Chapter XI

THE JAMESON RAID

[1896]“5th Jan.—There is excellent news. Those blackguards of the Chartered Company in South Africa, under Doctor Jameson, have made a filibustering raid on the Transvaal and have been annihilated by the Boers, Jameson a prisoner. I devoutly hope he may be hanged. I have seen this business coming on for some weeks past in articles from the ‘Times.’ That other high-placed filibuster, Chamberlain, is, I am sure, responsible, or the ‘Times’ would never have taken up the matter in the way it has. They seem to have been encouraged in the sort of way these things are encouraged unofficially, by Chamberlain, who would have scored a victory for himself if they had succeeded. As it is he will disavow them. I am much mistaken if Chamberlain, with his three Colonial wars on hand in Ashanti, Venezuela, and now in the Transvaal, involving quarrels with France, America, and Germany, will not upset Lord Salisbury’s government, if he does not upset the British Empire.

“Lord and Lady Cromer came here to tea. I had a good deal of talk with him. He says the Jameson episode will do a ‘deal of harm’ here, as people will consider it a British defeat (which it is). He added: ‘These filibustering enterprises are only justifiable by success. I don’t say that they are justifiable at all, but if they don’t succeed the actors in them should pay the penalty.’ I think he is rather uneasy in his mind. We talked also about Egyptian affairs. He told me the Khedive was spending money very foolishly and would soon, at the present rate, be bankrupt, also that complaints had been made to him by fellahin in the neighbourhood of Koubbah, whose land he had been attempting to take, reviving obsolete claims against squatters on abandoned land, but he was not sure the complaints were true, the complainants refusing to come forward openly. They stated that they had been bullied by the palace people and beaten with kurbajs. He asked me if I had received complaints on the subject, but it is new to me. He told me that Ibrahim Bey Ibn Saoud had been to him twice, the first time to evoke his protection against the Sultan, to which he had replied that, as long as he, Ibrahim Bey, remained unamenable to Egyptian law he had nothing to fear. The second time he had brought him a ‘ridiculous paper,’ the copy of one he had submitted to the Khedive, charging the Sultan with all sorts of crimes, and appealing to the Khedive to occupy Nejd. He had had to give him ‘a piece of his mind’ and tell him that if he meddled with politics and the Sultan heard of it and demanded his extradition, he should not interfere to protect him; if he wanted to talk Arabian politics he had better go to Bagdad.

“We also discussed the appointment of Alfred Austin to the post of Poet Laureate. He, Cromer, thought William Watson would have been better. The Empress Frederick had tried to get Rennell Rodd appointed. He had never heard of Austin. Indeed, Austin’s appointment is a ridiculous one, for, with the exception of three sonnets, Austin has never written anything in the smallest degree good. His sole claim is that he has been a solid supporter of the Conservative party in the press. I remember him well as a young man about thirty-eight years ago, when he first came up to London and published his earliest verses, ‘The Season, a Satire,’ and the rest. Some of them rather smart. He was a Catholic and moved in a small way in Catholic society, but later married an Irish Protestant and, I believe, joined the English church. He was the most absurd little cock sparrow of a man ever seen, and childishly vain of his talents. He has improved with years, but not in his verses. His principal poem, ‘Madonna’s Child,’ is about the dullest and silliest tale in meagre blank verse ever produced. He has floated in at last to the Laureateship on the success of a prose volume about his garden in Kent. There really was no choice, however, for the post. William Morris refused, the Queen objected to Swinburne, old Patmore was a Catholic, the rest were, if possible, worse than Austin. He is better anyhow than Lewis Morris, the Liberal candidate, or than Watson, Dobson, Davidson, and the rest of the sons of their own penny trumpets.

“9th Jan.—The German Emperor has telegraphed his congratulations to Kruger, and this seems to have produced great anger in England. We have now managed in the last six months to quarrel violently with China, Turkey, Belgium, Ashanti, France, Venezuela, America, and Germany. This is a record performance, and if it does not break up the British Empire nothing will. For myself I am glad of it all, for the British Empire is the great engine of evil for the weak races now existing in the world—not that we are worse than the French or Italians or Americans—indeed, we are less actively destructive—but we do it over a far wider area and more successfully. I should be delighted to see England stripped of her whole foreign possessions. We were better off and more respected in Queen Elizabeth’s time, the ‘spacious days,’ when we had not a stick of territory outside the British Islands, than now, and infinitely more respectable. The gangrene of colonial rowdyism is infecting us, and the habit of repressing liberty in weak nations is endangering our own. I should be glad to see the end.

“My old woodreeve, Bates, at Crabbet has hanged himself in his cart shed—a man of genius in his way of life, who, beginning as a day labourer, rose to be the best judge of timber in Sussex, as well as a successful farmer and churchwarden of the parish. Having completed eighty-four years of life and fifty of honest service in the Crabbet Estate, and having entertained his friends the night before, he went out in the early morning to his shed and was found there dead hanging from a beam. I can imagine the old man carefully tying the noose, as his manner was, without mistake. It was noticed by those who had been with him at dinner the night before that during the meal he had a hank of rope on his knees with which he was playing. In the morning he had got up by candlelight, asked his old wife ‘How are you, old girl?’ and had gone out to the cart shed, where he was found hanging.

“11th Jan.—Took Anne and Judith to Koubbah to see the Khedive. He received us with great empressement, talked a good deal about the petty vexations and the affronts put upon him by the English officials, and showed us his stud. He has got together some nice mares, but nothing quite first class, except two of Ali Pasha Sherif’s, one of which is our horse Mesaoud’s dam, a very splendid mare, with the finest head in the world. He has bred some promising colts and altogether the thing is well done. He invited us to go out with him some day on a desert expedition, and sent us to the station in his barouche.

“There seems a good chance now of the Egyptian question being re-opened as a European one, for the feeling against us in Germany is very strong over the Transvaal affair, and Egypt is the point where they can best put on the screw. I am sorry it should come in this way, though it is what I have always foreseen, for Egypt internationalized to the profit of Europe is not a pleasant prospect. It comes of Cromer’s wrong-headed administration, where the one object has been to Anglicize, not to establish a National Government. Egypt, too, has been scandalously used for the creation of highly paid posts for not very capable Englishmen. I foresaw all this and protested years ago, but it was of no use. Now we shall evacuate the country not for the benefit of the Egyptians, but for that of the scoundrel European Colonies.

“Yesterday Dawkins and his wife were here—he a new man sent in Milner’s place, and a friend of Milner’s. I talked to him a good deal about Cromer’s policy, in which I think he partially agreed with me, as they all do when it is plainly put before them that we cannot stay on for ever in Egypt. But, when things are quiet, and they see a chance of holding on, then they harden their hearts.

“15th Jan.—I see in the papers that negotiations are likely to come on between our Government and the French about Egypt. I have therefore put my ideas about a possible agreement for evacuation on paper, and shall probably send it to Lord Salisbury through Pom McDonnell. It ought to be a quite easy thing to arrange if only Lord Salisbury was willing. His great necessities just now should be our occasion.

“16th Jan.—Mohammed Abdu and M. Arminjan to luncheon. I talked the matter of evacuation over thoroughly with Abdu. He tells me that, much as he is attached to the Khedive, it would not do to trust him with power—the Ministry should be independent of him as far as possible, and supported by some sort of Constitution. He thinks this essential. There are good men to be found who would hold their own as ministers against Khedivial encroachment, but not the men now in office, who are mere dummies. The ministers ought to be irremovable as long as they have the support of the Chamber of Deputies. If we could get the French to agree to this, evacuation would be quite simple. It really looks as if it might come. Lord Salisbury has quarrelled with everybody, and it is about time he should patch up matters with some of them—and France is the most dangerous. I should prefer, myself, to see the British Empire break up. It has become a curse to the world, but, for Egypt’s sake, an arrangement with France would be better at the present moment.

“23rd Jan.—The English papers are sickening about the Transvaal, a mixture of swagger and poltroonery. One would have thought the less said about Jameson’s ignominious defeat by the Boers the better, but our blessed public must needs make a hero of him, a man who fought for thirty-six hours, and had only fifteen men killed and then surrendered, not a pretence of its being in any better cause than money-making and land-grabbing. The ‘Times’ prints a poem in praise of him by the new Poet Laureate. Austin has managed to turn off some spirited doggerel, and to get it recited at a music hall, so low are we sunk. I have been busy writing my letter to McDonnell, and also finishing my article about the evacuation of Egypt for the ‘Nineteenth Century.’

“We have had several visitors here. Madame d’Hautpoul and her cousin, Miss Pereira, Lady Decies and a pretty daughter, and Mr. Douglas Murray. The latter told me one or two new things about Egyptian history. Lesseps had told him that it was he who dissuaded the French Government from joining in the bombardment of Alexandria or occupying the Suez Canal, thinking that the English would get into military difficulties; also that when our fleet entered the Canal, Admiral Hoskins threatened Victor Lesseps to hang him from the yard-arm if he interfered with the operations. Lesseps was a vain old fool.

“25th Jan.—Lady Galloway has arrived at Cairo. I went in to see her at the Legation, where she is staying with the Cromers. She told me that it was out of the question to think of our evacuating Egypt, that if we went out the French would come in, or there would be massacres and a lot more rubbish, which I fear represents Lord Salisbury’s view. She also blamed Rosebery for the Armenian policy, but excused Lord Salisbury for continuing it on the ground that he had a real sympathy for Armenia, and real hatred for the Turks. The Russo-Turkish alliance is announced by the ‘Pall Mall,’ it cannot but be true. I fancy the Russian Government is glad to ally itself with a fellow suppressor of Nihilism, whether Russian or Armenian. The Armenians seem likely now to be exterminated between them, our Government playing the most foolish figure imaginable. Lady Galloway is coming to Sheykh Obeyd on Monday.

“27th Jan.—Lady Galloway was here for luncheon to-day. I have written my memorandum on the evacuation of Egypt, and am sending it to Lord Salisbury through Pom McDonnell. In my letter to Pom I say: ‘I have drawn it up very carefully, and after consultation with some of my Egyptian friends, who best know the situation, and in whom I have most confidence as honest and patriotic men. I have also some reason to believe that Monsieur Cogordan, the present French Minister, would enter into some such plan were it suggested to him. He is a far fairer and more intelligent man than any of his predecessors here. I have said nothing of it, however, directly to him, as I only know him very slightly. You know how anxious I am that Egypt should be allowed to work out her political destiny in peace, and I foresee that if Lord Salisbury does nothing towards a solution of the question now, it will be forced upon him later in a way which will lead to the sacrifice of all Egyptian hopes. With the support of Germany withdrawn from our occupation, it is impossible that Europe should long delay making the question its own. This sensible Egyptians fear as a worse evil than anything in their present condition, for it would mean Egypt for all the speculators of Europe.’

“Our policy at Constantinople has certainly gone an absolute smash, and Philip must be feeling small. A treaty is announced between Russia and Turkey, which, whether quite true or not, must be very near the truth. I strongly suspect that the famous incident of Saïd Pasha taking refuge at the British Embassy was an ingenious trick to spy out the real ideas of the Ambassador. Saïd may very well have gone there with the knowledge and privity of the Sultan, and the result may have convinced the Sultan that England was his bitterest personal enemy. Certainly from the day of Saïd’s return to his own house things have altered at Constantinople, and the Sultan has gone his own way without seeking any more to be on terms with us.[15]

“30th Jan.—Anne and I start on Monday for a considerable journey in the southern desert beyond Kalala. Judith goes up the Nile with Lady Decies, and Sheykh Obeyd will be shut up. I feel better and in better spirits, though the future is dark for me. If this next summer brings me nothing of value to my life I shall not return to England again. Perhaps I may find my hermitage this Spring in truth and reality, but I must go to England once again first, to solve one or two questions and complete my memoirs.

“3rd Feb.—Our party at Sheykh Obeyd is broken up. Judith went this morning to Cairo, and will stay there till she starts up the Nile. Anne and I leave to-morrow for our long desert journey, it ought to be an interesting one. I went to-day to the War Office, and saw Wingate, and looked over maps with him. I find that almost nothing is known of the country south of Kalala, so that we shall be exploring a new region. I have taken tracings of such maps as they have in the Intelligence Department, and they are not much. Floyer has also sent me tracings. I had some talk with Slatin, a commonplace little German, quite unworthy of ever having served the Mahdi. He talked a great deal about the prospects of reconquering the Soudan. I have been reading Kipling’s new ‘Jungle Book,’ and the story of the Indian Minister who became a fakir. It seems to me the only worthy ending of a public, perhaps of a private life; but it wants great physical courage to endure.”

February 4th to 26th in my journal is taken up with the diary of a camel journey made by Anne and me, with Suliman Howeyti and two other Bedouins of the Howeytat, under the guidance of Sobeyeh Ibn Zeydan of the Maaze tribe, through the Maaze country south of the Kalala mountains to the granite range of Jebel Gháreb southwards to Kúfra, Dokhán, and Kitár, regaining the Nile at Keneh, a journey of 400 miles of uninhabited desert, made in twenty days, of the greatest possible interest. My diary, however, is little more than an itinerary of each day’s march, suited rather for a paper in the Royal Geographical Society than for the present volume, and I do not transcribe it here. It was for the most part through an entirely unexplored and unmapped region. We returned from Keneh by steamer to Cairo. All that I will say of it here is that it was the last and perhaps the hardest of all the many desert journeys Lady Anne and I undertook alone together, and as such stands out in my memory as one of the most delightful. I made a rough map of our route for private use, not for the Geographical Society (of which I am almost the oldest member), because I have long convinced myself that it makes itself the precursor and instrument of Europe’s penetrations and conquests against the wild races of mankind.

“7th March.—Back at Sheykh Obeyd. Great things have happened since we were away. First and foremost the Italians have been smashed in Abyssinia, thoroughly and I hope finally. They have most richly deserved it. The whole history of their doings on the Red Sea has been a disgrace even to this graceless nineteenth century. They went there at our bidding in 1884, a job of Lord Northbrook’s when we were in straits with the Mahdi and thought they might help us. We gave them Massowa, which did not belong to us, but to Egypt, Egypt, of which we said we were acting as guardians and trustees. At first they occupied the island only, then little by little they encroached upon the mainland on the plea of wanting a hill station, then they made leonine treaties with the king and encroached more and more, and then they put forward pretensions for a protectorate. Next they made a dash at Kassala and captured it from the Soudanese. This turned their vanitous heads, and nothing would serve them but they must make war again with Menelik, wanting to grab the whole country. Menelik pretended to yield, for the Abyssinians are cunning, but let loose an army of Chouans upon them. The Italians were defeated and shut up in a fortress. The fortress was invested and at last capitulated on good terms granted them by Menelik, who, though victorious, asked for peace. His magnanimity, however, was put down at once in Italy to cowardice, the ‘heroic’ Italian defenders of the fortress were treated as if they had been conquerors, and pretensions were put forward of annexing the whole of Abyssinia. Menelik, however, calmly went on, all sections of the Abyssinians joining him, and proposed as an alternative condition of peace, that the Italians should return to their original quarters at Massowa; and war was renewed. The Italians then sent 50,000 men from Italy, but their General would not wait for the supports, fearing to be superseded, and with 15,000 men gave battle, and has now been entirely destroyed. The Italians have lost 60 cannons and 10,000 men, all most probably killed, and are being swept into the sea. This is a righteous ending to their iniquities. It is enough to make one repent of ever having wasted sympathy on liberty, to see these Italians, hardly released from their Austrian bondage, counting it a glory for their mushroom kingdom of Italy to attack and enslave the oldest free people and kingdom in the world—for the Abyssinian monarchy dates from before the time of King Solomon—and there was not a voice in Europe to cry shame! All the English papers applauded. ‘The wiping out of the little kingdom of Abyssinia won’t make much difference,’ they said, ‘on the Stock Exchange.’ But for once Providence has answered ‘No.’ Crispi, the Italian minister, formerly a revolutionist, now a renegade tyrant, has fallen. He will be lucky if he does not get torn to pieces in the streets, and it will fare hard with the Italian monarchy. The Duke of Sermoneta, who was at Cairo amusing himself, has been sent for to Rome. He has always been an opponent of the Colonial policy, but he will be too late even if they make him minister.

“Next the Transvaal business has developed. Jameson and his band have been fêted in London, and old Kruger must, I think, be sorry he did not hang them. It would have been the best policy, for Englishmen are cowards in the face of hanging, and we should have had no more filibustering for at least a generation. Rhodes, too, has been to England, and seems to have squared the Opposition. The inquiry is to be put off, and, if possible, shirked, and I fancy Chamberlain has saved his bacon. It is more obvious, however, than ever that he was in with Rhodes and Jameson, though possibly they acted without his exact knowledge at the last moment. But the British public is easily gulled, and Chamberlain’s protestations of innocence have been swallowed even by the opposition papers and Sir William Harcourt. It is a base world and will not prosper—but it tries one’s patience to have to wait to see the end of it.

“T. P. Gill has been here twice this week. He has come here for his health and to pick up ideas about evacuation, and I have got him an audience of the Khedive. He saw Cromer on Thursday, who told him all the usual story about the wickedness of Abbas and his unfitness to reign. Gill’s impression is that he will try to get him deposed. Cromer also fancies the French will come to terms which will leave him, Cromer, still in power here, but this will not be. It seems, however, certain that negotiations are going on between the French and English governments relative to the evacuation. McDonnell has acknowledged the memorandum I sent to Lord Salisbury, who ‘thinks I will understand that he cannot write just now on the subject of it’—which is the case. At any rate Lord Salisbury has read it, and that is something.

“Gill was very interesting in his account of Parnell’s last days. He saw much of him in all the time, both before the divorce trial and during the party split which followed. It was he who carried on the negotiations with Dillon and O’Brien when they were at Paris, and he left the party when these failed. He tells me that Parnell had a complete case in defence against O’Shea, O’Shea having connived throughout and profited in a money way. The house at Eltham was really Parnell’s, and O’Shea went there to blackmail him. He showed his whole defence to Gill before the trial. But Mrs. O’Shea would not allow him to defend himself as she wanted a divorce so as to marry him. She was a woman quite unworthy of him, who neither sympathized with his politics nor at all appreciated the height of his position. Later again when Parnell would have agreed to retire for a while from the party, and was quite willing to make peace, she always stood in the way of it—and he used to come back from Brighton changed and uncompromising. Lastly his devotion to her and the worry of his public life was too much for him, and she really hastened his end by her exigencies. I asked him whether he committed suicide. But he was emphatic that it was not so. ‘Parnell,’ he said, ‘was the last man in the world to do it. He was a fighter to his last breath, and would not give in. It was the worry and the strain of fighting that ended him.’

“Evelyn has come and is staying with us.

“12th March.—Evelyn and Gill have gone. The Armenian Blue Books are published. They show, as far as I can judge by the extracts given, that our Government has made a complete diplomatic fiasco. Philip seems to have had really nothing to go upon for his trust in Russian and French co-operation, and it has been exactly the old game of taking a threat to be as good as a blow, which Lord Granville was so fond of. Of course the whole truth is not given in the Blue Book. The reason for taking up the question in 1895, rather than at any other time was, I have no doubt, to make a diversion for the Egyptian question. It was probably the reason, too, why Lord Salisbury was so foolish as to continue his predecessor’s error. Nothing can excuse his having put the threat to Turkey into the Queen’s speech if he was not prepared to act up to it.

“13th March.—The English papers have come, telling of the Italian defeat at Adowa, no trace in any of them of the smallest sympathy with the Abyssinians or of disapproval of the wanton invasion of their country. All sense of the rights of weaker nations is lost in Europe even among the best and most generous of nations.

“14th March.—Mohammed Abdu was here to-day and tells me there is some prospect now of Arabi’s being allowed to return first to Cyprus, then to Egypt. Mustapha Fehmy, the Prime Minister, has spoken to him about it, and says that Lord Cromer is willing if the Khedive consents. If this is so the thing ought to be managed.

“15th March.—Sheykh Saleh, the Sheykh of the muhajjerin, the refugees from Dongola, called to-day. He says that Kitchener has told him the Government intends to advance to Abu Hamad and Berber as soon as the railway is finished to Wady Halfa. This can hardly be, however, for several years. He assures me the people of Berber would be willing, and of Abu Hamad, but the Khalifa is still powerful. Berber he declares to be the key of the Soudan, as all roads converge there.

“16th March.—It is announced that an advance is to be made immediately to Dongola by arrangement with the German and Austrian Governments, so as to make a diversion in favour of the Italians at Kassala. There is no doubt that troops have been forwarded up the river for some time past, as long ago as when we were on our way down from Keneh (a fortnight ago), but the final decision to advance must have been come to suddenly. Even now I can hardly believe it, it would be a most flagrant sacrifice of Egyptian for European interests, although there would probably be little resistance at Dongola; it must entail a re-opening of the war with the Soudan, and what has Italy done for Egypt to deserve Egyptian help?

“20th March.—I wrote to the ‘Times’ in the sense of my first impression of the affair, but I find that the facts are even more damning to our government than I had supposed, and for once I have done Cromer an injustice. Anne saw Lady Cromer on Thursday and she complained bitterly to her of the thing having been decided by Lord Salisbury ‘over Lord Cromer’s head,’ who had strongly disapproved of it. Moreover, Mohammed Abdu, who was here yesterday, tells me that the Egyptian Ministry was also opposed, Mustapha Fehmy saying that they had no money, and that it was impossible. Even the Khedive, who was keen on an advance to Dongola two years ago, objected to fighting for Italy, though I hear from Hadji Mahmoud that His Highness is to start up the river the day after to-morrow. Hadji Mahmoud got the news from Ali Pasha Lalla, and the vice-regal camels have already been despatched by train to Girgeh. I am sorry he should intend this, as he will get into trouble if he has done it off his own bat, and if at the suggestion of Kitchener or Cromer they will turn it to his disadvantage. Mohammed Abdu, however, was to see him to-morrow, and I hope will give him good advice.

“I sit most of the day at Sheykh Obeyd’s tomb, watching the birds through a glass. There are half-a-dozen kinds nesting in the sont bushes there: the Nubian shrike, a kind of blackcap with a black throat, the Palestine redstart, and two small warblers. There are also the thrush, the Egyptian dove, the crow, a pair of spotted cuckoos, a hoopoo, and a chat.

“22nd March.—A large party of visitors. Lady Galloway, who has come back from a journey up the Nile, which she has made with Lady Jersey. Then the Potocki party, Joseph and his wife, Zamoyski and his wife, Prince Radziwill and two other Poles. We had tea at the tomb and showed off the horses.

“It is certain now that Cromer had nothing to do with the new Soudan campaign, the thing having been arranged between the Emperor of Germany and Frank Lascelles (this was the account given me by our Polish friends). The Emperor, I imagine, has promised to support our staying on in Egypt in return for the help given by us vicariously to his ally the King of Italy. I notice already an announcement that Germany does not intend to be otherwise than friendly to Japan, which is also probably part of the arrangement. It means in any case that we are to have a new lease of occupation here. About the advantage or disadvantage to Egypt nobody seems to have thought or cared. I have written to John Morley, giving him my view of what is going on, as I see he has brought the matter forward in Parliament. It was through him that we stopped the Soudan war eleven years ago.

“24th March.—Sheykh Mohammed Abdu called to tell me what is going on at the palace. He sees the Khedive now twice a week, and leads the prayer on Fridays at Koubbah, omitting the Sultan’s name. He was with the Khedive some little time ago, and while he was there, a letter came from Lord Cromer, complaining of the Khedive’s having privately expressed disapproval of the Dongola campaign. The Khedive was very angry at this, and afterwards saw Lord Cromer, who repeated the complaint. The Khedive answered that upon this point he was in agreement with his Lordship, to which Lord Cromer did not dissent, but said that now that the thing was resolved on, it was necessary to put a good face on it, and hoped that the Khedive would speak in that sense to the soldiers. The Khedive has done so since. Lord Cromer, too, has brought him a message from Lord Salisbury, apologizing for an ‘error of form’ on the part of the English Government in ordering an advance on Dongola without first informing His Highness. Lord Salisbury explained that the advance was decided on ‘to satisfy Egyptian opinion.’ The Khedive narrated all this to Mohammed Abdu, and I have no doubt it is true.

“25th March.—The English papers of the 17th and 18th came today. Lord Salisbury’s statement in the House of Lords is amazing. He has made no such deliberate misstatement of an important truth since the Congress of Berlin.

“A large party to spend the afternoon, brought over by Lady Galloway; Lord Yarborough, Benson, the author of ‘Dodo,’ and others. She brought with her Arthur Balfour’s speech and Lord Salisbury’s declaration.

“26th March.—Sheykh Hassan Abu Towil called to tell me that the Government had assembled the Sheykhs of the tribes between Assouan and the Mediterranean Sea, to confer with them as to the raising of 7,000 horsemen for the Soudan war. Their answer so far has been that they have neither horses nor arms. He asked my advice. I advised him strongly to get out of the matter if he could, as the war will prove a bad business for Bedouins engaged in it. I doubted if one in five would return. He told me that in former wars the Bedouins had never been called to go out of their own district where they had acted as guards. It would be better to say at once the men were unwilling to go to a distance. He promised to bring Abu Shedid (head Sheykh of the Howeytat) with him to-morrow to consult.

“27th March.—A letter from Lady Lytton. She tells me: ‘Rhodes knew about Jameson’s advance on the Transvaal, but certainly not Chamberlain, though he may have encouraged Rhodes too much.’ Just so. It means that Chamberlain told Rhodes not to tell him the details, but gave him to understand that he would be pleased at the fait accompli. About the Soudan expedition she had great confidence in Lord Salisbury, though ‘one knows that what comes out in Parliament is all arranged.’

“30th March.—Received a note from Abdin, granting me audience of the Khedive for to-day, so to-day I went there. He asked me first about our journey to Ghareb and Keneh, which interested him much, but we soon got to politics. He gave me a full account of what happened regarding the advance on Dongola. The question was begun soon after the battle of Adowa by the arrival in Egypt of our military attaché at Rome (Slade?), when a council was held,[16] consisting of Knollys, Kitchener, the attaché, and Cromer. At this they decided to send a force from Tokar to Kassala to take over that town from the Italians and garrison it with Egyptian troops—this with the consent of Italy, and Cromer telegraphed their decision to Lord Salisbury. The Egyptian Government were not consulted, only informed of this, and gave consent. After this they knew nothing till, on the 13th March, Lord Cromer received a telegram from London, saying an immediate advance on Dongola had been ordered. Kitchener was in bed, and not at all expecting it. Neither he nor Cromer had recommended it; and, in fact, they disapproved. The next day was Beiram, and after the mosque, Mustapha Fehmy was informed of it by Cromer or Kitchener, I am not sure which, and it was not till 7.30 that the Khedive learnt it from Mustapha Fehmy. He refused his consent until a Council of Ministers had been called, especially because of a demand made that Suakim should be handed over to England. He disapproved of the expedition on account of the hot time of year and the suffering of the men and the increased cost of land transport at Low Nile, also because it was made in no Egyptian interest. At the Council Kitchener withdrew the demand for Suakim. When asked about it, he said that it was not in question. Consent was then formally given to the rest of plan. Cromer had since come to complain of his, Abbas’, having talked against the war, and had threatened to write against him in the Blue Books. Abbas had answered that he objected on account of the time of year and the cost, not in itself to the re-occupation of Dongola. ‘Oh,’ said Cromer, ‘in that I am with you, but you ought to be glad to help the King of Italy. He gave hospitality to your grandfather for many years at Naples.’ ‘Yes,’ answered Abbas, ‘and made him pay pretty heavily for it too.’ (Ismaïl lent a very large sum to the King, which I believe was never repaid.) Cromer asked the Khedive to write for publication an address to the Army approving the objects of the campaign; but Abbas declined, saying it was not necessary to talk politics to soldiers. He promised, however, to exhort them to obey orders and do their duty. This he has repeatedly done. I asked him whether Kitchener had recommended the Dongola campaign, and he said ‘No; he knew nothing of it till he woke up out of his bed.’ Also as to the Duke of Cambridge, whom I suspected of having arranged it, ‘No, he is an old man, too old to conceal anything, and as we had a deal of talk together I should have found out.’

“The Khedive also told me the detail of letters written to the Queen and to himself by King Mangasheh of Abyssinia, complaining, to the first, that he, being an old ally of England, England had nevertheless supplied arms to the Italians. Mangasheh is a son of King John, whom we put on the throne. His letter to the Egyptian Government was to propose joint action against the Khalifa, in order to recover his crown, which had been taken from him and carried away to Omdurman. In his letter to the Queen he asked England’s good offices with Italy for a peace. Both these letters were written before the battle of Adowa, and were conveyed to Cairo by a cousin of Mangasheh. They were translated at the Cairo War Office. The Queen’s answer was in general terms, hoping that peace would be made. The answer sent by Lord Cromer, in the name of the Egyptian Government, was a proposal that Mangasheh should advance on Omdurman, when they would together get back the crown, and Mangasheh should be recognized King of Abyssinia. Mangasheh, however, Abbas said, would never go against Menelik, as his father John had specially recommended him to recognize Menelik as Emperor. Mangasheh’s envoy went away dissatisfied, especially with the presents given him, which had been supplied by the Secret Service Fund of the Egyptian War Office, namely, a gold watch, a musical box, a red umbrella, and some dresses, which he told the Khedive he should be ashamed to deliver to the King, as they were the same as those worn by prostitutes in Abyssinia. They were chosen by Kitchener. The Khedive said it would be a good thing if I wrote an article in conformity with what he had told me; and I promised to do so, but without compromising him. In going away I asked him to allow Arabi to return to Egypt; and he questioned me about him, and I told him what an honest patriot he was, and that I would make myself answerable for his loyalty. He promised me that he would speak to Mustapha Fehmy about it, and I think he means it. He said: ‘What you tell me about him I must believe, for nobody who knows you can doubt that you are the best friend that Egypt has.’ And so we parted. I was again much struck with his great intelligence and power of expressing his thoughts.

“3rd April.—I have been writing an article, ‘The Truth of the Dongola Adventure,’ for the ‘Nineteenth Century.’

“I see they have been pushing George Curzon with questions in the House of Commons about Cromer’s approval of the campaign—this I doubt not in consequence of a letter I wrote to Morley, telling him that Cromer had certainly not recommended it.

“7th April.—Dawkins (the new financial adviser) was here to-day, and tells me that the half million sterling taken from the Caisse de la Dette has been spent already. The whole savings of Egypt will have been used up before the campaign seriously begins.

“Young Somerset and his bride, Lady Katherine, came on Saturday, a pleasing pair, who propose going to the Natron lakes on camels. I tried to dissuade her, as she has never yet been on a camel, and there was the chance of great heat so late in the year, but on Sunday, Easter night, there was a thunder shower, and the weather has become almost cold.

“10th April.—Gorst and his sister came to luncheon. He, like Dawkins, evidently disapproves of the war. He says that it will end in England’s having to make the campaign at her own cost, as Egypt has neither the money nor the men. I am, however convinced that it will be put a stop to as soon as a convenient pretext occurs. There is a report that the Italians have evacuated Kassala. Also the Matabeles have risen and killed a number of the Chartered Company’s people, and are besieging Bulawayo. The Chartered Company have no troops, and English regiments will have to be sent to the Cape, and there will be none to spare for a Soudanese campaign. I wish the Matabeles all possible good fortune, and trust they may capture Rhodes, who is said to be on his way from Fort Salisbury to Bulawayo. The man, however, is too sly, I fancy, to be caught, or to run any personal risks, and a telegram to-day says he is laid up with a fever, and unable to move! The Dongola expedition, therefore, will, in my opinion, get very little farther than Akasheh. Gorst tells me it is true that Rhodes took away with him 200 negroes from Cairo. He says they ‘volunteered.’ But the grounds of his belief seem slight. ‘I inquired,’ he said, ‘whether they were going willingly, and was told that they were.’ He is much averse to the seizure of black men, as practised by the Sirdar Kitchener, for the Egyptian army, and told me confidentially that he had had the intention of putting a stop to it, as it is quite illegal. But the campaign had interfered with his project. There has been a general raid on all negroes in Egypt. They are seized and forced to serve in the army on very small pay—I think thirty piastres a month, twopence half-penny a day—and are there practically slaves for life—or rather for as long as they are able to serve—for when past work in the army, they are pitilessly cast adrift without pension or provision of any kind. Yet we English pretend that our mission in Africa is to put down slave-raiding and slavery. The English officers at Wady Halfa told me last autumn that it was as precisely slavery as any existing in the world.

“We are leaving for England on the 17th. I am glad to go, having been seven months away.

“12th April.—Young Gordon (General Gordon’s nephew, Bill) is here with his wife. He confirms about the spending of the half million by Kitchener, but says the expedition is being done very cheaply. He has the ordering and arranging of the supplies, and says that the new equipments, saddles, arms, etc., have only cost £20,000. He, like Gorst and Dawkins, considers the Intelligence Department absurdly overrated and overpaid. Wingate and Slatin between them get £1,700 a year. Gordon has had some experience of the department, having been employed under it at Souakim, and he knows how the information brought in is cooked, and how the spies suit their news to the demand. I asked him about the negroes taken away by Rhodes. He thinks it likely that they were handed over by the agent of the Zanzibar Government (which had been recruiting in Egypt). He himself supplied Rhodes with uniforms for them out of the public stores ‘at a good price.’ He saw a great deal of Rhodes during the few days Rhodes was at Cairo.

“15th April.—They are apparently at a deadlock on the frontier, the Finance Ministry being angry with Kitchener for spending all the money. It must eventually fall on the English exchequer, if persisted in. But I still hope Lord Salisbury will be satisfied with the demonstration and go no farther.

“17th April.—We leave to-morrow morning for England. Mohammed Abdu was here yesterday with a young Turk of the Liberal party from Constantinople. He was employed till lately in the Ottoman bank. He seems not very hopeful of things on the Bosphorus, there being too many persons in high places interested in keeping the present system going. The army, though no better affected than the rest to the Sultan, is without any leader for a revolt, and as long as it can be paid it will do nothing. The civilian population has no power to move.

“Mohammed Abdu gave me particulars about the raid there has been made on the negroes in Egypt. Over 800 have been seized by the police for Kitchener and put into the army. In some of the provinces every black man of whatever age was taken and sent to Cairo, where the valid ones were retained, the rest turned adrift in the streets. Yet our Government talks of putting down the Slave Trade as one of its objects in this Soudanese war. There seems to be no doubt that the 200 negroes taken by Rhodes to South Africa were practically purchased from the Government of Zanzibar, which has ‘recruited’ them here. In the recent raid negroes holding respectable positions were seized, among them a son of the Khedive’s porter, the servant of El Abbasi, Sheykh of the Azhar, and a writer employed at £7 a month in the Native Courts at Cairo. These were rescued, but very many others were driven off.

“I spent my last day, a very lovely one, in the garden—the roses well in bloom, the nightingales singing, bee birds flying about, a roller sitting near the tomb, and in the evening a jackal. I lit two candles there for Sheykh Obeyd to get us a good passage home. We had our Mowled there on Monday. Old Sheykh Abderrahman Faki promises to say prayers for me in my absence, but expostulates that I do not go to his mosque. I prefer to recite my Fatha at the tomb.”

We reached London on the evening of the 24th, and slept there.

“25th April.—Breakfasted with George Wyndham. We are to go together on a pilgrimage to Stratford in connection with a monograph he is writing on Shakespeare. He has the practical editorship now of the ‘New Review,’ and in Parliament is making a cave against Chamberlain, whom he agrees with me in considering as at the bottom of all the Government mischief. He says there is no doubt in the world that Chamberlain was in with Rhodes and Jameson in their attack on the Transvaal, and he is angry with him for having backed out of it, and ruined the plot at the last moment to save his own bacon. He has been seeing much of Jameson, whom he likes, and of the gang that have been running the Transvaal business, about a dozen of them, with Buckle, the ‘Times’ editor, and Miss Flora Shaw who, he told me confidentially, is really the prime mover in the whole thing, and who takes the lead in all their private meetings, a very clever middle-aged woman. George made, it appears, a good speech in the House ten days ago, attacking the Government on the line of their having disarmed the Outlanders, and left the Chartered Company defenceless. Chamberlain has since been making overtures to him of friendship, and has been walking about with him ostentatiously in the Lobby; but, seeing this did not stop George’s mouth, he has since shown animosity. I warned George that Chamberlain was a man who would do him a mischief if he could. George is very happy with all this busy work.

“My article will be out on the 1st duly corrected in the ‘Nineteenth Century,’ and George has asked me to write him another for his June number of the ‘New Review.’ I shall give him one on the Moallakát with my translation of Antar’s Ode.

“Old Alfred Montgomery is dead, and buried with a wreath from the Prince of Wales ‘to our dear friend.’ So he ought to sleep happy to the Judgment Day. He was quite the last of the old D’Orsay set in London, and remained a ‘man of fashion,’ dining out to the end, though he died actually away from London at Burley, with his daughter, Edith Finch.

“28th April.—To London with Anne. Ralph came to luncheon in Mount Street, and I afterwards dined with him. He showed me the whole existing correspondence between Byron and Mrs. Leigh.

“14th May.—I have been down, for the most part alone, at Newbuildings, enjoying a wonderful fortnight, the woods lovely in green and gold, nightingales singing night and day from every hedge, quite a dozen close to the house so that one can hear them at any hour of the night chorussing when one opens a window. I have finished my article on the ‘Poetry of the Ignorance,’ and am half way through another on the ‘Origin of the Arabian Horse,’ for the June and July numbers of the ‘New Review.’ George and I and Sibell, and one of the girls, are to go to Stratford on Saturday. I lunched to-day with them and young Rosslyn, a pleasant specimen of the golden youth of the day.

“Then to Hammersmith, where I found my poor old Morris looking very ill and aged, toddling feebly in front of his house. We went in together, and he brightened up, and told me of his maladies in a cheerful not too desponding way, and I stayed on an hour or more and had tea with him. My new tapestry, the Botticelli, is finished, and I am to go with Mrs. Morris on Saturday to see it in Oxford Street. Morris showed me the title-page of his Chaucer, which is about the finest thing he has done, the whole has been subscribed for, a matter of some £9,000.

“Gill, whom I saw in Mount Street, repeated to me more of what Cromer had told him about the Soudan. He asked Cromer whether he should be in favour of an advance to re-occupy the lost provinces. In reply to this Cromer had told him that some time or other the Soudan would have to be reconquered from the Khalifa, but the question was by whom. As for imposing such a task on Egypt he was most emphatic. ‘I should never think,’ he said, ‘of proposing that the poor fellahin in their blue shirts should be charged with it.’ This, it is as well to remember, was as late as the beginning of March, and within a week of the expedition being ordered from England.

“15th May.—Had tea with Lady Lytton at her house in Sloane Street. She thinks it a pity I should have written what I have about the Dongola campaign, which has set people against me just as I was coming home. By ‘people,’ I suppose she means the Court, and I strongly suspect that Her Majesty has been the determining cause of the forward policy in Africa. Lady Lytton was at pains to persuade me that it was entirely Lord Salisbury, and that nobody else had been consulted about it.

“16th May.—Lunched with George and Sibell, and found Madeline, his mother, there, looking fresh and well and younger than I have seen her for years, and came on with them in the afternoon to Stratford, where we now are. We have already been to the Church and the Grammar School. George is a capital companion for a visit of this kind, as he enjoys sightseeing, and besides knows all about Shakespeare, and has his theories about everything. We are at the Shakespeare Hotel, a pleasant inn of the old kind. We have spent the evening reading ‘Venus and Adonis’ and ‘Lucrece.’ I have always been a great admirer of these two pieces, which are the most elaborate and sustained of their kind, and splendidly rhetorical. I did most of the reading as George has a cold.

“17th May.—A beautiful hot day which we spent driving round the country with a jibbing horse. We went to Charlcote and wandered about the park, and then to Mary Arden’s cottage, and to Anne Hathaway’s. Both cottages are interesting, and quite untouched and unrestored, the latter inhabited still by a descendant of the Hathaways. It is after all no such long way back to Shakespeare’s time, seven generations in my own family, and I think people largely exaggerate the changes that have taken place. Remote country villages can have hardly at all changed. In the evening I read them translations from the Moallakát, about which George is enthusiastic. My article for the ‘New Review’ has put him upon the track of discovery as to certain features of chivalry in the Middle Ages in Europe, a subject not yet properly traced to its origin in Arabia. We have had a thoroughly literary two days, to me of much profit.

“18th May.—Mary joined us from Stanway with Miss Balfour, and we all went to see the church and the tomb, then back to London in the afternoon.

“20th May.—Dined with Pamela, and then went to the Foreign Office party in honour of Her Majesty’s birthday, an immense crush, but as always a fine sight, and many people one knows.

“29th May.—The Morrises have been here at Newbuildings since Tuesday. He, poor man, very feeble and aged. I fear from the look of things that it is some form of consumption, and that he will not recover. But his spirits are fairly good, and he talks at times as brilliantly as ever. The new piece of tapestry he has made me, Botticelli’s Spring, is up and is very decorative and brilliant in the drawing-room, though the faces are hardly as good as they ought to be. It has been a great difficulty to execute it, he says, and has turned out better than he expected. We think the three figures with the flowers are March, April, and May. We have had many interesting talks on art, politics, and religion. As to the last he does not believe in any God the Creator of the World, or any Providence, or, I think, any future life. But he is not a pessimist, and thinks mankind the ‘crown of things,’ in spite of man’s destructive action and his modern craze of ugliness. His illness does not make him gloomy; only it troubles him in his work.

“Swinburne’s new poem was reviewed yesterday in all the papers. Morris thinks it poor stuff and not worth doing, as the story, ‘Balin and Balan,’ was quite perfect in its prose form in the ‘Morte d’Arthur.’ ‘It would not do, however,’ he said, ‘for Swinburne to hear me saying this, for he would never forgive me.’ Swinburne, it appears, is the most sensitive and jealous of men, and cannot bear the smallest criticism. But he and Morris have not met for some years, though Mrs. Morris goes now and then to see Swinburne. Tennyson, Morris says, was the same, and never forgave him and Burne-Jones for having disapproved of his bowdlerization of the ‘Morte d’Arthur’ in the ‘Idylls of the King.’ I drove Morris yesterday to Crookhorn and a little way round. He is, I think, happy here. The oak woods are new to him, though he was born in Epping Forest, and he likes the multitude of birds. He creeps about a little among them in the sun.

“31st May (Sunday).—The Morrises left yesterday. I think he enjoyed himself while he was here, and he talks of coming back for another week later, and of our making a drive together in Epping Forest, where he was born. But I fear he is very ill. He has told me something of his origin. His father was a bill broker in the City, and he himself was destined for that trade. ‘If I had gone on with it,’ he said, ‘I should have broken the bills into very small bits. We had some mining shares in Cornwall, and when I succeeded to them I sold them. My relations thought me both wicked and mad, but the shares are worth nothing now.’ I took him yesterday to see Shipley Church, a fine old Norman tower, injured with restoration. He was very indignant, swearing at the parsons as we walked up the nave: ‘Beasts! Pigs! Damn their souls!’ We had a long discussion whether the love of beauty was natural or acquired. ‘As for me,’ he said, ‘I have it naturally, for neither my father, nor my mother, nor any of my relations had the least idea of it. I remember as a boy going into Canterbury Cathedral and thinking that the gates of heaven had been opened to me, also when I first saw an illuminated manuscript. These first pleasures which I discovered for myself were stronger than anything else I have had in life.’ He talked much about his Iceland journey, as he often does, and has a sick man’s fancy to go there again, for it would do him good. ‘I am a man of the North,’ he said. ‘I am disappointed at the fine weather we are having here. I had hoped it would rain, so that I could sit indoors and watch it beating on the windows.’

“1st June.—Went up to London to take Anne to a Geographical meeting, where Theodore Bent gave some account of his travels south of where we were last winter. Like all our geographers nowadays he is an arch Jingo, and talked of opening up the country by gold digging as if it would be a work of piety. The Geographical Society has lent itself to this sort of thing in Africa for the last thirty years.

“2nd June.—To lunch with Judith at Margot’s; a great treat. Margot was delightful and most amusing. We found her with Lady Greville, who had come to interview her, on the subject of women cross country riders, for some magazine. Margot was splendid in her description of the various styles of riding, and of the falls and smashes she had had and witnessed. ‘There are only three women,’ she said, ‘who really have the nerve to ride a line of their own, and I am one of them.’ Her baby of last year has in no way spoilt her nerve, and she had seventy days’ hunting during the past winter. Two of her step-children were with her at luncheon, and the governess, which gave her a somewhat matronly appearance, but she is otherwise unchanged from the days of her hoyden maidenhood—affectionate, and nice, and cleverer than any one else, with a pretty colour in her cheeks, but very thin. ‘I have lost two stone,’ she said, ‘since you were with me at the Glen. I only weigh 7 stone 6, but I like to ride big horses. The best I ever had was 16.2.

“3rd June.—Newbuildings. I have sent the following to Morley:

‘As the debate on the Soudan campaign is coming on I write a line to say that I think you will find the action of the Italian Government explainable on the supposition put forward in my article in the “Nineteenth Century” of May, viz., that the arrangement made with the German Emperor was due not to the Italian Government, but to the King of Italy personally through his appealing to the Emperor. The Italian Government, and especially the Duke of Sermoneta, whom I know well, are or were when they came into office opposed altogether to the Italian Colonial policy. The Duke’s hobby (if one may call it so) is financial economy, and he would have liked to see the whole of Erythrya with Kassala, and even Massówah, given up. I am sure, therefore, that it has been the King’s influence that has been at work overruling that of his Ministers. The Italian Government’s object now, I imagine, is to get their expenses in Erythrya, or at any rate at Kassala, paid for by the Egyptian Government or ours, on the plea that they have been pacifying the country in Egyptian interests. It is all nonsense of course, but our Government, by inviting the Italians twelve years ago to take Massówah, has put itself under some obligations to Italy, which will be made the most of.

‘P.S. I am convinced that the whole of this business was worked in the first instance by Royal personages, including our own, much more than by the various F.O’s.’[17]

“8th June.—There is news of a ‘victory’ in the Soudan at Ferkeh, come, however, just too late to serve as an answer by the Government in Parliament. Labouchere rushed this debate on Friday, and it came off most successfully, whereas the battle, which I have little doubt was fought by order from Downing Street, was only fought on Sunday.

“Coming up to London in the morning I stopped at 90, Sloane Street, to see Frank Lascelles. We had some talk about Egypt and the Soudan, and he admitted to me that there had been a conversation between him and the Emperor William, such as I allude to in my ‘Nineteenth Century’ article. But he professed ignorance as to the real reasons of the decision come to, to advance to Dongola, also surprise at its having been made.

“10th June.—Mrs. Morris writes that Morris is less well, losing weight daily and growing weaker. But the doctors will have it that it is nervous exhaustion only, and recommend a sea voyage and rest. I do not believe them. She is to take rooms for him at Folkestone meanwhile, a sad prospect.

“13th June.—My good friend, J. H. Middleton, is dead.[18]

“15th June.—An inquest has been held on poor Middleton. The jury have returned a verdict of ‘death from misadventure.’ What is curious is that it now appears that for twenty years he has been a morphia taker, and his long illness has been entirely due to that cause. I have so often talked over with him his friend Rossetti’s death from chloral, which he used to deplore! He is a great loss, or rather, one should say, has been a great loss, for he has been dead to the world and to his friends for something like two years.

“Margot came to dinner with George Wyndham and Harry Cust, a merry parti de quatre, and George stayed on talking with me after the others were gone.

“16th June.—Lunched with Philip Currie and his wife, just back from Constantinople. There seems little chance now of their being transferred to Paris. Afterwards to Lady Galloway’s.

“24th June.—Yesterday to Folkestone to the Morrises. He is distinctly better, and I hope may yet come round, as the doctors declare he will. He talked a great deal about his boyhood, said he had read the whole of Scott’s novels before he was seven, and had gone through the phase of ‘Marmion’ and the ‘Lady of the Lake.’ At his school, Marlborough, he was neither high nor low in his form, but always last in arithmetic [in this like me]; hated Cicero and Latin generally, but anything in the way of history had attracted him; he knew English history better than Greek history, though only the latter was taught; he had learned nearly everything he knew of architecture and mediæval things running about the country round Marlborough as a schoolboy. The Morrises are at the Norfolk Hotel.

“26th June.—With Everard Fielding to see Tissot’s pictures, not really good either in drawing or in taste, and rather sham in their Oriental realism.

“Breakfasted with George, who was in the highest of his high spirits, having been up at a ball till five at Grosvenor House, and then out at nine to try a new bicycle on Hampstead Heath, which is to run forty miles an hour. His triumphs are my triumphs, and I delight in his happiness.

“1st July.—Lunched with Harry Cust, who is starting in a few days for South Africa.

“10th July.—Went with George Wyndham to a dinner given by Henley to the ‘New Review’ contributors, a deadly dull affair, as all men’s dinners are—the most interesting person I met there was the Dane Brandes, who has the honour of having invented Ibsen. Whibley also was there, with whom I talked.

“Things are going badly in South Africa for the Chartered Company. The black are in arms, and it seems doubtful whether they can be put down. Rhodes is now quite discredited.

“11th July.—Lunched with Lady Galloway, and down by the afternoon train to Canterbury to stay with Guy Wyndham and his wife, who are quartered there. They have a very beautiful child, a boy called George.

“12th July.—With Guy to see the Cathedral. I am disappointed with it, after all Morris told me—that is, with the inside, which has been scraped out of most of its interest. Only the tombs are splendid, especially that of the Black Prince. The tower outside, seen from the cloisters, is grand, and I have arrived just in time to see these and the chapter house unspoiled. ‘If you had come a week later,’ said the verger, ‘you would have found the whole a mass of scaffolding.’ Dean Farrar, who wants, Morris says, to be made a Bishop, is bent on scraping and destroying all that has hitherto escaped, a hideous madness of destruction nothing can prevent.

“In the evening back to London, and dined with the Morrises, to wish him good-bye, as he sails for Norway next week. The garden at Kelmscott House is lovely with hollyhocks.

“15th July.—To the Horse Show at the Crystal Palace, where Mesaoud has taken first Arab Prize, Meijliss second. This is satisfactory, though in truth no great triumph, seeing what a poor competition it was.

“17th July.—Went to see Bowles and consult him about Egyptian affairs, and as to bringing forward the case of Rhodes’ 220 Soudanese, which certainly ought to be done. Bowles has made for himself by his cleverness a certain position in the House of Commons, and I would rather he took the case up than the Radicals.

“18th July.—I have written to the ‘Times’ about Cecil Rhodes and his 220 Soudanese recruited at Cairo, and never since heard of.

“In the afternoon I started for Blackdown, going by way of Petworth, where I left cards, nobody being at home. Then on by Lodsworth Common. This is, I think, the easiest, though the longest road, and may be about twenty-one miles. I found Harrison at cricket with his boys, now grown-up young men, but they came in presently, and I played a set of lawn tennis with the philosopher, and spent a pleasant evening discussing his creed of Humanity and mine of anti-Humanity. It seems to be pretty much the same thing as far as politics are concerned, for the principal wish of both of us is to see the break-up of the British Empire. He has some right to believe in Humanity, as he has never had a pain or ache or a sleepless night in his life, and he is past sixty. Thus in half serious humour we passed the evening. There is nobody in the world less like a philosopher or a religious leader than the good Harrison.

“19th July (Sunday).—Off at five in the morning, having said good-bye overnight, going by Lodsworth and Ebenhoe, Kirdford and Wisborough Green, an old-fashioned bit of country as any in Sussex, belonging, I think, all to Leconfield. Long may it so remain.

“3rd Aug.—Dr. Jameson has been sentenced to fifteen months imprisonment, a sentence at once too much and too little. The Government has made him a first-class misdemeanant, so as a punishment it is very little. At the same time if the sentence had been carried out it would have been a savage one. He ought to have been hanged at Pretoria. The ‘Times’ has refused to publish my letter about Rhodes’ Soudanese.

“6th Aug.—There has been heavy cholera up the Nile. Captain Fenwick dead, and one of the young engineer officers I saw at Korosko last November. He was under twenty-four, and was receiving £1,000 a year from the Egyptian Government, and thought himself a lucky fellow to be there. They are to advance on Dongola at the end of the month. What our Jingoes want is to wait till the Egyptian army is exhausted by heat, hard fighting, and cholera, and then to send an English army to Khartoum in cool weather to reap the profits of the campaign in English interests. This is being advocated unblushingly in the ‘Pall Mall’ and elsewhere. I wrote to expose the scandalous intention, but they would not print my letter.

“10th Aug.—Started on a driving tour in the New Forest, stopping the first day for luncheon at Lavington with Reginald Wilberforce and his family. I have known Reginald all my life, that is to say, from the year 1845, when we lived for a while at Alverstoke after my father’s death, and when his father, the Rev. Samuel Wilberforce, afterwards Bishop of Oxford, was Rector of the parish. There were three boys then—Reginald, at that time called Garton; Ernest, now Bishop of Chichester; and Basil, Chaplain of the House of Commons. They were all three as bad boys as could be wished, and my mother nicknamed them ‘the sons of Eli.’ Ernest, with whom I was in the same class at school, an especially wicked boy, which is saying a good deal, but now just as justly respected, and a Right Reverend Father in God. The only good boy of the family was an older brother Herbert, but he had died at sea, while the wicked ones lived on to adorn the Church of England with their virtues. Thus is the child father to the man. I went over the little parish church after luncheon with Reginald, who is an amusing talker.

He showed me the grave of his Aunt Caroline, who had been Cardinal Manning’s wife. It remains without inscription of any kind. The old Cardinal visited it in 1876 and talked of putting up a stone, but he was probably perplexed as to the wording of the inscription. ‘Wife of Cardinal Manning’ would have looked strange. Reginald, however, thinks now of doing this, and suggests ‘Wife of Henry Edward, afterwards Cardinal Manning.’ Reginald told me much else that was interesting about Cardinal Manning’s visit. He had come down for the consecration of the Catholic church at Burton Park, and asked to be allowed to lunch at Lavington, so they entertained him there, and he saw all the old parishioners and was much affected. Afterwards he walked to the top of the down with Reginald and discoursed to him about his soul, exhorting him to conversion—thus for two hours. Their last words were: ‘Think, my dear Reginald, if God should require your soul of you to-night, where should you be?’ To which Reginald, ‘Why, my dear Uncle Henry, I should be in the hands of God.’ As his Eminence was leaving, the parishioners all came to wish him good-bye, and he blessed them each in turn. When Reginald had put his uncle into the carriage, he said: ‘And is there no blessing, no little blessing for me?’ They never met again, and ‘he never cared for me after this,’ Reginald said, ‘though he used to see my wife and children and was always most affectionate to them.’ He tells me the way Purcell, his biographer, got hold of the Cardinal’s diaries and letters was this. He had had several conversations with Manning on the subject of his biography, and Manning had given him some sort of verbal promise about it and had shown him where his diaries were kept, and one day he came to the house when the Cardinal was out and persuaded the servant to let him have them, saying that the Cardinal had told him to call and take them away, he knew where they were, and had authority, etc. But it was a pure theft and Manning had begun legal proceedings for their recovery when he died.”

I went on the same afternoon and camped on Goodwood Down, and on the next day through Chichester to Fareham and Southampton, and camped again in the evening at the edge of the New Forest, the immediate object of my journey being to pay Auberon Herbert a visit at Oldhouse. Of this I write:

“12th Aug.—Oldhouse lies pretty well in the heart of the Forest. One descends to it from the high road by a grass track of a mile and a half. It is a freehold of half-a-dozen acres, recently purchased by Auberon of its owner, and there he has made his hermitage. The old cottage he has pulled down and in its place has built up a number of cheap buildings of brick and wood devoid of architecture. Fortunately they lie in a hollow and so are invisible until one is close by. Auberon has done so much for the Forest, and fought so many battles to preserve it from the Crown officers, that he must be forgiven this one lapse. I found him with Stafford Howard, the Crown Commissioner, and Esdale, a local squire and verderer of the Forest, Auberon’s ally in the Forest battle. I had much talk with them about this. The chief difficulty is what to do with the great fir enclosures, the firs ought to be cut down, but there is nobody to buy them, and an ugly growth of them is creeping over the open spaces, self-sown. It ought to be put a stop to, or in fifty years’ time the Forest will be like Woking cemetery.

“Auberon is much aged since I saw him last, and more flighty than he used to be. He is beset with a double mania, a craving for fresh air and in contradiction a terror of draughts, so that he is always shifting from in to out of doors and putting on or taking off extra clothing. His two children, Bron and Nan, wait on him with angelic devotion. They do all the work of the house. When I arrived Nan was in the kitchen up to her elbows in flour, making bread. She is a great strong girl of sixteen, the picture of health, with limbs like a boy’s, great honest grey eyes, good complexion, and good teeth. Auberon and I have talked a great deal on politics, Eastern and Western, he, as his way is, asking innumerable questions. We agree on most subjects, but he is too tender to his countrymen’s sins, excusing them and comparing them favourably with the French. He has become an entire vegetarian, as is his daughter, and for the most part his son. Their way of life is the most uncomfortable imaginable. They have no fixed hours for meals, or for getting up in the morning, or for going to bed. The first regular meal is said to be at half-past two in the afternoon, and there is another at twilight in the evening, but they do not sit down to either meal. Auberon sits in a summer house during part of his meal, while the children run in and out, and he has constantly to get up to arrange and re-arrange his clothing, which is of Shetland wool shawls and jerseys, and the children are called to put up and take down wooden screens on this side and that as the wind may seem to blow or not to blow. Nan, with inexhaustible patience, humours and serves her father, and Bron is almost equally good to him. This is the best tribute that can be paid to Auberon’s system of education, but it is clear there must be a breaking point somewhere. I don’t know which child to admire the most, the boy or the girl.

“13th Aug.—Spent the morning alone writing, for Auberon has his occupations. He is a wonderful man, with a certain ethereal beauty of the Shelley kind, which has increased with years. His theories are, I believe, essentially true, and he is true to them in practice, but without his children it would be a desolate, impossible life. He took me for a walk at luncheon time, discoursing as he went, his daughter following, us, all ears for our talk. She is very nice and pleasant, as girls of sixteen always are, still wearing short petticoats, and with hair cut short, enthusiastic at the thought of going, perhaps this winter, to Egypt.

“14th Aug.—On by Ringwood and up the Avon valley to Salisbury, where we baited at the White Hart, an excellent inn, but vitiated by a German waiter. I went over the Cathedral, which has been scraped inside and garnished from end to end. In another hundred years it may perhaps tone down again to beauty, but at present the black pillar stems, newly polished, have the effect of so many tall stove pipes. It was infinitely finer under the old whitewash, but the deans will have their way. Then on to Wilton and George Pembroke’s grave. The house is shut up, as Sidney finds himself too poor to live in it, and the days of their joyous youth are a vanished dream. Then on across the Down through Groveley Wood, the biggest mere wood in England, where I remember riding with Pembroke and his brothers and sisters thirty years ago, when they were children, playing a game of Puss in the Corner, with wild galloping down the rides. There at nightfall I camped.

“15th Aug.—Another short morning’s drive brought us to Stockton where I spent the Sunday with my cousins Pamela and Eddy Tennant.

“George has been appointed to the South African Committee, and is to sail for the Cape to-day.”

From Stockton I went on through Warminster and Longleat Park to Mells. “Longleat is very fine approached from this side, but the house disappointed me. It is very perfect, too perfect, and, large as it is, it is lost in the size of the park. What makes it look dull is the uniform plate-glass which has been put in every window. It is astonishing how this destroys the beauty of old buildings. It is as though the eyes in a beautiful face had been put out and replaced with spectacles. I prefer Mells, where I now am, a really fascinating little place, a comfortable eighteenth-century house, remote and shut in, which gives a sense of immemorial quiet screened from the world’s view. I arrived late at half-past seven, but they had not yet gone to dress for dinner, and presently out rushed the whole family. Mrs. Horner, with her children, very pretty ones, and Godfrey Webb, who is staying there, and Horner, who went out to help me choose a camping place, and invited me in to dinner. I was not expected, but travelling in this way calls out the latent hospitality of the countryside almost as much as if one were in the East, and Horner gave himself endless trouble about my road to Wells next morning.

“17th Aug.—My day’s drive to-day was along the Mendip Hills to Wells, where I baited the horses at the Swan Inn, near the Cathedral. Wells Cathedral is the most perfect in England. The inside has been scraped, but not much spoiled, while the outside is quite intact. Its surroundings are unique—the Bishop’s palace, the famous wells in the Episcopal garden, and the moat. While in the Cathedral I got shut in behind the choir, and sat on a stone bench listening, not unedified, to the chaunting of a service. It is an interesting thing to have witnessed, as I have, from its beginning, the revival of the Church of England, which fifty years ago seemed almost dead. In those days a Cathedral like this was left almost without ceremonial from Sunday to Sunday, and the officiating canon, if he read the church service to his clerk, would begin with ‘Dearly beloved brother,’ for want of other congregation. Now all is elaborately ordered, yet I confess I like the old godless way best, it was more honest and marked the fact, which was a fact, that the continuity of church worship had been broken at the Reformation. Now all is sham mediævalism, sham seventeenth century, sham eighteenth century. We shall get back presently, I hope, to our pews on eclectic principles, and a new Georgian era of ecclesiastical wigs and gowns. Then I ran down by train to Glastonbury and back, and camped for the night in a beautiful coombe belonging to a Mr. Tudway, a local banker to whom Horner had given me a letter, dining with him in a beautiful Georgian house belonging to his family since 1760. Here my driving journey ended, for we were overtaken with heavy rains.

“30th Aug.—We have had three public events during the week, first Cecil Rhodes has patched up a peace with the Matabeles, heralded in all the daily papers as an heroic act of courage, because he went personally to the Matabele camp to treat. Secondly, our gallant fleet has bombarded Zanzibar. The Sultan had died suddenly, and Khalid, one of his relations, son of the former Sultan Bargash, had seized the throne and got the native soldiery to join him. These held the palace against the fleet, which bombarded them from close quarters, killed five hundred of them, and burnt out the remainder. Our papers are again exultant, and raise a cry for annexation on the plea for abolishing slavery in Zanzibar. Yet I remember fifteen years ago Sultan Bargash applying to me to get the Indian Government to allow him coolie labour as a substitute for the slaves. Zanzibar was a model Arab State, a hundred times more liberal in its ideas than the Government of India, which would not hear of helping the Sultan. I know this, having brought the case before Lytton. Thirdly, there has been a new great slaying of Armenians at Constantinople, the companion of what took place last year, but on a larger scale. It was begun, as in the first instance, by the Armenian Committee, which seized the Ottoman bank and threw bombs into the street, their object being to force on a crisis. To this the Moslems retorted with a massacre.

“2nd Sept.—The Nile expedition has been stopped by floods, great seyls from the hills, which have swept away the new railway just as they have finished it. The talk is now of having hardly time to get to Dongola before the river goes down. If the expedition fails, all I have said about the abdication of Providence has been blasphemy. The good Egyptian troops have been worn out by hard work in a thankless labour. They are said now to be ‘tired.’ Broadwood wrote me this some time ago.

“3rd Sept.—To Wotton to dine and sleep. The good old Evelyn is packing up his trunks to go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Next day to London to see Morris, whom the doctors now declare to be in a pulmonary consumption. Mrs. de Morgan was there and Cockerell, and while I was sitting with them in came Madeline Wyndham, beautiful in her old age. She took me away with her to see some enamel work she is learning to do at the studio of one Fisher, and I was shown all the process of mixing the colours, ground glass with water, arranging them on a silver plate and burning them on a small oven. Fisher has done a beautiful triptych of a Crucifixion, and a very pretty classic bit called ‘Love’s Chase,’ but the best thing there was one of Madeline’s own, two peacocks.

“8th Sept.—Started on a series of visits to Scotland, and, on my way north, I find the following:

“12th Sept.—Met Lord Loch in the train, and had much interesting talk with him on South African affairs and the intrigues of Germany. He told me that when he was at Pretoria some of the Boers explained these to him. Also that the opposition of Germany in South Africa dated from 1886, when Bismarck began it, as against the Empress Frederick. We also discussed the possible deposition of the Sultan. He thought this could only be done by Russia, as our fleet could not get through the Dardanelles without heavy loss.”

While in one of the country houses I found in an anonymous book, dated 1722, the following admirable epitaph of a Duke of Buckingham, which I cannot help transcribing here, so suitable is it for the agnosticisms of our day.

“Pro rege sæpe, pro Republica semper.

Dubius sed non improbus vixi.

Incertus morior sed inturbatus.

Humanum est errare et nescire.

Christum adveneror. Deo confido,

Omnipotenti benevolentissimo.

Ens entium, miserere mei.”

Often for the King, always for the Commonweal.

Doubting but not wickedly have I lived.

I die uncertain but unperturbed.

It is human to err and not to know.

I venerate Christ. I trust in God

The omnipotent the most kind

Being of beings, have pity on me!

Back to London, where we found “great preparations being made for the Emperor and Empress of Russia, who are being fêted in the middle of an agitation against Russian policy at Constantinople. All our English world has gone mad with self-righteousness.

“26th Sept.—Gladstone has fired off his powder against the Sultan at Liverpool, but there was no shot in his Armenian gun. All he can think of as a means of coercion at Constantinople is to break off diplomatic relations, summon the Sultan to take action of some kind and go no further. It is too foolish. All the time he was in office the old man lifted not so much as a finger for the Armenians, and now that he cannot help them he would play their champion against Abdul Hamid, who owes the strength of his position mainly to English diplomacy, as he should remember. In 1882 Gladstone called on Abdul Hamid to help him to put down liberty in Egypt by proclaiming Arabi a rebel and, as he explained to an Indian Mohammedan deputation at the time of Tel-el-Kebir, sent troops to Egypt ‘to establish the Sultan’s rights there.’ In all this he made the Sultan his accomplice against the liberal Mohammedan party, and by doing so set Islamic patriotism on reactionary lines and gave the Sultan his present triumph over his reforming enemies. If liberal Islam is powerless to-day in the Sultan’s grasp it is distinctly Gladstone who has made it so, yet now he comes forward shocked at the result. I should like to write these things, but who would listen?

“28th Sept.—Dined with the Morrises. He came in like a man risen from the grave, and sat a few minutes at the table, but seemed dazed and unable to follow the conversation. Miss de Morgan was there, and his wife waiting on him, and a young man who had charitably come in to sit up with him at night. He seemed absorbed in his misery.

“4th Oct. (Sunday).—Morris is dead. I got a letter telling it from Lady Burne-Jones this morning. She says, ‘Our dear friend Morris died at twenty minutes past eleven this morning, as quietly as ever a babe went to sleep in its mother’s arms.’

“It has come sooner than I expected, though I knew his case was hopeless. It is better as it is. He is the most wonderful man I have known, unique in this, that he had no thought for anything or person, including himself, but only for the work he had in hand. He was not selfish in the sense of seeking his own advantage or pleasure or comfort, but he was too absorbed in his own thoughts to be either openly affectionate or actively kind. I suppose he had a real affection for Burne-Jones, they saw each other constantly and spent their Sunday mornings, always together, and I have seen him tender to his daughter Jenny and nice with her and with his wife, but I doubt if he thought of them much when he did not see them, and his life was not arranged in reference to them. To the rest of the world he seemed quite indifferent, and he never, I am sure, returned the affection I gave him. He liked to talk to me because I knew how to talk to him, and our fence of words furbished his wit, but I doubt if he would have crossed the street to speak to me. He was generous and open-handed in his dealings, and I fancy did many kindnesses in a money way for people in distress, but he fashed himself for no man and no woman. The truth is he would not give an hour of his time to anyone, he held it to be too valuable. Thus, while all the world admired and respected him, I doubt whether he had many friends; they got too little in return to continue their affection. I should say half-a-dozen were all the friends he had. I do not count myself among the number, intimate as I was with him and much as I loved him. It will be a great grief for Jenny, a great break-up for Janey, and a great loss for the world at large, for he was really our greatest man.

“5th Oct.—I came up to London to see if I could be of any use at Kelmscott House, and first I called on Burne-Jones and had luncheon with him and his son. He said that his interest in life had come to an end with Morris, as all their ideas and plans and work had been together all their lives. Phil, with whom I had a private talk, gave me curiously enough the exact same impression of Morris as that which I wrote in this diary yesterday. His impersonality, his lack of personal affection for anyone except, perhaps, for his, Phil’s, father. Then I went on to Hammersmith. The coffin, a very plain box, lay in the little room downstairs, with a beautiful old embroidered cloth over it and a small wreath of leaves and sad-coloured flowers. It was the room which was his bedroom, and where he died, with his best and favourite books around him. The morning after the day I dined with him, Tuesday, was a fine one and he was taken out for an airing in his chair, and he enjoyed it thoroughly and said he felt well. On coming in he insisted on going upstairs, but the exertion was too much; he broke a blood vessel and lay after that for the most part insensible till he died on Saturday.

“8th Oct.—Rosebery has resigned his leadership of the Liberal party. I wrote at once to Loulou Harcourt to congratulate his father.

“15th Oct.—I am leaving home this afternoon for Egypt, stopping as usual for three nights at Gros Bois on my way. Jusserand and his wife there, and Giovanni Borghese and young Norton, Mrs. Norton’s grandson, now at the Paris Embassy.”