CHAPTER VII

LORD HALSBURY’S GHOST STORY

Being a Lord Chancellor does not render a man immune from belief in ghosts. I have more than once heard the late Lord Halsbury relate his adventure in this line. As a young man he went to stay with a friend, who put him up for the night. After he had gone to bed, a figure entered his room, and taking it to be his host he spoke to it, but it made no reply and left as silently as it entered. At breakfast next morning he said to the master of the house—I suppose jokingly—“If you did come in my room last night I think you might have answered when I spoke to you.” Both his hosts looked embarrassed, and then his friend said, “Well, to tell you the truth, that room is considered to be haunted; but it is our best room, and my wife thought that a hard-headed lawyer would not be liable to be disturbed, so we put you there.” Mr. Giffard, as, Lord Halsbury then was, left without further incident, but some time after, meeting his friend again, he said, “Well, how’s your ghost getting on?” “Oh, my dear fellow,” was the reply, “don’t talk of my ghost. My aunt came to stay with me and we put her into that room. The ghost came in and tried to get into her bed, and she will never speak to me again!”

Lord Halsbury also had a story about a ghost who haunted his brother’s house in London. I think it was a little old woman, I cannot remember the details, but he certainly seemed to believe in it.

Talking of dreams and apparitions, though I cannot remember the year—probably in the early nineties—Irecollect a rather amusing instance of the explosion of one of such stories when thoroughly sifted. Mr. (afterwards Sir James) Knowles told me one day that the great object of Myers and Gurney and the founders of the Psychical Society was to obtain evidence of a genuine apparition seen bytwowitnesses who would both bear such testimony as would stand cross-examination by a barrister. This was most sensible, as one person may honestly believe in an appearance, which may be an hallucination caused by circumstances, and affected by his own mental or bodily condition, but it is hardly possible that such conditions will enable two people to see the same spirit at the same moment unless it should actually appear. Mr. Knowles said that at last the Psychical Society had found a well-authenticated story in which two thoroughly credible witnesses had seen the ghost, and this was to come out in the forthcoming number ofThe Nineteenth Century.

THE GHOSTLY REPORTER

The witnesses were an English judge and his wife; to the best of my recollection they were Sir Edmund and Lady Hornby, and the scene of the apparition Shanghai. Anyhow, I perfectly recollect the story, which was as follows. The judge had been trying a case during the day, and he and his wife had retired to bed when a man (European, not native) entered their bedroom. They were much annoyed by this intrusion and asked what he wanted. He replied that he was a reporter who had been in court, but had been obliged to leave before the conclusion of the trial, and was extremely anxious that the judge should tell him what the verdict was that he might complete the report for his paper. The judge, to get rid of him, gave some answer that satisfied him, and the mandeparted. Next day the judge learnt that a reporter had been present who was taken ill and died before the conclusion of the trial, and he was convinced that this was his ghostly visitor. The weak point, said Mr. Knowles, was that the narrators would not allow themselves to be cross-examined by a barrister. They were very old, and nervous about the publication of the story in print, and the thought of cross-examination was quite too much for them. However, Mr. Knowles and the other investigators were fully satisfied as to their bona fides, and the tale duly appeared in an article in the Review. No sooner was it published than various people wrote pointing out that it was all a misapprehension. There had been no reporter who had suddenly died on the occasion specified, and various other details were disproved by officials and others who had been at the place at the time when the judge was by way of having presided over the trial and seen the ghost. (Sir Edmund was a judge of the Supreme Court of China and Japan.) Mr. Knowles came again and said, “There you see!” The story when subjected to the light of publicity fell to the ground. No doubt something had put the germ into the old people’s heads and it had blossomed in the course of years.

To return for a minute to the year 1887. In that year my husband was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire—an appointment which he held until his death. This is referred to in the following verses by Mr. Lionel Ashley, younger son of the great Lord Shaftesbury and a friend of my husband’s and mine of long standing. Lady Galloway and I used to call him “the Bard,” as he was fond of making verses about us. I insert these because they give such a happy ideaof one of Osterley Saturday-to-Monday parties. They are dated June 19th, 1887, which I see by our Visitors’ List was the Sunday.

“In a cot may be found, I have heard the remark,More delight than in Castles with pillars.But we find in the Palace of Osterley Park,All the charms of suburban Villiers.“A Sunday in Osterley Gardens and Halls,That’s a day to look on to and after.Its pleasures my memory fondly recalls,And the talk, with its wisdom and laughter.“In a nice little church a grave sermon we heard,Which reproved Christianity flabby,And urged that in heaven a place be preferredTo a Jubilee seat in the Abbey.·····“The Irish question, in masterly way,Mr. Lowell made easy and clear.We must make them content, without further delay,But the method was not his affair.·····“Of the Queen’s new Lieutenant, with pleasure we hailThe appointment, for now ’tis a mercy,From cold shoulders in Oxfordshire never will failTo protect her a glorious Jersey.····“Then may everyone of th’ illustrious BroodLearn to make the same excellent stand his own,That not only the names, but the qualities goodMay descend to each ‘Child’ and each ‘Grandison.’”

The last line was rather prophetic, as there was no “Grandison” apart from the family’s Irish title at the time of writing. My husband, as already mentioned, bore the name for the three weeks between his grandfather’s and father’s death, but our elder son was always Villiers. Nowhisson is Grandison and I think bids fair to inherit the “qualities good” of his grandfather—he could not do better.

A JUBILEE SERMON

The “nice little church” was that at Norwood Green, and the sermon, preached by a rather eccentric Irish clergyman, informed us that he had been studying history and found that in the days of George III’s Jubilee “there was an old king and a ma-ad king. How would you have liked that?” And he continued to tell us of the death at that period of Sir John Moore commemorated by an Irish clergyman who “two years later was translated to the Kingdom of Heaven, for which his Irish curacy had so well prepared him.”

In addition to those above named by Mr. Ashley, we had staying with us Lord Rowton, Lord and Lady Galloway, Lady Lytton and her daughter Betty, Col. Charles Edgcumbe, my sister Cordelia, and my brother-in-law Reginald Villiers, to whom my husband was greatly attached. It is very pleasant to recall those happy days, but sad to think how few that shared them are left!

I turn from our Osterley parties for the time being to record a most amusing journey which Lady Galloway and I made to Greece in 1888. Lord Jersey could not make up his mind to start with us, though we had hopes (which proved vain) that he might join us later. Our families were somewhat excited on learning our intention, as the recollection of the Marathon brigands who captured poor Mr. Vyner and the Muncasters still coloured the popular ideas of Greece.

Our husbands, however, were—fortunately—confident in our own powers of taking care of ourselves. Lord Jersey calmly remarked, “If you are captured Galloway and I will come with an army to rescue you.” Mr. Ashley, less trustful of the future, insisted on presenting each of us with a small revolver and box of cartridges. I forget what Mary did with hers, but my one objectwas to conceal the weapon from possible brigands. I regarded them rather like wasps, who are supposed not to sting if you let them alone, but I was certain that if I tried to shoot I should miss, and then they might be annoyed and I should suffer. I had to take the revolver, but I hid the cartridges in my luggage and put the weapon where it would not be seen.

We were not absolutely certain till we reached Marseilles whether we should go to Greece after all, or to Algeria or elsewhere, but finding that we could get berths on a Messageries boat we ultimately carried out our original intention though we did not really mean to stay long in Athens or its neighbourhood, and imagined Marathon (the scene of the Vyner tragedy) to be quite “out of bounds.”

However, when on March 31st we reached the Piræus early in the morning we soon found that we were in the happiest possible abode. Our constant friend and protector Sir Thomas (now Lord) Sanderson had written from the Foreign Office to Mr. William Haggard, the British Chargé d’Affaires, to look after us in the absence of the Minister, and it is impossible to speak too highly of his kindness. The Greek Ministers were deeply impressed by the fact that Lady Galloway was (half) sister to the English Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, and laid themselves out to make everything pleasant and delightful. Greece was still almost unknown to Cook’s tourists. I think there was a Cook’s Office, but I do not recall seeing any of his clients about the place—anyhow, not outside Athens itself. Mr. Haggard met us with a boat belonging to the Harbour Master’s Office, and as soon as we had settled ourselves in the Hôtel d’Angleterre at Athens (a very good hotel) he began to make all sorts of arrangementsfor us—so that instead of three days we stayed some three weeks in Athens and about a month altogether in Greece.

MARATHON

We told Mr. Haggard that our friends were very much afraid of our finding brigands at Marathon, or rather at their finding us. He assured us that after the tragedy—seventeen years previously—all the brigands had been killed and it was perfectly safe; anyhow, he took us to Marathon next day, and we were delighted with the scenery through which we passed and with the silent, desolate field where the battle had been waged, with wild flowers growing on the hillock pointed out as the soldiers’ grave. Whether it still keeps its impressive solitude I know not. It is useless to attempt description of Greece, so well known to all either from personal experience or from hundreds of accounts both in prose and poetry, but I may just say that as my mother (who saw it as a girl) told me, the colours of the mountains were like those of a dove’s neck, and the clearness of the atmosphere such that one felt as if one could see through the hills.

An evening or two later we dined with Mr. Haggard and his wife, and we were soon introduced to the various notabilities, who from the King and Queen downwards were most kind and hospitable. To begin with their Majesties, who entertained us at breakfast at the Royal Kiosk at the Piræus, and on more than one subsequent occasion at dinner, and whom we met on various other occasions: King George had much of the charm of his sister Queen Alexandra and was a distinctly astute monarch. As far as one could judge, he really liked his quaint little kingdom, and I remember his asserting with energy that they were a good people. The Queen, a Russian, was a kindly, pious woman and apparentlyhappy with her children, to whom she was devoted. She then had six, but there were only three at home at the time—Princess Alexandra, a pretty, merry girl just grown-up, and two younger children, Marie and Andrew. Andrew was a dear little boy about six or seven years old. When I asked Princess Marie about his birthday she gravely replied that he was too young to have a birthday!

Greece struck me as a singularly “democratic” country in the sense that there was really no “aristocracy” between the Sovereign and the people. What in other countries is commonly called “Society” was in Athens mainly composed of the Ministers, the Corps Diplomatique, and one or two rich merchants—particularly one called Syngros, who spent large sums on public works. One of these was the Academy, a large building with, as far as we could ascertain, nothing as yet inside it.

The Mykenæ Museum, which contained many of Schliemann’s antiquities, discovered at Argos and elsewhere, was specially interesting; but the Greek newspaper which followed our movements and formulated our opinions for us said that when we visited the Academy “both ladies were enthusiastic at the sight of the building. They confessed that they never expected to find in Athens such a beautiful building; they speak with enthusiasm of Athens in general”—but evidently the Academy (of which I do not think we saw the inside) was “It.”

M. Tricoupi was then Prime Minister, Minister of War, and practically Dictator. He was undoubtedly a man of great ability and judgment, and was devoted to England. We saw him constantly and also his sister Miss Tricoupi, a wonderful old lady.

MISS TRICOUPI

She gave up her life to promoting her brother’s interests in all respects. She appeared to me like a link with the past, as she had been with her brother in England early in the century, and then had taken to Sarah, Lady Jersey, as a present from King Otho, a water-colour drawing of a room in his Palace which always hung in my bedroom at Middleton. She also knew my grandmother and my mother’s elder sisters. Whenever Parliament was sitting she sat at home from one o’clock in the afternoon till any hour of the night to which the debates happened to continue. Any of her brother’s supporters, no matter of what rank, could come into the large room at one end of which she was seated. It did not appear to be necessary that she should speak to them, much less offer them refreshments. I saw some men who appeared to be sailors or fishermen enter and seat themselves at the far end of the room without speaking or apparently attracting any particular notice.

When we went to see her she gave us tea and delicious little rolled-up pieces of bread-and-butter—this we were assured was an especial favour. Naturally she could not have fed the whole of Athens daily! Poor woman—I saw her again on our subsequent visit to Athens, and after that used to correspond for nearly thirty years. She wrote most interesting letters, though after her brother’s death she lived mainly in retirement. During the war, however, her feelings became somewhat embittered towards the Allies; she ultimately died seated on her sofa—she never would give in to incapacity, though she must have been very old.

One of the most amusing members of the Ministry was Theotoki, Minister of Marine, who went with us on more than one excursion and was most kind inproviding gunboats for any destination which had to be reached by sea. I rather think that he was of Venetian descent—he had a nice, lively wife, and I should say that he was not averse to a little innocent flirtation. The bachelor Tricoupi embodied all his ideals of woman in his capable and devoted sister, and had very advanced Woman Suffrage views, more uncommon then than a quarter of a century later. He was all in favour of the appointment of women not only as Members of Parliament, but also as Ministers of the Crown. One day he and Theotoki were taking us somewhere by sea when a discussion arose on this point. Either Lady Galloway or I wickedly suggested that women, admitted to the Cabinet, might exercise undue influence on the minds of the male members. Tricoupi in perfect innocence thereupon replied that it might be arranged that onlymarriedmen should hold such office, apparently convinced that matrimony would make them woman-proof! I shall never forget Theotoki’s expressive glance.

NAUPLIA

Dragoumi, Minister of Foreign Affairs, was one of those who gave a dinner-party in our honour, on which occasion he and M. Tricoupi and one of the other Ministers concocted an excellent programme to enable us to visit Nauplia and Argos and Mykenæ. I wrote an account of this to my mother which she kept, so I may as well transcribe it, as it gives an account of places which have probably been much altered and brought up to date in the present day under the auspices of “Cook’s Tours.” I told my mother:

“We went with Bakhméteff the Russian and Haggard the Englishman, who each had a Greek servant, and we having a German courier made up a tolerably mixed lot. You would have laughed to see the threeCabinet Ministers sitting in solemn conclave at a party the night before to settle all details of our expedition. Theotoki, the Minister of Marine, had a ship ready to send to meet us anywhere we liked, and Tricoupi ordered Dragoumis, the Foreign Minister, just to go down to send off some further telegram, which Dragoumis—a white-haired statesman—obediently trotted off to do. The Czar of all the Russias is not a greater autocrat than Tricoupi. When we arrived at Nauplia we found the M.P. for that district waiting for us at the station, and he had received orders to have the hotel thoroughly cleaned and prepared—no one had been allowed to inhabit it for four days before our arrival. The landlord, as far as we could make out, was locked up in a room, whence we heard coughs and groans, presumably because he had found a clean dwelling such a ghastly thing, and we were waited on by a very smart individual (who was a Parisian doctor of law!) and a small Greek girl. When we woke up next morning we found by way of variety that the ground was covered with snow and the coachman said he could not possibly go to Epidaurus—however, Bakhméteff sent for the Prefect of Police, who told him he must, so with four horses in front and one trotting behind we went a perfectly lovely drive through splendid mountain country looking even more beautiful from the snow on the hills. Perhaps you don’t know about Epidaurus—an ancient temple of Æsculapius is there, and near it has lately been discovered the most perfect theatre in Greece, which could seat twenty-five thousand people. Hardly a stone is out of place—we went up to the top row, and an unfortunate ‘Ephor of Antiquities’ who had also been ordered up from Athens to do us the honours stood on the stage and talked to us—one could hear every word. The Ephor and all the inhabitants of Nauplia (who are stated by the papers to have received us ‘with affection’) thought us quite mad, not only for going in the snow, but for going in an open carriage, a circumstance also carefully recorded in the papers. A Greek wouldhave shut up the carriage and both windows. Thursday we returned (i.e. to Athens) by Tiryns, Argos and Mykenæ and saw Dr. Schliemann’s excavations. The Treasury of Atreus is a marvellous thing—a great cone-shaped chamber in a hill with an inner chamber on one side and an enormous portal with projecting walls in front with a gigantic slab over it. Metal plates are said to have been fastened on the walls at one time, but how on earth the prehistoric people arranged these stones curving inwards so as to keep in place and how they lifted some of them at all passes the wit of man to conceive.”

I continue in this letter to explain how much of all this Dr. Schliemann and his wife did and did not find, and also to describe the “Lion Gate” and the “Agora”—but all that is well-known and doubtless has been further explored since our visit.

Among other dissipations at Athens we attended two balls—one at M. Syngros’, the other at the Austrian Legation. After the former a correspondent of one of the Greek papers wrote:

“It is a curious phenomenon the gaiety with which the Prime Minister is possessed this year. I have no doubt that he belongs to that fortunate circle which sees with affection the setting on each day of the Carnival. It appears that the presence of the two distinguished English ladies who are receiving the hospitality of our town for some days now has revived in him dormant feelings and reminiscences. M. Tricoupi passed the years of his youth in England, and it was with the English ladies that he enjoyed the sweet pleasure of dancing. This evening he dances also with Lady Jersey. He frequently accompanied the two distinguished ladies to the Buffet, and with very juvenile agility he hastens to find for them theirsorties de balwith which the noble English ladies areto protect their delicate bodies from the indiscretion of that cold night.”

M. Bakhméteff, who was one of our companions to Nauplia, was a typical Russian—very clever, knowing some eight or nine languages and all about Greece ancient and modern. We used to call him the “Courier,” as he was invaluable on our various expeditions, and he seemed to enjoy his honorary post. Like many of his compatriots he had no real religious belief, but regarded religious observance as quite a good thing for women; he told me that a man looked rather ridiculous kneeling, but it was a becoming attitude for women—the folds of her dress fell so nicely! But he assured me that if I saw him on duty in Russia I should see him kissing the ikons with all reverence. Poor man! If still alive, I wonder what has happened to him. He lent me a capital Japanese costume for the ball at the Austrian Legation. Lady Galloway went as “Dresden china” or a “bouquetière.”

THE LAURIUM MINES

We made a very interesting expedition to the Laurium mines, of which I subsequently ventured to give an account inThe National Review, but again I think it unnecessary here to describe a well-known enterprise—the revival in modern days of lead mines worked in classical times. We stayed the night at the house of the manager, M. Cordella. He and his wife were most kindly hosts, and everyone contributed to our enjoyment. One little domestic detail amused us. As we entered the substantial and comfortable house one of us exclaimed to the other, “Oh, there is a bath!”—a luxury not always found in our wanderings—but a second glance showed us that we should have to wait till our return to the hotel next day, as the bath was fixed in the well of the staircase!

As for our sentiments about the mines I cannot do better than quote the words of theN ea Ephemeris, one of the papers which knew so well what we thought on each occasion:

“The eminently English spirit of the most ingenious and noble ladies saw in all those works something like the positiveness of the spirit that prevails in their own country and were delighted at it in Greece which they loved so much. They had no words to express their satisfaction to the true man possessed with the spirit of our century whom they found in the person of M. Cordella, the director of the works, and to his worthy wife, who tendered to them so many nice attentions.”

This, theHora, and theAcropolis, seem to have been the chief Government papers, and occasionally one of them would hold up to contempt a wretched Delyannis organ which basely ignored the presence of the English Prime Minister’s sister!

I cannot record all our excursions to Eleusis, Ægina, and elsewhere, but I will add a few lines describing the general appearance of the people at that time, also written to my mother, as probably they have greatly changed in over thirty years:

“The Peloponnesian shepherds look remarkably picturesque, as they wear large white coats with peaked hoods over their heads. Further north the coats are more often blue—near Athens black and a different shape—near Eleusis the people are Albanians and wear Albanian costumes, which are very bright with many colours. Almost all the natives outside the towns wear costumes which make the villages look like places in plays, and every little inn is a regular picture—but the country is very thinly populated and you go for miles without seeing a soul. It is most beautiful.”

HADJI PETROS

One rather interesting character was the LordChamberlain, an old gentleman called Hadji Petros, son of the original brigand who was one of the husbands of Lady Ellenborough, and is the thinly disguised “Hadji Stavros” of About’s novelLe Roi des Montagnes. Hadji Petros was supposed to be quite illiterate, but hecouldsign his name, as he did so on a case of chocolate which he gave me. Anyway, “by royal permission” he took us over the Palace and down into the kitchens, where he showed us the correct method of making Turkish coffee. His son, we were told, was a very smart young officer who led cotillons at the Athenian balls—two generations from the original brigand.

We left Athens on February 22nd, and were taken by ship from a port near Patras at the end of the Gulf of Corinth to Pyrgos. We went in a Government boat (theSalaminia, I believe), and it was arranged that we should stay with the Demarch (Mayor) and drive thence to see Olympia.

Fortunately for us M. Bakhméteff accompanied us, and the whole thing was very entertaining. The officers on the ship thought it too absurd that we should want to take off even hand luggage for the night, as they said we should find everything we wanted at the Demarch’s. Sure enough we found three elaborate sitting-rooms adorned with photographs and chairs tied up with ribbons, a bedroom with two comfortable beds and plenty of pin-cushions, and a dressing-room provided with tooth-brushes, sponges, and dentifrice water, but as means of washing one small green glass jug and basin between us. However, we managed to borrow two large, red earthenware pans from the kitchen and got on nicely. The Demarch was more than kind and hospitable, but as he knew no language save his native Greek it was lucky that Bakhméteffwas there to interpret. We landed too late for Olympia that evening, so we were taken down to a most romantic and desolate spot, where Alpheus runs into the sea in full view of the Acroceraunian mountains where “Arethusa arose from her couch of snows.” In addition to one or two officials we were guarded by a delightful gendarme and were introduced to a bare-legged giant in an oil-skin coat whose duty was to look after the fish in a kind of stew or watercourse running out of a lake. Whether the poachers had been busy lately I know not, but the efforts of the custodian, the gendarme, and the rest of the party to give us a fishing entertainment were singularly abortive. Their object appeared to be to capture a mullet, and at length a dead one was landed by the joint throwing of a small net and poking with Lady Galloway’s parasol. With dauntless courage they returned to the charge, and when another small fish was seen the gendarme drew his sword and vainly tried to stab it. Ultimately the professional fishermen did catch it and gave it to the gendarme, who skipped about with glee. He had seen me put some shells in my pocket, and apparently thought we should like to do the same with the fish, so proceeded towashit—and naturally let it escape. Next day the Demarch told M. Bakhméteff that he had ordered an open carriage for the ladies (knowing our lunatic tendencies) and that he would take him (Bakhméteff) in a shut one. Bakhméteff came to us in a frantic state of mind and begged our authority to say that English ladies could not possibly go in a carriage alone—so ultimately we three proceeded in the open carriage with our gendarme on the box, and the Demarch followed with his servant. All went well till it began to rain, when our gallantdefender jumped off the box and into the shut carriage with the Demarch and the other man. They put up both windows and I believe smoked, only leaving a little breathing-hole in front. Doubtless they enjoyed themselves immensely—so did we.

OLYMPIA—ZANTE

As with other well-known places, I omit all description of Olympia, reached by a road concerning which we decided that it would be a compliment to compare it to a ploughed field. The drive took four hours each way. I dare say there are hotels and chars-à-bancs if not trams now, but I am very glad to recall Olympia, as we saw it in the wilds with ruins of temples and the newly excavated Gymnasium undisturbed by eager tourists. The Museum, containing the beautiful statue of Hermes with the Infant Bacchus, had not long been erected on the lines of a Greek temple. By way of an additional treat our hosts had roasted a lamb whole and brought it into the outer hall of the Museum on a stick regardless of the mess which it made. We made futile efforts to protect the floor with newspapers, but were obliged to eat some of the meat.

From Pyrgos we went to the Island of Zante, where we spent Sunday. I wrote to my mother that it was a most lovely place—and told her:

“We took some luncheon up into an olive grove on the hills and lay on cushions there in the most perfect air and warmth you can imagine, with birds singing and the greenest grass thick with flowers just like the Pre-Raphaelite pictures. A little higher up you could see the sea on both sides. Cephalonia in one distance and the Acroceraunian mountains in the other. This island is, as you know, famous for flowers, and the nosegays the Consul sent us were so enormous that after filling all the vases, etc., we could we had to fill two large foot pans and put them on the balcony.”

Of Cephalonia, where we spent a few hours on our way to Corfu, my chief recollection is of wild mountainous country. The Consul (or Vice-Consul) who took us for a drive told us a thrilling tale—as yet unconcluded—of two rival families. The father of one married his daughter to a young man, whereas the other family wanted her and attacked the bridal party on the wedding day. I forget exactly how many people they killed, but I think the bridegroom was among the victims, and anyhow they carried off the young lady to the mountains, and she was still there at the time of our visit.

Corfu was very delightful—but I recall no particular incident. There seemed to be a good many people who still regretted that Mr. Gladstone had handed it over to Greece.

Our gunboat and M. Bakhméteff had left us at Zante, and from Corfu we went by an Austrian Lloyd steamer to Brindisi; thence by train to Naples. There we found Lord Rowton and dined with him and one or two friends. We also spent a day with him in Rome, where he was a good deal amused by our evident feeling that Roman were not to be compared to Greek antiquities.

VOYAGE TO INDIA—HYDERABAD

I must go back a little in these mixed memories to record our early acquaintance with Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, who afterwards became one of our great friends. I believe that I first met him at Lady St. Helier’s (then Lady Jeune) at a luncheon or party in 1886. We asked him to dinner at 3 Great Stanhope Street, and he accepted—and we also asked the Jeunes. Mr. Chamberlain, though this was about the time that he split with Gladstone over Home Rule, was still regarded as a dangerous Radical, and was by no means universally met in Conservative houses. As it happened he arrived at our dinner a little before the Jeunes. As they were announced I went to the drawing-room door to meet them and she stopped me, and said in a low voice before entering the room, “You are coming to dine with me on such a date—shall you mind meeting Mr. Chamberlain?” (She had quite forgotten our meeting at her house.) “He is in the house,” was my reply—whereat she gasped and nearly fell backwards. I well recollect the stern disapproval of our old-fashioned Tory butler Freeman. He showed it in his manner, though he did not venture at the moment to put it into words—but a few days afterwards we had another dinner at which were present some of our regular—and I am sure highly respectable—friends. The followingmorning Freeman said to me solemnly, “We had a very nice dinner last night.” “Yes,” said I, “I think it went off very well.” “All very nice people,” he added with marked emphasis, and left me to digest the unspoken rebuke.

Freeman was a great character and his comments were apt to be amusing. The year after this incident Lord Robert Cecil spent a Sunday at Osterley, and after the party had left on Monday Freeman informed me that there was only one thing that had troubled him. In reply to my rather anxious inquiry as to what had gone wrong he said: “That fine young fellow Lord Salisbury’s son did not hold himself up properly. I spoke to his servant about it, and he said it was his book. I said our young lord [Villiers] is very clever, but I hope he will hold himself up.” Poor Freeman! he was rather a rough diamond in some respects, but one of the best and most faithful of servants. He caught a chill and died early in 1894, soon after our return from Australia.

HADJI PETROS

To return to Mr. Chamberlain. Though already twice a widower he was still regarded politically as a young man, and I remember the American Minister Mr. Phelps assuring me that he had watched in the House of Commons Mr. Gladstone snub Chamberlain in a way that he was convinced had a good deal to do with his breach with the Liberal party. I doubt that being more than a very secondary cause, but I perfectly recall the acrimonious tone in which Mr. Chamberlain early in our acquaintance commented on the way in which politicians were treated “because they were young.” Anyhow, Mr. Chamberlain not only asserted himself as worthy of all consideration politically, but he rapidly discarded socially his stern views of thosewhom he had formerly stigmatised as “lilies of the field.” The late Sir Cecil Spring Rice once told me that he and Mr. Chamberlain had been thrown together a good deal on some occasion in America, and the latter had confided to him that he had really believed that the so-called “upper classes” were, taken as a whole, the idle, selfish, self-indulgent, and generally pernicious people whom he had denounced, but that when he came to know them he realised that they were a very different set of individuals. I have always held that Mr. Chamberlain was an honest man, and that when people accused him of changing his coat his changes were the result of conviction. He once said to me that he had invariably held that the people ought to have what they really wanted, and that more than once he had discovered that he was mistaken in what he had previously imagined to be their desires, and that then he was willing to follow their lead. “For instance,” he said, “I thought the country wanted Secular Education and therefore advocated it, but experience showed me that this was not the case and I therefore ceased to support it.” Of course this principle may be pushed too far. A statesman ought to have some convictions from which he cannot and will not depart, but it would be absurd to say that a man entering political life is bound to have a cut-and-dried programme which nothing will make him modify. Moreover Mr. Chamberlain had grown up in a narrow commercial circle, and larger knowledge of men and manners was bound to widen his views. On the first occasion that he stayed with us at Osterley in June 1887 and June 1888 his daughter Miss Beatrice Chamberlain came with him. I see by our old Visitors’ Book that we had some very good Conservatives to meetthem—in 1888 Lady Lathom and her daughter Maud, George Curzon, Lord and Lady Kintore, Sir John Stirling Maxwell, and my husband’s cousin, Prince Louis Esterhazy. I have been told that more than one person first saw Mr. Chamberlain rowing on the Lake at Osterley in a tall hat and with a pipe in his mouth! I rather think that it was at a garden party. In 1888 just after the death of the Emperor Frederick almost everyone appeared in mourning, which somebody said made it look like a funeral wake tempered with strawberries. Poor Beatrice Chamberlain, however, appeared in a sort of plaid gown which made her very unhappy. She confided to Lady Lathom that she had just returned from France and had not known that people were wearing mourning—moreover she belonged to some society in Birmingham (a very sensible one) which agreed not to wear mourning except for quite the nearest relatives. She was afraid we might think that her clothes were due to her Radical principles, which we certainly did not. She became a very talented and distinguished woman, and her death, a few years ago, was a loss to many good causes. I was much touched by a letter which she wrote me after my husband died in 1915 in which she said that he and I had been kind to her “particularly in the long-ago days when I, not so very young, but so very raw, was keeping house for papa and came with him into this strange, unknown, and uncharted world of London.” We had done little enough, and it was very nice of her to preserve such a recollection for over a quarter of a century.

Next year when Mr. Chamberlain stayed with us he had married the charming Miss Endicott, now Mrs. Carnegie, but I shall have more to say of them both later on.

DEPARTURE FOR INDIA

I must now record some recollections of the first of our three visits to India.

The idea of such a journey arose from my seeing Mr. Robert Bourke in a hansom as I was driving late in the season of 1886. He waved to me and I stopped to hear what he had to say. “I want to talk to you and Jersey,” said he. “Very well,” I said; “come down to Osterley and you will find us both at such a time.” It was accordingly arranged, and he told us that Lord Salisbury had offered him the Government of Madras. He was somewhat upset, as he had been Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs when Lord Salisbury was Secretary of State for that Department, and when the latter became Prime Minister Mr. Bourke thought that he ought to have had higher promotion, and regarded this offer rather as exile. However, on talking it all over he began to paint the gubernatorial glories in more roseate hues, and my husband and I both recommended him to accept, as we neither of us thought in our hearts that he was likely to attain Cabinet rank in England. Then he said, “If I go, will you come out and stay with me?” It was a new but attractive project, and we gave a provisional promise which we fulfilled in the autumn of 1888. My parents undertook to keep an eye on the younger children and to have them at Stoneleigh for part of our absence—it was arranged that Villiers should join us when his Christmas holidays began, and the Eton authorities consented that he should miss the following term as it was thought that India would be equally educational. We accordingly took our passages on the P. and O.Arcadia, which left Marseilles on Friday, October 26th. My brother Dudley and Mr. Charles Buller sailed in the same ship, which was a new one and had improvements then reckonedvery novel. For instance, it had electric light, which had not yet been installed in all the P. and O. fleet. There were about 240 first-class passengers—some entertaining ones among them, including Sir Samuel and Lady Baker, Captain Hext, who was Director of Indian Marine, and Mr. and Mrs. Gerard Leigh. In the second saloon was the theosophist Colonel Olcott—an odd mixture of philanthropy and humbug—but discussions with him often served to pass the time. One was not allowed to ask a second-saloon passenger for meals, but we had permission for him to come and talk to us, and also to give two theosophical lectures in the first-class saloon. I shall have more to say of him at Madras—but the inner meaning of theosophy is so often discussed that I insert here the way in which he presented it as I noted in my journal after one of his lectures given when we were nearing Port Said:

“Colonel Olcott gave a lecture on the Theosophical Society of which he is President. The Society has its headquarters in Madras” (N.B.—really at Adyar near Madras) “and has three chief objects—Universal Brotherhood, Study of ancient oriental texts, Investigation of hidden psychical forces. It admits members of any religion, but requires universal toleration. Practically its own tenets are Buddhist, that being rather a philosophy than a religion. It professes, however, to assist its members to the better comprehension of the esoteric or underlying significations of their respective religions.”

Colonel Olcott himself was a Buddhist, and moreover laid claim to certain powers of healing, which I should imagine, in so far as they were effectual, were a kind of faith healing; he went beyond M. Coué, as he declared that he had healed a blind man! Mrs. Gerard Leighgravely asked him one day whether he could give her something to protect her against spooks, as she often had to stay in a house which she believed to be haunted. “Give me something you are accustomed to wear,” he said, and she handed him a ring. He stared at it, and said, “If you could see—you would see two rays” (blue rays I think he said) “going from my eyes into this ring.” “What will it do?” she asked. “Well,” was the answer, “it will be like a hand laid on your head to protect you.” If she remembered it next time a spook was about, I feel sure that it was most effectual. “Your ring,” he said to one of us, “came out of a jeweller’s shop—mine came out of a rose,” and told us a pleasing legend of how his sister held a rose and Madame Blavatsky conjured a ring out of it.

COL. OLCOTT AND PROF. MAX MULLER

He had very exalted philanthropic views, and long afterwards, when he was in England, Professor Max Müller told me that he had said to him, “Colonel Olcott, with all your fine ideas for doing good how can you lend yourself to that nonsense of broken tea-cups and so on?” “And,” continued Max Müller, “he looked down through his funny blue spectacles and answered, ‘All religions must be manured’—which surely gave away the whole show.”

Colonel Olcott was extremely anxious to enlist me as a member of the Theosophical Society, assuring me that he only wanted my signature to a document which he would keep privately, “not for publication.” What good it would do him in that case is not very apparent, but the net was spread in vain in the sight of the bird as far as I was concerned. Years afterwards he reappeared at Sydney and renewed his appeal in the following pathetic—but still unsuccessful—verses:

“To our Lady of LeighOnly a paper,A very short paper,An innocent paper,My lady, to sign,Expressing your int’rest,Your broad-minded int’rest,Your psychical int’rest,In this work of mine.Sign: I entreat you,Bishops will greet you,Clergy beseech you,Lady, to joinThis league confraternalTo seek the eternal—Notthe infernal—Basis of truth!H. S. O.”Sydney, 7th May 1891.

Another, still more generally interesting, fellow-voyager on theArcadiawas, as already mentioned, Sir Samuel Baker, who, with his intrepid wife, was making one of his frequent journeys to India. He enlivened many hours which might have proved tedious by stories of his African adventures, and was always surrounded by an interested circle of listeners. He told how on his expedition to the sources of the White Nile he had met two tattered figures which proved to be Speke and Grant coming back from tracing that part of the river which flowed from the Victoria Nyanza. They urged him to continue his undertaking as they said that if he also found the source he was seeking “England will have done it”—and she did. He asked them to come into his camp—but they hung back—and when he asked why they explained that they heard he had Mrs. Baker with him, and were in such rags that they did not like to present themselves before a lady! Nevertheless they were induced not to treat the desert like a London drawing-room, and the lady laughed and mended their clothes for them. Sir Samuel loved to tell stories of his wife’s heroism and self-possession in more than one critical juncture. With all her adventures she had remained a very simple and charming woman.

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