Part 2 — CHAPTER III (continued 2)

“29th Oct.—The Russian Government has given in, thanks to the firmness of our Cabinet. The Russian officers are to be submitted to an International Inquiry, and punished if found guilty, and in the meanwhile our Baltic Fleet is to stay where it is at Vigo. Arthur Balfour has certainly managed things dexterously and well. Whether the punishment will be very real I doubt, but the main object is already accomplished, that of showing it is impossible to do these things with impunity.

“2nd Nov.—With Madeline Adeane to see Bernard Shaw’s new play, ‘John Bull’s other Island.’ It is a roaring burlesque, the most amusing I ever listened to. I laughed till I cried, sitting in the uppermost tier of the gallery, for we could get no other seats. Shaw has certainly made an epoch on the English stage, using it also as a platform for his political fancies. In this play he hits all round, making all the Parliamentary parties equally ridiculous, including the Irish.

“The arrangement of the Dogger Bank affair turns out less rosy than Arthur Balfour announced it to be. The Czar has declared publicly his belief in the torpedo story told by the Russian officers, and the Russian Fleet, with its Admiral Rojesvenski, has left Vigo for Japan. It will probably end in our having to pocket our slap in the face, and perhaps in having the torpedo story saddled on us in history.

“11th Nov.—I leave to-day for Egypt, after having taken all my male servants down to Shipley to vote for Turnour, the Tory candidate.”

At Gros Bois from 14th November to 20th November.

“17th Nov.—The great talk here at Gros Bois is of General André’s resignation, a matter of domestic politics. They take no interest here in the Baltic Fleet outrage, or much in the Russo-Japanese War, Wagram being convinced that Russia must win in the end, otherwise it would mean an invasion of Europe by ‘les jaunes.’

“This was a sad visit. On the 18th I went with Wagram and the rest of the family to a memorial service he has performed monthly at Boissy for poor Berthe, where she lies under her cold pyramid which marks the family vault, though Wagram is preparing for her a less dreary resting place outside in the sun hard by. Wagram had brought his little bunch of violets, and we both prayed for her, but alas, what matter, she does not know. ‘Though the Heavens and the Earth be broken, she shall not arise, nor waken out of her sleep.’

“20th Nov.—La Tour d’Auvergne is here, and Alexandre came to-day from Saint Cyr, which he has joined for the Army. He was proud of having driven his motor the distance (forty kilometres) in as many minutes, it being the best and straightest road he says in France, and with the fewest villages. We were taken out shooting as in former days, and killed eight or nine faisans vénérés, with a number of the common sort. These vénérés have been thirty-four years wild at Gros Bois, having escaped from their pens during the Prussian War and multiplied greatly, but Wagram complains that the length of their tails has suffered. Formerly the birds measured as much as 2 metres 10, whereas now they seldom reach 1 metre 80. Otherwise they have flourished exceedingly, we must have seen at least forty on one beat. They are somewhat puzzling to shoot, as they are very sudden and irregular in their movements, coming through the woods with a great noise and flourish, and, when you expect it least, perching on the outer trees and chattering like parrots. Thus many birds are missed.

“22nd Nov.—Venice. With Button Bourke, to see the sights, he doing cicerone with considerable knowledge. I was pleased to find that the loss of the great tower is really a gain to St. Mark’s, which one now sees in its true proportion. The tower dwarfed it, and it is best away. St. Mark’s is, I say once more, the most beautiful church in Europe, and the most interesting. By good luck I find Tintoretto’s great ‘Paradiso’ picture taken down from its place where it was difficult to see, and set in a good light on a gigantic easel, so that one can examine every detail. It is a really splendid thing. Button has been now two years living at Venice, and already has the ways and language of the ‘oldest inhabitant.’ He occupies a little house in San Giacomo dell’ Orio, where there is a large garden in which he stows the odds and ends of outdoor sculpture he buys for the London market, a business by which he makes a scanty living and which makes him happy, having found in it a vocation in life. He is, as always, a delightful companion.

“23rd Nov.—Lunched with Button and his chief friend here, Horatio Brown, who has taken on old Rawdon Brown’s work at the Venetian archives. I remember old Rawdon Brown when I was here with Anne thirty years ago. Both are interesting men. I told Button the story of the Gorst intrigue at Cairo, and he gave me in return the latest Egyptian news which he got from a friend in the War Office, namely, that Cromer has been in correspondence as to the withdrawal of the Army of Occupation. Cromer has declared himself ready to do without any English regiment beyond a Corporal’s guard at Alexandria. He says he can rely absolutely on the Egyptian troops, that the English garrison is not wanted, and that he declines to pay for it. The London War Office, however, insists on keeping it on in Egypt, as they thus make a saving of English expense, the cost of the army being put upon Egypt.

“28th Nov.—After a stormy passage I find myself once more at Alexandria and Sheykh Obeyd. During the voyage I read Frederick Harrison’s novel which he has just published, a strange mixture of historic fact of the most interesting kind, and melodrama of the most conventional. The romantic episodes will not, I think, redound to Harrison’s philosophic fame, for it is naïvely unreal, but these take up but a few pages, and might as well have been omitted altogether, while the historic background is vigorous and well told, only, as in every historical novel, the parts that are true ought to be printed in sober type, the parts untrue in red. As it is we don’t know what to make of the cream-coloured Arabs and the coal-black Barbs, which would seem to have been borrowed from Disraeli. I must write to him about it. The Creevy Papers is another volume of good gossiping value.

“Here at Sheykh Obeyd things change slowly. The city creeps gradually nearer us, and the old distant view of Cairo, which was so beautiful, is half shut out by new houses. The garden remains, as always, an unchanging refuge.

“Mohammed Abdu has given me an account of all that has happened during the summer. The chief incident has been an escapade of Sheykh Ali Yusuf’s, in which the Khedive has been mixed up. The Khedive, ever since his first visit to London and the acquaintance he made with our King, has taken to a life of amusement with ladies of doubtful character, and has surrounded himself with boon companions. Sheykh Ali Yusuf, whose connection with the Court was originally a literary one, but who is a pleasant fellow, has been adopted into this set, and, though no longer young, has put on the garments of youth in the Khedive’s company. Among other ladies honoured by His Highness was a daughter of the Sheykh El Saadat, whom her father from mercenary motives had not allowed to marry, though she is now twenty-seven, his high position as head of the Moslem nobility putting it into his power to exact rich presents from suitors for her hand, to whom he afterwards refused consent. The young lady, however, has been furious at the delay, and through the connivance of the Sheykh el Bekri, who had married an elder sister, the Khedive had made her acquaintance, and seems to have wished to establish her with Ali Yusuf. Ali Yusuf was therefore put forward as a suitor, his suit being supported by Abbas, but the old game of preliminary presents and then delays was the only result, and Ali Yusuf getting tired of this, arranged with El Bekri and the young lady that she should elope with him. Now elopement is a quite unheard of thing in Islam, and bears the character of a theft, inasmuch as it is stealing a man’s daughter without paying the customary dower, and the scandal caused in Ali Yusuf’s case has been everywhere immense, nor has it been made less by Lord Cromer’s having ultimately settled the dispute by advising the young person to return to her parents. Mohammed Abdu tells me that the Khedive’s position at Constantinople is that of being made use of by the Sultan as a spy for him on what goes on in Egypt, and for this he has lost his popularity.

“17th Dec.—I have been a week in bed with a strong fever, a soul-crushing evil, and now feel twenty years older than when I left England hardly a month ago. The things of this life seem very far away, or seemed so till this morning, not merely the things of youth, love, ambition, vanity, but equally so the things of the spirit, all hope, all fear, all wish to live or die. In these depths, the problem of a future life seems foolishness; God, heaven and hell, good and evil, duty of any kind, responsibility, words without meaning. Above all the heart is dead. Who is there that can help or heal? The good to us are as one with the wicked. There is no voice in all the world that can reach us or console. Only with the dead, those who have passed through the shadow where we stand, are we able to converse as equal to ourselves in sorrow. I seemed to grope in blind impotent search for a dead hand, Cowie’s, as she used to be here sixteen years ago, when we lived like mendicants in the little garden house, and as she had nursed me in Ceylon. Then I could have howled like a wild beast in my desolation. Such were the last few days.

“Now I am better, the fever almost gone.”

This was the beginning of a long illness which eventually declared itself as Mediterranean fever, and from which for two years it seemed unlikely I should recover.

It is with reluctance that I waste space in recording these ups and downs of health which would be better passed over in entire silence, for I am sufficiently old-fashioned to be of the opinion of our forefathers, that bodily infirmities should be hidden as far as possible from public view, and that self-respect should require us as men to follow the dignified course of the wild creatures of the forest, who retire out of sight when suffering, and end by dying of old age in some remote retreat alone. It is, however, not possible for me, in the present volume, to avoid all reference to those evil hours, seeing that they have covered so large a section of my later years. It has been fortunate for me that, however often pain has incapacitated me physically during the last decade of my life, it has always left my mind its full vigour, and allowed me to continue, with rare interruptions, its long acquired habit of setting down my daily record in these diaries. So far, indeed, has this been the case that during the years 1904 and 1905 I actually got through more literary work than in any other half dozen years of middle life. The necessity of bodily inaction forced me into activities of another sort which, in their turn, enabled me to survive. For this I thank a kindly Providence and the persistent devotion of not a few untiring friends who encouraged me to work, and working to live on.