning to open markets, but he thinks that eventually they will find
strong resistance in the Senussi confraternity. They are making friends,
however, with the Tuaregs and the Negroid inhabitants of the southern
oases. As to Egypt, he professes to share my view of the danger and
uselessness of our holding it. He told me that he had recently been
given the opinion of one of our high naval experts, and that it was to
the effect that in case of war with France the garrison in Egypt would
have at once to be withdrawn, and indeed the whole Mediterranean
evacuated by our fleet. To hold Egypt would not be possible.
“I find it very difficult to carry on a conversation in the Tunisian
dialect, even the commonest Arabic words are either unknown here or so
travestied as to be unrecognizable. There is a fondness for diminutives
and for throwing the accent on the last syllable. Amidst the more
educated class a better Arabic is spoken, as also I believe by the Arabs
of the South and the Bedouins generally, but the Berbers are nearly
unintelligible to me. Terence speaks to all with the greatest fluency, a
vile patois but with precisely the native Tunisian accent. His slightly
falsetto voice completing his disguise as no European.
“_23rd Oct._—Called with Terence on Rifault, the French Resident in
Charge, who told me nothing interesting, only the common banalities used
to strangers on such occasions; and on General Leclerc, the French
commander-in-chief. This done, we took carriage with a pair of mules for
Bizerta, where Terence has a European house, a distance of some forty
miles in less than five hours. A long, dull road with long stretches of
brown fields, at this time of year empty of all life except that of a
few poor tents, with cattle grazing on the stubbles. It is not till near
Bizerta that the hills begin.
“_24th Oct._—At Bizerta. Terence’s house here is less interesting than
the other, being modern and European in style. He has told me about his
domestic life in Tunis. The two women who keep house for him there lived
in his quarter and were very poor, and he has allowed them to inhabit
his house, which they look after in return. At first, he said, the
neighbours objected to these Moslem women living under the same roof
with him, but now they have accepted him in their quarter and find no
fault. Thus he has been able to lead a quite native life, has learned
the language (Tunisian Arabic) thoroughly, and knows more of the people
than any European in Tunis. Here in Bizerta he manages his large
property, takes contracts of all kinds, speculates in oil, and acts as
Her Majesty’s unpaid Vice-Consul at an office in the town. He seems
beloved of all, and it is natural, for he is kindly and quiet and full
of intelligent talk, and he has that rare virtue in an Englishman of
being never in a hurry, or bored, or out of temper, or too busy to see
and speak to the poorest man that calls on him. We went together to see
a few details of his management.
“_25th Oct._—We went round the old town, once a famous pirate’s nest,
now becoming little by little invaded by Europeans, but still
interesting, and stopped to drink coffee with a fat citizen, one of
Terence’s friends. In the evening we rode down into the village and
talked again, but I am confounded to find that I understand hardly a
word of what is said. Terence is happy and at home with everybody and
has a fund of good humour which makes him everywhere _le bienvenu_. We
played chess in the evening.
“_26th Oct._—We have had much talk all day on Oriental and religious
subjects, and I find Terence to have ideas not unlike mine on these
matters, and we have made a plan of going in the Spring to visit the
Senussi in the Tripolitan desert and perhaps making profession of Islam,
at least I hope some day to do so. I think a hermitage of the kind I
have been seeking might be found in the country near Cyrene. In the
evening we made a round of the eastern shores of the lake in a steam
launch belonging to the Harbour Company.
“_28th October (Sunday)._—Back to Tunis. Terence tells me the
agricultural colonists here are of a superior class to those of Algeria,
there being some young Frenchmen of good family among them. These are
opposed to annexation, and take the part of the natives as against the
encroachments of the officials, but the town colonists are for making
Tunis a French province. The worst of all are some from Algeria, where
they are all rabid against ‘_les Arabes_.’
“_29th Oct._—Once more in Terence’s delightful house in Tunis, Rue des
Silots, 41. A young Tunisian came in to-day to play chess with me and I
won two games of him, but he has considerable ideas of play on the Arab
lines, which I fancy were once also those of Europe. The principal
differences in rule are that the pawns cannot advance two steps at a
time at their first move and that castling is performed in three moves,
the king having the right on the second occasion to manœuvre like a
knight. This young man, who is well educated, talked a quite
comprehensible Arabic, and I am beginning to understand the others.
“We went in the morning to see the cavalry _remonte_ and were shown
sixty or seventy stallions, half-a-dozen of them Arab, none good, except
one old horse said to be a _Shouey-man_ from Nablous. The best were four
white barbs from the province of Oran, thick set, short legged, which
would be handsome if they had less drooping quarters. The native
Tunisians unfit to breed from in any country.
“_30th Oct._—Started with Terence for Kerouan by road with four horses
abreast in a landau, very like the old _vetturino_ travelling in Italy
of fifty years ago, very slow but pleasant in fine weather. We rested
two hours at midday on the road under a Carob tree, and stopped for the
night at a _fondouk_, a clean airy place the property of a Sherifa, a
widow of Tunis, whose husband built it as a speculation forty years ago.
It used to be a paying concern, but the new diligence service has
spoiled its trade, the respectable keeper of it told us. These
_fondouks_ are like the _khans_ in Turkey, a number of little empty
rooms paved with tiles, where the traveller pays a few piastres for his
night’s lodging and provides his own food. We paid five francs, which
included a franc for stabling. I should be glad to be always as well
lodged in Europe. The road passes over a series of plains, partly
cultivated in the summer, but all bare now, the hills beyond very
beautiful.
“_31st Oct._—Another long drive, crossing the Enfida estate. This caused
at one time a political question between England and France, the facts
of the case being these: Kheireddin Pasha (the same who was afterwards
Grand Vizier at Constantinople) having got together this immense
property sold it to a French land company, whereupon a right of pre-
emption was claimed by a Jew, a protected British subject, as
neighbouring proprietor. It was before the French Occupation, and both
governments backed their own clients for political reasons. The Jew’s
claim, however, was a rather doubtful one, and as the French company
gave more than the land was worth, he was in fact no loser, and the
British Government gave way. The estate consists of a vast tract of
plain, most of it capable of cultivation, but exposed to the south
winds. The company has planted many hundreds of acres with vines, but on
the whole Terence says it does not pay. The high road passes for several
miles through it, and through the chief farming establishment of which
they are trying to make a town of the usual French kind, with poplars
and eucalyptus trees.
“Beyond this there is nothing more in the shape of a house until one
gets to Kerouan. We were so pleased with our night at the _fondouk_ that
we determined to go to another at Kerouan instead of to the French
Hôtel. (We were both travelling in Eastern dress.) And so after some
wandering in the streets, it being already dark, we have taken up our
quarters at a house of reception, which is entirely Arab, and entirely
Moslem, about the centre of the town. It is an _okeilah_ or lodging
house, where merchants hire rooms by the month in which to deposit their
goods and sleep. We pass in it for an Indian Moslem merchant and his
friend, a Syrian, from Damascus.
“_1st Nov._—The _okeilah_ is a poor place. We have one little room
between us like a prison cell, opening on to a balcony which runs round
the inner court, open at the top. It is dirty and bug ridden, but decent
and essentially Oriental. The proprietor is a respectable merchant,
originally from Sfax, who sits all day in a room on the ground floor,
which is his shop and counting-house. His trade is to buy wool and other
desert produce from the Bedouins, and to sell them linen cloth. A number
of them have been all the morning in the courtyard, very noisy in their
bargainings, most of them of the Slasi tribe who have a good robber
reputation inherited from past times. Our driver, Rashid, pointed out to
us yesterday the sandy passage in the road where caravans used to be
attacked by them in the good old days, and even sometimes now of dark
nights. This reminds me that about ten miles from the town we came upon
a mounted Arab who shouted to us as he passed that a cousin of his had
just been killed upon the road, and he was riding for help.
“The proprietor has a son, a simple-minded youth in a white turban, who
comes to sit with us and talk, and there are two servants, one a merry
man who makes coffee at the door, the other a vague old mendicant who
occasionally sweeps out the rooms, and goes on errands. Both these are
_hashish_ smokers openly, for at Kerouan there is no shame in the drug,
and Terence, who went down to spend the evening below after I had gone
to sleep, tells me the _kawaji_ was most amusing, indeed they were all
in roars of laughter through the night.
“Terence is incomparable as a traveller for he has the readiest possible
wit and a pleasant word for everyone, and wherever he goes smiles break
forth, and a kindly feeling of goodwill from man and maid. He also is an
admirable cook, and with Saleh his servant, has given us excellent
dishes stewed over a spirit lamp. He can sleep anywhere, and all day
long, and never is put out, or bored, or in a hurry, withal of an
exceeding good sense and knowledge of the proportion of things, prudent,
economical, persistent, the reverse in fact of all that distinguishes
Europeans in the East, and astounding at his age (twenty-four).
“We went out last night in the streets, and again this morning, and I
think that no one suspects us of a disguise, though they are somewhat
puzzled at our affairs. We went to the Mosques directly after breakfast,
first to Sidi Okba’s of which we entered the outer court only, for the
inner shrine was being repaired, and a surly guardian refused us
entrance, saying that without order from Sidna el Morákeb the doors
could not be opened, so we had to be content with peeping in and
complaining of the tyranny. We saw, however, pretty nearly all there was
to be seen before we were turned out. At the other Mosque outside the
town we were more fortunate. Here we were admitted, and saw all, and
made our devotions at the tomb of Sidi Sáhabi unquestioned. It was very
hot all day, and we lay stewing in the balcony of the _okeilah_ till the
_asr_ and playing chess, to the wonder of the proprietor’s son, whom we
told it was an Indian game. Then we went through the bazaars and outside
the town to see the walls, all very interesting, and as yet little
spoilt by the French invasion, and spent the evening on mats under the
city walls, where there was an Arab coffee house, drinking lemonade, and
so the long day ended.
“_2nd Nov._—This morning, being Friday, the Mueddhin chaunted the whole
prayer from the Minarets—and there is one just outside the
_okeilah_—beginning at four and going on more than half an hour, a fine
old-world ceremony, disappearing alas from Islam. Kerouan, however, is a
holy city, and preserves some at least of its traditions. We were up
with the first light, and having drunk coffee prepared for us by our
friend the _hashishi_, and induced his old companion to carry our
baggage, which he did with great unwillingness for he was still drowsy
with his opium, and paid our two nights’ score at the _okeilah_, three
francs and a few coppers—it would have been the same if we had taken our
rooms for a month, and the proprietor was too sleepy to get up and see
to it—we went out through the half awake streets to the Eastern gate,
and the office of the new tramway, where we waited an hour and saw the
sun rise. Terence employed the time repeating to me a story told in the
_okeilah_ by the merchant of Sfax, which is as good as most in the
Arabian Nights. (It is too long to insert here, and I reserve it for
another occasion.) Then we took our places in the tram, and went at a
fine gallop across the desolate plains in four hours to the sea at Sus,
where we once more put off our Moslem garments and washed and dined at a
Frankish restaurant. The tram journey between Kerouan and Sus is a
curious mixture of old and new. The coach runs on rails laid across the
open fields, drawn by horses running beside it with a long loose trace,
so that when it crosses ravines the horses gallop beside it up and down
the steep places without checking their pace. The track is all more or
less down hill, so that once started the coach goes by its own weight,
and the horses have all they can do to keep up with it in certain
places, not being harnessed to any pole, the only check on the coach
being a brake worked by the conductor in the steepest parts, a most
exhilarating way of travelling, and quite practical for that particular
journey.
“Sus is a lovely old battlemented town as yet little spoilt, though the
usual obscene French houses are springing up outside it. I walked all
over and around it and through its bazaars. There is a fine citadel
commanding the town on which a French flag is hanging half-mast high.
The Emperor of Russia is dead.
“Here we both took ship, Terence to return to Tunis, I to go on to
Tripoli, touching at Monastir and Mehadir, two lovely mediæval
strongholds by the sea. In the latter I had the good luck to make a
friend. Seeing a nice clean Arab coffee-house in front of the mosque, I
sat down in it at the same time with a respectable Bedouin, whom I
saluted. He ordered at once two cups of coffee, and we talked and made
friends, he in good Arabic, a very worthy man, living, he told me, some
ten miles from the town, and he has promised, if he passes through Egypt
next year on the pilgrimage, to alight at Sheykh Obeyd. I have seldom
met a better bred or more kindly man. At Sfax, where we arrived at
daylight next morning, _4th Nov._, I had an odd adventure. Having made
acquaintance with a respectable looking man in the boat which took us to
the shore, I was glad to accept his invitation that he should show me
round the town, which he did with all politeness, and then invited me to
his house. This was in a by street of no very reputable appearance, the
entrance being by a low door where a donkey stood tied, and on entering
I saw at once that it was no Moslem house, as I had supposed my friend
to be, for there were women there unveiled, and it flashed on me what
was the truth, that they were Jews. This became clearly the case when
they set a meal of greasy bread before me, and tried to make me drink
absinthe, and I had some difficulty in finding excuse to get away and to
explain that I was not myself a Jew, for my conductor had come to the
conclusion that I must be one, for my having condescended to speak to
him and enter his house, for in these North African towns the Jews are
treated as pariahs by the Mohammedans, and he did not understand it as
possible that I could be other than one of his own nation treating him
with the politeness I had shown. It is no less characteristic of the
position Jews hold in Tunis that as soon as I had explained to him the
mistake he had made, his manner at once became changed from one of
hospitable anxiety to please, to one of undignified begging for a
_bakshish_, which I was of course only too glad to give, feeling that
the fault had been mine.
“Sfax is an interesting, and except for the Jew quarter, a wholly Moslem
town, inhabited mostly by Sherifs, every other man wearing the green
turban. It was bombarded and barbarously treated by the French in 1881.
The captain of our steamer, the _Ville de Tunis_, tells me that this was
in some measure a mistake. When the town was summoned by the French
fleet to capitulate, it happened that, being the 14th of July, in the
interval before the answer was received, a salute was fired in honour of
the day, and the people of Sfax, thinking it an attack and that the
shots had fallen short of the town, refused terms of unconditional
surrender offered to them. The town was then bombarded in earnest, two
breaches were made in the walls, and the place was stormed. The French
lost 700 men and gave the Moslem quarter over to sack for twelve hours
(this the captain denies, but it is historical), during which the houses
were broken into and the women ravished; the broken doors were long left
unmended in token against them, and I noticed when I walked through the
Moslem quarter in the morning that many doors showed new locks recently
put in and new panels not yet painted. The city walls have been mended,
but the town inside and the bazaars look poor compared with Sus. The
wealth of the town lies outside in the gardens, several hundreds of
which surround it, all belonging to the Moslem inhabitants. The French
colonists have tried to buy them out but they will not go. There is a
bitter feeling here against the conquerors. According to my Jew
acquaintance, Braham ben Gabrail Mazuz, there are a thousand houses of
Jews in Sfax, probably an exaggeration. These are divided in opinion
about the French occupation, but most are in favour of it, as they were
badly treated by the Moors. They are mostly very poor, the richer ones
doing trade as middle men between the Moors and Franks. Young Braham
came on board again to wish me good-bye, and brought some cake and roast
chestnuts and bread for me, but he could not resist asking me for the
fare of the steam launch he had taken passage in from the shore, and a
franc over.
“Our party on board is reduced to the captain, the doctor, and two cabin
passengers, so I have the ship practically to myself. There are very few
European colonists in these parts except the small population of drink
sellers and restaurateurs. The Arabs refuse to sell their good lands,
and the bad are not worth buying, nor has the French Government yet
found an excuse in rebellion to confiscate these as has been done in
Algeria. The taxes are low, no land tax in coin but the old tenth of the
gross produce and a poll tax of, I think, twenty-five francs levied on
rich and poor. This last presses on the poor and causes discontent
because in the old time it was not levied in extreme cases of poverty,
whereas now under the French no one is exempt. Civilized governments
always commit this injustice in Eastern lands, falsely pleading
immemorial custom.
“_5th Nov._—Arrived by daylight at Gabez, a palm oasis watered by a
small river which rises some five miles inland, they say in several
hundred springs. This feeds the gardens, the rest of the country being
desert. I found a ramshackle carriage with an Arab driver from Tripoli,
who took me round and explained everything. There are but few Europeans
here, some warehouses on the shore but nothing inland. The native
population is Arab, not Berber. Under conduct of my Tripoli driver I
visited the barrage, where there is a run of water about the size of our
Mole at Leatherhead, much overgrown with reeds and weeds, an oozy
unwholesome haunt of frogs and snakes. Then to the mosque and tomb of
Abdul Barber, a pretty place on a hill, and so round. There was a tame
gazelle running in the desert outside the villages, for there is no town
of Gabez. My driver told me that before the French occupation this was a
dangerous neighbourhood, as the Bedouins were always marauding. There is
a certain trade here of _halfa_ grass, which they bring from two or
three days’ journey inland, worth, my driver said, five francs the camel
load.
“We left at noon and arrived at sunset off Jerba, a long, low island,
wooded with olives and palms, the water so shallow that our steamer had
to lie six miles from shore, so that we only saw it as an outline on the
horizon. This they say is Calypso’s Island, a dreamy afternoon place,
lying sweltering in a stagnant sea.
“_6th Nov._—Tripoli. A lovely white town with walls and minarets and an
immense growth of palms. Here there is a natural port which could be
improved if the Turkish Government would allow Europeans a concession to
do it, but it wisely refuses, knowing the consequences. The foreign
population consists of some 6,000 or 7,000 Maltese and Italians. There
are many Jews, and a large population of Moslems, mostly of Arab race,
manly and fanatical. The Tripolitans are not subject to conscription for
the Ottoman army, but form a kind of militia having obtained certain
terms of independence when the Sultan took possession, in return for
their support given against the Bey.
“The palm gardens, which extend for ten miles, are wholly in their
hands, and Europeans are discouraged, if not forbidden, from living
outside the town. Beyond the gardens all is a sandy desert, and the
general character of the place is like our own palm district at Sheykh
Obeyd. I called at the British Consulate, and found my old friend Jago
officially there, who sent his son with me in a covered cart through the
palm groves and to the desert beyond. We stopped to see the Wali’s
garden, newly reclaimed from the sand. It has all the features of our
own garden in Egypt, but without the _lebbek_ trees. He is making a
number of such gardens, using the soldiers to do the labour as is the
way in Turkey. Then to a place they call the Hahneh, which is a bit of
high, stony ground kept bare for the purpose of assemblies and
festivities in the centre of the palm gardens. From it one sees nothing
but palm tops all round.” [The palm district here described was the
scene in 1911 of the abominable atrocities committed by the Italian
soldiery when, in defiance of all right or even pretext, they made
their raid on Tripoli, and massacred the Arabs of the oasis.] “Then to
the Suk el Jumaa, and the Suk el Thalatha held on the seashore. Here we
found a great concourse of Arabs with camels, horses, asses, and cows
for sale, several thousands of them on the beach. Some had brought a
load of _halfa_, others sheep, others woollen shawls. I bought a grey
and white shawl for fifteen francs, more than their market value,
though really beautiful pieces, like the best Scotch or Irish homespun,
only better. I should say a good trade might be made by importing these
to England.
“After this we went back to a midday meal at the Consulate, a good old
Moorish house, but standing unfortunately in the Maltese quarter, which
is noisy and filthy in the extreme, contrasting with the Moslem
quarters, which are clean, silent and decorous. The Turks keep about
6,000 regular soldiers in Tripoli, but count the native militia at as
many more. They have Mudirs and Kaimakams in the principal towns inland
as far as Ghadamés, but the policing of the country district is done by
the Arabs. They say these inland districts are fairly secure for native
travellers, but a great caravan, which started for Wadai in the far
south two years ago with £40,000 worth of goods, was plundered there by
Rabagh Ibn Zebeyr when he attacked Wadai last year, and none of the
merchants have yet returned. This has caused great lamentation and
distress in Tripoli.
“We weighed anchor in the afternoon for Malta, there being no direct
steam communication between Tripoli and Egypt.
“_7th November._—We arrived off Malta by daylight, and got inside the
harbor at Valetta by nine o’clock, certainly a splendid place. I called
at once on Count Strickland, to whom Terence had given me a letter. I
was surprised to find him quite a young man, he is thirty-four, and he
reminded me that we had met already at Cambridge, when he was an
undergraduate and one of the chief officials of the Union and I was down
there with John Dillon only seven years ago; now he has been for six
years secretary to the Malta Government, a post of no small political
importance, he being half a Maltese, through his mother, a Countess
della Catena, and having married De la Warr’s eldest daughter, Lady
Edeline Sackville. I found him very busy preparing for a debate on the
estimates in the Maltese Legislative Council, an annual event, the
principal political one of the year.
“The Council was to meet at half-past two, and he took me there with him
to attend the debate, an interesting display. The Governor, Sir Arthur
Freemantle, was in the chair, the six official members to his left, the
fourteen elected members to his right, three or four benches at the end
of the chamber being for the public. I was given an armchair behind the
Governor’s. The Council Chamber is a splendid room, and the ceremonial
was dignified, but with a certain air of unreality as in a debating
club, though it was an important occasion, for politics are running high
in Malta just now. The leader of the opposition, Savona, is a man of
about fifty, keen-eyed, alert, professional, reminding me a little of
Freycinet. He knows English well, and made his attacks sometimes in
English, sometimes in Italian, for both languages are used optionally,
the more animated speeches being in Italian. There seemed to be a very
full liberty of speech, but no applause or dissent of the kind that
makes our House of Commons a babel. To me it was most interesting, as
the questions treated turned on Constitutional right, and were dealt
with ably and with passion. Savona on some previous occasion had been
taunted by an official member with having allowed the Estimates to pass
untouched, and he was determined now to reduce this year’s on certain
points in protest against an infringement made three years before by an
order of the Colonial Government of the Maltese Constitution. Elected
members had been deprived of their right to become members of the
Executive. Strickland replied in an able, debating speech, but without,
as I thought, having the better argument, or commanding the sense of the
Council. One of Savona’s proposed reductions was of £10 for the
repainting of the Government barge, and this he made fun of. He found,
however, support on the point in one of the elected members, Mozu, and
Savona lost the amendment, though he carried another reducing the vote
by £266 in regard to other items. Freemantle then retired, and a rather
noisy discussion followed about his successor in the chair, during
which, as it was late, I too went out. On the whole I was pleased with
the debate, which was ably conducted by the opposition, there being but
one very foolish speaker, a deaf old man, who talked nonsense about _i
poveri Maltesi_ in and out of season. There was certainly more reality
in it than in the Viceregal Council meetings I attended at Calcutta, and
must do good as putting a check on the Government’s autocratic vagaries,
if nothing more.
“Dined with young Sitwell of the Rifles at the Club, and was glad to
find him talking sensibly about the exclusion of the Maltese nobility
from its membership. This is a notorious scandal and cause of ill-
feeling. Looking through the Club list I can find no more than two
Maltese names among the English ones, Strickland’s and Dingli’s. The
tone of English society here, Sitwell tells me, is violent about the
Maltese and absurd. He and his regiment are off next week for Bombay,
where he will find race arrogance more violent still.
“_8th Nov._—Drove across the island through a series of lovely villages,
all of hewn stone, to Hajar Kim, where there is an ancient temple of the
Druidical kind, then with Strickland to his country house, on the way to
Città Vecchia, a fine villa of the beginning of last century, with
courts and fountains and an orange garden. This he inherits from his
mother. He tells me there are about twelve families in the island which
enjoy a _majorat_, his being one, in the rest property has been divided
among all the children, and so has disappeared. This dates from the time
of the knights. When the island was given to the Knights of St. John in
1530 by Charles V a proviso was made that it should revert to the Crown;
consequently, when the English first occupied Malta it was in the name
of the King of Naples that they did so. The French knights had betrayed
the island to Bonaparte, who took possession of it as part of the French
Republic, ill-treated the inhabitants, robbed the churches, and speedily
made the French detested. The Maltese rose against them and invested the
fortress for eighteen months and forced a capitulation which the French
made, not to them but to Nelson—the annexation to England was an
afterthought.
“Strickland explained Savona’s attitude of opposition as one caused by
disappointment. Savona began life as a soldier in the hospital corps,
but having learned English he bought his discharge, set up a school and
newspaper, and attacked the Government. He was then taken in the
Government to keep him quiet, but left it when the Constitution of
1887[12] was granted, he having opposed it and recorded in a minute his
view that Malta should be governed as a Crown Colony of a severe type.
This minute was thrown in his teeth when he seceded from the Government
and set up as its violent antagonist. Strickland, of course, is
officially prejudiced against him, and will not see in him any patriotic
motive, but he admits that public opinion generally is anti-English
among the educated Maltese, while the country people are indifferent.
Savona, he assures me, is losing his popularity, but he, Strickland, is
tired of the worry and would be glad to change his chief secretaryship
for a Colonial appointment. I find him clever and interesting.
“_9th Nov._—Left Malta for Egypt _via_ Brindisi.”
The winter that followed that year and the following spring in Egypt was
one that has left me few political records, the new National movement
headed the last two years by the Khedive Abbas having lost its first
impulse through the reasons I have already described, and I stood aside
busying myself with other things, and beyond a single visit to the
Khedive at Abdin Palace, my diary contains little worth transcribing. I
arrived at Sheykh Obeyd on _15th Nov._ and found Anne and Judith already
there, and on the 21st Fenwick Pasha, who for the last two years has
been English adviser at the Home Office and head of the police, called
on me. He had, compared with most Englishmen, been favourable to native
self-government, and under the new _régime_ had become out of favour:
“Fenwick leaves Egypt immediately to join his regiment in India. He
spoke strongly and rather bitterly of the recent change in the
administration which has put the police once more under the Mudirs, and
thinks it quite uncompensated by the appointment of Gorst as English
Adviser at the Ministry of the Interior. He thinks Cromer may have
yielded the point from a Macchiavellian motive of allowing the native
Government to make mistakes of which he will profit later, but I do not
think this.
“_29th Nov._—To-day being the Khedive’s birthday and a whole holiday,
Tigrane Pasha came to see us; he is down on his luck politically and
looks at things as going badly, regarding Gorst’s appointment to the
Ministry of the Interior as a new encroachment.
“_30th Nov._—Sheykh Mohammed Abdu to lunch with us. He tells me the
Khedive’s ideas are unchanged since last year, that he is still bitter
against Cromer and the Occupation, that his visit to England was
prevented last summer by the Sultan, and much else. The Khedive is very
kind to him, Abdu, now, and gave him a private audience of thirty-five
minutes, and he has obtained his long-wished for grant of £2,000 a year
for the Azhar University. A committee is to be appointed to see to the
spending of the sum. We talked over old events and he gave me again the
history of the Mufettish Ismaïl Sadyk’s murder by Ishak Bey on board the
Khedive’s steamer. Ishak strangled him with his own hands. He says this
was certainly done on the river, immediately after Ismaïl Sadyk’s arrest
by the Khedive Ismaïl opposite the Jesireh palace. He told us the story
of Ali Pasha Sherif’s slavery adventure. Ali Pasha Sherif had been
recently arrested by our people on a charge of slave dealing, he being
the oldest and most respectable personage perhaps in Egypt, and
President of the Legislative Council. The Pasha had behaved very
foolishly, Abdu said, ‘like a child.’ The truth was he is in his dotage
and has become foolishly attached to a woman on whom he spends his time
and money, and it was for her that he had bought the slaves, and he told
us also of Nubar’s moneymaking schemes now he is in office, and of other
scandals that have taken place during the summer.
“_5th Dec._—Had luncheon with Riaz. He tells me the Khedive’s politics
have not changed at all since last year. He (Abbas) hates Nubar, and is
sorry now, ‘poor young man,’ for the mistake he made in allowing Cromer
to change his Ministry. He would have gone to England in the summer, but
was prevented by a French intrigue acting on the Sultan. He lamented the
usurpation of new authority by Lord Cromer in the Ministry of the
Interior, etc., etc.
“_10th Dec._—Saw the Khedive at Abdin Palace. He received me cordially,
even affectionately, and on my congratulating him on a domestic event
expected in his family, and which had been announced, said: ‘Yes, it
came upon us quite as a surprise. Now I shall marry her. I wished to do
so at once, but when I consulted our religious authorities they told me
I must wait till the child was born. But I will marry her the very day
afterwards, this is according to rule.’ I said: ‘There was no pleasure
in life like that of being a father, and hoped that his son would be a
blessing to him.’ He is evidently in the highest delight. Then he talked
of his journey to Europe, and thanked me for my letter about the Prince
of Wales. ‘I should have liked to go to England,’ he said, ‘but was
prevented at Constantinople. It is impossible to do anything with _him_
(meaning the Sultan). Will you believe it, I was twenty days at
Constantinople, and was watched all the time by spies. He gave me two of
his aides-de-camp, who were constantly with me, even sleeping in my
palace at night. Not once did he discuss any political subject with me,
though I several times brought them forward when we were alone. Each
time I did so he jumped up and shut the windows, lest we should be
overheard, but I could get nothing from him. Even Mukhtar, who was there
three months, got no more than a lecture for not preventing the Cairo
newspapers from writing against him. He told Mukhtar to spend money—he
might pay each newspaper £1,500 a year—but Mukhtar refused to have
anything to do with it. Mukhtar will never be Grand Vizier. All who
serve the Sultan are expected to bow to the ground and say, “Certainly,
your Majesty.” We shall never come to any good with him for our Caliph
and Emir el Mumenin.’
Abbas asked me if I had had any news of a new revolt in Arabia, and I
told him I had seen paragraphs in the papers about it, but attached
little importance to them, as such paragraphs always appeared when
diplomatic pressure was being put at Constantinople, and just now the
Armenian question was being pushed forward. The new friendship between
England and Russia boded no good for the Ottoman Empire. He said: ‘I
have information that an agreement has been come to between them by
which Russia is to occupy Armenia.’ This seems most improbable, and with
it the abandonment of Cyprus by us, as we could not consent to it
without retiring from the Cyprus Convention, which guarantees the
integrity of the Sultan’s territory in Asia. As to his visit to England
he said: ‘The King of the Belgians invited me to stay with him, and I
asked permission at Constantinople, but was told I should make pretext
to decline, and avoid _all_ visits.’ He is evidently disgusted with the
Sultan’s timidity and narrow-mindedness, but I noticed that he never
once mentioned him by name, only as He.
“From this we went on to home matters, and the way in which Nubar’s hand
had been forced in the matter of the new arrangement at the Ministry of
the Interior. Nubar was old and stupid, he said, and had been made to
appear to demand it. I am inclined, however, to suspect that this was
merely Nubar’s way of excusing himself to his master. About the slave-
trading case brought against Ali Pasha Sherif, the Khedive told me that
it was without doubt a trap laid for him by Shäffer and the Slave Trade
Bureau. Dr. Shafai was an accomplice, and the three slave women had been
taught their parts. When Shafai was condemned to hard labour he was not
really sent to Toura prison, but kept for a month at the caracol in
comfortable rooms upstairs. He, the Khedive, had been asked to pardon
him, but had said the law must take its course. Then they sent him to
Toura, but made him second doctor there. It was all a political intrigue
to discredit Ali Pasha and frighten the Legislative Council. He
complained of the timidity and lack of fibre in the native Egyptian
members of the Council. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘at Heshmet Pasha, we all
looked upon him as a Nationalist and a Riazist, yet directly the trouble
came last year he went round at once.’ It now being twelve o’clock,
after a little talk about Tunis, the Khedive got up and, taking my hand
with both his, thanked me and said he knew I was one he could depend on,
and who had the welfare of Islam at heart. I am more struck than ever at
the frankness of his character and the clearness of his ideas.”
The first three months of the New Year, 1895, were devoted by us almost
entirely to desert travelling, when we explored the hill country that
lies between the Nile and the Red Sea, a piece of desert land almost
entirely unknown to Europeans, or indeed to the townspeople of Cairo and
the fellahin of the Delta, and as yet unmapped, to me a great additional
charm, and except for a few scattered Bedouins quite uninhabited. We had
on this occasion my cousin Mary Elcho with us, who was spending the
winter in Egypt, and we pushed our explorations as far as the Red Sea,
and followed the coast line down it between the high mountain range of
Kalála and the Gulf of Suez, a narrow strip of sandy shore seldom or
never visited, there being barely room in places for camels to pass, a
rugged shore, where the only sign of humanity is the occasional
apparition of a distant ocean steamer far away on its road to India or
Japan, and at the water’s edge a continuous jetsam of empty brandy and
rum bottles cast up by the waves, and marking the unholy track of
Western civilization. The whole of the precipitous Kalála chain, which
runs in places to a height of four and five thousand feet, was in the
ancient days before Islam the scattered abode of those early Christian
hermits who were so picturesque a feature of the fourth and fifth
centuries, and may still, some of them, be identified as former
hermitages by the possession of a trickle of water and a palm or two
still growing wild, and one monastery, still inhabited, the convent of
St. Anthony. It lies in one of the ruggedest and most desolate places in
the world, difficult of access for camels, and parted from the Nile
Valley by eighty miles of inhospitable desert, and twenty from the
seashore on the other side. In all that journey we had met with no
inhabitant after our first day’s march, and it was with some difficulty
that we made out our road to it, for the Bedouins with us had never been
there, and we only had knowledge of it by the vaguest hearsay. The
convent is hardly ever visited by Europeans, and ours was absolutely the
first occasion on which women had been admitted within the Monastery
walls since its foundation some 1,500 years ago. All this was intensely
interesting, but descriptions of desert journeys lie outside the scope
of my present memoirs. It is only here and there that in the interval of
these expeditions I find a notice of public events, as for instance:
“_25th Feb._—The long expected Egyptian crisis seems at last approaching
in Europe, if one may judge by the foreign newspapers which are
threshing the question of the English Occupation once more out. I fancy
Rosebery’s escapade with the Congo Company has set up the German
Emperor’s back, and he is encouraging the French to push us out of
Egypt. In spite of our swagger, and it is past all bounds, we shall have
one day to go. Our papers repeat the bravado that a great nation like
England does not yield to threats. My experience is that it is to
threats only of very immediate chastisement that the British public does
yield. Soft words never have effect with us.”
About the same time the announcement reached me of poor Randolph’s
death, and on the 30th of March of Princess Hélène’s engagement to the
Duke of Aosta, and lastly on the 11th of April of the huge scandal in
London of Oscar Wilde’s arrest and prosecution. Of political events in
Egypt there is no further record worth transcribing. The 27th of April
saw us back at Crabbet.
This year I saw more than ever of George Wyndham, and spent much of my
time with him. He was at the height just then of his literary activity,
having become editor of the “New Review,” and being pushed forward by
Henley as a writer, and at his instigation, and Henley’s, my thoughts
took a more decidedly literary direction than before. He proposed that I
should write for him on Arabian subjects, and this I, being full just
then of desert memories, willingly agreed to.
“_12th May._—Henley proposes to bring out a selected edition of my poems
under his auspices, and promises to run me into a more public place as
poet than what I now occupy. I am not particularly anxious for this, but
he and George may try. George is a good enthusiastic friend, and very
dear to me. He has given me a touching description of Pembroke’s
funeral, at which he was present in the little churchyard near Wilton,
where they buried him; the Wilton gardens in their full Spring
splendour, the birds singing their hearts out, and many men, the most
distinguished in the land, in tears. Pembroke lived a noble, if an
unproductive, life, a man of large sympathies and high ideals, but no
fixed beliefs, and no results in action. He had at one time an opening
in politics which might have led him to any sublimity when Disraeli gave
him a place in his Government at the age of twenty-four, but his health
was not sufficient for the strain, and he could not go on with it. The
rest of his life was spent at Wilton, a paradise on earth, the
possession of which I have always thought hinders its possessors, by its
beauty, from engaging in the world’s ambitions. He lived honoured and
beloved by women and by men.
“Sir Robert Peel, too, is dead. I met him on Friday at the St. James’
Club and had a talk with him about Japan and China. His death was sudden
in the night. He was not a wise man, but interesting, a very good
speaker, full of _bonhomie_ and sometimes of wit.
“_29th May._—My poor Locker is dead, not other than a worthy ending to a
happy life. His last day was a cheerful one they all say, and he talked
more strongly than for some time past. I had called in the evening at
Rowfant and had seen him, and was there till seven, and then took his
son Godfrey back riding with me, so that he must have died very shortly
afterwards, for the announcement is in the ‘Times’ this morning.
“_Later._ I called again at Rowfant and found to my surprise the family
not in mourning. My friend, instead of being dead, is a trifle better,
and talks of outliving some of us. It is a mystery how the thing got
into the ‘Times,’ from which it had been copied into all the evening
papers with long obituary notices. [It was not till two days later that
he died at the age of seventy-four.]
“_22nd June._—Yesterday when I was in London I called at half-past five
on Margot, who is invalided. While we were talking Sir William Harcourt
came in, and their talk turned at once to politics, the Cromwell statue
debate, and other interests of the moment, but nothing presaged what at
that very hour was happening in the House, namely, the defeat of the
Ministry on St. John Broderick’s amendment in Supply. Poor Margot, as it
happened, was in some measure responsible for the Government minority,
for as I left her a little after six I found yet another visitor, John
Morley, at her door, and she kept him so late giving him good advice
that he missed the division! To-day I see the account of it in the
papers.
“_24th June._—Rosebery has resigned, a feeble statesman though a clever
man, whom we shall never, I fancy, see Prime Minister again. It seems
there is to be a coalition between Lord Salisbury and the Duke of
Devonshire, under Lord Salisbury’s leadership. I am glad the imposture
of Whig Liberalism is defunct.
“Yesterday was my last day at Crabbet, for Crabbet is let for three
years, perhaps for four, and we take up our abode at Newbuildings to-
morrow. We have no need, with so small a family as ours is, of so large
a house, and Newbuildings is enough for all our wants, and I am in a
mood to loathe old things and pine for new; nevertheless, it was a
melancholy day for me in spite of the brave sun.
“_25th June._—The day of Princess Hélène’s wedding to the Duke of Aosta.
The Comtesse de Paris had sent us an invitation, and I drove down to
Kingston with Judith, where the wedding was, and then to Orleans House
at Twickenham. It was a day of heaven, a brilliant blue sky with a light
north wind to freshen the sun’s heat. Judith, of course, was late at
starting, and so we arrived too late to get inside the church, and the
bride and bridegroom were already coming out in procession. The Duke is
under-sized, of extremely dusky hue, his features good, but not
imposing. Behind them came her brother, the Duke of Orleans, his broken
leg still disabling him, and a little after the Prince and Princess of
Wales with their daughters, and the Dukes of Coburg and Connaught,
Tecks, Fifes, and a number of foreign Princes and Princesses. In the
crowd of invited persons there were many French and a few Italians.
There were hardly any English. Indeed, all the English I saw were not a
dozen. Leighton was there and Lady Burdett Coutts, and a few men
connected with the Court, but almost no one belonging to general
society. Nor were there any English presents, which is strange, but
though living so long in England, they hardly knew any English people.
Then we all got into our carriages and drove in procession through
Kingston and Twickenham, a really pretty sight, with multitudes of flags
and large crowds cheering and every window filled in the old-fashioned
houses. There was something Hogarthian in it all. In Orleans House
tables were laid for the royal personages and Ambassadors, but we, the
less distinguished, had to be content with what we could scramble for at
buffets. Then we went into the garden where the bride and bridegroom
were making their round of congratulations, and I had the privilege with
others of kissing the bride’s royal hand. My wedding present of the
Kelmscott poems was laid out with the rest. Sweet personage, may she be
happy!
“_26th June._—Called on Lady Lytton. She has just been appointed Lady of
the Bedchamber to the Queen in the Duchess of Roxborough’s place, and
she showed me Her Majesty’s autograph letter, which was very kindly and
even touchingly worded, saying she admired the way she had borne her
troubles, recalling Lytton’s good services, and in a postscript saying
she was glad of Victor’s recovery from his recent illness. Certainly the
old Queen has the power of conveying her meaning in a few simple, not to
say commonplace, words so as to give the impression of a true feeling,
more than most women. It affected me to read the letter, I hardly know
why.
“_29th June._—Called on Harry Cust at the ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ Office. He
is much improved since last year and takes his editorship seriously. He
told me that when he began with the ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ he had had a
promise of office as soon as the Tories should come into power, but
that is now all swept away.
“Then to Newbuildings, where I joined Anne, and we took formal
possession. It pleases me much to be there, for it is far more of a
hermitage than Crabbet was, and one can forget here the worries of the
world.
“_6th July._—Called on Betty Balfour, whom I found in high spirits at
the appointment of her husband as Chief Secretary in Ireland. Gerald is
a very able fellow and will doubtless do well on his brother’s lines,
and I had some talk with him about his prospects there.
“_11th July._—Pamela’s wedding to Eddy Tennant, and afterwards with
Judith to a dance at Sibell Grosvenor’s in honour of it. George
(Wyndham) was in delightful vein and supped with Judith and me,
entertaining us with his Epicurean views of life. ‘What we want in
modern life,’ he said, ‘is to have more feasting, song, and flowers, and
noise, and to sit long and late with beautiful ladies, ourselves crowned
with wreaths.’ Certainly his own entertainment, the first he has ever
given, was perfection. He has just been returned for Dover unopposed,
the first member of the new Parliament. His is a happy nature.
“_15th July._—To my Aunt Caroline Chandler’s funeral at Witley, driving
there and back from Newbuildings, a full forty-five miles through the
oak country of the Weald—an almost entirely uninhabited district. Witley
village, with the exception of some half-dozen new cottages, is
unchanged from what I remembered it as a boy or for that matter from
what my mother knew it, as her drawings of it show thirty years earlier.
Only the church is changed, the inside having undergone the modern rage
of decoration. The funeral was a shock to me, as it was conducted with
cheerful music and a merry peal of bells, which seemed to me absurd. The
old English services are all made ridiculous now with pseudo-catholic
‘mummeries.’ They have lost their dignity of old days, but it is of a
piece with the whole English character, which has changed from top to
bottom in my short fifty years of recollection. Here was my poor old
aunt, who, when she came to Witley first as a pretty bride in 1845, was
wedded soberly and in all decorum, now in 1895 at the age of seventy-two
launched into a grave piled up with flowers like a birthday cake, to the
merriest strains of the organ, strains to which we might with no
impropriety have danced. The only old-fashioned thing in the ceremony
was that her son’s widow, who inherits the property, fainted and was
carried out.
“_19th July._—Lunched with Lady Galloway. There has been a regular rout
of the Liberals at the Elections. Harcourt, John Morley, Lefevre, Arnold
Morley among the slain. Much talk of all this. Asquith has won or kept
his seat.
“_13th Aug._—A visit from one Oppenheim, a Jew, who has been travelling
in Mesopotamia, and wants to go to Nejd. [This Oppenheim was afterwards
an agent of the German Government attached to the German Legation in
Cairo, much concerned in his Government’s intrigues there.]
“_15th Aug._—Lunched with George Curzon at 5, Carlton House Terrace,
which he has rented. We talked of things political, and of his own new
position in the Government as Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs. He
prefers this to a minor place without power in the Cabinet. About
Armenia, in spite of the brave words in the Queen’s speech to-day, he
agrees with me that they can do nothing. Russia, he says, will never
consent to an Armenian buffer State, even if there were the materials to
make one, and how can we put pressure on the Sultan? In truth it is
impossible, and the sooner they drop it the better, which I fancy they
will do. He told me all the same that the horrors were not exaggerated.
I told him of Knowles wanting an article of me about Egypt. This he
deprecated in due Parliamentary phrase. It was embarrassing the
Government and defeating its own end. It would be better to wait a
little till the Government had had time to look about it, and the rest
which are the common excuses of Under Secretaries. He said that he
himself was entirely opposed to evacuation, or change of any kind, that
the French were out of court by their having refused the ratification of
the Wolff Convention, and that he considered Lord Salisbury would be
most unwilling to re-open the question, though as yet Lord Salisbury had
said nothing to him on the subject, the matter was not pressing. The
Government did not believe the rumours of any joint French and Russian
action about Egypt. All this after luncheon.
“Then to Merton to see the new tapestry, Botticelli’s Spring, which
Morris is making for me there, and on to Coombe where I dined with
Bertram and Laurence Currie, Bertram full of old and interesting
reminiscences.
“_25th Aug._—A visit to Cromer, Newhaven Court, the Lockers’ house.
“Francis Palgrave was here in the afternoon, an interesting man,
garrulous, but in a good sense of the word, telling stories, principally
of Tennyson, reminiscences of whom he is writing. He talked to me about
his brother Gifford (the Arabian traveller), and told me that in the
last three years of his life he was reconciled to the Church, and that
this had made him much happier and more contented. I asked him how
matters had been arranged about the wife and children, seeing that
Gifford was a priest and had been a Jesuit. He said his brother had told
him that no difficulty had been made, such cases having of course often
happened before. He was allowed to continue his domestic life, only not
conjugally; _that_ Gifford had told him laughing was no great privation.
He was glad to hear me corroborate the accuracy of his brother’s account
of the politics of Nejd and its social condition. He was anxious I
should believe Gifford was never really, or ostensibly a Moslem.
“Miss Kate Greenaway is also staying in the house.
“_26th Aug._—I have come to Ockham for a night, where all is much
improved since Ralph came into his inheritance. Miss Lawless, the
novelist, is staying here, a well-informed, clever woman, and a good
talker.”
On 8th September I left England once more for abroad.