CHAPTER I

MY

DIARIES

Part

Two

BOOKS BY WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT

_PROSE_

THE FUTURE OF ISLAM 1882

IDEAS ABOUT INDIA 1885

THE SECRET HISTORY SERIES

I THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH OCCUPATION OF EGYPT 1907

II INDIA UNDER RIPON 1909

III GORDON AT KHARTOUM 1911

IV THE LAND WAR IN IRELAND 1912

V MY DIARIES PART I. [THE SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA] 1919

VI MY DIARIES PART II. [THE COALITION AGAINST GERMANY] 1920

_POETRY_

LOVE SONNETS OF PROTEUS 1880

THE WIND AND THE WHIRLWIND 1883

IN VINCULIS 1889

A NEW PILGRIMAGE 1889

ESTHER AND LOVE LYRICS 1892

GRISELDA 1893

SATAN ABSOLVED 1899

SEVEN GOLDEN ODES OF ARABIA 1903

POETICAL WORKS. A COMPLETE EDITION 1914

[Illustration: Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

1900]

MY DIARIES

Being a Personal Narrative of Events 1888-1914

By

WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT

With a Foreword by Lady Gregory

PART TWO

[1900-1914]

[Logo]

NEW YORK ALFRED A. KNOPF MCMXXII

COPYRIGHT, 1921,

BY WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT

_Published, December, 1921_

_Second Printing, March, 1922_

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

FOREWORD TO PART II

No further preface is needed for the present volume more than that

prefixed to Part I of these “Diaries,” except a brief one of apology for

the short period which has been allowed to elapse between the latest of

the events recorded in it and their appearance, to-day in print. This

has seemed a political necessity forced upon the Diarist by the

ungenerous terms imposed by the allied Governments at Paris on their

opponents vanquished in the war, terms which are still not definitely

settled and against which it may be yet possible to appeal on grounds of

truth and honour.

For the benefit of those who would follow the logic of events leading to

the Great War of 1914, and especially to the war with Turkey and the

declaration of a British Protectorate in Egypt, readers are invited to

take notice of the Chronology printed as No. VIII of the Appendix. It

has been carefully drawn up, and will be found of use to them in forming

a correct historic judgment.

W. S. B.

NEWBUILDINGS PLACE, SUSSEX.

_Christmas_, 1919.

CONTENTS

PART II

1900 TO 1914

CHAPTER PAGE

FOREWORD TO PART II vii

I. DEATH OF QUEEN VICTORIA, 1901 1

II. GEORGE WYNDHAM’S IRISH LAND BILL, 1902 32

III. CROMER BEGINS TO MAKE MISTAKES 76

IV. LITERATURE AND POLITICS 113

V. THE BEGINNING OF GREY’S BLUNDERS—AKABAH 133

VI. FRANCIS THOMPSON 168

VII. ASQUITH AT DOWNING STREET 199

VIII. KING EDWARD’S DEATH 286

IX. GEORGE V, KING 309

X. THE FRENCH INVADE MOROCCO 334

XI. GENERAL TROUBLE IN EASTERN EUROPE 376

XII. THE WAR WITH GERMANY DECLARED 416

APPENDICES

I. THE GRAND MUFTI OF EGYPT TO COUNT LEO TOLSTOI 437

II. THE AKABAH QUARREL 439

III. DHINGRA’S DYING SPEECH AND EXECUTION 443

IV. MR. BLUNT’S MEMORANDUM ON PRISON REFORM, ESPECIALLY AS 445

TO THE TREATMENT OF POLITICAL PRISONERS

V. THE ITALIAN MASSACRE OF ARAB PEASANTRY IN TRIPOLI 452

VI. SIR ROGER CASEMENT’S LETTERS TO MR. BLUNT 455

VII. MISS FRANCES JENNINGS TO MISS ELIZABETH LAWRENCE 458

VIII. CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS 460

INDEX 477

PART TWO

THE COALITION AGAINST GERMANY

PART II

1900 TO 1914

CHAPTER I

DEATH OF QUEEN VICTORIA, 1901

“_23 Jan._, 1901. _Sheykh Obeyd_.

The Queen is dead of an apoplectic stroke and the great Victorian age is

at an end.”

Such is almost the first entry in my diary of the new year and the new

century. I was in Egypt when the tidings reached me. It was the second

day of the Bairam festival, and all our country folk at Sheykh Obeyd

were keeping holiday, a glorious morning of sunshine, and I had been

watching the foxes in the garden at play among the beans which were

coming into flower. It was thus the news reached me. The entry goes on:

“This is notable news. It will mean great changes in the world, for the

long understanding amongst the Emperors that England is not to be

quarrelled with during the Queen’s lifetime will now give place to freer

action. The Emperor William does not love his uncle, our new king. On

the other hand, it may possibly lead to a less bloody régime in South

Africa; not that the Prince of Wales very likely is any more humane than

his mother, who had a craze for painting the map Imperial red, but

because he knows European opinion better and the limitations of

England’s power and the necessity of moderating English arrogance. The

Queen it was easy to flatter and mislead, the only paper she read was

the ‘Morning Post,’ and the people about her did not dare tell her the

real truth of things, but the Prince of Wales hears and knows everything

that goes on abroad far more than does Lord Salisbury. All this is to

the good. I suppose there must be a new dissolution of Parliament—this

also is for the good. As to Her Majesty personally, one does not like to

say all one thinks even in one’s journal. By all I have ever heard of

her she was in her old age a dignified but rather commonplace good soul,

like how many of our dowagers, narrow-minded in her view of things,

without taste in art or literature, fond of money, having a certain

industry and business capacity in politics, but easily flattered and

expecting to be flattered, quite convinced of her own providential

position in the world and always ready to do anything to extend and

augment it. She has been so long accustomed to success that she seems to

have imagined that everything she did was wise and right, and I should

not be surprised if the discreditable failure in South Africa had

hastened her end. I see that Roberts went down to Osborne just before

the seizure took place, and perhaps she may have insisted upon hearing

the whole truth from him and, realizing it for the first time, have had

the stroke of which she died. We shall probably be kept in the dark

about this for a long while, for the public has got to look upon the old

lady as a kind of fetish or idol, and nobody, even now she is dead, will

dare print a word not to her glorification.

“_3rd Feb._—The Prince of Wales has been proclaimed as Edward VII and

begins his reign with the usual acclamations of the vulgar, the vulgar

in this instance including everybody, all his little failings forgotten

or hidden well out of sight. He has certain good qualities of amiability

and a Philistine tolerance for other people’s sins which endear him to

rich and poor, from archbishops down to turf bookmakers, and the man in

the street. He will make an excellent king for twentieth century

England. His nephew, the Emperor William, has come forward to stand his

sponsor in face of the world, an evil conjunction, for William is the

Apostle of European violence. All the same I should not be surprised to

see German influence brought to bear upon the Boer war. Our people are

pretty nearly at their wits’ end what to do in South Africa. The war is

costing them a million and a half a week and the financial gamblers are

losing money. There is a reaction against the war now that it looks like

a losing concern, and perhaps they may be glad of a pretext, such as the

Queen’s death affords, to try and bring about an arrangement with the

Boers. William would be flattered to be the _Deus ex machina_ and so

recover his popularity in Germany which has been much compromised by his

refusal to receive old Kruger. I am not sure, however, that the Boers

will accept anything short of entire independence. There is talk of the

Queen having expressed a strong wish for peace on her death-bed. What I

hear through a very confidential channel is that Her Majesty’s last wish

was a very human one, that her little dog should be allowed to jump up

on her bed and that it was with her till she died.

“_6th Feb._—We are preparing for another desert expedition. Things go on

in South Africa without change, the Boers having overrun the British

colonies and cut the railway lines and Kitchener and the army are at a

deadlock, unable to move, the soldiers tired of it and pinched for

supplies. There is a report, however, that the arrangement entered into

with Portugal is to come into effect and that English troops are to be

landed in Delagoa Bay. It is very doubtful, however, whether this will

affect the issue much.

“The new hero in England just now is the Emperor William, whom all

abused and laughed at four years ago and whose boots our people are now

licking. There is nothing so mean in the world as the British mob,

unless it be the British aristocracy, but now our fine lords and ladies,

though they adulate royalty, do so with their tongues in their cheeks,

and this saves to some extent their self-respect. Wilhelm, however, has

been made a Field Marshal of the British army! and I verily believe our

people would offer him the crown of England if he expressed a wish for

it. I suppose all this means that Edward VII has joined the Triple

Alliance.

“The Duke of Aosta is attending the old Queen’s funeral as a _persona

grata_ on account of Princess Hélène and her sister the Queen of

Portugal, to whose good will very likely the Delagoa Bay job is due.

These things are managed nowadays between Kings and Princes far more

than between Ministers and Ambassadors, and royalty was never in such

high feather as now. The Queen has left an unknown number of millions,

it is said, to her family, but the heir to the Crown is to have his

debts paid by the nation at a time when not a single million has been

spared for the famine in India—truly we deserve to follow Spain and Rome

and the other Empires into the gulf. There is an article in the

‘Fortnightly’ signed ‘Calchas’ closely on the lines of George’s

conversation with me eighteen months ago about the coming struggle of

the Empires to eat each other up. I wonder what George thinks now of his

precious policy of forcing on the war and getting a leader for his

government who would allow him and the other young bloods of the Tory

party their ‘occasional amusements,’ I think that was his phrase the day

we went up Chanclebury Ring together and he foreshadowed to me the

policy of world-grabbing Chamberlain was to inaugurate.

“_13th Feb._—Charlie Adeane spent yesterday with us and we took him for

a gallop round the Birkeh. Hampden writes that the war must go on until

every Boer has been killed or wounded or made prisoner, but he says

nothing now about deporting the Boer women, perhaps because that part of

the work has been already done. His _saugrenu_ opinions are of value

because he gets them direct from Chamberlain.

“_14th Feb._—To-day, while we were waiting for luncheon, we heard

screams from the kitchen, and running to the window, I saw an old woman

rush out brandishing a log of wood. I supposed at first it was a

domestic quarrel of the cook’s, but as everybody in the house was taking

part in the fray, I went down into the yard to see what the case really

was, and found them hauling a wolf out of the kitchen by a rope, which

they had got round its neck, belabouring it the while with staves. The

cook’s boy was following them with his hand badly bitten. It appears

that the boy had been left in charge of the stewpans, and, while he was

watching them, what he thought was a dog, but which was really a wolf,

looked in at the door. The boy turned to drive it out, when it sprang up

at him and bit him on the hands. He caught it, however, by the throat

(or rather, he afterwards explained, by the ears, which he said he could

not let go, thus illustrating the proverb) and fell on it, while an old

woman who was also there beat it with a log of wood. Then others came,

and the boy still holding fast, they got the rope round its neck. When

laid on the ground in the yard, the wolf pretended to be dead, though he

did not look much hurt, but all declared he was mad and begged me to

shoot him, and so reluctantly I did. He died without a groan, and from

first to last did not make a sound. He was a fine dog-wolf, about the

size of a collie dog, with reddish legs, and altogether a good deal

redder than European wolves are, and a fine set of teeth. The boy was

rather badly bitten, and after having his wounds washed, we sent him

straight to Cairo to the Hydrophobic hospital. I cannot think the wolf

was mad, as he was fat and in fine condition. He had no foam at the

mouth, nor a haggard eye, nor any appearance of disease. I think rather,

this being their breeding time, when they are bolder than usual, he

simply followed his nose to a meal. We have often heard him lately

howling in the garden, and once at night in the yard, so he probably

knew his way about. The old woman, whose clothes had been torn and her

legs bitten, but not badly, at once when the wolf was dead took some

hairs from him to dress her wound with, and the heart was kept for the

boy to eat. I had the wolf skinned; he was a powerful beast, with

immense muscles in the throat and great depth of chest. There is at

least one other in the garden; indeed, I hear one howling as I write.”

N.B. Naturalists affirm that there are no true wolves in Egypt, and the

red colour of this one seems to show him to have been a jackal of the

large kind which frequents Egyptian gardens. I am, however, certain that

the true wolf is also found in the desert east of the Nile, for I have

several times seen them at close quarters. The true wolf is a desert

animal, and like other wolves, attacks sheep, hovering round the Bedouin

encampments for the purpose. Suliman has sometimes suffered from their

depredations just outside our garden wall, and in the hot weather they

come inside it for the sake of the shade and the water. They breed,

however, far away in the desert, whereas the jackal seldom leaves the

cultivated district, I have measured wolf tracks in the desert sand as

large as my hand.

This incident, which had a tragic sequel, as will be seen later,

occurred while we were in full preparation for a desert journey of

exploration in the Kalala mountains, and we left Sheykh Obeyd the

following morning (15th February), and remained absent till 2nd March,

during which time we had no communication whatever with the outer world.

It was a very interesting expedition, covering a good deal of unexplored

and difficult mountain land, following the romantic Wady Dem Dem to its

source at the extreme ridge of the mountain overlooking the Red Sea and

the Sinai Peninsula.

On our return after sixteen days’ absence we found the tragedy of the

wolf already far advanced, and ten days later my diary contains the

following:

“_13th March._—The poor boy Mohammed Sueylim, who was bitten by the

wolf, is dead. He had been treated in Cairo on the Pasteur system and

returned to us from the hospital on the 7th, having finished, they said,

his cure. He was in good health and spirits and was at work on Friday in

the kitchen as usual, but in the evening he complained that his arm hurt

him, and we sent him to sleep at home with his family, intending that he

should go back next day to see his doctor at Cairo, but his father, old

Sueylim, objected to this, and he did not go. On the 9th he came with

his father to the house, looking much frightened, and saying that he had

a swelling in his throat and could neither eat nor drink, but still the

father would not consent to his going back to the hospital. In the

afternoon he was reported to be better, but it was followed by a bad

night, and early on the 10th he was taken to Cairo. There the Italian

Doctor Simon saw him and sent a note back with him to say he certainly

had hydrophobia. He would have detained the boy, but the father would

not allow him to remain in the hospital for fear they would dissect the

boy if he should die there. However, on the morning of the 11th Sueylim

took him in again, but again would not leave him, and the next night the

boy, having gone raving mad, died.

“This is a horrible thing for which there seems no accounting according

to any theory of Providence, for it is not even a case of our miserable

civilization being in fault. It seems as if it might have happened in a

pure state of nature, for here at Sheykh Obeyd the wild beasts have been

allowed to come and go as they please without interference, nor have

they ever before given trouble. Or is hydrophobia an effect of the

unnatural condition of the tame dog, communicated to him by the wolf?

Anyhow, it is a pitiful event. The boy was his father’s only son and

support, who was doing his work quietly and well in the kitchen. The

wolf, too, they tell me, leaves a widow and cubs in the garden. The old

man complained pathetically of his loss. ‘I have seven daughters,’ he

said, ‘anyone of which the wolf would have been welcome to, and he has

taken my only son!’”

As to hydrophobia being perhaps an effect of civilization, there is more

to be said in favour of its being so than I first imagined. I find that

all the old travellers in Egypt, or at any rate many of them, make the

remark as a noticeable circumstance that the dogs in Egypt, though there

are so many of them, do not go mad. Hydrophobia seems to have been

introduced with other Western diseases from Europe during the nineteenth

century.

“_16th March._—Left Sheykh Obeyd with my nurse for Europe, leaving Anne

and Judith to follow later, and slept at Alexandria, especially to see

Dr. Ruffer, on whom I called in the morning at his villa at Ramleh. I

went on purpose to consult him as a pupil of Pasteur on our kitchen

tragedy. What he told me is briefly this. He tells me that, whereas only

13 per cent. of bites inflicted by dogs proved by dissection to have

been mad are followed by hydrophobia, it is more serious in the case of

wolf bites, 60 or 70 per cent. being the proportion of the bites

followed by the disease. On the other hand, he tells me that the Pasteur

treatment itself kills a proportion of 2 per cent. of the cases where it

is used. It would therefore, he considers, be most rash to have oneself

treated on the Pasteur system in the case of a simple dog bite and

unless the dog had been ascertained by dissection to be mad. In the case

of wolves or jackals, however, the advantage of the treatment would be

far greater, though it would not be at all certain. In the case of being

bitten Dr. Ruffer recommends nitric acid as the best immediate treatment

of the wound. Burning, he says, is quite insufficient, but he is not

very encouraging as to any cure.”

Ruffer’s opinion is of value as coming from so distinguished a disciple

of Pasteur. I remember asking him at the end of our talk whether in his

own case he would submit himself to the Pasteur treatment if bitten by a

dog ascertained to be mad. He said: “I think so, but I should first make

my will.” My impression is that he believed in the Pasteur treatment as

of practical utility only in the case of wolf and jackal bites, while

there was a certain risk of 2 per cent. in all cases subjected to the

treatment whether the dog was mad or not.

This was the end of our stay in Egypt that winter of 1900-1901.

I had a pleasant voyage from Alexandria to Marseilles in company with

Lord and Lady Chelsea, Hedworth Lambton, Lady Wolverton, and Lady St.

Oswald. With Lambton, who was then in command of the Royal yacht, I had

much conversation about Arabi, whom he had been to see three years

before in Ceylon, a conversation which I think had much to do, seeing

his position with the new King, with Arabi’s release later. He is a good

fellow and a gallant officer, and we made friends.

After spending a week at Hyères on our way homewards with the Wyndhams,

who were established there for the winter, and where I found George with

his son Percy, I went on to England, arriving at Newbuildings on the

10th of April, where I take up my diary.

“_19th April._—Parliament met yesterday and Hicks-Beach’s budget has

produced a sensation. He avows a deficit of 55 millions, and that the

South African War has already cost 152 millions, which means that it

will cost fully the 200 millions I predicted when the war began. He also

had the courage to say that the working class which made the war ought

to be taxed for it, and has clapped a duty on sugar and coals as well as

an extra twopence on the income tax. This is better than I had dared

hope from the Tories, though by rights the whole deficit should have

been raised at once by a 20/- in the £ income tax if necessary.

“I went to Park Lane and found George Wyndham rather crestfallen over

the narrow majorities the Government got last night and the show up of

his preposterous war ‘amusement.’ He said he was all against the sugar

and coal taxes as they would make the voters ‘tired of the Empire.’

Doubtless, too, he is angry with Hicks-Beach for his plain speaking, for

George has always been a member of the intrigue which, as he told me two

years ago, had for its object to get rid of the old Conservative

leaders, especially of Hicks-Beach, who stood in the way of their little

war amusements. George, however, will not take it too much to heart. His

theory of politics is that a politician should ‘play the game,’ and that

he owes no duty except to his party. All the same he is more responsible

for the war than anybody else not actually in the Cabinet, for he was

one of those who under Rhodes’ inspiration worked to bring it about. It

is amusing to see that Rhodes, whose prime object in making the war was

to slip out of his personal responsibility for the raid indemnity, a

matter of a million sterling, has succeeded in getting the Government to

wipe that matter publicly off the financial slate.

“After my talk with George, Sibell took me with her to Grosvenor House

where we found the young Duke, her son, resplendent in uniform, having

just come back from seeing Roberts of whom he has been begging a

transference from the army to the Yeomanry. The morning sun was

streaming through the windows, which made the rooms very beautiful, the

‘Blue Boy’ being especially splendid.

“_21st April (Sunday)._—To see Meynell, who was as usual full of gossip.

It appears that the King’s debts have been paid off privately by his

friends, one of whom is said to have lent £100,000, and satisfies

himself with £25,000 in repayment plus a Knighthood.

“_22nd April._—Hampden dined with me in Chapel Street. As to South

Africa he is quite converted now to ideas of peace and economy, the

effect of the extra twopence on the income tax. He has two sons still at

the war.

“_15th May._—As I was walking in Rotten Row this morning I was accosted

by an imposing personage with the face and figure of a Roman Emperor,

seated on a huge drayhorse, and I recognized in him John Redmond. I had

not seen him since 1888 when I knew him in Ireland, and he has since

become head of the Irish parliamentary party. He was very cordial in his

greeting, and I was able most truthfully to congratulate him on the

position of Irish affairs, which have never been so hopeful since

Parnell died. We talked about George Wyndham. ‘He is a nice fellow,’

said Redmond, ‘and I like him much personally, as we all do.’

“_25th May._—Arabi has been pardoned. A fortnight ago I had a letter

from him from Ceylon, telling me that the Duke of Cornwall had given him

his royal promise to do what he could to obtain his release, and this is

the result. If he had been recalled sixteen years ago, as Gladstone

intended, he might have been of great use in reforming Egypt, but as it

is the pardon has come too late. Arabi will find that the world has

marched far during his absence, and the National Party has followed new

lines which are not altogether his.

“_11th June._—To Sotheby’s where the Ashburnham MSS. are being sold.

They are very splendid, but quite beyond my reach as a collector. I

intend to confine my purchasing to Oriental MSS., where the field is

open to a moderate purse, as for some inexplicable reason no one cares

for them. Being in Quaritch’s shop a few days ago I heard the Librarian

of the Bodleian declare that he was inundated with offers of these, for

which there were no buyers. With Cockerell’s help I have got together

about twenty illuminated ones at prices ranging from £4 to £10, though I

gave £50 for one, a very fine ‘Shah Nameh,’ which had belonged to

Morris. Some day these Oriental MSS. will be worth much larger sums,

analogous to those given for European ones of equally fine execution.

“_14th June._—Hampden, whose son has just returned from South Africa,

leaving another son still fighting there, and a nephew Campion dead, is

now loud in denouncing the war. He would like to have Kruger and Rhodes

and Chamberlain tied in a bag together and dropped into the sea. This

from the ex-Liberal Unionist whip is a pretty good conversion.

“The Ashburnham MSS. have sold for £33,000, the finest of them a French

version of _Lancelot du Lac_ for £1,800, a cheap price for perhaps the

most beautiful book in the world.

“_27th June._—I have been going over old letters. Of men’s letters

George Wyndham’s are by far the best, and I have a good series of them

written at the most interesting period of his life, that of his literary

interlude between the days when he was Arthur Balfour’s private

Secretary, and his taking office as Under Secretary of State. They are

all a man’s letters to a man can be, in some ways better even than

Lytton’s, wonderful as those are.

“_29th June._—Hedworth Lambton came over from Portsmouth, where he is in

command of the King’s yacht. He tells me the Duke of Cornwall’s

intervention in favour of Arabi’s must certainly have been prearranged,

probably before he left England, with the King. I took him over to

Crabbet where he greatly admired our horses, regretting that his Majesty

did not breed Arabs instead of Hackneys.

“_6th July._—Our annual Arab sale. A great concourse of people from

London, including not a few notabilities. We sold twelve lots at an

average of over 120 guineas, four (stallions) were bought for the Indian

Government, three for New South Wales, two for Java, and one for

Germany.

“_25th July._—News has come of a conflict at Sheykh Obeyd between some

English officers fox hunting, and Mutlak, and our Arab guards. Our

people have been arrested, and I went up to London to the Foreign Office

for information and to protest. Old Giglamps (Sir Thomas Sanderson)

received me with a little official manner, and talked of its being

necessary to leave the matter to be settled by law, but I overbore him

with a torrent of indignation, which is the best way to break down the

official fence, and he became amiable, discussed the question with me,

promised to speak about it at once to Cromer and advised me to address

Lord Lansdowne formally, stating my view of the case. We parted the best

of friends.” [This was the beginning of a long correspondence between me

and the Foreign Office, which as it is embalmed in a Blue Book of forty-

seven pages, I need not here relate in detail. The Blue Book is one of

the most amusing ever issued by the Foreign Office.]

“_26th July._—Lunched with Frank Lascelles at the Travellers Club, and

we talked of old days and of present days too. His success as Ambassador

at Berlin, where he has captured the friendship of the Emperor William,

is the greatest diplomatic achievement of our day, which he attributes

modestly to his talent for making small jokes of the kind which royal

personages like. He would not hear of Wilhelm’s being called ‘a clever

ass.’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘not at all. He knows everything and does

everything, including painting and fiddling, and most things he knows

well. In shipbuilding and engineering he surprises all the experts who

have to do with him. Also he is a man. He really commands his army, and

really governs his Empire.’ ‘A second Frederick the Great,’ I suggested.

‘Just so,’ he said. ‘That is what he would like to be thought.’

“_27th July._—With Cockerell to Parkstone to see Alfred Russel Wallace,

the Grand Old Man of Science. Cockerell, who knew him already, had asked

him to have a talk with me about the prehistoric horse, and an excellent

talk it was. He lives in an uninteresting little red villa near the

station, but the old man himself is a treasure. Though not able to give

me much information on the subject I had come to him about, the early

domestication of animals and especially of the horse, he was most

instructive about the primitive races of mankind. He divides mankind

into three great families, the White, the Black and the Yellow. Among

the first he classes not only Semites and the lighter coloured Hindoos,

but also the Dravidians, the Hairy Ainus and the Australians. He classes

them by their features, and by the quality of their hair, which is long

and wavy. The black races are the negroes, the negritos and all others

who have crisped hair. The yellow race is characterized by comparatively

hairless faces, and the absence of wave in their hair. The Aryans, he

says, are a mere linguistic division of the white family, the

distinction has nothing to do with the race. He holds it probable that

civilization had only one birthplace, and from it had spread everywhere.

The taming of animals was imitated from a first example of success by

tribes communicating with the successful tribe. His socialistic talk was

also interesting, and he displayed wonderful vigour of intellect for so

old a man. He complimented me on my pamphlet, ‘The Shame of the XIXth

Century’ and expressed strong views on the pauperization of India. There

was a number of the paper ‘Light’ lying on his table, and I asked him if

he still adhered to his belief in spiritualism, and he said very

positively that he had not receded from it in the smallest degree.”

The month of August was occupied with a driving tour I made to Clouds

and the West of England. While at Clouds I saw a good deal of one of our

Royal Princesses, who was staying there, and whom it fell to my lot to

entertain on a number of drives seated by me on the box seat, for I had

my four in hand there. This was Princess Louise, daughter of Princess

Christian and granddaughter of Queen Victoria. My conversations with

this royal lady were a revelation to me of the political atmosphere in

which our royal personages move.

“_20th Sept._—In London. A day of disaster for His Majesty’s arms by

land and sea. Two defeats in South Africa, three guns lost to Botha in

Natal, the 17th Lancers cut to pieces in Cape Colony, and His Majesty’s

ship ‘Cobra’ totally wrecked off the Yorkshire coast. I called on George

Wyndham and talked the situation over with him. The whole army, he says,

is overdone and stale, the 17th Lancers have been on the run since the

10th of May, trying to catch the Boers, without a day’s rest, and it is

the same with them all, horses and men can do no more. He thinks now the

winter is over and the grass up on the veldt, our army will have to mark

time and stay on the defensive till next year. He is beginning to think

we shall have to make terms with the Boers. I suggested a ‘Reservation’

for them such as the Basutos have where they could be free and govern

themselves and live in their own way. He told me in confidence he had

long ago proposed exactly this solution as the only one to end the war.

The Boers ought to be allowed a ‘blow hole.’ What they wanted was to

lead a patriarchal life according to their own ideas. He thought that if

this was allowed they would be eventually amalgamated with the rest of

South Africa by the natural processes of progress. George is much

pleased with his work in Ireland, and is glad now he did not get the War

Office as he had wished. He is taking my advice of doing nothing, and

waiting instead of forcing the situation, as people were urging him to

do. He described a yachting tour he has made in very stormy weather with

his son Percy. We also talked over the Fox-hunting case at Cairo; he has

been staying with Lord Lansdowne.

“_21st Sept._—There is another defeat this morning, two more guns taken.

Hampden is now all for ending the war.

“_25th Sept._—Rennell Rodd is gazetted our Ambassador to Rome.

“_28th Sept._—Cromer’s marriage with Lady Katharine Thynne announced.

“_3rd Oct._—Captain H—— came to shoot with me and Neville. He has just

come from the war. He thinks the fault lies in not hanging the Boers,

man, woman, and child.

“_4th Oct._—To London. Met Austin Lee at the Club. He tells me Cromer’s

engagement was a very sudden affair. Cromer had been down to lay a

wreath on his late wife’s grave at Bournemouth, and had taken his place

in the steamer for Cairo with Gorst. Gorst had gone on to Paris, and he

was to meet him there, but this engagement has intervened.

“_11th Oct._—At Gros Bois on my way to Egypt, and find here a large

party of French people come over from Paris for the day, the Duchesse de

Trévise and her daughters, and her son-in-law, de Brissac, and with them

Lady Windsor and Lady Paget. In the afternoon I was taken out shooting

by Wagram, the other two guns being country neighbours, de Kergoulet and

Lagrange, in the Forêt de Notre Dame. Berthe’s two girls are growing up

charming, with the prettiest possible manners, and quite unspoilt.

“_13th Oct. (Sunday)._—The ladies all went off in Berthe’s new

automobile to Vaux, and I with Wagram to Paris. There we were met by

Alexandre, and after breakfasting at Durand’s we went to see a new play

at the Theâtre Antoine, ‘L’honneur,’ a piece translated from the German

of an exaggerated Ibsen kind, which interested me not a little.

Alexandre acted the cicerone there to his father and me, explaining the

play to us learnedly as it went on.

“_14th Oct._—Shooting again with Wagram. All his ground here is

beautiful and of great extent, and he has pride in every inch of it.

Some 7,000 acres, if I understand him rightly, in a ring fence, for

France a very large estate, and only surpassed anywhere near Paris by

those of the Rothschilds, who have between them about 30,000 acres.

“_15th Oct._—After a last day’s shooting I left in the evening for

Marseilles and Egypt with Anne, who had joined me in Paris.

“_24th Oct.—At Sheykh Obeyd._ Mohammed Abdu came to spend the morning.

He tells me he has incurred the Khedive’s displeasure by having

performed the marriage ceremony for one of the Khedivial Princes in

Switzerland this summer. The Khedive had given his permission, but had

intended to back out of it. We discussed the Fox-hunting case. This, he

assures me, contains not merely strainings of the law, but positive

illegalities on the part of the English authorities. Then we talked of

Arabi’s return to Egypt. Mohammed Abdu blames him for having held

communications with the newspapers, and without waiting to ascertain the

true state of things, having proclaimed that everything done by the

English in Egypt was good. This has got him into trouble with the native

official world, which has given him the cold shoulder, though he is much

run after by the common herd. Boys follow him in the street shouting

‘_Allah yensurak ya Arabi!_’ (God give you the victory O Arabi!), and in

the mosque when he goes to pray the poorer sort kiss his hands. He,

Abdu, disapproves of this, and has not called on him, but I think I have

persuaded him that it will be best to make the most of the popularity,

and he has promised to meet Arabi at my house when he comes. I am of

opinion that a great deal might be profitably made of Arabi in the cause

of Egyptian freedom, but Arabi’s popularity with the vulgar was always

a source of jealousy with the well-to-do.

“Later Raffiuddin Ahmed, a leader of the Mohammedan community in London,

called on me, and I had with him also a long and interesting

conversation. He told me things that were interesting of the influence

over the late Queen Victoria exercised by her Indian Munshi, with whom

he was intimate. Her Majesty allowed the Munshi to have the key of her

despatch boxes and to read all their contents, even during the Cretan

difficulty and the Sultan’s war with Greece. He read the despatches

every morning, and told the Queen which were the most important. The

Prime Minister knew this and did not object, as the Munshi was really

discreet. As soon, however, as the Queen was dead he was packed off back

to India. Raffiuddin seems to have read everything I have ever written,

and has a surprising memory of dates and facts. He tells me that through

his friend the Munshi, he got the Queen to read my protest published in

the ‘Times’ against the massacre of Omdurman. He was to have been put

forward by Lord Salisbury for a seat in Parliament, but happened to be

away in Constantinople at the time of the general elections. Now, poor

man, I fear he is in very ill-health, and is on his way back to India to

recover, or, as to me seems more probable, to die.

“_26th Oct._—To-day Arabi came to lunch with us in company with Ali

Fehmy and their friend the doctor. Arabi is still a hale and hearty man,

and his white beard becomes him well. I found him simple and

affectionate, and very grateful to me. It appears that my telegram of

congratulation received by him on the 23rd of May was the first news he

had of his release and pardon. It was not officially communicated to him

till the 26th. I had a long talk with him about the attitude he was to

observe on political affairs, and was pleased to find him with definite

opinions. He is too trustful, to my mind, of English good intentions,

having experienced only kind treatment during his exile, and it is right

he should be grateful, otherwise his view does not differ much from mine

or Abdu’s. I advised him to be content with what he had already said

publicly, to call on the Khedive, if the Khedive would receive him, and

on Lord Cromer. He has so much dignity, frankness and honesty that his

personal presence must do good. Then Mohammed Abdu came in and they

embraced, and talked till luncheon, and through it and afterwards for an

hour and more, recounting old experiences and discussing modern men. The

meeting was eminently a success, and was really a touching one for us

all in many ways. I had, however, fever on me, and was glad to get to

bed as soon as they were gone.”

Arabi’s return to Egypt was robbed of the success it ought to have been

by his initial mistake of having allowed himself to be interviewed on

his landing at Suez by one of the staff of the “Mokattam,” a newspaper

carried on by certain Syrians in the interest of the British occupation,

who gave a garbled account of what he had said in praise of the reforms

introduced under the English régime so as to make it appear like a

recantation of his patriotism. The Khedive, too, never really forgave

him nor did Lord Cromer. Arabi was too simple-minded a man not to give

opportunities to those ill disposed towards him, and he made the mistake

when calling upon Cromer of concealing the fact that he had first called

on me, and this was used against him. On the 19th Nov. I called on Lord

Cromer and spoke of this with him, who made me a history of the pressure

he had put on the Khedive to get him to consent to the exile’s return,

the line taken by him being that Arabi was no longer of any political

consequence. He had received him but they had had little conversation

together.

The history of Arabi’s recall from exile is without doubt that King

Edward thought it would be politic and insisted on it with the Foreign

Office. I have always suspected that Admiral Lambton’s visit to me at

Newbuildings, though ostensibly to look at my horses, was really in

connection with this matter as during it we had talked much of Arabi.

Lambton had been a believer in Arabi from the time of Arabi’s trial in

1882, when he had given useful evidence in his favour. Lambton was also

with the Duke of York (now King George V) when he visited Colombo and

had the talk there already referred to with Arabi. The exile’s recall

had been in consequence imposed on Lord Cromer, who was conscious that

the whole case for intervention by England in 1882 rested on the logic

of Arabi’s being a rebel and his patriotism unreal. While therefore

Cromer submitted to the pressure put upon him by the Foreign Office he

was determined to neutralize the good effect of it as an act of tardy

reparation for a wrong done by managing to get the pardoned exile put in

coventry by Mustapha Fehmy and the rest of the Khedivial Ministers. In

that way Arabi’s initial popularity was neutralized and robbed of any

political effect.

“_23rd Nov._—To-day I went to see the Khedive who was as cordial and

affectionate as usual. He began by making me an elaborate apology for

not having paid me his promised visit at Crabbet when he was in England

in June 1900 (I had not been to see him since) and how he had several

times asked Rennell Rodd, who had been appointed by the Foreign Office

to look after him, to arrange the visit, and how Rodd had always said

there was no time. Then I thanked him for having pardoned Arabi, and he

told me that Arabi had displeased him by his political pronouncements on

arrival and by his always being with Ali Fehmy who had behaved so badly

to his father Tewfik, and how he had also heard of Mohammed Abdu’s

having been to lunch with me when Arabi came to Sheykh Obeyd, and how

wrong it was of Abdu. But I told him I was the only person to blame in

the matter as I had entrapped Abdu who had been most unwilling, and he

laughed and said he would make it all right with Abdu when he saw him.

Then we talked about the Fox-hunting case and he told me of the _peur

bleue_ he had been in for years past lest the English soldiers should

break in on him at Koubbah where his garden was so little protected;

also of the Omdeh of Waila having been stopped on the road by a party of

Lancers on his way home as he was riding with two servants, and how they

had struck him on the head and how he had died a fortnight after it. He

is off to Khartoum next week and he went with me to the door shaking

hands and assuring me of his great affection and that I was the only

true friend they had in Egypt.

“_28th Nov._—Our yearly _mowled_ of Sheykh Obeyd, a festival attended by

about a thousand people and all the Arabs and Sheykhs of the villages

round, and we had horse races and _jerid_ play the whole day long in the

bit of desert outside, and not a European showed his nose from dawn to

dusk.

“_19th Dec._—Rosebery has made a speech which is causing much excitement

at home, offering himself as alternative Prime Minister to Salisbury on

equally jingo lines. Salisbury is bad enough, but Rosebery would mean

merely Government by the Stock Exchange.

“_30th Dec._—Left Sheykh Obeyd for England, having hurried my departure

principally on account of the fox-hunting case which was being brought

forward in Parliament. We went by way of Port Said and Brindisi. Rhodes,

Jameson and others of the South African gang were to have taken the same

steamer but I believe missed it. They had come to Egypt with the

intention of going up the Nile to Khartoum, but Cromer, who hates

Rhodes, put a veto on that and stopped the party at Assouan.

“_16th Jan._ 1902.—London. Hampden dined last night with Rosebery, where

he was more or less solicited to join Rosebery’s party, and we talked

over the prospects of Liberalism. My advice to him was that if he wanted

office or further employment of any kind, Rosebery was as likely to give

it him as any other, though he would never come into office as head of

the Radical party. Apart from this, however, there were only two

policies on which party lines could run, the first of Imperialism, which

meant a bid for the Empire of the world, a gambling venture which would

entail the sacrifice of everything we have of value at home, personal

liberty, freedom from conscription and financial prosperity; the other

Anti-imperialism, which meant letting the world alone and leaving the

colonies to work out their own destinies without our interference, and

the same for Ireland.

“_22nd Jan._—Lunched with Labouchere, who was as usual very amusing,

describing the intrigues and dissensions of the Liberal leaders. ‘If you

were to take them all together,’ he said, ‘and boil them in a pot,

Campbell Bannerman, Asquith, Morley, Rosebery, and Grey, you would not

get the worth of a mouse out of them.’ Of the Liberal Imperialists none

had any following in the country except Rosebery. He told, too, some

interesting stories about his own past adventures, how he had ridden

once from Cairo to Suez in company with Shepheard, the founder of the

hotel, sleeping one night on the road, also from Damascus to Palmyra

with Lady Ellenborough and her Bedouin husband Mijuel some time in the

fifties, when she was still almost a young woman. And again in Mexico

with a notorious robber. He was in every way most pleasant. I have known

Labby now for forty years and feel a real affection for him.

“_24th Jan._—Called on Redmond at St. Ermin’s Club. He holds a high

position now in the House of Commons and in the world. He was in America

last autumn and tells me everyone there is pro-Boer including Roosevelt,

the President.

“_28th Jan._—I have been, since Saturday, at Hewell and have seen much

of Rowton who is staying here. He has been most agreeable. I have had

him pretty nearly to myself and we have made great friends. He still

delights to talk of his old master Dizzy and described how they first

met at Raby in 1865. There was a large party in the castle, and Rowton,

a young fellow then of five-and-twenty, was asked by the ladies one

evening to play the fool for their amusement, and he had sung a comic

song and was in the middle of a breakdown when he caught the eye of the

old man fixed on him and was filled with shame at being detected in such

absurdity, but in the course of the evening a hand was laid upon his

shoulder and a lugubrious voice said, ‘Mr. Corry, I shall ask you some

day to be my impressario.’ This led to a talk on serious subjects, and

eventually to Rowton’s being taken on as assistant private secretary.

Ralph Earle was then the first private secretary, but he threw up his

position with Disraeli to take an appointment in the City soon after,

and made use of his former position to look in at Downing Street and

read the confidential papers for his profit on the Stock Exchange.

Rowton was given his succession, but had the disagreeable task assigned

him of telling Earle he was to come there no longer. Earle revenged

himself by making a bitter speech against his former master at a

critical moment in the House of Commons. The thing affected Dizzy

deeply, less from the ingratitude shown by Earle than from shame at

having been taken in and trusted his secrets to such a man. Rowton is

full of such anecdotes, and when I pressed him to write them, even if he

did not publish, confessed that the real reason was that he lacked the

literary gift and could not do it well. He told me, too, of the story

current that Dufferin was really Disraeli’s son, but he had found

evidence in the papers left him that Disraeli had only made Lady

Dufferin’s acquaintance six years after Dufferin was born. Dufferin, who

had heard the story, was most grateful to Rowton for letting him have

the memorandum proving this, and had inserted it in his mother’s life.

Another story was of how Disraeli came to be Christianized. Isaac

Disraeli, the father, had given offence to the Jews by his unorthodox

writings and was fined £50 by his synagogue. This angered him and he

went straight away and joined the Church of England and had his children

christened, Dizzy being then about ten years old. But for this quarrel

the son never could have got into Parliament or made even the beginning

of a political career.

“_3rd Feb._—Lunched with Mark Napier who is just back from India where

he has been settling a legal claim for a native prince. It had been hung

up for thirteen years, but he got it pushed through by George Curzon in

ten days. (Such is the virtue of the Crabbet Club.) He gave a good

account of George and of his surprising energy and power of work, which

leaves him no time for amusement. He is master of everybody, Mark says,

and so is not altogether popular with the high officials, but seemed to

be so with everybody else.

“_4th Feb._—Called on George Wyndham and had a long talk with him about

Ireland, which wholly occupies him. He is far more in sympathy with the

Nationalists than with the Castle party which he despises for its

sycophancy or the Ulster Protestants whom he dislikes for their sour

bigotry. His own people, however, are constantly worrying him to coerce,

and he has been obliged to make a show of doing something in that way

though most unwillingly. He told me he had quite come to agree with me

that there was no possibility of doing anything of real good in Ireland

under present conditions and the less done by a Chief Secretary, the

less the harm. He thinks, however, that if Ireland could be governed as

a Crown Colony for five years things might come right. This is a curious

remedy which would need fifty, not five years to have any effect. He was

delighted when I repeated what Redmond said about him and that the Irish

members still regarded him with a friendly eye.

“Then he read me a long letter from his brother Guy written at the end

of the year, describing a fight he had been engaged in in Cape Colony

against Smuts in which he took credit that he had held his ground. I

remarked that I had thought the Boers had long ago been cleared out of

Cape Colony, at which George laughed aloud. Guy in another letter said

that to try to prevent Boers going where they chose to go was like

trying with a single squadron to prevent two squadrons passing a line

between Bath and Salisbury. It is clear the war is far from over.

“_14th Feb._—Found George Wyndham at breakfast and walked with him

across Green Park to his Irish Office. I congratulated him on the new

Japanese Alliance (the Convention of Alliance with England had been

signed on 30th Jan.) which is the best thing the Government has done for

a long while, but George is quite disillusioned about politics or the

possibility of much affecting the course of the world’s events.

Chamberlain is the hero of the day in spite of his absurd blunders in

South Africa, because he talks big and defies European opinion.

“There is a funny story current:

_Master to Boy_: “Who was it made the world?”

_Boy_: “Mr. Chamberlain.”

_Master_: “Think again. Wasn’t it God made the world?”

_Boy_: “Oh, go on! You are a pro-Boer.”

“_22nd Feb._—Rosebery has cut the Liberal painter and has passed out

into the wilderness.

“_23rd Feb._—Lord Dufferin’s death is in the papers. His end was tragic,

but carelessness in money matters was the weak point in his character.

When he came of age, I remember hearing, he had a quite unencumbered

estate of £20,000 a year, but he muddled it away, Heaven knows on what,

for he was not a gambler nor a runner after women, only he kept no

accounts and liked to do things on a grand scale. For the last thirty

years he has lived on his pay as a Government servant, always in the

highest posts. Then when his time of service was over he found himself

with a large family of children and a pension of less than £3,000 a

year. He took Whitaker Wright’s £6,000 a year to enable him to live. In

all things else he was singularly high-minded, with a chivalrous

devotion to his mother, the one passion of his life. He trifled with

women rather than made love to them, and when his mother died, his chief

affections went to his children. He was a faithful friend, retentive of

old memories and was rightly beloved by all. I knew him when he was only

thirty-three, a good-looking and attractive young man travelling in the

East with his mother. His marriage was arranged for him by his mother, a

year or two later, and he accepted it as he would have accepted anything

else from her hands.

“_28th Feb._—Yesterday I went to see poor Peploe Brown (the painter),

and found him strangely altered. He has been paralysed for some years

and is now a little wizened old man, quite helpless in his chair, but

preserving all his old powers of talk. He sits there a pathetic figure

in his studio in York Place surrounded by canvases of gigantic size, the

monuments of ancient failures in his art, blind and alone but for the

devotion of a man servant who waits always within call. This man, Fred,

deserves a medal of gold if ever a servant did, for he puts his whole

soul into his service, and I fancy even without wages, for Brown is

almost penniless. Poor Brown, what a terrible life! yet he does not

complain because he can still see light out of the corner of one eye,

also he suffers no pain, and he sleeps well.

“_2nd March (Sunday)._—Walked across the Park and lunched with Frederic

Harrison. I sat next to Miss Hobhouse, recently come back from South

Africa where she was prevented by our authorities from landing. She is

an amiable middle-aged woman, much persecuted on account of her action

in the concentration camps. People are rude to her, refuse to shake

hands, and they get up to go when she enters a drawing-room. Others of

the party were Henry Arthur Jones the playwright, young Trevelyan the

poet, and Lady Gregory.

“In the evening with Lady Gregory to Newton Hall to hear Harrison

deliver his farewell address on retiring from the leadership of the

Positivists. The beginning of it was rather tame and I was dosing off

when I was awakened by an allusion to my work in Egypt and hearing my

name cheered. After this Harrison gave a really fine address, saying

many hard things and true things of modern England, touching, too, from

the fact of its being his last spoken word.

“_11th March._—Learned last night of the defeat and capture of Methuen

by Delarey. The news of the capture was heartily cheered by the Irish in

the House. It was the King’s wedding-day.

“_12th March._—Called on Father John Gerard, S.J., in Farm Street, whom

I had last seen fifty years ago at Stonyhurst where he was my special

boy friend. He had written to me, and hence my visit. I found him a

worthy matter-of-fact Jesuit advanced in years but preserving just the

little touch of romance which had prompted his letter to me about our

childish school friendship when we were both twelve years old. He

reminded me that we used to keep caterpillars in paper boxes and that I

had insisted upon pricking holes in the lids in the form of the

constellations so that the caterpillars inside might think they were

still out of doors and could see the stars.

“_14th March._—Methuen has been released and the newspapers are full of

praise of Delarey, the first time they have had a word of civility for

any Boer since the war began.

“_15th March._—To the Zoölogical Gardens to look at Prevalsky’s wild

horses, just arrived. They are miserable specimens, like the poorest and

weediest of the New Forest ponies, coarse-headed, knock-kneed, cat-

hammed and with drooping donkey tails, yet distinctly horses.

“_17th March (St. Patrick’s Day)._—To George Wyndham, who explained to

me the difficult position he was in with the Tory Press on account of

his Irish policy. ‘They are all waiting,’ he said, ‘to pounce on me

because I won’t go their way in Ireland.’ He promised to tell me some

day the whole history of the last fortnight, as to which I gather from

him that he was obliged to threaten resignation rather than go in for a

policy of extreme coercion, which has always failed and will fail again.

Then to John Redmond in Wynnstay Gardens. I found him just arrived by

the night train from Manchester, where he spoke on Saturday, but alert

and smiling. It being St. Patrick’s Day, somebody had sent him a little

box full of shamrock and he opened it and gave me a bunch which I shall

try and grow at Newbuildings as it has a root, but he warned me it would

never grow out of Ireland. We talked about George. He was perfectly

aware how matters stood with him. ‘I am obliged,’ he said ‘to be fierce

with him in public, but I know he is with us in his heart, and we all

know it.’ I like Redmond, he is a thoroughly straightforward good

fellow, strong and practical and self-reliant but not self-assertive, a

worthy successor of Parnell. I was surprised to hear him regretting

Rhodes’ illness and saying that he would be a great loss if he died. I

asked him why, and he said that Rhodes has always been a Home Ruler

about Ireland as part of his Imperial Federation scheme, and also

because he thought the Irish quarrel ought to be settled in the interest

of the Empire. Redmond had seen a great deal of Rhodes when he was in

South Africa, and believed he still held to his Home Rule opinions. My

own opinion of Rhodes, on this as on other points, is that he is a rogue

and a humbug. The King and Queen are sending him their royal condolences

about his illness.

“_21st March._—John Dillon was suspended last night in the House of

Commons for calling Chamberlain ‘a damned liar.’

“_22nd March._—Dined in Park Lane and met there Lady Ormond and the

Berkeley Pagets. George explained to me his new Irish Land Bill after

dinner, which he does not profess to regard as anything but a makeshift.

As far as I understand it, it is a scheme devised to buy up the quite

small holdings in the West and group them into farms of fifteen and

twenty acres. He again said that he was very averse from Coercion, but

added that the Government might be driven into it, and it would then

mean something much more than what had hitherto been done, and would

involve the imprisonment of all the leaders of the League, and

government by force in Ireland after the manner of a Crown Colony. He

would do what he could to make things go quietly, but there were strong

forces at work pushing to extremities, witness the ‘Times’ articles. I

told him I was inviting Redmond to dinner, and asked him whether he

would come. He said there was nothing he should like better, but it

would be too dangerous in his present position, and as long as he was

Chief Secretary.

“_24th March._—Took my niece Mary Milbanke, it being Lent, to a mediæval

morality play, ‘Everyman,’ being just now revived, a terribly dreary

business, which more than half reconciled me to having been born in the

nineteenth century. These ancient plays have only an archæological

interest and are impossible on our modern stage. They are worse than the

worst comic parts of Shakespeare, which is saying a great deal, crude,

childish, long-winded. The mediæval idea of life in Christian Europe

with death and hell as a perpetual background of all pleasure, is

repellent, when put nakedly before us in action. There is a brutality in

the view of all pleasure being sinful, which is only tolerable when

mixed with a large dose of scepticism, as in Boccaccio. These north of

Europe plays with their serious intention are like having a bucket of

cold and very dirty water poured over one for a joke.

“In the evening to hear an excellent lecture by Sir William Butler on

Cromwell in Ireland, a most able and brilliant performance. I was asked

to say a few words afterwards, and did so lamely enough.

“_25th March._—George has made a brilliant speech introducing his Irish

Land Bill, and I see Redmond and his men are very civil to him. I pride

myself on having contributed to this good feeling.

“_30th March (Easter Sunday)._—Rhodes is dead. I did the rogue an

injustice when I thought he might be shamming as a pretext for getting

away from the Cape and the prosecution of Princess Radziwill, in which

he is implicated, but Rhodes was one of those of whom one always had to

ask oneself, ‘_Quel interêt peut-il avoir en mourant?_’ The capitalist

newspapers are, of course, full of his praises. He is supposed to have

bequeathed a part of his millions for Imperial purposes. I look on him

only as a lucky speculator, a gambler on rather wider lines than the

rest, shrewd, or rather lucky, in his calculations for a long while, and

then, having made a series of gross blunders, unscrupulous enough to

save most of his own money at the expense of a war and ruin for

everybody else. I suppose he will live in history as he has given his

name to Rhodesia, and has engineered the Boer War. If the British Empire

recovers from this and asserts itself permanently in South Africa he may

count for something more, but it is quite certain that he miscalculated

the whole Transvaal business. His pronouncements from time to time

during the last five years have been always contradicted by events. Some

people say this was only an excess of roguery. I think he really

blundered and blustered and pretended to be wise to people who looked

upon him, on account of his first successes, as an oracle. I have seen

just the same thing at Homburg in the old gambling days, when a man who

had broken the bank once was followed by admiring crowds, who credited

him with supernatural intelligence, and went on believing in him till

the day he lost all and disappeared. Rhodes had the intelligence to go

away with a large share of his winnings in his pocket, but his friends

have been ruined following his lead.

“My niece Mary Milbanke is with me. I am very fond of her; there is

something soothing in her phlegmatic nature and absence of all ambition,

personal or otherwise.

“_11th April._—37 Chapel Street. I entertained Miss Hobhouse at lunch

with Meynell and Margaret Sackville, and we discussed Rhodes’ will, the

topic of everybody’s talk. It is astonishing the general adulation

bestowed on the man. People do not see that the £4,000,000 he leaves to

public purposes are £4,000,000 robbed from the public and bequeathed to

the ends of new robberies. Meynell was amusing and pleasant as he always

is.

“_17th April._—St. George Lane Fox brought his cousin Lord Russell with

him to lunch with me to-day. We talked over matters connected with Egypt

and the attack I am making on Cromer as having tampered with the

Criminal Courts at Cairo. Russell, though wrong-headed, is a very able

man, and has legal experience and much practice in speaking as alderman

of the London County Council and in Committees of the House of Lords. He

is also quite fearless of Governments. I should not be surprised to see

him some day Opposition leader in the Lords. He has a good presence, a

good voice, and a wonderful memory. Our luncheon was amusing.

“_19th April._—Hunted from Fernycroft with the Foxhounds. Young Bron

Herbert was out and rode with me very pluckily, poor fellow, with his

cork leg replacing the one lost in the Boer War. He is a very clever and

very nice young man, but has been captured for service on the ‘Times’—a

bad education. His sister, he tells me, has joined the Theosophists and

gone off to live in California.

“_26th April._—Lady Gregory called and took me off to dinner with her

and Yeats and afterwards to a meeting of the Irish Literary Society,

where the Cuchulain Saga was discussed. I spoke on it and so did

O’Donnell, he partly in Irish, partly in English—an interesting man.

Yeats also spoke well. He is a pleasant talker on his own subjects, and

in appearance is of that most interesting dark Irish type with pale face

and lank hair.

“_5th May._—Anne writes from Egypt announcing somewhat enigmatically

that Cromer has had a final quarrel with the Khedive and is trying to

depose him. I think this not unlikely, but it would be difficult for him

to do unless the Great Powers were to decide to divide the Mohammedan

States between them. This is nearly certain to happen some day. I

suppose France will be given Morocco; Italy, Tripoli; England, Egypt;

Germany, Syria and Asia Minor; Austria, Constantinople; and Russia,

Persia. [Compare Secret Treaties of 1916.]

“_6th May._—Lunched with Ralph. He has decided at last to publish the

great Byron Secret, and has drawn up the case against Byron and Mrs.

Leigh in the form of a book called ‘Astarte.’ This is very ably done,

but to my mind is marred by an introduction violently attacking Murray,

the publisher, with whom he has quarrelled over Murray’s recent edition

of Byron’s Works. I shall endeavour to get him to modify this; indeed, I

think the whole thing might without much injustice to Lady Byron’s

memory be let sleep. It is an ugly story, however told.

“_10th May._—Anne has returned from Egypt. I met her at Charing Cross

and gave her breakfast here in Chapel Street and saw her off to

Newbuildings, I being obliged to go to Ockham for Sunday with Cockerell,

where Ralph is to consult us about ‘Astarte’ and its form of

publication.

“_11th May (Sunday)._—At Ockham. Cockerell and I have spent the day

trying to persuade Lovelace to omit his attacks on Murray, which are

really undignified, and also, we think, unjust in so far as they concern

the present representative of the firm.

“_18th May (Sunday)._—I have sent in my letter to Lord Salisbury. It

went last night to Hatfield with a private note inside to Schomberg

McDonnell explaining that I hoped Lord Salisbury would read it himself.

It is a big venture as I am attacking Cromer personally, but in big game

shooting it is safest to leave the antelopes alone and go straight for

the rhinoceros. It being holiday time makes it a favourable moment.

“_21st May._—My bomb against Cromer has exploded with a real bang. The

‘Daily News’ gives it a leading article, the ‘Standard’ a whole column,

the ‘Morning Post’ printed my letter to the Editor and a _résumé_, the

‘Chronicle’ and ‘Daily Mail’ are also good, only the ‘Times’ and

‘Telegraph’ fail us. It could hardly have made a bigger noise.”

The great publicity obtained on this occasion in the Press made it

unnecessary for me to pursue it further, and it was agreed not to bring

it forward in Parliament. There was, of course, not the smallest chance

of obliging the Foreign Office to publish the correspondence, and the

publicity was already obtained. Moreover, before the Foreign Office Vote

came on for discussion the King’s illness had occurred, and nobody had

any attention to pay elsewhere. The case was of importance, not so much

in itself as from the demonstration it gave of the unscrupulous methods

resorted to by our diplomacy at Cairo to hide its tampering with the Law

Courts and whitewash the misdeeds of the Army of Occupation; the

publicity made it possible for me later to fix on Cromer the

responsibility of the scandalous Denshawai case.

“_29th May._—An early luncheon with George Wyndham and sat talking with

him for a couple of hours, mostly on his Irish policy. I am amused to

find him more and more of a Home Ruler, though he does not quite avow

it. He seems to have found out that it is a choice between that and

Government as a Crown Colony. I asked him whether he did not think the

Local Self Government Bill in Ireland had played entirely into the

Nationalists’ hands, and he admitted that perhaps it had, but it had

been a necessary part of the general Unionist policy of treating Ireland

precisely on the same lines as England. It might lead indirectly to a

sort of Home Rule, that is to say it might come to a union of the local

councils under one general council at Dublin which would practically

settle all Irish affairs. In the meanwhile the law had to be carried

out. There was hardly any real crime in Ireland; but where the law was

very clearly broken the Crimes Act must be put in force. He believed the

Irish leaders would secretly quite approve of this, for they did not

want crime any more than the Government did. What had always been

resented was the blundering in the choice of cases to be dealt with. On

the whole, the thing as far as he was concerned was to get his Land Bill

passed and his Catholic University Bill, both of which he meant to carry

through, and get through his term of office as peaceably as was

possible. He did not expect the Government to last out longer than

October 1903.

“We talked also on the larger aspects of Imperialism, and he agreed with

me that the violences done in connection with South Africa, necessary as

perhaps they were, had had an ill effect on our national character, and

that it might well happen that personal freedom and strict legality

would both suffer here in England in consequence. I have been reading

Stowe’s Chronicle of the reign of Henry VIII, and I reminded George of

the destruction in a very few years of both freedom and legality, and

how it had ruined the character of Englishmen to the extent that at the

close of the reign each nobleman was ready to betray his fellow-

conspirator, and each Bishop to recant his heresies, and each gentleman

condemned to death to beg abject pardon of his King for having opposed

him as if for a crime.

“_2nd June._—Peace has been signed at Pretoria. The country is

thoroughly war sick, and I hope will so remain during my lifetime. King

Edward was determined to have an end put to the fighting before his

coronation, and I fancy the Boers have had better terms given them than

people are aware of, and that the peace has been arrived at over

Chamberlain’s head and Milner’s. Talking of Chamberlain on Thursday,

George said of him that his character was completely misunderstood by

the public, who, judging by his face, thought him a cool, unimpassioned

calculator. He was just the reverse, being rash and impulsive in his

decisions, to a great extent a political gambler, anything but a safe

man to be at the head of affairs. George is beginning to learn things

now he is in office.

“_3rd June._—Madeline Wyndham took me to tea at Apsley House with her

son Guy and his wife and stepdaughter, a pretty child just out. The Duke

and Duchess showed us all over the house from garret to cellar, or

rather to the underground chamber, where the plate is displayed in huge

glass cases. The old Duke must have had a passion for silver plate, for

every crowned head seems to have presented him with some, the most

magnificent being the gift of the Portuguese Government. This last

includes thirty-two dozen silver dinner plates. It is unfortunately all

of a date which leaves its value something less than the weight of the

metal, though the Portuguese is better than the rest, enormous pieces of

preposterous design of the time of George IV, practically unusable.

There is something melancholy in such a vast display for every one

except the head butler, who has the proud charge of it. The Duke and

Duchess, however, take a full interest in it all, and explained

everything in detail to us very amiably. They are excellent people, he

rather stiff and formal as becomes the representative of his great

ancestor, whose half whisker he imitates; she a good-natured soul, and

both without pretension. They have only succeeded to their kingdom

within this last year. Upstairs the great ballroom is a really fine

thing, hung with a few good pictures and many bad ones, the best the

‘Velasquez’ obtained in Spain, and a sweet little religious picture of

two panels, I know not by whom; it is called an Albert Dürer. We had tea

in the garden under the old thorn trees just in full blossom. An

interesting visit.

“_4th June._—To bid good-bye to Rowton at his house in Berkeley Square.

He has been very ill, and is going away on a sea-voyage to the Cape and

back, which he thinks will set him right. I hope, indeed, it may, for I

have a considerable affection for him. His rooms, which had been newly

cleaned and decorated, looked bare and uncomfortable. He complained of

having no one to look after him or hang his pictures, or arrange his

furniture—the misery of never having married. ‘You see me,’ he said, ‘in

my sixty-fourth year, and I have never proposed to any woman in the way

of marriage, and there is no one who will care whether I live or die.’

He has been through a terrible time, having one of his ribs cut out by

Bennett at St. George’s Hospital. ‘It was a question of life or death in

twenty-four hours, and I said “Do it.”’ He asked me what I had myself

felt when at the point of death, and I told him, ‘A great indifference.’

‘It was the same with me,’ he said, ‘I did not care which way it might

go.’ It is strange to see a man with so many friends yet apparently so

little loved. There is nobody who looks after him, no woman who spends

her time with him, not even a nurse, nobody he thinks that loves him.

This must be terrible. Neither has he any religion to give him a false

hope, nor even a belief in his own philanthropic work. His nearest thing

to a creed is his worship of his old master, Disraeli.

“Then I went on to see John Dillon, and had a long talk about Ireland.

He is rather sceptical of George Wyndham’s Nationalist sympathies, and

says that he is putting the Coercion Act in force more vigorously in

some ways than Arthur Balfour did formerly. He gives hard labour now as

well as imprisonment, with a view to disqualifying men from serving on

County Councils. Dillon also talked much about the peace in South

Africa, as to which his views are much the same as mine. He was pleased

at my calculation that each Boer, man, woman, and child annexed will

have cost the British Government just £1.000. He talked strongly of the

ineptitude of the Liberal leaders in the House of Commons.

“Had tea with Princess Louise of Schleswig-Holstein, whom I had met at

Clouds in the autumn. She is living in a very small house in Queensbury

Place, which she has decorated with an enormous Union Jack in honour of

the peace. With her I found an old friend, Mary Hughes, her lady-in-

waiting, and a visitor, one Landon, who has been ‘Times’ correspondent

for the last five years in South Africa. Landon gave us a long account

of the origin and rise of the war, which was extremely interesting.

Inspired by the Princess’s sympathy, who interjected at every mention of

a Boer or of a pro-Boer, ‘He ought to have been shot—he ought to have

been hanged,’ he unfolded all his budget, and let us into many secrets.

‘I am perhaps,’ he said, ‘the only man who has ever ventured to ask Mr.

Chamberlain directly, whether he knew of the Jameson Raid before it

happened. I had myself known it was intended nearly a year before, as it

was talked of quite openly at Johannesburg as due to take place at the

end of the year, and it did in fact take place on the 31st of December.

Mr. Chamberlain, in answer to my question, said, ‘Well, I was consulted

as to what would be the attitude of the Government in the case of a

_bona fide_ popular rising at Johannesburg, and my answer was that if it

was _bona fide_ the High Commissioner would be instructed to intervene

to restore order, and of course that would have meant by the forces of

the Crown.’ ‘As a matter of fact,’ Landon explained, ‘the raid as nearly

as possible succeeded. What hindered its success was that the

Johannesburgers could not make up their minds what flag they should

hoist, the Union Jack or the flag of a Republic, and they had agreed to

send a Commissioner to Cape Town to settle this question, and while they

were awaiting the answer Jameson grew impatient, for his men got tired

of doing nothing, and were drifting away from him, and he resolved to

risk the coup. Jameson was always a gambler. When he was making £2,000 a

year as a Doctor, he used to lose £1,000 and £1,500 a night at cards,

and he treated the raid in the same gambler’s spirit. He had 500 men

still with him, in another week he would have had only fifty, and he

played his stake. If the Johannesburgers could have made up their minds,

they could have got possession of the fort and with it of the whole

situation, for all the ammunition, artillery, and supplies of the

Transvaal were there, and there were only seven men to guard it. The

thing might have been done quite easily. As it was it failed through

Jameson’s folly. He ordered the advance in spite of seventeen telegrams

he received ordering him to stop, including one from the Queen. ‘Yes,’

said the Princess, ‘Grandmama has several times told me long before it

happened, that she only hoped to be spared living to see another war in

South Africa.’

“Landon also told us about the part Schreiner had played in what he

called ‘the black week.’ Schreiner had up to that time been the trusted

leader under Hofmeyr, of the Bond, but he had the wit, Landon said, to

see that the defeat of the British armies would oblige England to

destroy the Dutch Republics, and he came over secretly to Milner. It was

this that prevented a general rising in Cape Colony, for all trusted

Schreiner, and when he advised against it the Dutch followed him. He

spoke of the Orange State as a model of good Government, honest in all

branches of its administration, and on good terms with the English

Government. I pushed him to say what reason there was for the war, which

he avowed was forced on by our side. He said it was one entirely of

racial ascendancy, and that if matters had been left alone for a few

years more, the Dutch would have become predominant in South Africa.

When I further asked what harm there would have been in that, his reply

was that a Dutch Government would have been a corrupt one, after the

fashion of the South American Republics. I walked back with him as far

as Hyde Park Corner.

“_10th June._—A lecture by Yeats at the Clifford’s Inn Hall in

explanation of his theory of recitation. As an entertainment it was

excellent, as he had got three ladies who recited admirably to the

accompaniment of the psaltery invented by Dolmetsch, who himself took

the chair at the meeting and explained everything musically. Yeats,

however, was far from convincing me that the method was either new or

good as a way of reading poetry, indeed it reduced the verse to the

position it holds in an opera libretto. It was impossible to distinguish

whether the words were sense or only sound, and the whole effect

depended on the reciter.

“_11th June._—With Neville to another lecture to hear Bernard Shaw

defend his position as a Socialist (especially as to the part he had

taken against the Boers in the late war). It was a very clever

performance, for he is a brilliant and ready speaker full of paradox and

ingenious jesting, but it was clear his socialist audience was not much

with him, and it was impossible to take his doctrines seriously. To me

the Fabian position has nothing to recommend it. It is socialism without

the few humanitarian virtues which commonly go with it, without romance

and without honesty of principle, only opportunism.

“_15th June (Sunday)._—Newbuildings. Yeats is here with others, and we

had an afternoon of poetry, but all agreed that Yeats’ theories of

recitation were wrong, useful only for concealing indifferent verse.

When he recites it is impossible to follow the meaning, or judge whether

the verse is good or bad. All the same he is a true poet, more than his

work reveals him to be, and he is full of ideas, original and true, with

wit into the bargain. We all like him.

“I am trying to dramatize one of the Cuchulain episodes for Yeats to

bring out next year in his Cuchulain cycle of plays at Dublin [‘Fand’].

“_23rd June._—The whole of London is decorated for the Coronation, the

line of the processions being barricaded with stands for spectators,

covered with red cloth. Though the decorations are not generally in the

best taste, the general effect is gay, and the grime of London is

clothed and put out of sight. Very few modern buildings are not improved

by being faced with scaffolding. Immense crowds parade the streets, and

traffic is blocked.

“_24th June._—A bolt has fallen from the blue. The King is ill, has

undergone an operation, and the Coronation is postponed.” [So little was

the misfortune expected that the King and Queen had been photographed,

robed and crowned in anticipation. I have one of these photographs by me

still. There never was so dramatic a misfortune.]

“_25th June._—Called at Dorchester House to write my name down for

Princess Hélène, who with her husband represents the King of Italy at

the Coronation, and at 35 Park Lane to give Lettice her wedding gift and

the Sonnet I have written her. I found her with Lord Beauchamp, her

fiancé, a good looking, smooth faced young man, who complained much of

the deception that had been practised on the public in regard to the

King’s illness. Passing through the Park I found Rotten Row crowded, not

a trace of trouble on any face, though the newspapers talk of general

gloom. On the contrary, streets are full of gay sightseers, satisfied to

look at the decorations since there will be nothing more. Returning

after dark I found the Park still crowded, but almost exclusively by

lovers who occupied each bench in pairs reposing, according to the naïve

London custom, in each other’s arms.

“_5th July._—The day of our horse sale. I am camped at Caxtons very

pleasantly. As a social function all went off most prosperously. Five

hundred and ninety people had accepted invitations, and some five

hundred sat down to luncheon. Also the quality of the guests was

exalted—Princess Louise, the Sultan of Perak with a turbaned suite,

Pertab Singh, Maharajah of Idar with the same, some twenty Colonial big

wigs, including Barton, Prime Minister of the new Australian

commonwealth, and a fair show of our own Lords and Ladies. My health was

proposed by Lord Egerton, and I made a rather longer speech than usual

in reply. There was no hitch in any of the arrangements, and all the

world was pleased. The sole thing wanting was the presence of buyers for

the horses. It was the worst sale we have had in all our twenty years,

as last year’s was the best.

“_10th July._—Newbuildings. Hilaire Belloc came to see me and stayed to

dinner. He is a very clever fellow, a good talker, and a powerful wine

drinker, as his book, ‘The Path to Rome,’ indicates. (I had not met him

since sometime in the eighties, when he came as an Oxford undergraduate

to consult me on a plan he had of bringing out a Catholic magazine.) We

had an amusing evening trotting out paradoxes.” [This entry records

Belloc’s arrival to take up his residence in Shipley, who was afterwards

to prove so good and interesting a neighbour to me for so many years.]

“_13th July (Sunday)._—Labouchere and his wife and daughter, Bill Gordon

and Sibyl Queensberry are here (Newbuildings) for a Sunday visit.

Labouchere in the highest possible form, brimming over with wit and good

stories, the most brilliant talker in England, now Oscar Wilde is gone.

Gordon, too, is no bad talker on his own subjects. Labouchere is to

retire from Parliament at the dissolution, and has bought Michael

Angelo’s Villa at Florence, where he means to live. He is busy pulling

the Villa about ‘to suit it,’ he says, ‘to modern requirements,’

uprooting old trees in the _podere_ and planting new ones. About this

vandalism, as about all else, he is shamelessly amusing. ‘Old Michael,’

he explained, ‘didn’t understand how to make a house comfortable, it’s

time we should teach him.’ His daughter tells me he is a model father,

always in good humour, and never scolding her. Indeed he is full of

private kindnesses in spite of his public ferocity, and they are a very

happy family. I like them all. We sat up till half-past one last night,

and he must have told quite a hundred stories and nearly all new. To-day

Belloc joined us at dinner, and proved too talkative for Labouchere, who

would not compete with him.”

“The Duke of Norfolk’s undeveloped son is dead, and Meynell, whom I saw

on Friday was full of anecdotes about him, tragical enough, from his

birth, which when it happened was considered an event of the extremest

significance in all the English Catholic world, down to this drear

conclusion. Perhaps the most pathetic incident was when he was on

pilgrimage at Lourdes to which place they repeatedly went in search of a

miracle for him. As the ducal party approached the shrine they found

themselves face to face with a crowd of joyous French peasants chaunting

in honour of a cure which had just been wrought, and the verse of the

psalm they were singing was ‘He hath filled the hungry with good things,

but the rich he hath sent empty away.’ ‘We shall have no miracle,’ said

the Duke, and the Duchess burst into tears. The boy as he grew up had a

beautiful face, but he had no mind, and he never learnt to speak. The

only words he knew were ‘Pretty boy, pretty boy,’ which he had heard

strangers say who came to see him, and he repeated these when he became

excited mechanically. His father spent several hours every day with him,

but he did not know his father, except as a playfellow, and when the

Duke came back from his campaign in South Africa the boy had clean

forgotten him. This was a sad wound to the Duke. The Duke, some think,

will never remarry. He considers that he resisted a vocation when he did

not become an Oratorian, and that he was accursed for this in his son by

Heaven. He is more likely to end his days as a priest. The little Lord

Arundel is to be buried to-day.

“_14th July._—Lord Salisbury has resigned, and is succeeded as Prime

Minister by Arthur Balfour. This has disappointed the extreme

Imperialists who have been intriguing for the last four years for

Chamberlain, but I think Balfour will be found just as uncompromising a

Jingo as the other; however, it makes for morality in England, and so on

the whole I am glad.

“The Tower of St. Mark’s at Venice has fallen, its foundation probably

undermined by the wash of the steamers and the dredging of the canals.

“_21st July._—There are to be changes in the new Cabinet, Hicks Beach

has resigned and Lord Cadogan, so George Wyndham will get his step

whether he stays in Ireland or not.”

The first fortnight of August was spent by me in making my annual

driving tour, this time through East Sussex, and afterwards for a month

at Fernycroft, writing my play, “Fand,” with other poetry. I find

nothing of political importance in my diary for many weeks. In November

I was for a week at Gros Bois and Paris, where I found everything in a

state of political quiescence, all that was being talked of being a

certain growth of Socialism. On the 22nd, being about to start finally

for Egypt, I went to see George Wyndham in Park Lane, and he gave me a

full account of his plans for Ireland. Next session he is to bring in a

bill to deal finally with the land question on the basis of compulsory

purchase, aided with English credit. He has got a majority, and more

than a majority of the Irish landlords to agree to it, and thinks he can

carry it through at a cost, if I understand him rightly, of about

seventy millions. The extreme cost he put at £120,000,000, the security

for which from the English taxpayer is to be got out of the Public Aids

given to the local rates, which will be stopped if the tenants of the

County aided fail to pay their yearly rent. He intends to deal very

liberally with the readjustment of the financial relations of England

with Ireland, and the money thus paid annually to Ireland will be the

security of the Land Purchase settlement. Lastly, he will endow a

Catholic University. I asked him what he thought would be the outcome of

all this if it was effected, Home Rule or a closer Union. He admitted

that it would probably lead to Home Rule, but said it was not his

business to look so far ahead. Indeed if he carries out all he talked of

he will have done enough for one man. As to coercion, he said his

revival of it was the price he had had to pay for obtaining a free hand

from his colleagues in the Cabinet. He had made large use of the London

press, and the support of the “Times” could only be bought by coercion.

George was in his most sanguine and optimist vein, and felt certain of

success. We were interrupted at this point, and he promised to look in

on me at Chapel Street in the afternoon. This he did, but we were no

longer alone, and the Irish talk was not renewed.