“_Later._ I drove over to Mulberry House. Miss Petre had gone out to the

monastery, but her sister, Mrs. Powell, took me into the garden house

and showed me the poor body. It was laid out in the tiny cell which had

been his sleeping place, hardly more than a cupboard, ten feet, perhaps,

by five; there was scarcely room to squeeze in between the very narrow

bed and the wall. There lay the dead heresiarch, as sad a little shard

of humanity as ever my eyes saw. I could not have recognized it as the

man I had known so brilliant in his talk, so full of combative life, or

indeed, hardly as a man at all. The face was shrunk and the features

seemed to have fallen in though he had been only thirty-six hours dead,

for he died at nine yesterday morning, and the body with its poor small

fingers was more like an accidental handful of shapeless clay than

anything that had been alive. Pious hands had clothed him in surplice

and stole, as befitted the priest he was, and there were two tapers

lighted at his head. I knelt a minute or two beside him and recited a

‘De Profundis’ and kissed the hem of his garment, or rather the stole,

and rose and went out, moved, as one could not help being moved, to

tears of pity. It was so utter an ending. I had some talk with Mrs.

Powell, a vigorous, unemotional woman of fifty, who gave me the details

of his death and of how the Archbishop was raising objections to his

being buried as a Catholic with full funeral rights. Her sister was out

on this very business at the monastery, but would be back immediately

and she urged me to await her. I occupied the half-hour which elapsed in

paying a visit to Mrs. Lucas, Meynell’s married daughter, who has taken

rooms in a farm house, Chantry’s, just outside the village. When I came

back I found Miss Petre had returned and she received me in her room

upstairs. I had been prepared to find her altered by this sudden

misfortune, but she met me with her usual cheerful smile and without a

trace of sadness on her face. There was no paleness on her cheeks or

trace of tears, and she talked at once in her open, straightforward way

about all that had happened and was happening. She is a wonderfully

wise, courageous woman, for it is certain that Father Tyrrell’s death

must be a terrible grief to her, and loss in every way. She talked of

him simply as a child might talk, but with the wisdom of a woman, the

courage of a man. What she told me is this: Three months ago there had

been some question of Father Tyrrell’s health and he had seen a doctor,

some kidney trouble, but the doctor thought little of it. It was while

he was staying at Clapham, nor did he think much of it himself. He came

back to Storrington for his summer holiday at the end of last month. She

thought him overworked, for he was writing a final apologetic, added to

his great daily correspondence. It was not till a week after, that one

day he complained of his head, while at dinner, and rose to leave the

table and, as I understand, fell. Still, for a day, she did not

recognize it as serious. ‘I am naturally of a sanguine disposition,’ she

said, ‘and thought he would recover. He complained of violent pains in

the head, and could not speak plainly, but I did not recognize it for

what it was. Then he got worse. I was with him for forty-eight hours

without leaving him before anyone came to help nurse him. He suffered

terrible pain continuously till he died.’ Three doctors have since

declared him to have had Bright’s disease and the stroke to have been a

consequence, the breaking of a blood vessel on the brain. She repeated

to me what there was in her ‘Times’ letter about his having received the

last sacraments. ‘I sent it,’ she said, ‘because I knew there would be

all sorts of stories told, and I thought it best to let the truth be

known at once.’ She was pleased when I told her how wisely, in my

opinion, she had done. ‘It was, perhaps, fortunate,’ she said, ‘that he

could not speak, as it spared him explanations, and enabled his friend

Abbé Brémond, to administer the sacraments and give him absolution, also

it will at least prevent any false account of his having at the last

moment made recantation of his opinions.’

“She went on to speak of their difficulties since with Archbishop

Bourne, and she spoke strongly of the little moral courage existing in

the world, and how all were afraid of undertaking independent

responsibility. The Prior of Storrington was anxious to be kind, but he

was without courage, and it seemed as though he would not dare give a

Catholic burial, although he had administered extreme unction. I

suggested that the Crawley monks might be more bold, and it is settled

that we are to apply to them if others fail.

“_17th July._—The ‘Times’ has the following: ‘At Mulberry House,

Storrington, the Rev. George Tyrrell, aged 48, fortified by the rights

of the Church. R.I.P.’

“Meynell arrived for the week-end. He has been to the Archbishop’s house

in Westminster to discuss the case of Tyrrell’s burial. The Archbishop

himself is away, having gone abroad to Rheims to take part in the

ceremonials connected with Joan of Arc’s canonization, but he saw Butt

the coadjutor. He tells me Miss Petre’s letter to the ‘Times’ has put

them in a terrible fix. Bourne is himself much in sympathy with the

Modernists, and especially with Father Tyrrell. He had once said, ‘I had

rather my hand withered than lift it against Tyrrell’; nor is Butt

otherwise than friendly. But the position is this: Tyrrell, though not

technically excommunicated, was cut off from the sacraments until he

would recant three propositions, which he had not recanted. If nothing

at all had been said, the fact of his having on his death-bed received

absolution and extreme unction might have allowed them to presume a

recantation, but Miss Petre’s letter makes this difficult or impossible,

and the Archbishop if appealed to must forbid Catholic burial. To me,

however, it seems that in the first place Miss Petre’s letter to the

‘Times’ is not authoritative, however true what it says may be;

secondly, burial not being a sacrament while penance and extreme unction

are sacraments, it would be straining at a gnat to refuse the first, the

rest having been swallowed. Meynell thinks that if the worst comes to

the worst it would be best to bury him at Newbuildings where Abbé

Brémond could perform the service, trusting to a change in

ecclesiastical opinion for his subsequent translation to consecrated

ground. Meynell cited it as curious that he should find himself

connected with this case as he had been with that of Mivart. In Mivart’s

case Meynell had appealed to Cardinal Vaughan, who left the decision to

three of his canons, two of whom decided against Mivart’s being given

Catholic burial, so Vaughan forbade it; but on Vaughan’s own death-bed

he was troubled at the thought of this decision. ‘I was wrong,’ he said,

‘in the Mivart case.’ And, in fact, Mivart’s body has since been removed

(it was done privately at night) and reburied according to Catholic

ritual in consecrated ground. It is also curious that Bourne should be

just now away at Rheims, officiating at Joan of Arc’s canonization; Joan

of Arc, who was refused by the Bishops of her day burial at all, her

ashes being scattered to the winds lest any relic of her should be

preserved, and over the place of whose martyrdom were ecclesiastically

inscribed the words ‘Heretic and Sorceress,’ yet she is to-day being

worshipped on all Catholic altars. The same might happen, who knows, to

Father Tyrrell. The Archbishop’s position is made more difficult because

his leanings towards Modernism have delayed the sending a hat to him

from Rome.

“The ‘Times’ announces the abdication of the Shah Mohammed Ali and the

triumph of the Constitutional régime in Persia, which is acknowledged by

the Russian and English Governments. This is a victory stolen out of the

fire, and Browne may justly claim as his the whole success. But for him

Persia would most certainly have been annexed by Russia, or rather put

under Russian tutelage after the precedent of Egypt.

“_18th July._—After luncheon I drove Meynell to Storrington, where we

found Mrs. Powell. The present situation is that they have got a

telegram from Brentwood, the Petre estate in Essex, to say that the

priest there will bury Father Tyrrell; so they consider the matter

settled, and Miss Petre has gone to Brentwood to make sure. The funeral

will be on Wednesday.

“Mrs. Powell gave us a more detailed account of Father Tyrrell’s

illness. He had had trouble with the kidneys for some time, but did not

pay much attention to it, and his doctor did not consider it very

important, though now, since his seizure, all agreed it to have been

Bright’s disease. He spent the early Spring at Clapham, but when her

sister returned from abroad he also returned to Storrington, but had

left again for London till the end of June, when he once more came to

Mulberry House for the summer. He had been greatly overworked and felt

his quarrel with Rome more deeply than appeared on the surface. He was

subject to violent headaches, when he would retire to his own room for

twenty-four hours at a time, but in the intervals was cheerful and

seemed full of life. His general health had improved latterly.

“_20th July._—Tyrrell’s case seems to have been referred to Rome, and

the burial service absolutely forbidden. It is announced to be at

Storrington to-morrow, I presume in the parish graveyard, so I go back

to Newbuildings to-night. Tyrrell’s little book of poems is in print at

Elkin Mathews’, though not yet published. Meynell took me there and we

saw it: ‘Versions and Perversions,’ with ‘To W. S. B.’ on the title-

page. They gave us a copy of it not yet bound.

“I lunched with Harry Cust and his wife and George Leveson Gower, and

Harry’s young nephew (Storrs), who has some place in Egypt, a very

intelligent youth.

“John Dillon spent an hour with me, and we discussed India and the

ethics of assassination. He said he had always been opposed to it,

except where there were secret societies, which could not be maintained

without it against members who turned traitor. I told him I would send

him my ‘Canon of Aughrim,’ which he said he had never read. He will try

and bring forward the case of the Egyptian press persecutions on

Thursday, when they have the Foreign Office vote. There may be some

chance of getting it discussed now that the Persian question seems in

way of settlement. He says, however, that there are not three members in

the House that interest themselves about Egypt—and this is true.

“I went down by the last train to Newbuildings, nor do I intend to

return to London this summer.

“_21st July._—The day of Father Tyrrell’s funeral. I drove over to

Storrington, and arrived at Mulberry House half an hour before the

contingent of mourners from London, and had some talk while waiting with

Freddy von Hügel, now an old man much grizzled, and the most

distinguished of the lay Modernists in England, and with his daughter, a

devout disciple of Tyrrell’s. She was greatly pleased with his lines,

‘Two Chambers hath the Heart,’ when I recited them to her. The London

friends having arrived, we formed procession some forty or fifty

persons, to the grave, which was in Storrington parish churchyard, a

pleasant place under the Down where Tyrrell had been in the habit of

walking and reciting his breviary not twenty yards away from the

Catholic Chapel, just outside the wall, symbolic, so I thought, of the

position into which Tyrrell himself had drifted. Abbé Brémond read the

funeral prayers in English, and then read an address he had very

carefully composed for publication, a moderate and worthy presentment of

his poor friend’s religious attitude towards either Church, the English

or the Roman. Miss Petre was to me the chief interest at the grave. She

was evidently much moved, and her face showed signs of weeping, but she

stood there valiantly with her sisters and two little nieces following

the prayers out of a book with them and giving the responses aloud. I

shook hands with her when all was over, and she asked me into the house,

but I did not care to face the crowd there, and drove straight home.

“_23rd July._—The Foreign Office vote was taken yesterday, the whole

time allotted to it being occupied discussing the Czar’s visit, so that

Dillon could say nothing about Egypt. It is impossible to get any

attention in the House of Commons either about foreign affairs or about

India.

“_24th July._—Dingra, the slayer of Sir Curzon Wyllie, has been

condemned to death, having made no defence, beyond a dignified

justification of his act as one of political warfare. When the judge,

the Lord Chief Justice, had passed sentence on him that he should be

hanged by the neck until he was dead, ‘Thank you, my lord,’ Dingra said.

‘I am proud to have the honour to lay down my humble life for my

country.’ Also, before the sentence, he had said: ‘You can pass sentence

of death on me if you like, it is perfectly illegal. You are all-

powerful and can do what you like, but remember, we shall have our

time.’ No Christian martyr ever faced his judges more fearlessly or with

greater dignity. I discussed his case with Kháparde, who is here for the

week-end, his first country visit in England. He is as full of

admiration as I am of Dingra’s courage. We agreed that if India could

produce five hundred men as absolutely without fear she would achieve

her freedom. It was recorded in the medical evidence at the trial that

when arrested, Dingra’s pulse beat no quicker than was normal, nor from

first to last has he shown any sign of weakening.

“_25th July (Sunday)._—Kháparde (Mrs. Russell, Miss Cockerell, and Miss

Nussey being here) gave us a most interesting account of his religious

views. He is a Theosophist, having adopted their tenets as a young man,

and he explained, better than I have ever heard it treated, their

teaching of the relation between mind and matter. He is an admirable

expounder, expressing himself slowly in English, but with extreme

clearness and logical exactness, seizing at once the meaning of each

question put to him, and evading nothing in reply. By birth he is a

Mahratta Brahmin who has broken his caste. His father was a Yogi, and he

gave us an excellent account of him and the high-minded simple life he

led; how he passed his days sitting for the most part in the shade of

trees in contemplation during his later life, though earlier he had been

in Government service as Deputy Collector, or something of the sort. His

grandfather had been a banker and rich, but dying his wealth had been

lost, and the father had to reconstruct it and revive the bank. Kháparde

himself was brought up in good circumstances, living on lands of his

father’s own, with horses to ride, and a herd of cows. He had made his

education in the Government College in Bombay, and while there had

joined the Theosophists. He is now fifty-six. He reverences Mme.

Blavatsky and highly esteems Mrs. Besant, though the latter, he says,

has gone wrong lately on the political question. Under these ladies’

influence he learned to eat meat and drink wine, but later returned to

his vegetarian food. His philosophy is extremely interesting, but it

always surprises me that the doctrine of the eternity of the soul

renewing itself by passing from body to body should be so absolutely

believed as it is by men so enlightened in science. In reply to his

exposition I set before him my own philosophy of the nothingness of man,

a mere scum on the surface of our little earth. He acknowledges the

truth of this, but supposes that in other worlds of the vast universe a

higher kind of animal body exists into which our souls may transmigrate

before they come to perfection. ‘Only a few souls, such as Jesus Christ

or Buddha,’ he said, ‘can have attained to perfection on this Earth.’

Arguing on these lines he had a great success with our house party, his

discourse having become a regular lecture, including Miss Lawrence and

Miss Butcher and my grandchildren, who listened with open eyes fixed on

his dark face and crimson turban. In the course of it his exposition

between soul and body were so closely the same as those I had put into

verse fifty years ago that I recited a stanza of it to him:

I am but by your union.

With either soul or body lost

All perisheth. Then work ye on

Together, friends not corpse and ghost.

To live and be is my sole boast.

Learn this, alone ye nothing can.

Yet both together ye make Man.

“This he declared to be an inspired verse. Later he displayed great

intelligence when I showed him my Arab horses, chestnut with four white

feet and a blaze, being, he said, the favourite Indian colour,

especially that dark chestnut (Feluka’s colour) which he recognized just

as Mohammed Abdu had done as _kumeyt_.

“_26th July._—Belloc tells me that the government is seeking an excuse

to treat Dingra as a criminal lunatic instead of hanging him. That

traitor Stead had a letter in yesterday’s ‘Observer’ urging this on the

ground that it would punish him more. I have written to Dillon showing

how dangerous a precedent it would be, as admitting the right of an

English Government to inflict lifelong torture on its political enemies

when it finds one brave enough to face death and defy them. Kháparde

says that certainly Dingra would prefer death, because he would then at

once re-enter life in a higher sphere of being, instead of having to

wait twenty or thirty years in prison for it, with the risk of becoming

deteriorated by the too long persecution.

“_29th July._—The papers are full of flying feats, a Frenchman, Blériot,

having flown across the Channel. How interested Robert Lytton would have

been in this! He always maintained forty years ago that the true

solution of the flying problem lay in a machine which should be heavier,

not lighter than air.

“_30th July._—There has been something of a revolution in Spain, caused

by an unsuccessful piece of filibustering by the Spanish Government in

Morocco. The people at Barcelona and Madrid refused to go on with the

War there. It is an excellent symptom of anti-jingo feeling, and will do

good everywhere, though it will also work to the profit of Socialism.

“_1st Aug. (Sunday)._—Belloc and Basil Blackwood came to luncheon;

Belloc in one of his most talkative moods. He tells me Father John

Pollen was with Tyrrell the day before he died. Belloc was at Mulberry

House, too, though not inside Tyrrell’s room. There has been a great

dispute in the papers as to the true facts, but Pollen’s visit is

mentioned by none of the writers, unless it be as ‘the other priest’ who

gave him absolution.

“_15th Aug. (Sunday)._—We have Professor Cockerell and his wife here for

the week-end with Meynell and again Kháparde. Kháparde, who was born a

native of the Berar province of Hyderabad, has told me the story of how

the province was finally made over to the Calcutta Government on a

perpetual lease in 1903.[7] Kháparde’s account is that when Curzon was

at Hyderabad in that year he was invited to dine with the Nizam, he

being on one side of the Nizam and Lady Curzon on the other, they got

him to give a verbal promise that a lease should be granted, the Nizam

being partly drunk at the time. In the morning he would have backed out

of his promise, but Curzon threatened to depose him and forced him to

sign the document desired. Thus Lord Ripon’s promise that the Berar

province should not be taken was evaded by the officials. The Nizam is

said to have been so angry at what had been done that he refused to take

food for four days. Now there is a new intrigue, which has for its

object to get hold of the two other Provinces, Arungabad and Parabhani,

they being, after the Berars, the richest of the Nizam’s territory. I

asked Kháparde his opinion of the Viceroys who succeeded Lord Ripon. Of

Dufferin he said he was a diplomatist, who gave fair words but did

nothing. On arrival he announced that he intended to carry out Lord

Ripon’s policy, but he made no step in advance of the Municipal

Councils, Lord Ripon’s first instalment of self-government. Lords

Lansdowne and Elgin also did nothing, letting the officials have their

own way. He holds Curzon to have had the ambition to make himself

Viceroy for life of India, and to revive the state and splendour of the

Mogul Emperors. The great Durbar of 1903 cost £5,000,000 sterling,

though only £50,000 figured for it in the budget, the deficit being made

up by charges credited to the Public Works Department. This was made

easy by the arrangement according to which the provincial budgets are

subject to approval and alteration at Calcutta, so that extra expenses

can be charged on these if required by the Imperial Government. In

Curzon’s time all the Councils were officialized, and the management

centralized, so as to destroy their independence. He told how the famine

accounts had been manipulated in 1900 in Berar and the Hyderabad state.

During the famine no accounts were kept by those entrusted with the

distribution of relief, the money wanted being drawn from a fund at

Hyderabad, which consisted of the surpluses of six or seven years, paid

from the Berars and kept there in hand, but when the famine was over

those who had administered the relief were called together and were told

to write out accounts, so much for one thing, so much for another, so as

to make up the sum taken from the Fund; thus there was no real check at

all upon the expenditure.

“I asked him about loyalty to the Crown. At this he smiled. There was at

one time, he said, a certain feeling towards Queen Victoria, on account

of her proclamation of 1858, but all that was long past. The Nizam was

bitter about the Berars, and had no love at all for the Imperial

Government or for the present King. The Duke of Connaught had good

manners with the Indian princes; in this a great contrast with others,

but his appointment as viceroy would not alter the situation now. As to

the Mohammedans there would be no difficulty arising from them in a

restoration of self-government, except in the Punjaub, where the feeling

between the two communities, Hindoo and Moslem, was still very bitter.

“This afternoon we had quite a garden party, over twenty guests sitting

down to tea in the Jubilee Garden. Among them Miss Frances Jennings, who

came with one of the Meynell girls. Miss Jennings is a most interesting

girl, pretty in the Burne-Jones way, with a rose-leaf complexion,

strange blue eyes and flaxen hair. Meynell tells me she is of Welsh

origin, but she herself said her father was from Cumberland, her mother

from Devonshire. She came up quite young to the Slade School in London,

where everybody, girls and boys, fell in love with her, and she having a

romantic fancy for Olivia Meynell, became a Catholic, inflicted on

herself all kinds of austerities, and wanted to be a nun. In the

meantime her drawing at the Slade School became famous, and she went

over to Paris to study art there. She was alone, and failed to find a

lodging in an inn in the Quartier Latin, and was picked up by a

charitable Englishman there, who has ever since wanted to marry her.

Then she returned to England, and last Spring was found by her friends

sitting outside St. Etheldreda’s church in the rain with severe

influenza, and she has since been paralysed. I had some talk with her.

She has all the look of a Saint, with strange unearthly eyes which

seemed as if looking at spirits in the air, and a wonderful ecstatic

smile and still more wonderfully sweet voice; her features rather

irregular with a wide unshaped mouth, I can imagine her attracting a

young man’s devotion. Kháparde has talked brilliantly all day.

“_17th August._—My birthday of 69. They have done me the honour of

choosing the day for Dingra’s execution, thus making of it an

anniversary which will be regarded as one of martyrdom in India for

generations.

“Another long talk with Kháparde. He is very angry with the Indian

Government, which has just closed five Schools which he had founded in

Berar, as seditious. He talked more plainly than he has yet done about

the future of India. I asked him whether they could set up a form of

Government there which would replace the English, and if so what would

be its character? He answered that it could easily be done. First, they

would redistribute the provinces, so as to make them coincide with

ethnical conditions, each to be governed by a Provincial Council, which

in its turn would send delegates to a Central Council. The Provincial

Councils would have the management of all provincial affairs, while the

Central Council would control the army, the posts and telegraphs,

foreign affairs, and other matters called Imperial. Thus, in a way, the

old Hindoo Empire and the Empire of Akbar would be refounded. Who should

be the head of it would probably be determined by events; it might be a

successful soldier, or it might be a President, as in the United States.

All would be easy to arrange. He does not give English rule in India

more than five to ten, at most twenty, years of survival. A revolution

could be accomplished to-morrow if the funds necessary were forthcoming.

Five million sterling would be sufficient. As to the army, it was a mere

matter of money which side it would take. It was mercenary, and would go

where its pay was most secure. It was not loyal for any other reason. As

for the native Princes whose loyalty was constantly proclaimed, they

hated English rule in their hearts; their loyalty was forced on them by

the residents, who ordered all things in their name, by promises held

out alternately with threats. One great hold the Residents had over them

was this: in former times each independent prince had his treasure house

where he stored up his wealth. Now the Residents insisted on their

investing it in Government securities, so as to bind their money

interests to the existing state of things. I showed him my notes of what

Mademoiselle Gaignaud had told me in 1884 about Cordery’s threats to the

Nizam. He assured me it was true. Since I was at Hyderabad, there had

been a plot in Lord Dufferin’s time, according to which it had been

intended to depose the Nizam, on the plea of unsound mind, and to

replace him with a Regency, so as once more to get control of the State

Funds; but this had been prevented by the Nizam’s appeal to his old

minister, the Peshkar, who had him medically examined and pronounced him

to be entirely sane before Cordery could get a contrary medical opinion.

The plan of Governing by a Regency was a favourite one with our

officials, as it threw all power without restraint into the hands of the

Resident. As to Scindia, it was the same thing; none of the native

princes were really loyal, in spite of their public professions and

their subscriptions.

“I asked him whether it would not be better to bring about the coming

change peaceably. He said, ‘Of course. But it would be impossible; there

are too many money interests involved. India, in spite of the great

poverty of the people, still had much undeveloped wealth in mines and

such like. The Indian Government would always be able to pay a mercenary

army for its support, and as long as it could pay its way it would

listen to no reason. It would never abdicate its authority while it

could buy men to fight. The Government policy was to prevent the growth

of wealth in native hands. Nevertheless the present state of things

could not be made to last by force for more than twenty years.

“Dr. Riza Tewfik, Turkish delegate and member of Parliament for

Adrianople, lunched with us in Chapel Street. He is by birth an Albanian

Moslem, his mother a Circassian, nor has he till this year been out of

Turkey, yet he talks French like a Parisian, and has a great knowledge

of French and English literature, and has acquired a very great breadth

of ideas. Of Turkey’s constitutional prospects he does not speak

hopefully; the Empire is so diverse in its languages and nationalities.

He believes in ultimate autonomy for the provinces, though at present

self-preservation makes administrative union a necessity. He approves my

recommendation of allowing the interior of Arabia to govern itself in

its own way, holding only the seaports and the pilgrim railway. I asked

him about Egypt. ‘Egypt,’ he said, ‘is already independent of the

Empire, except in name. We sympathize with their desire for a

constitution, but they must look for it to England. We cannot interfere

or raise any question likely to make trouble between us and England.

England will probably allow the Egyptians some kind of Constitution, as

much as they are worthy of. They are a corrupt people without courage.

Nevertheless there is no danger of the Ottoman Government selling Egypt

to England as the price of financial help. It has been talked about at

Constantinople, but will not be entertained.’

“Speaking of the revolution at Constantinople, Dr. Riza Tewfik said that

the reactionaries had a certain support from our Embassy through the

influence of Fitzmaurice, the Chief Dragoman, our Ambassador, Lowther,

being quite ignorant of Turkish affairs. On the whole I find him quite

sympathetic, and he urged me to write to him. He returns to

Constantinople this week.”

I went down in the evening to Clouds, where I spent ten pleasant days.

“_18th Aug._—Dingra’s last dying pronouncement is published in the

_Daily News_, all other papers being silent about it.[8] It is a noble

declaration of his faith in the destinies of his motherland and in his

own. ‘My wish,’ he says, ‘is that I should be born again of the same

mother, and that I should die the same death for her again.’ No greater

fortitude was ever shown by a martyr for any faith. With such men to

love her, the Mother India must succeed; but the British public is so

besotted with its own self-satisfaction that it refuses to acknowledge

in this martyr’s death endured so calmly anything but a murderer’s wish

for notoriety. The day of reckoning, however, cannot be long delayed.

“_19th Aug._—At Clouds. Lyne Stivens, the doctor, was here to-day, a

vulgar, amusing dog, who told a number of good stories. One of them was

how the King received Cromer on his return from Egypt when he went to

His Majesty to receive the Order of Merit. ‘I am happy,’ the King said,

‘to bestow this final honour upon you, and all the more so because I

hear so good an account of your work in Egypt from my friend Sir Ernest

Cassel.’ This raised Cromer’s bile.

“He told us, too, of how the Duke of Connaught’s chauffeur, having been

fined by the magistrates of Salisbury for exceeding the legal speed

limit in his motor, His Royal Highness had declared his determination

never to enter Salisbury again, with more stories of a like high life

kind. He had brought with him his wife, a Buenos Aires heiress, whose

wealth puts him above the necessities of his profession, much to his

fellow-doctors’ disgust, who treat him as a quack; but he is a clever

fellow, who claps his patients on the back and tells them to ‘buck up,’

which they do. He talked about the Dingra assassination, which seems to

have at last convinced his Royal friends that there is something wrong

about the state of India. People talk about political assassination as

defeating its own end, but that is nonsense; it is just the shock needed

to convince selfish rulers that selfishness has its limits of

imprudence. It is like that other fiction that England never yields to

threats. My experience is that when England has her face well slapped

she apologizes, not before.

“_22nd Aug._—Hugh Wyndham, the younger, arrived last night. He is

settled now with his wife near Johannesburg, on a farm eight hours’

railway journey from the Natal frontier, where he breeds thoroughbreds

for racing. He is a rich man, as his father left each of the younger

sons £10,000 a year, and he intends going into the new Cape Town

Parliament. He gave me a more intelligent view of the political position

than I have yet had. He approves of the Transvaal settlement made after

the war, and thinks that in time Boer and Briton will settle down

amicably together, though the balance of power will be with the Boer,

whose vote on all questions will be given solidly, and who moreover is

an increasing population more than is the British. On the negro question

he does not think there is any danger of a return to legal slavery. Also

it will be impossible to prevent the education of the blacks, or their

eventually obtaining the franchise. They are rapidly increasing in

numbers and in knowledge of their power. He would like State education

for them, so as to direct their intelligence in a right direction. He is

opposed to dividing the land into white and black districts, as it would

be impossible to enforce the dividing lines. The whole question of the

future is whether the white man can be persuaded to do manual labor. If

not, South Africa must eventually fall to the blacks, but he thinks the

pride of colour will be sacrificed by the whites when they find they

cannot live without white labour. He also thinks that the independence

of the Basutos and Bechuanas will be respected. His ideas are far more

humane than I at all expected.

“_29th Aug. (Sunday)._—I am spending a week-end at St. Giles’ with the

Shaftesburys, a large and pleasant party with a number of interesting

people, George Wyndham amongst them, and we sat up talking late,

Shaftesbury, George and I, when the rest were gone, and with us De Bary,

Shaftesbury’s chaplain, once Father Angelo at Crawley, now doing

priestly duty in the Anglican Church. I asked him what his religious

position exactly was, and he told me that, without changing any of his

opinions, he had signed the Thirty-nine Articles as expounded to him by

Dr. Gore, the Anglican Bishop of Birmingham, and now did duty in the

parish church here. He seems quite happy, and has a very pleasant time

of it at St. Giles’ and at Belfast with the Shaftesburys. He is a quiet,

serious man, and spends his time writing books on theology and history,

being on the best of terms with his patrons, making them a very superior

chaplain indeed. George, of course, did most of our talking, and gave us

one of his lectures on Irish politics and the new Land Bill, using

arguments which are precisely the strongest ones for Home Rule. We also

discussed India, and he agreed with my major premise that India was

being ruined by us economically. He does not seem wrapped up in its

retention, caring more for the English-speaking colonies. Shaftesbury,

without special brilliancy, is sensible and open-minded, and took full

share in all this.

“_30th Aug._—Newbuildings. Kháparde has been telling me some tales of

the great Delhi Durbar of 1903, at which he was present. It began with a

half comic, half ominous incident. All the world was assembled in the

great horseshoe arena waiting for Lord Curzon to open the proceedings in

state, when a fox terrier belonging to a bandsman in one of the Highland

regiments was suddenly seen to mount the steps of the dais and jump into

the throne on which the viceroy was to sit and began barking, to the

amusement of the assembled Princes, dignitaries of the Empire, and

somewhat too to their disgust, till the dog was driven out. It seemed to

some of the Princes to symbolize the indignity to which they were

subjected, and the position of India as a country with a dog for master.

When Lord Curzon arrived, he took his seat, the Duke of Connaught,

representing the King, being placed at his right on another throne, and

the Duke had to rise and bow to the Viceroy, which gave new offence to

the native princes, while Lady Curzon had to curtsey to the Duchess,

each being then seated behind their respective husbands. A third cause

of offence was when the Begum of Bhopal came forward in public, contrary

to all Indian usage about women, and touched the Viceroy’s foot with her

forehead. Lastly, as an ill-omen, three men of the Highland regiments

fell down dead with sunstroke. These happenings, which Kháparde saw with

his own eyes, being not more than ten or fifteen yards from the throne,

were the subject of much native talk, though the incident of the dog was

kept out of the newspapers. The chief offence, however, given to the

princes was that, while Curzon returned none of their visits paid to him

in camp, he devoted three hours to newspaper correspondents.

“He told me also some interesting details of the Government’s dealings

with the rulers of various native States, notably with Scindia, Holkar

and the Nizam. Scindia, it seems, had accumulated eighty crores of

rupees in specie as a reserve fund in case of actual rebellion and for

the payment of an army he kept up of some strength. This immense sum the

Imperial Government, taking advantage of there being a Regency (a

favourite opportunity), invested in Government securities, and this

bound the Gwalior State to loyalty. This was managed under Lansdowne.

Under Curzon, the State of Indore, Holkar’s, was in like manner

manipulated during a Regency.

“_31st Aug._—Newbuildings. Two young Egyptians came to dine and sleep,

and consult me about their hopes. They have come to England on behalf of

the National Congress to be held at Geneva on the 13th, the anniversary

of Tel-el-Kebir. Both young men are courageous in their opinions, and

the elder especially of a keen intelligence, reminding me not a little

of Mustapha Kamel, but speaking English instead of French. The younger

of a purer Egyptian type, the son of a rich man in the Delta, who has

been for three years an undergraduate at Oxford. The first was a

disciple of Abdu’s, and has taken a degree at the University of Lyons,

and has been working for some time past among the Delta villages,

preaching political sermons in the mosques. He gives a very hopeful

account of his progress among them. Both are thoroughgoing in their

plans. They came to ask my advice as to the course of action they should

take under present conditions. The Khedive, they say, has gone over

altogether to the English, but has very little influence, the younger

students of the Azhar being now very nearly all Nationalists. What they

are afraid of now is lest the Government at Constantinople should sell

Egypt to England. On this point I reassured them. I advised them to keep

on the best possible terms with the Copts and the European Colonies, so

as to conciliate as far as possible the European Powers, and very

especially not to quarrel with Constantinople, Egypt’s connection with

the Ottoman Empire being its real safe-guard against England. We

discussed the formation of a secret society on the lines of the Turkish

Committee of Union and Progress. One of them has a plan of throwing up

his career at Oxford without waiting for a degree, and of going to

Constantinople or the United States or Germany to get a military

training. He says the Egyptian army is rapidly becoming Nationalist, and

they have received assurances that it would join them in case of

disturbances. It would not fire on the people, but officers would be

wanted when the time came to take the place of the present English

officers. He is fired with the ambition of playing a part like Enver

Bey’s. He is a big strong young fellow, rather silent, but with flashes

of enthusiasm and anger. I much applauded his resolution; also I told

them I considered it waste time to try and convert England to the idea

of evacuation. Englishmen were not open to persuasion on that head, but

might be convinced if it could be shown that their hold on Egypt was a

trouble and a danger. I read them my manifesto, not yet finished, for

the Congress, and they will have it read out at the opening of the

proceedings. It is in French, and they will have it translated into

Arabic as well as English. We sat up talking till midnight. These are

the sort of young men to make a revolution. The older Egyptians are

useless; they have not the courage.

“_1st September._—The young men are gone. Winston Churchill came down

to-day to Carpenters to see his wife, who is staying there with her

mother, and I had tea with them and discussed the Indian question with

him. I found him sufficiently open-minded to admit that if it could be

proved that India was poorer to-day than a hundred years ago we ought to

leave it.

“_2nd Sept._—There is a report in the papers to-day that the Grand

Vizier at Constantinople, Hilmi Pasha, has declared his entire approval

of the Khedive and of English policy in Egypt; but it is also rumoured

that Hilmi is about to resign. I have read Gorst’s new White Paper with

the text of a new law permitting the deportation of persons in Egypt

without trial.

“_5th Sept. (Sunday)._—Winston and Clementine came to lunch with me.

Winston is a charming young man, as unconventional as his father was,

and as light in hand. We lunched in the garden, and sat there after it

till four o’clock, discussing nearly all the great questions of the day,

the Budget, the fight with the Lords, South Africa, Egypt, India, all

the tricks of the political game. He believes the Budget to be very

popular, and that the Government will win on it if it comes to a General

Election; but it will not come to that. The Lords will not fight. Some

day there will be a great Constitutional fight, which he thinks the

Commons will win, though, at present, the Lords would have all the

physical force in their hands: army, territorials and Boy Scouts. The

Lords could be coerced if they refused, after the General Election, a

second time to vote the Budget, and the King, if he refused to swamp

them with new peers.

“Talking about public schools he said they were a bad training for a

clever boy. ‘I never learned anything at school,’ he said, ‘and to be

high up at Eton is enough to ruin any boy, and give him a narrow view of

life.’ He likes the universities and military training for a few years,

though the army is a poor profession. ‘I got all the fun of it,’ he

said, ‘for I was on active service nearly all the time in the Soudan,

and afterwards in South Africa, as a newspaper correspondent.’ He went

on to Kitchener and the Mahdi’s head. Kitchener, he said, had behaved

like a blackguard in that business. He pretended to have sent the head

back to Soudan in a kerosene tin, but the tin may have contained

anything, perhaps ham sandwiches. He kept the head, and has it still. ‘I

made a row about that,’ he said, ‘though they told me it was bad taste

for a young Lieutenant to say anything. I always hated Kitchener, though

I did not know him personally. They are ashamed of the matter now, but I

took pains to remind them of it two years ago when the case for

Mambata’s mutilation in Natal was brought forward. I had to defend the

Government. “At any rate,” I said, “We have an excellent precedent for

what was done to the Zulu Chief in what Lord Kitchener did to the Mahdi

when he blew up the body and kept the head.” There was a question raised

about a medal being struck for the campaign amongst the Zulus, and they

sent the sketch of it to me at the Office for approval. I wrote on it:

“Surely the medal ought to have Mambata’s head on it, not the King’s.”

This docket must be still at the War Office.’

“From this we went on to the characters of various personages; Morley’s,

which he praised, because he always learned something from talking with

him, though he more or less agreed with me about him as a poor

politician, and the mess he had made about that very Mahdi’s head

business. Of Arthur Balfour he narrated how Belloc had spoiled a dinner-

party at Harry Cust’s where Arthur and several others had been. The

house had caught fire during the dinner, and after putting it out they

all drank champagne, and Arthur had grown talkative and confidential,

and was just launching into the secret history of the South African War

when Belloc insisted upon giving his own views and kept on talking all

night and Arthur never got in again. Winston corresponds with Labby, of

whom he has a good opinion, and he admires Chamberlain, ‘Old Joe,’

because he is unscrupulous and bold; but he says Labby is an example of

failure in that line. He had the ambition of being in the Cabinet, or

else an ambassador, and he succeeded in neither. About South Africa he

told how he had dined with Moore, the Natal Premier, a little while ago,

and how Moore had said to him, apropos of what was going on in India:

‘Well, Churchill, I suppose you’ll have to bleed them soon; there’s

nothing like it. Next time they have a demonstration ride them down, and

if that isn’t enough pour in a volley. You’ll bleed a few thousands of

them, but it will be better for them in the long run; there’s nothing

like bleeding.’ Winston did not talk as much about India as I had hoped,

but he said: ‘If they ever unite against us and put us in Coventry all

round, the game would be up. If they could agree to have nothing at all

to do with us the whole thing would collapse.’

“He went on to Egypt. He said: ‘We shall continue to hold it whatever

happens; nobody will ever give it up—I won’t—except we are driven out of

it at the end of a war. It will all depend upon whether we can hold

command of the sea; the fate of the war will decide it.’ It is something

to know from him that this is, in fact, the present Government’s policy.

It is exactly what I have just written in my Congress Manifesto.

“I talked to him about my prison time in Ireland, and this interested

him. ‘I am dead against the present system,’ he said, ‘and if I am ever

at the Home Office I will make a clean sweep of it.’ I promised to send

him in a paper on the subject if ever the time should come. He thinks

Home Rule will come now very soon. About the suffragettes, he expects

them to take to dynamite, he told a story of a man who, talking about

their chaining themselves to the railings till they got the vote, said:

‘I might as well chain myself to St. Thomas’s Hospital and say I would

not move till I had had a baby.’ Coming indoors he saw the butterflies

in cases on the chimney-piece, and told us about those he had found in

Uganda. I like him much. He is _aux plus petits soins_ with his wife,

taking all possible care of her. They are a very happy married pair.

Clementine was afraid of wasps, and one settled on her sleeve, and

Winston gallantly took the wasp by the wings and thrust it into the

ashes of the fire. We had out the stallions for him to look at; Ibn

Yashmak being the one he liked best. He is to come again and shoot

pheasants here in October. Now he is off to the Prussian Manœuvres and

to visit Kaiser Wilhelm.

“Talking about the decay of the House of Commons as a power in the

country, he said that if he had his way he would revive the right of

adjourning the House once a week to debate any urgent affair of the

moment. He is all for the discussion of everything, and is inclined even

to adopt my doctrine of no secret diplomacy. He thinks with me that it

is monstrous the Government should be able to bind the country by secret

treaties for years, while the country knows nothing whatever about them.

“_12th Sept._—On Tuesday Keir Hardie sent me an urgent message wanting

to see me about Egypt at any hour next day that I would name, and I

telegraphed that I would give him luncheon in Chapel Street at one; but

though I went up to London on purpose he failed to keep his appointment,

and it was not till two days later that he wrote to apologize. These

M.P.’s have no manners. His reason for wanting to see me was that he was

going to the Congress of Geneva with Kettle and two or three other

members. I have been hard at work all the week past writing my manifesto

for the Egyptian Congress in French, and I have posted it to Geneva.

“_16th Sept._—De Bary, ex-Father Angelo, came for a couple of nights. He

tells me his father and mother were mystics who looked for a restoration

of a theocracy in Europe under the Pope and a Catholic king in France.

They wished all their six children to become monks and nuns, and all six

did so. He himself joined the Capuchins before he was fifteen, and made

his vows without knowing anything, if I understand him rightly, of the

relations of the sexes. For that reason Father Tyrrell was of opinion

that De Bary’s vow of chastity did not bind him, and that he was free to

marry if he chose. He showed me a number of Tyrrell’s letters, one of

which bore on this point. At twenty-one he was made to sign a

disentailing deed of the family property which he had not read or

understood the meaning of. He is now about forty, and acts as private

chaplain to the Shaftesburys at St. Giles’, where I met him in the

summer. I drove him to-day to Storrington, where we had tea with Miss

Petre, and visited Tyrrell’s grave with her. It is kept decked with

flowers, and there were two persons, a man and a woman, kneeling there

and praying. This is Miss Petre’s pious work. De Bary and I knelt also.

There is yet no stone placed.

“De Bary is an interesting man, and on his own subjects is a good,

though rather vague, talker. He is enthusiastic about the rights of the

weak races of mankind, and is a good Nationalist in Ireland of the

Horace Plunkett school. He was a member of the Roger Bacon Society,

which had its meetings at Holmwood, with several other Capuchins. He has

a high opinion of Gibson as entirely devoted to Sinn Fein. Gibson’s wife

was sympathetic to a certain point, but, as a Catholic complained that

he adopted ‘all the heresies.’ Mivart was one of the most notable of

their members. It was Coventry Patmore who started the idea of the

identity of Aphrodite and the Virgin Mary, which Mivart afterwards

brought forward in one of his ‘Nineteenth Century’ articles. Jesus

Christ, Mivart said, was first worshipped as identical with Æsculapius.

De Bary is a great believer in Bishop Gore and his Christian Socialism,

and he assures me that this section of the English Church is sound about

India and the Zulus and other native questions in the British Empire. De

Bary was a year earning his own living in America, where he says things

are far worse than in England. He has been fortunate in getting into

harbour at St. Giles’.

“_24th Sept._—Newbuildings. The Geneva Congress has been a success.

Osman Ghaleb writes enthusiastically of young Goumah, who took the lead

at the Egyptian meeting, speaking out well in answer to Keir Hardie (who

had made a half-hearted speech), and had carried the Congress with him.

They also carried an amendment omitting the complimentary telegram to

the Khedive. It has had its effect here in England. The Budget debate,

however, absorbs all English attention, and much depends on its issue

both for Egypt and for India.

“Bernard Shaw writes to me: ‘We are in for a bad time in India I am

afraid, but the Indians, like the Egyptians, must work out their own

salvation, for we _cannot_ let them go on until they break loose, and

until defeats and Empire shrinkage in other directions compel us to

march out as the Romans marched out of Britain.’ Hall Caine, too, writes

to me about his new Egyptian novel, ‘The White Prophet.’ The novel is

fantastic, but will do good, as thousands of people will read it. He

says in his letter: ‘I recall the fact that you kindly sent me “The Wind

and the Whirlwind” at the time of its publication. I read your poem

again while writing “The White Prophet,” and it may possibly occur that

certain of my own passages are coloured by yours, etc.’ Cromer, he says,

has been making efforts to influence the Press against his book, and he

wants me to write in praise of it.

“_27th Sept._—Lady Cardigan’s Memoirs have been published, a really

audacious book, surpassing everything of the kind that has yet been

printed. Most of the stories in it relate to things well known in

society, but which have only been talked about in private hitherto.

There is very little that is new to me. One thing, however, I may say I

know to be untrue, the story of Lord Ward’s first marriage, though the

versions given of it here I have also heard. What I believe really

happened (my informant being Mme. d’Usedom, who told it me forty and

more years ago) is this: Miss de Burgh, who was a very pretty girl, had

four young men who adored her, and who all had proposed to her. Among

them were Lord Mount Charles and Lord Ward (afterwards Lord Dudley).

There was another, however, whom she really loved, and finding herself

with child to him and him unwilling to marry her, she wrote to the

others in turn saying that she was now willing, on the sole condition

that the wedding should take place at once. Ward accepted her terms and

married her, and for some time remained ignorant of how it was with her,

but finding it out at last sent her back to her parents, and a

separation, not, I think, a divorce, took place. The wife, however, did

not long survive it, and having miscarried badly of her child sent to

her husband and begged his forgiveness, and he nursed her with all

possible kindness to the end. Mme. d’Usedom said this was the account

Ward had given her of the affair, and one that, if I remember rightly,

Mount Charles had confirmed. Lady Cardigan’s story, a very different

one, of Ward’s brutality was, however, circulated at the time, Ward

being a man of strange idiosyncrasies with women and unpopular with men.

She quotes as her authority Lady Duppelin, whose husband was one of the

lady’s lovers and who doubtless got it through him from the lady—not a

very reliable source. The occasion on which I heard my version was when

I was staying with Mme. d’Usedom at S. Maurice in Switzerland in 1867,

Lord Dudley being at the time on his second honeymoon there. Through

Mme. d’Usedom I made acquaintance with him and his bride, whom I had

known as Miss Moncrieff, and formed a high opinion of him in the

character of middle-aged husband with a quite young bride. Though it was

anything but a love marriage at starting (for she was in love with

another man, Lord Tyrone, who had failed to marry her, and took Dudley

as a _pisaller_), he was so assiduous and tactful with her that he

succeeded in gaining her full devotion, and eventually she bore him sons

and daughters not a few, and remained through life attached to him,

although he was unfaithful to her. Blanche Hozier confirms my version of

the story as being that told her by her mother, Lady Airlie, who knew

Miss de Burgh well at the time of her marriage. She says that Dudley

died of a too violent passion he indulged in for Sarah Bernhardt. I have

a special recollection of a picnic in which we all took part at S.

Maurice, and of Dudley’s having challenged me to race him a hundred

yards down hill, one which, being then young and for a short distance

light of limb, I won easily enough to his chagrin and, as I think, to

his bride’s. She was a lovely girl, tall and framed like a goddess, but

with an unlovely voice.

“_1st Oct._—Belloc was here to-day wanting to buy cord-wood for his

winter’s firing. He tells me that Gorst is now looked upon at the

Foreign Office as a complete failure, and that he himself acknowledges

that the whole of his policy has broken down. He wants to leave Egypt

for another post, but they cannot find anybody willing to replace him.

‘They missed their opportunity,’ Belloc said, ‘of making a deal about

Egypt with Germany.’ This was to have been in connection with the Bagdad

railway, but the revolution at Constantinople spoilt that. Gorst’s

policy was what I always said it was, to convert the Egyptians through

the Khedive to English ideas, and, of course, it has failed egregiously.

Even the wretched old Legislative Council has rebelled, and has

addressed a remonstrance against Gorst to Grey for what he said in his

last annual report, and claiming a sort of Constitution. Lastly, Ronald

Storrs writes from Cairo that he has just been given the succession to

Boyle’s place at the Agency, another indication of a change of plan

there. Boyle has been chief adviser of the Agency for the last twenty

years, and has engineered the Cabal against the Nationalists, with the

help of the Mokattam newspaper and the Syrians. Storrs has just been at

Damascus. He knows Arabic well, and is an extremely clever fellow, and

his appointment is significant. It probably means a change of policy,

perhaps, a reversion to Cromerism, perhaps, though I don’t expect it,

something really liberal at last, only all this is dependent upon

politics at home and the fate of the General Elections.

“_2nd Oct._—Our shooting party arrived late last night, Winston and

Clementine and Harry Cust and his wife; and we had an exceedingly

pleasant evening. Winston was in excellent form, and as he and Harry are

old and very intimate friends, the ball of conversation was kept rolling

well. Harry described to us Asquith’s adventure with the Suffragettes at

Lympne. He was there with Asquith and Herbert Gladstone, and the

suffragettes assaulted Asquith, striking him on the face with their

fists, or rather with their wrists (he gave a demonstration). He, Harry,

was Secretary of the Golf Club and intervened, telling the women that

whatever their dispute with the Prime Minister might be it was

impossible they should be allowed to walk on the grass, as it was

against the regulations of the Club. This, he said, impressed them.

Asquith defended himself, and caught hold of one of the women and

Herbert of another, and eventually got away in a motor. While they were

at dinner a stone, a big block of granite, was thrown through the window

of their room and fell within a yard of Margot. He says it will come to

murder before long. The women were quite mad.

“Winston gave us a very full account of what his policy in the Budget

dispute with the Lords would be. He began by saying that his hope and

prayer was that they would throw out the Bill, as it would save the

Government from a certain defeat if the Elections were put off. The

Budget, once it became law, would be immensely unpopular, and everybody

would be against it. It was therefore to the interest of the Opposition

to let it pass. It seemed, however, likely that the Lords would throw it

out. Then there were two courses, either to resign at once or to

dissolve. He is for dissolving. Then if the Government came back with a

good majority he thinks they could go in for a regular attack on the

Lords’ veto. He thinks the King would go with them in swamping the House

of Lords by a creation of peers, and so would abolish the veto. But, if

only with a small majority, they would say the King’s Government could

not be carried on, and would resign, when Lansdowne would be called on

to form an administration; and he also being unable to carry on the

King’s Government, would have again to dissolve. Thus it would no longer

be a question of the Budget but of a quarrel between Lords and Commons,

‘and in time we should have all the forces on our side’—except the

physical forces. Winston is an admirable and delightful talker; very

clear in his ideas and with an extraordinarily ready wit. Harry, though

also ready and witty, was nowhere at all with him in the discussion,

which he tried to maintain from the Tory side. We had continued our talk

after leaving the dining-room and got on the subject of India and George

Curzon. Curzon, according to Harry, entirely lost his head in India; and

after Broderick became Secretary of State, thought he could do what he

liked. St. John, he said, had been George’s butt for thirty years. He

had always laughed at him and would not treat him seriously. St. John,

on the other hand, could not resist the temptation of having his little

revenge on George, when at last he found himself George’s official

superior, and was down on him on the first opportunity. As to the

quarrel with Kitchener, whom Winston hates, calling him by very hard

names, Winston explained how badly Curzon had played his cards. The

quarrel between them he declared to have been this: when the question of

the change in the Commander-in-Chief’s powers was introduced, Curzon

agreed to it on condition that Burrows was appointed, and Kitchener

agreed verbally to the appointment. At the same time, however, Kitchener

telegraphed privately to the War Office saying that Burrows was quite

unfit. This telegram, according to the espionage system practised in

India, was laid before the Viceroy. ‘Curzon ought then,’ said Winston,

‘to have called on Kitchener to explain himself, accused him of being

the liar and intriguer he was, and reported the whole thing to the India

office, when it would have been Kitchener who would have had to resign.

Instead of this he allowed Kitchener to bring the thing forward as a

dispute about the Commander-in-Chief’s powers, where Kitchener was able

to get the best of it. Curzon being Kitchener’s superior, ought never to

have allowed this—and it ended in his having himself to resign.’ He lost

his temper to such an extent that when Minto came out to relieve him he

refused, contrary to all precedent of etiquette, to attend the ceremony

of handing over his Governor-Generalship to the new-comer, and remained

in his own room.

“Winston sympathizes much with my ideas about the native question in

India, and in general about the enslavement of the coloured by the white

race. But he says he is an Imperialist, and his chief interest is in the

condition and welfare of the poor in England, who, he says, are far

worse off than the poor in any part of the East. ‘I would give my life,’

he said, ‘to see them placed on a right footing in regard to their lives

and means of living. That is what I am paid for, and I would really give

my life.’ I can see all the same that my arguments have effect on him,

just as they used to have with his father; and I should not be surprised

if some day he made the Indian cause his own. Talking of Kitchener’s

appointment to Malta he scoffed at Haldane’s pretence that this was

destined to be a post of the highest military importance, comprising the

whole of our military communication with India, ‘when,’ he said, ‘we all

perfectly well know that our only road to India in war time is by the

Cape.’

“To-day we shot hedgerows round about Gosbrook and Blinks Wood. Winston

shot very well, though, of course, it was easy shooting. Both the ladies

walked with us. Farid Bey and Osman Ghaleb had announced their arrival,

which would have been most inconvenient; but, fortunately, did not

appear, having, I suppose, received my telegram in time to put them off

till Monday. It was a beautiful day, and all went off successfully.

“In the evening we had another great discussion of the fundamentals of

politics, each of us holding our own ground. Mine was, of course, that

of ‘Satan Absolved,’ to which Winston opposed one of optimistic Liberal

Imperialism where the British Empire was to be maintained, in part by

concession, in part by force, and the constant invention of new

scientific forces to deal with growing difficulties of Imperial rule. He

admitted, however, that India does not pay its expense to us in men or

money; and it seems to me that he would be pretty easily persuaded to

let it go, were the pressure severe enough. Like most of them, it is the

vanity of Empire that affects him more than supposed profit or the

necessities of trade, which he repudiates; also, doubtless, his military

training counts for much in his Imperialism. He will come round to me in

time. Harry Cust, with all his cleverness, was quite outclassed by

Winston in the discussion, who has studied all these problems

thoroughly, and is wonderfully quick in defending his position. He has

just his father’s talent of seizing the points of a situation and

driving them home in his replies. He fills me with admiration and

delight. The two women took little part in the discussion, but sat in

rapt attention. Mrs. Cust is a nice woman and her book, ‘Gentlemen

Errant,’ which I have been reading, is a monument of historical

research. He, though less attractively brilliant than Churchill, is

wonderfully well equipped for talk, having a far greater knowledge of

history and literature and a real poetic side, which in Churchill is

wanting. His knowledge of poetry is wide, and he has himself written

quite excellent verse. Both have wit and quickness of repartee and the

power of epigram. It is first-class sword play between them.

“_3rd Oct. (Sunday.)_—To-day was rainy and nobody appeared downstairs

till noon. But our talk began again at luncheon with new vigour. Then we

went out to look at the stallions. I mounted Churchill on Rijim and took

him with the others to Worleys to look at the mares, which gave us a

fine exhibition of galloping and circling round us. Rijim showed himself

nobly, and I promised Churchill he should ride him in the procession

there would be one day when he went to open Parliament as the first

President of the British Republic.

“Again we sat up till late. Among the many memorable things Churchill

said was this: Talking of Dingra, he said that there had been much

discussion in the Cabinet about him. Lloyd George had expressed to him

his highest admiration of Dingra’s attitude as a patriot, in which he

(Churchill) shared. He will be remembered 2,000 years hence, as we

remember Regulus and Caractacus and Plutarch’s heroes, and Churchill

quoted with admiration Dingra’s last words as the finest ever made in

the name of patriotism. All the same, he says that he was strongly in

favour of the law taking its course, even to the extent of refusing to

give back the body of the hanged man to his friends for their own

funeral rites. He quite understood that it would have been an additional

torture to have commuted the sentence.” [For text of Dingra’s speech see

Appendix III.]

“Churchill’s opinion of Lloyd George is high, but I doubt if he so

regards any of his other colleagues in the Cabinet, though he is careful

in his words about them. Of Burns he said, ‘His attitude is quite

excusable. He has been attacked out of jealousy by his fellow Socialists

past endurance; but he does not care. He has been three years in office,

drawing £2,000 a year salary, of which he only spends £300. He has saved

up all the rest. He can afford to snap his fingers at them.’ There was

much discussion between him and Cust about Asquith’s character, and a

comparison made by them between him and Arthur Balfour. ‘Asquith,’

Churchill said, ‘is a very simple-minded man, very ingenuous, but he has

a wonderful talent for work, and the clearest possible head for

business. He will sit up playing bridge and drinking late at night, and

yet in the morning he will come to his office or to the House and enter

into the most complicated business with his head entirely clear and work

on for six or seven hours. He will attend committees and give full

attention to every point of discussion, and draft amendments in his

perfectly clear handwriting without altering a word clause after clause,

and he is far and away the best speaker in the House. That is what gives

him his power. He is single-minded and good. Arthur, on the contrary, is

in his nature hard; he could be cruel. I call him wicked. He is very

courageous, the most courageous man alive. I believe if you held a

pistol to his face it would not frighten him. He is not appalled by

adverse circumstances, by the number of his enemies. I look on him as my

enemy, and I say this of him. The difference between him and Asquith is

that Arthur is wicked and moral, Asquith is good and immoral.’ This was

_à propos_ of a question put by Harry as to which of the two it would be

pleasantest to spend a week with. According to both of them, Asquith of

late years has gone morally downhill. From the Puritan he was, he has

adopted the polite frivolities of society. Harry told stories of this,

and compared him to Fox and Arthur to Pitt. He had gone all to pieces at

one time, but pulled himself together when he became Prime Minister. He

had lost his influence with the Radicals by his addiction to fine

society. ‘But,’ said Churchill, ‘Lloyd George and I have re-established

his credit with our Budget. It has put a stop to his social career.’

This evolution of the square-toed Asquith, with his middle-class

Puritanical bringing up and his severity of conduct, into the ‘gay dog’

of London society is to me irresistibly funny. It needs a Balzac to deal

with it properly. As to Morley, Churchill is silent, allowing me to

attack him without defending him, and I think in his heart agreeing with

me. We went over the whole history of Morley’s weakness in the Mahdi’s

head case, and in that of his feeble opposition to the Boer War and his

muddle-headedness about India. I think Churchill will come round to my

views about India, for in all essentials he is at one with me; and he

was fired at the description I gave him of his father’s doings at the

India Office and at our formula, ‘The Queen and Native India,’ against

the covenanted Civil Service.

“He is sympathetic, too, about the motor car tyranny, and talks of

children being collected and carried to school so as to escape the

dangers of the road. But he has no scheme of immediate protection for

foot-goers, and says that flying machines will have superseded motors in

ten years’ time as an amusement of the rich. He told me he had a scheme

for settling the Somaliland folly on lines precisely the same as those I

proposed five years ago—that is to say, by withdrawing the British

troops to the seaports, and providing for the ‘friendly’ tribes, if they

could not agree with the Mullah, elsewhere. I told him about the blood

money way of settling accounts. Also he has urged a settlement of the

Cyprus trouble by ending the swindle there in regard to the tribute. All

this is excellent, and may lead to real Imperial reforms.

“_4th Oct._—They are all gone, much pleased, I think, with their visit.

“Farid Bey and Osman Bey Ghaleb arrived from Paris to talk over Egyptian

affairs. They intend holding their Congress next year at Constantinople.

I think that a good move. There seems to have been an intrigue at this

year’s meeting at Geneva, the Khedive having got hold of one of their

number, Mohammed Fehmi, in the interests of a rival party, the party of

the people. It was only Goumah’s courageous speech that turned the

tables against these.

“_5th Oct._—I have received a letter from Arabi after a long silence,

congratulating me on my Congress manifesto. I am glad to get this from

him, for it may be the means of putting him right with the young

Nationalists. Belloc repeats to me that Gorst seems now quite

discredited at the Foreign Office. His policy, as he himself admits,

having failed, he wishes to be moved to another post, but there is

difficulty in finding any one willing to succeed him.

“_7th Oct._—Churchill has sent me two secret minutes he had printed for

the Cabinet two years ago about Somaliland and Cyprus. They are very

plain spoken in the sense of our talk. He must have been Under-Secretary

for the Colonies at that time. ‘There are only two secure alternatives,’

it says: ‘(A) To occupy the country effectively by holding all the

important wells and, in concert with the Italians, to crush the Mullah,

or (B) to withdraw to the coast as the Italians have done since, and as

we did before the rise of the Mullah’s power.’ Winston recommends the

second. Churchill’s second minute, that about Cyprus, dated 19th Oct.,

1907, recommends the expenditure of the revenue being devoted to the

improvement of the island, and that the tribute which goes to the

holders of the Turkish loan should be paid by the English Exchequer,

which is responsible for the Turkish loan it guarantees.

“_12th Oct._—George Wyndham and Mark Napier have been here to shoot.

Last night we discussed the Indian question. George disapproves now of

the Japanese alliance, and praises that with Russia. He says that it is

quite impossible India should be made self-governing under two hundred

years, or that the English democracy will ever consent to a withdrawal.

But at the same time he is inclined to agree with me that England would

be better without her Indian Empire. In old times, when England was

governed by an oligarchy, the administration of India might have been

gradually transferred to the natives, and so the country be set adrift,

but not now. A Minister proposing to do so could not remain a month in

office. This, of course, is true, but it is the same thing as admitting

what Gordon said, that no reform was possible in India except by a

revolution.

“Conny Lytton and Mrs. Brailsford have been arrested with other

suffragettes and mean to starve themselves, and Brailsford telegraphs to

me asking me to get George Wyndham to take up their case. George,

however, of course would not do this, though he says he is opposed to

these violences in prison against women, and we discussed the case of

the treatment of political prisoners. He is more enlightened on this

point than Mark, who takes a plain lawyer’s view. I have written to

Brailsford in this sense.

“_15th Oct._—Conny and Mrs. Brailsford have been released by order of

the Home Secretary, and Conny has written an extremely able letter to

the ‘Times’ about her case. It will, I think, force their hand into

altering the law about political prisoners.

“_25th Oct._—George Leveson Gower has been here shooting. Talking about

the G.O.M. (Mr. Gladstone) whose private secretary George was from 1880

to 1885, he told a good story. At the time of the Kilmainham Treaty he

had undertaken to expostulate with his master on the danger he was

running by carrying on the negotiation through Mrs. O’Shea. He and Eddy

Hamilton (his fellow private secretary) had talked it over together, and

Eddy had said he did not dare approach the subject with Mr. Gladstone,

but had no objection to George doing so. George opened the matter with

what delicacy he could, mentioning Parnell’s connection with the lady;

but the old man fired up at once, and made him an oration which George

repeated to us, imitating exactly the old man’s voice and manner: ‘You

do not mean,’ he said, ‘to ask me to believe that it is possible a man

should be so lost to all sense of what is due to his public position, at

a moment like the present, in the very crisis of his country’s fortunes,

as to indulge in an illicit connection with the wife of one of his own

political supporters, and to make use of that connection in the way you

suggest.’ I asked George whether Mr. Gladstone negotiated the thing

personally with Mrs. O’Shea, and he said, ‘Oh, no, not personally; he

did not see her, but it was done through her.’ He also told us about

Minto, as Viceroy of India, a mere nonentity in the Government, not even

reading the most important documents laid before him. On one occasion

they tested this by gumming the leaves slightly together, which he

returned unopened. A third thing George narrated _à propos_ of Lady

Cardigan’s memoirs, which have just been published. He went once to Dene

with his father to look at a house, as they were staying in the

neighbourhood at Apthorpe, and while they were being shown round came to

the portrait of Cardigan riding in front of the Balaclava Charge, when

his father nudged him and whispered that it was all fudge; Cardigan was

not in the charge at all, being at the time on board his yacht, and only

arrived on the field of battle as his regiment was on its way back from

the Valley of Death. This sounds incredible, but George says his father

was very positive that the thing was so.

“The chief excitement of the week has been the execution of Ferrar in

Spain for complicity in the Barcelona insurrection. It has roused all

the Socialism of the world to fury, and even in London there have been

demonstrations, in which Cunninghame Graham has taken a leading part.

“_1st Nov._—Two events have occurred in the last week; an attack made on

a convoy in Somaliland by the ‘Mad Mullah,’ in which three Indian Sepoys

have been killed, exactly proves the folly of continuing to hold the

Interior. The second is what is called a ‘punitive expedition,’

despatched by Gorst to Siwah. There my old friend Haboun has got into a

quarrel with the Egyptian authorities by shooting the Maoun and two

others, who had come to effect a domiciliary visit. A hundred and fifty

men are now being sent from Alexandria to arrest him and restore order.

[This resulted in the capture and hanging of Haboun.]

“_6th Nov._—Terence Bourke and Basil Blackwood are here. Terence tells

me things are going not so badly in Tunis for the natives; and there

seems to be less violent feeling against the French there than against

us in Egypt. Basil has got an appointment at the Board of Trade. He is a

pleasant fellow, astonishingly like his father in manner and voice.

“_12th Nov._—Neville came to dine and sleep. He is much interested just

now in the Steinheil trial at Paris, through his intimacy with Geoffroy,

whose mother was M. Steinheil’s sister, and he also knew the lady

herself there in his student days. The Geoffroys had quarrelled with

Mme. Steinheil, and Geoffroy’s father had even given evidence against

her at the trial. As to her connection with President Faure’s death

Neville gives me this account of it. She met Faure at some watering

place ‘aux Eaux,’ and obtained an influence of passion over him; and it

was in her arms that he died. She had been introduced privately into the

Elyseé, and his hand in death was so tightly clutched in her hair that

the hair had to be cut off. This fact and the possibility of political

revelations regarding it seem to have influenced the prosecution into

giving her every opportunity of an acquittal; and an acquittal seems

intended.

“_19th Nov._—Lord Lansdowne has made the sensational announcement that

he will propose an Amendment to the Budget Bill in the House of Lords to

the effect that the Lords are not justified in passing it without an

appeal to the country. This means a General Election in January. Margot,

in a note to me of the 11th writes: ‘The Lords are mad; but I pray that

they may help us to a good majority in January. There will be hot

fighting for four weeks and not much holiday.’

“In Egypt the quarrel over the Suez Canal concession, against which

there has been a strong Nationalist protest, has been solved by the

Canal Company’s refusing the terms proposed. I have written to

congratulate Farid on what is a victory for his party.

“_22nd Nov._—I have been reading the traveller Stanley’s autobiography.

The description of his early life as a workhouse boy, and at sea, and as

a vagabond in the Southern States of America is extremely interesting;

and his wife, whom I used to know before her marriage, would have been

well advised for his fame to have ended her volume there; for the later

record, which is not strictly autobiography, reveals him as the type of

all that is most repulsive in what are called our ‘Empire Builders.’ No

book ever showed more clearly the demoralizing influence contact with

savage life exercises on the average white man. Stanley, before he went

exploring in Africa, though ill-bred and ill-educated, was a decent

working-man with a modest opinion of himself and a good heart, but the

position he found himself in in Africa filled him with the usual idea of

being the representative of a superior race, with right of command over

the people of the country he was travelling through, and little by

little he got into the way of shooting them if they did not obey his

orders, or provide him with food. All his later writing is an attempt to

show that he had a high motive in excuse for these violences, the cause

of Christianity, civilization and the rest, till he became a

contemptible humbug. His journalism, too, as he gets to that point of

his career, gives him the nauseous flamboyant style I remember in his

lecture at the Albert Hall. He remained to the last the rough lout he

began life as, with a veneer of sham romance added, which made his later

life so despicable. Nevertheless, as was the case with Burton, his

brutality gained him the devotion of a superior woman far too good for

him. There are many points of resemblance between the two men revealed

in their base countenances, though Stanley’s is the more ignoble of the

two.

“Morley’s Indian reforms are published, poor things in truth, for though

an unofficial majority is in name conceded to the Provincial Councils,

it is not an Indian majority, the Anglo-Indian non-officials being

counted in, so that there remains everywhere an English majority. Also

the Government grants itself a power of vetoing the candidature of any

Indian; this, with new powers of arbitrary arrest and of seizing

newspapers and printing presses, leaves native India in a worse position

than when Lord Morley came into office. Nevertheless, his sham reforms

are a long step towards real revolution.

“_23rd Nov._—The Abbé Brémond, Tyrrell’s friend, who performed his

funeral rights, has recanted his errors publicly and made apology at

Rome, so poor Miss Petre is left out in the cold. I did not like the man

when I saw him at Storrington.

“_24th Nov._—Lunched with George and Sibell. They had all been attending

the debate in the Lords (about the Budget), the House crowded with

peeresses and, George said, the most representative assembly he had ever

seen, representing as it did every grade of society from royal

princesses down to Rosie Boote, Marchioness of Headfort. George quite

approves the fighting attitude of the peers and believes in his party

winning at the General Elections. He has been doing a great deal of the

fighting himself. George has written an excellent sonnet which he sent

me a day or two ago.

“_25th Nov._—Called on Frank Lascelles. Talking about the Budget quarrel

he told me he had a long conversation yesterday with old Joe

Chamberlain. Chamberlain is paralysed but quite clear in his mind,

though he has a difficulty in speech being unable sometimes to pronounce

his words rightly. He assured Frank that the Tories would return to

power with a large majority. In England, whatever it might be in

Scotland, they would sweep the board. Then to luncheon with Winston and

Clemmie. I told him of Joe’s prediction, but he declared the Government

would remain with a clear majority of sixty after the election,

independently of the Irish. About Somaliland he told me things had been

arranged according to his wishes. The troops are to be moved to the

coast. ‘I don’t call it evacuation,’ he said, ‘but concentration, it

sounds better.’ This is satisfactory. I gave him the first copy of my

‘India under Ripon,’ which reached me on Monday, and we discussed the

whole question of Empire over again and I find him much more favourable

to my anti-Imperial views than he was two months ago. Indeed, he is

almost converted to the view that the British Empire will eventually

ruin England. ‘We get no advantage from it,’ he said, ‘and it’s a lot of

bother. The only thing one can say for it is it is justified if it is

undertaken in an altruistic spirit for the good of the subject races.’ I

said, ‘Yes, but where do we find the altruism?’ and I repeated to him a

story my hairdresser, Middleton, told me yesterday of how a military

customer had come into his shop one day when old Lewis, his former

master, was alive, and how he had spent ten minutes expounding to them

the glories of the Empire, across the counter. ‘Old Mr. Lewis stood

there all the time saying nothing, and the customer began to lose

patience, “You don’t say a word,” he exclaimed, “now tell me Lewis,

frankly, what your opinion of the Empire really is?” The old man seemed

to think awhile and then in his deliberate way replied, “Well sir, you

see, I have only been to the Empire twice and I didn’t find the

entertainment amusing enough to go a third time.” He thought, or

pretended to think, the talk had been about the Empire theatre. It was a

good answer, but we lost our customer, he never came again.’

“Winston was brilliant as usual, and he inspires brilliancy in those

about him. I found myself talking in epigrams and we had a merry

rattling hour and a half before he was obliged to go back to his office,

with intervals of domestic felicity, his baby being brought in with the

coffee. There is no more fortunate man than Winston at home or in his

political prosperity. He is quite ready, he says, for Irish Home Rule,

and I expect him by degrees to adopt the whole of my programme,

including my anti-Socialism. He believes in the acquisition of railways

by the nation but is not for nationalizing the land, which, he says,

will lead to endless jobbery, the nation being the worst of landlords.

All this pleases me. He gave me in return for my Indian book a volume he

has just published of his speeches.

“_30th Nov._—Hyndman writes me a long eulogistic letter about my Indian

book, ‘India under Ripon,’ which has just come out, and asks me to help

his candidature at the elections; this, of course, I cannot do, though

he would be personally an acquisition to the House of Commons. He tells

me he is sixty-eight (too old to begin).

“_4th Dec._—The Lords have thrown out the Budget by a majority of 260 to

75, and the Commons have passed a resolution by a majority of 250,

saying the Lords had no right to do it. The Irish did not vote. So here

we have war declared, it is pretended to the knife, but I expect it will

end in some compromise; there is not stuff enough in the country to make

a revolution.

“_5th Dec._—Belloc and his wife came to dinner. He looks for a 160

majority for the Government, and he expects a great creation of peers,

hoping he himself may be one. There was much talk in Belloc’s random way

about the corrupt practices of Governments and the sale of titles. Mark

Napier was with us and defended Asquith’s integrity.

“Belloc has written a very amusing little squib in rhyme which he

recited to us, a ballad of which the leading line is ‘And Mrs. James

will entertain the King.’ If this comes to His Majesty’s ears it may

stand in the way of his hoped for honour. I have been reading Belloc’s

‘Marie Antoinette’ and find it most interesting.

“_17th Dec._—That scoundrel, King Leopold of Belgium, is dead, the

greatest ruffian of all those sitting in the high places of the Earth. I

remember once having speech with him as long ago as 1863, when I was an

attaché of the Madrid Legation. It was in the picture gallery in the

Retiro where I was copying a Velasquez, and he and an aide-de-camp came

behind me and looked over my work and talked to me for a few minutes

about matters of art; a tall, black-bearded man, by no means ill-

looking; he cannot have been more than thirty then. It is just a

reminiscence and no more. The history of the Congo State will hand his

name down to posterity as that of one of the most infamous among kings.

He has, however, made a pious ending, and has received the sacraments,

including absolution of his crimes, so our good Catholics of the Belloc

school will doubtless say their prayers to him as to a saint. His death

has disclosed the fact of a secret marriage made by him some years ago

with a French girl who has borne him two sons more or less legitimate.

It may give rise to dynastic complications, the papers say.

“_20th Dec._—The Unwins and Meynell dined with me. Great talk about the

elections. The King, they say, strongly disapproved of the throwing out

of the Budget by the Lords, and will create 300 peers. Redmond has

declared in favour of the Liberals in virtue of a not very clear Home

Rule pronouncement made by Asquith, but I trust he has got it in writing

more clearly from the Cabinet or he runs the risk of being made a fool

of should the Liberals return in power enough to do without him. Their

safest policy would be to lower the Liberal majority, and I wrote about

it some time ago to Dillon. If it is true that the King sides with

Asquith, it is very important. Arthur Balfour has chosen the occasion of

the elections for one of his influenzas.

“_31st Dec._—The year 1909 has been a notable one for the world, all

that portion of it that most interests me, the deposition of the Sultan,

Abdul Hamid, and of the Shah of Persia, with grave events in India. As

to my own life I feel that I have come at last to its watershed, and

that whatever happens henceforth can only be on the downward slope, not

without its little pleasures perhaps, but still with no possibility of

again ascending.