better this year in Persia, in Turkey, in India, and in Egypt, the cause
of liberty has been making progress and Cromer himself. This time last
year Cromerism, if not Cromer, seemed to be having it all his own way,
now the self-Government of Asia seems an admitted principle, even at our
Foreign Office. Grey and even Morley are being dragged at the heels of
Eastern progress. Thus ends the year 1908.
“_1st Jan._ 1909.—An earthquake in Sicily. Messina destroyed.
“_5th Jan._—The Government has certainly managed things cleverly in
India. A few days before Morley made his speech announcing his reforms
they arrested all the leaders of the Opposition, and impounded the chief
organs of the extremists at Calcutta and elsewhere, and in this way
silenced hostile criticism. Then they got hold of Gokhale to give them a
good word, and also, it would seem, telegraphed the headings of Morley’s
speech in a more favourable sense than the reality (a common Government
trick), just as the Moderate Congress began its sittings, thus getting
declarations from it of a ‘loyal’ character, which, as the Extremist
Congress had been forbidden to meet, has been accepted as the unanimous
voice of educated India. I suspect that a good deal of the more recent
bomb throwing, which has hurt nobody, has been managed by the police, so
as to give the Government an excuse for violent measures. In the
meanwhile, here in England, Morley had delayed his speech till the last
day of the session, so as to prevent his measures being discussed in
Parliament. Now the subject of India is dropped, and we shall hear no
more of it till the next crisis comes.
“_6th Jan._—I have been reading the ‘Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun,’
the most beautiful ever written; I wish I could be sure of their
authenticity, but it seems to me very doubtful. They are too perfect as
literature for any Portuguese nun to have written, and nobody has ever
seen the original Portuguese. They were first printed in French in 1769,
and their authenticity seems to rest solely on what St. Simon says about
them, namely, that they were addressed to the Comte de Chamilly. I
should like to believe in them. (_Traduttore tradittore_.)
“_8th Jan._—There is an article in to-day’s ‘Daily Graphic’ which amuses
me. It is a protest against Russian designs in Persia which have reached
the stage of threatening intervention there to put down anarchy and re-
establish the deposed Shah, with a Constitutional régime at Teheran.
What amuses me is the moral indignation of the ‘Daily Graphic,’ an
extreme jingo journal, at Russian insincerity, entirely forgetful of the
history of our own intervention in Egypt which was undertaken on exactly
the same excuse. The ‘Daily Graphic’ says: ‘That Great Britain should
abet so scandalous a conspiracy against the liberties of the Persian
people is incredible. The condition of Persia is not one of aimless
anarchy but of revolution, and in such a state of things no foreign
Government has a right to interfere. That the movement against the Shah
is a national one is proved by the revolt of Ispahan. The pretence that
the people are not ripe for a Constitution will be most convincingly
answered by the Persians themselves, possession is the best title to
popular liberties . . . in any case Great Britain cannot be a party to
an intervention aimed at a people struggling for freedom, more
especially as this freedom is already theirs by Constitutional right.’
Every word of this might have been written against our intervention in
Egypt in the Spring of 1882, but our Tories are incredible in their
self-blindness.
“_10th Jan. (Sunday)._—Malony writes an interesting account of affairs
at Constantinople and the probability of there being a line of cleavage
between the Turkish-speaking and the Arabic-speaking elements in the
Ottoman parliament. This was sure to be, but the immediate danger is of
a Balkan war pressed on by Austria which will break out in the Spring.
Haymerlé, I remember, used as long ago as 1860, when we were attachés
together at Athens, to explain to me that it was a settled part of
Austrian policy to shift the centre of the Empire eastwards, and make
good the imperial title of Emperor of the Oesterreich. They will never
allow the Turks to reform themselves in earnest, and all the more now
that Russia, beaten by Japan, is no longer so great a military rival. I
am writing to Malony to warn him of this and not to trust too much to
English help. If given at all it will be restricted to the defence of
Constantinople.
“_12th Jan._—There is a telegram to-day confirming my fear of Austrian
intervention in the Spring and of a secret understanding between Austria
and Bulgaria for intervention in Macedonia, it can hardly be otherwise.
[Compare Dr. Dillon’s ‘Eclipse of Russia.’]
“_14th Jan._—An arrangement is said to have been come to between Austria
and Turkey which I hope may prove an end to the danger of war, at least
for the present, and so Turkey may get breathing time for its internal
affairs. In my letter to Malony I advised that no attempt should be made
at coercing the tribes in Arabia, and that the Turks should restrict
themselves to holding the seaports so as to prevent European aggression.
I am sure this is their wisest policy. Eventually there will have to be
some form of administrative autonomy in the Arabic-speaking provinces.
“_16th Jan._—To-day is the centenary of the battle of Corunna, where my
father was wounded. He had made the campaign with Sir John Moore as
junior ensign of the 1st Grenadier Guards, and was carrying the colours
at the final battle when he got his wound. He was carried on board the
‘Victory,’ and came home in her and was landed at Plymouth where he
arrived with little hope of recovery, his wound having been neglected
from the multiplicity of cases, the calf of one leg had been shot away
and he remained lame through life and was obliged to leave the army on
account of it, though able afterwards to ride and even walk, shooting
with the best. On landing at Plymouth he was taken charge of by his
uncle Glanville at Catchfrench and nursed by his cousins there. The
miniature of him in scarlet uniform shows him a pale young man just
convalescent. He was only sixteen when he joined the Guards, and was
sent out straight from Harrow where he had been a younger contemporary
of Byron. The campaign, according to my father’s account of it repeated
to me as a child, must have been carried on in a curiously amateur way.
My father, like the rest of the officers, was allowed to take with him
his fowling-piece and a brace of pointers for sport on the campaign, and
I have now the heavy mahogany desk and still heavier box for papers
which were among his baggage. The officers were mounted, but on the
retreat, in order to encourage their men, they walked on foot. The
pointers were left behind while fording a river which they could not
swim, and thus put an end to the sport. ‘The Burial of Sir John Moore’
was amongst the first pieces of poetry I learned, my mother explaining
to me that the line originally printed ‘The foe was suddenly firing’
ought to have been printed ‘sullenly’ as it always now is. My father
retained a great devotion to Moore. There is probably not another person
in England to-day whose father was in the battle.
“_19th Jan._—The ‘Egyptian Standard’ is dead. It has been moribund for
six months.
“I have been reading Haeckel’s Berlin lectures on evolution. They
interest me immensely, first because they are quite clear and easy to
understand, and secondly, because I see in them my own reading of the
Universe and the ‘Matter God,’ a philosophy I jumped to in 1861, exactly
reproduced in the lectures and laid down and proved. I have a paper of
that date which I wrote for Usedom who had given me an article in a
Berlin scientific journal of the day, on ‘Design in Creation,’ of which
he thought a great deal, and in this paper I give boldly, but with
sufficient clearness, my doctrine of pure materialism which Haeckel
claims to have been the first to propound in 1863.”
I find among my records of that year, 1861, a short paper showing how
rapidly my mind had worked, which is worth mentioning here, for it
contains as I think the germ of the Monist philosophy elaborated some
years later by Haeckel, and which is still the soundest line of
materialistic argument. The paper was written not for publication, but
in private answer to an article which Usedom had given me to read, taken
from the “Zeit” newspaper, in reviewing Ulrici’s work, _Gott und die
Natur_. The ground taken by the article had been Paley’s old one with
the precisely same formula our Jesuit censors had condemned at
Stonyhurst, “Through the contemplation of created things, by steps we
may ascend to God.” The writer in attacking evolution, had referred his
readers to the evidence of the _Natur-Forscher_, the Naturalist, who in
an infinite variety of living things had found the evidence of a
creative Mind. For every effect, he had argued, there must be a cause,
and that cause is God. Taking up this point in my reply to the writer, I
begin by asking, “What is the God he, the _Natur-Forscher_, finds in
Nature, an impersonal or a personal God? If impersonal, why dignify the
recognized forces, whose existence none doubts, with so high a name? If
personal, including the idea of first causer and planner, why _assume_
that Nature is an _effect_ when that was the very point to be proved?”
Why speak of a Creation unless to postulate a Creator? If we find an
order in Nature, is it necessary to assume an Orderer? Why should blind
forces be necessarily a chaos? Is not every “Law of Nature” the
statement only of a continuous fact? Might we not as well assume a
Disorderer, were no order there? Order is but the way of material being.
I went on from this to examine what the _Natur-Forscher_ showed us;—with
his telescope, a Universe apparently unbounded and so infinitely great;
with his microscope, a world infinitely divisible, infinitely small;—a
Universe without bound in Time, therefore apparently Eternal, eternal in
the past as it shows no sign of beginning, eternal in the future as it
shows no sign of decay; nothing is added to the material, nothing taken
from it; it remains unchanged in substance, varying in form only. What
must we reflect, I ask, upon such news as this? Here are the old
attributes we assigned to God, “He who is,” the Eternal, the Infinite.
Why then not the Self-Existent? Neither in Time nor Space has any fact
revealed an external power, Creation is but a metaphysical idea untested
by fact. Again, our _Natur-Forscher_ will tell us that Mind is a mere
phenomenon of yesterday as compared with Matter, that it sprang
therefrom by a gradual and sufficiently marked development, but so
gradually that it is impossible to note where it began. Is the actinia a
fish or a plant? Where does Mind preponderate over Matter in the brute
creation?—in the lower forms of Man himself, _der Gipfel der Natur? Der
Mensch ist was er isst_.
The second half of my syllogism was this: “It is a law of human reason
(that is to say its universal experience) that the simplest cause is the
best. We are bound, as philosophers call it, to aim at unity; two
reasons may not be admitted where one suffices; it is useless to search
for the law of the law. Arrived at the Universe we have the law, then
why go farther? Here is no knot. Then do not bring in a God to solve it.
. . . Thus we see that Nature does not lead us necessarily to believe in
God, that its order is rather a proof of its self-existence than of its
dependence. The _Zusammenhang_ shows that it hangs only on itself.
Disorder must suppose a Disorderer quite as much as an Arranger, etc.”
Such was the argument of my paper, which is headed _Nec Deus intersit
nisi vindex judice nodus_. I was but twenty when I framed it, a doctrine
of pure Materialism with its Monist formula “Mind an accident of
Matter”; and when I wrote the doggerel verse called “Body and Soul.” It
is an argument I still hold unanswerable in logic, and which, in spite
of more than one desperate effort in after life, has ever since
dominated my reason. Yet though it satisfied my reason it did not all at
once content me. On the contrary, its cruel logic oppressed me with a
sense of irreparable loss and I still clung, notwithstanding reason, to
an unreasoning belief in God as an inherited instinct of my soul. My
last words in this very paper, were “For God’s sake and His recognition
among men, let us avoid the _Natur-Forscher_ and hold fast by our
eternal unreasonable consciousness of a Father who is in Heaven.” The
Matter God I had imagined in place of the personal God was a thought
that made me giddy when it presented itself first to me, as a demon by
my incantations out of the forbidden books that I was reading; and in
the middle of my intellectual debauch I found life unutterably sad. But
once evoked I could not evade it or the destruction it involved of that
other consoling doctrine of Man’s supernatural destiny, his life beyond
the grave. I found myself as it were deprived of my soul’s birthright,
proved to be no lawful heir; no child of God with Heaven for my
inheritance and eternal bliss for my reward, but just a common “by-blow”
of Nature, undistinguishable from her humblest offspring the thousand
and one forms of the brute beasts that perish—a humiliating and
demoralizing thought.
“_1st Feb._—Terence Bourke has been with me for the last two days. He is
now quite with me about the reform movement in the East and the Future
Independence of Egypt. There is better news from Persia, where it is
reported that the Shah’s army has been defeated by the
Constitutionalists, and the three Russian officers in his service are
flying for their lives. Browne is issuing a useful pamphlet about the
revolution there.
“_5th Feb._—I have moved to London for some weeks, to Chapel Street.
Cockerell dined with me, very happy, he tells me, at Cambridge, enjoying
the life there and acquiring influence with the undergraduates.
“_9th Feb._—In the afternoon came Brailsford, with whom I discussed
Turkey, Persia, Egypt, India, and Somaliland. He thinks Grey is
practically selling both Turkey and Bulgaria to Russia, as he sold
Persia. Brailsford is making a good fight for them in the ‘Daily News.’
“_13th Feb._—There is another crisis in Constantinople, an attempt by
Kiamil Pasha, the Grand Vizier, to bring about a reactionary _coup
d’état_. He has dismissed the Ministers of War and Marine, and appointed
new ones. If the Parliament does not insist on his dismissal the
Constitution will go to ruin, as it went thirty years ago, at least so I
read the telegrams.
“_17th Feb._—The crisis at Constantinople has passed off well, the
Committee of Union and Progress, with its great majority in Parliament,
having forced Kiamil to give in his resignation. This will be an
excellent example, and was absolutely necessary if they are not to lose
what had been gained by the revolution. The ‘Times,’ however, and ‘Pall
Mall’ and other financial papers are very angry, just as they were angry
when Sherif Pasha had to resign at Cairo in 1882. There are finance
schemes at the bottom of it all now as then, and precisely the same
arguments are used about military pressure having been put upon the
Chamber, the _pronunciamento_ it is called.
“_25th Feb._—Morley has produced his Indian Bill in the Lords, a great
flourish of trumpets about a very small matter. Morley will not be at
the India Office long enough to set the reforms really going, and his
successors and the Anglo-Indian officials will take care that these are
neutralized in detail, as they easily can be. If Morley had been serious
he would have brought in his Bill three years ago when he had an all-
powerful Radical House of Commons behind him, but he did absolutely
nothing, nor would he have done anything but for the boycottings and
assassinations. Then he tried the first sham reform, a council of tame
landlords, suggested to him by the Anglo-Indian officials, and now he
puts forward this other sham suggested by Gokhale. They will lead to
nothing. Still the East is awake and moving.
“Conny Lytton has been arrested with other suffragettes, and is to-night
in Holloway gaol. She has led a hermit’s life at home for the last
fifteen years, seldom going away from her fireside, nor from her
mother’s wing, now she suddenly takes up this suffrage question in its
most violent form.
“I hear from Lady C. that the poor King is really very ill, though they
do all they can to hide it. The present attack they say dates from his
visit to the Kaiser Wilhelm at Berlin, caused by wearing a Prussian
uniform too tight at the throat.
“_1st March._—I have been reading Newman’s ‘Loss and Gain,’ which I read
years ago, but had forgotten. In style I think it quite perfect, having
the same sort of quiet humour one finds in Jane Austen’s novels, but
even more subdued. The characters are admirably drawn, and justify
themselves in speech and action in a way so many novelists miss,
including Meredith; thus it continues to interest one in spite of its
strangely out-of-date controversial Theology. Newman’s mind, at any rate
in his Oxford days, seems never to have faced the real issues of belief
and unbelief, those which have to be fought out with materialism, yet
the book was published less than a dozen years before Darwin’s ‘Origin
of Species.’ What a gulf separates us from that time, the epoch of
undoubting belief in the literal inspiration of the Holy Scriptures. It
seems difficult to realize the time when the best and sanest minds in
England were arguing about the Apostolical Succession and the Councils
of the early Church, unconscious of the wider issues about to be opened,
just as they were at Constantinople about the Procession of the Holy
Ghost, while Sultan Mahmud was hammering at the gates.
“_5th March._—Chapel Street. Frank Lascelles lunched with me, and we had
a pleasant talk about old times. He has seen much lately of the King,
having been at Sandringham and Windsor, and constantly asked to meet his
Majesty at dinner and play bridge with him. He gives the same account of
the King’s short temper that Lady C. did, and of the language he uses to
his partners when the cards go wrong. I asked him whether the King was a
good player, and he said, ‘Oh no, when he has a good hand with his dummy
he knows how to make the best of it, but he has no knowledge of where
the unseen cards should be.’ The King is off to-day to Biarritz, and I
gather that there is something seriously the matter with his throat.
Frank talked highly of the King’s knowledge of Foreign politics, and of
his tact and skill in dealing with them. Cromer was Frank’s subordinate
in Egypt in 1879, and he told me that meeting Cromer the other day, he
had remarked, ‘I suppose we shall be having the Emperor William talking
again in a few days, it seems impossible to make him hold his tongue.’
Frank’s reply hit Cromer hard: ‘Yes, as impossible as it is to make you
hold yours.’ Cromer deserved it, for he has been talking a deal of
nonsense since he returned from Egypt about things he does not
understand. Lady Cromer has become a suffragette in opposition to her
lord.
“Next we talked about the Sackville case, which is just now much in the
papers. I asked him what his recollection was about Lionel West’s having
ever acknowledged his marriage with Pepita, and he said that he had
never heard him acknowledge it, though, of course, they were together at
the Paris Embassy. If he had acknowledged it Frank would have taken his
own wife to call on her. But there was never question of it. Lionel was
the most secretive of men. Some years ago he had written to Frank to ask
him what his memory was on the point of such acknowledgment, and Frank
had answered him in the sense just given. On the other hand, there were
one or two curious facts within Frank’s recollection. Pepita died at
Arcachon during the Commune, while Lionel was in charge of the Embassy
at Paris, and Frank was with him when he received the telegram
announcing her death from Lord Lyons, who was at Bordeaux, which was as
follows: ‘_Votre pauvre femme vient de mourir. Vos enfants vous
appelent_.’ Lionel asked him what he ought to do. Could he leave Paris?
It was agreed that certainly he ought to go. Lionel was terribly
overcome, for he was devoted to her, and Frank saw him off to the
Orleans station in a private brougham they found in the street, for
there were no cabs on hire—as an affair ‘_de vie et mort_.’ This would
seem to show that Lord Lyons recognized the marriage, but nobody
actually knew. John Bidwell once put the question plainly to Lionel, and
his answer was ‘the person most interested in knowing knows the whole
facts.’ Another curious incident, taken in connection with the present
case, which is being tried at Madrid, of a page in the entries of the
marriage register having been torn out, is this: It happened also while
Lionel was in charge at Paris. Sir Richard Wallace had been married at
the Embassy, and Lionel one day looking through the Register, found the
entry recording it and tore out the page, saying, ‘the marriage is an
irregular one, and ought not to be here.’ Atlee, who was Librarian in
charge of the Archives, was shocked at this, and insisted that Lionel
should restore the page and write an acknowledgment of its having been
torn out. My own impression from all this is that Lionel wished to make
a legal marriage with Pepita, but knew of her previous marriage, and
perhaps went through some form of marriage with her secretly, wishing to
legitimize the children one day, at least in France—that in order to
secure this he got the page of the Madrid register torn out which would
have been evidence against them, indeed of his own first marriage. It is
certain that he entered his later children as legitimate. Afterwards,
however, when he had become Lord Sackville, the succession to the title
and estates became a matter of importance, and as his chief love was for
his daughter Victoria, whom his marriage could not legitimize in
England, for she was born before the secret marriage, and whom he had
married to his nephew, he changed his mind and wished to destroy all
trace of it and, to make matters surer for his nephew, Victoria’s
husband, got him to restore the torn out page recording Pepita’s first
marriage to its place in the Madrid register. This, I think, is the only
possible solution of the puzzle consistent with Lionel’s honourable
character, the love he bore to Pepita, and the love he bore to Victoria.
It would account, too, for his nephew’s part in the affair, for there
would be nothing dishonourable in _restoring_ a missing page to its
proper place. The truth about the double marriage was probably told by
Lionel to his brother Edward and Edward’s son, the present peer, and it
was agreed between them to say nothing about it, and trust to chance, as
the case could not legally arise during Lionel’s lifetime. I expect all
this will come out when it is tried in the House of Lords. Meynell,
however, whom I saw later in the day, declares that the burden of proof
will lie with those who deny Lionel’s marriage. I am of opinion that the
nephew and Victoria will be able to retain their possession of Knole and
the title. But it is a most interesting problem.
“_8th March._—Called on Margot in Downing Street, and finding her alone
stayed on for an hour. We talked among other things of Conny Lytton’s
imprisonment and the doings of the suffragettes, from whom she gets
numerous threatening letters, not all of them anonymous, menacing her
with bombs and even the murder of her children. She got one only the
other day and has to be guarded by police. There were two at the door as
I came in and every caller has to be scrutinized, and I had been kept
waiting five minutes for this in the hall before I was allowed upstairs.
‘Even my brothers,’ Margot said, ‘have to submit to this.’ I told her of
a letter I had received about Conny from her sister Betty, and she
expressed great concern and asked what she could do to make her
comfortable at Holloway. Could she send her things to eat, or what? I
told her there was nothing to be done except to keep her in hospital,
where she would be well looked after, but I advised her strongly to
cease the war with the suffragettes if she could; there was nothing so
demoralizing for a country as to put people in prison for their
opinions. This could be seen in Ireland, where nobody felt it any longer
a disgrace to be in gaol. She said: ‘I suppose they will get what they
want in the end, though I don’t suppose it will do them any good. Henry
says that it all depends on the Cabinet, where there is a majority in
favour of the suffrage, but he does not see how women could be kept out
of Parliament if they got the vote, and that would never do. From this
we went on to Francis Thompson and other pleasanter themes till the hour
went by, and her doctor calling, I said good-bye. I am very fond of
Margot. Years do not change her nor the deceitfulness of politics.
“_10th March._—Father Tyrrell and George Wyndham came to luncheon with
me, and we had an interesting discussion on poetry, literature, and
religion. We talked about the proposed new ‘Life of Newman,’ which is
being brought out by Wilfrid Ward. Tyrrell doubted whether it would be a
sincere one as to Newman’s attitude towards Papal Infallibility, and he
told us how a letter from Newman to Lord Emley, dated 1870, had recently
been destroyed, in which Newman had spoken strongly against it. It was
untrue to say that Newman had never had a doubt since he joined the
Church. Newman, he agreed with me, had never really argued out the
fundamentals on which Christianity is based, the existence of God and
the reality of a revelation. Newman’s attitude is epitomized in his
‘History of My Religious Opinions’: ‘I believe in God because I believe
in the existence of myself and in my consciousness of right and wrong,
all the rest is a matter of development,’ or words to that effect.
Tyrrell to-day was in his most attractive, least aggressive mood.
“After this I went on to Farm Street, which had been so long Father
Tyrrell’s home, and sat an hour with his once fellow Jesuits, Fathers
Gerard and Pollen. Father Gerard showed me his ‘History of Stonyhurst,’
where we had been at school together, and gave me a little play, an
extravaganza he had written for the centenary of the College. He talked
also of Alfred Russel Wallace and his opinions, which he thought
illogical, and of W. H. Hudson, and of various matters of natural
history, which has always been his hobby.
“_11th March._—John Dillon came to lunch and we discussed Persian,
Turkish, and Egyptian affairs, about which he has been worrying the
Government in Parliament. We talked also about old times in Ireland,
when we two worked together. ‘It is astonishing,’ he said, ‘how all the
doings of that time are forgotten. There is hardly a young man in
Ireland now who has any knowledge of what the Land League accomplished,
or who Michael Davitt was, or what was the Plan of Campaign. The ten
years that followed the Parnell split were a political blank. It has
left a gap in our history.’ I asked him whether George Wyndham’s Land
Bill had done good or harm? ‘Something of both,’ he said, ‘the people
who have taken advantage of it had become better off, but it has not
stopped the decrease of population nor the emigration. One thing it has
not changed, the ill-feeling towards England is stronger than it ever
was.’ ‘As long as that is the case,’ I said, ‘things are going right.’
“_12th March._—I was premature in thinking I had converted Margot in the
direction of peace with the Suffragettes. She writes in strong language
about them: ‘I personally think the women criminal as they threaten
people’s lives and incite the rotters in the street to storm anything
and anybody. They are hysterical, full of vanity, and too idle to
promote their cause in an intellectual way. . . . Let them have the vote
after a general election approves of it, but let us be in peace till
then.’ I am answering: ‘You must not be angry with me for what I said in
favour of the Suffragettes. I have no brief for them, nor do I take much
interest one way or another in their cause. I should be against them if
I thought there was the smallest chance of woman rule in England, but
there is none, no more than there is danger of “the Yellow Peril” in
Europe, or the “Negro Peril” in America. Women have never ruled men
anywhere and never will except indirectly by being better and kinder and
less selfish than we are. You are one of these, and if I talked as I did
it was because I was afraid you might focus on yourself the resentment
of some foolish women who would do you an injury in anger at having been
treated criminally for a political offence. I know how violent ideas
work in enthusiastic people’s minds. That is my chief interest in the
quarrel. So absolve me. The whole woman’s movement is not worth a curl
of your brown head, which may God protect from evil.’
“An Indian gentleman, Mr. Khaparde, called on me with a letter of
introduction from Hyndman. Here is a genuine Nationalist of a very
different type from Gokhale and Lajpat Rai. He is in England now for the
first time to do what he can in favour of his friend Tilak, who has been
deported to Mandalay. He brought Tilak’s case before the Privy Council
but, of course, without result, and he is now trying to get a petition
signed in favour of his friend’s release, and present it in Parliament.
He spoke very openly in an extreme national sense, saying that everyone
in India now was for eventual independence, even the moderates, though
people dared not say all they thought. ‘Even the Mohammedans?’ I asked,
and he said there was no real difference of opinion between them and the
Hindoos, ‘in a revolt they would all be with us. They hate English rule,
perhaps more than we do, because, except in the West, it was they, not
we, who had been deprived of power by the English. The Moderates,’ he
said, ‘were swayed by motives of personal interest, but they had no
following in the country. Gokhale found it to his advantage to play the
English game or he would not be where he is. As for Lajpat Rai, his
arrest had been a blunder, for he was a man of no importance, the real
leaders of the riots being still at large.’ He said he found our people
here in England very different to what he had imagined them. He had been
brought up with the tradition of their being full of good qualities,
liberal, hospitable, and kindly, he found them entirely engrossed in
money-making, and it was impossible to get them to take any interest in
Indian questions. His visit to England had convinced him that it was
useless to appeal to any sense of justice, there must be more than talk
in India before any change could come about and violence there would be.
He was scornful about Morley’s reforms, they would be useless except to
the few hangers-on to the Government who would get places and pay. They
would never have been given at all but for the bombs, and the reforms
were not intended now to be effective. The Indian Government had got all
it wanted—special powers of arrest and imprisonment and of putting down
the freedom of the Press. I asked him whether this would stop the
revolutionary movement. He said on the contrary, it would accelerate it,
they would work on all the same in secret and more effectively. Khaparde
has adopted European dress but still wears his red turban; he has great
intelligence and his ideas are precise and strongly expressed. He is to
come again.
“_16th March._—Poor Peploe Brown is dead. Yesterday his servant Fred
called on me and gave me a long account of his master’s illness and
death. It was a pathetic story told in that odd cockney language ‘Fwed’
was famous for. I had never heard exactly about Peploe’s early life, for
great talker as he was, he never spoke of it to anyone, and Fred had
only learned it from a brother who came to him in his last days, for all
that he had ever said to Fred was that ‘God had been hard to him in his
youth.’ It appears that forty-six years ago, being a young lieutenant in
the army, he had married a girl he loved and who loved him, but almost
in their honeymoon she had been taken with a fever and died. This
destroyed his life. He left the army, wandered about the world, took up
painting and adopted Bohemian ways. For the last twenty years he had
occupied a studio in York Place, where he died. He had squandered all
his money and lived there in the greatest poverty. I knew him through
his fellow-painter, Molony, who had made friends with him many years
before at Madrid. He was the kindest of men, and when Molony grew old he
nursed him and took great care of him notwithstanding Molony’s somewhat
scornful protests, who used to swear at him as ‘that damned fellow
Peploe.’ About the time Molony died he himself got a return of malarial
fever which attacked his spine (much as my case was), and for the last
twelve years he has been practically paralysed and has remained day and
night sitting in his armchair, never going to bed or lying down, and
often at a loss how to get a meal, for he could not sell his pictures.
He could not have lived but for his servant Fred’s good care, who for
the last fifteen years had done all for him with wonderful devotion,
coming each morning at a very early hour to the studio and staying on
till eight or nine at night and never a day off during all those years.
There was no bed for him in the studio. Peploe spent his lonely nights
reading, sometimes Fred said for thirteen hours at a time, though he was
almost blind and had to use microscopic glasses applied to his single
valid eye. Being alone at night he had had a number of contrivances
arranged to put out or light the gas, or to call for help if needed, for
he was an ingenious mechanician. Last Christmas he was taken with a
strong bronchitis and a violent attack of what Fred called ‘his
lightning pines’ (pains), but Fred nursed him through it till the late
snow and cold had brought it back. He had been left to sleep one
evening, and when Fred and the brother came back in the morning they had
found him sleeping still, but he was dead. It was then discovered that
during the forty-six years since his wife died, and in spite of growing
poverty and difficulties of every kind, he had kept all the things that
had belonged to his dead wife, her clothes, garments of the days of
crinoline, her jewellery, her ornaments and the furniture of the house
where they had lived, stored in a magazine for which he had religiously
paid rent, also that he had worn her photograph next to his heart, and
they found it on him when they found him dead. A number of his smaller
treasures they buried with him in his grave, but the poor old clothes
and the furniture in the warehouse will be sold. He had sat all these
years under his ‘Magnum Opus,’ an immense picture in the style of
Murillo, representing the Adoration by the Shepherds at Bethlehem, at
which Molony used to mock in its unfinished state because the angels,
represented as sitting in the clouds, with their harps not having yet
been filled in, left the expanded fingers in the grotesque attitude that
schoolboys use in ridicule, though this had been altered now and the
picture with infinite labour finished. It had been bought of him out of
charity by a former friend, Lord Bute, who had been kind to him in many
ways, but Lord Bute unfortunately had died, leaving the picture there.
Lady Bute was now taking it away to put in her chapel. I asked the
faithful Fred what had been done for him. ‘He had nothing,’ he said, ‘to
leave me, poor gentleman, but he was generous and good to me. I am by
trade a mender of china, I mean to set up in a small business, but I
cannot get over the loss. I have been with him seventeen years and never
a day off. I do not know now where to turn.’ [I took two statuettes of
camel riders, which Brown had modelled in his later years, off Fred’s
hands, they are very perfect of their kind, and had been given him with
other odds and ends from the studio by the brother. Fred brought them to
me a few days later and left me promising to come again, and I promised
I would help him to set up his business, but he never reappeared.]
“_18th March._—There has been a debate in Parliament on the military
danger from Germany, and Frederic Harrison has a long letter about it in
the ‘Times.’ I agree with him that the danger is a very real one of
invasion and ruin within no great number of years, only he does not draw
the inference I draw, namely, that we should hasten to divest ourselves
of our overgrown overseas Empire and devote our naval and military
resources to the defence of our own shores. We shall not do this, and we
shall perish, as the Roman Empire perished, by trying to hold too much.
I am myself the extremest of all possible Little Englanders and would
cheerfully return to the ‘spacious’ days of Queen Elizabeth when we held
not a foot of land outside the kingdom.”
[This is the point at which Harrison and I diverged from what had for
twenty-seven years been a common political sympathy about foreign
affairs into antagonism, his path being towards war with Germany, mine
towards a gradual shedding of our “white man’s burden” in Egypt and
India.]
“I saw George Wyndham in Park Lane. He is pessimistic about the
prospects of a German invasion, and thinks it is certain to happen in a
few years. The only thing we can do is to go on building ships. Speaking
of the plan revealed to me by Usedom in 1866 of bringing Holland into
union with Germany and claiming the Dutch Colonies, he told me he had
heard the same a good many years ago from Vitelleschi.
“_19th March._—Professor Browne came to luncheon. He has made a
wonderful fight of it about Persia, but is beginning to be hopeless, as
Russian armed intervention seems imminent. He is losing his influence,
too, with the Foreign Office. Grey at first listened to him, but is now
less willing. ‘Grey,’ he said, ‘is so ignorant, that he hardly knows the
Persian Gulf from the Red Sea.’
“_26th March._—Things are going badly both in Persia and the Balkans. As
soon as the snow melts, both countries will be occupied, the one by
Russia, the other by Austria. Grey has thrown over the Persian
Constitutionalists, and has declared that the Russians may do what they
like at Teheran.
“_29th March._—I have been reading Stead’s book about himself and Madame
Novikoff, poor stuff as literature, a paste and scissors collection of
articles of the last thirty-five years; nevertheless I have managed to
extract from it certain historical facts of importance, as also to fix
the date of Madame Novikoff’s visit to Crabbet. It must have been
September or October 1876. She was not at that time a really pretty
woman, but was lively and anxious to please, singing Russian songs and
making the most of herself. I paid her some attention at first, and
wrote a song for her to sing to one of her Russian airs, but she ended
by boring us before her week’s visit was out. She was too intent on her
own particular politics to be interesting in any other way. As to these
she no doubt began by being an enthusiast, but she also made a business
of it later. Her advocacy of Ismaïl Pasha’s claims in 1885 can hardly
have been political. She and Stead were pretty well matched. I find in
the book one important letter which I wish I had had when I was writing
my ‘Secret History of the Occupation of Egypt.’ It is from Gladstone,
written a few days after the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, and reveals how
entirely that great moralist had thrown himself into the fury of blood-
shedding in that least just of wars. After thanking his correspondent
for her congratulations he says: ‘We and the whole country are in a
state of rejoicing, and I hope of thankfulness to Almighty God who has
prospered us in what I feel and know to be an honest undertaking. . . .
Whether the England of 1882 deserves to be regarded by some in Russia
with a jealous eye, or whether we, too, have been labouring in the
common interests of justice and civilization a little time will show. We
certainly ought to be in good humour, for we are pleased with our army,
our navy, our admirals, our generals, and our organization! . . . It is
hardly more than seven weeks since we determined to send some 35,000 men
to a distance of say 3,000 miles, and it has pleased God to give us a
quick result.’
“This, be it recollected, in regard to a military adventure undertaken
in the interests of the Stock Exchange, and a battle at which 20,000 of
the half-armed peasantry of the Nile had been slaughtered.
“_2nd April._—There is a telegram in the papers, ‘Riots at Cairo, the
garrison under arms on account of new Press Law’! I should not be
surprised if what has happened in the Balkans may have had some
connection with it. There Servia has had to accept the terms imposed on
her by Austria—backed as Austria was by Germany—while Servia failed of
her expected backing by Russia, a German triumph and a corresponding
defeat for England. There has long been a connection between Egyptian
Nationalists and German policy. It is clear now that Germany is all-
powerful in Europe, and that a great slap has been given in the face to
our Foreign Office, and the King and Hardinge and Grey, who has played
his cards badly. I am only sorry for the sake of reform prospects in
Turkey, which are likely to be jeopardized.
“_3rd April._—Rothstein came to see me, and we discussed the whole state
of Europe and Asia, where his views coincide closely with mine. He looks
upon Grey’s diplomatic defeat as absolute, and Germany’s position as
unassailable in Europe. Grey’s (or what is the same thing, the King’s
and Hardinge’s) attempt to get together a Coalition with Russia and
France against the Central German Powers, he regards as an immense error
of calculation, Grey being unaware first of Russia’s military
helplessness, and secondly of France’s entire unwillingness to fight. Of
this Aerenthal and Bülow have taken full advantage, and have not only
gained their end in Servia, but have done it in such a way as to make it
clear to all the world that their will is law, and that they care not a
brass button for either Russia or England. This cannot but react on
Constantinople, and it is probable now that the Turks will have to make
terms with Austria, perhaps even an alliance, and leave English
influence aside. I confess I do not see what else they are to do. It is
clear England cannot and will not give them military help, and they are
forced back on Kaiser Wilhelm’s good will if they are to preserve
Macedonia or even Constantinople. Rothstein, however, assures me that no
farther advance will be made by Austria yet, as Germany will not be
ready with her navy for some years. Then the war with England will
certainly be.”
This remarkable forecast of the situation marks the point at which
Grey’s incredible mistakes in diplomatic dealing with Europe and at
Constantinople began to declare themselves. That he should have been
ignorant of Russia’s impotence and have sacrificed to her alliance all
his relations with the East, was a cardinal mistake which led to his
subsequent gambler’s folly of joining France and Russia in the great
war.
“Rothstein had hardly gone when letters came from Farid Bey at Cairo and
Malony at Teheran. Malony’s account of the Persian revolution is more
cheerful than any I have yet read. He considers the whole of Persia to
be now on the Constitutional side, even Teheran, where the Shah has a
few troops. He does not think the Shah can maintain himself even there.
Farid complains of new press laws and laws prohibiting meetings. He
urges me to raise my voice once more in the Egyptian cause.
“George and Sibell dined with me and Saleeby and his wife, a fortunate
combination, and we had a very pleasant evening.
“_11th April (Easter Sunday)._—The news of the day is that Swinburne is
dead. ‘The greatest lyric poet of the English tongue,’ is my judgment of
him, and perhaps ‘our worst prose writer.’ Beyond being a poet, he was
almost nothing. He never enjoyed his life, wasting his youth on drink
and his old age on Theodore Watts. Mrs. Morris says he never was in love
with any respectable woman, but Lady C., who knew him well, says that he
was once when quite young. His most respectable connection was probably
Ada Menken. It was a poor life as far as action was concerned. As a
poet, however, he will live when nearly every other of our age is
forgotten, for he was a prince of harmony and rhyme and created an
entirely new kind of lyric verse. He was seventy-two last week and died
of a rapid pneumonia. He ought certainly to have been Laureate after
Tennyson, but the old Queen refused to appoint him because in one of his
poems he had fulminated against the Emperor of Russia, and she said that
after that it was impossible he could be in her household service. The
last thirty years of his life have been stultified in a suburban villa
at Putney with Watts-Dunton, who had used him as an advertisement for
his own literary trash.
“Last night Belloc looked in on me very woebegone because he had made a
rash vow of total abstinence from liquor during the whole of Holy Week,
and it was the last day of his sufferings, which he said were beyond
endurance. ‘It has its uses, however,’ he said, ‘if only to make one
realize how flat the brain becomes when cut off from wine. There are
moments when I find myself thinking and arguing almost like a
teetotaler, but I will make it up to-morrow after Mass as soon as ever I
have received Communion.’ I tried to make him break his vow, but in
vain, and he went home sadly. [N.B. He wrote the most amusing of all his
books, ‘A change in the Cabinet,’ during that temperate week.]
“_13th April._—From Blanche Hozier I get a letter, one of the best she
ever wrote. In it she describes her doings at Dieppe, where she has
established herself in a home of her own. It also encloses a pretty
scrap from Clementine at Blenheim, where she is very happy with Winston.
Blanche has a real genius for letter writing, women being far better
letter writers than men, they chatter more naturally and are less self-
conscious. I am reading ‘Pepys’s Diary,’ the unbowdlerized edition,
which is extraordinarily good and has something of both these qualities,
but is without grace and is coarsely fibred.
“_14th April._—There has been a counter revolution at Constantinople,
and Abdul Hamid has once more got the upper hand. A mutiny of soldiers
against their Young Turk officers, joined in by the less liberal Ulema
and a reactionary mob, has upset the Committee of Union and Progress,
and has forced Hilmi Pasha, the Vizier, and the Ministry to resign.
Constantinople is in full reaction.
“_18th April._—The Young Turks are marching, it is said, on Salonika
from Constantinople.
“_19th April._—Frederick Ryan, late Editor of the ‘Egyptian Standard,’
has returned from Cairo, and came to-day with the latest news. He is an
intelligent young man of the same Irish type as Malony, good, modest,
and sincere. He tells me there is a complete split now between the
Khedive and Farid Bey, and the Press Law is directed mainly against the
Khedive’s opponents. Abbas has lost what little popularity he had with
the old-fashioned Ulema by his attempt to misappropriate the Awkaf
revenues of the Azhar. The students struck for an increase of their
bread money needed by the immense rise of prices. All the Cairo
newspapers protested against the Press Law except two Ryan complains of
the lack of business capacity in the management of the Egyptian
newspapers. They are also now without a capable leader. Mustapha Kamel
died of cancer in the stomach and suffered tortures.
“_20th April._—The Young Turks under Enver Bey have again got the upper
hand and have marched to Constantinople. There is news to-day, though
not certain, that the Sultan has abdicated and fled. This will be a
splendid triumph. A revolution to be effective must have a basis of
force, force which everybody is afraid of and is bound to acknowledge,
otherwise it degenerates into mere chaos. I think they will be well
advised to bring Abdul Hamid to open trial; it would be dangerous to
leave him at large, or even alive in prison.
“_23rd April._—Things still unsettled at Constantinople except that the
Young Turk Party is in power. It is not yet decided what the Sultan’s
fate is to be. Enver has declared that Abdul Hamid cannot be allowed any
longer to reign, though his life will be respected. I fancy the Kaiser
Wilhelm is intervening on his behalf. They may be obliged to consider
German wishes. Otherwise in cases of this kind ‘stone dead has no
fellow.’
“_24th April._—An order has been given for the occupation of Tabriz by
the Russian army, the excuse being that the Shah has broken his promise
of allowing food to be supplied to the besieged townspeople. The
Russians will now certainly occupy Teheran and Northern Persia and
administer it in imitation of our English way in Egypt. Massacres, too,
are announced in Armenia and at various places in Asia Minor, which may
lead to intervention in Turkey. However, let us hope for the best.
“_Later._—The Young Turk army has stormed Yildiz, though with what
result to the Sultan is not known.
“_29th April._—Abdul Hamid is at last formally deposed and has been sent
as a prisoner to reside at Salonika. Reshad Effendi has been proclaimed
Sultan Mohammed V in his stead.
“_30th April._—Lloyd George has brought in a Budget of a rather
Socialistic kind, with a beginning of taxing land values and of things
more drastic.
“_1st May._—To Cambridge, where I am staying with Browne at his villa in
Trumpington Road. The garden is large, one of those pleasant suburban
gardens which run a long way back, but the house is of the plainest
Philistine order—very clean, very handsomely furnished, but everything
in it commonplace, Browne being the least æsthetic of men. He has made
me, however, extremely comfortable, and is in all things else extremely
sympathetic. A nightingale is singing close to us.
“He is writing a history of the revolution in Persia, which will include
a life of Seyyid Jemal ed Din, as to whom I have promised to write a
monograph. We had several clever young men at dinner, one of them,
Mozley, a young Don, Editor of the ‘Cambridge Review,’ and Somerset,
Editor of the ‘Granta,’ also Cockerell and his wife, and Angela Mackail;
also another interesting young man, Malory, and Haddon, the
anthropologist. Browne is, of course, in despair at the Russian march on
Tabriz, and believes the English Government has the idea of partitioning
the Ottoman Empire as well as Persia.
“_2nd May._—Spent the day with Cockerell, going with him to the
Fitzwilliam Museum where he showed me Rossetti’s MS. of the ‘House of
Life.’ He has asked me for a MS., if I have got one, of ‘Esther.’
“_3rd May._—Back to Chapel Street.
“_7th May._—All the past week has been glorious at Newbuildings which is
in full Spring beauty. On looking into the bathroom yesterday I heard a
twittering and there were three of the swallows hatched there last year,
siting together in last year’s nest. They must have been the same, as
they were not frightened at my coming in, and the fact of there being
three of them also shows it, for if they had been strangers looking for
a place to build there would not have been more of them than a pair.
“Yesterday I watched for an hour the throwing of an oak, one of seven
old ones they are cutting at the end of Newbuildings Wood. I wonder
whether oaks have any sense of pain, perhaps a little, but it must be
very little, just when the sap is rising. Woodcraft is the most
fascinating of all rural work.
“_14th May._—I have written a valentine for Nellie Hozier:
AN OUT-OF-DATE VALENTINE
NEW is the morning, child,
Sunrise for thy heart.
Evening, how near its close,
Sunset for my heart.
Life in its fulness yours,
Mine but an ending.
Loyal we yet may be
Love’s cause defending.
I have my wisdom, child,
You your youth’s glory.
Each shall find wealth in each,
In each a story.
High be our fortune’s aim,
He who would win it
Offerings large must bring
To Fate each minute.
Zealous is Love for love,
Grudge not love’s kindness.
Ill ’tis for joy to wait,
Light lost is blindness.
Ends life as life began,
Heart which would meet heart.
Run we and outstrip Time,
Child, be my sweetheart.
“_20th May._—Meredith is dead after a two days’ illness, and there is
talk of his being buried in Westminster Abbey. The papers say more about
him than they did about Swinburne, though as a poet he was really far
inferior to him. With the exception of ‘Modern Love’ and ‘Love in a
Valley,’ Meredith wrote no verse that was quite first rate, or even much
of it readable, and his novels were not, in my opinion, really great. I
never could read quite through any of them. They contained, of course, a
number of good things and the style was original and natural to the man,
but as stories they had little point, and though he sketched out his
characters well at starting he had not the art to give them strong
dramatic action, nor had he sufficient knowledge of human nature to make
their doings credible. He was without a grain of tragic power, still he
had a vast number of readers and I see no reason why he should not be
buried in the Abbey. Politically I was for the most part in agreement
with him, and we interchanged letters on such subjects more than once. I
see in the obituaries that the fact of his having been a tailor’s son at
Portsmouth is evaded by the paraphrase of his having been ‘born in
Hampshire.’ Only the ‘Daily Graphic’ gives a photograph of his
birthplace at Portsmouth. According to Meynell the fact of his tailoring
parentage was the secret trouble of his life.
“It has been glorious weather all the week, and I never saw the view of
the downs from the Hilly Seven Acre field so beautiful. But the ash-
trees, checked by the frost of 1st May, are not yet in leaf. Most of
them are still quite bare while the oaks are in full plumage.
Nightingales are rarer this year than usual, probably because it was so
bad a breeding season last Spring.
“I have been reading Rousseau’s ‘Confessions’ again after forty years
and do not find my opinion of them much altered. The early part, before
he went to Paris and grew famous, is wonderful as a work of art and
justifies itself as a young man’s confession, for in spite of its
crudities, it is beautiful. But the rest is ugliness unredeemed. I fancy
my own memoirs, if they are ever read, will give the same impression,
though my youth has been prolonged beyond all measure and his ended very
early. It was reading Rousseau’s ‘Confessions’ about the year 1866 that
first determined me to write mine and at the same time to have a more
satisfactory life to make record of.
“_21st May._—Meynell came to dinner and gave me an interesting account
of his intimacy with George Meredith and of Meredith’s romantic devotion
to Mrs. Meynell. It began in this way. Some fifteen years ago Meredith
had told a mutual friend of theirs that he was curious to know who
‘Autolycus’ was who wrote the literary criticisms in the ‘Pall Mall
Gazette,’ and hearing it was Mrs. Meynell, wrote her a very
characteristic letter complimenting her on her style of writing and
inviting her and him to pay him a visit. ‘You will find,’ he said, ‘my
daughter to receive you, she looks at literature through an eye glass.’
It happened soon after that an address was being presented to Meredith
by the Society of Authors, and Meynell and his wife joined them and went
down from London to Burford Bridge where Meredith met them, and when the
presentation was over drove her back with him to his house on Box Hill,
while Meynell walked. During the drive Meredith asked her whether she
was not the author of a certain book, to which Mrs. Meynell, who has a
talent for silence, said simply, ‘No,’ at which he expressed himself
disappointed, and then whether she was not Francis Thompson’s sister, to
which she again said, ‘No,’ at which he expressed himself doubly
disappointed. Nevertheless they speedily made friends and from that time
for two or three years he wrote to her, both letters and verses (these
have not been published) and professed a special devotion. It was a
great interest for both of them and was continued, as said, for several
years. Thus Meynell came to know him well, amongst other things his
secret trouble about his parentage, which cast a shadow over the
novelist’s life. The trouble was that his father had been in trade, in
fact a tailor, a fact which in his later years he kept jealously
concealed, though his first novel, ‘Evan Harrington,’ published
anonymously, had been founded on that very theme. His father had been
the well-known naval outfitter at Portsmouth and his grandfather’s name
had been Melchisedech, as in the novel. Mention is to be found of him in
Marryat’s ‘Peter Simple,’ and again in Hardy’s letters to Nelson, where
Hardy mentions that he had lodging at Portsmouth with ‘the tailor
Meredith.’ It is curious that having attained to the eminence where he
was he should have allowed so small a thing to annoy him. Meredith’s
life latterly was a very lonely one, though he had many friends he had
nobody to be quite devoted to him. He had talked of me to Meynell and
had once said, which I am glad to hear, ‘Blunt is one of the few honest
men we have in public life.’ He and I had much sympathy on many matters,
and I bear him the reverse of a grudge in that, being Chapman and Hall’s
literary reader, he was the cause of my first little volume of mixed
verse and prose being refused publication. He was entirely right, for
the volume, except some of the sonnets, was worthless. That must have
been in 1867, Robert Lytton having recommended me to send it to Chapman
who was then his publisher. It was a fortunate refusal.
“_29th May._—Newbuildings. It has been a week of glorious weather, the
last of a long drought, but now there have been two days of rain. Our
only trouble is that the caterpillar has fallen on the oaks, and half
the leaves are devoured. This is always the result of frosts at the time
the leaves are first unfolding, for the young grub needs a certain
cooking of its food, and the frost does this for it, burning the young
leaves. It is the same with the apple blight, which is also upon us.
Both apple and oak, however, have a natural regrowth of leaves in July
and August, which renews their vigour, giving them a second Spring.
“_30th May (Whit Sunday)._—At Newbuildings. Meynell is here. He has just
been for Joan of Arc’s canonization to Rome. He saw Monsignor Stonor
there, and asked whether he had been to the ceremony. ‘No,’ said Stonor,
‘why should I go? She was a Frenchwoman.’ The subject of modernism, he
said, is now never mentioned at the Vatican. ‘The Pope is a worthy, good
man, but his pronouncements are all dictated to him by the Cardinals,
and he is allowed no initiative.’ I showed him a passage in my diary in
1892 relating to Manning’s Modernist sympathies in the last years of his
life, and he told me that what I had put down was quite correct, and
about his death. Vaughan had been his creature, but latterly the
Cardinal had grown to dislike him.
“_2nd June._—I am at Newstead Abbey, brought here by Beauclerk, who is a
country neighbour and friends with Lady Chermside and her sister, who
own it. He tells me that his father was once offered Newstead Abbey and
a part of the estate for £6,000; then, in 1860, old Webb bought it of
Wildman, to whom Byron had sold it. Webb had had two sons, but the
elder, a charming young man, had committed suicide while an
undergraduate at Cambridge, and the younger had emigrated to Australia
at the age of twenty-four. So he left Newstead to his daughters, the
eldest, Geraldine, having married Sir Herbert Chermside, a retired
General, the same Chermside who was in Egypt and Governor at one time of
Suakim. The sisters lived together there, the younger, Ethel, who is
unmarried, sharing the ownership of the property in a sort of way, one
managing everything indoors, the other everything out of doors. They are
both pleasant and conversible, and proud of their family possessions, as
they may well be, and of its connection with the poet. They have made me
very comfortable in rooms overlooking the garden.
“I forgot to say that Meynell, who dined with me last night in London,
narrated to me the true version, as he heard it from Meredith, of
Meredith’s quarrel with Rossetti. They were at breakfast one morning,
and had a dispute about a trifle, and Rossetti, resenting something that
Meredith had said, told him that if he said it again he would throw a
cup of tea in his face. Meredith thereupon repeated it, and Rossetti
threw the tea, and Meredith left the house at once and sent for his
effects during the course of the day. I have been reading ‘Evan
Harrington’ coming here in the train, but as far as I have got, it does
not alter my opinion of these novels. I fail to take any interest in the
characters. They are cleverly sketched, but act very much at hap-hazard.
They are not comic enough to make one laugh, and not tragic enough to
make one weep. They bore one before one is half through with their
doings. There is a good deal of subtle observation and happy phrasing,
but it is strange that anyone should call them great novels. Yet I find
people comparing Meredith with Shakespeare and all the heavenly host!
“_3rd June._—I have spent the day very pleasantly, the morning with Miss
Ethel Webb, who, in spite of a rugged exterior, is a nice woman, more
conversible, I think, than her sister, though both are good talkers.
Having that department under her special charge, she showed me
everything outside. Certainly Newstead is a splendid domain, through the
abundance of its water and the lie of the land about it. The trees are
mostly sycamores, to me a new feature, the soil being unsuited to oaks.
The celebrated oak sown by Byron only a hundred years ago, is already
dying. I have recommended its being pollarded as the best chance of
prolonging its life, but the soil is gravel and sand. Yews grow better
than any other tree on it, and the tank, which is overshadowed by them,
is one of the most beautiful features of a garden I ever saw. Miss Webb
pointed me out the place in the garden wall where there had been a
postern gate opening formerly towards the forest. This has been built
up, she tells me, for centuries, yet her dogs sometimes scratch at it,
recognizing it as a doorway still. We sat in her rock garden in the sun,
for the wind was cold, and she told me she had acquired the power of
making birds understand her, and that the blackbirds and thrushes give
her warning of the approach of strangers when she is there alone, as she
often is, not wishing to be disturbed. The outside walls of the Abbey
have been much spoiled by restoration, done in Wildman’s time, who spent
£100,000 on it, so that it is difficult to make out quite what is old
and what is new, and the windows have been plate-glassed, and otherwise
bedevilled, but it is still a splendid possession, much larger and more
important than I had at all imagined, and one can well understand how
the sudden inheritance of it by Byron and his mother turned their heads,
and helped to give him that exaggerated pride of birth and position
which was his weakness. Inside, too, the house is a noble one, in spite
of horrible tampering with the stonework of the Gothic lower story; all,
however, might be made good with whitewash. The cloisters are less
injured, and need nothing but to be let alone. Upstairs, wicked
architectural things have been done, but the great drawing-room is
magnificent, one of the finest state rooms to be found anywhere, and the
long corridors are also fine. The main front has the advantage of
looking south. Byron’s own little bedroom, with its simple furniture, is
most interesting, unaltered since his time, but that has been told in
the guide books, so I need not describe it. Beauclerk has returned from
his manœuvring, and we walked again in the garden. He starts for Central
Asia next week, to remain away a year. He is a very attractive young
man, with, I am sure, an excellent heart. The feeling of the house is
strongly against Lady Byron in the old family quarrel.
“_4th June._—Back to London early, much pleased with my visit to
Newstead and the good ladies, my entertainers there.
“Sabunji came to dine with me. I had not seen him since 1895, I think.
He has become the type of what he doubtless was till the other day, a
Yildiz Palace spy, a little furtive old man dressed in black with a
black skull cap on his head, a jewel in his shirt front and another
jewel on his finger. He has come to London, I imagine, on some business
of intrigue, and to me partly to find out what my opinions are, partly
to get my help in a publishing project he has in hand, a ‘History of all
Religions.’ I got a deal of useful information from him about men and
events at Constantinople. He tells me he continued to hold his place at
Yildiz and draw his pay or pension till a month ago, but he is now
deprived of it in common with the rest of the Palace employés. His
position with the Sultan Abdul Hamid, which had been originally that of
Reader for him and _précis_ writer of the European Press, had latterly
become one of tutor to the young Prince Burhan ed Din, the Sultan’s
favourite son, whom he describes as very clever, and knowing French,
English, German, and Italian, besides Turkish, Persian, and a little
Arabic. The fact of his loss of income by the Sultan’s deposition
naturally colours Sabunji’s views, and he is gloomy about the prospects
of Turkey under the new _régime_. I asked him about the revolution of
last year, and the counter-revolution of two months ago. As to the
first, he says the Sultan was in complete ignorance till it happened,
and this, doubtless, was the fact. The counter-revolution was got up not
by Abdul Hamid or Burhan ed Din, but by an intrigue between Az ed Din
(son of Sultan Abdul Aziz, who is heir to the present Sultan according
to the law of succession), and the Russian Embassy, the latter being
jealous of the influence the English Embassy had acquired under Kiamil
Pasha. The German Embassy had nothing to do with it, nor was it true
that the Sultan had distributed money to the troops to make them revolt
against their officers. The Sultan had given money for the foundation of
a Madrasa (public school) which had been handed over by the Ulema, who
had received it for the Madrasa, to the troops. This sounds like an
excuse. What probably is true is that there was a strong reactionary
party at Stamboul, which appealed to the soldiers on religious grounds.
Sabunji declares that this feeling was so strong that it was intended to
have a general massacre of Christians, and that this was only prevented
by the rapidity of the march on Constantinople from Salonika. Had the
massacre taken place there would have been European intervention and a
partition of Turkey. He declares that there was a settled plan for the
partition already agreed to, according to which England was to get Syria
as well as Egypt; France, Tripoli; Italy the Albanian coast; Austria,
Salonika; and Germany, effective administration of the railway line from
Broussa to Bagdad, with ten kilometers on either side of it, while
Russia was to get the northern part of Asia Minor. [Compare text of the
secret treaties afterwards discovered at St. Petersburg and published
1917.] He says, too, that there was an intrigue between Izzet Pasha and
the Khedive Abbas for getting Abbas acknowledged Caliph, and that the
English Government favoured it, intending to use the Khedive as a first
step towards an Arabian Caliphate under English protection. This, of
course, is the old idea which he (Sabunji) with many others, held in
1881, as shown in my ‘Future of Islam.’
“_9th June._—Chapel Street. Met Cunninghame Graham in the Park and
talked with him of Grey’s speech at the Imperial Press Conference, which
will need, I think, a manifesto from some of us to the Mohammedan world,
for I read it as announcing a definite intention to retain Egypt.
‘English policy,’ Grey says, ‘is to keep all we have.’
“It is a question now for the Ottoman Empire to make up its mind whether
in the coming conflict it is to side with England or with Germany. On
the whole an alliance with Germany would probably be the lesser risk of
the two, seeing how Egypt and now Persia have been betrayed by England,
and how India is held by us in permanent bondage, also England’s power
is apparently on the wane, while Germany is increasing.
“Lady Gregory came to luncheon, and we went after it to the Court
theatre together. She has just been for three weeks at Venice, staying
there with Lady Layard. She gave an amusing description of the arrival
one day at luncheon while there of two little ‘maids of all work’ rather
shabbily dressed, which proved to be Queen Alexandra and her sister the
Empress of Russia, who had arrived together on a yachting cruise, and
had come to call without ceremony. The Empress, Lady Gregory says, looks
now much the older of the two, for the Queen is extraordinarily well
preserved, whether by nature or art. They stayed on chattering the
little banalities of Court conversation for half-an-hour with the German
accent Lady Gregory imitated well. At the theatre we found Yeats, who
talked to us between the acts. He told me he had been converted to my
use of the Alexandrine metre for plays in verse, but that he had such a
difficulty in finding rhymes that a rhymed play would take him two years
to write. The pieces we saw given were ‘Devorgilla’ and the ‘Playboy of
the Western World.’ The ‘Playboy,’ I fancy, must have been a bit
bowdlerized from the original version, or else it was not very
intelligible to an English audience, but certainly here in London it
seemed a very harmless bit of broad farce which could shock no one. The
Irish of it was such that a good deal of the dialogue was difficult to
catch. I found it immensely amusing and quite admirably acted. The
principal girl’s part was done by a sister of Sarah Allgood, who had
been engaged to Synge. Of Sarah Allgood herself I thought less, she was
more conventional. The house was half empty, and there was little
encouragement given to the actors. Yeats is beginning to get fat and
sleek; he has cut his hair and his cheeks have a pink colour, and he is
well dressed, as a prosperous theatrical manager should be.
“_22nd June._—George Wyndham came. He is rather out of it just now in
Parliament as he takes no very strong interest in the Budget dispute,
believing the Radical bark to be worse than the bite. I do not expect
the Lords will reject the Budget, as some of the extremists would have
them do. In regard to the land they would be on firm ground, for the
Radical view on the land question is essentially unsound, unless the
full Socialist doctrine be admitted, _la propriété c’est le vol_.
“To the Tate Gallery, which has revived in me many old memories. The
Vernon Collection, which I remember in Marlborough House when I first
came to London in 1856, and used constantly to visit, the early pre-
Raphaelite pictures, most of which I saw about the same time hung in the
Academy, and numbers more. It is wonderful how they have improved with
age, or is it with pictures as it is with a sonnet, which seems better
if one has once known it by heart and half forgotten.
“_24th June._—Some Persians called on me, introduced by Rothstein, poor
helpless people, knowing hardly a word of any language but their own and
Russian. They had come to London to try and enlist English sympathy for
their Constitutional cause.
“_28th June._—Halil Hálid and Meynell dined with me. Halil has been with
Mukhtar Pasha since his stay of three days in England as Extraordinary
Ambassador, but he had very little to tell me, being affected with
pseudo diplomatic reserve, except that the question of Egypt was not
raised or mentioned by Mukhtar. Cromer, he tells me, still influences
the Foreign Office and was put to sit next to Mukhtar at a dinner given
to the Marshal.
“_3rd July._—We had our Arab sale to-day. Bidders few, but the financial
result not unsatisfactory.
“A most important thing has happened in connection with India. Sir
Curzon Wyllie has been assassinated by a young Indian at the Imperial
Institute. The ‘Manchester Guardian’ and other Liberal papers are
endeavouring to persuade themselves that the assassination is not
political; but this is nonsense. It has quite obviously been planned as
part of a new departure and almost certainly by Krishnavarna, whose
‘Indian Sociologist’ of last week contains clear indications of what
might be expected. The whole English Press is united in its religious
horror at the crime, forgetting how it applauded exactly such crimes in
Italy fifty years ago, and in Russia the other day. Krishnavarna’s
position is precisely the same as Mazzini’s then was, whom we all now
justify since his plan of assassination led to the liberation of Italy,
and if ever people had excuse for means of this kind it is the people of
India.
“_8th July._—Gallifet is dead. I remember him well in Paris in the
sixties when he used to play tennis at the court in the Tuileries
Gardens, a good looking _sabreur_, with an irresponsible tongue. His
wife was one of the pretty women of the second Empire, but he had no
respect for her, and I have heard him crack his garrison jokes about her
without reticence. She had her lovers, and he his mistresses, but made
no concealment of his contempt for her. All the same he was a gallant
fellow and has died in deservedly high repute with his fellow-
countrymen, for what he was, a true French aristocrat of the old-
fashioned fighting and love-making eighteenth century days.
“I went to a party at Button’s house at Fulham where his sister Eva was
entertaining, a garden party with tea out of doors. Button has made a
very beautiful place of it with his marble columns and gateways and
well-heads, like a villa at Pompeii. What especially helps the effect is
that there are broad walks crossing each other covered with paving
stones, the squares enclosed by them being of grass. If I were a
millionaire I would certainly buy the whole _en bloc_. Most of the
Wyndham clan were there.
“_9th July._—To an evening party at Stafford House, a really charming
entertainment of, perhaps, 200 people, which in those immense rooms
looked like a family party, where I met a number of people I had not
seen for years, with a few foreign guests, among them Pierre Lôti. The
last is a diminutive dapper little Frenchman, very correct in his get
up, with scarves and decorations, and a rather aggressive pose.
Remembering his joint letter of two years ago written to me, with Mme.
Adam, I got the Duchess to introduce me to him, but found him less
amiable than I had reason to expect. We spoke of Mme. Adam and Mustapha
Kamel, but his tone about them was not enthusiastic, and gave me the
impression that there must have come a coolness between him and Mustapha
since the day when they were photographed together. I mentioned having
read Mustapha’s letters to Mme. Adam recently published, which are
really very pretty, and in which the photograph is reproduced, but my
remark brought no response at all. Perhaps their publication had
displeased him. Then we were separated by other claimants on his
attention. He did not impress me favourably.” There was much else of an
amusing nature connected with this party but which I cannot transcribe
here.
“_10th July._—Good old Lord Ripon died last night at half-past eight in
the evening. One of the few honest men in public life, and the only Whig
who ever showed real sympathy with Eastern liberty.
“I am reminded by having met Pamela Plowden last night of the beautiful
lines Harry Cust once wrote to her, and which I think have never been
published except in an ephemeral ‘Book of Beauty.’ I transcribe them
here.
Beautiful face!
Is your heart broken that you look so sad?
Is there no heart on earth that once made glad
Your heart, to hearten yet your flower of grace?
Is God untender towards you? Or can Man,
Loving such dear eyes,
Or, save despairing
For too much caring,
Grudge his uncrownedness in the race he ran,
And squandered life and lived and lost the prize?
They pay the worthiest cost
Whose lives for you were lost.
“_13th July._—Spent the day at Caxtons with Professor Osborne, head of
the Natural History Museum at New York, and his daughter. He is a highly
intelligent man, a pupil of Huxley’s and is writing a book on horse
history. He has read my controversy with Professor Ridgeway on the
origin of the Arab horse in Arabia and takes my side in it, holding the
Arab to have been the descendant of a distinct wild breed in the
Peninsula. He wants the United States Government to start an Arabian
breeding stud in some of the dry districts of the Western States.
“_16th July._—Late on Tuesday night I got a telegram from Meynell saying
that Father Tyrrell was dying at Storrington, and this morning the
‘Times’ announces his death. His loss is a great one, both personally to
me and to the world at large, though perhaps for himself it is a
happiness. Miss Petre has very sensibly written to the ‘Times’
announcing the fact of his having died at her house, and giving the
details of the last rites administered. It seems to have been a
paralytic stroke, for he had lost the power of speech, and I fear his
ecclesiastical enemies will hold this to be a judgment of Heaven upon
him, but it will save him at least from the reproach of having ‘recanted
his errors’ in the face of death. I have telegraphed to Miss Petre and
shall certainly, if permitted, attend his funeral as an act of sympathy
with a persecuted man who was also, I am glad to think, my friend.