LAST YEAR OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
“_1st Dec._—On board the Messageries ship _Niger_ off Corsica on my way
to Egypt, having for the twentieth time shaken the dust of Europe from
my feet. The day I started, Tuesday morning, I lunched with George
Wyndham. He gave me the latest news of the war. They hope at the War
Office to relieve Ladysmith in the course of the next eight days, but
not without battles, one or two. They acknowledge now that the Boers are
immensely stronger than they thought, that they are fighting according
to the latest new scientific rules, and are armed with the newest of new
weapons—they are officered in a large measure by Germans, and are
holding their own determinedly. George does not make too much of the
latest victories, Belmont and Graspan. But it seems to be part of the
Boer tactics to invite attack on strong positions, and to hold these as
long as they can inflict loss on their enemies—then at the last moment
to run, so that, although the position is taken, the victor suffers
most, and the Boers reassembling at a preconcerted rendezvous are not
much the worse for their defeat. ‘We could not let our men act like
this,’ said George, ‘for if they once began to run there would be no
stopping them.’ So he by no means considers the matter over, sanguine as
he naturally is. Guy Wyndham is still shut up with White at
Ladysmith—and he showed me a most interesting letter from him written a
month ago, immediately after the defeat of Nicholson’s Nek, or whatever
it is they call it. The letter described excellently an attack in three
columns delivered by White, all of which failed in the presence of
superior numbers, and it seemed to suggest of superior generalship. Guy
had been with a detachment of a few hundred men pushed forward into an
exposed situation from which it was more by luck than skill that they
managed to extricate themselves. One of the officers had suddenly
observed that the rest of the column seemed to be in retreat, and after
pooh-poohing him at first they observed it too, and Guy volunteered to
ride across the open hill under a heavy fire to ascertain the truth.
This he did and discovered that the General in command had entirely
forgotten the detachment, and sent it no order of retreat with the rest.
So Guy had to ride back over the same rough ground with bullets and
shells striking the earth all about him. The detachment was not brought
in without considerable loss. The letter, very simply written, gave a
powerful picture of the haphazard character of modern warfare, and of
the extreme helplessness of the units of an army while in action. The
letter said nothing of the surrender of the third column, which was
perhaps not known at the time by the writer, or it may have been
purposely omitted, for what George showed me was a typewritten copy of
the letter made for family reading. He was going down with it to his
mother at Clouds in the afternoon, where there is naturally a great
anxiety. Of the victory in the Soudan, and the death of the Khalifa, he
seemed to admit that it, like Methuen’s victories, had been timed to
coincide with the Emperor William’s visit to Windsor, just as the Dundee
victory was for the Parliamentary vote. Personally, George was in the
highest spirits, amply consoled for his disappointment at his not
getting the Foreign Office instead of the War Office last summer.
“I have been reading Kegan Paul’s Memoirs, which are extremely
interesting. His description of his first school at Ilminster might
stand for my own experience at Twyford, a mere hell upon earth—and I
notice that the Ilminster master had been a Twyford boy, under Bedford,
whom I remember as a very old man living on in retirement, near the
school, when I first went there in 1847. The caning cupboards, on either
side the head master’s throne at Ilminster, were clearly modelled on the
Twyford ones. I received a letter only the day before I left home from
old Roberts who used to cane me in them, begging piteously for pheasants
to eat in his old age. Now I am reading Aubrey De Vere’s Memoirs. The
two books are much on the same lines, and both interest me greatly,
recalling memories of people I have known, and phases of thought gone
through. Nevertheless Kegan Paul’s is by far the best, being simpler and
less literary. De Vere bores one a little with his poems, and his
explanations of them. I remember him well when we lived at Mortlake for
a year in 1853. He used to come and see my mother while he was staying
with the Taylors at Shene. Mrs. Cameron was another of his friends, but
Taylor was the central figure. For Taylor, Mrs. Cameron affected a great
devotion, and had a portrait of him by Watts hung in a recess of her
drawing-room before which a lamp continually burned. De Vere posed as a
poet, and we children thought him a bore. All the same I have a very
high respect for him now. An _homme de bien_, if ever one was in the
world. Many years later, I came into communication with him regarding
the letters of ‘Proteus and Amadeus,’ which he edited at Newman’s
suggestion. At one time Newman had almost consented himself to do the
editing, for Dr. Meynell, the ‘Amadeus’ of the letters, was much at
Edgbaston just then. But for one reason or another the old man changed
his mind, and De Vere undertook the thing for him and wrote the preface.
“It was in connection with this that, in 1876 or 1877, I went to
Edgbaston and stayed three days at the Oratory. I do not remember if at
that time I kept a journal. I think not—and I may as well write here my
recollection of the visit. I had stopped at Edgbaston on my way back
from the west of Ireland, where I had been staying with Laprimaudaye at
Treenlawr, and I had caught a toothache fishing on the Lough which
worried me greatly, and I remember distinctly feeling as I knocked at
the door that I should be thus _hors de combat_ at the moment of my
coming to consult the great man. Nevertheless my distress was vain, for
I was shown up to him at once, and, at the instant of touching his hand
when he received me, my pains vanished, nor did they return while I was
staying in the house. Newman’s was a wonderful hand, soft, nervous,
emotional, electric; and I felt that a miracle had been wrought. I told
Father Ryder of it at the time, but he charged me that I should tell no
man, and I said no word of it to the Saint himself. Newman, though he
knew well that I had come to consult him for the good of my soul, and
though I had much conversation indirectly with him upon spiritual
things, did not attempt to argue out any of the fundamental principles
of religious thought, and sought to influence me rather through the
heart by his great kindness, and by the confidence with which I was
admitted to all the life of the community. It was a touching sight,
indeed, to see the old man taking his turn with the rest to wait on us
at table in the Refectory—and living his simple life of piety and
cheerful unselfishness. The lives of monks and nuns are alone in some
accordance with the life of Jesus. All the rest of Christianity is an
imposture and an impudent negation of Christ.
“_5th Dec._—Arrived at Sheykh Obeyd after nearly two years’ absence. At
Alexandria I had to wait some hours, and spent them in the company of
Hewatt and his family at Ramleh. I found the Hewatts, to my surprise,
very anti-Jingo about the war. There has been another ‘victory’ on the
Modder—and another heavy loss of officers and men. I am sorry to see
among the killed one of Mrs. Earle’s two ‘splendid sons,’ about whom she
wrote to me a month ago. She did not deserve this misfortune, for she
was very humane in her ideas, and hated soldiering and all its ways.
“Anne met me at Cairo, and we went on home at once, having the good luck
to travel in the same carriage with Sheykh Mohammed Abdu. Of all
Easterns, perhaps I might say of all men, my dearest friend, Mohammed
Abdu, after having been imprisoned for his Liberal opinions, and exiled
by the Anglo-Khedivial restoration of 1882, has gradually become
recognized for what he is, by far the ablest and most honest man in
Egypt—and they have made him our Grand Mufti, the highest religious
authority in the vice kingdom. I gave him an acre of land two years ago,
and he has built himself a country house on it, and so is now our
nearest neighbour. When we said good-bye on my leaving Egypt last I
little thought we should meet again.
“_6th Dec._—Coming back here is like rising again from the dead.
Everybody connected with the place clearly took it for granted I should
be seen in it no more, and acted on the supposition. Nothing very bad
has been done, and some changes are for the better, but still they have
been made. My gazelles have been sent to the Zoölogical Garden, some of
the horses have been sold, the house has been re-arranged. I feel like a
guest in it—the _revenant_—the ghost who has returned. Perhaps it is all
the more delightful, for the garden is in splendid leaf, and the trees
never had a thicker shade in a more brilliant sunshine. Encroachments in
the way of new wells and cultivated fields have been made all round us
in the desert, and we are already almost completely cut off from the
open plain. But it is the least of the evils that threatened us four
years ago. First the sewage farm, and then the building operations. So
that the new corn fields may be looked upon as a comparative blessing in
an age of unscrupulous progress.
“_15th Dec._—Two new Boer victories, or rather British defeats. One at
Stormberg, the other at Spytfontein. People will soon be getting angry
in London, and perhaps leave off some of their music hall songs. There
is a ridiculous swaggering one in the papers, promising Uncle Paul to
dine with him on Christmas Day. It reminds me of the Paris cry, ‘à
Berlin,’ which became historic.
THE NEW PATRIOTIC SONG
Now Sung at the Music Halls and Theatres with immense success.
KRUGER’S DINNER PARTY; DEC. 7, 1899
or,
We’ll be There.
Written by Fred C. Smale. Composed by Geo. Le Brunn.
Oh, Uncle’s giving a party and he’s asked us all to come,
We’ll be there!
We’re marching up from Durban town, behind the fife and drum
And we’ll be there!
There’s some from Dublin City, there’s some from out the West,
The Devon lads “be vitty,” there’s Gordons with the rest;
Oh, Uncle, don’t you trouble, there is time enough to spare—
We’ll be there!
(Chorus) So please you, Uncle Paul, light the Lantern in the Hall
(We know we’re welcome as the flow’rs in May),
Just keep the pudding hot for the lively little lot
Who are coming up to dinner Christmas Day.
We’ve got some little sailor men, we thought you wouldn’t mind,
They’ll be there!
We are bringing them to see our Uncle Paul so good and kind,
They’ll be there!
They have come across the ocean, they would like some tea and buns,
Then they’ll just give you a notion how they work their little guns.
No, Uncle, dear, they are not at sea—they travel everywhere.
They’ll be there!
(Chorus) So please you, Uncle Paul, just arrange a little ball
(They’re having one or two upon the way);
Majuba some went through, and they want to speak to you,
So they’re coming up to dinner Christmas Day.
Pretoria’s a place we’ve often wanted for to see,
We’ll be there!
The air with us, there is no doubt, will splendidly agree,
We’ll be there!
Perhaps I may just mention, we are coming up in style,
And with the firm intention of remaining for a while;
Still, Uncle, don’t you worry, for mother’s paid the fare.
We’ll be there!
(Chorus) So please you, Uncle Paul, see that there’s enough for all.
There’s fifty thousand Tommies on the way,
And somewhere in a bag they have got a little flag
To stick up in the pudding Christmas Day!
* * * * *
KEITH, PROWSE and CO., Cheapside, E.C.
[N.B. Several of our regiments _did_ dine with Uncle Paul that Christmas
Day, but it was as prisoners of war.]
“A torrent of newspaper abuse has fallen on my ‘Satan Absolved.’ The
first notices were fairly moderate, but as the war has gone more and
more against our Army, they have become more and more vindictive. They
began by admitting that the poetry had some eloquence; then it was found
clever, but vulgar; then blasphemous, vulgar, and stupid. Now the
condemnation is extended to all my poems. It has been discovered that
the ‘Songs of Proteus’ were a plagiarism on Meredith’s ‘Modern Love’:
and that in the rest of my works I have been ever sinking deeper in the
mire.
“_17th Dec._—The third and main British army is badly beaten on the
Tugela River. MacDonald (John Murray MacDonald), Anne’s cousin by
marriage, who is staying with us, declares he shall go off himself to
fight. He is a mild semi-Jingo Radical of the school that believes the
British Empire has a divine mission to subdue and occupy the waste
places of the earth. I have been arguing the Boer case with him for the
last ten days. To me it is incredible how any reasonable creature should
believe such trash. His wife and her niece Irene Noel are generally on
my side. But to-day when I say, ‘Now we ought to make peace with the
Boers’ they are all against me. Even Anne thinks that the rights of the
blood feud forbid _that_. Yet what absurdity! War, when it is a war of
aggression, as they all admit that this is, is mere murder, and though
it is humiliating to make peace on a defeat, it can’t be surely _right_
to go on.
“As to the wisdom of persisting, the Boers are really better soldiers
than ours. We had a few good regiments to begin with, but they are
pretty well used up now, and the rest is of a feeble kind. Our army, if
it can fight, cannot march, and has to stick to the lines of railway.
Our superior numbers are consequently of little advantage. The Boers are
making a splendid fight for their freedom, and are winning all along the
line. Every honest man, English or not, ought to rejoice. Instead of
this, we English are in league with the Americans, we, who were the two
peoples who have posed as champions of freedom in the world, to subdue
two small, weak nations, the Boers and the Filipinos, fighting for their
independence, and not a word of disapproval is heard amongst us.
“Young Walter Gaisford, Talbot’s A.D.C., was here the other day,
lamenting that the Khalifa and his dervishes had all been killed, so
that there would be nobody left to shoot, he complained, even in the
Soudan. ‘There is hope, however, that, when the Boers are polished off,
we may go on to a war with Abyssinia when more sport will be to be had.’
This is the way our young fellows look at war (‘a high old rabbit
shoot’). It is good for them and the world that they have at last met
their match. War will be unpopular enough in England soon if it goes on
as at present, and there will be a chance then for the weak nations to
remain unmolested.
“_20th Dec._—Prince Aziz was here yesterday and told me things that were
interesting. He was once a lieutenant in the 16th Lancers, and talks
intelligently about the war. Gatacre, he says, was always a fool,
violent and abusive to the natives in India. He had been certain he
would get into trouble when it came to fighting. The Prince holds the
British Army cheap. They would never have been able to get to Omdurman
but for the Egyptian troops, who did all the work and all the fighting,
and in South Africa they were inferior in everything to the Boers.
Things have come to a pretty pass when this fat Egyptian Prince can hold
such opinions. But they are perfectly justified. Kitchener, as a last
hope of saving the situation, has been named Chief of the Staff to
Roberts, and is to start at once for the Cape. The Dutch in Cape Colony
are in revolt. The English newspapers say there has not been such a
position of things since the Indian Mutiny. It is thought old Roberts,
who is popular with our rank-and-file, will be able to restore
confidence. But he is too old for serious work, and they have shoved
Kitchener forward to the real command. I don’t believe either of them is
a bit better than our beaten Generals. I had long talks with Roberts in
India years ago, and he gave me a poor notion of his intelligence, good
old fellow as he is. As for Kitchener, he knows nothing of European war,
and his Soudanese experience will serve him little. He has the curse on
him of the Mahdi’s head, and deserves to fail. There is a paragraph in
the papers this week giving an account of the Khalifa’s end, and how
courageously he met it. This man has been uniformly represented as a
contemptible coward. Yet he met death as nobly as any of Plutarch’s
heroes.
“_25th Dec._—Christmas Day. Kitchener has left Egypt. Though he sailed
from Alexandria he had not the grace to go to Montaza, where the Khedive
was, to bid him good-bye. Yet he has been drawing £6,000 a year latterly
from the Egyptian Treasury, and high pay for the last fifteen years. A
bearer of the white man’s burden at £6,000 a year!
“_29th Dec._—I have received a nice letter from old Herbert Spencer
about the attacks made on my poem by the critics, and saying he thinks I
was probably right when I told him I thought it would need a foreign
army landed on our shores to bring us quite to our sober senses. There
is at present a lull in the South African fighting, the Boers waiting to
be attacked again and the English not having got their second wind.
“Margaret Talbot came to-day and spent the afternoon. Her husband is in
command here of the English garrison, and is, of course, much grieved at
the way the Boer War is going. He would like to be there, but at the
same time would dread the responsibility of failure where so many others
have failed. She described Kitchener’s departure. He was only half an
hour at Cairo—the time between one train and another, and said hardly a
word to anyone. No one here regrets him, for he has made no friends.
“_31st Dec._—The last year of the 1800’s ends disastrously for England,
or rather for the British Empire. For England can only gain by the
break-up of that imposture. I think now there really is some chance of
such a consummation, for we are sending the whole of our armed force
into South Africa, where it is likely to become engulfed, and we have
got the whole sentiment of the world, civilized and uncivilized, against
us.
Thou hast deserved men’s hatred—they shall hate thee;
Thou hast deserved men’s fear—their fear shall kill;
Thou hast thy foot upon the weak, the weakest
With his armed head shall bite thee on the heel.
“Percy Wyndham writes: ‘In this terrible struggle in South Africa we see
a picture in little of what will be the close of the present
dispensation, to use the language of those who believe in prophecy, when
the survivors of Teutonic blood will fight for the mastery of the
world—in that struggle the Dutch, South African or Native, will have a
look in.’
“Two young British officers were here this afternoon. They are both agog
to join the fighting, looking at the whole thing entirely from the
professional point of view. ‘If we are not in this show,’ they said,
emphatically, ‘we may as well hang up our hats.’
“_1st Jan._, 1900.—The Emperor William, the papers say, has issued a
rescript, ordaining that the new Christian Century is to begin in
Germany to-day. This, if true, goes one better than Carlyle’s Emperor,
who was _super grammaticam_. I find the Moslem centuries go down to the
end of the hundreds, and begin again with the year one.
“Mohammed Abdu, our Mufti, was here this afternoon. And to him I read
Herbert Spencer’s letter, which immensely interested him, and afterwards
described to him my poem. He considers Spencer the first of living
philosophers, and has translated his book on Education into Arabic. I
also explained to his brother Hamouda my views of the rights of animals,
which was one absolutely new to him. Though on reflection he said that
it was strictly in accordance with the Koran and Moslem teaching, which
enjoins respect to animals, and even to inanimate objects. So that it is
forbidden wantonly to deface so much as a stone. In truth, it is
Christianity that is really responsible for the brutal attitude of
modern man towards animals. No other religion that can be called a
religion tolerates it, but our Christian doctors have laid down the
atrocious doctrine that beasts and birds were made solely for man’s use
and pleasure, and that he has no duties towards them. It is only in the
last hundred years that Europeans, having partly freed themselves from
Christian teaching, have begun to take a humaner view. The doctrine of
evolution has pushed it a bit forwarder, for though it has injured the
cause of savage or coloured man as having equal rights with the white
man, it has established our far away kinship with the beasts, which was
formerly denied. So that there are a few amongst us who begin to doubt
our right to bird and beast slaughter. My own view is that wild birds
and beasts who do no harm to man have a right to be left in absolute
peace. But that those whom we help to breed by giving them protection
may fairly pay a certain tribute, just as our tame beasts are made to
do, though the higher law would be to let all live. We argue these
things nightly at dinner.
“_5th to 10th Jan._—We were occupied with a desert excursion to within
sight of Ismalia on the Suez Canal and back, our furthermost point being
a prominent dark brown rock, which stands some hundred feet above the
plain overlooking the Bitter Lake. From this point we marched north
north-west to the Sand-hills and the Wady Tumeylat. The following day,
the 9th January, Anne and I made a long camel trot of six hours across
the gravel plain, crossing Wady Jaffra to another conspicuous rock south
of Belbeis, and so on the 10th back to Sheykh Obeyd. It was a pleasant
excursion, but contains little worth recording.
“_10th Jan._—Mohammed Abdu was here to-day, and confirms to the full the
accounts of Kitchener’s dealings with the Mahdi’s head as I gave it last
summer in the ‘Daily News,’ especially as to Cromer’s disapproval of it
and his dislike of Kitchener. We agreed that at last God’s Providence
was moved to anger against these abominations, and that England’s Empire
would go the way of all the rest.
“There is a letter in the ‘Times’ just come which I think caps
everything yet written for absurd bombast. Its author is old Reid, the
naval constructor, a former Gladstonian Radical, and still M.P. It shows
to what a pass of self-glorification we English have come, for the
Radicals are worse now than the extremest Tories, and I have had to
write home to tell them to cease sending me the ‘Daily Chronicle’ and
the ‘Manchester Guardian,’ and replace them with the ‘Daily Mail’ and
‘Morning Post.’ The only London paper that speaks a word of sense is the
‘Westminster Gazette.’ Here is the concluding paragraph:
“‘May I add, Sir, that my thoughts search history in vain for any
spectacle of national heroism greater than, or equal to, that which
Great Britain and her truly noble colonies are presenting to the world
at this moment. The crafty and foreigner-aided enemy lies in our
territory and across our path, with shell guns on every available hill,
and trenches dug between; with barbed wire stretched to protect their
cunningly devised lairs, and cover spread to conceal their more or less
rebellious persons. Their power to deal out death and mutilation is
their delight; their skill in doing so is their pride; and it is known
that the flag which they most hate is the Union Jack, the very symbol of
freedom and equality throughout the world. They have done their level
and their unlevel best to slay our men and lower our flag on our own
soil. They are difficult to tackle, for they fight lurking, and fly
alike from cold steel and the open field. All that human heroism
combined with animal cunning can perform they will do against us, and
they will add to these such prayers as even ignoble lips oft dare to
address to the God of battles. But have they alarmed us? Have they
“frightened the isle from its propriety?” Have they detached one colony
from the motherland? Have they caused young or old, citizen or noble,
poor or rich, small or great, worldling or worshipful, in any part of
this Imperial Realm to shrink or hold back from the encounters, however
deadly, to which they have challenged us? No, Sir, there has sprung from
every part of the Empire a flame of patriotism and of heroism so high
that the whole world is, so to speak, alight with it, and, depend upon
it, while we rejoice, the world wonders and admires.’”[22]
N.B. The total Boer population thus described as menacing the British
Empire, with its 200,000,000 souls, is exactly that of Brighton.
“_15th Jan._—I have been reading Mivart’s article on the ‘Continuity of
Catholicism,’ which has raised a tempest against him. It is certainly
the most daring declaration ever made _in articulo mortis_, for poor
Mivart is, I believe, dying. If, forty years ago, I had found a Catholic
writer equally bold, I should have been saved from much infidelity, but
now it is too late. Mivart is clinging desperately to his faith, but it
is at bottom an impossible thing to reconcile science with any form of
Christianity.
“_21st Jan._—A letter in verse about ‘Satan Absolved,’ from Sir Wilfrid
Lawson, which is bad verse but amusing:
Brayton, 9th Jan. 1900
Your work on the Devil, dear Blunt, I have read.
What a curious fancy to enter your head!
The World, I admit, is as bad as can be;
But how _he_’ll make it better I scarcely can see.
I fancy if matters were right understood
There’s a Spirit of bad and a spirit of good,
They’re continually fighting in battle array
Each pulling like mad in a different way,
The one is Jehovah, Jove, Lord, Names like these,
The other is the Devil as bad as you please.
Then between these two powers comes man on the scene,
Where he comes from there’s no one can tell us, I ween;
But still here he is with a body and soul
Designed, I imagine, for filling some rôle.
His rudder is conscience by which he should steer,
But at present it seems to be quite out of gear.
But come, my dear Blunt, do not let us despair.
Even yet we may make something of him with care,
At present he is—you and I never flatter—
At present he is just as mad as a hatter.
His brain has undoubtedly met with a shock,
Which has sent him through Africa running amock.
The nobility, gentry, and clergy of course,
His madness by all in their power enforce,
And all in this country are cutting their capers
At the murders recorded each day in the papers.
Well, in trying my best to hunt these matters out
That the Devil is in it I haven’t a doubt
Well, I will resist him, as long as I can,
And so do my best to emancipate man.
Some good yet we may see when there comes to the front
The excellent doctrine of Lawson and Blunt.
“_28th Jan. (Sunday)._—A long talk with Mohammed Abdu on the whole
subject of mankind and the dealings of the strong with the weak. I find
he is as pessimistic as myself. He has been reading the _Towra_, the Old
Testament Pentateuch, lately, and attributes the brutalities of
Christianity largely to its connection with Judaism. As to the treatment
of dumb animals he quoted to me several of the _Hawadith_ enjoining
kindness, and it is certain that wanton destruction of these is contrary
to the sentiment of Moslems. Wanton destruction is indeed peculiar to
Christendom. Abdu believes in no good future for the human race, and I
fear he has as little faith in Islam, Grand Mufti though he be, as I
have in the Catholic Church.
“Buller has had another reverse before Ladysmith at Spion Kop. This time
it is General Warren who has suffered defeat. I am glad of it. It was he
that hanged the Bedouins for the Palmer affair after Tel-el-Kebir. I
have written to Leonard Courtney to say I will join the ‘Stop the War
Committee,’ and am sending £50. This though with some qualms of
conscience, for if the war goes on another six months it really may
smash up the British Empire.
“My once dearest friend Lothian is dead. What a grief this would have
been to me five-and-thirty years ago! He was the lightest of all light-
hearted companions, yet serious too. We made our storm and stress
together at Frankfort when Darwinism was a novelty, and solved the
riddle of the universe together gazing at the stars. We have gone
different roads since then. He to lead an uneventful life of high and
various dignities in Scotland, I to adventure in what devious ways. It
is only casually that we have met for years.
“_29th Jan._—I have written the following in answer to one who had
criticized my ‘Satan Absolved’ on the ground that though splendid if
intended as a _reductio ad absurdum_ of Christianity, it stopped short
of accepting Nietsche’s doctrine of Force. ‘Of course the poem was a
_reductio ad absurdum_. The thing that seemed to me supremely in need of
being shown ridiculous was the worship of humanity in any form. I am not
a disciple of Tolstoy. He believes in the possibility of improvement, in
moral progress, and in a far away Christian civilization. I do not. At
the same time I do not mock at Christian ideals. If Man were not the
ludicrous, vicious ape he is, but were capable of being converted to a
quiet, harmless life without thought for the morrow—or ambition or
desire more than to praise God and enjoy himself in the sun like the
lilies of the field, the world would be a very happy place, as it was
before Man came to disturb it. But of course this will never come to
pass. It never even really began. That, however, is no reason for
adoring as you say you do Force even tempered by Fraud. There is nothing
in the smallest degree admirable in either. If it is true that your
worship of Force is to be the creed of the future, and very likely it
will be so, it is only another proof of the innate vulgarity of man.
Nietsche is an ass. The law of the strongest, as we see it in Modern
Civilization, is not the law of Nature, only the law of _human_ nature,
which is a very different thing. The oak tree does not monopolize the
forest, nor are the flowers which grow there trash. If Nietsche had been
as many years as I have in the East he would not talk of the Christian
ideal as being a creed of a slave for slaves. He would know it was far
more truly the creed of the dervish, of the poor, happy vagrant who
scorns property and scorns what we Europeans absurdly call the “dignity
of labour,” and who is as free as the birds of the air. It needs
Oriental experience to understand this. The place for European
civilization is the Paris boulevard; south of the Mediterranean a white
skin is only a form of leprosy, and from an æsthetic point of view you
might as well plant the New Forest with cabbages as have anything to do
with applying the doctrine of Force to the world at large.’
“Mivart has been formally excommunicated by Cardinal Vaughan. It seems
to me that if Catholics are really called upon to believe that the first
man was the Adam of the Garden of Eden, and that all the books of the
Old and New Testaments not merely ‘contain Revelation with no admixture
of error,’ but were also ‘written by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost
and have God for their Author,’ we may abandon the idea of any possible
reconciliation between religion and science. Of course one knew the
thing was hopeless, but still there were many Catholics, even priests,
who pretended it was not.
“I have had several more talks with Mohammed Abdu. He tells me that
several of the high English officials here make money in illicit ways.
He is, however, as little in favour of internationalizing Egypt as I am,
for that would merely be to exchange one wolf for a pack of wolves. He
is bitter against Cromer, whom otherwise he likes, for having
established nothing that can survive of indigenous Government when the
English Occupation ends—nothing, that is, that can be counted on to work
on Liberal and honest lines. There has been a general proscription of
the patriotic and enlightened element in the country, and the men pushed
forward have been those who had least self-respect and could most surely
be counted on for their pliancy.
“_5th Feb._—Parliament has met, and the Queen’s Speech has been
telegraphed. Pharaoh has hardened her heart, and declares that she will
carry the war on to a successful end. Buller has, however, clearly been
badly beaten again at Spion Kop and Ladysmith must fall. The famine in
India is a new ‘judgment of God’ upon the Empire, and, just as in old
times, the stress of the punishment falls on the innocent. There are
three and a half millions of people now on daily relief. Yet I suppose
not a single official of all that have fattened upon India will forgo a
third of his income—or a fourth or a tenth part of it to feed the
people—this although they are subscribing and making the natives
subscribe to the South African War. It is the ‘divine mission’ we are
carrying out of making the world happy!
“Osman Digna has been captured at last and brought in chains to Cairo.
‘A large crowd pressed forward eager to see the dark, long face,
brilliant eyes, large mouth, and long grey beard, of a frightened and
dignified old man who sat with chains round his sore ankles and swollen,
bare feet.’ I quote ‘Our own correspondent.’ This is how the British
Empire makes its ‘Roman holiday’! But the hour of vengeance is, I hope,
now very near.
“_8th Feb._—George Wyndham has made a very able speech in defence of the
War Office and his political fortune is made. I am glad of this, though
his principles in politics have been up to now abominable. He is no
Philistine at heart, and will be sobered both by the defeat of his
policy and his personal success, and may end as a great and large-minded
statesman. He was wise enough to confine his speech strictly to the War
Office, and did not attempt to explain the policy of the war: being a
subordinate of very short standing in the Government he will not be held
responsible, and people will only see in him what they most appreciate,
a very clever parliamentarian defending a bad party cause in the best
possible way. The only speech that was sound on the Opposition side was
Sir Robert Reed’s, which stated the whole case against the war fully and
fairly.
“_14th Feb._—I have written as follows to John Dillon in honour of the
reunion of the Irish Parliamentary Party:
Sheykh Obeyd, _Feb. 14_, 1900.
“DEAR DILLON,
“I write to congratulate you and the rest of my old friends of the
Irish Parliamentary Party on the reunion of the Party, and your
resolution to be once more independent of English ones. You know that
for the last ten years I have held aloof from politics and have been
mute about Ireland. But I cannot help saying now how much I sympathize
with you all. The moment certainly has come for a new departure—for
Ireland’s one chance lies in the check given to our English plan of a
world-wide Empire which has been accepted equally by both parties and
which leaves no room anywhere for Nationalism. I think, too, that the
iniquity of the war we are carrying on in South Africa, and which both
Parties almost equally approve, should make it intolerable for an honest
man to remain any longer allied with either. I don’t know which is the
more despicable, the boasting Tory who made the war openly for the fun
of the thing and to fill his pockets, or the Radical, who has allowed
himself to be persuaded that he might bully the Boers cheaply and in
accordance with Liberal principles. At any rate I am glad to see Ireland
free from both of them. There was always to my mind a certain danger to
her high ideal in her connection, however temporary, with our ambitions.
Imperialism is very contagious, and Scotch, as well as English
Radicalism, has been entirely perverted by it. I have often thought that
the ‘union of hearts’ we talked so much about in 1887 might, if it had
become a reality, have only led to the perversion of Ireland too. It is
best as it is—at least until we English are humbled to entire sanity.
“I shall be glad if you will show this letter to Harrington and Healy
and Redmond, as well as to Davitt and O’Brien, as I intend it equally
for all. It is a great pleasure to me to be able to think of you
fighting once more well together for Liberty as in the days of our old
campaign.”
“_15th Feb._—Cockerell arrived last night from London very keen for
sight-seeing, and to-day Evelyn also came; he is strong for stopping the
war, and also approves of my letter to Dillon.
“Mohammed Abdu was here in the afternoon and told me the true story of
the military trouble at Khartoum. Kitchener has long been hated by the
Egyptian Officers, whom he has throughout ill-treated, allowing the
English Officers to behave arrogantly to them, and paying no attention
to their complaints. The Egyptian troops have been made to do all the
hard work, and have been given no credit, while the black troops have
been petted and spoiled. When things began to go badly at the Cape
Kitchener got alarmed, and tried to prevent any news of the English
defeats reaching the Soudan, but he could not hinder it leaking through.
Then fearing a revolt he ordered the ammunition to be taken away on the
pretence that it was old and would be renewed, but the Soudanese
regiments refused to give up the old till the new was supplied; the
Egyptian Officers were suspected of encouraging the refusal and some
were arrested. In the middle of it all Kitchener was recalled to go to
South Africa, and the thing was patched up by Wingate who is less
unpopular, though it is not wholly settled yet. Abdu tells me that the
idea now is in the event of the Egyptian Question being brought on by
the European Powers to call in Turkish troops to replace our English
garrison. This would be a lesser evil than the advent of French or
Italian troops, which would only mean the Internationalization of Egypt.
Mohammed Abdu knows that it has been talked over among the Ministers and
with Lord Cromer. I am inclined to hope that it may really end thus for
there seems to be no chance of a simple evacuation in favour of a native
Egyptian Government. Abdu has a good opinion of Cromer personally. But
says there are a number of shady things done by his subordinates.
“_16th Feb._—Buller’s third attack on the Boers and his attempt to cross
the Tugela has failed as abjectly as the other two, and we may hear any
day now of the fall of Ladysmith; a final attempt I fancy to capture a
victory in view of the vote in Parliament for which it has served its
purpose, though later it turned into a defeat.
“_17th Feb._—To Cairo with Cockerell. The first time I have been there
this winter, after seventy-four days at Sheykh Obeyd, so that I felt
strange and naked in European clothes. On the road we met Prince Aziz
who talked with much intelligence about the management of his property.
These Khedivial Princes are all of them shrewd men of business. He also
gave us news of the relief of Kimberley, a telegram having come last
night. This will have the practical effect of putting that sad villain
Rhodes once more on the scene of the world’s intrigues. I am sorry for
it.
“I called on various necessary people, including Margaret Talbot in her
new official house as the General’s Lady, and on Cromer, who talked to
me for half an hour about Nile irrigation, the debts of the fellahin,
the famine in India, and such administrative subjects as he talks best
on. He is certainly a great man in his official way. We did not touch on
any dangerous matters, nor allude in any sort to past differences.
Personally I like him much. Amongst the plans he discussed with me was
one in connection with the National Bank of advancing small sums of £5
and £10 to the fellahin at 9 per cent., to enable them to get out of the
hands of the Greek usurers, who charge them thirty and forty per cent.
This is precisely the scheme the Nationalists of 1881 had, and its
adoption by Cromer is another proof of the foresight of those poor
patriots whom we cannoned into silence. With the single exception of
constitutional government, I believe every article now of the National
Programme has been adopted by us.
“_24th Feb._—The MacDonalds and Irene, and her brother are gone to
Greece, after staying here three months. She is an attractive child,
clever and pretty—and her brother, Byron, interesting, because quite
uneducated, with a good heart and much sense. Young Ward was here
yesterday, who is acting as correspondent to the ‘Times.’ He gave us
news that Roberts, having raised the siege of Kimberley, has now got
Kranje’s army in such a position that it seems likely to surrender. This
is important, and I fear will rehabilitate Chamberlain and the Rhodes
gang. Lady Lytton writes to me after her waiting at Osborne: ‘I enjoyed
my three quiet weeks at Osborne, and the Queen is such a splendid
example of wisdom over the war and all the sorrow and things that follow
from it, and she always judges rightly without too much emotion. . . .
You say you wish they would stop the fighting. Every one wishes it also,
but we must get to Pretoria first, and be able to get equal justice for
all our people there, and for which reason the war has been brought on
England, and it will be a very long business of years—so let us try and
be patient, and good will come out of it in the end. The spirit of
wishing to help is quite splendid everywhere in England, and the
soldiers must be allowed to do better than they have done as yet before
they stop fighting.’ This no doubt is her Majesty’s sentiment. Milner
who arranged the ‘equal justice’ _casus belli_ will now doubtless get
his peerage. Sibell writes in the same strain about the unselfishness of
the war, and the noble qualities of all concerned. One might think it
was a crusade, instead of being the Stock Exchange swindle it is. The
art of governing the world has become the art of deceiving, not only the
people, but if possible one’s own high-minded conscience.
“_1st March._—I went into Cairo with Cockerell, and learned the relief
of Ladysmith. Kronje capitulated a few days ago at Paardeburg, and the
Boer army has evacuated Natal, and seems to be concentrating for a final
stand on the Drakensburg line. One thing is satisfactory in it, the
release of Guy Wyndham from his captivity. There have been debates in
the House of Commons about Chamberlain’s part of the Raid. He now says
that his white-washing of Rhodes after the Committee Report only
concerned Rhodes’ money transactions. I remember George telling me at
the time (and he was in the thick of the plot) that they had played a
trick on the opposition in getting Harcourt and the rest of them to
agree to the Report on an understanding that Rhodes was to be thrown
over, and also, if I remember rightly, in forcing Chamberlain’s hand to
support Rhodes. This one thing is certain, Rhodes remained, and is still
a Privy Councillor.
“_5th March._—I have been very busy getting ready for our long intended
pilgrimage to Mount Sinai. Anne is unable to go as Judith has written
hurrying her departure for the expected baby, but Cockerell goes with me
and my nurse, Miss Lawrence. We are to start on the 7th, and take
steamer to Tor on the 8th, and be met there by our camels.
“_6th March._—Evelyn spent the day with us having come to Egypt with his
daughters. He is in trouble having just received a telegram from his son
to say that he has joined the Imperial Yeomanry and is going to South
Africa. It is the smart thing to do just now, and all the world is mad
for fighting.
“_7th March._—To Suez by train, a hot, disagreeable journey, and put up
at the ‘Bel Air,’ next the station. Suez full of pilgrims, the streets
crowded and gay.
“_8th March._—Occupied in taking our places by the Khedivial steamer for
Tor, and getting passports for Suliman and Hassan at the Moudirieh. The
people there very friendly, as the Governor was formerly an Arabist and
the Katib had been secretary to Mahmoud Fehmy. The place was being
besieged by pilgrims come for their passports, which cost them 150
piastres, to the Hedjaz. In the afternoon went on board the _Chibine_
with the agent Beyts, whom I remember twenty years ago at Jeddah, where
he had a house of business with one Wild. He did what he could to make
us comfortable, but the _Chibine_ is crowded with pilgrims, 350 of them,
they say.
“_9th March._—I went to my berth early and woke about half-past one, and
opened the cabin window as it was very hot below, and so was lying awake
thinking over the lapse of years since I was last at Mount Sinai and the
poor issue of our short lives, when I felt as it were a blow received by
the vessel, and immediately after a second blow. At the first moment I
thought it was an earthquake shock—we had had one last Tuesday at Sheykh
Obeyd—and called out to Cockerell, who shared my cabin, to that effect;
but looking out of the window I saw a line of breakers close before us
on the port side, and the ship began to be knocked about by the waves.
It was very dark, but the breakers were plain enough, and I said to
Cockerell, ‘No. We are on a Coral Reef.’ I had not undressed and had
nothing but my shoes to put on to be ready for all events. And I went to
Miss Lawrence’s cabin and told her to get up and dress as we were
aground. Then on Cockerell’s confirming what had happened I went on the
upper deck where Suliman and Hassan were, and got the life-belt I always
carry out of the bullock trunk in which it was and put it on Miss
Lawrence. She was not at all frightened, nor indeed was anybody else as
far as I know—though the Pilgrims began reciting their prayers aloud.
The wind was blowing pretty strong, and I could make out the line of the
shore not far off and the breakers, though the night was dark. There did
not seem to be any immediate danger, but we prepared ourselves for
whatever might happen, and in the darkness, of course, there was room to
imagine the worst. I did not stay long, however, on deck, but after some
talk with Suliman went below and lay down again, for it was clear there
was nothing to be done till daylight. I had looked at my watch as soon
as the vessel struck, and found it was seven minutes past three.
Cockerell and Miss Lawrence stayed on deck, I believe, till morning.
After a bit I got to sleep again, for the ship was steady enough, and
there was nothing very tragic in the appearance of things.
“By daylight we were able to make out where we were. Suliman thought at
first the hills in front of us were the Hamam Faraoun. But later we made
out Serbal and the mouth of Wady Feiran, so it is now agreed that we are
ashore north of Ras Jehan. The Captain, Ross, did not seem to know much
about it. He told us he had only left the deck ten minutes when the
thing happened. [This turned out afterwards to have been quite untrue.
He had come on board late, having been at some entertainment at Suez,
and gone to bed early without giving any proper instructions as to the
course. No watch was kept, and we drove straight on a coral reef,
without so much as slackening speed or with a cry of breakers ahead!] We
must be clear eight miles out of our course, and it looks like bad
seamanship. Here we are, anyhow, stuck fast on a line of sand banks
(they proved to be a reef about a mile from the shore) and with small
chance of getting off to-day or any other day. The steamer is miserably
ill supplied with boats, and still more miserably with seamen, there are
only four boats capable of taking off at most a dozen passengers each,
and of these one is already lost. They launched it, the Captain says, in
order to put out a hawser for an anchor to windward, but it was swamped
by a breaker, and at least one man has been drowned. I saw another
holding on to the hawser for some minutes, and we thought he would be
swept away too, but at last he got hold of a rope and hitched it round
him, and was pulled up the ship side, but it was a near shave. The boat
drifted away, and is now on the sandbank (reef) bottom upwards, and five
lifebuoys, which were thrown to the drowning men, are drifting on shore.
The captain asked me about the nature of the country on which we had
run, the shore of the Sinai peninsula, and I offered to let my Bedouin,
Suliman, go in a boat if they could put him safely on shore when the
wind drops; he would then take a message to Tor, which is not more than
forty miles away, asking help. Suliman, however, is very unwilling to
go, now that he has seen the _feluca_ swamped and the man drowned, nor
will I let him attempt it until the wind goes down. [It was Suliman’s
first experience of being at sea, and, like most Bedouins, he was
frightened at being off his own element.] Should it become calm I shall
propose that we are all sent on shore here with our baggage, as we are
the only passengers for Tor, and we have provisions enough with us for a
fortnight. I am writing this at 9.45 a.m.
“1.30 p.m.—Things look worse than they did. The tide going down has
shown that we are on a coral reef, which may be half a mile in width,
with, perhaps, three miles of comparatively still water beyond it to the
shore. Also the wind has become stronger, and, though the waves do not
break over the deck, we are beginning to heel over in rather an alarming
way. I finished Tolstoy’s ‘Resurrection’ this morning. It is a most
depressing book, and makes one as willing as one can easily be to leave
a life so miserable as Tolstoy shows it. I don’t know which is the more
hopeless, the picture of polite society _en décomposition_, or that of
his convicts and political prisoners who find a dreary satisfaction in
helping each other in ways which human nature cannot really be satisfied
with. All the same, one clings a bit to life. There is a certain
physical menace in death which it is ill to face, and I feel it more
strongly this afternoon than I did last night when the danger was vaguer
and newer. The poor man drowned has saddened us, and made the danger
seem more real, but as yet we have not even begun to feel discomfort. No
water has reached the cabins, or even the decks, except now and then the
spray of a wave, and the sun is shining brightly, and we are surrounded
by flights of happy seagulls. The shore is romantic and beautiful
between Serbal, in front to the north-east and Ghareb to the south-west,
both mountains which I love and on which I could be content to die. It
is the physical repulsion that one has, that of being knocked to pieces
on the reef, or drowned in one’s cabin. Two ships have been sighted far
off, but they took no notice of our signals, and we are fully ten miles
away from the usual Red Sea course. My own only satisfaction is to think
Anne did not come with us. She has a terror of water, though of nothing
else, and would have been unhappy. Both Cockerell and Miss Lawrence are
cheerful and undisturbed; indeed, every one is behaving well. We are all
three sitting on the upper deck now, on a carpet with one of the
pilgrims next us, a man from Mitgamr. At every blow of a wave which
shakes the ship he ejaculates, ‘Ya robb! Ya róbbina’! (From God are all
things. Yes, all. Our Lord is merciful. Ya, Robb!) Below there is an old
lady who puts her head out of the cabin and calls to her son, ‘Ya,
Yusuf! Ya, Yusuf!’ The rest are devout and quiet, and there is none of
the affectation of merriment one would see under like circumstances on
board a P. and O.
“_10th March (Friday)._ [N.B. This part of my Diary is splashed with sea
water, but still legible.] We have had a very bad night and things this
morning look almost hopeless. With the rise of the tide at sunset the
wind increased in violence, blowing still from the north-west, and the
waves swept the upper deck. I went up to try and persuade Suliman and
Hassan to come below, but they would not move. The whole night through
the ship was banged upon the reef—raised by each wave, and let down with
a thundering bang upon her keel, which prevented much sleeping. At times
it seemed as if she must break her back. At midnight it was quieter, but
it is worse than ever this morning, and the ship has settled lower into
the water. There is only one comfort, she is now wholly aground, and
cannot sink lower. It depends all on the wind. If it goes on like this
for another night she will break up, and there is no chance of a rescue.
There are practically no boats and no sailors. The captain would not
risk trying to land the passengers except in a calm. Even the arrival of
another ship would be of no use, as we could not be got off. If the wind
does not fall, it will not be our pilgrims’ fault, for they pray
strenuously, with a fine male devotion. The women have been drilled to
silence, or at any rate to pray instead of complaining, even the little
boys shout, ‘Alláhu Akbar. Ya latif’! and the women add prayers to Seyd
el Bédawi of Tantah. For my own part I say my usual prayers to the dead
and to St. Winifred, who may help me, as she did three years ago, a
superstition which quiets the mind. I have been reading the Gospels,
too, in an edition Cockerell got me for our journey to Sinai, parts of
Mathew, Mark, and Luke, the doctrinal parts of which are splendid, and
as little like our English nineteenth-century Christianity as it is
possible to conceive. How foolish my Nietsche correspondent’s talk about
it is. The water is coming into the cabin, so I must leave off. Miss
Lawrence has been altogether admirable through all this, doing her duty
to me as a nurse just as if at home, and cheerful and courageous as I
never saw anyone. I have just been on deck and got wet through. It has
made me feel more indifferent to what may happen, and I contemplate the
water filling up the cabin and drowning us without much repugnance. It
is the getting wet that one really dislikes. It is now 7.30 a.m., and we
hope the wind is lulling, otherwise our prospects are poor.
“11 a.m.—Though things remain precisely as yesterday, and with rather
less chance of a good issue, for the wind blows as hard as ever,
everybody on board has settled down to the situation. There are no more
querulous plaints of the women, and the prayers are less incessant. The
children are playing merrily in the saloon, the little boy pretending to
bastinado the little girl on the soles of her feet, and there is a group
of women on the ground gossiping as if at market. This, I suppose, is in
all human nature. People go about their affairs, however much there may
be an earthquake or any other catastrophe impending. I have settled down
to a novel, which I brought with me in case of accidents causing delay
anywhere. There is no sign yet of succour from any quarter, and I expect
to-night will be critical. The thumping and banging on the reef goes on,
and all of our cabins are in a leaky state at the portholes; fortunately
the ship stands pretty steady on her keel, with only a slight list to
port. This has kept us fairly dry, though on the main deck the pilgrims
must be suffering terribly. There has been no cooking done to-day, as
the fires are out. Also salt water has got into the fresh water tanks,
and we may be soon short of water to drink.
“Later. In the afternoon, at Cockerell’s suggestion, we moved our
quarters from the after-cabin, which is being much battered by the sea,
to the upper platform in the centre of the ship. There we are sheltered
by a bit of awning from the wind and spray, and the waves do not wash
quite so high. Suliman had already established himself there, and it is
pleasant to have our little camp with him altogether as if we were in
the desert. The sight of the waves breaking over the reef is
interesting, and there are seagulls to watch and floating seaweed, and
one can mark the variations in strength of the wind; the centre of the
ship, too, is free from the thumping of the stern, and we have a feeling
here that even if she breaks in two, the fore half where we are would
remain firm on the reef. Nor is it a small advantage to be free from the
incessant prayers of the rich pilgrims in the cabin, who shout in chorus
all day long, and of the children who, in imitation of them, make treble
invocations of their own. In the forecastle, which we overlook, the
pilgrims, mostly Persians, confine themselves to an ‘Alahu Akbar,’ when
any specially big wave breaks over them. There is one of them stationed
on purpose to look out for the big waves and announce their coming. Here
we are settling ourselves for the night.
“_11th March._—The sunset last night was less yellow than the day had
been, for there had been a thick haze, and the stars and the moon came
out, but the wind blew all night as hard as ever, the waves running up
to within a couple of feet of our platform, making one wonder whether
the afterpart of the ship had not been carried away. We made ourselves
as comfortable as circumstances would permit under our awning, and I
took a little dose of morphia to keep me warm through the night. I had
got wet through in my European clothes, and have now got on my Arab
things, and so dozed through the night, trying to fancy myself in
Jendali or on Kalala. Miss Lawrence and Cockerell too, none of us in
much comfort, for we could not lie down. Still things might have been
worse, and we were able to keep dry, and the wind is not a cold one. The
pilgrims, among whom we are now established, began by being not quite
friendly, one or two thought I was masquerading as a pilgrim, and asked
me why I wore the _akhram_, and whether I had a passport from
Constantinople, nor could I altogether satisfy them, as they did not
understand Arabic, being mostly Turks or Bokharists. But the feeling
amongst them has quite changed now. This is owing to my having taken
their side against the captain, and decided him at last to send off a
boat to the shore. [The captain, since the ship had struck, had shut
himself up almost entirely in his cabin, refusing to do anything or take
any measures.] The pilgrims had insisted upon his sending off a boat,
and had come to the cabin door in a body, under the leadership of an old
sea-captain, a Moslem from the Caspian, a rugged fellow in an Astrakhan
cap, who declared he could easily steer a boat on shore at high tide
across the reef, and so carry the news of our shipwreck to Tor. This
seemed to me a sensible plan; and I went with them to the cabin, and got
the captain to consent, though there was a difficulty in finding men to
man the boat, as all the ship’s crew (there were only five of them), odd
men picked up at Suez, were frightened at the drowning of the sailor on
Thursday, and I volunteered myself, if necessary, to go, and with me
Suliman to run on with the news to Tor; and Cockerell also would have
gone and Miss Lawrence, but there was no boat large enough for us all,
and at last it was decided that Suliman alone should go, with five of
the ship’s crew. He was very unwilling, as he is terribly afraid of the
sea, but I persuaded him there was really no great danger. He bid me a
solemn farewell, taking off most of his clothes and handing over to me
his money and his passport. Then the ship’s crew would have nothing to
do with the Caspian sea-dog as their commander, and at one time the
whole plan seemed as if it would break down, for Captain Ross was
without resource or power of command. At last, however, just on the turn
of the high tide, they got the boat launched and across the reef, and so
to the shore in safety. We were able to watch them till they landed. So
Suliman at least is out of danger, and may bring us help from Tor. The
boat was the last one left, as one was lost on Thursday, and the two
others were destroyed last night by the sea. Some of the ship’s company
are making a raft, in case things come to the worst. Except the lack of
drinking water, however, I don’t think there is much immediate danger,
as the wind has moderated and the sky has become clear. The difficulty
is that there is no means now of getting the pilgrims on shore, even if
it is calm, as we have not a boat left, and are without water. We
ourselves fortunately have with us three quart bottles of water, which
are still intact, and a large number of oranges, but unless help comes
to-morrow or next day, it will fare badly with all of us. One of the
pilgrims, though very amiable to us, has told me the captain’s throat
ought to be cut. They all think he is hiding water, though that is not
the case. There never was a ship, however, sent to sea worse found, or
with a more incapable captain.
“We have made special friends with two of the pilgrims, Russian
subjects, one a Tartar, living at St. Petersburgh, formerly an Alem of
Bokhara, who has spoken to me in high praise of Sheykh Jemal el Din. He
is a very superior man, in a snuff-coloured robe. The other, a Mongol
from the Crimea, who has been a student for the last fourteen years at
the Azhar at Cairo. This one is a thick-set heavy man of the true
Chinese type, or rather of the Mongol type, from which Chinamen derive
their features. These have taken up their quarters next to us, and they
are very polite to us—with them most of their friends. We have
distributed a few of our oranges among them; all complain of thirst. The
most interesting of all, however, is an Arab from Medina, a _Muhajjer_
who affects the character of a wely. He is the most beautiful human
being I ever saw, going bareheaded, with an immense shock of black hair
in ringlets; his face is very dark, and brilliant as a hawk’s, his teeth
splendidly white, and his eyes of womanish, gazelle-like lustre. His
beard, too, like his hair, is a whole mass of ringlets, and his hands
and feet are of perfect form. With all he is kindly and friendly, with a
peculiar, inconsequent way, as becomes a saint. [He was fantastically
dressed when he came on board, with gorgeous muslin robes, but these got
soon draggled with the sea water, without thereby affecting his gay
spirits or pleasant smile. He would go about from one to other of the
pilgrims with a pleasant word to each, and gave away at once the oranges
we gave him. His exact position in life, except that he was a
_Muhajjer_, I never ascertained, but he invited me cordially to his
house if I visited Medina, and was especially polite to all of us. Most
of those that I have mentioned talked Arabic, but many knew no word of
it, having come from distant parts of Asia.] They are evidently good,
pious people, and it is a relief to find ourselves among them at a
solemn moment like the present, when we have death, so to say, staring
us in the face, and away from the few ungodly Englishmen who frequent
the bar of the first class cabin. I never marked the contrast more, and
it consoles me not a little for the rest.
“Miss Lawrence is wonderful in her simple courage and good sense. She
makes us all as comfortable as the small space we have will admit, and
has not said a complaining word. When I said to her half in fun, ‘Your
poor patient has almost come to the end of his tether,’ she answered
simply, ‘I cannot think we shall be drowned. God would not allow all
these good people who call on him to perish.’ Cockerell, too, is full of
help. He has made friends with a young Belgian and a young English
accountant, who are better than the rest, and gathers a deal of
information about all that is going on.
“It came on blowing terribly again in the afternoon, and the sea has put
on the pale green look it has in the northern seas—each wave capped with
foam. The waves are pouring over the lower decks, and the ship is
sinking a bit in her bed. A great ship was seen just at sunset, and wild
hopes were indulged. The sailors hoisted a torch at the mast-head, but
the vessel was too far away and soon disappeared. Nor could she have
helped us had she come to us for no captain would put out a boat in such
a sea. Notwithstanding all this we under our awning on the bridge have
passed (_12th March_) a not quite uncomfortable night. Only one woke
every few minutes with a start, and thoughts forced themselves on one’s
mind of things beyond the world. There were signs of lightning in the
hills in the direction of Mount Sinai, and one seemed to see in them
God’s anger in his dwelling place, perhaps at one’s impiety at seeking
to set foot on it, and for the attitude I have taken of having
complained of his dereliction of his duty and neglect of the World and
Man. Towards morning just in front of us stood the Scorpion, for the sky
was clear, and it reminded me of many things. It was then that Miss
Lawrence used the words that I have recorded. This is the worst night
that we have passed, and there seems little left to hope.
“_12th March._—Our fourth day on the reef, which is whiter than ever
with foam—the wind stronger and the waves higher. The cabins aft are
flooded, and the people are leaving them, and crowding on to the bridge.
Nevertheless there is a more cheerful feeling, for at eight o’clock a
vessel approached which was recognized as one of the Khedivial Line
Steamers, the _Misr_, evidently sent out to look for us. We could not,
however, communicate with her, as there is no system of signalling on
board, and the sea is far too big for them to launch a boat; they have
therefore gone back in the direction of Tor, waiting we suppose for the
wind to moderate. This gives us something to hope for, and all agree
that the gale cannot last much longer, and that the ship is too fast on
the reef to be in immediate danger—only that the pilgrims are in straits
for water, and I hear that a woman and child have died. The stewards,
meanwhile (for the government of the vessel and the administration of
the supplies are abominable) are selling soda at exorbitant prices to
the richer people. We dare not give away our water yet, as it would be
drunk up at once, but we give oranges. Personally I have not drunk a
tumbler of water in the last three days and have eaten nothing but half-
a-dozen oranges. The morphia I have taken does away with both thirst and
hunger, there is much dampness too in the air, and the pilgrims I think
suffer much less from thirst itself than the thought of it, knowing
there is no water. Most of them come from the northern countries where
water abounds, and the thought of being without it frightens them, as it
does not frighten the Arabs. They make very little complaint, however,
considering how hardly they are treated. I go on writing my journal and
reading and dozing between times. The sun is shining brilliantly, and we
are not so uncomfortable for the waves do not reach us, and the spray
here and on the forecastle is not very wetting. It is at night that the
gloomy thoughts come.
“There is a Greek boatswain or second officer who tells me that he has
been eight times wrecked, and twice in this same _Chibine_. ‘If I get
safe on shore this time,’ he said, ‘I go to sea no more. I sell oranges
for a living, it is better.’ He is certainly right. They have finished
two rafts, or rather punts, unseaworthy looking craft, which I should be
loath to embark in. The thought of the Red Sea sharks has been, I fancy,
with all of us, though we say nothing about it. The still water inside
the reef must be full of them—here it is too rough, and there is only
drifting seaweed and a multitude of gulls.
“Later. The weather shows signs of improvement, though the sea is as
high as ever, and the wind is hardly less, but the sky is clearing, and
the line of hills on the west coast is beginning to show again. We can
see Ghareb and the rest. I feel confident the wind will fall at sunset.
And the _Misr_ should return and take us off to-morrow—but everything
depends upon the fall of the wind.
“Evening. Our troubles, I hope, are over. At 4 p.m., behold as a _coup
de théatre_, H.M.S. _Hebe_, a gunboat, arriving from Suez to our rescue.
The sea was still very heavy, and the wind as strong as ever, but
Commander Taylor in command of her, gallantly put off in a whale-boat,
and has himself come on board our wreck. His arrival has relieved us
entirely from our anxiety, for though he cannot land us to-night he is
satisfied our ship is in no immediate danger of breaking up. He will
return in the morning and take us all across the reef at high tide, if
it is still rough, or directly to Tor if the wind has gone down. He is a
good, clean-shaven, grey-eyed little British officer of the best type.
To us personally he offered, if we wished, to take us all three off with
him at once to-night, but as he seemed to think it would be rather a
risk, especially with Miss Lawrence, we elected to stay on the wreck yet
another night—and it is well we did—for the whale-boat as we could see
it had a narrow shave of being capsized, and was unable to get taken on
board the _Hebe_ on her return until the _Hebe_ had moved down a mile or
two to leeward of the reef. What has caused Taylor coming is this. As
long ago as Saturday the people at Suez became uneasy at getting no
telegram about us from Tor, but imagined the _Chibine_ must have
neglected to call there and gone on to Jeddah, then rumours came that
something was wrong, and the _Misr_ was sent out to look for us, and
later Cromer, having been referred to, ordered the _Hebe_ out. The
_Hebe_ was to have looked for us on the West Coast of the Red Sea, but
fortunately just as she was getting up steam our telegram, carried by
Suliman and despatched from Tor, arrived, telling them where we were,
otherwise they would have searched the Western Coast in vain, and might
not have found us for some days. However, as our friend the Crimean
pilgrim says, ‘El hamdu l’Illah’ (God has not forgotten his slaves). We
are all congratulating each other now, and the pilgrims are showing
their good-will to us, and thanks for having helped to get Suleyman sent
ashore, in a number of agreeable ways.
“_13th March (Tuesday)._—Our last night on the wreck was a peaceful and
a joyful one. At sunset the wind, as was expected, dropped—and it is now
nearly a dead calm. I slept profoundly. With the first light we got our
traps together, and distributed all our remaining provisions among the
pilgrims who were ravenous for our oranges. These were rescued at last
from the water which had been sweeping over them on the after deck. They
had been well packed and were not much spoiled. The best of them went to
our friends, Sheykh Abdul Hamid, and the gallant sea-dog of the Caspian,
Suleyman Ismailoff of Astrakhan, the rest I took with Hassan in a bundle
to the forecastle where they were eagerly grabbed for by the Persian
pilgrims, especially the women. Here are the names of our chief friends
on board, Sheikh Abdul Hamid of St. Petersburgh, one of the Ulema, and
his friend, Suleyman Ali from Crimea, a Crim Tartar Student of the
Azhar, Captain Suleyman Ismailoff of Astrakhan; our friend the
_Muhajjer_, whose name I have unfortunately forgotten, Mohammed Ali,
aged nine, a gay boy who was the captain’s servant. Gilroy, an English
accountant going to Jeddah, Dr. Edward Rist of the Sanitary Board of
Alexandria (an Alsacian Frenchman, of whom we afterwards saw much).
“3 p.m. We are on board H.M.S. _Hebe_. At eight o’clock we were taken
off among the first of those rescued by Captain Taylor, and are once
more on the clean deck of a British man-of-war, feeling that after all
the British Fleet has its beneficent uses and was intended for other
things than only the bombardment of Eastern towns. Taylor tells me that
but for the telegram sent by Suliman, we must have been several days
longer on the reef—we might well have been overlooked till it was too
late. All is ended now, however, and we can say ‘El hamdu l’Illah.’ In
the course of the morning other ships arrived, and all the pilgrims
having been taken from the wreck and placed on board them, they went on
their way to Jeddah, while we returned to Suez on the _Hebe_.
“Names of the Officers of the _Hebe_ are: Commander Taylor, Lieutenant
Frederick Loder Symonds, Lieutenant James Kirkness, Surgeon Herbert
Gill, Chief Engineer George Pascoe.
“The officers of the _Hebe_ are an excellent set of men; they have
entertained us all last night on board, feasting our hunger, and giving
us stretchers for beds. Remembering the navy as I knew it forty years
ago at Athens, these young officers seem to me superior in intelligence
and manners to what they then were. The _Hebe_ is one of the new and
highly scientific gunboats which require men of head and education to
work them, and they took pleasure in explaining to us everything, more
indeed than I did in listening, for machinery is the least interesting
of novelties. We might have been taken on to Tor if we had wished it,
but I decided against this, seeing the peril we had escaped, and I have
a superstition against continuing a journey in face of a strong warning;
indeed to me this is more than a warning. I see in it a menace
forbidding me to approach the Holy Mountain. Perhaps another year I may
return, but not now.
“In the early morning as we arrived at Suez I was awoke from sleep by a
very terrible dream or imagination, for I was between waking and
sleeping. The screws of the gunboat had been reversed, and there was a
fearful vibration on board, so loud that it sounded like a storm. I
thought that we had come to the head of the gulf to that place where
Pharaoh and the Egyptians were overwhelmed in the sea, and that an
immense wind had struck us from the west, so that the gunboat was being
driven on to the eastern shore. It was a storm so terrible that nothing
could live in it, and I knew that it had been sent by God, and I heard a
voice saying: ‘There are no pilgrims here to save you again by their
prayers,’ and I was terror struck and I made my profession of faith—‘La
Allah ila Allah, wa Mohammed rasul Allah,’ nor was I relieved of my fear
until I had looked out of the scuttle and seen the lights of Suez, and
smooth water, and the Scorpion in a quite clear sky. [I think the
extreme vividness of this dream was probably due to the morphia I had
been taking during the wreck.] I remember Captain Taylor, whose cabin I
was sharing, asking me what o’clock it was, and I told him a quarter to
three. He was surprised at my knowing this when, having struck a match,
he found that I was exactly right. I had calculated it by the stars in
the Scorpion’s tail, which are an excellent clock at this time of year,
but sailors have forgotten these old-fashioned observations of the
stars.”
The next fortnight of my journal is defective. The excitement of the
shipwreck over, I felt the effect of it, and was once more suffering in
health. My last days in Egypt before returning to Europe were occupied
in laying before Lord Cromer the circumstances of the pilgrim case, and
urging him to take up the defence of these Moslems, whose safety had
been so jeopardized by the disgraceful mismanagement of the Khedivial
Government, the lack of all proper provision for them on board, and the
incompetence of the captain. I also wrote a strong letter in the same
sense to the “Times,” with the effect that a naval court of inquiry was
appointed to be held at Suez on board H.M.S. _Halycon_. Consul Cameron
presiding. This Court Cockerell and I and Dr. Rist attended, and we gave
evidence with the result that on the 28th of March, the Court found
against the Company, and Rist and I were publicly thanked for our
“public spirited action,” while it eventually led to new regulations
being issued with regard to the pilgrim traffic in the Red Sea, which to
some extent alleviated the evils of the system so long pursued. All that
I find of importance in my journal is the following account of my final
visit to the Khedive.
“_2nd April._—To see the Khedive at Abdin, where I found Mohammed Abdu
also waiting for an audience. He introduced me to Mohammed Pasha Shukri,
the Khedive’s Turkish secretary, and other functionaries, all very
amiable, as they had heard of the shipwreck and how I had brought the
pilgrim case forward.
“Abbas received me with affection, and we had a most intimate and
interesting conversation. It began about the pilgrim traffic, as to the
better regulation of which he promised help. Then he went on to talk of
his journey to the Western oasis. He told me that he had been extremely
well received by the Senussia, and had found out everything he wanted to
know about them. Their principle of conduct, he said, was to obey the
law in all countries where they resided. In the Zaghwiyahs nothing was
permitted to be done which could bring them into conflict with the
Government. Although they imported arms and ammunition, largely from
Egypt, these never passed through the Zaghwiyahs, but through
individuals, generally poor men, so that if discovered it would not
bring them discredit. In the Zaghwiyahs nothing compromising would be
found. He assured me, however, that the Arabs of the Western tribes, all
of whom belonged to the brotherhood, were well armed with Martini
rifles; the brothers were very particular whom they would talk to; they
would trust no Christian, and no Moslem who served a Christian, as, for
instance, no Egyptian soldier, because the Sirdar and officers were
Christians, also no Moslem who did not pray and openly show himself
such. He was evidently much impressed by their strength and their
organization, and by the instruction and high character of their leading
men. All this seems to tally with what Mohammed Abdu told me lately of
the Khedive’s having become ‘superstitious and opposing Liberal reform
in the Azhar on the ground that he feared to lose the prayers of the
old-fashioned faithful.’
“He then talked of his intended visit to England. I advised him to talk
frankly to everybody, and promised to do what little I could personally
to dispose people in his favour. Lastly, he told me Lord Cromer had
spoken to him about allowing Arabi to return to Egypt, but he had a
grief on this head against Lord Cromer, inasmuch as Cromer had refused
to allow his grandfather, Ismaïl, to come back and die in Egypt. Ismaïl
was suffering from cancer, and only asked to see Cairo before he died,
but Cromer had refused, why then should he now come to him and say, ‘Let
Arabi return.’ We stood together discussing this matter for some time,
as I was going out, and it ended by his promising or half promising to
grant Arabi’s pardon. Another farewell visit was to my old friend and
neighbour, Sheykh Hassan Abu Tawil, now very near his end. I found him
(_5th April_) like Job upon his bed, surrounded with comforters, a mere
skeleton, too feeble to rise. I asked him whether he had had the doctor
to see him, but he said ‘No, he preferred to be doctored by God,’ and
this is probably best even scientifically. I told him the tale of our
shipwreck, and he besought me to have a lamb slain for Sheykh Obeyd, and
I promised him so to do, though I have a quarrel with our local saint
for the little good he did me two years ago. I shall be grieved to lose
old Hassan, for he is good, and much beloved by his tribes-people. We
leave Sheykh Obeyd for Italy to-morrow.”
My journey home was made with Cockerell and Miss Lawrence, Lady Anne
having preceded us, and at Brindisi I received a telegram from her,
announcing the birth of a grandson. Another fellow-traveller was M.
Cogordan, the French Minister at Cairo, a man of great intelligence and
knowledge of art and archæology. We stopped the night at Ancona and
several days at Florence, where we found Lady Paget and Lady Windsor,
and where I made acquaintance with Mrs. Ross, Lady Duff Gordon’s
daughter, who was so long in Egypt, as to which she had pleasant
recollections of things that happened thirty and more years ago. Our
next halting place was Lucca, which I had not visited since 1852, when,
as a boy of eleven, I spent the summer at the Lucca Baths. I remember
having been taken to see the Holy Coat, and of having beheld in the
streets the Grand Duke and Duchess of Tuscany, with the fat grand ducal
children, pass in their carriage in days before the invention of the
Kingdom of Italy.
The next day I went with Cockerell to call on Ouida at her villa at S.
Alessio, some three miles from Pisa. I had been in correspondence with
her on literary matters, and took the opportunity of paying her a visit.
“Our driver did not know the house or who we wanted, until he suggested
‘the lady with the many dogs.’ We said, ‘Oh, yes, the lady with the
dogs,’ and so it was. Ouida’s house proved to be a nice old villa with a
high garden wall and an eighteenth century iron gate, towards which from
inside seven or eight dogs, poodles mostly and nondescripts, came at us,
open-mouthed, when we rang. It was some time before we could make our
ringing heard, and the bell was answered at last by a portly man-cook in
cap and apron, who, after some further delay, on my sending in my card,
admitted us. We were shown into the front hall, and there found the lady
of the house seated at a small table, as one sees in the opening scene
of a play, arranged apparently for the occasion. She was a little old
lady, dressed in white, who rose to meet us and reprove her dogs, still
yelping at us in chorus. A mild reproof it was, nor did it save us from
their caresses. The largest poodle placed himself upon my knees, and
another took my hat in his mouth. ‘They do not often bite,’ she
explained, ‘except beggars.’ I had been prepared by the violence of her
writings and anecdotes I had heard of her from Lady Paget and others, to
find a person somewhat loud and masculine, but Ouida proved the reverse
of this. In face she is much more French than English (her father, she
told us, was French, M. de la Ramée, and her mother an Englishwoman),
small featured, soft, and distinguished, with a high forehead, rather
prominent blue eyes, dulled and watery with age, almost white hair, and
that milk and roses complexion old people sometimes acquire, and which
gives them a beatified look. It was difficult to believe her capable of
such a malevolence as her novel, ‘Friendship.’ She can never have been a
sensual woman, whatever passions she may have revelled in in her
writings. Her conversation is good, intellectual, without being
affected, or the talk of a blue stocking. It gives you the impression of
a woman who has thought out her ideas, and has the courage of her
opinions. We talked about the inhumanity of modern Europe, especially
modern England, and the rage for slaughter, which is its chief feature.
Also about Italy and Crispi, who is her _bête noir_ there, as
Chamberlain is in England. She talks English perfectly, as she says she
does also French and Italian, and complained to us of the slipshod
writing of the day. It was evidently a pleasure to her to talk, and to
find us such good listeners. With Cockerell she was immensely taken, and
was curious to know who he could be, for I had not introduced him, and
persisted in thinking him a personage in disguise. At the end of a
couple of hours we moved to go, but she would have detained us, and made
us promise to come again. She cannot, she says, now go to England, on
her dogs’ account, and, indeed, they monopolize her life. Altogether she
is a pathetic figure, condemned to solitude, not by choice, but by
necessity, and regretting the cheerful society of Florence, an exile
imposed on her, I fancy, by poverty and her bitter pen. ‘The world,’ she
said, ‘takes its revenge on us for having despised it.’ We both left her
with feelings of respect, almost of affection, certainly of sympathy and
pity.” [With Cockerell Ouida corresponded to the day of her death,
though I believe they never met again.]
Yet another visit in Italy was to Princess Hélène, now Duchess of Aosta,
at her palace in Turin, where I had luncheon with her and her husband,
who struck me as a kind of understudy of the Emperor William, a good
talker but somewhat brusque. As fourth at luncheon there was his
stepmother, the Dowager Duchess Letitia Bonaparte, daughter of old Plon
Plon, who is much with them. I was introduced to both as a revolutionary
character in connection with my adventures in Ireland. There was talk
also of the Transvaal War, which they, in common with all foreigners,
consider an unfortunate, not to say ridiculous, affair for England. The
meal was a pleasant one, and in the afternoon Cockerell and I went on by
the night train to Paris. My companion in the sleeping car was Colonel
Needham, military secretary at the Rome Embassy, who told me that
Kitchener, who had been the best hated man in the British army, is now
becoming almost popular in South Africa. A visit to Gros Bois followed
where, as usual, there was much interesting talk. Among other things
told me was this, that the seriousness of the anti-Semitic rage in
France was due to Alphonse Rothschild’s neglect to buy up Drumont. He
might have done it for a small sum early in the day, but did not
recognize Drumont’s power sufficiently and now it is too late. The Jews
are put in Coventry by all the great French world. There, as elsewhere
abroad, I found it considered that we had made ourselves ridiculous in
South Africa and that the war ought to be stopped.
We arrived at home in England 25th April.
“_1st May._—To the Danes to see Lady Lytton, travelling there with Betty
Balfour, who told amusing stories about Ireland, one being of a voyage
the Queen had made in her yacht. The Queen used to be a good sailor, but
is disturbed now if it is at all rough and likes the doctor to sit with
her in the cabin and look after her. It came on to blow and a wave
struck the ship rather roughly, which alarmed and made her indignant.
‘Go up at once,’ she said, ‘Sir James, and give the Admiral my
compliments and tell him the thing must not occur again.’
“I talked to Lady Lytton about the Khedive’s intended visit. She said
the Queen would certainly see him if she was at Windsor, but would most
probably be away at Balmoral, and there was nobody else who could be
depended on to be polite. Lord Salisbury, now Lady Salisbury was dead,
would give himself no trouble, no more would the Duke of Devonshire.
Broderick and Lady Hilda were worse than useless and the rest would not
think it their business. She knew nothing about the Prince of Wales.
There never was a time when it was more difficult to get the duties of
politeness done to foreign princes.
“_2nd May._—Lunched with George Wyndham at Willis’s Rooms, he in high
feather with his parliamentary success, though things are not going as
smoothly as they might at the War Office. They are in trouble there
about despatches they have published blaming Buller, and George will
have to defend the Government on Friday. Evan Charteris was lunching
with us, which prevented any very intimate talk.
“_17th May._—Button spent the day with me at Newbuildings, his mother
having come with him. He tells me the relief of Mafeking is being
carried out by Kitchener, though his name has not been mentioned in the
newspapers in connection with it. He went on to describe the different
systems of slavery and forced labour of the blacks in South Africa. One
of the great grievances of the Johannesburg people was that they were
not allowed by Kruger to have compounds in which to keep their
‘labourers.’ Kruger was afraid they would arm and drill their blacks,
and consequently forbade it, leaving them to hire labour as they could,
which cost them a good deal more. The ‘compound’ system of ‘free
labour,’ as practised at Kimberly and elsewhere in Rhodesia is an
ingenious substitute for slavery. The negroes are recruited with
promises of very high wages, and the wages are actually paid, but once
inside the walls of the compound they are permanently prisoners and have
to spend their wages there. To prevent their leaving with a show of
legality, a rule is enforced that each negro before going out must be
dosed. This has the double motive of preventing them from swallowing and
carrying away diamonds and, as the dose is an immense one, of
frightening them from undergoing it. The dose plan was invented by the
Jew Porgés, who is now a millionaire at Paris. Such negroes as, having
saved money, face the dose and are allowed to depart, are waylaid on
their way back to the Zambezi, from beyond which many are recruited by
Boers in league with the mining authorities, and stripped of all they
have. The Government, he says, is making itself very unpopular in
Ireland and he thinks also in England, but I cannot agree with him that
there is the least chance of their being turned out at the General
Elections.
“_21st May._—The streets of London are decked with flags for a foolish
victory, the relief of Mafeking, and even the cottages in Sussex flew
their Union Jacks. This war has been so little glorious that our
patriots are thankful for the smallest of small mercies. One would think
that Napoleon and all the armies of Europe had been defeated by the
British arms.
“_22nd May._—The Poet Laureate has published an absurd effusion in the
‘Times’ about the relief of Mafeking.
“Called in the afternoon on Kegan Paul, who is still confined to his
room and chair, and learned the details of Mivart’s death, which are
dramatically terrible.
“_23rd May._—Called on Father Tyrrel, the Jesuit, at Farm Street. Kegan
Paul had shown me a letter from him about my poem, ‘Satan Absolved,’ in
which he had said, amongst other approving things, that my account of
the Incarnation was precisely the one he had always had in his mind and
he had suggested my calling on him, so I went. I found Father Tyrrel
very sympathetic, a thin, somewhat ascetic figure, with a nervous,
imaginative face, his age perhaps forty-eight. We talked of Mivart, for
whose ideas he clearly had much sympathy, but he blamed him for having
lost his temper in the quarrel. He spoke strongly against the Roman
Congregations, thought Vaughan had been unfair in denying to Mivart an
answer to his questions, but all the same he was severe on Mivart for
the final quarrel. It could only be excused by the failure of his mental
balance through ill health. I asked him what really was the theology of
Mivart’s position, especially with regard to the inspiration of the Holy
Scriptures. Was Mivart bound to accept the Pope’s Encyclical? He said
the Pope’s Encyclical, though an interesting pronouncement as being made
by the Pope, was in no way binding, though the extreme theologians
maintained that it was. Vaughan had no right to demand of Mivart
adhesion to it, an adhesion which was beyond what was ever demanded of
converts before their reception into the Church. Mivart’s fault was one
of temper. He should have held his tongue and let the Congregation say
what they would. I asked him whether he knew Meynell, but he said, ‘No,
not personally,’ and added that as to his Liberalism of thought, he did
not mind how liberal a man was so long as he retained a definite basis
for his ideas. By this I suppose he meant that there must be a certain
bed-rock of faith in the Church, however ill-defined. We talked of
Stonyhurst, and he was surprised when I praised his system of protecting
boys from all contact with evil. I said it had been good for me if not
for everybody. He called it a French system, not peculiar to the
Jesuits, and said it was much altered now at Stonyhurst. Certainly,
Father Tyrrel is as enlightened a priest as I have ever met. He agreed
with me that it was impossible not to believe in Evolution, whatever
might be pronounced at Rome. ‘Rome,’ he said, ‘is two hundred years
behind-hand. They never read any modern work of criticism there, and do
not take the trouble to understand the opinions they condemn.’ Forty
years ago a priest so outspoken would have saved my faith.
“Herbert Vivian looked in on me, fresh from Abyssinia. He tells me the
Abyssinian army has just been beaten by the Mohammedans of the Southern
Province. He gave a curious account of the French colonists at Zeila,
who sleep, he says, naked in the streets with the native women, and who
do every kind of violence, without restraint, against the natives.
“_26th May._—Old Philip Webb came down for the day with Cockerell, a
worthy old fellow, who is leaving off work at his trade of architect,
and is searching for a hermitage in which to end his days. He has been
too honest to make his fortune, and talks of living in a £10 cottage. I
shall try and find him one.
“_28th May._—All is satisfactorily settled about the Khedive’s visit to
England, Lady Lytton writes from Balmoral that he is to be lodged at
Buckingham Palace and the Queen will give him private audience.
“_9th June._—Roberts is now in Pretoria. Our country fools have been in
ecstasies again over this, though it is quite manifest that both
Bloemfontein and Pretoria have been purposely evacuated by the Boers who
have not lost a gun or hardly a man in their retreat. The papers are all
saying the war is over, but I think it may well last till next year. The
Boers’ campaigning season begins in October, and if they can manage to
hold out in their mountains till then, they may turn the tables yet.
“_26th June._—I have moved to-day from my rooms in Mount Street to 37,
Chapel Street, Belgrave Square, having taken the whole of that house, a
small one, with Hampden, as Mount Street was too small for us both.
“_27th June._—Dined with Godfrey Webb and Hugh Wyndham at the
Travellers. The excitement of the moment is the trouble in China, where
the Foreign Embassies are in danger from the mob. The Chinese, after a
long course of bullying by the Powers, worrying by missionaries, and
robbing by merchants and speculators have risen, and are, very properly,
knocking the foreign invasion on the head. Admiral Seymour, with two
thousand men, mostly English, who was sent up to relieve the Embassy, is
himself blockaded, as is Tientsin behind him, and the rumpus is general.
“_28th June._—The Khedive has arrived at last in London at Buckingham
Palace.
“_3rd July._—To London and lunched with Wilfrid Lawson, who told me a
number of splendid new stories, and took me to an Aborigines Protection
Conference. Dined with Charles Russell and his wife.
“_7th July._—Our Arab Sale Day. An immense concourse of guests but few
buyers, some five hundred sitting down to luncheon. Hampden proposed my
health as a poet, politician, and horse-breeder, which, in my reply, I
said was unkind, seeing that in the first two characters I had been a
failure, and I then gave them my idea of how to breed horses for war.
Many were prevented from coming by the news from China, where all the
European Ambassadors, they say, have been murdered by the mob. People
are shrieking against the Chinese, as inhuman barbarians, and there is
wild talk about the Yellow Terror. I wish I could believe that Europe
stood in the smallest danger from it. [This tale about the murder of the
Ambassadors turned out to be a Stock Exchange scare invented by the
‘Daily Mail.’]
“_13th July._—Drove with Anne to Wotton, stopping on the way at Holmwood
to lunch with William Gibson and his wife, a pleasant Frenchwoman. He is
an odd creature, much engrossed in ecclesiasticism and the Irish Celtic
revival, in honour of which he wears a drab kilt, being by birth a
Dublin Irishman of the Castle persuasion.
“_15th July (Sunday)._—At Newbuildings. Alfred Austin is staying here.
We put him on a horse, but he was not happy on it, and made ingenious
excuses for ending the ride. We have had long talks and discussions on
theology, philosophy, and the Catholic church. He is an acute and ready
reasoner, and is well read in theology and science. It is strange his
poetry should be such poor stuff, and stranger still that he should
imagine it immortal.
“_17th July._—It is certain now that the Europeans in Pekin have all
been massacred. [Nevertheless it turned out that the whole story was a
fable invented by the halfpenny press.]
“_31st July._—The King of Italy has been assassinated. The wonder is
that he has not long ago fallen a victim to his subjects whom he has led
into miserable poverty and ground down with taxes for his political
ambition. He wanted to be an Emperor like the rest of them, Emperor of
Ethiopia, and this is the end.
“_13th Aug._—Started on my summer driving tour, going by Oldhouse, where
I had a long talk with Auberon Herbert about the great affairs of the
world. His son Bron has gone as correspondent to the ‘Times’ in South
Africa, not much to Auberon’s contentment. Then on to St. Giles’, where
I dined and slept at the Shaftesburys’. The next day by Rushmore to
Clouds, where I stayed a week or more.
“_4th Sept._—Arrived by the night train in Paris, and drove straight to
the Horse Show at Vincennes, where I am exhibiting a number of Arabs,
but the feeling just now is too strong against everything English for
much hope of our getting prizes. The judges are French military men, of
the same class that sat in court-martial on Dreyfus. Also the Sultan has
a number of horses at the show which he has entered in the names of
various Turkish Generals, so as to elude the rule making Government
studs ineligible for competition. There were some _saises_ looking after
them, whom I cross-questioned in Arabic, and they let out to me that all
really belonged to the Sultan. The handsomest Arab mare is one sent by
Prince Sanguscko, a very great beauty with a flea-bitten coat. Then on
to Gros Bois.
“_5th Sept._—Gros Bois. There is nobody here but the family. Alexandre,
the boy, is a good talker and a good fellow, very superior in
intelligence to most young fellows of his age, which is seventeen, while
the two girls are charming and begin to make a feature in the
conversation and amusement for the house.
“_6th Sept._—To Paris to see the International Exhibition, a fatiguing
affair. I went through the Pavillons Etrangers, of which incomparably
the best is the Spanish, most of the others are cluttered up with the
rubbish of modern manufactures, and even the English Pavilion, which
represents a Victorian Gothic country-house, has a certain vulgarity,
but here in the Spanish section there is an incomparable dignity. By a
stroke of genius worthy of her days of splendour, Spain, ignoring
altogether the nineteenth century, even to its bric-à-brac, shows us a
mere empty house with tapestries on the walls, tapestries the most
magnificent ever shown, and in two small glass cases in the centre of
the room, the armour of Charles V, and the dress worn by Boabdil el
Chico—absolutely nothing more. The beautiful Morris tapestries in the
English House looked tawdry after these.
“_7th Sept._—To Vincennes with Wagram where we breakfasted, and saw the
horses paraded before President Loubet. A Fourth Prize of 1,000 francs
has been awarded to us for Mesaoud, and one of 500 francs for Bozra. All
the superior prizes, however, have been got hold of by the Sultan, under
the name of Muzaffer Pasha, and with the help of his own Inspector of
Studs, Fuad Bey, and of one Hector Passega, manager of the Ottoman Horse
Show, both of them being judges here, has manipulated the jury and swept
the board. There was only one first-class stallion in the Ottoman show,
sent from Bagdad, and that has been left out of the prize list. The
others are rather ordinary beasts, the First Prize being taken by a
small black stallion, whose colour is his chief recommendation. Only one
is fit to show at all with ours; however, it does not much matter, as we
have had many admirers of a serious kind, and have already sold one
mare, Makbula, to Count Strogonoff for 10,000 francs.
“To-day is Berthe’s wedding-day, and I have written her a sonnet.
Giovanni Borghese and Madame de Jaucourt, a friend of the Prince of
Wales, have come. After dinner, there were fireworks in the park, and a
crowd of people from the neighbourhood.
“_8th Sept._—With Berthe in her new automobile to Paris for the day,
going at about fifteen miles an hour. It is certainly an exhilarating
experience, quite new to me, and if the machine could be made cheaper
(hers cost £800, and an ordinary one £400) would doubtless take the
place of horses and carriages. In France it is already much used, but in
England, where the roads are neither so broad nor so straight, I doubt
whether they will become popular until the mechanism has been simplified
and cheapened very considerably. We went a round of the Colonial shows
of the popular kind, representing Marchand setting fire to African
villages, and French generals bombarding the Madagascans. Then to the
Petit Palais with its splendid bric-à-brac, and alongside it the Grand
Palais, a modern monstrosity forming together a caricature of the
nineteenth century. On the one side a huge show of everything hideous
the century has produced; on the other, giving its eclectic fancy for
ages gone by.
“_9th Sept._—Paid a last visit to the Horse Show, where we have taken
four medals and prizes, 1,000 francs, 800 francs, 600 francs, and 500
francs. The printed list calls them _recompenses_ it being not even
pretended that the judging is according to merit, the medals being
awarded to the exhibitors rather than to the beasts. As a rule those who
sent most animals got most prizes.
“_10th Sept._—Back to Newbuildings, taking Alexandre with me for some
English shooting. He is a nice young man, extremely well educated and
full of ideas, which he expresses fluently in somewhat imperfect
English. ‘In France,’ he said to-day, talking of duels, ‘when men
quarrel and one receives a _gifle_, he is expected to beat himself.’
“_22nd Sept._—Politically much has happened in the last week. Kruger has
abandoned the Transvaal, and the Boer army, though never yet beaten in
battle, seems to have broken up into small bands, so that our Government
has some ground for saying the war is over. On this, Parliament has been
dissolved. I shall take no part whatever in the new elections, as
neither political party has the slightest claim on my sympathy. It is
difficult to say between Rosebery and Chamberlain which would be the
more dangerous in power.
“_1st Nov._—I left home on Monday for Egypt, this being Thursday.
London, when I passed through, was in an absurd uproar on account of the
return of the City Volunteers from South Africa. People have become
idiotic over this war, to the extent that they really think something
chivalrous and noble has been achieved, while we have been making
ourselves not only detested, but a laughing-stock the whole world over.
I found George getting ready for a speech he is to make at Dover. He
talked very scornfully of Rosebery and the Imperial Radicals, who had
dished the chances of their party by supporting the war, and had put his
own party in power for another fifteen years. ‘There will be a reaction,
of course, some day,’ he said, ‘but they won’t profit by it. Rosebery
will have to join us altogether, as Burke did Pitt, or be left out
permanently in the cold. He talked of his own prospects of promotion,
which he said had been a little injured by his candour in admitting
defects in the conduct of the war, though he had saved the Government by
the line he took last Spring. ‘But it does not matter,’ he said,
‘politics are a long game, and I shall not lose in the end by telling
the truth.’ As it was, he had some chance, he said, of being shifted to
Ireland, and he said I must write and tell him what I thought of it if
it came to pass. I said the Irish remembered he was Lord Edward
Fitzgerald’s great-grandson, and it would be something to start on, but
would not carry him far. George’s political hard work has aged him and
he is much greyer than I am, though only thirty-seven. Hampden, who
expresses Chamberlain’s ideas about the war, said to-day, ‘It looks as
if the only way of ending it will be to deport all the Boer women and
hang all the Boer men. Roberts will come home and leave Kitchener behind
him to do the butcher work.’ He argued quite seriously that this was not
only necessary but implied nothing disgraceful to us as a nation, yet
Hampden was a Gladstonian Radical M.P. of the most advanced non-
intervention type twenty years ago, and is now a respected Liberal
nobleman and ex-Governor of a Colony.
“_6th Nov._—On board the P. and O. _Valetta_. Among the passengers is a
Mr. Seton Karr, a lion shooter, who showed me photographs of his victims
in various parts of the world. These amateur killers for killing’s sake,
who compass the four continents of the earth at vast labour and expense
only to destroy, are a pitiful feature of the age we live in. What have
the lions and elephants in Africa done to Seton Karr that he should
travel 20,000 miles, and spend a fortune to extinguish their race? Men
of his stamp, though he seems a very worthy man, need to be put under
restraint, far more than half the lunatics in our asylums. They do a
thousand times more harm. There is no pretence with him of science,
missionary work, or Imperial politics, and in so far he is respectably
sincere. His work of destruction does not injure his moral nature, but
he is a dangerous criminal all the same, and ought to be straight-
waistcoated. I see that my letter to the ‘Times’ of last winter has had
the effect of causing regulations to be issued in Egypt which, if
carried out, will do something towards saving the small wild birds there
from extinction at the hand of European gunners. If this succeeds, the
British occupation will have done something to justify itself in the eye
of whatever force rules the world.
“I have been reading Mrs. Browning’s letters. They are interesting in
many ways, but on the whole poor literature, lacking, as they do, all
wit. They are gossiping, too, in not the best sense, and commonplace,
far inferior to her poems, for which I have the highest admiration.
There is nothing in them which makes one love the writer, and very few
of them would be worth preserving if not written by so famous a poet.
Browning stands out well in the volume, and the few scraps that are
given of his writing show the superiority of the man, as an intellectual
power, over his wife. Her enthusiasms are poor stuff in prose. There are
a few meagre allusions in them to Robert Lytton, and one, a pretty one,
to Anne, but the whole series written in Italy is infected with the
sentimental vulgarity of the Anglo-American colony, which had its
headquarters in Storey’s rooms in the Palazzo Barberini, and which so
nauseated me thirty and more years ago at Rome. Browning himself was not
exempt from it, though this does not appear in the volume, for I
remember him in his later years, a gossipy diner-out in London and
teller of second-rate funny stories. He did not on these occasions show
to advantage, though beyond question he was a thinker of a very high
order, the most intellectual poet we have perhaps ever had.
“Another volume I have skimmed is Watts Dunton’s absurd romance,
‘Aylwin,’ a thing of the lowest order of childish melodrama. Kipling’s
‘Stalky’ is the third volume. Here, at least, we have vigour and wit,
though it is brutal in its realism and displays the seamy side of our
British schoolboy life without mercy. It needed courage to print it.
Kitchener, I fancy, has served in some sort as his model. Lastly, I have
read Tourgueneff’s ‘Smoke,’ which is excellent.
“_7th Nov._—A day of great enjoyment. We landed at Alexandria and came
on by special train to Cairo, arriving at sunset, a light wind blowing
from the north, which puts one in the gayest of spirits. There are few
things more beautiful than the Delta at this time of year, or where one
sees more life from a railway carriage window. The appearance of plenty
and happiness does one good after the squalor of Europe. The country
districts are still quite untouched by our Western ugliness. On the
whole journey from Alexandria I did not see a European or a European
dress, yet the fields were full of people, with their buffaloes and
donkeys and camels crowding the country roads, men, women, and children
gathering cotton in manifest enjoyment of their lives. How different
from our own agricultural England, where one may travel for miles
without seeing a living being and where all labour is done silently,
except at hay and harvest times. The splendid wealth, too, of the crops,
especially the maize, delights one. Then there are the birds, I counted
nine kingfishers, some blue, some pied, and as many hoopoes, besides
numbers of spur-winged plovers, which are far more brilliant than our
English ones, and kestrels, kites, hen harriers and other large birds,
to say nothing of the flocks of smaller ones. I was met by my mare and
Mutlak at the station, and rode through the moonlit garden, which was
alive with cicalas and so enjoyed its whole beauty. Then, after a drink
of fresh milk with Mutlak and a cup of his scented coffee, we got on our
mares again, and rode out into the desert. It was as light as day with
the full moon, and we were able to canter our mares with their unshod
feet noiselessly on for some miles till we came in hearing of dogs
barking, which showed us where Suliman’s tent was. It was set behind a
little hillock surrounded by sheep and camels, and we had some
difficulty in waking them, but Aïda (his favourite wife) heard us, and
looked out and then Suliman. Here, too, seemed an abode of happiness as
good as is to be found in the world. It was eleven before we got back to
Sheykh Obeyd, and we must have ridden ten miles.
“There are three bits of news. Aared has revolted from Ibn Rashid in
Nejd; the Sultan is building a railway from Damascus to Medina, and a
French company has bought up a tract of land beyond Kafr Jamus to build
a new town near us like Helwan, Heaven forbid! There are three fox
earths in our stable yard, and I heard the jackals cry outside my window
between one and two.
“_9th Nov._—Mohammed Abdu called to-day. He has seen the Khedive, who
came back from England highly pleased with the civility shown him by the
Queen, the Prince of Wales, and the Government, but as I had told him
would be the case, there had been no talk of Egyptian politics, though
those at Constantinople had been mentioned. He sent me messages of
thanks through Abdu, and said he had intended going to Crabbet according
to my invitation, if his illness had not prevented him. Mohammed Abdu
praised him for his power of making himself agreeable when he chose, as
he had done in England, but said he had been most indiscreet afterwards,
having told everything that had happened there to the editor of the
‘Mokattam,’ who had straightway published it.
“George, according to a telegram, has got the Chief Secretaryship of
Ireland. I am glad of it for him as a step in his ambition, but it is a
thankless task, if he thinks to reconcile Ireland to English rule.”
During the rest of the month my diary is mostly filled with an account
of explorations made in the eastern desert, interesting in themselves,
but not of sufficient importance to be here transcribed. We were back at
Sheykh Obeyd the first week of the month.
“_10th Dec._—Oscar Wilde is reported dead. He was without exception the
most brilliant talker I have ever come across, the most ready, the most
witty, the most audacious. Nobody could pretend to outshine him, or even
to shine at all in his company. Something of his wit is reflected in his
plays, but very little. The fine society of London and especially the
‘Souls’ ran after him because they knew he could always amuse them, and
the pretty women allowed him great familiarities, though there was no
question of love-making. Physically, he was repellant, though with a
certain sort of fat good looks. There was a kind of freckled coarseness
in his colouring I have seen at times in other Irishmen. I was never
intimate with him, though on superficially cordial terms when we met. He
had been two or three times at our Crabbet parties and was a member of
our Club, but only attended one regular meeting. The last time I saw him
was at that brilliant luncheon party at Asquith’s in Upper Grosvenor
Street which I have already described. His poetry, though nothing very
wonderful, was good, especially his ‘Ballad of Reading Gaol,’ as was
also a protest he wrote on leaving prison against prison treatment, and
if he had then begun a decent life people would have forgiven him, but
he returned to Paris and to his dog’s vomit and this is the end. I see
it said in the papers that he was received into the Catholic Church on
his deathbed, a strange ending, and yet not strange!
“_22nd Dec._—The old century is very nearly out, and leaves the world in
a pretty pass, and the British Empire is playing the devil in it as
never an empire before on so large a scale. We may live to see its fall.
All the nations of Europe are making the same hell upon earth in China,
massacring and pillaging and raping in the captured cities as
outrageously as in the Middle Ages. The Emperor of Germany gives the
word for slaughter and the Pope looks on and approves. In South Africa
our troops are burning farms under Kitchener’s command, and the Queen
and the two Houses of Parliament, and the bench of bishops thank God
publicly and vote money for the work. The Americans are spending fifty
millions a year on slaughtering the Filipinos; the King of the Belgians
has invested his whole fortune on the Congo, where he is brutalizing the
negroes to fill his pockets. The French and Italians for the moment are
playing a less prominent part in the slaughter, but their inactivity
grieves them. The whole white race is revelling openly in violence, as
though it had never pretended to be Christian. God’s equal curse be on
them all! So ends the famous nineteenth century into which we were so
proud to have been born.
“_25th Dec._—Christmas Day. I have embodied some part of my feeling in a
letter to the ‘Times,’ if they will print it (‘The Shame of the
Nineteenth Century’). The Boers have shown themselves alive within the
last week and have won two battles, capturing over 500 men, and are now
in full march forward into Cape Colony. The railroads are cut behind
them and Kitchener seems pretty well bewildered. There is something like
a panic in London for the last week of the old century.
My old friend and neighbour here, Sheykh Hassan Abu Tawil, at last is
dead. I went to see him four days ago and found him lying speechless
with his eyes closed, in the little closet he used as his sleeping room.
He looked the picture of frail, worn-out humanity, with a Job-like
Eastern patience on his fine old countenance, over which the flies were
crawling as they doubtless crawled in his childhood in the tent where he
was born. He died last night at midnight, and we heard the women wailing
a short mile away at daybreak, while we were breakfasting on the roof.
Now they have buried him, walking in beautiful procession, men and
women, past our gates to his grave in the desert. These country funerals
are touching things, with the flags flying and the chaunting and the
wailing, dignified, and with something in them of triumph as well as
grief, which mitigates the ugliness of death. Old Sheykh Hassan has gone
to his grave, full of years, the last of the old-world Arab Sheykhs of
Lower Egypt. His tribe, the Aiaidé, were all tent-dwellers when he was
young, a wicked, turbulent lot, whom he has controlled with a mild
humanity much to his credit. With me he has always been on more than
friendly, on affectionate terms, and I grieve for him as sincerely as
his own people. It is a link broken for me with a pleasant past which
will not be joined again, for the fashion of the old world passeth fast
away at Sheykh Obeyd and we shall soon be engulfed in the town.
“_31st Dec._—I bid good-bye to the old century, may it rest in peace as
it has lived in war. Of the new century I prophesy nothing except that
it will see the decline of the British Empire. Other worse Empires will
rise perhaps in its place, but I shall not live to see the day. It all
seems a very little matter here in Egypt, with the Pyramids watching us
as they watched Joseph, when, as a young man four thousand years ago,
perhaps in this very garden, he walked and gazed at the sunset behind
them, wondering about the future just as I did this evening. And so,
poor wicked nineteenth century, farewell!
END OF PART I
APPENDICES
APPENDIX I
My Paris Diary of 1870
The fragment of Diary here printed was begun by me at Paris in the early
summer of 1870, a few weeks only before the rupture of relations between
France and Prussia. I already knew Paris well, having been a member of
the British Embassy there in Lord Cowley’s time, and I had remained in
pleasant personal relations with my successors on the Embassy staff, and
so found myself in close touch with all that was going on
diplomatically. There were few days when I did not see one or other of
my Embassy friends. I had only just left the diplomatic service, and now
on my marriage I had come to Paris with my wife, meaning to make our
temporary home there, before settling down finally to country life in
Sussex. I had a romantic feeling about the great capital of the world’s
pleasure and was deeply interested in all that concerned France when the
war broke out, and was fired with a corresponding sympathy when it
resulted in her unlooked for overthrow.
Of Germany, too, her adversary, I had had experience. Among the many
posts I had filled as attaché and secretary I had been twice at
Frankfort, a place at that time of first diplomatic importance as
capital of the Germanic Confederation and seat of the Diet, and had made
there my apprenticeship in Central European politics. When I was first
appointed to Frankfort in 1860, Bismarck, though already noticed as
leader of the Junker party at Berlin, was still at the outset of his
political career. The old King Frederick William was still King of
Prussia, and Bismarck was not much in his good graces. His place at
Frankfort had just been taken by his rival, Count d’Usedom, who was in
better favour at Court. Usedom was a highly intellectual man, a leading
member of the Liberal party in Prussia, and his sympathies were with the
movement for a United Germany, then a Liberal movement having for its
acknowledged head the Duke of Saxe Coburg, elder brother of our English
Prince Consort, nor was it till Frederick William’s death that
Bismarck’s power with the Hohenzollerns found its opportunity.
With Usedom I was intimate, spending most of my time at the Prussian
Legation, where I held in some sort the position of child of the house
through the favour of Madame d’Usedom, the good-natured Scotchwoman who
figures in Bismarck’s memoirs under the name of Olympia as his _bête
noire_, the subject of his unsparing jests. Both she and Usedom were too
outspoken to please the Bismarckian ideas of diplomacy; and in their
society, though I took little interest as yet in the great world’s
politics, I learned much that I have not forgotten of Berlin policy and
of the hopes and fears of German patriotism in which the Hohenzollerns
under the old King had as yet refused to play a part. I remember a visit
paid to Frankfort by the Crown Prince of Prussia, afterwards Emperor
William I, and his accession a little later to the Prussian throne,
which set Bismarck securely in the saddle and began that intrigue which
resulted in the war with Denmark over Sleswig Holstein, as to which
Usedom was daily eloquent.
I have dreamlike memories, too, of many hours—some pleasant, some
wearisome—spent in attendance on the Princes and Princesses of the Royal
and Electoral Houses to whom we at the English Legation were accredited,
including Princess Alice of Hesse Darmstadt, our Queen Victoria’s
daughter, and a vast number of cousinly allied royalties assembled one
summer at the family château of Rumpenheim, where I had the privilege of
paying an early court to our future Queen Alexandra while she was still
a girl of seventeen, and her sister, afterwards Empress of Russia,
pretty but plainly dressed maidens of no acknowledged importance, though
we at the Legation had been secretly apprised of the intended marriage
of the elder with our Prince of Wales.
All these incidents were unconscious elements in my diplomatic
education. My thoughts, however, at the time ran more on poetry than
politics, and what interest I took in German thought lay rather in the
direction of science which was beginning to perplex me, for Darwin’s
“Origin of Species” had only just been published.
My second appointment in Frankfort found the Bismarckian policy in full
swing. After three years’ absence at other posts—Madrid, Paris, and
Lisbon—I had returned in 1866 in time to witness the great duel in the
Diet between Prussia and Austria shortly after to be decided at Sadowa,
which displayed Bismarck as the leading force of his generation.
Of the great man himself I have but a single personal recollection, that
of a couple of hours spent in his society at tea alone with Lady Malet.
He was then still an object of dislike and even ridicule at Frankfort,
but already recognized by Lady Malet, a very clever woman, to whom he
had paid a certain court while at the Frankfort Legation, and who
already saw in him the man of genius he was soon to show himself. My
memory of him is of a tall, distinguished personage, still slight in
figure, who, having been told about me by our hostess favourably as
having some faculty of verse, talked pleasantly and well on literature
and science in excellent English for a couple of hours, affecting a
certain Anglomania, where he touched on politics. He showed himself thus
at his best, and left me with a feeling of the heroic such as a young
man gives to one already beginning to be famous and who had been kind to
him.
All this, however, had failed to give me when I left Frankfort after
Sadowa any enthusiasm for Germany, and when the war of 1870 broke out I
was strongly anti-Prussian. My connection with the Paris Embassy in the
days of the Napoleonic glory had made me a partisan of France, and I had
come to look upon Germany as intellectually the home of barbarism given
up to the grosser forms of social life and clumsy in its politics as in
all else.
With these few words I leave my diary to tell its own story.
“_Paris, 27th May_, 1870.—I have taken the first floor of No. 204, Rue
de Rivoli, at 8,000 francs rent. My proprietor is M. Desfontaines, one
of Louis Philippe’s councillors. He is an old man who lives at Noissy,
and his house is managed by his concierge, whom we call the _faux bon
homme_. He sits with his wife all day under the arcade, and the people
of the quarter dislike him because he has made 100,000 francs. Every
Monday morning he brings us from the country a country bunch of flowers.
“To-day I went with my cousin Francis Currie to the other side of the
Seine for furniture. We went to one Recapet’s, a bric-à-brac dealer, and
having to ask the way I inquired of a shopwoman in the faubourg, a
dealer in religious prints, the road to the ‘Passage Marie.’ ‘The
Passage Ste Marie,’ she answered, correcting me. There is still religion
in France! Yesterday Francis Currie saw a dead man fished out of the
river near the Pont Royal. A woman in the crowd asked what it was all
about. ‘A naked man,’ my cousin answered. ‘If it is only that!’ said the
woman. I afterwards drove with my wife to the Jardin des Plantes, and
back through the Faubourg St. Antoine. Coming home we saw the carriages
of ‘Le Singe’ as they call their Sovereign.
“_30th May._—We drove down on Saturday to Chantilly by the old Royal
Road passing through St. Denis and Luzarches. There are some fine views
on the way, but the road is still paved nearly the whole distance. In
the Forest we noticed two large oaks on the boundary between Oise and
Seine. These are the only trees more than twenty [_sic_] years old. The
races on Sunday were pleasant and the weather fine. A horse called
Bigarreau won the principal stakes.
“_2nd June._—To Fontainebleau to play tennis. Our party was Frank
Lascelles and his wife, Henry Wodehouse and Mr. and Mrs. Fred Ricardo.
Lascelles and I played from two till half-past six. The _paumier_,
Garcin, is eighty-three years old. In his time he has played tennis with
Wellington and others of the Waterloo heroes. ‘Napoleon Bonaparte,’ he
told us, ‘played in the tennis court at Fontainebleau, but did not show
much aptitude. Il n’avait pas même des dispositions. Quant à Wellington,
il ne faisait que s’y amuser, il venait de gagner la bataille de
Waterloo.’ (The old man hobbled into the court to play us a _chouette_,
supported by a granddaughter, who picked up and handed him the balls. He
pretended at first not to be able to send the ball over the net, but
with five francs on the set he soon recovered his skill and won his
money. Anne made an excellent drawing of the court while we were
playing.)
“_3rd June._—Two great fires have taken place, the one at Fontainebleau,
which destroyed a large part of the Forest, the other at Constantinople,
a thousand houses burnt at Pera, including the English Embassy.
“People in Paris seem to be becoming aware how grossly they have been
cajoled in the matter of Liberal reform. I myself thought three months
ago that it was sincere, and I was only surprised that so long-sighted a
policy should have been adopted by the Bonapartes, who have always held
by small expedients. For the future of the dynasty there could have been
no greater folly than a sham conversion to constitutionalism and a
repetition of the old trick of the plebiscite. Another such victory and
the dynasty is lost. They complain already that Ollivier is nothing else
than Rouère over again, and that personal government is precisely what
it was last year. I care nothing for all this, not being one of the
Singe’s subjects.
“_8th June._—We dined last night at the British Embassy, thirty covers.
Amongst the guests were some of the new French Ministry—Grammont, Mège,
Richard, also Monsaud, Under Secretary at the Affaires Etrangères. Lord
Lyons keeps great state at the Embassy, with Sheffield managing the
household, and Edward Malet for Private Secretary. They all three go out
driving in a barouche every afternoon in the Bois de Boulogne, with a
dog named Toby on the fourth seat. The Parisians mock at it calling
Malet ‘le petit brun,’ and Sheffield ‘le petit blond.’ The Duke and
Duchess of Montmorency were at the dinner. He is the hero of a rather
mean adventure. Being by birth a Perigord, he solicited through his
wife, who was an Aguado and partly Spanish, one of Empress Eugénie’s
set, a grant of the Duchy of Montmorency, the direct line of the Ducs de
Montmorency having failed, though there were still collaterals. One of
these, the Comte de Montmorency, who now represents the family,
scratched out the new Duke’s arms from the panel of his carriage the
first time he drove up in it to the Jockey Club. It led to a duel in
which the Comte was slightly wounded, and the Club, indignant at the
affair, expelled the Duke from their house. On this the Duke appealed to
the Court, the Empress happening to be Regent at the time, and the
police received orders to close the doors of the Jockey Club if they
persisted in the expulsion. The Club succumbed, and so the matter ended.
[I was constantly in and out of the Chancery at our Embassy during all
this time, having through my former official connection with the Embassy
still many friends there, Lascelles, Malet, Saumarez, Claremont, and
Atlee, thus I heard the news pretty regularly as the Embassy heard it.]
“The ‘Figaro’ has published a _charge_. Villemessent, the editor, begins
by announcing that he has sold his paper to the Irreconcilables, and
articles and letters follow, signed by the chiefs of the revolution. The
best is a piece in verse, purporting to be by Victor Hugo in which his
style is well imitated. Half the town has been taken in by the hoax.
“_11th June._—There is news from Lisbon of disturbances, Saldanha being
the hero of these. I used to see this curious old Field Marshal very
frequently during the summer I spent at Cintra in 1865. He was a
_poseur_ of the first water, and nature had given him a head and figure
exactly suited to the part of _ancien militaire_, which he had been
playing ever since the day of the Peninsular War. He is now eighty-five.
Twenty years ago he made a revolution in Portugal very like the present
one. He got a few regiments together, and when the King marched out
against him with the rest of the Portuguese army these at once joined
the Marshal, and the King had to gallop back alone with his A.D.C.’s to
Lisbon. Saldanha had no political principles, but being a restless, vain
old man, could not bear to be forgotten. I saw him again at Rome in
1867, on his way in uniform to the Jesuit church in Easter week, his
whole coat, front and back, a mass of stars and orders. He is the most
completely decorated personage in Europe. Also he has the pretension of
universal knowledge, and has written a book or pamphlet on every
possible subject from Pisciculture to the Immaculate Conception. At
Cintra he had a garden of acclimatisation. His wife, the widow of a
British navy surgeon, was a worthy Englishwoman on whom he imposed
absolute silence in society so as to conceal her defects of education.
“Another revolution is an absurd one at Monaco, where the _Prince
héritier_, who married Lady Mary Hamilton last spring, has slapped his
wife’s face, and asks for a divorce. The late Duke of Hamilton, her
father, so well known here at Paris as the Empress’s cousin and intimate
friend, with many faults of conduct, was a grand seigneur. His worst
folly was his marriage with a Baden Princess who despised his Scotch
nobility and gave him a heavy set of German heirs. He met his death by
slipping down the narrow stairs of the Maison Doreé where he had been
supping with Henry Howard and a couple of women after an opera ball. The
Empress learning what had happened hurried to his rooms and was with him
till he died.
“Déjazet is retiring from the stage on which she has been popular for
nearly seventy years, having begun as an infant prodigy at the age of
five.
“Yet another scandal has been one in the Spanish Royal Family. The ex-
King’s pension has been left unpaid, and he sues the ex-Queen Ysabel for
arrears.
“I have bought a pair of horses of Mrs. Lyne Stevens for 4,000 francs.
She was on the stage, and her husband dying left her an immense fortune
which Claremont, our military attaché here, manages for her at a salary
of £1,000 a year.
“_26th June._—The Orleans princes have addressed a letter to the French
Parliament demanding their readmission into France. Courbet, the
painter, has refused the legion of honour. The Paris papers consider the
refusal a miracle of virtue.
“_28th June._—The claim of the Orleans princes has been refused through
fear, probably, that they should go on to demand their property in
France confiscated by the Republic. The Chantilly Estate is said to be
worth 280,000,000 francs. Among the wills and bequests I see that this
Estate, bought of the Duc de Nemours, has just been left by Sir Edmund
Antrobus to his son, held I suppose fictitiously for the Orleans family.
“Yesterday morning died Lord Clarendon, our Secretary for Foreign
Affairs. I met him four years ago when I was staying with the Usedoms in
the Villa Capponi at Florence, a sleek white little old man, with a
pulse, it was said for some years at forty, and an agreeable old-
fashioned manner. His brother, Charles Villiers, I met several times at
the Malet’s at Frankfort in 1860, a very brilliant talker, who was kind
to me, and interested in my young man’s chatter. Their mother was the
Mrs. Villiers of the Byron correspondence.
“_1st July._—To Versailles to see whether the historic tennis court
there was in a fit state for play. A nice little girl in charge of the
place told us that an order had just come from the Ministry for its
restoration. The court is miserably out of repair, the floor chipped,
and the plaster falling from the walls, the brass plate commemorating
the oath of 1789 was taken down by Dalmand the _paumier_ some years ago,
and _remise à neuf_. The court had not been used for four years, and
there are but a few rotten old balls to play with, but the court was
played in this summer.
“Queen Ysabel has signed her abdication publicly of the Crown of Spain,
and the Prince of Asturias, her son, becomes King Alphonso XII. On the
same day a rival Prince of Asturias was born to Don Carlos at Geneva.
The Pope has sent his blessing to them both. I well remember the Court
of Queen Ysabel, and the _besa manos_ ceremonies in which the little
Prince Alfonso figured with his parents, set in a tall gilt chair,
having his hand kissed fast asleep. He had in those days a most
beautiful little Andalusian pony, a miniature horse, but only twelve
hands high, with silky mane and tail sweeping the grounds, legs fine as
a gazelle’s. When the revolution came which drove the Bourbons from
Spain, Prim gave the pony to his son. I met General Prim in the summer
of 1863 at the baths of Panticosa, a pale, ugly little man, with no kind
of distinction, suffering from an internal disease which gave him
constant pain, half his political energy, they said, was caused by this.
General Prim was the leader then of the Progresista Party. He was at the
baths for his health with his aide-de-camp, General Milans del Bosch.”
The abdication here mentioned of the exiled Queen of Spain was the
occasion of the quarrel between France and Prussia a week or two later,
which resulted in the disastrous war, the capitulation of Sedan and the
overthrow of the Napoleonic dynasty. I was, at the time of writing,
strongly anti-Bonapartist, a reader of the “Lanterne” and other journals
of that type, more than my diary shows. In this I shared the general
view of the Parisian mob, and even of the _bourgeoisie_ who were sick of
the Empire. The gossip of the Paris streets was retailed to me daily by
my old _bonne_ Julie, who had a curious faculty for gathering news as
she was constantly wandering about the streets where she had become a
well-known character by reason of her kindness to birds and beasts, and
sufferers of all kinds. With the sergeants-de-ville of the Tuileries
quarter she was a favourite, for she was always ready to help in cases
of sickness, or accident, coming within their province. A Bretonne
peasant by birth, (she had had an uncle a priest, massacred during the
great Revolution on the steps of the altar, while he was celebrating
mass). Her political prepossessions were strongly Orleanist, as became
one who had been in their domestic service, for she had been housemaid
in her young days under Louis Philippe in the Château, as she called the
Tuileries, and knew every room in it from cellar to garret. Another
informant of the same class was my cousin, Francis Currie’s _bonne_
Julienne, a pendant of my Julie. She had a German husband, waiter in a
restaurant, and brought us gossip from the German point of view, also an
amusing woman. To these two may be added our man-servant Desiré who
appears from time to time in the diaries.
“_4th July._—The ‘Constitutionel’ publishes the news that Prim has
offered the Crown of Spain to one of the Hohenzollerns, a brother of
Prince Charles of Roumania, and that the candidature is accepted. On
this a general outcry from all sides. A Hohenzollern, it is said, at the
Escurial will complete the wild beast show of Europe. We have already
seen a Bonaparte at Fontainebleau, a Savoy at Venice, a Hapsburg in
Mexico, to-day the rage is for German Kings, the most wonderful
phenomenon of the age. Yesterday we drove to St. Germain with a mixed
company of Americans, French, Jews, and Brazilians, to dine there on the
terrace. The event of the day was Grammont’s speech in the Chambers. He
declared that if the candidature of Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern was
not withdrawn ‘France would know how to act without hesitation and
without weakness.’ This being considered a declaration of war with
Prussia was tumultuously applauded by all parties in the House. The move
is considered an excellent one for the Bonapartists, who need a show of
energy to cover their humiliations of the past four years, for the first
place in Europe is every day becoming more plainly Prussian. Whether the
Germans are beat in the war, or the Emperor Napoleon, I shall feel some
satisfaction. St. Germain looked lovely as it always does.”
Though my diary does not record it, I remember well the excitement there
was among us that evening at the news which had been brought down by
Frank Lascelles, or some other diplomatist of our party, and how in the
beautiful summer’s night we walked upon the terrace after dinner, and
looked across the river towards Paris, and how someone suggested, though
we none of us had much misgiving as to the fortunate issue of the war,
the possible trouble there might be for the fair city which we loved.
Our imagination for a moment encircled it with a girdle of armed men,
and a gulf seemed opened suddenly at our feet of unknown adversity. Yet,
as I have said, none of us, not even those who ought to have known it,
had a suspicion of the unreadiness of France for a serious campaign.
There had been a comparative lack of interest in the Paris newspapers at
the first announcement of the Hohenzollern candidature, which was
treated by them as only another rebuff for the Imperial diplomacy, and
it was not till Grammont made his valorous speech, and after him
Ollivier that a cry, _à Berlin_, began to be raised.
“_8th July._—There has been a report that Prim has abandoned his
Hohenzollern, but this is not true. The German papers affect not to
treat the French menace as serious. At Madrid the Cortes are to assemble
for the vote on the 20th. If the present candidature is not withdrawn
before that date the position of France will become less simple.
“To-night I start for Southampton to meet my brother Francis, leaving
Anne here. He is returning from Australia via the Cape and Madeira.”
[A fortnight’s break occurs here in my diary caused by my absence from
Paris.]
“_27th July._—I have been more than a fortnight in England, and my
journal has been interrupted, but I will recapitulate the events which
have led to the declaration of war. In answer to the French demand of a
withdrawal of Prince Leopold’s candidature Prim denied the right of
France to interfere. At first all previous knowledge of the candidature
was denied in Prussia, but it soon appeared that King William had given
his assent to the Prince’s acceptance. But on the matter being pressed
by the French Government William withdrew his consent, not as King, but
as head of the Hohenzollerns, saying at the same time that if Spain
still chose to elect the Prince he would not as King of Prussia
interfere. Nevertheless France insisted on a formal disavowal of the
plan by the Prussian Government. Things being in this position, to the
astonishment of all, Prince Anthony, Leopold’s father, writes to the
Spanish Government withdrawing his son’s candidature, Leopold himself
remaining silent, and the Prussian Government professing not to know
even where he is. In France Leopold is thought to have gone incognito to
Madrid, as his brother Charles in like circumstances went incognito to
Roumania. I have no doubt in my mind that some such stroke was
contemplated by Bismarck, as Usedom has often told me that Prince
Charles’ expedition was sanctioned by the Prussian Government, and that
it was Bismarck’s policy to raise up anti-French influences in every
corner of Europe, in Greece, in Italy, and in the Turkish Provinces. In
England it was very generally believed that Prince Anthony had settled
the matter, and the ‘Times’ sang a Te Deum of peace, the stocks rose
prodigiously in London, and two days after, Sunday the 16th of July, as
I was sitting in the balcony after dinner in Belgrave Square (number 44,
my cousin Percy Wyndham’s house), I heard the news hawkers bawling out,
‘Declaration of War.’ A story had appeared in the ‘Times’ that morning,
relating that M. Benedetti the French Ambassador at Berlin had accosted
King William contrary to etiquette in the Public Garden at Ems, and had
there again urged the claims of France, and that the King turning on his
heel had told his aide-de-camp to inform the Ambassador that he had no
more to say to him. This story has since been denied, but it has been
made use of both in France and Germany to inflame popular passions. On
Monday morning the ‘Times’ announced the war, and declared that the
French Emperor had committed the greatest crime Europe had witnessed for
thirty years. The ‘Times’ has since persisted that the war is one of
aggression on the part of France with the Rhine Provinces for object,
but I have never met for years past a Frenchman who has not laughed at
the idea of taking possession of the Rhine, or who would have given a
fig to annex. People expected a battle would be fought at once, but ten
days have passed, and no blow has been struck.
“This morning the ‘Times’ gives us a new surprise, the draft of a treaty
between France and Prussia (undated) in which the annexation of Belgium
and Luxemburg by France is agreed on if necessary by force of arms. The
draft has no appearance of authenticity, its style being unlike that
usual in treaties, and the French used is poor. Some such scheme may
have been talked over between the French Emperor and Bismarck, soon
after the late war (the war of Sadowa), but I cannot conceive its having
been thus put on paper. I expect the French Government to deny the
authenticity of the document, and perhaps ultimately they may make a
counter-charge against Prussia of designs on Holland. Feeling in England
is pretty well balanced between France and Prussia, but people fail to
see that France is in reality fighting for her existence. This is no war
of Government against Government, but of race against race, of France
the last of the great Latin nations against Germany. If Germany is
beaten she will recover, if France she will go the way of the other
Latins. The Radical Party in England side with Prussia because they see
in it a triumph of atheism and socialism in Europe. France after many
years goes forth to the Rhine singing the Marseillaise in the cause of
order and religion. It is strange.
“_28th July._—We drove this morning to St. Cloud to see the Emperor and
his son start for the war. He went off by the back door, and nobody saw
him go. The flag was pulled down exactly at ten o’clock. The Emperor has
his headquarters at Metz.
“_29th July._—It is decided that the French garrison is to leave Rome.
M. Visconti Venosta, the Italian Foreign Minister, has engaged to
protect the Holy See from the Garibaldians; the Pope, however, is I am
sure quite able to take care of himself at Rome. The Foreign Legion is,
or was, when I saw it in 1866 as fine a body of men as any in the south
of Europe, they did not need the French _chassepots_ to beat the
Garibaldians at Montana; however, we shall see. The announcement of the
new dogma of Papal infallibility has passed almost unnoticed after all,
though there are rumours of a schism in Germany.
“_30th July._—To-day we have a full explanation of the projected treaty
[that published in the ‘Times’ of the 27th, about Belgium and the Rhine
provinces]. Benedetti writes to the official journal, stating that soon
after the war of 1866, being one day with Bismarck at Berlin, and
talking as they had often talked of proposed territorial changes in
Europe, Bismarck said: ‘What is the good of always talking, why not put
our ideas in writing.’ Thereupon giving Benedetti a pen and paper, he
dictated the famous draft and kept it, as he said, to show the King, a
stroke worthy of the golden age of diplomacy. I know positively from
Usedom, who was in the thick of affairs in Prussia during the war of
1866, that Bismarck promised the Rhine provinces, or, at least, those
south of the Moselle, to France as the price of her neutrality, but
never with the intention of keeping the promise. Benedetti must have
been a great donkey to be gulled by Bismarck in this way, but the story
he gives of the transaction bears the impress of truth. It explains what
was so odd in the draft, namely, that in quoting the names and titles of
the high contracting parties the King of Prussia’s name stands first.
Bismarck is the most wonderful man of his age, but he has outwitted
himself as well as Benedetti here. Public opinion in England is veering
round from Prussia; and Belgium, which is most interested, acquits
France in the matter.
“A skirmish has taken place on the frontier, where strangely enough an
Englishman in the Baden service was killed, the first victim of the war,
his name Winslow. The addresses of the Emperor and the King to their
troops are both published. The King appeals to God the Emperor to Glory,
quite in the old style.
“Yesterday we drove to Versailles through the Forest of Meudon, a lovely
old deserted road, never used apparently since Versailles became a royal
residence and the new high road was carried through Sèvres.
“Lascelles tells me the true history of the message sent by King William
to M. Benedetti ‘Allez trouvez son Excellence,’ the King said to his
aide-de-camp, ‘et priez le de venir baiser mon c—l.’ He also related an
anecdote of Bismarck illustrative of his equally Rabelaisian style of
humour.” [This anecdote is omitted as unprintable.]
“_Aug. 2nd._—Went last night to the Opera to hear ‘Masaniello.’ Between
the third and fourth acts the stage represented the French camp, and
Faure in the uniform of the Garde Mobile sang the ‘Rhin Allemand’: Nous
l’avons eu votre Rhin Allemand. The Marseillaise was then called for and
Marie Sasse came forward with the tricolor and gave it amid great
enthusiasm. It was the most emotional thing I ever saw on the stage.
Faure afterwards was called for and sang the Marseillaise in his turn,
kneeling down at the last verse, and wrapping himself in the flag. All
the house stood up while it was being sung. The effect was lessened to
me by the uniform and by the tricolour having on it a little gilt eagle,
but in spite of this I have seldom been so touched. [The Marseillaise
was then being sung for the first time in Paris, after having been
proscribed there for twenty years.]
“_3rd Aug._—It is officially announced that a division of the French
army has captured the heights above Saarbruck and driven the Prussians
out of the town, Saarbruck being just over the frontier. The Emperor and
the Prince Imperial were present and under fire.