1 ' ■ ■ • bBsShhs U'i-l s ■■*'* \. '*-m a ^ os of the low-roofed houses. The beauty and majesty of the prospect are in truth incomparable, and surpass even such splendid views as those from the Acropolis or the Castle of Edinburgh. But unlike these, it lacks, for the visitor from the Old World, the inexpressible charm and interest of ancient historic memories or associations. Yet no grander or more lovely setting could be ima- gined to great deeds or events which still remain to be written on the blank page where the meagre opening sentences of Chilean history alone figure as yet. By this time I had succeeded in housing myself in the Calle Vcrgara, a street running from the central Alameda or Canada to a public park re- cently presented to the town by Don Luis Cousiiio, a wealthy and munificent citizen, whose premature death, which occurred shortly before my arrival in Chile, may be accounted a distinct national loss. I furnished this moderately sized abode almost entirely "with the things I had brought with me from England, and soon turned it into a fairly comfortable home By degrees, too, I became acquainted with a f< w persons belonging to the leading native circles, and must at once here place on record my grateful lense of the kind feeling and tact which some of them, whom 1 afterwards numbered among my best friends, showed in gradually drawing me out of my usion and winning me back to social intercourse. 26 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST There exist in Chile the elements of a society in some ways essentially superior to any to be found in other South American Republics. The land- owning class, who practically govern the country, do so by reason of their territorial possessions and their pure Spanish descent. Families like the Larrains and Irrarazavals, for instance, go back almost to the days of early Spanish occupation, and own Castilian titles which, under the existing Republican insti- tutions, they no longer openly assume. The wealth of the country being mainly based on its thriving agriculture, the hacendados, or gentlemen farmers, are necessarily preponderant in the State, and con- stitute in effect a powerful oligarchy. To their firm and intelligent control of public affairs Chile owed, at the time I write of, her exemption from the prin- cipal evils which have afflicted the sister Republics in the shape of military pronunciamentos and cor- rupt administration. 1 The ruling class in Chile has many of the higher qualities of an aristocracy de- voted to the best interests of the country, and is much too independent to be open to debasing influences such as too frequently obtain in public life under a more undiluted democratic dispensation. Among the leading families with whom I soon became more intimate was that of the late General Bulnes, who had filled the Presidential chair for 1 It should be pointed out that the war with Peru, and later on the civil contest during the Presidency of Balmaceda, took place a good many years after this period. THE CHILEAN UPPER TEX 27 two consecutive periods of five years, and had led the army which successfully invaded Peru in 1837— 1839. The widow of the victor of Yungay and con- queror of Lima, whom a very agreeable French colleague, M. de Bacourt, amusingly dubbed Madame la Marechale Duchesse de Biilnes, was a pleasant, well-bred old lady, with two daughters, married respectively to Don Kuperto Vergara and Don Adolfo Ortiizar, to whom I am indebted for the greatest kindness. The salon of Lucia Biilnes de Vergara became before long my chief resort, and at the time when the Chilean market was booming with that modern Potosi, the silver mines of Cara- coles, Iluperto and his clever, lively wife kept the most hospitable of houses in Santiago. The simple, cordial welcome I received from these kindly, con- siderate people was a real boon to me under the circumstances in which I began life again, as it were, in the far-off New World. The most historically interesting person in Santiago society was certainly the aged General Blanco Encalada, the valorous comrade-in-arms of Lord Cochrane. I w r ent pretty often to the house of this national hero j>"r excellence, a distinguished looking old gentleman, with a thin face and a promi- nent nose, his genera] outline in some degree tiling that of the Iron Duke, a circumstance to which the gallant old Allow was rather fond of inviting the attention of strangers. "On dit que je emble beauconp a wotte Dnc de Wellington," he 28 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST said to me, pronouncing it Villaington with a nasal intonation which, with the leading feature in his countenance, reminded me of old Prince Metternich. He had said this probably more than once to Taylour Thomson (my predecessor), who at last one day replied : " C'est vrai ; surtout vu de dos ! ' As for the Chilean ladies of that period, they seemed to me, with a few exceptions, to be remark- able rather for their sprightliness and easy, graceful bearing than for very great beauty. Dona Isidora de Cousino — the widow of the millionaire to whose splen- did donations I have already referred, and a very great lady indeed by reason of her wealth — was one of the few really handsome women I met in society, while Dona Transito Sanchez Fontecilla was, to my mind, much the prettiest and most taking of them. 1 The Chilean elegante, although the best of customers to the grandes maisons de confections at Paris, never looks so well as in her church-going attire of sober black, her head and shoulders draped with the plain black manto of woollen or silk stuff (not the coquettish lace mantilla of the old country) which is de rigueur for all women of whatever social grade when going to their devotions. Somehow, when I first met my fair acquaintances in their charming tenue d'e'glise, my thoughts could not but revert to the appalling catastrophe in which their mothers and other relatives had been involved 1 The husband of this charming lady — at one time Minister of War and Marine — now, I believe, represents his country at Rome. THE DESTRUCTION OF THE COMPAXIA 29 ten years before at the destruction by fire of the great church of the Jesuits, or the Compania, by which name its sinister record will ever be handed down to posterity. Upwards of 1600 1 persons — most of them women and children, a very large pro- portion of whom belonged to the upper class — are known to have perished in the flames. One of the habituds of Casa Yergara, a sad-visaged man whose name has escaped my memory, had lost his wife, his mother, and all his sisters on that occasion. He and others gave me particulars of the event which in their horror far exceed what I had previously known on the subject. The catastrophe took place on the afternoon of the Sth of December (1863), which in the southern hemisphere is of course the hottest time of the year, the great church being thronged for vespers on the high festival of the Immaculate Conception and lighted up a giorno. The precise origin of the fire never could be clearly ascertained. Probably some draperies near the high altar became ignited and caused the explosion of naphtha lamps placed against the walls, a universal panic at once ensuing. I had heard a good deal of the disaster from my chief at Berne, Admiral Harris, who was chargd dfqffaires in Chile some years before the occurrence, and, having l'-ft many friends at Santiago, was of course deeply 1 The inscription in the cemetery of Santiago puti the number of 1000. The "Diccionario Jeogrdfico de la Bepublicade Chile," by P. S< lano Ajta-Buroaga, estimates it as over ia 30 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST shocked by the dreadful fate that befell so many of them. I was under the impression that the cause of the appalling loss of life was the wild rush made for the main exit by the terrified crowd, which in press- ing against doors that opened inwards, had hermeti- cally closed them. This, my Chilean informants assured me, was not the case. 1 The doors, they all said, opened outwards, and remained wide open throughout. In their terror some of the poor people who had first reached the entrance must have stumbled or fainted, others had fallen over them, and in an instant a living, struggling barrier had been formed which the desperate throng, pushing forward from the back, had surged up against and striven in vain to overcome. In an incredibly short space of time the building was turned into a vast brazier which it was impossible to approach from the outside. The scarcity of water and the want of anything like an organised fire-brigade from the first rendered futile all attempts to quench the flames, but on the plaza outside some mounted men con- trived to extricate a few victims from the threshold by lassooing their bodies from a distance and liter- ally dragging them out. Finally, when the agony of the scene was at its climax, the big bell of the church came crashing down into the midst of the dying and the dead. A monument has been erected in memory of the 1 It was stated, and very generally believed at the time, that the clergy, for fear of robbery of the church treasury and ornaments, closed the only other exit at the back of the altar. A FIRST AUDIENCE 31 event on the square where stood the church, facing the house of Congress, and in the cemetery beyond the river Mapocho — for the greater part of the year the dry bed of a torrent spanned by a picturesque old Spanish bridge — a really beautiful statue by the French sculptor Carrier-Belleuse marks the spot where the charred and utterly unrecognisable remains of the victims were consigned to one great common pit. A fortunate effect of this fearful tragedy has D the formation of one of the best found and most highly trained fire-brigades existing anywhere. It is mainly officered by young men of the higher classes, and is so popular that its periodical drills on the Canada always attract a large concourse of spectators. Granville Milner joined this body very shortly after our arrival in Chile. My first entering upon official relations with the Chilean Government was retarded by adverse circumstances. For some weeks after reaching Santiago the troublesome inflammation of the ear I had contracted on the journey kept me mostly within doors, and quite prevented my applying for an audience of the President for the delivery of my credentials, which I should have had to attend in the undignified guise of II. M. Representative with his head tied up! On the 1st of September, how- ever, I was received by Don Frederico Errazuriz, with the customary ceremonial, al the Casa d<- Moueda, which contains the Presidential offices. At this first interview the President impressed me 32 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST favourably by his dignified, though somewhat stern, aspect, and seemed to me a very creditable specimen of the Chilean patrician class. I was before long to learn that, while accounted by his countrymen, and especially by the Clerical party who had been prime movers in his election, to be remarkably cautious and circumspect, his was essentially a despotic temperament. Lengthy disquisitions on the politics and state of parties in Chile thirty years ago would be both wearisome and unprofitable. I may briefly say, however, of the Errazuriz administration, that it was not unfairly described by its opponents as a close corporation. The Chamber of Deputies was full of the President's personal friends and depen- dants, and some of the most important offices in the State were held by relations and connections of his. He had more particularly a powerful supporter in his brother-in-law, the Intendente of Valparaiso, M. Echaurren, an official of great shrewdness and very large private fortune, but of the same arbitrary disposition as himself. The Intendente carried things with a high hand in the thriving Chilean seaport, but at the same time, it must be admitted, thoroughly devoted himself to its improvement and good administration. The government of Chile was certainly in strong and capable hands at this period. The general course of public affairs was by no means without interest. There was the contention between Church and State, to which I have already THE "ENGLISH OF THE PACIFIC" 3$ referred, about the privileges of the clergy, and more particularly the exclusive right they had up till then preserved of keeping the civil registers. On this a split took place before long between the powerful clerical interest and their nominee, the President. Of more general importance were the relations be- tween Chile and her neighbours on the Pacific coast and across the Andes, which just then were of a nature to cause well-founded anxiety to the Cabinet of Santiago. Chile had long been regarded with little favour by the cognate nations which surrounded it to the north and east. They were envious of the prosperity of the well-ordered State, due to the stability of its government and the vigour of a popu- lation which, from the poorest and most neglected of Spanish dependencies, had in less than half a century turned it into the most flourishing of South American communities. The "English of the Pacific" — as they were termed with a dash of sar- casm — were, like their prototypes at the present day, far from universally popular, and like them, too, were charged with a selfish disregard of anything but their own interests and with a policy of excep- tional perfidiousness in the pursuit of their aims. The Cabinet of Santiago had therefore good reason to apprehend a possibly formidable hostile combina- tion, which, besides Peru and Bolivia, might include the Argentine Republic. Proposals from Lima to that effect were known by them to have been c 34 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST discussed in secret session by Congress at Buenos Ayres. 1 Pretexts for such a combination were not want- ing in the differences of Chile with Bolivia about the mining district of Caracoles, and those with Peru respecting the nitrate fields in the northern region of Tarapaca, out of which grew a few years later the great war of 1879. In addition to these there was, of course, the long standing cuestion de limites, or conflicting claims of the Argentines and Chileans to the ownership of the Straits of Magellan and the vast untenanted regions of Patagonia. An active paper war had been carried on for years on this question between the two Governments ; the length and dryness of the arguments adduced on both sides by the lawyer element which so largely predominates in South American administrations being truly typical of the size and aridity — I would venture to add, the forbidding and unprofitable character — of the greater portion of the tracts in dispute. The question has now, I need hardly say, been quite recently settled by the arbitration of this country, but for a number of years it endangered the peace of two flourishing Republics, and in contributing to bring it to a happy and reasonable issue no diploma- tists ever did better work than my old friends Sir 1 I subsequently had it on unimpeachable authority at Buenos Ayres that one of the last acts of President Sarmiento was the sig- nature of an offensive and defensive treaty of alliance with Peru and Bolivia. The treaty passed the Chamber of Deputies, but was adjourned by the Senate and remained a dead letter. CHERS COLLOGUES 03 William BarringtoD and Mr. Gerard Lowther at Buenos Ayres and Santiago respectively. It so happened that when I reached Santiago an acute turn had been given to the controversy by a vote passed in the Argentine Congress for the erection of a lighthouse on Cape Virgins at the Atlantic entrance to the Straits. This had been at once looked upon at Santiago as an aggressive assertion of sovereignty over the contested passage. I may perhaps claim to have helped to diminish the tension thus produced by giving it as my private opinion to the Chilean Ministers that their country would improve its case in the eyes of the world, with regard to the question in general, by making known its readiness to neu- tralise the Straits in time of war and not to attempt to fortifv or raise toll in them. My suggestion was very readily adopted by the Chilean Government, and this soon led to a similar declaration being made by the Government at Buenos Ayres. I have said nothing as yet of the Diplomatic Corps at Santiago, which was much smaller than those I had been accustomed to elsewhere. Only two or three of the chief European Governments were diplomatically represented there, the rest contenting themselves with consular agents of more or less dignity at Valparaiso. The French had B full Minister Plenipotentiary in the person of M. Brenier de Montmorand, who had been some years Consul General at Shanghai before coming tO Chile, a man of decided ability, who had an 36 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST amiable half-English wife and a remarkably pleasing daughter. The Breniers greeted me most kindly, and I am indebted to them for much civility. Later on, my relations with my French colleague became still more cordial by reason of the friendly line he followed in the Taena affair, of which I shall have a good deal to say presently. M. Brenier was before long joined by M. de Bacourt, a young and very promising diplomatist, who came out as secretary to the Legation, and whose uncle, of the same name, I remembered well at Baden Baden as an especial favourite of the Princess of Prussia, afterwards the Empress Augusta. Bacourt and I soon became great friends. Germany was represented by M. Leven- hagen, a small, wizened old gentleman who had resided in the country fourteen years, and who, partly on account of the warm Chilean sympathies he evinced, was highly esteemed and much con- sulted by the Chilean Government, and notably by the then Minister for Foreign Affairs, M. Ibanez. I was rather amused, I remember, in the earlier days of my intercourse with that Minister, at having, on some occasion, to undergo from him a kind of homily on the admirable manner in which my Ger- man collegue acquitted himself of his duties, clearly meant for my benefit, and not obscurely conveying the hint : " Go thou and do likewise." M. Levenhagen later on actively bestirred himself against me in the Taena question, to which I have above referred. It was much to his credit, however, as well as to that A SLIGHT CONFUSION 37 of others charged with German interests on the South Pacific coast, that already at that period, a few years only after the resuscitation of the Empire, the influence and trade of Germany were distinctly asser- ting themselves in that distant region, and competing not unsuccessfully with ours. The German agents in South America had evidently taken to heart the caution which the Minister at Lima told me had been addressed to him by Prince Bismarck when he in- quired, before leaving for his post, whether the Chan- cellor had any special instructions for him : " Suchen Sic Handel, aber h im Handel!" A pleasant Italian charge" d'affaires, Count Sanminiatelli, completed the European contingent of our Diplomatic Corps. The principal American States had all, of course, representatives at Santiago. With the exception of the Brazilian Minister, M. d'Andrada — whose popu- larity was such that on his transfer to Monte Video a round-robin was in vain sent by the most in- fluential members of Chilean society to the Emperor of Brazil begging that he might be maintained at his post — and of the Argentine Envoy, M. Frias, an able Buenos Ayrea lawyer, who treated the thorny Patagonian question with greater seal and eloquence than discretion, I can call to mind no one of special not*' among my other plentiful American colleagues. With the United States Envoy, on the other hand 1 pretty soon established amicable relations, which were marked at the beginning by a somewhal laughable incident. Although this gentleman was 38 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST living at the same hotel to which I went on my arrival, and we duly exchanged cards, I happened by some chance not to meet him until shortly after I had set up house in the Calle Vergara. Having been previously cautioned to avoid frequenting the table cVhdte, the habitues of which were generally a very mixed lot, I had infinitely pre- ferred dining and lunching in my own rooms with Milner. My servants, on the other hand, and especially my smart English major-domo, Mr. Dinsmore, had their meals at the hotel-ordinary with other travellers, there being no such thing as a separate table for domestics under the regime egali- taire that obtains in South American habits and customs. The first time I met my North American colleague I was greeted by him with almost effusive heartiness. " Well, sir ! " said this worthy gentle- man, whose name, I grieve to say, is a blank in my memory, " I am very glad indeed to know you, and also very glad to find that you do not yourself take in the milk at the door of a morning ! ' I was rather startled by this unexpected remark, but soon found out that my excellent colleague had had for his neighbour at the table d'hdte my friend Dinsmore, who, being an uppish specimen of his class, had led him to suppose that he formed part of the Legation, and had accordingly been mistaken by him for the new British Minister, whom with some surprise he had subsequently, in his early walks, observed taking in the milk at the door in Calle Vergara ! CHAPTER III LIFE IN CHILE By the end of 1873 I had settled down comfortably enough in my new antipodean quarters, and was fairly reconciled to the sense they brought me of complete banishment, always excepting the incon- venience — in those days, when as yet there was no direct communication with Europe by telegraph, a very serious one — of having to wait upwards of three months for a reply to letters, however urgent or im- portant they might be. My official occupations not being of an absorbing character, I employed part of my spare time in working at the rough notes of my experiences and recollections, which I had first begun jotting down some months before at Nice. A good deal of the earlier part of these I put into shape at this period under the singularly bright and exhilarating impressions of the Chilean spring and summer ; the heat of the latter, except for the great power of the sun in the middle of the day, being quite endurable, relieved as it invariably is by cool, fill nights. The summer weather at Santiago seemed to me indeed delightful, even at the most biasing of Christmas - tides. I have all my life been peculiarly susceptible to external surroundings, 39 40 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST whether cheering or the reverse. In this respect the beautiful Chilean skies and climate, and my cosy, quiet home were in every way congenial and beneficial to me. The sunny patio with the scent of its flowers — nowhere are they so deliciously fragrant, or fruit, with some exceptions, so taste- less as in Chile — the gentle splash of its central fountain, the merry voices of my little children — I can almost see and hear them now as I did when idling away an hour or two in some well-shaded corner, and dreaming of old days long past, or chatting about common friends and acquaintances with that muy simpatico joven — as he was univer- sally accounted — Granville Milner. I soon fully realised what sound sense there had been in old Hammond's kindly counsel, and how well I had done in following it. Before dismissing my trim patio, by the way, I must mention that it was one forenoon about this time the scene of an absurd and very annoying experience, caused by a sudden stoppage in the open acequia in the backyard of the house. This revealed itself at first by a slight trickle in one corner of the dining-room, which, with the children's nursery and other rooms, lay between the back and front courtyards. In spite of all attempts to stop the leakage the water soon came in with a regular flow, which spread over all these rooms, and began invading the trim patio aforesaid and the front part of the house. The only chance of stopping the A DELUGE 41 mischief was to find out where the obstruction had occurred in the acequicu of the adjoining houses. The search resulted in the discovery of a formidable barrage, composed of a pile of rinds of the enormous Bondtas (water-melons), with which some rascally rotos, 1 whose favourite food they are, had choked up one of the conduits. By this time the water in my house had become a stream nearly two feet deep, through which the whole of my household were disconsolately wading and trying in vain to stem the torrent, my little fellows having meanwhile been sent for refuge to an obliging neighbour close by. The worst of it was that some of my best carpets from Maple's, put down only a day or two before, were completely deluged. This serio-comic affair, I may well say, damped the admiration I had at first conceived for the Santiago water-supply arrangements. In the perfect summer weather I now took to riding a good deal, and horse-flesh being almost the only cheap commodity in Chile, was able to set up a small stable, which Milner, as a good York- shireman, looked after very satisfactorily. Nothing can surpass the freshness and beauty of the early mornings in the hot season. Milner and I were frequently in the saddle by five o'clock, and went longish distances, sometimes not returning home 1 Roto, the generic name given to the Chilean proletarian class, of Indian descent, who for the greater part lived in I ■ ii 11I it inn of extreme penury and squalor. 42 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST until after a substantial almuerzo, or dejeuner a la fourchette, at some hacienda in the environs. One of our favourite excursions was to Macul, a large experimental farm and stud belonging to the Cousinos, full of carefully selected stock of the best English breeds in cattle and sheep, thoroughbreds and racehorses — " Fanfaron," a splendid stallion bred by Lord Zetland, was amongst the latter — the whole being under the management of a gentleman- like Englishman of the name of Canning. Besides the breeding establishment there was on the estate a large park-like enclosure containing fallow and other deer, alpacas and guanacos. Although the whole place was of recent creation, the gardens, under the care of an experienced Scotchman, Mr. Graham, were already remarkably pretty, and the orchards and vineyards, treated after the most approved methods, very promising. It was altogether a notable and enviable domain. Occasionally, too, we rode out on a shooting expedition to higher ground among the first spurs of the hills, and had a day with the partridges — the South-American species, which is mostly found singly and never in large coveys. The sport was fairly good, but scarcely perhaps repaid one for the very rough walking. Our staple food at the mid-day meal on these occasions was the national cazuela, prepared on the spot by the peones of some neighbouring farm. This is a chicken-stew cooked in an earthen pot with rice, Indian corn, and other vegetables, and judiciously seasoned with CAUQUENES BATHS 43 pimento and just a soupcon — well! of onion; un- questionably a very savoury dish, which we washed down with the chicha — half-fermented grape-juice or newly-made wine — of the country. In the very hot weather I each year took my children for a change to the baths of Cauquenes, a primitive watering-place with hot springs — a sort of Chilean "Wildbad — situated up one of the lateral Andine valleys at a height of 2500 feet. To get to it we had a four hours' journey on the line that runs due south along the great valley of Chile, with a I wenty miles' drive at the end in a coach of ante- diluvian build and immense size, to which three old screws were harnessed abreast. When we at last reached the baths, we found excellent accommoda- tion at the comfortable establishment kept by a German and his wife. Herr Carl Hess, or "Don Carlos" as he was popularly called in these parts, was quite the smartest and most obliging of inn- keepers, and with his genius for management and organisation deserves long ago to have made his fortune and retired to some luxurious residence at Santiago, if he has not indeed entered public life and placed his eapacitiesat the service of his adopted country. The hotel and baths are admirably located on a rocky platform high above the rushing, roaring Cachapual River, at the opening of a gorge whence I obtained a iniieli more perfect idea of the real grandeur of the Andine (bain than I had bad up till then. The life led by the badegdste at Cauquenes 44 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST was deliriously contemplative and dull. They scarcely ever indulged in a stroll beyond the well- shaded garden of the establishment, and were quite content to spend hours under the trees in complete idleness, broken at intervals by a game at cards or dominoes. We stayed here about ten days on our first visit. No traveller in distant Chile should miss seeing this sleepiest of health-resorts, with its charm- ing surroundings, its cheerful buildings clothed luxuriantly with fuchsias, passion-flowers, and other lovely flowering creepers, the great wall of jagged "black rock that faces it across the bright, winding river, and far away, in the background above all, the glitter of the snowfields at the base of the giant Maipo (5384 metres) and the peaks adjoin- ing it. By far the most pleasing and interesting experi- ence I had of Chilean country life and hospitality I owe to Don Adolfo Ortuzar and his amiable wife, nee Biilnes, who soon after my arrival at Santiago had made me promise that I would in the summer pay them a visit at their estate of Codao in the province of Colchagua, 1 50 miles south of Santiago, and bring all my boys with me. Early in January 1874, in unusually hot weather, I availed myself of this very kind invitation, and, after a few hours' run on the Southern line, and a long, dusty drive from the station at Pelequen, reached my destination late in the afternoon. I found a large family gather- ing, comprising, among others, the Vergara couple A MODEL HACIENDA 45 and all their children, so that, with my own par 100. 46 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST fanega{\\ cwts.), this season's crop of 50,000 fanegas being, therefore, worth about ^"30,000. The wheat- fields in the central provinces of Chile are in some ways the most remarkable in the world, their yield — which is fully equal to 12 for 1 in the province of Santiago and the neighbouring zone, and in the province of Concepcion and the southern districts reaches a still higher figure — being entirely due to the admirable system of irrigation applied to them ; and, according to some writers, to the fact that the mountain streams from which the water is derived bring with them, in their torrential course, rich, fertilising mineral manures from the limestone and other rocks. "The fields," says one authority, 1 " ordinarily receive four irrigations between the cessation of the rains in September and the maturity of the grain at the end of November ; on each occa- sion the soil remains submerged during one night, and sometimes for twenty-four hours," the result of this method of flooding being that a mineral deposit is left which " in some years amounts to a stratum of three - quarters of an inch." The magnificent crops produced by these triumphs of irrigation over torrid heat in the driest of climates entail of course corresponding labour, so that the Chilean hacendado who conscientiously exploits his land, as did Don 1 Lieutenant Gilliss, of the United States Navy, who was in charge of a naval astronomical expedition to South America about 1850. I borrow the above from Mr. T. W. HinchlifPs very pleasant record of travel, " Over the Sea and Far Away." AN OLD-WORLD CABALLERO 47 Adolfo, is, especially at harvest-time, one of the hardest-worked of men. My host was up and on horseback punctually every morning with the first glimmer of dawn, and was seldom back before nine or ten, having mean- while ridden over the whole estate and seen to everything with his own eyes. Don Adolfo, then a man of about six-and-thirty, was a remarkably creditable specimen of the old-world Spanish cahal- lero, with his spare, active figure, and plain, neat riding-gear, to which the graceful folds of a silken poncho and a great broad-brimmed sombrero gave a picturesque touch. No man in Chile was better mounted, or had an easier seat or a greater grip on a horse. He kindly placed at my disposal one of his nicest hacks, which I afterwards purchased from him, and I generally rode out to join him on his early rounds. There exists, I believe, no pleasanter mount than a well-broken Chilean cob or roadster. Plis easy hand-gallop — he is no good whatever at trotting — is the perfection of motion, and to canter, where the reaping was over, across the immense stubble fields — bounded in great squares by dense rows of the Lombardy poplar {alamo) — through a cool morning breez.e off the mountains just tipped by the rising sun, was one of the most exhilarating sen- sations I can recall in my well-nigh countless experiences in so many climes and countries. At Codao, agriculture was carried on after the most modern European methods with steam-ploughs 48 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST and threshing machines of the best English make. Yet, as a strange contrast, wherever the work was at its busiest with these matter-of-fact engines, the level landscape was dotted with brilliant patches formed by the many-coloured ponchos of Ortuzar's capataz (overseer or farm bailiff), and other sir- vientes del campo — or confidential staff, as they may be termed — superintending the peones and in- quilinos 1 of the estate at their labours. These brightly-striped articles of the ordinary riding attire of the country are very striking, and as one canters along the straight endless roads in the dim, almost impenetrable shade of the lofty alamos, the sound of one's horse's hoofs quite deadened by sand inches thick, the effect of a group of these variegated horsemen rapidly moving towards one from a dis- tance, through a golden mist of dust and sunbeams, is to a degree picturesque and charming. But I am allowing myself to linger far too long in these rich Chilean fields. The slanting rays of the morning sun begin to beat fiercely, and it is time to turn one's horse's head homewards] and get 1 The peon, or ordinary labourer, is of a somewhat migratory char- acter, and often without a settled home. The inquilinos, on the other hand, are the mass of the resident peasantry who are allowed by the landowners to occupy certain patches of land, as well as their ranchos, or huts, rent free, but are bound, in return, to perform a certain amount of unremunerated labour on the estate. This unpaid service, or corvee, is the distinctive feature of the system known as inquilinaje ; but the amount of the service required of the inquilino varies greatly on the different estates, and is determined by custom or voluntary agreement, there being absolutely no written contract between the- owner and the inquilino. SOUTH AMERICAN FEUDALISM 49 back to one's bath and the sensible light and early mid-day meal which takes the place of our much too copious and belated luncheon. The ladies who, as well as the children, have bathed under a large tent rigged up for that purpose in a stream that passes through the grounds, now make their appearance in becoming white ncylige garments, together with mine host as spruce as possible in a well-cut suit of spotless white duck. After the ahauerzo we lounge and laze about the garden or under cover of the verandah which faces the inclosure through which the house is approached. To the palings that divide it from the fields a number of horses, ready saddled and bridled, are tethered all day long, and occasion- ally some huaso, or farm-servant, comes round from the back regions, and, saluting respectfully as he goes by, mounts and gallops away into the dust and L r lare ; or an inquilino with a message or a report rides up, and jumping off his horse approaches the patron with uncovered head and low obeisance. The bearing towards their employer of all these dependants is distinctly feudal, as indeed are in many respects the relations between owner and tenants in this land of free and independent cen- t.tuis. 1 Before long we all retire for the indispens- 1 There Win^, a- shown in the preceding footm tricing the condition of 1 1 1 « - inquilino, no real link between him ami the land— hie only title to exist >>n it, and by it, being in reason of little Less than servile tenure In- may be said to be practically Ln a state of \a- alage, ther, although hi: i-, in tin- rya free man, ami has an iindoul right • :••• <;ii which he has been allowed to squat, the him ..f ill.- landowner, who frequently 1* tvbdtltgado D 50 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST able siesta, and later on, in the cool of the evening, are taken for a drive, perhaps to the neighbouring little town of Rengo, surrounded by orchards which produce a perfectly delicious kind of that generally insipid fruit, the apricot. But, with the exception of these, and unapproachable melons, figs, and grapes, the Chilean fruit seemed to me to have less flavour than ours of the eastern hemisphere. Amidst these pleasant scenes, and in the company of these kindly people, a fortnight sped quickly away, and by the end of January I was back again in Calle Vergara, but not to stay there very long. Like most other capitals, excepting our own, Santiago is deserted at the height of summer by the upper ten, who visit their estates, or go down to Valparaiso for the sea-breezes and sea-bathing. This year the exodus had taken place sooner, and was more complete than usual on account of the President, who, being much nettled by the opposition he met with on Church questions, had adjourned Congress somewhat unexpectedly. The town was quite empty, even the principal members of the Government, including the Minister for Foreign (rural magistrate) or comandante de policia, are such as to check any excess of independence on his part. " The inquilinos,'" wrote Don Manuel Jose Balmaceda — the father, I believe, of the notorious and ill- fated President, and one of the largest landowners in Chile — "the inquilinos are the compulsory hands (los brazos obligados) which the owner has at his disposal for every kind of labour." The writer from whose Manual del Hacendado Ghileno the above is taken held, however, what might be termed Colonial views of the duties incumbent on the inquilinos as the successors of the Indians of the encomiendas, and enforced the sternest discipline on his estates. A CRUISE TO THE SOUTH 51 Affairs, being away. This seemed to me a propi- tious moment for carrying out a plan I had formed of visiting the southern Chilean ports in H.M.S. Scout, a roomy corvette which her commanding officer. Captain (now Admiral) Cator had, when staying with me at Santiago, kindly placed at my disposal. On the 1 6th of February I accordingly embarked at Valparaiso with Milner, and was away three weeks on a very pleasant cruise. After roughish weather, with a strong head-wind from the south as we steamed down the coast of Arauco, we anchored in the roadstead of Corral in the afternoon of the 19th, this being the nearest point whence we could reach Valdivia, one of the oldest Spanish settlements in this region, and so called after the conquering Pedro of that ilk. Early the following morning we left the Scout in the captain's galley, and sailed across the wide estuary of Corral — guarded by the old fort of Niebla and the remains of other ancient Spanish defences, sadly knocked to pieces by Cochrane and his Liberating squadron in February 1820 1 — to the mouth of the Calla Calla River, on which lies the primitive little city to which we were bound. Coming as we did from the parched uplands of the central districts, the luxu- riant vegetation on the banks of the broad, beauti- ful stream was quite delightful to behold. Dense 1 During the ti ■'■• for independence Valdivia and it* trail- Bed bay became an tmportanl bate for the Spaniard* until taken by the inanrrectionary tquadron under Lord Cochrane, 52 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST thickets of bamboo and laurel — with a background of the Chilean oak — gigantic cedars (alerce), and Rauli (Fagus jorocera), with other equally splendid timber, their trunks here and there decked with fuchsias and a variety of brilliant twining plants or parasites — grew right down to the water's edge. The depth and silence of the woods, although astir with bird life — bright-plumed loros (parroquets) flying from branch to branch, while numerous divers and other aquatic birds disported themselves in the water — gave to the whole scene the aspect of some lovely, primeval solitude, far removed from any human habitation ; a fascinating conceit which even a sailing barge or two we crossed on our way scarcely dispelled. Some years later a journey I made up the great, forest-girt reaches of the Uruguay, and which I have described elsewhere, 1 called forth in me similar impressions, though on a far grander and more vivid scale. We had an absolutely perfect day for our easy sail of three hours against the broad current, and shortly before noon sighted Valdivia. The unexpected advent of our smart man-of-war s- boat made no little sensation in this small secluded community of at most 6000 souls, while we in turn were little prepared to find here a South American Burton-on-Trent, and the home of the excellent beer which is drunk in such great quantities all over the country. 1 See my " Great Silver Eiver," notes of a residence in Buenos Ayres in 1880 and 1881 (John Murray, 1887). VAL1UVIA 53 German enterprise and industry had made Val- divia what we found it, and had given it the un- mistakable, and in this remote region incongruous, stamp of a fourth-rate Franconian or Suabian town. Its narrow irregular streets and the build of its houses were typically Teutonic, as were its tannery close by the landing-place and its prosperous brewery. The owner of the latter, Herr Anwandter, the great capitalist of the community, had come out with the first batch of immigrants from Germany in the early 'fifties, and in barely twenty years had amassed a fortune of several million piastres. I had some interesting talk with this patriarch, who, after having begun by setting up a small chemist's shop, was now flooding the whole west coast with his malt liquor. His fellow-colonists were, according to him, a fairly prosperous lot, but not increasing in numbers. Although most of them had taken Chilean wives, the national type still strongly asserted itself in the fair skins and flaxen hair of their children and grandchildren. The Valdivia Germans make up about one-fourth of the popu- lation, and form a sort of close corporation, with schools of their own, musical and other clubs, but. no church, or indeed any attempt at public worship. " It is all school with us," grimly said old Anwand- ter to me, "and no church," and the Governor of the Province, one of the very Clerical Irrara/.avals, corroborated the statement, adding that this frank dispensing with all outward slum ofreligioui obser- 54 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST varices seemed to him quite regular or natural. We were taken to a German inn, which was the head- quarters of the Deutsche Verein, the cleanliness of the rooms assigned to us leaving much to be desired, while the food, on the other hand, was remarkably good. The woody scenery round Valdivia is most at- tractive, and Captain Cator, with whom I took a long stroll in the afternoon, told me it reminded him very much of New Zealand. We went along an atrocious road skirting the noble river, and presently met a string of big, clumsy waggons, whose ungreased wheels produced dreadful creaking sounds which had long before prepared us for their approach. These vehicles were heavily loaded with the household goods and chattels of a large com- pany of German settlers shifting their quarters farther south to Osorno. High up on the piled bedding and mattresses sat the elder women and children. It reminded me somehow of the sad caravan of fugitives in " Hermann and Dorothea" ; a very pretty girl, who escorted the waggons on horse- back, affording an agreeable presentment of the heroine of Goethe's somewhat insipid eighteenth- century idyll. The German colonies in Chile extend down to the adjoining province of Llanquihue, but, although fairly thriving, have remained stationary, no steady flow of immigration from the Fatherland having thus far set in this direction. After dinner we adjourned to a large room used "GOD SAVE THE QUEEN" 55 by the Verein for its meetings, and assisted at a sort of smoking - concert which had been partly arranged for our benefit. The national turn for music seemed to have degenerated a good deal in the Yaldivian atmosphere, and, barring a creditable performance on the fiddle by a young Teuton, the entertainment was rather trying. It wound up with the Chilean national hymn, followed by "Cod Save the Queen " — or such we complacently assumed it to be — both played by what I find I described in rough notes taken at the time as an " atrocious brass band." Considering, however, the calm ap- propriation in Prussia of the latter melody as a national anthem, under the title of " Ileil dir im S /■ rhrcmz" it may very well have been nowise intended for us. We left Valdivia next morning on our return to the Scout, crossing the bay in a stiff westerly breeze that made our boat heel over quite unpleasantly. We had proposed going farther down the coast as far as Puerto Montt, but rough weather and the limited holiday I had assigned myself decided us to steer north again to the bay of Talcahuano, where v\ e lay at anchor a couple of days off* the domains of the Cousino family at Lota. It is difficult to imagine a more beautiful site than that they have chosen here for their sumptuous villa and park, which, at time I write of, were as yet in an incomplete state ; but, from the accounts 1 have since seen of them, may well now rank among the marvels of the 56 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST South Pacific. Dona Isidora Cousino received us with the greatest cordiality, and put us up very comfortably — her own house being as yet only partly ready — at the house of the agency for the estate. After going over the large copper-smelting works and seeing the coal-mines, which together have laid the foundations of the great wealth of the Cousinos, we took coach to Concepcion, reaching that place towards evening after a long and uninteresting drive. This picturesque old Spanish town of some 16,000 souls, situated on the banks of the broad and rapid Bio-bio, is the capital of the south, and played a leading part in the revolutionary war, witnessing the formal proclamation of Chilean in- dependence on the 1st of January 1818. From Concepcion we went on by train and steamer up the river to Nacimiento, and the following day struck across country to Angol, a place of quite recent creation, and the centre of the administra- tion of the so-called province of Arauco, which was formally incorporated in the dominions of the Republic in 1852. We were now on the very borders of the Arau- canian region, and one of the main objects of my journey was to visit the frontier line of defence, as the Chileans themselves then oddly enough designated it, against the aboriginal tribes which occupied the country from the Andes to the sea, for some 250 kilometres to the south, as far as the Rio Tolten and the borders of the province of Valdivia. THE LINE OF THE MAILLECO 57 Although this great wedge or enclave in the Chilean territory no longer figures as an unsightly break on the map, the greater part of the so-called province, nevertheless, remained practically as independent as it had been from time immemorial. It was, in fact, only effectually subdued and occupied several years later by the forces rendered available for that purpose at the victorious close of the great war against Peru. The military governor of the pro- vince, General Urrutia, whose headquarters were at Angol, obligingly placed horses and an escort at my disposal for the excursion I wished to make along the line of fortified posts on the river ^Iailleco. Early in the morning, with a sergeant's guard in attendance on us, we started on this expedition from the very primitive inn where we were lodged. Like all the Chilean breed, the troop- horses provided for us were pleasant mounts enough, but the regulation high-peaked saddles proved rather a trial to both my naval friend and myself, and our ride of something like fifty miles in and out that day seemed to us a fairly creditable achievement for persons of our respectable middle age. The line of the Mailleco consisted of a chain of a dozen forts, or more properly blockhouses, at intervals of a few miles, and, with a similar girdle on the southern frontier towards Valdivia, afforded >d training and employment to the greater part of the modest Chilean army, which in those days 58 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST numbered altogether but a few thousand men. 1 These amply sufficed to keep in check the maraud- ing bands which occasionally ventured across the river for a raid on the Chilean farms. The remnant of the Araucanian nation, whose exploits are sung in Ercilla's heroic verse, 2 had then already sadly degenerated from the formidable warriors led by Caupolican and Lautaro, and had become little better than caterans and cattle-lifters. Fugitives from justice, deserters, and in general the pick of Chilean scoundrelism, who found a ready refuge with the tribes, nevertheless constituted a dangerous element amongst them, and the country along the border could certainly not be said to be safe, while any attempt to penetrate beyond it, into the heart of the area complacently mapped out as the Pro- vince of Arauco, was, at the period of my visit, out of the question without an adequate armed force. The banks of the Mailleco are much broken up by wooded ravines affording excellent cover to predatory parties. Not eight miles out of Angol, and within gunshot of one of the forts, a Danish doctor in the Chilean service had been quite recently murdered, and only a week before our visit a party of fifty Indians had forded the river and been engaged in a sharp and bloody skirmish with the nearest garrison. 1 The military element has been systematically and wisely kept under in Chile, with the result that the country has been far freer from internal disturbance than any of the South American Republics. 2 " La Araucana," the great epic poem of the soldier-poet Alonso de Ercilla y Zuniga. ACHING LIMBS 59 Our ride along the border, with our military escort and some of the pom}) and circumstance of war, remains a decidedly interesting and pleasing experi- ence ; the officers at the several forts, and especially at Colli Pulli, where we made a longish halt for dinner and rested and baited our horses, entertain- ing us to the best of theil ability, and freely plying us with the heady wines of the country. We got back to Angol after a steady gallop of a good many miles in the broad moonlight, and gladly tumbled into bed — I for my part with aching limbs and lively recollections of the Chilean cavalry saddle. The next day we retraced our steps to Concepcion and Talcahuano, where we embarked for Valparaiso. At the latter port I parted from one of the pleasantest friends I have ever made in ELM. Navy, and on the 10th of March was back at my duties, which now, quite unexpectedly, became both engrossing and troublesome. CHAPTER IV THE TACNA AFFAIR On March 8 the Tacna, a small steamer of 322 tons, employed by the Pacific Steam Navigation Company in trading with the ports north of Val- paraiso, capsized in the early hours of the morning at a distance of nine or ten miles from the coast. The disaster was due to careless and excessive load- ing of a vessel already reported to be crank. The cargo partially shifting in the night, and giving her a marked list on the port side, the Tacna failed to right herself from a heavy lurch caused by the long ground-swell off the shore, and turned turtle in less than fifteen minutes. Nine of her eighteen passengers were drowned, as well as ten out of the crew of thirty-four. The survivors got off in boats, and with the master, John Hyde — who was twenty- five minutes in the water before being saved — landed, after a weary pull of six hours, at the small port of Los Vilos. The catastrophe caused a great sensation at Valparaiso, and was vigorously commented upon by the press, which, not unnaturally, held the master of the wrecked vessel answerable for the lamentable 60 A NAVAL COURT 61 loss of life. A naval court of inquiry at once met at our Consulate under the presidency of Mr. Drum- mond-Hay, and Hyde, with the other survivors, was examined ; the Court rinding both the master and the agents on shore of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company highly censurable for the careless and improper loading of the vessel, especially on the upper deck. The Court animadverted at the same time on the absence of proper supervision of the charing of vessels in Chilean harbours, there being thus no check on the condition in which they pro- ceeded to sea. My attention had been called before, I regret to say, to malpractices on other British ships similar to those which had proved fatal in the Tacna. I therefore immediately communicated the finding of the Court and its remarks to the Chilean Government, and suggested the delegation to some authority in their ports of powers to prevent vessels departing in an unsafe condition. Meanwhile the Valparaiso authorities, moved by the popular feeling, themselves instituted an inquiry into the circumstances of the wreck. The case, it is most essential to explain, was one which they were legally incompetent to deal with otherwise than for pure purposes of investigation, it having been proved beyond any doubt that the Tacna had gone down on the high seal entirelj outside the limits of the Chilean waters. Our Consul, none the less, very properly placed at their disposal all the evidence given before the Naval Court, the principal witnesses, including 62 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST Hyde, being examined by the magistrate charged with the inquiry. The circumstances attending the loss of the vessel having thus been fully gone into on the Chilean as well as the British side, it became neces- sary to send Hyde home to answer for his conduct before the Board of Trade and his employers. The Consul accordingly informed the Maritime Governor that he proposed despatching the man to Liver- pool by the next mail, inquiring at the same time whether it was desired to interrogate him further before his departure. No answer being returned to this communication, Hyde sailed in the Ulimani on March 25. No sooner was his departure known than there arose such an outcry at this "great criminal having been allowed to leave the country," that the Govern- ment, intimidated by the clamour, and inspired by a President who was only too prone to arbitrary pro- ceedings, took the unwarrantable step of telegraphing to Lota, where the Illimani was to touch thirty-six hours after leaving Valparaiso, to have " the offender flying from justice " seized and brought back. Hyde was accordingly taken out of the ship, put in irons, and, on arriving at Valparaiso, was confined in the common jail, and at first kept au secret. Although not a little disturbed by the arrest, I was on sufficiently cordial terms with the Chilean Ministers to flatter myself that I should be able to convince them of its illegality, and thus be spared OFFICIAL STUBBORNNESS 63 having to take official action in this unpleasant business. Unfortunately the Minister for Foreign Affairs. M. Ibahez. was away at his country house at Quillota, eighty miles from Santiago. I sent him a very pressing message through the official mayor, or Under-Secretary, M. Domingo Gana — now the much- esteemed representative of his Government in this country — but received the somewhat annoying reply that he was indisposed, 1 and would not return for some days. An offer I made to go down and see him was taken no notice of. I then tried to con- vince the Minister of Justice that Hyde's seizure was unjustifiable, and might have serious conse- quences. M. Barcel6, however, treated the affair lightly, if not flippantly, and confined himself to saying that justice must take its course. I also saw the Minister of War, M. Pinto, whom I frequently met at his near relatives, the Vergaras. Don Anibal Pinto, a man of high standing and character, who afterwards succeeded M. Emizuriz in the Presidency, listened to me courteously, and undertook to convey my urgent remonstrances to the President. To my chagrin, however, I found that he, too, thought the incident of little importance. Several daya thus passed, my well-meant efforts and warnings producing no result beyond a verbal isage from the absent Ebanez to the effect that 1 I rabeequently Ifwrntd from Mr. DrammancUH&y thai the Minister was in perfect health, tnd had lmcl violent language at Val paraiao in favour of Byde*i arrest, which indeed Mi. Bay attributed to hi in. 64 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST Hyde was now allowed to communicate with the British Consul. I could defer action no longer, and sent in an official note pointing out the complete illegality of the arrest, as shown by the fact, which had been proved beyond question, that the Tacna had foundered on the high seas entirely outside Chilean jurisdiction. On that ground I demanded the release of a British subject arbitrarily detained. To this note I received an extremely long-winded and anything but conciliatory reply, treating my arguments as scarcely worthy of consideration, and declining to interfere in any way in the proceedings against Hyde. I thereupon addressed a very vigorous protest to M. Ibanez — whose reasoning was, I may fairly say, deplorably weak — holding his Government answerable for the illegal acts of their agents, and insisting on the liberation of a man who, whatever might be his error, was in no way accountable to Chilean judges, and had been forcibly taken out of a Royal Mail steamer under circumstances of peculiar indignity. In both my communications I purposely avoided putting forward any claim for pecuniary damages, well knowing how sensitive the Chileans were certain to be on that score. The excitement caused by the Tacna incident now reached its height. The newspapers loudly applauded the attitude of the Government, and pro- fessed amazement at my audacity in venturing to question its correctness. I have passed through far more important crises in the course of a long diplo- AN ILL-TIMED VISIT 65 matic career, but this storm in a teacup is one of the sharpest I can remember. Society at Santiago was divided respecting the affair, but I fortunately had influential friends who supported me in my conten- tion as to the wrongful seizure of Hyde. Among these were two distinguished lawyers and members of Congress, MM. Good and Huneeus, both of foreign extraction, the former being of English ! and the latter of German parentage. These gentlemen did me essential service in the controversy in which I was engaged, but made no concealment that the predominant feeling was : " We will face ten wars with Kngland rather than surrender Hyde." The national susceptibility and an excessive — almost morbid — conception of the dignity of the country, which are characteristic of the entire Spanish- American race, were screwed up to the highest pitch. On the other hand, the large and influential British community at Valparaiso were equally up in arms over the outrage committed. A fortnight had now elapsed since Hyde's arrest. On April 1 2 I was surprised by a visit from M. Ibanez, who entered my room with a jaunty air, a smiling countenance and extended hand. I bowed to him, of course, and motioned him to a seat, but at once 1 that, before shaking hands, I had much to say of his oeglectful treatment of me, to which was 1 Mr. Cood bad been partly educated in England. Two maternal ancles of bis, of the name of Ross, were I 1 on the staff of Tfo T B 66 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST mainly due the serious character the Tacna affair had now assumed. M. Ibanez seemed greatly taken aback and impressed (as I wished him to be) by my resentful tone, and soon retired in evident confusion. The next day he sent me an official communica- tion, referring to my reception of him, and giving an account of it of which he begged me to confirm the correctness, " as my reply would determine the atti- tude to be observed towards me by his Government in future." His object clearly was to get me to commit myself by some injudicious statement that might be used against me with our Foreign Office, and thereby to extricate himself at my expense from the awkward position he had got into. In reply I begged " to be excused from following him on to the ground to which he apparently wished to lead me," being, I said, unwilling to further complicate our controversy by the importation of extraneous matter. I admitted, however, that, while most anxious to preserve the friendliest relations with his Government, I did not feel bound to show marked cordiality to a Minister who had done nothing to meet me in my earnest desire to settle the Tacna affair amicably and without taking diplomatic action on it. " For the rest, I would continue in the dis- charge of my official duties without heeding the threat which the concluding passage of M. Ibanez's note possibly contained." The answer to this was a letter requesting me THE CHILEAN FOREIGN MINISTER 67 to call the next day at the Moneda* when M. Ibanez "felt confident that our interview would lead to the satisfactory object he proposed to himself." On reaching the Foreign Department I found in the waiting-room M. Pinto, who asked as a favour to be present at the interview about to take place. Nothing, I replied, could be more agreeable to me than his presence, but as I had not come to apologise to his colleague, but rather to make quite clear my stand- point in the Tacna incident, I preferred seeing M. Ibariez alone. Some description of the Chilean Foreign Minister may not be out of place here. He was a small man of insignificant appearance, with thin sandy hair, and the address and bearing of a schoolmaster. Somehow he reminded me of the St. Omer of my boyhood. 2 By profession he was a lawyer — of no particular distinction — verbose and boastful, and at this time much inflated by the encomiums bestowed on his interminable notes on the Argentine Boundary question. In no way a man of mark, he was essentially a puppet in the hands of the President, who, throughout, as I well knew, was answerable for the high-handed proceed- ings against Hyde. Scarcely had I entered the room when, to my 1 The M /■■'(•• (Mint) i» the President's official residence, and con* tains the chief ( lorernment offices. The original plans for this building as a Mint were intended, it ii said, for the city of Mexico, and, in the strati^- confusion of thr old Bpaniab days, were sent by mistake to The tradition, however, appears doubtful, and is denied in M. Wiener's OMU •< GhiUt n . * Fids u Becollections of a Diplono I '. L pp. 34,35. 68 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST intense surprise, the Minister began with ill-con- cealed emotion to express his regret that he had not better appreciated and seconded my efforts to settle the affair amicably at the outset. He was, however, chiefly anxious to be assured that I had not intended any insult in not shaking hands when he called upon me. I had no difficulty in satisfying him on that point, and stretched out my hand, which he grasped with effusion. The poor man was, in fact, in the most submissive of moods, as he let appear just before by stooping to pick up a walking- stick that had slipped out of my hand — quite acci- dentally, I need scarcely say, and in no parodying reminiscence of one of old Prince Metternich's stock anecdotes. 1 " And now," despondingly inquired the Minister, " what is to be done ? What would you have us do 1 " I said that it was not for me to show him the way out of the difficulty. I could only repeat that the affair must be stopped as speedily as possible. I insisted on Hyde's release ; if he could effect this by legal methods, so much the better for him. Here M. Ibafiez rang the bell, and, writing a few lines, handed them to a messenger, at the same time explaining that he was sending a request to the Supreme Court (to which the affair had come up on appeal from Valparaiso) " to suspend proceedings 1 The memorable interview at Dresden, when Napoleon, in order to test the pliancy of the Austrian statesman, threw his hat down, Metternich not attempting to pick it up. AN ULTIMATUM 69 at once." He then asked what were my terms. I told him that my conception of my duty to my Government made it impossible for me to assist any longer at the arbitrary incarceration of my countryman. If, therefore, I was not in a position to report home by the mail of April 22 — six days hence — that Hyde had been set free, I would take upon myself to suspend relations and withdraw to Valparaiso, where I would await further instructions from II. M. Government. Further, the release must be notified to me officially, with some suitable ex- pression of regret for the error committed, which I could transmit home. M. Ibariez, although evidently much relieved by what I said, seemed anxious to know whether a pecuniary indemnity would be demanded. I reminded him that I had carefully reserved this point for the decision of the Foreign Office, though it seemed to me only reasonable that Hyde should be indemnified for wrongful imprisonment. The Minister then proposed we should draft the ex- pression of regret, which would, in my opinion, meet the circumstances. Being, however, loth to press him further at the moment, 1 said we could settle that point when he came to me the next day, as he proposed doing. On parting he again thanked me effusively "for all I bad done." When the Minister called upon me, as arranged, he teemed rather inclined to shilly-shally about the release of Hyde, apprehending, he said, thai 70 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST it might be difficult to obtain a unanimous decision from the Supreme Court for his liberation. He had evidently seen the President in the interval, but he soon changed his tone on my warning him again of my firm resolve to suspend relations if necessary. He then inquired whether I had pre- pared the draft we had spoken of the day before, and here, in my sincere desire to spare him what seemed the humiliation of dictating terms to him, I was so weak as to say that I was not particular about the exact wording of the regret to be ex- pressed. "Ustedes son caballeros " (you are gentle- men), I said, " and can be trusted to say gracefully what is needed." Thereupon he left me, not, how- ever, without destroying in my presence, of his own accord, the threatening note he had sent me and of which he was evidently much ashamed. 1 Finally, on the evening of the 21st, I received a private line from M. Ibaflez, stating that the Supreme Court had quashed the proceedings at Valparaiso, and I was thus able to telegraph next day to Lord Derby — the second Disraeli Adminis- tration had shortly before come in — that Hyde had been released. I was well satisfied with my success in the affair, and still more glad to receive, after a few weeks interval — Panama or Montevideo being still at that time the nearest points whence it was 1 I had thought it advisable to keep copies of this curious corre- spondence. A BREACH OF FAITH 71 possible to communicate with Europe by telegraph — a message of approval from Lord Derby. Great was my disgust, therefore, when the formal notifi- cation of the decree of the Supreme Court reached me without a single expression of regret, or the admission of any wrong-doing on the part of the Chilean authorities. I, of course, reported home this breach of faith, and assumed an attitude of great reserve towards the Government, being, in due course, instructed to demand satisfaction and compensation for the arrest. The final settlement of the affair did not, however, take place for months, and the Tacna incident affected my official rela- tions until nearly the end of my stay in Chile. It practically came to a personal contest over the question between the stubborn autocratic President and myself, which at one time led to the resignation of the maladroit Ibariez and the substitution for him of my friend Don Enrique Cood, whose ap- paintment was avowedly intended to be agreeable to II. M. Government and their representative. But it is high time that I should turn from this troublesome business to other subjects. In the early antipodean spring — read August — of 1874, the somewhat dreary sameness of life in Chile was broken by the arrival at Valparaiso of Adelaide I J i >tori. A good many yean before at Vienna 1 had made the acquaintance of this greatest of tragic actresses of our time — still living, I rejoice to think* I could recall the impression made upon me by 72 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST her brilliant appearance, her southern verve and picturesque gestures, when I first met her at an entertainment given in her honour by Stametz Meyer, the rich Austrian banker and Maecenas of those days, and well remembered her impulsive greeting of some revolutionary ditties of the dawn of the risorgimento — sono Italiano, and the like — which I had been induced to sing after dinner for her amusement : a highly treasonable proceeding on the part of an attache* at the Imperial Court. I had gone down to Valparaiso for a few days, for a change from the worry of the Tacna affair, when Madame Ristori — now Marchesa Capranica del Grillo — arrived at the Hotel Oddo where I was stopping. I called upon her at once and offered my services during her approaching visit to Santiago, where she had arranged to give a series of per- formances at the very handsome Teatro Municipal. There was something touching about this last venture of the illustrious tragedienne. She had met shortly before with very severe financial reverses, and, although she was already on the threshold of old age, and had long since exchanged her dramatic triumphs for the repose and dignity of the Palazzo Cap- ranica at Rome, she was now pluckily engaged on a professional tour round the world. She had just been starring it at Rio Janeiro and Buenos Ayres, and was on her way to Peru, Mexico, California and Australia, with the object of making good to her son and daughter the million or so of francs by which A PICTURE FROM PETRARCH 73 their inheritance had been curtailed. All this she was explaining to me, in her sitting-room at the Valparaiso Hotel, when the door opened and a tall, slight girl, with hair of the most perfect blond \r4y dark eyes, and an indescribable look of distinction and refinement, entered the room and was introduced as her daughter Bianca. Donna Bianca — should these lines ever come under her notice — must forgive me if I permit myself, after these long years, to say that I scarcely remember ever being so struck as I was by this unexpectedly lair apparition in a commonplace inn-parlour in the remote South Pacific. But for the perfect taste and simplicity of her nineteenth-century gown, she might have stepped out of the frame of a Bronzino or Lorenzo Lotto, depicting the sweetly serious traits of some high-born biondina bella of a great Italian house. Charming Donna Bianca ! As I write, and look back to that far-away time, Petrarch's splendid statelv lines recur to me as best and most vividly recalling her as I first beheld her that sunny fore- noon : — ( liovaru- ' the Foreign Office, in chaffy allnaion to the notorioai ( ihartUt leader Feargua < POonnor. 80 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST for my small belongings through the Straits of Magellan. My last visit, a fortnight before my departure, was to the kind Ortuzars at Codao, where I once more enjoyed such perfect hospitality as I have seldom experienced since in any clime or country. Parting, with sincere regret, from my kindly hosts at early dawn for the long drive to the station at Pelequen, I well recollect calling the attention of my eldest boy — then not quite seven years old, and now following his father's footsteps in a service which may, I trust, use him well — to the striking effect of the sun rising over the great chain of mountains, bidding him remember in after years that in his early childhood he had seen that wondrous spectacle. In many respects I was sincerely sorry to leave Chile, and have ever since kept a warm corner in my heart for that country and its friendly people. I had felt it right, and still feel it was right, to turn to account the Tacna difficulty — absolutely forced upon me by an autocratic President and an incompetent Minister — for the recovery of some of the ground which our Legation, and in some degree our national prestige in that important region of the South Pacific, had for some years been losing. My predecessor, Mr. Taylour Thomson, had on several occasions been subjected to much indignity, and the bearing of the Chilean authorities towards our Legation and our countrymen, as indeed towards foreigners in general, had for some time past been VEXATIOUS PROCEEDINGS 81 troincr from bad to worse. I had just cause to complain of a series of vexatious proceedings, such as the refusal to acknowledge the right of our ( onsuls to issue sentences of imprisonment against seamen for offences committed on board vessels flying the British flag, and the still more invidious attempt to close our Naval Hospital — where seamen of all nations, including Chilean blue-jackets, were most liberally treated — on the pretext that Dr. Cooper had not taken a Chilean degree, although holding the diplomas of both the Royal Colleges of Physicians and of Surgeons. These and other acts of the arrogant Intendente Echaiirren, backed up by his brother-in-law the President, made it, I considered, imperative that the Chilean Government should be brought to their bearings, and this view of mine was fully indorsed by my colleagues, with the sole exception of the German Minister. Never- theless, throughout the Tacna controversy, I had never once attempted or threatened anything like coercion ; and on one occasion, in fact, had made it an urgent request to Admiral Cochrane, in com- mand of the West Coast squadron, who had reached Coquimbo on his way to Valparaiso, to postpone his visit and return north, lest the presence of his ships on the Chilean coast should be construed as a menace to a recalcitrant Government. The Tacna question had, liowcvi r, now been settled some time, 1 1 The Chilean &fii a London, Bleat Gana,had offered an ei ion oi ■• ifficient by Lord Derby, and in the and d of 1000 dollan bad been allowed i<> Hyde, K 82 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST and I parted on the best of terms with the Chilean Ministers both past and present. I had very gratifying evidence that my attitude had been rightly appreciated by the best class of Chileans in the flattering manifestations of regard shown to me before my departure. A dinner was given in my honour at the Club de la Union — a most luxurious establishment by the way — by the leaders of Santiago society, under the presi- dency of M. Pinto, then president-elect, and the small British community also very kindly enter- tained me. At Valparaiso, too, my numerous English friends were good enough to invite me to a farewell dinner at the Gran Hotel Central, at which very kind things were said of my efforts to guard British interests in this most considerable seaport of the west coast. In these efforts I had been throughout very efficiently seconded by H.M. Consul, James Drummond Hay, who not many years afterwards died in the prime of life — a great loss to the Consular service. And now, in closing these recollections of my sojourn in their beautiful country, which have, to my dismay, grown to an inordinate length, I send most cordial greetings to those of my Chilean friends who still tread this globe in their splendid inland city under the shadow of the great moun- tains, or by the sparkling southern sea. Valeant et Jloreant ! CHAPTER V HOME AGAIN I sailed from Valparaiso on January 19, 1876, in the Galicia, of the Pacific S. N. Co., a very comfortable ship, whose captain was Squire T. S. Lecky, one of the most capable officers on that line. The sea becoming unpleasantly rough about three days out from Valparaiso, the captain took us, by exceptional favour, through some of the inner channels formed by the intricate archipelago which extends from the south of Chiloe down to the entrance of the Straits. Several years before he had himself surveyed most of these difficult and dangerous passages, which, in certain places, are so narrow that our yard-arms almost scraped the Jvertical masses of rock by which the deep water-way is walled in. No other region of the globe, except the forbid- ding, monstrous Polar solitudes, can bear a sterner aspect than this extreme southern point of the American continent, broken up, as any map will show, into innumerable chaotic fragments by the tremendous convulsions of a primeval age. Never- theless, the moist atmosphere and abundant rainfall 83 84 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST favour vegetation to such an extent that, wherever there is a break in the rocky barrier, dark patches of pine and beech come down to the very edge of the sea and somewhat mitigate the general sense of desolation. Nowhere, however, is the impression of one's having reached the extreme confines of the habitable globe so strong as, when issuing forth again from the shelter of the inner channels into the great waste of troubled sea outside, one first sights the weird group of rocks known as the Evangelists — the lonesome vedette, one may say, of the dreaded Cape Pillar, which all vessels seek- ing to enter the Straits of Magellan are bound, in nautical parlance, " to make " in their course. These four huge, storm-lashed crags in mid-ocean, with the size of the rollers that break on them, even on a fair summer's day, are one of the most awe-inspiring sights it is possible to conceive. The character of the whole of this lonesome region is well recorded on the charts by such names as Froward Island, Port Famine, Desolation Land, or Last Hope Inlet. After doubling Cape Pillar we stopped for a few hours at Sandy Point (Punta Arenas), where I called on the Governor, and was taken in a trolley on a short tram-line leading up to some coal-mines quite recently opened in the heart of thick moss- grown woods of evergreens, lightened by the white stems of the Antarctic beech. This settlement, con- taining about 1 200 souls at the time of my visit,. AT SEA 85 is noteworthy as the most southern civilised com- munity of our planet, and as having been for many years the chief bone of contention in the wearisome euestion de limites between Chile and Argentina. It seemed to me a dreary, heaven-forsaken spot. Oceans of ink were spilt over it, but the enterprising Chileans, by their bold occupation of the place iu 1849, had acquired the nine points of the law from which no Argentine arguments could afterwards dis- lodge them. "We reached Montevideo on February 1, waiting there twenty-four hours for the Buenos Ayres mails and passengers, and got to Rio de Janeiro on the 7th. Here I found my old Petersburg col- league, Victor Drummond, who had been acting as charge* d } affaires for a long time, and made me most welcome, taking me out with him to dine with the Russian Minister, Baron Koskull, at that loveliest of tropical country resorts, Tijuca. The heat at Rio was very great, and there was so much yellow fever about that we got away with anything but a clean bill of health, which was not improved by our touching at the equally contaminated Bahia and Pernambuco. After leaving the latter place, 1 turned to account the fortnight 's stretch between it and Lisbon to work at, and complete, a very exhaustive official reporl on the progress and general condition of Chile, on which 1 had been engaged for some time. This was not only i'a\ ourablv re- ceived at the Foreign Office — my valued friend 86 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST Villiers Lister x writing to me in the kindest terms about it — but it attracted a good deal of attention in Chile itself, where the sincere tribute I paid to the high spirit and patriotism of the governing class, the purity of the administration, and the vigour and industry of the people, must have con- vinced those who read it of the friendly spirit in which I viewed the condition and prospects of their country, believing it to be by far the best- ordered and most advanced of South American States. 2 We touched at Lisbon on Februaiy 28, flying the yellow flag, and were thus prevented from landing, much to my disgust, as I longed to set foot on European soil again after so long an absence. The Consul, Mr. Brackenbury, the brother-in-law of my old friends, Sir Charles and Sir George Russell, of Swallowfield, obligingly came alongside in a boat to see me, and, among other news, brought me the announcement — rather a damper to my diplomatic aspirations — of the appointment of Lytton as Vice- roy of India, and the choice of Robert Morier as his successor at Lisbon. At last, early on March 2, we reached the entrance to the Gironde, and steamed slowly up to Pauillac, where we anchored off" low hills covered 1 Sir Thomas Villiers Lister, K.C.M.G., who died in 1902, had a distinguished career, during which he served for twenty years as Assistant Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. 2 President Pinto, the successor of Errazuriz, caused this report to be translated at Paris into French for more general circulation. A WARM WELCOME 87 with vineyards and dotted with chdteaux, bearing some of the best-known names in the wine-lists of the world. I had arranged to land here with my party, bnt presently a tug came puffing alongside, and I was gladdened by the unexpected sight of my sister, who, with her husband and daughter, had very kindly come to meet and welcome me on my return. After greeting me and my children most ail'ectionately. my sister broke to me the news of the death at Nice of my dear old aunt, Mrs. Arabin, which had taken place almost suddenly two months before, on the closing day of the year. At her advanced age — she was in her eighty-seventh year — there was nothing surprising in the event, but the loss of her who had stood me in a mother's stead came to me none the less as a great shock, and the more so from my having received, shortly before I left Santiago, one of her periodical letters, giving no indication of failing health. With her death the strongest link in my recollections of the past was broken for good. The La Rochefoucaulds were now permanently established at Biarritz, where, having parted with my sister's villa at Baden Baden, they had acquired a large plot of ground, and built themselves a charming roomy cottage, in which they were living, pending the construction of the much larger house, now certainly one of the best in the place, and \\ Inch one winter season had the honour of harbouring her late Majesty. We went up the river in the regular 88 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST steamer to Bordeaux, where we all stayed for the night at the comfortable Hotel de la Paix, kept by a man named Lassalle, whose cellars were stocked with unexceptionable wines. The following day we went on to Biarritz, where I took up my quarters at the Hotel d'Angleterre, then almost the only inn there, and excellently managed by the Campagne family. Few places have changed and increased more of late years, or become more the fashion, especially with our English of the better class, than Biarritz. When I first knew it, its ways were simple enough. It had no golf-links then, no club, no imposing hotels or casino ; while the hounds, which have since rivalled the old-established pack at Pau, had not yet been thought of. It was but a small, rather dull place, which, after being brought into notice for a few brief years under the Empire, had relapsed into its primitive quietness, when, with the beautiful Empress, the brilliant sunshine of fashion had de- parted from it. In the summer months it woke up a bit with the influx of bathers from Spain, and, for the nonce, became a barrio or suburb of Madrid. My worthy brother-in-law had served four years in that capital as Second Secretary to the French Em- bassy, and, after going to Washington as First Secretary, was now en disponibilitie. I must indulge here in a digression about Gaston de la Rochefoucauld — a most creditable specimen of those gentlemen of France, cast in an old mould A RENAISSANCE FRENCHMAN 89 which is fast being broken up, who have always served the country well at its hours of need, but for whom this Republican age no longer finds any uses. His grand air and old-world, slightly formal manner, somehow make one think of his forbears who in December 1539 entertained with much splendour, in their halls at Verteuil, 1 the Emperor Charles V. on his memorable journey through France. He has a Renaissance look and carriage, and might have sat to Janet 01 Ponrbns. But this does not prevent his keeping in full touch with the times we live in, and holding enlightened views not quite common among Frenchmen of his class. Withal the best of good fellows, and, in his family relations, the kindest and most warm-hearted of men. Gaston and his wife were of course intimate with the small set of Spaniards who at that time made Biarritz their headquarters all through the year, and among whom were the late Due de Frias, then the widower of the charming and talented daughter of Balfe the composer ; and O'Shea, Due de San Lucar, a sociable Irish-Iberian, whose sudden death, caused by a rupture of the diaphragm in simply stooping to 1 Verteuil ia a very old seal of tbe La Rochefoucauld family, not far from AngoulSme, first mentioned in chronicles aboul 1050-1100. ■ of the different branches of the family was Pranopia che, who in 1494 was godfather t" the prince who afterwards me King Francis I. In memory of this circumstance the hea b, or Due de La Rochefoucauld, always bears the name of Francois. Ti • Habsburgwa so gratified by his reception that, irting from his hostess, Anne de Polignac, the widow ol Prancpia II. de La Rochi foucanld, he declared, " N'fitre jamsi entr^ so maiaon entit mieux sa grande vertu, honnestet el tegneui 90 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST put on his boot, is one of the most singular I have ever heard of. Besides the Spanish, there was a French coterie of Nadaillacs, Delesserts, and Carayons la Tour, with a very few English, of whom the best known were Lady Ernest Bruce, afterwards Lady Ailesbury, who had built herself a house in an out- of-the-way nook on the sea-shore beneath the C6te des Basques, and Mrs. Edmund Phipps, mother of our present Minister at Brussels. With her tradi- tions of the salon Delmar, and her own talents de societe, my sister made her house a pleasant point de reunion for all these people. Altogether the first few weeks I spent at Biarritz after my dis- tant exile have left me very agreeable recollections ; my sister, to whom I have always been much attached, making much of me and my boys in every way. As for the treeless, boisterous place itself, its violent gales, the great Atlantic breakers thundering on the beach or on the rocks at the Port Vieux, or, in fine weather, the glare and dust of its white roads, I cannot say that I ever took to it much or should care to live there for any length of time. At the end of March I left my small people in charge of my sister and went with La Rochefoucauld to Paris, where I stayed a fortnight at the Hotel Chatham. My primary object here was to examine the papers that had been taken at the seizure of my grandfather at Hamburg in 1 804, l and were still kept 1 For an account of this, see " Recollections of a Diplomatist," vol. i. pp. 24-27. LORD LYONS 91 at the Archives Nationales. Lord Lyons had been good enough to apply officially for permission for me to see them, but the task proved disappointing, inas- much as the correspondence contained little that "was of family value, while whatever there may have been of real political interest in it was, I strongly suspect, withheld from me, doubtless on the plea that the papers were classes as secret police reports to which no one was allowed access. I nevertheless was given have to take copies of some of the documents, which I added to my very scanty family archives. I now saw a good deal of Lord Lyons — to whom 1 was indebted for this, to me, interesting search — and might be tempted to give a slight sketch of him, had he not been so skilfully and faithfully portrayed in the charming Shifting Scenes of his devoted subor- dinate, Sir Edward Malet. Still, I will permit myself to say that our eminent Ambassador at Paris, under whom I never had the good fortune actually to serve, seemed to me, with his simple, direct manner, his admirable perspicacity and judgment, and his broad, generous views of affairs in general, joined to an exquisite sense of humour, a very perfect sample of what a diplomatic spokesman of Great Britain should be. Succeeded though he was by such brilliant men as Lord Lytton and Lord Dutl'erin — not to speak of our actual wry able representative, to whom old friendship alone would make me partial — Lord Lyons left behind him at Paris a record that will ever be hard to heat ; while his wise and bene- 92 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST ficent attitude during the great war and the lurid drama of the Commune gave him a prestige and authority with the French Government such as no other British Ambassador could pretend to. Lord Lyons had but one defect in my eyes. His cook was the best, as his horses and carriages were the handsomest in Paris. His dinners were absolutely perfect, but he ate so fast — although endowed with a very healthy appetite, and drinking, by the way, nothing but St. Galmier — that the waiting at his table went with a lightning speed which, being myself a very slow eater, I was utterly unable to keep up with. I have gone through many such experiences at Royal and Imperial tables, finding it very difficult to get a fair meal while duly re- sponding to the remarks of exalted neighbours, but Lord Lyons's exquisite dinners live in my memory as cruelly tantalising temptations set before me actually in vain. At this time, too, I happened to make the acquaintance of a much more prominent actor in the events which had not so long before desolated France. I met my old Petersburg acquaintance, Princesse Lise Troubetzkoy, in Paris, and was taken by her one evening to see M. Thiers. I exchanged only a few words with him, though his reception of me was very gracious, but it is interesting to have seen, in his unpretentious home in the Rue St. Georges, this dauntless, eloquent little statesman and most unselfish of patriots — a true PARIS RESTAURANTS 93 French meridional in appearance and accent — remembering well, as I did, his splendidly devoted, but heartbreaking, tour through Europe in search of support and sympathy for his country in its death-strii^iile. Among other old Paris friends I renewed acquaintance with the Due de Mouchy, now married to the charming Princess Anna Murat. 1 lunched, too, in company of La Hochefoucald, with Robert Moricr, whom I had scarcely ever met or heard from since our Vienna intimacy and his marriage at Marble Hill in 1861 to Miss Alice Peel. I mention this trifling circumstance because of the unwonted impulsiveness and emotion with which Morier, on this occasion, reproached himself for his forgetfulness of me at a time when most of my old friends had shown me much sympathy. But a curi- ously tender chord ran through my ruggedly massive, imperious colleague, tinged almost with the senti- mentalism of a German student. I had not been in Paris for so long that I much mjoyed sampling, with La Hochefoucald, the more fashionable restaurants of the day, like Brabant's and Bignon's, now all defunct. The best known of the cabarets, as they used to be called by old- fashioned Frenchmen — with the exception of such modern and extravagantly dear establishments as Paillard's or the Tour d' Argent — have since been driven out of the tield by cheaper eating-houses and grill-rooms on the English pattern. We of course also went the round of the theatres, seeing, with 94 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST other plays, L Etrangere at the Francais, in which the leading part was taken by that powerful artist the late Madame Croisette ; and the Petite Marine at the Renaissance, where the captivating Jeanne Granier had only just begun to make her mark. It was, however, now high time that I should go on to England, so I crossed over on April 13 with Lord and Lady Headfort, who were returning from the South after their recent marriage. By a lucky chance I came across them at the Gare du Nord, and, being offered a seat in their reserved compart- ment, thus made the journey in most pleasant company. On reaching London I first went to lodgings at 42 Clarges Street, removing afterwards to 29 Half Moon Street. CHAPTER VI LONDON IX 1S77-1S78 I got home at what was politically an exceptionally interesting period ; the troublous course of events in the near East culminating at that very time in the Bulgarian atrocities and the hostilities between Turkey and Servia, to which the conspicuous part taken in them bv General Tchernaieff, the " Herman Cortez of Central Asia," with a crowd of Russian volunteers, gave the appearance of a guerre qfficieuse bv Kussia, to quote Prince Bismarck's saying con- cerning it. Afar off at Santiago I had watched, as well as I could, the first signs of the great crisis in the insurrection in the Herzegovina, and have since been reminded by my friend Bacourt — -the only one of mv colleagues out there who took a keen interest in European affairs — of my then foretelling that these risings would lead to a far more general com- plication in the near future. 1 saw a good deal of the Derbys at this time. Despite a somewhat ungenial manner — the outcome of insurmountable shyness Lord Derby was in every way a considerate and eminently just chief, and in Lady Derby I found a trulj kind friend. For this 1 was in pari indebted to the Austrian 96 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST Ambassador, Count Apponyi, who had known me from boyhood, and, being on terms of considerable friendship with Lady Derby, was good enough to write to her from Paris, to which place he had been transferred some time before, expressing the far too favourable opinion he had formed of my fitness and qualifications for advancement in the service. My old friend Lionel West, like me on leave from South America previous to his being appointed to Madrid, also contributed his share in warmly commending me to his favourite and very charming sister. I was therefore in a position to follow the course of affairs with more accurate knowledge than I could have acquired by the most assiduous newspaper reading. At the St. James's Club, too, which I used a great deal for the next two years, and elsewhere, I pretty often met the Russian Ambassador, Comte Pierre Schouvalow, whom I had known at St. Petersburg when he was in charge of the almost omnipotent Troisieme Section. 1 Count Schouvalow's striking good looks and grand seigneur mien, his freedom of speech and convivial moods — frequently rather simulated than real — his easy, insouciant bearing at a period when all his faculties were absorbed by the most delicate possible diplomatic negotiations, are still so well 1 The Third Section of the Imperial Chancellerie, as it used to be called, comprised at that time the Secret Police, which, among other important functions, had of course to provide for the safety of the Emperor. In allusion to his power and influence Count Schouvalow went, in Petersburg society, under the sobriquet of Pierre IV. AN ABLE AMBASSADOR 97 remembered in London society that to attempt to describe him may seem superfluous. Under the gay, seductive exterior of a courtier of the licentious days of Catherine, he screened great earnestness of purpose, joined to remarkable adroitness. He strenuously applied himself throughout the crisis to prevent its coming to a conflict between the two countries, and no ambassador, I believe, ever laboured more ably and unremittingly than he did in the cause of peace. In dealing with such statesmen as Lords Beaconsfield, Salisbury and Derby, he showed great qualities as a negotiator, and, above all, may claim the merit of enjoying their confidence when the credit of his own Government for straight deal- inv; was at a very low ebb in Downing Street. This distrust of the methods of the Imperial Chancellerie unfortunately still remains a disturbing factor in our relations with Russia, to the regret of those who, like myself, desire to see some understanding estab- lished between us and that great Power on the questions which divide us in the far East, and, at the time I refer to, divided us in the nearer Levant. I extract from an unusually full diary I kept for some time on my return to Europe, a passage which affords a good illustration of the mental attitude of our Government towards the Cabinet of St. Peters- burg in the protracted discussions which took place during the crisis preceding tin- Etusso-Turkish War. It refers more especially to the Protocol of March 3'» '' l "'77' which defined the expectant position the G 98 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST Powers engaged to maintain with regard to events in Turkey on the very eve of the declaration of war by Russia : 1 — March 31, 1877. — -After dinner had a long talk with Schouvalow in the smoking-room at the St. James's. He told me that the Protocol had been signed that afternoon, and then went on to talk of the negotiations in general, dwelling quite openly on Ignatiew's disregard of truth and the mischief he had done here. He complained that we were bien durs comme ne'gociateurs, and that we carried our suspicions of Russian policy a great deal too far. " Why ! " he said, " the real truth is that we have no fixed policy ; everything changing from day to day. Comme vous savez, tout se fait au Palais, et tout depend de la digestion de deux ou trois indi- vidus." But it was no use his representing this to Ministers here, and he would give me the most curious instance of all of our distrust. One day he was on the point of giving up the whole thing in despair, when he was entreated by Lady Derby to make one more effort and see whether he could not find a redaction that would meet the difficulty. So he went home that evening and drafted a Protocol of his own, without referring it to St. Petersburg. The following day he took it to Lord Derby, who 1 The gist of the Protocol was that the Powers would wait for the introduction of the promised reforms in Turkey and watch the pro- gress of events ; a conditional disarmament to take place in Russia and in Turkey. War was declared by Russia on April 24, 1877. THE IGNATIBWS 99 said he thought it would do, but must consult the Cabinet. The Cabinet likewise approving, this draft of his became in fact the document that was finally signed. The best part of it, he added, was that it was perhaps less favourable to us than former projects which had been rejected. But its merit in our eyes was its not coming from St. Petersburg, and Lord Beaconsfield had said to him afterwards : " You understood us very well in laying before us a docu- ment which bore the date of Chesham House." From my diary, too, I glean the following about General Ignatiew's visit to London in March 1877, referred to in the above extract. He was engaged on a tour to the great capitals, urging his views on the Eastern crisis, and, much to the annoyance of Count Schouvalow, who tried hard to stop him, came over from Paris on the 1 6th : — March 17, 1877. — At ten o'clock left the Club fur the Foreign Office party, being curious to see the Ignatiews there. He seemed quite pleased to meet me again, as she did too, speaking with much feel- ing of my poor dear C. A lovely Paris gown — turquoise blue, matching the beautiful turquoises she wore, made her look the pink of neatness and ildgance in the midst of the masses of dowdiness that kmed her in on every side, for they both got a most thorough mobbing, com/me de raison, I chaffed tli<- General about this, and, with his utual charkning ioo RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST carelessness of statement, he said he was quite ac- customed to it, for at all the stations coming up from Dover the people had turned out to see him, pointing him out to their children, &c. ; a strong order, con- sidering he came up by an ordinary passenger train, sans tambour ni trompettes ! At half-past eleven the Ignatiews left for King's Cross Station, where a special train was waiting to take them on to Hatfield. Schouvalow afterwards told me that among other results of this visit he thought the General had destroyed any chance he may have had of coming here as Ambassador, while, as for Prince Gortchacow, his policy had been so ill-judged of late years that in his (Count Schouvalow's) opinion he would have done well to retire some five or six years ago. Speaking of Prince Gortchacow, towards whose memory I, personally, remain grateful for much in- dulgence and kindness, I am tempted to intercalate here a scrap of some historical interest from a frag- mentary diary of 1869, which ought rightly to have found a place in the first part of these " Recollec- tions," and has no connection with the Eastern affairs above referred to : — St. Petersburg, June 23, 1869. — Went to take leave of old Prince Gortchacow this morning, finding him in high good humour and full of anecdote. " Qu'est ce que vous venez faire ici ? " he said ; " vous QUEEN HORTENSE 101 ne savez done pas que je suis mort." x Speaking of the Emperor Napoleon, he told me it was wonderful how grateful he was for all past services, forgetting none. When he (the Prince) was serving at Rome, he was very intimate with Queen Hortense, and spent most of his evenings at her house. On one occasion he went there much disturbed by an order from the Emperor Nicholas, transferring him to Berlin, which he had declined to obey. The Queen, noticing his annoyance, took him aside and led the way to her dressing-room. Here she opened a box, he holding the light for her, and took out of it a ncarab4e t set as a seal, which she gave him, saying: "Take this, it will bring you luck!" She told him she had given two similar ones before ; one to Ypsilanti, and the other to Fabvier the Philhellene. "It did bring me luck," observed the Chancelter t ' for. instead of resenting my refusal, the Emperor Nicholas appointed me to the very post I wanted — Florence." There, he went on to relate, he was when 1S30 came, bringing in its train the insurrectionary move- mentfl in Italy. Both the sons of Hortense were »-iiL r :iL r <'\ the 1 Thii mi in allusion to report* then assiduously circulated thai r had leal the [mperial favour, and to which a vi it of 1 ral [gnatiew to the Emperor in the Crimea al this period lent 102 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST Bonaparte brothers (the eldest died in the interval) melting away, Louis Napoleon and his mother were in a position of great danger. Their only way to Leghorn and the sea was through Tuscany. One morning at the Russian Legation in Florence a gentleman was announced to Gortchacow as coming from the Comte de St. Leu, the title taken by the ex-King Louis of Holland. Gortchacow received him, and the gentleman stated that he was sent to beg him to exert himself in favour of the Queen and her last remaining son. " Tell the Comte from me," was the reply, " that he has been a King himself and therefore must know how impossible is interference in certain cases. The Tuscan Government would never allow enemies of Austria and of order to take refuge in their territory." The envoy was about to withdraw, but, as he reached the door, the Prince recalled him, and, pointing to a map, said : " If I follow you correctly, they are at this point, and in order to reach Leghorn they must pass through such and such places," dwelling with his finger on each place successively as he spoke. " Please," he added, " express to the Comte my regret at being unable to move in the matter." The emissary of course understood him, and, as soon as he had left, the Prince went to Fossombroni, then Minister, and asked him to blink at the passage of the fugitives along the line he had marked out on the map. Sir Hamilton Seymour, then our charge d'affaires at Florence, at the same time sent the Queen an BERLIN VIEWS OF THE CRISIS 103 English passport, and with this and with Louis Napoleon, dressed up as a courier on the box, she reached Leghorn in safety. In her will the Queen left Lady Seymour a beautiful cameo brooch set in fine pearls in recognition of the service ren- dered her by Sir Hamilton, while to Gortchacow she sent a message " to be delivered to another diplo- matist whom she could not name, but who helped to save her and her son." " The son," added the Chancelier, "has never forgotten this, and when I last saw him at Paris, he permitted me great freedom of speech and treated me with much kind- ness." When I parted from the old Prince, who was going away for the summer, he said to me all manner of obliging things, which the few rags of modestv remaining to me preclude me from repeating even in this private diary. To return to what I learned from unexception- able sources at this period of the Eastern crisis, a few passages relating to the views and aims of Prince Bismarck at this juncture seem worth trans- cribing, as conveying lessons possibly not without their uses at the present day : — June 1, 1877. — It is reported from Berlin on the best authority that Bismarck still dreads an attack from Prance, and that all his policy is subordinate to thai fear. As for the Eastern affair, it is said that marck will Let Bussia have free play up to a io 4 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST certain point, but would be disposed to lend England the full weight of German moral support towards stopping Russia after any considerable success of hers. As regards the Turks, he thinks that Con- stantinople, with a small amount of territory round it {Rome avec un jardin), would be enough for them. He would not object to a partition of the Turkish Empire. Why should we not occupy Egypt, Syria, Crete, Cyprus, &c. ? He is not in- clined to do much for Italy, but would let her have a bit of Tripoli, and although France has already cut out for herself her share of the spoil in Algiers, why she might add some portion of Tunis to it. His greatest bugbear is a possible coalition between France, Russia, and the Pope. He has repeatedly offered us his alliance, and is said to have com- missioned Odo Russell (who has come over for a few days) to make a fresh offer of it. " If you have anything good to bring me," he is said to have told Odo, " come and see me at once, wherever I may be." But I will leave my diary for the present, merely observing that in the extracts I have given from it I have departed a good deal from the chrono- logical order of my narrative, which it will now be convenient to resume. I spent the best part of the season of 1876 in London, and being " avant tout un rnondain," according to obliging critics of the first part of these Recollections, probably saw the BEAUTIES OF THE DAY 105 pleasantest side of London society of that day. Among other dissipations, I went for the Ascot week to Minley, a place belonging to Mr. Raikes Carrie, the father of my old friend Philip, now Lord Cnrrie, where I found a very pleasant party ; the greatest ornament of which was the late Mrs. Mahlon Sands — probably the loveliest American that had as yet dawned upon the world of London, and who, to my mind, has never been eclipsed by any of the numerous fair daughters of Columbia who have since graced, and in some degree revolu- tionised, English society. This season, too, witnessed, if 1 am not mistaken, the first appearance of Mrs. Langtry, the dazzling Lily of Jersey, who was literally mobbed wherever she went. Among the noted beauties of the day were Mrs. Cornwallis West, Mrs. Luke Wheeler and others. About this time my brother William and his wife having come over for a fortnight — the last visit they ever paid to England — Spencer Cowper, a very old acquaintance of mine at the Cercle de l'Union at Paris, asked us all to dine with him. With my love of music the occasion happened to be an interesting one, as the first on which I ever met Paolo Tosti, a young Italian artist, who delighted us after dinner by Binging his own compositions Quantfio t'amerei and 7V Ra/pirei amongsl them. He was then quite unknown to fame, but afterwards deservedly became the most popular of composers and most charming disev/r of hifl own melodies. I had heard of him before 106 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST from his delightful pupil Donna Bianca Capranica, and more than other singing-masters he has con- tributed to implant in our amateurs a production of the voice and an art de bien dire which were almost unknown in the days of my youth. Not the least gratifying of Signor Tosti's after experi- ences was the favour in which he stood with the late Queen and the venerable Duchess of Cambridge. In the last years of Her Royal Highness's life he used to go and sing to her every day, and the Duchess is said to have left him in her will sub- stantial proof of her regard. If I can trust my recollections of the season of 1876 it was a brilliant one in every way. Great balls and parties were given at Stafford House and at Grosvenor House, and almost for the first time the splendid palazzo of the Holfords in Park Lane, not long before completed, opened its doors in honour of the very charming young ladies of the family, one of whom, now Lady Grey, whose marriage took place the following year, seemed to me, when I first met her at the Loyd-Lindsays at Lockinge, one of the most attractive types of high-bred English maidenhood imaginable. Nor can I pass over in my retrospect of this and fol- lowing seasons that absolutely unique combination of a town and country abode, Holland House — where I had the good fortune to be asked a good deal at this time — with its lively, diminutive hostess, who dispensed the hospitality of her grand historic HOLLAND HOUSE 107 house with a half foreign ease and grace, and whose smaller gatherings and dinners were quite the pleasantest in London. Among her frequent visitors of those days wire that Irish cosmopolite, Percy Ffrench, speaking all languages with equal volu- bility ; the Granvilles and Frederick Leveson- Gower ; old Panizzi of the British Museum; poor Fortunato, the last of Neapolitan representatives in London, where he then still lived on in exile and penury ; Edward Cheney, Lord Ronald Gower, and Lcighton, whose artistic home almost adjoined Holland House, &c. &c. x\t dinner here one day I remember meeting, for the first time, Princess Frederica of Hanover, who seemed interested in my South American and other experiences, and conversed with me most of the evening. I have seldom since come across this gracious and state- liest of princesses of a fallen house, the " poor Lily of Hanover " as the late Queen used to call her, and little did I then foresee the many kind- nesses that were to be shown me years afterwards by other members of her illustrious family. Beauti- ful Holland House! It is good to know that it has since parsed into the hands of another perfect hostess, who fully values and guards its treasures and associations, and that it has the promise of like intelligent solicitude in the next generation. Such distant exile as I had undergone naturally drew me still oearer to old friends and relations on my return, and I wm warmly greeted by old 108 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST Lord Rokeby and all the Montagu connection, by the Haringtons — kindly Johnny Harington, then fast approaching his end — the Loyd-Lindsays, and by Rivers and his sister Harriet Bruce. I shall not easily forget Harriet's affectionate welcome of me in her house in Prince's Gardens, now tenanted by the most popular, and certainly not the least patriotic, of our statesmen. Still wonderfully hand- some — in her youth she had been the most beauti- ful of Maids of Honour in the earliest years of the late Queen's reign — she was already stricken past recovery with a cruel malady against which she bore up with the rarest pluck for the sake of her brother, Horace, to whom she was devoted ; care- fully concealing her hopeless condition from him and all others up to the very end. I have kept a touching letter she wrote me when I left town for Biarritz at the beginning of July, in which she told me of her danger, of which I had not had the least idea, and said that I should never see her again. A week later she was no more. I found my small people comfortably installed in lodgings at the Maison Roquejoffre in the Rue de rimprimerie, where I spent two months with them. They had been provided during my absence with a daily governess, a worthy lady who calls for mention as about the plainest and quite the wartiest person I ever beheld. The poor creature's face and hands were covered with these distressing excres- BRAVO TORO' 109 cences, which of course did not commend her to sensitive, quick-witted boys, so that, with all her goodwill, the results of her teaching were hardly commensurate with her efforts. My widowed sister- in-law 7 , Helen Rumbold — very smart and pretty in those days, and much liked and cntource by the habitues of the Chalet la Rochefoucauld — was also here with her little Arthur, a handsome, intelligent child of eight, who was almost suddenly taken from her a few months later. The perfect weather we had made Biarritz very enjoyable, and favoured some distant excursions. We went, a large family party with a lew friends — including, I think, the beautiful and charming Mrs. Arthur Post, now Lady Barry- more, my acquaintance with whom dates from this period — to a bull-fight at St. Sebastian — the only occasion on which I ever set foot on Spanish soil. I frankly confess that, in spite of the novelty and brilliancy of the pageant, I came away greatly shocked by what seemed to me the barbarity of the proceedings, more especially as concerns the wretched animals on which the picadores are mounted. The sight of one of these broken-down beasts, gored to death and literally disembow 7 elled, yet still standing on its poor quivering legs, while blood dripped from it in a stream that reached the sand beneath with a dull thud, was sickening beyond words. My sister-in-law nearly fainted away and had to Leave the box. Almost more re- \oltinu r and painful t<> my mind is the Inexorable no RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST fate of the bull itself when once it has been let into the arena. The temper of the beasts immo- lated in any corrida of course varies a good deal, some of them showing far less sport — if such a term can be fairly used — than others. One splendid, savage brute — as black as Erebus — with red, blood- shot eyes full of the lust of battle, and snorting, fiery nostrils — came bounding into the ring, which he soon almost cleared, unhorsing the picadores and lacerating their mounts, and chivying a banderillero or two over the barrier for safety. He got a deservedly warm ovation, the Spanish elegantes — at this bathing-season St. Sebastian was full of smart folk from Madrid — applauding him to the echo ; it was bravo toro ! with a vengeance. But, when he was practically master of the field, it was too sad to see the poor brute wander round and round the wooden wall that penned him in to his doom, blindly feeling along it with his horns for the entrance whence he would too gladly have returned to his native potrero in distant Cordoba, 1 but through which, after being artistically despatched by the renowned Lagartijo, specially engaged, his carcase would presently be dragged by the team of mules with gay harness, to the funeral blare of trompeta e clarin and impatient cries of otro toro ! It is this side, it seems to me, of the drama in the bull 1 The greatest breeding establishment for bulls destined for the ring is, I believe, in the province of Cordoba, and belongs to the Duque de Veraguas, the descendant of Columbus. SLOANE STREET in ring — a surviving fragment of the brutal old gladi- atorial and other shows of decadent Rome — that cannot but be repugnant to healthy-minded English- men, in whose keen instincts of sport, however murderous, the idea of all possibility of escape being denied to the victim pursued can find no place. Not all the wonderful skill and grace and the cool daring of the espada and other bull- fighters, pitting their lives en champ clos against the most dangerous and infuriated of animals, can quite redeem the national sport of an essentially chivalrous people from this reproach of unfair- ness. I left Biarritz on the i 5th September with my boys, and after a few days at Paris, where we halted to see my late wife's parents, the Harringtons, and I had the great pleasure of visiting the del Grillos in their Parisian home, we went on to London, where I had engaged the upper part of No. 136 Sloane Street, over what was at that time the shop of an upholsterer in a small way of business. In the course of the autumn I paid a few visits — among others, at Lockinge and at Vale Royal (the Delameres), and to Wilfrid Blunt at his delightful Sussex home, C rabbet ; also spending a day or two with Ferdinand Rothschild and his sister at a small hunting-box he then had at Leightofl Buzzard, meeting there Mrs. Sands, who, too soon for her English friends, went back to the States a few months later. For the first Christinas dinner 1 ii2 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST had eaten in England for many years I was indebted to Mrs. John Towneley in Eaton Place, always a very kind friend to me, who kept, so to speak, open house on that day for the homeless and the destitute like myself. CHATTER VII COUNTRY VISITS, 1S77-1878 From this time onward a diary — almost Pepysian in its fullness — which I kept pretty regularly for the next two or three years, to a certain degree simplifies my task, while at the same time some- what inconveniently crowding the slight canvas I have been working upon with the help of memory alone. Early in January 1S77, I went for a few days to the Bamngtons at their pleasant home in the Vale of White Horse. The Barrington family and connec- tion have been amongst my kindest and staunchest friends through life, and at this day I have in Eric Barrington 1 almost the only link left to me with the great Department I served under for over half a century. At the time I refer to, George Barring- ton" — certainly one of the most agreeable and best- looking men of his generation — ruled at Beckett with his charming wife, and soon afterwards became Lord Beaconsiield's chef du cabinet — to borrow a foreign term which alone correctly conveys 1 The Eon. Sir Eric Barrington, K.C.B., successively l'rivate .•y to Lord Salisbury and Lord Lanadowne, ; George, ;tli W..,uiii Barrington, married Iiabel, daughter of John lioi ritt, of ] ■• Pai '»■■ JTork. 11 ii 4 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST the confidential functions of a Private Secretary to the Premier. The party I found here were almost strictly family, grouped, as it were, round perhaps the dearest old lady I can remember, the Dowager Lady Barrington, one of the numerous and popular Liddell sisterhood, 1 of whom at this moment Lady Bloomfield alone survives. With her gentle ways, her brightness, her slight lisp, the lovely smooth skin and complexion, and the pretty hair she kept till her last day, it is difficult to imagine a more lovable central figure to any family circle. These quiet days at Beckett, and the welcome I was always assured of in Cavendish Square and Hertford Street, are among my most pleasing recollections of this period. Lord Barrington took me a long, delight- ful ride on a pulling thoroughbred chestnut one day, I remember, to the great White Horse and the Roman camp above it, and thence home by Wayland Smith's cave of Kenilworth fame ; and of an evening Miss Augusta Barrington 2 enchanted me by playing quite magistralement bits of Schumann and Schubert, and a heavenly motif from the only symphony ever written by Chopin for the piano and orchestra. From Beckett I went on to Castle Ashby, whither Percy Anderson, 3 one of my most intimate F.O 1 Lady Normanby, Lady Williamson, Mrs. Edward Villiers, and Lady Hardwicke were some of Lord Ravensworth's many daughters. 2 Now Mrs. Maclagan, wife of the Archbishop of York. 3 Sir Henry Percy Anderson, K.C.B., K.C.M.G., was Assistant Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and died in 1896. CASTLE ASHBY 115 chums, had been commissioned by his sister, Lady Alwyne Compton, to ask me. The invitation was afterwards kindly extended by Lord Northampton ! to my three little fellows, who, having spent their small lives abroad, were at first much bewildered by the size of the beautiful old Jacobean pile, with its intricate passages and long, creepy galleries. But although a thoroughly haunted-looking house, no uncomfortable traditions appear to attach to Castle Ashby. We spent upwards of a fortnight here, our host taking a great fancy to the boys, and to the quaint (ierrnan patois songs they had been taught to sing in parts by one of their nurses. Lord Northampton was already then in the very last stage of decline, but his conversation was still delightful, and, like his gifted sister, Lady Marian Alford, he \\ as an admirable draughtsman, and worked with pencil and brush to the very last. Artistic gifts are indeed hereditary in the family, for staying in the house was old Lady Elizabeth Dickins, Lord Northampton's aunt, who used to amuse the children with very clever pen-and-ink sketches which she did, for choice, kneeling by the table, although then considerably past eighty. From Castle Ashby we went, a party, by train (I quote again from my diary) to lunch with Mrs. Stopford Sackville at Drayton House, a place that 1 Charles, 3rd Harqnesi of Northampton, born 1816, died 1877* n6 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST interested me, specially from its having belonged to the last Duke of Dorset, 1 who had been so often mentioned before me in my boyhood as an intimate friend of my great-aunt, Mrs. Rigby. It is a magnificent old house, but looks dreary and fallen in estate, the income from the property barely sufficing to keep it up. Mrs. Sackville, the niece of the last Duke (she would have been Duke had she been a boy), was most cordial to me, and said my name was very familiar to her. She showed me some miniatures, one of which I singled out as being Mrs. Rigby, but I could not find the clue I had hoped for to the lost picture of her by Sir Joshua. 2 There are almost unique old hornbeam hedges in the grounds here, and the finest wrought-iron gates of ancient Dutch work- manship. In town afterwards I saw a good deal of Mrs. Sackville and her daughters, who were great friends of my cousin, Harriet Bruce. From the diary, too, I extract the following about an expedition to my mother's home at Bunney Park, near Nottingham, which I undertook from Castle Ashby, being curious to see the place once 1 Charles, fifth Duke of Dorset, K.G., died unmarried in 1843. He was godfather to my elder brother Charles. 2 This very fine portrait of the only daughter of Sir Thomas Bumbold by his first wife, painted before her marriage with Colonel Rigby, which I well remember in my youth, was sold at Paris in the sixties, and it has been impossible to trace it since. FAMILY PICTURES 117 more ; the owner, to whom it had been left absolutely by my uncle Rancliffe, away from his family, having died quite recently : — January 22. — Reached Nottingham at 3, and went to the "Flying Horse" inn, to which old Rancliffe had taken me in 1849. Mai pas was dead, and his daughter having sold the concern, the new people knew nothing of Bunney. I chartered a hansom and drove the 7^ miles out there. Trim lodge and gates. Drove through the park to the hall, over the porch of which hangs Mrs. F.'s hatchment. The house had a deserted, neglected aspect as I stood before it in the fading light. At last a servant in ill-fitting mourning livery came to the door, and, taking my card, ushered me into the library ; Miss Hawksley was engaged, but would come to me presently. There is a bare, unfurnished air about all the rooms, and, coming straight from luxurious Castle Ashby, of course one felt the con- trast. Miss H., when she came, received me very civilly, and obligingly volunteered to show me the family pictures she had put away in one of the b'drooms upstairs. There are half-a-dozen good paintings there — my grandfather and grandmother by Hoppner (the latter a beautiful picture), their parents, &c. One or two of them (not being lettered) it was impossible to identify, and such was the ease with those downstairs, none of which could be told with certainty, except the old Cavaliei colonel, n8 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST Isham Parkyns, father of the first Baronet. She had to take extra care of everything, she said, on account of the trustees. This gave me an opportunity of asking how the place was left. She answered simply enough that she " might live here for her life if she pleased," but after her all went to the Levinges, meaning, of course, William. He and his wife (Miss Sutton) had been there at Christmas. It was getting very dark, but Miss H. sent round to have the church opened for me, and I had a look at the monuments in the gloaming. The sexton's wife, who did cicerone, turned out to be the daughter of a woman who had been in my father's service when he was living at Melbourne Hall, Derbyshire. That must have been before he went out to India in 1813. I made another excursion to Bunney, with my wife, some years later. Miss Hawksley (now Mrs. Wilkinson) is doing her duty by the place, and hunting friends, who know it well as a regular meet of the Quorn, tell me that she is greatly esteemed in the neighbourhood. Our stay at Castle Ashby now came to a close. We left on the 30th January in so violent a gale that it was doubtful whether we should be able to reach the station. About noon a good-sized elm came down with a crash close to the entrance. The weather moderating, we took the 2 o'clock train. I was quite moved at parting from Lord Northampton LADY MARIAN ALFORD 119 and the kind Ahvyne Comptons. 1 He looked so ill, and his hand was absolutely transparent. He died on the 3rd of March following. Lady Marian, who travelled with us to town, was quite delightful in the train, and whiled away the time with some capital anecdotes, some of which, with others she had told me at Castle Ashby, I will endeavour to recount, though I can do them but little justice. Some of her stories referred to Mr. Gladstone, whom she was much too °:ood a Tory not to dislike. She said that during a round of visits she was making in the North the previous autumn she met the (iladstones at Ford Castle, and went on with Mrs. Gladstone and her daughter to Alnwick. On the way there they had to traverse some property belonging to Lord Browulow, and Lady Marian's coming being expected, the tenants were on the look-out for her, and made many affectionate de- monstrations as she drove by, whereat, unconscious, Mrs. Gladstone exclaimed: ''They think William is in the carriage ! " During this same tour Lady Marian had met Iliibner, 2 who was on his way to 1 Lord Ahvyne Compton, youngest brother <>f the Lord Nor- thampton spoken of above, was then I ;<-i the Foreign Office. 1 1 i ~ wife mel with a leath, being run away with in Gro renoi Place and thrown out of . carri.i).'' il iiijui 1 122 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST January 24. — Went up to town, and in the afternoon to some music at the Marchs — mostly Virginia M.'s compositions. Met here Mrs. St. George Caulfeild, whom I have scarcely seen since a certain journey from the Piraeus to Messina in the Messageries boat in January 1 864, when she charmed Geofroy and me by her singing. Asked to meet her to-morrow at lunch at the Haringtons. I will say but a few words here on a subject which, from that day forward, looms very large in the daily record from which I am quoting. At the very outset I knew for certain that what happiness I might yet hope for lay in that direction ; and, writing this in the sere and yellow leaf, am grate- fully assured of how true was my instinct. Before reaching, however, the goal I thenceforward steadily kept in view, I had to pass through troublous times, on which I will touch but lightly in these pages, penned in a haven of rest in prosaic Sloane Street, with its noise and traffic, and its bright, common- place shops — but which to me, in the days I write of, was an enchanted region, the glamour of which has in my memory not departed from it yet : — In einer nahen Gasse sollt'st Du wohnen, Ich wollt dein Nachbar sein und Dich bewachen ; Das Dir kein Leid begegne, nichts Dich store — Mit einem Blick kbnnt'st dann und wann mich lohnen ! l 1 The rooms I had engaged, on my return from abroad, at 136 Sloane Street, happened to be only a few doors from the house of my present wife, who was living there with her little son after the loss of her husband, Captain St. George Caulfeild. LONDON GAIETIES 123 To turn to the U rilenzio. The [gnatiews meanwhile arrive, and then the Prince with Princess Louise. 126 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST Somewhat further on I find the following : — May 14. — Dined at the Dorchesters in Berkeley Square — a pleasant party : Sir A. Cockburn, Lady Rosslyn, the Charles Barings, Avelands, Wombwells, Henry Lennox, &c. I took in Mrs. Baring, whom I have not met for years, and this brought back old times very vividly. Reached Grosvenor House at 12, and found there a great crush. It was generally known that it would develop into a dance, but the arrival of H.R.H., who had been at the Albert Hall, was waited for before they began. Mrs. Sands here, looking lovelier than ever. I danced a quadrille vis a vis to her and Deym (then Secretary to the Austrian Embassy). At 2.45 a. m. Montgelas brought news of the division in the House. A great triumph for the Government, who got a majority of 129. 1 While I was having a little supper before leaving, the Prince came up to me and entered into conver- sation very graciously. He is as anti-Russian as ever, and indeed, longs, it is said, for some command in the field. He ended by offering me a lift in his carriage — an honour I was obliged to decline, living so far out of his line of road. It is difficult not to be drawn towards him, his manner is so absolutely perfect. Meanwhile I had heard in the early spring from my sister of the engagement of her daughter, Ida 1 The division on Mr. Gladstone's resolutions on the attitude of the Government towards the Porte and the massacres in Bulgaria. AN ENCASHMENT 127 Cavendish, to a young Prince Louis Pignatelli d'Aragon — of the Spanish branch of that ancient and well-known family — whose parents had been settled for some time at Biarritz. These Pignatelli s, who were not, I believe, in affluent circumstances, had come to live here close to the Spanish frontier partly on account of their strong Carlist proclivities, the fiance and his elder brother having served with Don Carlos on his last campaign in the Basque provinces. I should myself have much preferred to see my dear little niece, who has since borne herself admirably in difficult and painful cir- cumstances, married to some nice young Englishman, but diiscUiter visum. My sister made it so pressing a request that I should be present at the wedding, and be one of the tc'moins customary on these oc- ( asions in France, that I resolved to go, leaving my boys in London, where Cinny Montagu and other friends promised to look after them. I reached Bayonne on the day of the signature of the contrat, and was met by my sister and her future son-in-law, who, at first sight, impressed me favour- ably, having a well-bred look, and somewhat the air of a smart Austrian cavalry officer. Lord Henry Lennox 1 was the other English tdmoin besides myself, the Spaniards being a Count de la Florida and the Due de San Lucar. The function was absurdly delayed, I remember, by the bridegroom 1 Lad ll'-nrv Gordon Lennox, &t one time Secretary to the A.dmi- ad robeeqnently FintCommi Loner oi Worke,died in 1886. 128 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST and his parents, Count and Countess de Fuentes, keeping us all waiting over an hour with true Spanish nonchalance. The next day the mariage civil took place at the Mairie at Biarritz at the impossible hour of 11.30 p.m.; Henry Lennox being rather amusing about the absurdity of our meeting at midnight in the house of a French mayor. Almost the last time I had seen him, I think, was at Henry Labouchere's at Pope's Villa, Twickenham, in far more diverting sur- roundings. Punctually at eleven the following morning our family party met at the Church of Ste. Eugenie for the wedding. We found the approaches crowded with well-dressed people, and all the wedding guests assembled, with the exception of the bridegroom and his belongings, who again were upwards of a quarter- of-an-hour late. There being no one else there of sufficient importance to take my sister into the church, the Duke of Abercorn, 1 who had been asked as a distant relation of the bride, promptly came forward and gave her his arm, the poor bride having meanwhile to wait in the porch for these strangely unpunctual Castilians. At last we moved in due procession up the aisle, and the couple were married dans le chccur, inside the altar railings, which, it seems, is a privilege of the Princes du Sai?U Empire ; these Pignatellis having quite a string of high-sound- 1 The first Duke of Abercorn, ex- Viceroy of Ireland, whose wife, Lady Louisa Russell, was related to the Cavendishes. AN OLD SECRET TREATY 129 ing Spanish, Italian, and Flemish titles, and, among these, laying claim to that of Egmont of tragical memories. After the ceremony, at which the Abbe Saubot officiated with considerable unction and dignity, we all signed the register in the sacristy, and then drove back to the as yet unfinished Pavi- lion where breakfast had been laid for twenty-four in a big coach-house, decorated with much taste for the occasion. The luncheon went of! well, though with a certain solemnity, and our duke, who in manner and appearance was certainly a perfect specimen of his class, proposed the bride's health in excellent French but with truly British shyness. I stayed on at Biarritz a few days, during which I was taken to St. Jean de Luz, and shown over the house which in 1660 witnessed the somewhat more important marriage of Louis Quatorze and his Spanish Infanta. At Paris, where I also lingered a few days, I found the Embassy Chancery composed of old friends like Ottiwell Adams (afterwards Minister in Switzerland), Bill Harrington, Maitland Sartoris, and George Greville. There was much talk li.ac of course about the critical situation in the Bast, and I recollect being assured by one of the Embassy staff that during the Duke of Wellington's brief embassy at Petersburg in 1826 a secret treaty had bees Bigned between us and Russia, which provided tor a partition of Turkish territory in given eventualities, and that this agreement had I 130 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST afterwards really been the basis of the notorious pourparlers between the Emperor Nicholas and Sir Hamilton Seymour. I have never heard this remark- able statement corroborated since, but, on referring to my diary, find that it was distinctly made to me at the time, and struck me the more on account of our being again on what seemed the eve of war with Russia. Lord Lyons, I know, was certainly of opinion that we could scarcely hope to keep out of the impending conflict, and was much disturbed by the evident leaning towards Russia of the Due De- cazes, who was then Minister for Foreign Affairs. One of the great dangers, as I recollect Sir Charles Dilke remarking to me about that time, was the warlike tone of our constituencies, and the fact that the greater the progress of democracy in England, the less the people would be disposed to accept a "peace at any price policy." I went with Ottiwell Adams to see the " Poule d'Essai," or French Two Thousand, run for — a bril- liant sight and a brilliant crowd, conspicuous among which was the strikingly handsome Mrs. Francis Lowther, to whom Adams introduced me. I also went to a great ball given by the Gustave Roths- childs in their splendid new house in the Avenue de Marigny, built on the very site of the poor old Hotel Delmar of my childhood and first youth. Although the Paris world could not but have entirely changed since those distant days, there came over me that evening a peculiar Rip van Winkle-like sensation WAGNER CONCERTS 131 at finding myself practically an entire stranger in a society once so familiar to me. Fortunately some few old friends remembered me, and I supped gaily with Mouchv and Georges d'Aramon — the latter full of the drollest sallies, and both of them the best of company. The following day I went back to London, and almost the next thing I find entered in my diary is a dinner given by Ferdinand Rothschild partly in honour of his cousin Gustavo aforesaid, who had come over to see his horse " Verneuil " run at New- market in the Two Thousand, in which, by the way, he was beaten by Lagrange's " Chamant." May 3, 1S77. — The dinner last night was a big affair. We had the Castlereaghs, Macnamaras, Lord , \Yaterford, Count Beust, Lord Rosebery, Miss Marie Ilervev, &c, and the new Lady Mandeville, to whom I was introduced and with whom I had a long talk about America, and my sister and Ida, whom she had known well at Newport. She has all the American simplicity and unconventionality ; but will make, I fancy, a Duchess after an entirely new pattern. Lord Harrington too was at the dinner, much dis- gusted, I fancy, with Gladstone and his resolutions. This year there took place, for the first time in this country 1 think, a series of Wagner concerts at the Albert Ball, some impressions of which, as noted down by me, seem not entirely without interest in viru of the passion for the works of Wagner which 132 KECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST has reached such a pitch in this country of recent years. May 7, 1877. — To a box at the Albert Hall, belonging to Mrs. White of Ardarroch (afterwards Lady Henry Lennox), the party consisting of Mrs. Henry Wodehouse, 1 a Miss Hornby (daughter of the Admiral), Walter Creyke, and the Lord Chief Justice. 2 The Tannhaiiser march was magnificently played, and gave rise to a great ovation, but the Rheingold music seemed too strange and incompre- hensible without the scenic effects, and fell rather flat. Quoth Sir Alexander, rousing himself at the end from his slumbers : " Well, any man who be- lieves in that music would believe in the Claimant." The Royalties mustered in great force to-night, the Teck box being next to ours. One result of these Wagner performances, directed by the great composer himself, was cer- tainly, as far as I was concerned, to make it im- possible to listen patiently to such operas as Donizetti's. A few nights later, for instance, " Lucia," admirably given, with Albani and the new Spanish tenor, Gayarre, in the leading parts, seemed to me almost unendurable, with the ex- ception of the great septett and the duet in the second act between the soprano and baritone. 1 The widow of my Vienna colleague, remarried to the 5th Marquis of Anglesey. 2 The well-known Sir Alexander Cockburn. THE PRINCE IMPERIAL 133 The next extract is not without a melancholy interest : — June 10, 1877. — At 4 o'clock took a train from Yauxhall to Putney, and thence in a hansom to Borthwick's x place at Coombe. I knew it was pretty, but had no conception of the extreme beauty of the spot as it appeared on this glorious summer day. There were about fifty or sixty people here, and on the lawn some clever Indian ju ™lers and snake-charmers, who did wonderful tricks, but were very slow over them. After their performances the Prince Imperial and Arthur Russell ~ asked to look at the snakes, and began handling the loathsome creatures, one charming lady following their example, rather to my dis- may. We stayed to dinner, a party of sixteen, amongst whom were the Barringtons, De la Warrs, Dorchesters, the Duke of Sutherland, and the Prince Imperial, to whom I was presented, and who made a most favourable impression upon me. Hi- went away early, but, before leaving, wrote his name (plain Napoldon) in a book Borthwick keeps of his visitors. Drove home with Bertie lfitford a and his wife, going for a few minutes into their house in Cheyne Walk, which seemed 1 Tin- jiivM-tit I,.. 1 <1 1 Jlum-sk. - Lord Arthur Km- ill. M.I', for T&TlfltOOk, died i8e rated pn achei in appearance. TIh: late BiH !harlet Hall t Q.C., Recorder of I.' in. ion and A.ttornej - 1 . to the Pi incc of Wales. * M ' feneral Oliphant, 'Mi., now commanding the Home District. 140 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST were waiting for me which fully confirmed the bad news. From Perth I went on the 25th September to Glamis Castle on what proved to me a momentous visit. For my invitation to this house, which I had long wished to see, I was indebted to dear old Lady Barrington, who was going there herself with her daughter from Murthly Castle — a delightful place overlooking the river Tay, and well known for its excellent fishing, then occupied by Henry Graham * and his mother, and subsequently rented during many years by the painter Millais. I joined the Barringtons at Murthly and reached Glamis with them late in the afternoon as it was getting dark. Coming upon it in the gloaming of a September day, the first sight of the splendid Castle, round which have grown up such strange mysterious traditions, quite surpassed my expectations, and I at once realised the peculiar atmosphere of uncanniness by which all those who have stayed there agree that it is pervaded. Lady Strathmore — most graceful and gracious of hostesses — took me to a room on the second floor at the top of the main staircase, known as the " panelled chamber," very comfortable and perfectly harmless to all appearance, except for a large, dark, and deep coal-cupboard in one corner of it — in the great thickness of the wall — the recesses of which seemed to me uncomfortably vague and obscure. I may as well admit at once that, all 1 Now Sir Henry Graham, K.C.B., Clerk of Parliaments, married to Lady Margaret Coinpton, second daughter of the fourth Marquess of Northampton. GLAMIS 141 through my week's stay here, I felt somehow on the stretch, and certainly did not enjoy unbroken rest at night. The next day I was taken over the house, which is truly a unique habitation. It has been lived in for over eight centuries, and is full of puzzling, crooked corridors and unexpected staircases and turnings, the rooms and passages, though charm- ingly furnished and brightly carpeted, and made to look as cheerful as possible, yet none the less con- \< y an indefinable sense of gloom and mystery. I hasten to add that no house I ever stayed in inter- ested me so deeply, or remains so vividly and grate- fully present to my memory. Other causes, however, ■\\ hicfa have made Glamis in every way memorable to me contributed to this ; for to the small party staying here — mostly family — was soon added my friend and neighbour in London, Mrs. St. George Caul- l'< lid, who with her boy came on from a visit to the Kinnoulls at Dupplin. Michaelmas-day being the anniversary of the con- secration of the private chapel in 1688, full choral service was held in commemoration — Dean Nicolson of Brechin officiating. The chapel, which adjoins the drawing-room — on the further side of which, by the way, is the sacristy — has a curious panelled and painted ceiling, one of the panels being said to lead to a " priest's hob/' or hiding-place. In the afternoon we drove over — tLpCLfite c<f the 1 ' in il Company. Wilson, G.O.M.Q., C.B., Controller-General of the National Debt, and afterward Finance Minister in Egypt. 150 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST that great Department. Our gathering at cheery Hanford was essentially artistic, its occasion being some concerts given for a charitable purpose at the neighbouring village of Stourpaine. Fred Clay, the clever composer and most amusing and Bohemian of Treasury clerks — some of whose melodious songs, like " She wandered down the Mountain Side " and " I'll sing thee Songs of Araby," still hold their own at ballad concerts — was the life and soul of the rehearsals. A good deal of the music that was performed was by Arthur Sullivan, with bits from his " Sorcerer," which had then not yet come out, directed by the talented composer himself. Lionel Benson and an old acquaintance of mine, pretty, charming Mrs. Ronalds — to this day deservedly the most popular of musical hostesses in London, who has never been known to say an unkind thing, and has never lost a friend — took the chief parts in a programme such as no Dorsetshire yokels ever had a chance of listening to before or since. Rivers and his wife completed the party. It was almost the last time I saw much of Rivers, who, as Horace Pitt, had been one of the smartest and certainly much the best-looking of officers of the Blues, and, late in life, had found a very devoted wife in bright, cheery Minnie Bastard. His father had been my godfather; he in turn being one of the godfathers of my eldest son. 1 I went with the boy to see him 1 The boy was called Horace after him, and Montagu after Lord Rokeby. NETHERBY 151 one day, and was rather disappointed, I remember, at his taking but little notice of him. All the more surprised and gratified was I, therefore, when he most generously left his godson and namesake ^500 in his will. My second visit was to the ancient home of the Grahams at Netherby, near Carlisle. Origi- nallv a frontier stronghold in " the debatable land," and the headquarters of the most troublesome of borderers and moss - troopers, it has been in my recollection the cradle of successive generations of perhaps the fairest women in English society. The mingling of such strains as Sheridan and Callander has produced in the Graham blood a truly wonderful blend of loveliness. Of Lady Graham, ne'e Callander — the wife of the eminent statesman, Sir James, and mother and grandmother of the ladies I refer to — it is said that the Emperor Nicholas, when asked, on his visit to this country in 1S44, which he most admired of the ladies he had met, unhesitatingly accorded her the palm of supreme beauty. Netherby is altogether an interesting place with manv old traditions; the best known of them pro- bably being the legend of "Young Lochinvar," the scene of which most romantic of runaway matches lay, not inappropriately, in the close vicinity of Gretna Green. The house has also the credit of being haunted, and on this point T can oiler what ems to me curious testimony. My friends the Etokebys were very intimate with Sir .lames Graham 152 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST and his family, and used in old days to stay at Netherby regularly every year. On one occasion, the night after their arrival, Lord Rokeby woke up suddenly out of his first sleep, and, in the dim rays of a night - light which was burning in the room, distinctly saw a figure in white cross at the foot of the great four-poster and pass into a dressing - room next door which had no separate outlet beyond it. The room was occupied by his daughter Lily (now Mrs. Wellesley), then a girl of about fifteen. Lord Rokeby turned to his wife and found that she too was awake, and had had as vivid an impression as himself of the passing vision. He got up and went into the dressing-room, thinking that possibly the girl might have been playing some prank on her parents, but found her fast asleep. To make sure, however, that she had not been out of bed, he felt her feet, which were quite warm. On going down to the breakfast - room next morning he was greeted by the eldest Miss Graham (Cossy), and, on her casually expressing the hope that he had slept well, he began telling her of his nocturnal experience, when she at once stopped him and begged him to say nothing further, as her father might be down at any moment, "and could not bear the subject to be alluded to." 1 I have, nevertheless, related the above almost exactly, I believe, as it was afterwards told me by Lord Rokeby himself. 1 No doubt Sir James had learned by experience how inconvenient such a tradition can be in a large household. AN INTERESTING LECTURE 153 I have never since had the good fortune to re- visit Netherby and its beautiful views of the river Esk and the blue hills beyond it. In my memory it remains associated with much kindness shown me at a period of discouragement and perplexity, and I shall always look back with pleasure to the walks I took in its delightful woods, so picturesquely overhanging the bright, rapid Border river, in the company of charming Lady Ilermione — one of my present wife's oldest and best friends, full of sympathy and good counsel — or with the eldest of her four fair daughters, then lately widowed, who afterwards became Lady Verulam. One more reminiscence of an entirely different character should be recorded in this place. On February the 1st I went to a lecture on the Tele- phone, given at the Royal Institution by Mr. (now Sir William) Preece. It was, I think, the first com- plete account given in public of that wonderful apparatus, of which, at that time, comparatively little was known. 1 I called in the forenoon on the secre- tary in Albemarle Street to obtain, if possible, an order of admission. Mr. Spottiswoode courteously promised to do the best he could for me, and, as I was leaving him, observed that another invention of a very interesting character wonld probably be produced that evening. Pointing to a box on his table he said that the inventor hud that morning brought him [l fa i been ihown to the Queen, ' borne, by Ifr. Preece just a fortnigbl ;. 15, 1S78). 154 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST an instrument by which the mechanical effect of the vibrations of sound could be imprinted on a moving surface of wax, and the sounds thus collected be afterwards reproduced at will. Mr. Preece's lecture was of course deeply interest- ing, and, when it was concluded, the apparatus I had been shown in the morning was produced. It was the very rudimentary phonograph invented two years before by Mr. Edison, and the first design of which he patented in 1877. The sounds it emitted — among other things a few words by Mr. Gladstone, if I remember rightly — were of a thin, grating, Punch and Judy like character, while its rendering of some commonplace melody reminded one of a cracked penny trumpet. The effect produced was nevertheless decidedly uncanny, and when I think of the present instruments, with their almost perfect reproduction of orchestral pieces or vocal recitals, it seems as though far more than a quarter of a century must have passed since the first exhibition of the embryo phonograph at which I was present. Far more satisfactory, though equally uncanny, it was when, at the close of the evening, ear-trumpets were handed to visitors near the lecturer through which one distinctly heard the harmonies of some glee-singers at Long's Hotel, Bond Street, which had been connected for the purpose with the Royal Institution. It is a far cry from these experiments to my quite recent recollections of my German colleague and opposite neighbour at Vienna being MY HOME ON THE MUXSTERPLATZ 155 called up from his writing-table by n. ring to receive some special message spoken at Berlin by the voice of his Imperial master. Following, meanwhile, the advice given me at the Foreign Office I accepted Berne, and early in March made a hurried journey thither and presented my credentials to President Schenk on the 9th of that month. It was very distasteful to me to have to set up a home again in a place so full to me of saddening memories, but, after some hesitation, I made up my mind to take on the old house on the Miinsterplatz, which had been lived in by all my predecessors. This immediately faced the Cathedral and the equestrian statue of Rudolph von Erlach, and belonged to the ancient patrician family of Tscharncr. Although it was really too large for my requirements, its big, empty rooms and echoing staircase made a splendid romping-ground for my three boys, with whom I definitively installed myself there in April, providing them before long with a tutor of the name of Schimmel — a rough young Teuton who knocked them about considerably, but grounded them sufficiently well in German, Latin, and mathe- matics. This strapping young fellow, just released from his military duties, and still full of martial ardour — combined with scarcely concealed contempt lor everything that was English put his pupils through a complete course of regimental drill, ami it soon was the prettiest sight imaginable to watch 156 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST the little fellows performing the Prussian manual exercise with absolute precision and smartness. As for me, I made myself fairly comfortable in a few rooms on the first floor, and decorated my sitting-room with some handsome Italian hangings of fine cinquecento embroidery, which I picked up — a great bargain — in my old acquaintance Woog's shabby little shop, under the arcades of the main street of the Federal city. My embroideries, the careful repair and arrangement of which later on gave my wife many months of pleasant occupation at Stockholm, afterwards became a great adornment to her boudoir, both at The Hague and at Vienna. I found Berne but little altered from what I had last known it six years before on my return from Con- stantinople. The Corps Diplomatique, which had of course been entirely renewed, fortunately contained sufficiently pleasant elements of society. Comte Bernard d'Harcourt, who for a short time had been at the French Embassy in London, was now at Berne, with his ample and jocund spouse, nee de St. Priest, a most pleasant, cordial woman whose pungent sallies and Rabelaisian wit, full of V esprit Gaulois, made her the very best of company. The hospitality of the d'Harcourts was unbounded, and the quality of their wines quite remarkable ; their eldest daughter having married Comte Duchatel, the owner of some of the finest crils of the Gironde. Madame d'Harcourt subsequently inveigled me into taking part in some private theatricals at her house THE MANXLICHEX 157 — the last indiscretion of the kind I have to confess to. The play I acted in was Petite pluie abat grand rent, and had much success, thanks to my partner in the principal part, Comtesse Gaston de Dudzeelc of the Belgian Legation, a pretty, graceful woman who was then one of the great attractions of the diplomatic set, but not very many years later suc- cumbed to that cruellest of all maladies, cancer. Among the new colleagues who proved a real resource to me I may mention the Spanish Minister, Vicomte de la Vega, and his pleasant wife — one of the Murrietta family, which at that time enjoyed such favour in London society. I saw a good deal, too, of the American charge d'affaires, Nicholas Fish — son of the then Secretary of State, Mr. Hamilton Fish — and his vivacious wife, a lady who spoke both French and German well, but with an accent which lives in my ear as a perfect curiosity of its kind. With this amiable couple and my eldest boy, now nine years old, I made a short tour in the Oberland, in the course of which we went up the mountain known as the M;innlichen, which immedi- ately faces Grindelwald, and divides as it were the valley of Grindelwald from that of Lauterbrunnen. The easy, but long and somewhat toilsome ascent of this eminence is up steep grassy slopes, which in Bnmmei are covered with a profusion of lovely wild flowers. t ( 'n reaching t } 1( . topmost ridge, \n hich is marked by a rough mountain inn, one undergoes what in ni\ 158 KECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST memory remains a perfectly unique impression of a stupendous grandeur suddenly revealed. It is only a few yards from the inn to the summit above it, and when our party had climbed to the very top of this, so to speak, green rampart, a full view of a group of the finest peaks of the Bernese range — including the Jung- frau, the Monch and the Eiger — instantaneously burst upon us with literally dazzling effect. The narrow green margin we stood upon overhangs an almost perpendicular descent going sheer down several thou- sand feet into the Trumleten Thai, which, peered into from above, seems a mere gully. From its bed rose, immediately facing us and seemingly within easy gunshot, the glorious peaks aforesaid, visible throughout from their base in all their snowy splen- dour, their beautiful forms being sharply outlined against the intense blue of a July noontide. The magnificence of the picture thus abruptly presented to the eye literally takes one's breath away. Indeed, of the various Alpine views I am acquainted with, this one appears to me much the most striking from the way in which one finds oneself, without any preparation whatever, suddenly transferred into the very heart of the glorious mountain solitudes, and face to face with the sublimest scene it is possible to conceive. No other view can match it in this respect, although, next to it, when afterwards crossing over the Kleine Scheideck and the Wengernalp down to Lauterbrunnen, the prospect we kept in view of the Jungfrau, with its lovely secondary peak of the EDMUND FANE 159 Silberhorn, is quite marvellous in its way. This and other excursions I made during the two summers I now spent in Switzerland fully confirmed me in my opinion that, for real majesty and beauty, the gigantic Andes, in all their rugged grandeur, cannot compare with the Swiss Alps. On reaching Berne I found at our Legation Graham Sandford, who was transferred almost im- mediately to Rio, and W. N. Beauclerk. 1 Before long the Legation staff was strengthened by the arrival of Edmund Fane 2 and his wife, whom I reckon among the best friends I have ever had in the service. My first glimpse of Fane's tall figure and kindly humorous countenance was at Marseilles, when I landed there in sorry plight on my return from China in 1S59. He was then on his way to Persia, with Sir Henry Kawlinson, and at the beginning of a long, and not all too well requited career. Years afterwards I was in regular correspondence with him when he was Minister at Belgrade, and saw his despatches — models of their kind— which passed through my hands at Vienna under flying seal, and, like his private letters, were full of shrewd observation and sound judgment. The Fanes installed themselves for the summer at Thun, and afterwards took a house in the suburb of La Villette at Berne, which, in the dreary winter 1 Mr. William Nelthorpe Beauclerk is dow Minister Resident al Lima. 1 * 3 Edmund Fane, K < ' \i G ., Envoy extraordinary at 1 when be died in Bfareb i ' jamais memorable; on Fappettera Ven- " d\ s pions .' " l To me the appointment of M. Challemel-Laconr was destined to be of some personal interest. Very shortlv after his arrival he announced to me, with evident satisfaction, that my brother-in-law, M. de La Hochefoucauld, had been named First Secretary on the staff of his Embassy. I of course rejoiced at the prospect of my sister coming to live at Berne, but soon gathered from the letters she wrote me that however much her husband might be personally inclined, after his long disponibilite', to take up the offered post, there were serious obstacles in the way of his doing so. The very extreme views attributed to his future chief made it difficult for any one with La Rochefoucauld's name and family connexions to serve under him. More especially M. Challemel'fl reputed attitude at Lyons when sent there as Pre*fei in i.S;o by the Government of National Defence, and the violent language attri- 1 A COntemptUOOl term fur sclnxil-usher. 176 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST buted to him 1 at that period — which to me he positively disclaimed ever having held — had made him the bete noire of French monarchist and aristo- cratic circles, who saw in him a demagogue of the type of the worst men of the " Terreur." My brother- in-law soon found that by definitely accepting the offer made him he risked a serious breach with his relations and friends. Being very loth, how- ever, entirely to give up the diplomatic service, and having then besides to undergo a severe surgical operation, he naturally endeavoured to gain time, and applied for and obtained a few weeks leave before proceeding to his post. On passing through Paris on my way home in the spring I went to see the late M. Waddington, then Minister for Foreign Affairs, on this business, Ottiwell Adams, a Rugby schoolfellow and friend of his, having given me a letter to him, but I found the minister very obdurate and slightly cassant in manner. At the expiration of his leave La Rochefoucauld was given the choice between going to his post or resigning. Unfortunately the 1 M. Challemel-Lacour was sent to Lyons at a very critical moment, in the midst of the Franco-Prussian war, when the red flag had been hoisted and the town was in the hands of a " Comite de Salut Public." He displayed great energy in restoring order under these difficult circumstances, but was charged with having used the language referred to above about a Royalist demonstration which took place. The accusation was brought against him in the Chamber in 1873 by M. de Carayon-Latour, who said he had seen a written order from M. Challe- mel containing the words : " fait es-tnoi fusilier ces gens-lcl !" No proof whatever was produced of the existence of this order, which M. Challe- mel in a most eloquent speech indignantly denied ever having given. M. CHALLEMEL-LACOUR 177 papers had got hold of the affair, and it became the talk of the clubs at Paris. Under these circumstances La Rochefoucauld thought it more dignified to return to la dispoiuhil'ttr. Two years later M. ( iambetta, then President du Conseil, of his own accord con- ferred upon him the rank of Minister Plenipotentiary as some compensation for the unfair treatment ac- corded to him. A very promising diplomatic career thus came somewhat sadly to an untimely end. This incident and his transfer soon afterwards to the Embassy in London gave me an opportunity of seeim: a good deal of M. Challemel-Lacour. He of an unhappy disposition and almost a con- firmed hypochondriac, but brilliant in conversation and a speaker of rare eloquence. He owed much to (iambetta, who had a very high opinion of him, and who, after having left the bar for upwards of ten years, came forward to plead for him in an action he brought against a newspaper which had scandalously charged him with cheating at cards at some club. In London, shortly before I went out to Buenos /Lyres, M. Challemel freely unbosomed himself to me about the objections which he knew were so generally entertained against him. He was, he said, the most unfortunate of men. He hated nothing more than strife, and jret was thrust into the thick of it: " •/< de'teste la politique, et m'y trouvefovi re" jusqu'au cou!' 1 His greatest misfortune was that he could refuse nothing to his friends: " /'"?>\\ forms part of the creed of the great majority of Englishmen. I may perhaps be pardoned for claiming to have foreseen tins a quarter of a century ;iU r o, and to have then already firmly held to tenets which at that period were far from generally re- ceived. This seems perhaps the most suitable place for 1 1 1 f - 1 1 1 i < ) 1 1 i 1 1 lt what little I myself remember of Lord 1 82 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST Beaconsfield. Principally owing to the kindness of Princess Mary and the help of Monty Corry, 1 a friend of old Cambridge House days, I obtained an interview with him about some Indian business in which I have been deeply interested all my life. I cannot honestly say that, beyond a patient hearing, I obtained much from him in furtherance of that affair ; but however negative the results of my conversation with him, I was fully conscious of the great charm he is admitted to have exer- cised on all who approached him habitually, and it is something to have conversed with the Sphinx- like statesman at the zenith of his fame. I next met him at a great dinner in his honour given by dear Lady Marian Alford — almost the first time she opened the beautiful house she had recently com- pleted in Princes Gate. She had asked a number of smart people to meet him, the Duchess of Bedford, the Duchess of Cleveland, Lady Somers, and Lady Brownlow amongst others. The Premier arrived late, and it was curious to see these great ladies — en grandissime toilette for the State Concert that evening — all rise as for Royalty when the old man came in. After dinner he said a few words to me, and surveying Lady Marian's beautiful drawing- room and the conservatory beyond it, made a sweep- ing gesture with his hand, and observed in his best Lothair manner : " This is a Palace of Art ! " which, 1 Montagu William Lowry-Corry, now Lord Rowton, and at that time Private Secretary to Lord Beaconsfield. LORD BEACONSFIELD 183 though not precisely original, was just the sort of thing he might be expected to say. He looked de- cidedly worn and aged, and in spite of the great attention and respect shown to him, seemed, I thought, rather bored. And this reminds me of a pathetic little anecdote of Lady Marian's concerning him. She went to the House of Lords to see him take his seat as a Peer. She was standing about in one of the lobbies, and as he went past in his rubes heard a voice close by her sob out: "Oh! if she could only have lived to see this!" Dizzy's confidential servant ! My eldest boy was now old enough for school, and having determined from the first that he should enjoy the advantages which had been denied to me of a thorough English education, I took him home with me in May 1S79, and placed him at the large preparatory school kept by the Rev. John Hawtrey at Aldin House, Slough, which in those days went by the name of " Little Eton," and for comfort, and indeed luxury, has never, I believe, been excelled. Here the boy did extremely well, and was, on the whole, happv, having for his schoolfellow, among others, my future step-son, Alg\ Caulfeild. 1 spent three months in England this summer in my old Sloane Street lo(lu r i 11 lt, and only returned to my post in August. In my diary I find a few pas- sage! relating to this season which seem worth transcribing : — 1 84 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST July 5, 1879. — To lunch at Kensington Palace with Princess Mary, who is as agreeable and full of entrain as ever. She is very indignant — and rightly so I think — with the ladies who are going to sell next week at the Albert Hall Bazaar, cheek by jowl with the French actresses, and says the Queen ought to interfere and forbid it. She is angry, too, about the weakness shown by the Government in the matter of the reception of the remains of the Prince Imperial. After luncheon she took me to her room, and told me she had herself given Lord Beaconsfield the letter it was agreed I should write to her explaining my Indian business, and had strongly commended it to him. "With him," she amusingly said, " we can now do much more than we have been able to do for some time. He has no family of his own, you see, so he has adopted us!" She told me, too, that she had just heard of Lady Waldegrave's death, and also of that of young Lord Ossulston, from cholera in Afghanistan. The latter news, it seems, came late on Thursday even- ing. That same night I saw and spoke to Lady Tankerville at the Guinness' ball — she must have found the fatal telegram on getting home ! After taking leave of the most charming of Princesses — ■ than whom I have never had a kinder, truer friend — I walked home through the Park, and then to dinner at Ernest Clay-Ker-Seymer's. I may mention here by the way a story told A CHARITY BAZAAR 185 about this same Charity Bazaar spoken of by the Princess. A great beauty of the day, who shall be nameless, was selling cups of tea at half-a- crown apiece. A man who was quite unknown to her asked for one, and at once handed her the amount she charged for it. The lady then, before giving him the cup, took a sip from it, and, pas- sing it to him, said: "And now it's a sovereign!" AY hereupon he quietly produced the gold coin, and, returning her the tea, replied : " And perhaps now you will kindly let me have a clean cup!" May 24, 1S79. — The usual official dinner, at Lord Salisbury's in Arlington Street, in honour of the Queen's birthday, with a big party at the Foreign Office afterwards. A disagreeable incident occurred at dessert, when SchouvalorF, who probably was a little flushed with wine, made a very savage onslaught on White (of Bucharest), who showed perfect temper. Much struck at the Foreign Office party by Miss Sinclair (the daughter of Sir Tolle- inache), whom I met for the first time, and who has the most lovely complexion and a perfect figure. In elucidation of the above, I should explain that in those days the foreign Ambassadors and Ministers were the only persons to whom places were assigned, according to their rank and pre- cedence, at these birthday banquets. Our own 1 86 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST representatives on leave from their posts, and the higher personnel of the Foreign Office, sat pretty nearly as they liked — an arrangement which, al- though it was less correct, I myself much preferred to the plan now followed of sandwiching our men between the chiefs of the different foreign missions. The table, on the occasion I refer to, was of the horse-shoe shape, the top of which was reserved for Lord Salisbury's more distinguished guests. I was seated at the lower end, almost next to Mr. White, 1 who had shortly before been appointed Envoy in Roumania. Suddenly I recognised the well-known voice of the Russian Ambassador saying, in almost stentorian tones : " Demandez done a Monsieur White comment cela se dit en Juif Polo- nais." We all turned round of course, and there was an awkward silence, soon relieved by White's replying, with admirable temper, that he did not know to what Count Schouvaloff referred, but that in any case he was ignorant of the dialect in question. The studied insult conveyed in this strange and unwarrantable attack — for such it clearly was — lay in the fact that some doubt was believed to exist as to White's precise nationality. He was said to be of Irish extraction, and had been partly educated in this country, and had been at Cam- bridge ; but much of his childhood and youth had been passed in Poland, to which country his father 1 Afterwards the Right Honourable Sir William White, G.C.B., and our very distinguished Ambassador at Constantinople. SIR WILLIAM WHITE 187 had gone after being a short time in our consular service, and 'where he himself commenced his re- markable career in the modest capacity of clerk to our Consulate-General at Warsaw. He had long been obnoxious to the Russian Foreign Office as a diplomatic agent of great astuteness and activity, with quite an exceptional knowledge of things, and, above all, of men in the vast region peopled by such various and intricately dovetailed races, which, from the shores of the Baltic — where he acted as Consul at Dantzig — stretches, through the Polish and Balkan countries, to the seat of his future Embassy on the Bosphorus. The would-be sting of SchouvalofFs apostrophe was the hint it conveyed that "White was really of humble Jewish extraction, and therefore familiar with the Yiddish which of recent years has so overrun the whole of the East end of London. lie may possibly have had some Polish blood in him, and he certainly was a devout Roman Catholic. This incident, together with an invitation to the Foreign Office party, which Schouvaloff pro- cured for a somewhat notorious Kussian lady, who was scarcely received in Petersburg society, was one of the minor scandals of the season. At the Levee two days later, after I had made my bow and reached the cornet where stood the Cabinet Ministers, Lord Salisbury stopped me — a very un- usual thing for him — and significantly made some remark about the Kussian .Ambassador not being 1 88 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST present in the diplomatic cercle. These unfortunate indiscretions probably contributed to Count Schouv- alofFs resigning in November of that year. He had done such good work in contributing to preserve peace between the two countries at a most threaten- ing crisis that his splitting on such a rock was greatly to be regretted. I pretty frequently met White after this at the St. James's Club and other places. His was in every way a striking personality. In some respects he reminded me of Morier, and, without the latter's polish, was, like him, massive and imperious. His rugged exterior, rough manner, and, still rougher, loud voice — which was said specially to grate on the Sovereign to whom he was accredited — together with his peculiar foreign accent, grafted on what he claimed to be a native brogue, almost belied, and effectually masked, the great finesse and almost Slav flexibility and adroitness that lay beneath. Most remarkable of all was his flair, and his memory for the antecedents of persons of any interest he had known in his multifarious service. The self- made diplomate double' d'un policier thus became, if not a great Eltchi on the Stratford de Redcliffe pattern, at least a vigilant, admirably informed, and most loyal guardian of interests to which we then still attached much importance. One more recollection of this season I must put down here, namely, taking my boy Horace — up with an exeat from school — to see Lord Rokeby A WATERLOO VETERAN 189 in a house in Stratford Place, to which he had a few years before removed 011 the expiry of the lease of Montagu House in Portman Square. It was hard at his age — he was then in his seventy-fourth year and a martyr to gout — to be turned out of the family- home of a century. This trial he owed to his great- aunt, Mrs. Montagu (the patron of blue-stockings and chimney-sweeps), who might, it is said, have originally secured a freehold of that valuable pro- perty iustead of only a ninety-nine years' lease. We found the old general seated in the fauteuil roulant in which he habitually moved about his rooms — a picturesque figure in a loose dressing-gown and a black velvet cap, which, witli his white hair and flowing beard, gave him a most patriarchal appear- ance. The boy squatted at his feet, and presently asked him to tell him something about Waterloo, at which battle he knew from me that his godfather had been present. Nothing loth, the dear old man then related how he had been drafted out from England at seventeen to his battalion of the Guards, and had joined it only a few days before the great battle. He then told us of the terrible fight round Ilugoumont, where the Guards and Brunswickers had held out all through that never-ending June day against the repeated attacks of the enemy. It Was a story to be remembered fol Life, as I said t<> my little fellow ; for the boy-guardsman, whose baptism of fire WBM now described to him, had lived to command the brigade, and with it had likewise ipo RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST gone through the long anxious hours at Inkerman, when a few thousand English had successfully stood their ground against such fearful odds, till reinforced by Cathcart's Division and afterwards by the French. • • • • • • On my return to Berne I found a fresh colleague in M. Hamburger, who had succeeded, as Russian Minister, Prince Michel Gortchacow, the very un- popular younger son of the Chancelier. I had known M. Hamburger in the days of his bondage as one of Prince Gortchacow's ablest of quill-drivers and humblest of satellites. Now that he was a free man, he turned upon and rent his late master without mercy, and, as he owed to him his unex- pected promotion, I was amazed by his ingratitude. He cynically spoke of the Prince as being now quite incapable of any mental exertion, and abused everything about him — down to his cigars, which he described as being of the cheapest and nastiest possible kind. " You know his intolerable vanity," he said to me, "he thrusts these execrable, spurious Havanas on his acquaintance, and, I really believe, thinks they acquire flavour by his doing them the honour to smoke them." Altogether, the newly- fledged Envoy gave me the idea of a man who breathes freely for the first time, the acrimony of his remarks bearing painful witness to long habits of repression. Indeed he could, I thought, almost be looked upon as the last serf enfranchised in Russia. By an odd perverseness, however, he had EXILE AGAIN 191 regained his liberty with the Chancel icr, only to forfeit it again to a strangely selected wife, and it was doubtful which was the worse — his former or his present condition. Before very long, I was to take leave for good of Berne and of my colleagues, pleasant or indifferent. During my stay in England Philip Currie, then Private Secretary to Lord Salisbury, had sounded me several times as to my willingness to go out to Buenos Ayres. An offer of the post was repeated to me in August, in terms which made it impossible for me to refuse, though, as I reminded Lord Salis- bury, I had been given the option between Buenos A vies and Berne eighteen months before, and had chosen the latter, with its inferior rank and pay, rather than go back to South America and separate myself from mv children, to whom, as it happened, I was more than ordinarily necessary. Meanwhile I was engaged the whole autumn in negotiations with the Federal Council about a new treaty of Extra- dition, so that I did not actually leave Berne before the 15th of December. I was sincerely sorry to part from some of my friends and colleagues, notably from the d'Harcourts, the La Vegas, and old Melc- •_ r ari and his clever daughters, one of whom has since been successful in literature, and quite re- cently contributed BOme thoughtful essays to the • NuOTO Ant'ilogia." I have paid but one flying visit to Switzerland since, thougb bo many memories of my past life i 9 2 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST are bound up with that beautiful country. In taking leave of it, as it were, in these pages, I must express a sincere wish for the prosperity which its intelligent and industrious population so fully deserve. Though its sons no longer seek their fortunes in faithful military service in foreign lands, the spirit of enterprise is in nowise extinct in them. They are to be found at the most distant points of the globe, pioneers and workmen in the army of commerce, and everywhere carry with them the memories of their native soil, cherishing its ancient customs and traditions, gathering at joyous Liedertafel and festive rifle-match — nowhere forget- ful of the history which has made that wildest and most sublime of European regions, nestling in the heart of the Continent under the watch and ward of its mightiest uplands, as dear to friends of liberty as it is to all lovers of nature. CHAPTER X LONDON AND BUENOS AYRES, 1 880-1881 I LEFT Berne on the 15th of December in un- usually severe weather. Paris, where I broke the journey for twenty-four hours, was literally buried in snow, piled up in long hillocks parallel with the trottoirs, so high as quite to hide the foot passengers, apertures being cut at intervals to permit of access to the houses. It was a surprising sight, and both the aspect and the temperature of the gay, insouciant city were simply Siberian. Journeying north the following day on our way to Boulogne a milder current met us before lorn* and on nearing Folkestone we at once felt "the dewy breath of England blown across her ghostly wall " — a striking and pleasant contrast to the bitter weather we had left behind us. But for this we were soon to pay in another shape, the fogs in London this winter exceeding in density anything I can remember either before or since. On Christmas day especially the darkness was such that in the early forenoon the Very principle of light seemed gradually to die "tit of the sky. It really looked as if one's windows were being carefully draped from the outside with b N i 9 4 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST heavy black pall, and I had nothing for it but to close the shutters and draw the curtains at 10 a.m., and spend the rest of the day indoors with my small trio. Many Londoners must remember that Black Christmas, one of the strangest features of which was the dead silence of the streets. All wheeled traffic had of course been stopped at an early hour, but none the less an adventurous omni- bus managed to get on to the pavement in Sloane Street, and was overturned with a great crash a few doors from where I was staying in my old quarters. A variety of circumstances, into which it is need- less to enter, made me postpone as long as I possibly could my departure for Buenos Ayres, the result being that I passed the first seven months of 1880 in London. The change of administration which took place at the end of April, after the great Midlothian campaign and the defeat of the Conservatives at the general election, might, I hoped, produce some shuffle in the diplomatic service that would lead to my obtaining an exchange to a less distant post. I knew Lord Granville, who was now back at the Foreign Office, to be personally so well disposed towards me that I lingered on in expectation of a reprieve which, as it turned out, never came. Notwithstanding his decisive victory at the polls, the return of Mr. Gladstone to power was viewed with apprehension and distrust by an influential section of public opinion, and nowhere more so, it was said, than in the highest quarters. I happened A ROYAL AUDIENCE 195 at the time to hear, from a perfectly trustworthy source, something of the circumstances attending the great" Liheral leader's visit to Windsor when sum- moned thither by the Queen. The Dean of Windsor l was a very old friend of his, and looking in upon him at the Deanery on the evening of the 23rd April, on his way up to the Castle, Mr. Gladstone did not conceal the misgivings with which he looked forward to his audience. He returned to the Deanery after it. evidently much relieved. The Queen, he told his friend, had received him most graciously, and had confined herself to expressing the hope that no great change would he attempted in the general direction of the foreign policy of the country. Unfortunately, in looking back on those five years of Mr. Gladstone's second Administration (April 1880 to June r 8S5), it is impossible to forget that they began with what has been well described as "the apparent capitulation of the Queen's advisers to the enemy" after the disaster of Mn juba Hill — the bitter fruits of which have been reaped in the present generation — and ended in the abandonment of Gordon, and the culpably tardy, however gallant, attempt made at the eleventh hour to rescue him. But in permitting myself these stric- tures on the spirit with which the eminent statesman was apt to deal with Imperial questions, I am con- scious that I am overstepping the bounds I have set myself in these reminiscences of my pasl career. My 1 Tip- Honourable and Very Her. Gerald Welleeler, Ohaplain and Lord High Almoner to the lata Queen. 196 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST excuse for doing so must be the painful experience I shared with others who then had to watch over British interests abroad, of the humiliating effects of Mr. Gladstone's incoherent and nerveless foreign policy, as shown in the palpable decrease of our weight and influence in the affairs of the world. To be fair, however, it must be allowed that succeeding Governments in some degree followed that same policy down to a more recent period. The ground we lost has since been recovered by slow degrees ; but, for a good many years, the national credit of England stood at a low ebb, which only those whose business it was to uphold it in foreign capitals were in a position fully and despondingly to realise. For the rest, during my few months stay in England, the course of public affairs both at home and abroad was uneventful, but for the unsatisfac- tory campaign then going on in Afghanistan, and the reverse we sustained there at Maiwand. On the Continent, on the other hand, there was just then a good deal of tension in the Kusso-German re- lations, due partly to the antipathy entertained by Prince Bismarck for the old Russian Chancellor. I had heard a good deal about this before leaving Berne from President Hammer, who was unusually well-informed on German affairs, and also from my Russian colleague M. Hamburger. M. Hammer told me that one of the motives assigned for the meeting of the German and Russian Emperors at Alexandrovo, which made a great sensation at the TWO CHANCELLORS 197 time, was the desire of the Emperor William to effect the dismissal from office of Prince Gortchacow, whom the Iron Chancellor could not abide, and to whom he attributed the hostile tone then current in the Russian Press towards Germany. The President added that several Prussian military men, old acquaintances of his, whom he had met in the summer, had told him they considered a war be- tween Russia and Germany to be inevitable, and its outbreak merely a question of time. On the other hand, Prince Gortchacow was profuse in his denials of having in any way instigated a press campaign against Bismarck, for whom he professed the greatest admiration; speaking of him as u un ■ si phenomenal que tout* VEuropi devrait se mettre a plat ventn devant lui" The old Chancellor' 8 official days, however, were almost numbered, 1 and very nearly his last act was to appoint my Petersburg acquaintance, Prince Alexis Lobanow, to succeed Count Schouvaloff in London. Of the various occupants of Chesham Souse I have known, from Baron Brunnow onwards, Prince Lobanow was, I fear, the one who took to it the least kindly. For a man of such refined tastes and aristocratic traditions, he was rather unaccountably out of sympathy with English life and English society. This was probably in pari 1 Se resigned in [882 and died the following jrear. The l: 1 yeai of bislifew tly oul "i" Runria, the Foreign Office being • : 198 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST due to his belonging to that generation of his countrymen whose standards of thought and culture were almost exclusively French. He it was in fact who subsequently, during his short tenure of the Imperial Foreign Office, laid the foundations of the Russo-French alliance. Here, too, again, " cher- chez la femme" for during a considerable period of his life, at Constantinople and elsewhere, he had been greatly under the influence of an attractive and very clever French lady, who, for his sake, had thrown her cap over all the windmills of this world. On the strength of the connection between our families the Russian Ambassador — who in appearance somehow reminded one of an abbe of the ancien regime — kindly treated me en guise de parent, and I have preserved a grateful recollection of his hospi- tality, the culinary arrangements of which, by the way, were presided over by a really eminent artist. With the help of a select staff of men like Adler- berg, the nephew of the right-hand man of the Emperor Alexander II., and poor Boutenieff — whom I had known from his first youth at Baden Baden and Stuttgart, as English in speech and ways of thinking as his chief was French, and who died under very painful circumstances when afterwards Minister at Munich — Prince Lobanow made his Embassy the most pleasant of resorts. At Easter I went to the Clevelands at Battle Abbey, where a number of agreeable people were assembled under the auspices of a hostess who, BATTLE ABBEY 199 besides being the mother of perhaps the most brilliant of our younger statesmen, was herself a perfect mistress of the art of conversation, and had the still rarer gift of promoting it in others. At Battle it was in fact a field-day from early breakfast until bedtime, and such poor weapons as one disposed of had to be kept well furbished for the fray. The late Lord Houghton — himself an admirable and indefatigable talker — and Lord Strathnairn, whom I had scarcely come across since we played at tin soldiers together at the Legation at Yieuna in 1856, 1 were the • known men of a pleasant gathering, which also comprised Lord Sligo and his very charm- ing semi-French wife;- the Bylandts, 8 who lived among us for so many years and made them- selves so popular, without, at heart, I believe, ever really caring for us much; Henry Brougham, 4 Alec Yorke, and others. Some of tin- arrangements at Battle were decidedly old-fashioned. The Duke, stately and ancien rdgvme, and extremely agree- able — who had been Attache at Paris under the R'stauration and afterwards at Petersburg — relegated the smokers to sonic remote place in the lower regions of the great monastic pile, the approach to ". vol. i. of these " Recollections," pp, 253 54. 1 Lady Sligo ii the granddaughter ol tin- Vioomte de Peyronnet formed part of the ill-fated Polignac Cabinet under Charles \ • Count Bylandt wbb Blin I t the Netherlands in London fur ;i great aumbei ol yean and highly esteemed in looiety. i 1 1 bam and Vaux 200 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST which was through devious and confusing passages and turnings. One night, after a more protracted tobacco parliament than usual, one of the smokers, rather a figure of fun in a scanty and very ancient dressing-gown, took the wrong turning and opened the wrong door, and to his dismay found himself in a room where one of our married couples were peacefully slumbering. Battle has quite lately passed into other hands, after the recent death of the old Duchess — the beautiful and brilliant Lady Wilhelmina Stanhope — who survived four months the Queen whose bridesmaid she had been, became in her old age the most indefatigable of travellers, and died, while abroad, a mercifully sudden death, almost, it may be said, in harness. If this rough sketch of my visit there, nigh upon a quarter of a century ago, should come under the notice of the devoted daughter who so admirably helped to do the honours of that historic abode, I trust she may see in it a slight tribute for much kindness shown to one of those who met there in that spring of 1880. For the Ascot week I was again asked to Minley Manor, where I found two of the Harris young ladies, Constance and Florence — the latter afterwards the wife of Sir Charles Grant — and the latest additions to the French Embassy in London : namely, La Fer- ronnays and Montebello with their wives. Madame de Montebello — a niece of the then ambassador, M. Leon Say, and very smart and attractive — was MINLEY MANOR 201 destined later to dispense for a long period the splendid hospitalities of the French Embassy in Kussia. But the clou, as they say at Paris, of this Ascot party was — to quote the enthusiastic language of our host, old Mr. Kaikes Currie — that simply glorious creature, Lady Ramsay, afterwards Lady Dalhousie, quite the loveliest woman of her generation in London society, who but a few years later died, in all the splendour of her youth and uty, literally within a day of her husband, for whose health they had been travelling in America. She contracted blood-poisoning at New York, and died almost immediately after landing at Havre ; Lord Dalhousie onlv surviving the shock of her death twenty-four hours. Gone, too, of that party is charming, bright Lady " Conty " Harris, as well as Godfrey Webb, one of the most popular and amusing of diners out in London. Saddening in all conscience it is to summon up — as I am seeking to do in these pages — a retrospect filled so largely, as it must be, with those who have passed beyond us, too many of them in their prime. In looking over my other relatively scanty jottings of this season, I find a few rough notes of dinners and parties at Grosvenoi House — where Yolande de Lnynei was then, I remember, on a visit for some time — at the Wharncliffes, the Leeds', ! tlv Margaret Beaumont's, and at Lady Somen', irhere I first heard pretty Mrs. Arkwright warble her delightful French and Spanish melodies. But 202 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST on these records of society doings I will not linger at greater length. It was about this time that I first engaged in ex- tensive researches at the Public Record Office, which proved of great interest to me, and enabled me to re- construct entirely the history of my family at the close of the sixteenth and in the seventeenth century. My immediate object in this inquiry was to trace the exact history of a certain Henry Rum- bold, who, according to a vague family tradition, had taken refuge in Spain during the Common- wealth, and had afterwards held a consular ap- pointment in that country. He was believed to be a brother of the comparatively well - known loyalist, William Rumbold, 1 a very active agent for the Royal cause in England during the exile of Charles II., 2 who is frequently mentioned in the Clarendon Papers in the Bodleian, and in other State Papers of the so-called Domestic Series. For this purpose, with the kind assistance of the late Mr. Alfred Kingston, and afterwards of Mr. Hubert Hall, I went through the great mass of uncalendared papers relating to Spain, which are to be found in the wonderful storehouse in Fetter 1 This William Rumbold entered the office of the Great Wardrobe at an early age, and was at Naseby with his father, Thomas, who was afterwards taken as a prisoner by the Parliamentary forces, from his house near Burbage, to Leicester. 2 "Among many others that employed themselves in the King's business, none did more faithfully or judiciously negotiate than Mr. William Rumbold, who doth well deserve a good place in this story for his great services." — Doctor Gumble's " Life of General Monck." THE RECORD OFFICE 203 Lane. The results of my search were surprisingly satisfactory. I dug out the man I was looking for from under the dusty mound of records in which he and his doings were buried. From his letters to the King, to Arlington, Sandwich, and others, I gathered all it was possible to Learn about his services as a Royalist agent in Spain, which were rewarded by his appointment tn the Consulate-General for Andalusia in 1660; his two marriages in that country ; the adventures of one of his sons while serving in the garrison of Tangier ; his subsequent thankless treatment by the Government at home — in short, a full ac- count of a direct ancestor whose existence, owing to a wanton destruction of family papers, had become almost a myth. I afterwards supplemented these facts by searches which I caused to be made in the registers at Cadiz and at San Lucar de Bar- rameda, and in the vast records at Simancas, where copious sources of information touching upon our relations with Spain at that period still await in- vestigation. What facts 1 thus recovered from oblivion I afterwards embodied in a contribution to the Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. There was something very fascinating to inc in this Work, over which I often spent whole days, with an interval for lunch at the "Rainbow" tavern in Fleet Street, a vet) ancient establishment, which has leew been modernised past recognition, and has entirely I"-' itfl (plaint old-world character. 20 4 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST In connection with the task I had set myself a curious incident took place which seems almost worth relating. I went down one May morning to Fulham, for the purpose of getting an exact copy of the inscription on the tomb of the above-men- tioned William Rumbold, who, at the Restoration, was appointed Comptroller of the Great Wardrobe and Surveyor-General of Customs, and was buried, in May 1667, in the chancel of All Saints. On reaching the church I found it in the hands of workmen, but was warmly greeted by the vicar, who said that he had been on the point of writing to give me notice that, in view of the projected altera- tions, the slab marking the grave of the comptroller was about to be removed. When I arrived on the spot this was actually being done, and the vicar suggested that some inspection might be made of the vault beneath. 1 assented to this, but when the first turns of the spade brought to light a few mouldering bones I had not the heart to persist in the search, and begged that it might be abandoned. I may thus have missed the chance of finding interesting coffin - plates of the old Restoration Worthy or his family, but I shrank from disturbing his remains. By an odd chance my visit took place two hundred and thirteen years, almost to a day, after they had found here their last resting-place. The season now rapidly drew to a close, and with it vanished all my hopes of evading Buenos Ayres. Lord Granville was personally most kind A SPECIAL TRAIN 205 to me. When I went to take leave of him, and explained the great difficulty I was placed in with respect to my boys, he at once suggested that I should take them down to Walmer, where he would, he said, help to look after them. I accordingly found for them a snug little cottage under the shadow of the castle, where they spent most of the summer and autumn. At the same time, Lord Granville took care to let me understand that he did not propose leaving me at my distant post any Longer than he could help. With this comfort - ing assurance I went on the 31st July to Osborne, to kiss hands on my new appointment, in a special train conveying Lord Spencer, the Lord Steward (Lord Sydney), Lord Kenmare (then Lord Cham- berlain), and Mr. C. Lennox Peel, Clerk of the Privy Council. Besides these there were in the train, but in another carriage, two gentlemen about whose identity our high court officials seemed to be in some degree puzzled. When we were on board the boat going across to Osborne, I was consulted respecting these persons, who, though they had a foreign ap- pearance, must, it was presumed, be colonial or con- sular officials going down to be knighted after the Privy Council. I soon found out that they were simply the new Envoys from lloumania and Servia, on their way to present their credentials, and who thus, it might almost be said, narrowly escaped an honour chiefly reserved for inch dignitaries as city aldermen or provincial mayors ! 206 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST At last, on the 1 2th of August, I left England for Bordeaux, whence I had engaged my passage to my destination in one of the steamers of the French Messageries Maritimes. I took a circuitous route, travelling with a party of friends who were on their way to Wildbad, and stopping with them on the road at Brussels and Coblentz. It was altogether a delightful journey in perfect weather, every incident of which to this hour remains as vivid in my memory as though it had taken place but yesterday. At Wildbad I regretfully parted from my companions, and, after spending an evening with the La Roche- foucaulds at Baden Baden, where they were passing the summer, found my way to Bordeaux, embark- ing there on the 20th, in extremely hot weather, on the Niger, a roomy and fairly comfortable vessel which, however, owing to the top-weight of her great hurricane-deck, could be on occasion as lively a roller as ever I came across. We touched at Lisbon, where I landed and went to see Morier, who showed me all over the Legation, which seemed to me a charming house. The garden, with its terrace and outlook over the Tagus, is simply delightful, and I could not help picturing to myself with some degree of bitterness the ideal home I might have set up here had the chances of the service been more propitious to me. There was scarcely any one to associate with on board, most of my fellow-passengers being of the noisy type of lower middle - class French and PETROPOLIS 207 Italians, with u sprinkling of Brazilians, so I passed niv time, as best I could, reading and working at my " Recollections." We got to Rio de Janeiro on the 10th of September, and I at once went on to Petropolis, where I spent a cool night up in the clouds with our charge" d'affaires, Harris Gastrell, and young Francis Elliot, the son of my old chief Sir Henry. The drive to this hill station, after one has crossed the bay, is along an admirably en- gineered read, tarried up by zigzags through perfectly splendid scenery, which struck me im- mensely, but Petropolis itself, perched on high in almost British mists, left on me a dreary impression. The heat next day down at Rio was intolerable, and I was glad to get on board again. The last stage of my journey, however, proved highly unpleasant, for, shortly after leaving Rio, we encountered one of those heavy gales from the south-west known as a pampero sucio, which are prevalent in the spring of the southern hemisphere. For two whole days we lay tossing in the gloom and drizzle, unable to get a reliable observation of OUT whereabouts, and having in consequence to feel our way as best we could by dead reckoning along a dangerous coast. On the evening of the [4th we sighted, to our great relief, the light on Cape Santa Maria, and the next morn- ing anchored in the roadstead of Monte Video. T new hade farewell to the Niger, and for twenty-four hours became the guest of my old friend Edmund 208 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST Monson, 1 whom I found cosily installed as Minister Resident to the Republic of Uruguay. From him I received full particulars of the disastrous effects all over the Argentine Pampas of the gale I had just passed through. The number of live stock de- stroyed throughout the great province of Buenos Ayres, by what on land had been a terrific tempest, was afterwards roughly reckoned at not less than half a million head. It was still blowing hard at Monte Video, and I had a rough and very cold passage the next night up the River Plate to Buenos Ayres, which I at last reached in the early hours of September the 17th. Lord Granville was so true to his word that my actual residence at Buenos Ayres did not exceed seven months and a half in all. Leaving England in mid- August of 1880, I was back there again on the last day of the following May. Of my brief experience and impressions of Argentina, and, among others, of an interesting excursion I made up the Uruguay River, I have written so much elsewhere 2 that I have little left to relate of them. Some few reminiscences, however, of my sojourn in the River Plate still remain to be told to make the record of this part of my life complete. I was fortunate on arriving to find here my old Petersburg 1 Now the Right Honourable Sir Edmund Monson, G.C.B., Ambassador at Paris. 2 " The Great Silver River : Notes of a Residence in Buenos Ayres in 1880 and 1881." John Murray, 1887. A SECESH PROVINCE 209 colleague and very good friend, Edwin Egerton, 1 who had been acting as chargd $ affaires for some months after the departure of my predecessor Mr. Ford, and, being a Bhrewd observer, was able to give me much valuable information about the country and its people. I lived in close intimacy with EgertoD throughout my stay, and a charming companion and most valuable collaborator he proved to me in all respects. Argentina when I reached its shores — or, more correctly speaking, the Province of Buenos Ayres — had just passed through the ordeal of civil war, the proud city having itself undergone the humili- ation of a ruinous siege and blockade. The short but sharp Btruggle arose out of what was practically an attempt at secession on the part of the Province and its capital. In some points, in fact, it bore a resemblance to the great contest between the Northern and Southern States of the North American Union. As in the United States, the signal for BecessioD was given by the election of a President hostile to Provincial, or state pretensions, who came forward as the candidate of the nation at large, as opposed to that fraction of it which up to this time had monopolised the lead in the Confederacy. Sooner than surrender its hegemony, Buern a Ayres (the province and the town) took up : win Egi • . 1 1 ' 1.1 ;.. K 1 B., Em 03 al Alheo . 'The late Sit Fran i I rely ambassador al . ' osl intinople, and I «) 210 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST arms against the rest of its Confederates, and its discomfiture may in some degree be compared to the overthrow of the South, and a parallel for the election of Lincoln be sought in the nomination of President Boca. The comparison, however, if pushed too far, would turn almost to the grotesque, for in the Argentine tussle for power there was no great principle at stake such as the suppression of slavery, or the prior duty of the citizen to his native State rather than to the Union. But it is not my purpose to dwell at length on this South American family quarrel, which was fortunately brief, is now entirely forgotten, and can have no sort of interest for those who may glance through these pages. My object in referring to it is to give some idea of its effect on the society of the aspiring Argentine metropolis at the time of my arrival. What native society there was, composed of the leading Buenos Ayrean families, deeply mourned and resented the issue of the contest. A few of its jeunesse doree had fallen in the sharp skirmishes outside the beleaguered town, at the head of the bands of rough Gauchos whom they had armed and brought in with them from their estancias. The Argentine upper ten were in a sulky, dejected mood, though some of them were wisely disposed to put up with the consequences of their defeat. My first opportunity of meeting Buenos Ayres society was two days after my arrival, at one of the weekly THE ARGENTINE BEAU MONDE 211 evening receptions of President Avellaneda, whose term of office was fast coming to an end. 1 There was at this party a sprinkling of the vanquished element, showing some signs, I was told, of a more conciliatory disposition, but of this I, as a complete Btranger, conld of course not judge. 1 cannot say that these receptions appeared to me very enter- taining, and 1 was certainly at first sii^ht dis- appointed as to the good looks for which the /'" ladies are so celebrated throughout South America, though in the smartness of their clothes they seemed to me even to outdo my fair Chilean friends across the Andes. Of the festivities of the short Bueno> Ayres "season" I best remember the parties and balls given by Don Diego de Alvear — who had been Minister in London and had several eedingly pretty daughters — by the Berdiers, the Castros and the Elortondos, all wealthy people, with well decorated and splendidly furnished houses, who were content with the large incomes they had amassed, and kept entirely aloof from public affairs. Although some of them had very large estates, there was here no politically influential class such as the land-owning oligarchy I had known in ( Ihile. To descend to frivolous details about the few private balls at which I was preseni at Buenos 1 Tip- new President, General Roca, w :>•f (obex 1880. P ok inhabitant "f the Port, if - 1 1 1 appellation commonly 1 on 1 he citizen "f Bu< \ 212 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST Ayres, I must admit that they appeared to me rather dreary and lacking in animation, though, as regards what our fashionable news reporters de- scribe as "floral decorations," and the arrangements for supper, they were sumptuous enough in all conscience. What struck me most was that the " sitting-out," which is so familiar a feature at London dances, was replaced by promenading the ball-room in couples, quite regardless of the actual dancers, whose feeble gyrations were apparently re- garded as of little account by the young people who tramped up and down the whole evening, like so many London stockbrokers bent on making a record in mileage. I presume that these ambu- latory flirtations answered their purpose as well as a valse echevelee, but to me they seemed anything but festive, and rather suggested the early grind between one's glasses at Kissingen or Homburg. Most friendly and serviceable to me on my arrival was a Brazilian gentleman of the name of Alkaine, whom I had first met at the St. James's Club in London, where he formed part of Baron de Penedo's Legation, and was known as the Vicomte de Castello Alvo — a title he dropped when he settled in demo- cratic Buenos Ayres, and became Government broker during Roca's administration. He had a charming wife, belonging to one of the best Argentine families, who died a few years afterwards when still quite young. This very refined lady and two of her greatest friends, Mme. Adele Heimendahl, nee BRITISH KXTKRPRISE 213 Ocampo, and the lovely Mine. Magdalena Elizalde, Ramos Mejia, made up a pleasant and extremely cultivated coU rie, in every way accomplished and — what was indeed rare in Smith American society at that period really musical. I have endeavoured to pay a Blight tribute to these charming ladies in my book alread\ referred to, without, however, mention- ing them by name. They formed part of the small remnant of high-bred, old-world society still existing there — a diminutive Bet which kept very much to itself, and was not easily accessible to strangers. ( >n the other hand there was a Large foreign — and what of course concerned me most— a large British community. The English of the River Plate need no favourable mention from one who for only a few short months had to watch over their interests. To their enter] >risc and industry the land of their temporary adoption owes no small share of its steadily ing prosperitv. Thei have so effectually stamped upon it the imprint of the British race that this splendid region which, but for Whitelock's craven surrender, we might possibly have permanently con- quered, is even now in greal part held and worked by OUT capital and developed by the energy of our people. Iii fact, the giant strides made l>\ Argentina in the twenty-two years of peace and good governmenl thai have elapsed since my brief sojourn, make my recol- lection! of the country on the morrow of b severe internal convulsion almost valueless. \n entire generation h;^ passed away since then, and of my 214 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST countrymen with whom I was then most associated, and on whose cordial and loyal co-operation I could always count, but few probably survive ; and these, it is to be hoped, are now enjoying at home the well- earned fruits of their labours. Gone is genial old Mr. Coghlan, the chief engineer and builder of the great Southern line, which has been so powerful a factor in reclaiming vast tracts of splendid soil which a quarter of a century ago were still the camping grounds of wild, marauding Indians. Gone, too, I know, is poor Frederick Woodgate, at whose hands I received great kindness, and whose bright wife and merry trio of pretty daughters made his house at Bella Vista the liveliest and cheeriest in the big pleasure-loving city. Early in November, when the summer heat began to make itself felt, I removed from my stuffy quarters at the Hotel de la Paix to a furnished quinta at Belgrano, which I took over, with all its contents, from some English people who were going home for a while. Hotel life in South America in those days was far from pleasant, let alone being horribly ex- pensive, and was only fit for the tribe of bagmen and commis-voyageurs whose custom kept the extortion- ate caravansaries going. My villa, which bore the high-sounding name of 22 Calle Once de Setiembre, was charmingly situated at the top of a low ridge, or barranca, that stretches for some miles to the west of the town, and commands a clear view of the great estuary of the River Plate. A quaint enclosure — MY HOUSEHOLD AT BELGRANO 215 half wild garden and orchard — which lay behind it. and yielded fruit and flowers in abundance for my wants, completed what was a simple but very attrac- tive residence. I kept on trial the cook and the gardener of the previous occupants. The former was in some respects one of the oddest combinations that could be imagined even in the olla podrida of nations to be found on these shores. A burly, sour-visaged Gascon, and yet a rigid C'alvinist, he answered to the name of Triboulet, which, as readers of Victor Hugo may remember, is the appellation of the jester in " In Ren s* amuse" and the original of Verdi's " Rigoletto. - ' Egerton would have it that the fellow's proper name was Marcel, and that he came out of quite another opera, the " Huguenots." We were fortunately agreed as to his cooking, which was quite satisfactory*. I had brought with me as valet and factotum another meridional whom I picked up in London, and who was by no means so great a suc- cess, ih' proved a nerveless, feckless creature; in- variably lost his head at the wrong moment, and was thus most aggravating. Although quite respectable in appearance, lie had a forlorn, downcast look — due, ;i- 1 presently discovered, to a bibulous turn — which made Egerton call him "the blasted one," an ap- propriate name that afforded a relict' to one's feelings and stuck to the pour devil till the end. I got quite fond of my 7'"/-/", and was as happy in it as I could be under the circumstances. In its front verandah, with the fair outlook over the "Great Silver River," 216 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST I wrote a good part of the book to which I gave that title, but only put it into shape for publication some years afterwards at Athens. I had been settled but a short time in my suburban abode when I received official notice from home of the forthcoming arrival at Monte Video of the De- tached Squadron, with the Princes Albert Victor and George of Wales. The Foreign Office Circular, in which this was notified to the Legation, informed H.M. Ministers abroad of the Prince of Wales's desire that his sons should lay aside their royal rank during their cruise, and of H.RH.'s hope that they would be treated, as far as possible, on the footing of members of their family by those of H.M. Represen- tatives whose places of residence they visited on their journey round the world. The squadron reached Monte Video early on the 22nd December, and that same afternoon I went down the river to meet it in the Elk, a small gun- boat, commanded by a cheerful Paddy of the name of Clanchy — a capital fellow, who had been some months on the station, had done good service during the blockade of Buenos Ayres, and whom we had come to consider as part and parcel of the Legation. As a rule I am a fairly good sailor, but the lively behaviour of the Elk, in the rough waters of the shallow estuary, quite did for me, and Lord Charles Scott, of the Bacchante, when he came on board next morning to call upon me, where we lay off his ship, found me in a very limp state indeed. THE FOUNG PRINCES 217 After seeing the Admiral — my old acquaintance Lord Clanwilliam — and making the necessary arrange- ments with him and the Princes' Governor, Mr. (now (anon) Dalton. for the Royal visit to me, 1 went on shore to the Hotel Oriental. I staved four davs Monte Video, during which Monson gave a very pretty dance in honour of the squadron, and 1 ate Christmas dinner at Mrs. Munro's, one of whose charming daughters a few months later became the v^ wife of my friend and colleague. My guests arrived in the Elk early on the last of the year, and I at once took them out. to Belgrano, where J managed at a pinch to put up the two Princes, with their Governor and young Lord Francis Osborne, a brother-midshipman of theirs. A neighbouring villa, which had been ob- ligingly placed at my disposal by its owner, an Italian, provided accommodation for Lord Charles Scott, Prince Louis of Battenberg, and Doctor Turn- 1 all, of the Bacchante. After luncheon I took the young Princes and Prince Louis to call upon the newly-elected President, General loicn. The visit was of course a purely private one, as I had taken rare to explain to the President beforehand. The was that, although to my mind nothing could be u ore judicious than the line laid down by the Prince [ea for the reception of his sous, it was no easy tter to e, to its being strictly carried out, and, idea causing some disappointment to the Argen- tine authorities, il rise to heartburnings anuniir 218 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST the British residents, who were bent upon giving the Royal visitors the heartiest and most loyal of welcomes. It was my thankless task to check, or at least to moderate, this creditable outburst of patriotic feeling. General Roca received us in his unpretentious Villa del Caballito, at Flores, with much cordiality and perfect simplicity. He was certainly one of the remarkable men with whom the Princes had an opportunity of becoming acquainted during their long cruise, and to this day he plays a leading part in the destinies of his country. At this period the new President was still very young-looking, of slight, delicate build, with thin fair hair and cold steel- blue eyes, his general appearance being much more Germanic than Spanish. But in his countenance, and in his quiet, collected manner, there were un- mistakable indications of the energy he had shown in the campaigns in which he drove the Indian tribes back beyond the Rio Nauquen into the fast- nesses of the Cordillera — thereby pushing the fron- tier forward some 400 miles, and almost doubling the Argentine patrimony — as well as in his short and decisive struggle with the rebellious metropo- litan province. Roca's advent to power marks a most fortunate turning-point in the history of his promising country. We dined that evening, a large party, in the verandah overlooking my garden, which I had lighted up with Chinese lanterns. Considering that ADVERSE CIRCUMSTANCE- 219 I had really no maison monte'e, having come out to my post in light marching order, the entertainment was on the whole a fairly successful one. Unfor- tunately, the wretched "blasted one," who, to steady his nerves, had indulged somewhat freely, committed various deplorable laches, which, to my great dis- tress, my young Royal guests, with the sharp eyes of their age, did not fail to see, and no doubt to be amused at. Torrential rain, such as I have seldom experi- enced elsewhere, ushered in New Year's Day of 1SS1, and closely confined me and my visitors to the house the whole morning. The weather was so bad that my overflow party at the other villa, which was some distance off, were unable to get across and join us before two o'clock. I thus had to amuse mv three middies as best I could bv tell- ing them stories, showing them albums, &c., and it was then that I first realised what nice, simple, unspoilt lads these two young Princes were. They soon found out that 1 was given to music, and made me play and siiiL, r to them, until Prince George — having considerately gone off to look after Mr. Dalton, who was unwell and had staved in bed — returned, and begged me to stop as his tutor was asleep. The weather mended sufficiently for us to L r <> down iiftcr lunch to the Parque Palermo, where the British residents had got up for the occasion a cricket match, which was, of course, entirely spoilt by th<- rain. Mere we found a special train waiting 220 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST for us, and were soon being rattled, at forty miles an hour, on the Great Southern line to Villa Nueva, the station for the model estancia Negrete, belong- ing to Mr. D. A. Shennan, who had kindly under- taken to show the Royal travellers something of Argentine " camp " 1 life. What between our reach- ing our destination late, and an accident to the carts which were bringing the luggage from the station, our party — now strengthened by Monson from Monte Video, and two more young sailors, Erskine and Wemyss — did not sit down to dinner until long past 10 o'clock. I mention the trifling circum- stance because of the opportunity it gave us of seeing at his best our host, who did not allow him- self to be put out in the least by these annoying contretemps, and — while despatching one mounted gaucho after the other to help to bring up the things — did the honours with such imperturbable tact and grace as to strike even judges of men and manners like Prince Louis and Lord Charles Scott. But my very good friend Shennan is as truly a prince of good fellows as he was in my day the most successful of estancieros, and the best all-round sportsman in the River Plate. The three days' stay of the Princes at Negrete went off admirably, and is duly chronicled at length in the interesting account which afterwards appeared 1 Camp, from the Spanish Campo, is the somewhat barbarous expres- sion used by the Buenos Ayres English for country and country life. ESTANCIA NEGRETE 221 of the cruise of the Bacchai > . l I will only men- tion a rodeOj where 30CO head of cattle were driven in from all parts of the estancia by Sherman's mounted men into one great enclosure — a reallv splendid and exciting spectacle, during which young Wemvss had a rather singular accident. I lis horse fell with him, and he at once picked himself up. apparently quite unhurt. It soon appeared, how- r, thai he had a Blight concussion of the brain, for he began talking the most arrant nonsense, and - for a time entirely unconscious of what had urred to him. Our whole party got back to Kelgrano on the evening of the 4th, in time for a great ball given by the British residents at the theatre — nominally for the Admiral and officers of the squadron, but in reality, of course, for the young Trinces, who, to their great contusion, were greeted on entering the box reserved for them with the National Anthem, which made them remark to me, in some distress: "Why do they do that ! We are not the Queen." The ball, I am bound to add. quite beautiful, and did the greatest credit to the committee who made the arrangements for it. The Royal visit — a mosl grateful break in the wearisome monotony of the Buenos Ayres summer — came to an end the next day, and I saw my guests off at the Catalinae Mule, where they embarked on their return to the squadron. The Princes had both '•'I'll.- < ,1 II. M I Marmillim I 222 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST been so thoroughly nice and considerate throughout — never giving the slightest trouble, and being so cheery and easily amused — that their visit left rne none but the pleasantest recollections, saddened since, as regards Prince Eddie, with his amiable, gentle ways, and somewhat shy, reserved manner, by the thought of his early death little more than ten years from that time. Of Prince George I was to see a good deal more later on in the Mediter- ranean. In his middy days his dash and spirits, his thoughtfulness for others, and frank, simple manner, made him the most winning boy imaginable. On parting he thanked me in the nicest way possible for having looked so well after him and his brother, and my quintet, when I got back to it, seemed to me dreary and empty indeed without the presence of these bright sailor lads, of whom one remains the future hope of England. I have but little more to tell of my stay at Buenos Ayres, for the first days of March brought me a most welcome telegram from Lord Granville announcing my transfer to Stockholm. Before leaving, however, I paid my friend Shennan two more visits at Negrete, meeting there my worthy Brazilian colleague, Baron de Gondim, with his family, and one of the Woodgate young ladies. To me there was a peculiar, not-to-be-forgotten charm in life at this hospitable place, a restful oasis of shade and verdure in the boundless, treeless Pampa, which was now parched and baked brown by the fierce THE AMELOTS 223 summer heat. The wonderful wild-fowl shooting in the lagunas, or shallow marshes, the early gallop before breakfast in the clear, dry morning air, in company with I iondim's pleasing little daughter, and bright, madcap Adela Woodgate, and the long evening drive to some neighbouring estancia, still vividly live in my recollection. But 1 have so amply recorded elsewhere my impressions of the strangely fascinating Argentine prairies — as grand and imposing in their expanse and their constantly varying aspects as the ocean solitudes to which they have been so often compared — that 1 will linger no more on the subject. Impatient though I was to get home again, and correspondingly desirous as I am to have done with the subject of Buenos Ayres in these pages, I feel, nevertheless, that I owe a few valedictory words to some of mv colleagues there. To the above-men- ■ tioned Brazilian Minister and his amiable, half- English wife 1 was indebted for more than ordinary kindness. Shortly before I left, too, the French Minister, my old colleague Amelot de Chaillou — whom J had scarcely met since our memorable tour in the Ionian Islands with the young King ( leorge in 1864 — returned from leave of absence with his wife, whose acquaintance, as Mile. Rosalie du Ballay, I had first made in almost equally old days at Berne. It was under their roof, indeed, that I spent my last days in Argentina, alter breaking up my establish- ment at Belgrano, and of this, in many ways brilliant, 224 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST couple I may recount here what I imagine to be a unique experience. Countess Amelot was, for a Frenchwoman, unusually keen about sport, and ac- companied her husband in his many travels and shooting expeditions all over Argentina and Para- guay. She was herself a capital shot, and, with other game that fell to her rifle, was credited with an American tiger, or jaguar. In her journeyings in the Pampa she had become interested in the Indian tribes that were then being hunted down by Roca and his troopers. It happened that among the prisoners taken at the break-up of one of the Indian encampments, and conveyed to Buenos Ayres, there was a little girl of about six years old, the child of some cacique who had either been killed or had vanished into the Patagonian desert. This poor little waif was brought to Madame Amelot by an Argentine officer of her acquaintance, and she, having no children of her own, offered to take it in, and, getting much attached to the child, ended by formally adopting it and giving it the best of European educations. A good many years after- wards she came through Vienna with this Princess of the Pampas, now a grown-up and very accom- plished and intelligent young lady, speaking French, of course, perfectly, and German and English very well. With her remarkably fine figure, dusky hair, smooth copper-coloured skin, and supple, almost feline, grace, the adopted daughter of the Amelots made a great sensation at a party at our house. Not A PRINCESS OF THE PAMPAS 225 verv long afterwards she was married to a country neighbour of the Amelots in Normandy. Thus what seemed at first a somewhat hazardous experi- ment has so far proved highly successful. I must also mention another colleague, namely the German Minister Kesident, Doctor von Ilolleben. I did not see very much of him, but remember him well as an agreeable, much-travelled man of pleasant manners. Ilerr von Holleben's name has quite recently been prominently before the world in connection with the Venezuelan complications. In the twenty-two years that have elapsed since I bade farewell to Argentina, that country has advanced continuously in the path of progress, and is now once more under the firm guidance of Roca, who, next to Juarez in Mexico, is probably the most capable Spanish- American ruler in the Western hemisphere. \\ hat Argentina still suffers from, however, is the bane of a constitution, almost exactly copied from that of the North American Union, which confers on backward, imperfectly- developed provinces, such as Rioja or Corrientes, State rights similar to those enjoyed by great cultured communities like Massachusetts or Illinois. This in reality sham federal system imposes on a relatively small population the burden of fourteen separate provincial governments, composed of an executive, a legislature, a judicature, and all the other branches of au independent adminis- tration The taxable power of the country is thus tried to the utmost by threefold contributions to 226 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST the national, provincial, and municipal treasuries. According to a calculation made thirty years ago, these accumulated charges amounted to nearly £8 sterling per head of the population in the pro- vince of Buenos Ayres, or almost double the same charge per head of the population of France. The material resources of the country are fortunately immense — in fact, practically inexhaustible — and under a reasonably provident administration the financial prospects of the Republic need not cause much apprehension. In one important respect, however, the clumsy and costly federal organisation, even though the powers of the provincial governments have been considerably curtailed, has more particularly baneful results by conducing to the regrettable insecurity of life and property in the remoter districts of the country. The jealously guarded sovereign rights of those governments unfortunately stand in the way of effectual intervention on the part of the Central National Power. The atrocious murder, just before I left the country, of some Scotch sheep- farmers in the province of Corrientes, and a series of similar crimes, of which Italian subjects in that pro- vince and in adjoining Entre Rios were the victims, 1 1 The most scandalous feature of a great number of these crimes was their being traceable to persons in the employ of the provincial government, from common policemen up to Commis- saries of Police, and even Justices of the Peace. In September 1880, twelve persons, comprising the entire family, down to infants, of a well-to-do Italian shopkeeper of the name of Muti, together with the servants and two guests staying in the house, were mas- sacred by the Juez de Paz (Juge de Paix) of Curuzu Cuatia and his two sons. HOME ONCE MORE 227 afforded striking instances of the powerlessness of the central government at that time to bring criminals to justice. The circumstances attending the recent murder of Mr. Barnett 1 only too clearly show that even at the present day that Government is unable to cope successfully with the evil. None the less, Argentina remains a land of infinite resource and promise, and, whatever the flaws in its organisation and administration, is assured of a great and pros- perous future. I left Monte Video on the 4th of May in the Britannic of the Pacific Line, and, landing at Pauillac, passed two days with my sister at Biarritz, whence I went straight on to London. I found in v three boys all at school at llawtrey's, where the two younger ones had joined their elder brother. Of the kindness that had been shown to them during my absence 1 cannot speak too gratefully- After leaving Walmer they had been provided for during the Christmas and Easter holidays by Lord Rokeby at Hazlewood, by Lord Brownlow at Ash- ridge, and by the kind Alwvne Comptons at the Deanery at Worcester. My days of doubt and despondency were now well over, and I could look forward confidently to ;i happier home and a brighter future than I had for some years ventured to contemplate as within my reach. 1 In this c;ih«', uft'i ondlen oorreipondenoe with bhe Argentine l Brnment, the murderer mtm ■entenosd to ten yew imprison- ment. CHAPTER XI STOCKHOLM, 1881-1882 During the next few weeks in London I was busily and pleasantly engaged in preparations for going out to my new post, and with the arrangements for my almost immediate marriage. I only left town for the inside of a week on a visit to Alfred Caulfeild (the brother-in-law of my fiancee) and his wife, Lady Alan Churchill, at Roke Manor, their very nice place, near Romsey. The lovely Hampshire country was at its very best in the unusually perfect June weather, and the splendour of the foliage and of the rhododendrons, which flourish exceedingly in the parks and chases round about these borders of the New Forest, seemed to me beyond compare, coming as I did straight from the dead and colour- less level of the Argentine wolds. I remembered the neighbourhood well from former days in the Palmerston reign, and our party of four drove out to Broadlands one afternoon, and went all over the empty rooms which once upon a time had re-echoed the old statesman's cheery voice and laughter. We were married quite quietly on the 28th of July at our parish church of Holy Trinity, Sloane Street ; only my wife's nearest relations, with the 228 NORTHWARD BOUND 229 Dowager Lady Lonsdale and her daughters being present, and Lord Crofton acting as my best man. After luncheon in Ashley Gardens with my father- in-law, Mr. Crampton, we started for a short tour in North Wales, where T had never been before, first spending three days in that most picturesque of old English towns, Chester. Here, in wandering about the ancient Rows, we picked up a few bits of good old furniture, which afterwards decorated our various diplomatic homes, the best of them — a large and remarkably handsome Chippendale cabinet — remaining to this day an ornament of the Embassy 1 1 use at Vienna, being too large for the modest home of a retired diplomatist. From Chester we went to Bangor, and thence to Bettws-y-Coed, end- ing our delightful tour by a two days' visit to the Dean and Lady Alwyne Compton at Worcester. I had kissed hands at Windsor on the 15th of July — this time not so entirely in dumb show as on the two previous occasions — the Queen being pleased to charge me with messages for the King and Queen of Sweden. Our preparations being eompleted, we went down to Hull on the 19th of August, and embarked in the 8.8. Orlando of the Wilson line, for Gottenburg. The whole of our combined schoolboy contingent from Aldin I louse, now four in number, went with us for their holidays, so that, with servants, we made up quite b large number and fully taxed the accommodation of the ship. As far ai I can recollect, the North Sea treated us fairly 230 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST well, and we were so happy a party, beginning with H.M. Minister, that, in looking back upon it, our invasion of Sweden in force appears to me more in the light of a summer picnic than of the official journey of a diplomatic functionary proceeding to his post across the choppy waters. How well I remember the first aspect of the bright, clean Swedish Liverpool ; the early breakfast at the Hotel Christiania after landing with our crowd of hungry schoolboys ; and the check we met with at the railway station, when the officials, quite regardless of the representations of John Duff — most amiable and serviceable of Consuls, who was looking after us as in duty bound — somewhat rudely declined to reserve a compartment for us, the only bit of incivility I can recollect being shown to me during the whole of my residence in kindly, hospitable Sweden. This little difficulty made us at once realise the desirableness of acquiring some know- ledge of a language which, by reason of its apparently close affinity to both English and German, at first sounds familiar and easy, but nevertheless quite non- plusses the unfortunate stranger. We both of us, my wife and I, speedily took to wrestling with and made some progress in it, with the help of a poor university teacher of the name of Kjellberg, for whom, through the personal kindness of King Oscar, I was able afterwards to obtain a small pension. The fourteen hours by rail, right across the country, which it then took to reach Stockholm from SWEDISH SCKXKKV 231 Gottenburg, afforded the new-comer a perfect epi- tome of Swedish Bcenery. Without ever being grand or exceptionally striking, that scenery lias the peculiar charm of a paysage intime, and grows upon one more and more even though it be lacking in variety. As you speed along in the well-appointed, never- hurrying train, the same attractive picture recurs at intervals. As the principal feature of the prospect, a good-sized lake, framed in by great sombre patches of fir and pine, mingled with the lighter tints of beech and oak, and broken at intervals b\ grey lichen-covered rocks ; groups of houses of chalet-like build scattered along its margin, and boat-houses and bathing-huts climbing down into the cool, dark water, with here and there the landing- st;iL r <' of the small local steamer ; now and then a modest church and one or two more imposing white- washed buildings — presumably a school or a post- office — and, stretching away in the distance, green meadows, dotted with small cottages and cow-sheds, all painted a rich brownish red. Almost such a simple picture, in its crude tints of green and red and blue, as an intelligent child might paint for itself; but the whole tinged with a subdued sadness b\ the cold, pale sky, the northern light, the sombre woods, and the scattered tenements Buggestive of a sp;irs.' population spread over the poor soil of count- less acres which, as the first look :it the map tells "In-, extend we]] J I J 1 • » the Arctic ciplr. Or, to put it another way, imagine but little mine than the 232 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST number of inhabitants of London proper 1 turned out to settle in a region reaching nearly a thousand miles from Malmo to Haparanda, and covering an area of about 1 70,000 English square miles. Nowhere on the long stretch across the country, from sea to sea, does the line pass through any towns of importance. There is, nevertheless, a considerable amount of traffic, and we stopped at a good many small stations before reaching, after midday, the junction at Hallsberg, where a longish halt took place for lunch. Here we realised for the first time the admirable arrange- ments made in this country for the famished traveller. The tables in the large dining-room of the station were spread with an extraordinary variety of food of all kinds and of excellent quality, both hot and cold — in fact, an amply abundant menu for a big dinner, the payment of 1^ kronor, or is. 8d., entitling one to dispose of as much of the viands displayed as one's digestive powers and the company's time-tables permitted. It seemed a wasteful system, but was princely in its liberality. A distinctive feature of the railway buffets, as well as of the suppers at the private parties at Stock- holm, by the way, is the delicious milk handed round in glasses with the other refreshments. Not to dwell too long, however, on the subject, I may say at once that the food in Swedish houses is, as a 1 The last general census taken (that of 1898) put the population of Sweden at just over five millions. ARRIVAL AT STOCKHOLM 253 rule, extremely good, and that some of the Swedish \\ omen-cooks are perfect cordons blew. Quite late in the evening, when the intermin- able summer daylight was at last fading out of the sky, we passed through a wilder region of fir and moorland, strewn here and there with great moss- grown boulders, and soon reached the immediate outskirts of the capital, and then crossing the long railway bridge that spans the very head of Lake Malar and the Island of Riddarholm, found our- selves at the central terminus in Tcgelbacken. Here we were met and taken to the Hotel Rvdben* on the Large square known as the Gustaf Adolf Torg, the centre of which is decorated by a very mediocre equestrian statue of the Lion of the North. W e liked our quarters at the Hotel Rydberg well enough, old-fashioned though they were in some respects, with very large scantily-furnished rooms, where the beds were placed in deep alcoves screened off by curtains, as in ancient country inns in France. The big massive building, with its handsome J'/rudr on the square, had no doubt known more dignified fortunes in the old turbulent days of the strife between "Hats and Caps." 1 The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Baron Hochs- child, whom I of course at once soughl out, happened to ho an old acquaintance. I had frequently met 1 The nam a to the contending Russian and French factions m tl Mmm, w! ension di turbed the country for .tit the middle <>f ili«- eighteenth cent iry. 234 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST him in the early 'sixties in London, where he was Secretary to the Swedish Legation, and we had both been habitues of the Persigny salon at Albert Gate. Hochschild, who had trod the paths of diplomacy for a good many years, was a nineteenth century revival of the Fvanpais du Nord, on the pattern of the courtiers of that brilliant Wasa who, for a short period, played so prominent a part in Swedish and European history until foully murdered in the old Opera Llouse that stood at the corner of the square we looked over from our windows. A very pleasant man Hochschild, witty and accom- plished, and a good musician and linguist, with a strong vein of sarcasm. We were soon on excellent terms with him and his wife, a Comtesse Piper, a thoroughly warm-hearted woman and staunch friend as well as tres grande dame, who did the honours of the Hdtel des Affaires Etrangeres with much dignity and hospitality, although at times sadly handicapped by the severe neuralgic headaches to which she was a martyr. Hochschild I think it was who told me of a villa, belonging to an artist, to be let in the Djurgarden, just outside the town, which — the weather being still wonderfully fine — I might with advantage hire for a few weeks before settling down for the winter. The Stockholmers are justly proud of their Djurgarden, which for size and natural beauty far surpasses all other public parks adjoining European capitals. Its circumference is said to be DJURGARDEN 255 about twenty miles, and the broken, undulating ground, relieved here and there by bright inlets from the sea; its splendid timber, growing so thick in plates as to give it the character of a primeval forest, with lovely intervening glades, and great ragged masses of rock in the heart of dense planta- tions of trees, make it an absolutely unique pleasure-ground. "When it is considered that Stock- holm and Petersburg are situated almost exactly in the same latitude, the wonderful growth of the forest trees — the old oaks especially being remark- able for their size and vigour — and the general luxuriance of the vegetation are very striking as compared with the low, stunted woods of pine and birch that line the shores of the Gulf of 1 inland, and make so sombre a background to the great Russian metropolis. In other respects, too, the contrast between the two capitals is very great, for though the cold of Stockholm in winter is occasionally severe, there is not in it the same icy penetrating sting as at Petersburg. Stockholm, in fact, sheltered by the Scandinavian range that divides Sweden from Norway, can boast of a climate ntiallv superior to that of the city of the Ingrian swamp, which Lfl OpeD all round to frozen blasts from Antic or Siberian wastes and solitudes. We spent five delightful weeks m the rough and un- pretentious Villa Thorell, the redeeming feature of which was a large studio, where our hoy quartet made the evenings melodious with German and 236 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST Christy Minstrel part-songs, which they really sang to perfection to the accompaniment of my third boy George, who early developed great musical talent. Their songs, I may truly say, faithfully reflected the harmony of our now composite, but thoroughly united, family circle. I had my first audience of King Oscar on September i. I had years before met his Majesty, then Crown Prince in the lifetime of his brother Charles XV., during one of my numerous visits to Nice, when he on several occasions took part with our set in excursions and junkets all over that lovely neighbourhood. He was very thin and slight then for his great height, and seemed rather to have outgrown his strength. In middle age he looked the picture of health, and every inch a king. He received me most graciously, and was pleased to show me unvarying favour and confidence during my residence of three years and a half at his Court. The King of Sweden was in those days, and pro- bably still is — next to the exceptionally gifted and many-sided German Emperor — the most talented and accomplished of European monarchs. His con- tributions to Swedish poetry and literature would alone suffice to mark his place among the royal authors whom it may be the task of some future Walpole to delineate for posterity. He is above all a born orator, and — in this again not unlike that other sovereign who now takes up so pro- minent a position on the stage of the world — uses SWEDISH FREEMASONRY 237 this great gift with signal effect. It certainly was a real pleasure to hear King Oscar speak on any public occasion, so perfect was his delivery, and so carefully modulated his voice. Like his more immediate predecessors on the Swedish throne, beginning with the last reigning Wasa, Charles XIII., the King is a zealous Free- mason and Gland Master of the Order in Sweden. Freemasonry is widely spread in the Scandinavian countries, and in Sweden certainly acts as a useful bond between classes. Although myself but an unprofitable member of the craft, the lodge to which I belong, and which I joined in 1877 under the auspices of the late Lord Donoughmore, was good enough to raise me to the Royal Arch Degree on my appointment to Stockholm, so as better to qualify me for admission to the higher degrees in Sweden. I was thus present at several interesting Masonic ceremonies, which are carried out with much solemnity and pomp in the extremely hand- some and beautifully decorated Masonic Hall at Stockholm, the King making a point of presiding at them in person. It is on such occasions a- the anniversary banquets (Hdgtidsdag) of the Nordiska F&rsta, the principal Swedish Lodge, at which several hundred masons of every rank in life an- gathered together, that the genial monarch is rhaps t<> be seen to tin- greatest advantage. At : the brethren are brought up to him in large batches, and he drinks the Swedish sin/ (toast) 238 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST with them as they stand in a row behind his chair, and then after some general and always eloquent address, in which the economic and poli- tical questions of the day are not left unnoticed, the Royal Grand Master mixes familiarly with the crowd and freely enters into conversation with many of them, the consequence being that he is per- sonally well known to a great number of the Stock- holmers. In fact, Freemasonry in Sweden may be said to be partially run by him on political lines, and constitutes a cordial and very valuable link between the sovereign and many of his subjects of all classes and callings. The eighth degree, which answers to that of Knights Templar, was conferred upon me by the King himself some time after my arrival, on the same occasion as upon his Majesty's third son Prince Charles, Duke of Westergotland, at that period the handsomest youth of twenty it was possible to imagine, and, both in features and stature, a perfect presentment of some young god out of the Northern Mythology. The ceremony was rendered most impressive by beautiful music and the complete religious ritual which forms part of it. Before being admitted to this degree, candidates are supposed to undergo the full night's vigil, or veillee des armes, which in mediaeval times used to precede admission to knighthood. Prince Charles and I accordingly partly underwent this ordeal, being locked up for a few hours in uniform and with YKIU.l'.i: DI-JS ARMES 239 our swords drawn, in one of the halls of the Masonic Temple, but, by special dispensation, were released about 2 a.m., when we were glad to go to the supper thoughtfully provided for us. This inter- esting old form, which, thanks to exceptional cir- cumstances, 1 had the good fortune to go through perfunctorily, had, at a by no means remote period, to be undergone in the ancient church of the Riddarholm — the St. Denis or Westminster Abbey of Sweden — where are laid to rest the hones of the mighty heroes who, for the space of rather more than a century, made the national history such a marvellous record of military glory. A solitary night's watch among these royal tombs, over which droop the tattered Danish, Polish, Herman or Russian' banners taken by the warrior kings, must have been a somewhat trying experience for the postulants to high masonic honour^. The fine old Riddarholm Church is altogether most interesting, although unfortunately a good deal disfigured by the modern spire of cast-iron tracery that has replaced the ancient one destroyed in 1835 by lightning. Here in the Bemadotte Chapel lie the remains of the last' and most popular King Charles XV., whose memory 18 cherished to this day, and on whose tomb flow ers arc said to be secretly laid at each recurring anniversary of his death (Septem- ber 18, 1872) }>v Mane loving but unknown hand. During my sojourn in Sweden very interesting addi- tions were made t<> the illust nous company of Wasas 240 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST who slumber in the church in what is known as the Gustavian Chapel, round the central monument of the great Gustavus Adolphus. At the instance, it was said, of the Queen of Saxony, 1 private pour- parlers had been carried on for some time with the Swedish Court and Government for the translation to the resting-place of their ancestors of the re- mains of her Majesty's grandfather, father, and brother : the dethroned King Gustavus IV. ; his son Prince Wasa — whom I remember perfectly well as an amiable and popular general in the Austrian service during my first stay at Vienna — and his grandson who died as a child. The Government, it was further said, were at first divided as to the expediency of acceding to this request ; but the King, with his generous, imaginative temperament, favoured the scheme, and the necessary preliminary steps were taken for the transfer of the ashes from their place of interment at Oldenburg to Stockholm. It was very reasonably thought advisable to give no special eclat to the affair, and to treat it as a private matter only concerning the royal family. No doubt with that view, the coffins were shipped on board one of the large German steamers habitu- ally trading between Liibeck and the Swedish capital, where they were landed at a very early hour and quietly taken to the Riddarholm Church ; the Crown Prince, with the Governor-General of Stockholm, Baron Ugglas, and other dignitaries, 1 Queen Carola, Princess of Wasa, now the widow of King Albert of Saxony. THE LAST WASAS 241 all in plain morning clothes, being in readiness there to receive them. Nothing could be more suitable and dignified than these arrangements. Unfortunately, however, certain ill-disposed news- papers somehow got hold of the fact that the mortal relics of the exiled monarch and his descendants had, by an unlucky mischance, made the voyage, with other miscellaneous cargo, in company with a performing elephant destined for a circus then giving representations in the Djurgarden. There seemed a cruel crowning touch of irony about the circumstances attending this last removal of the unfortunate Wasa — in reality, by the way, a IIol- stein-Gottorp. 1 He had already been buried three times before: at St. Gall in Switzerland, where he died in 1S37, after many restless wanderings, under the name of Colonel Gustafson ; then on his son's estates in Moravia ; and subsequently in the church of St. Hedwig at Oldenburg. A curious fact in connection with his final interment was that in the Gnstavian vault into which he was lowered, there was found only just enough space to receive the three additional royal coffins. I happened to reach my Dew and delightful post at a season of exceptional rejoicing. The marriage of the Crown Prince with Princess Vic- toria of Baden had taken place at Carlsruhe on the 20th of September, and great preparations were ■ the line, K 1 n^* Adolf Frederick, wa descended from the Waaaa through hia great-grandmother, a daughter of Cha IX. :■ u. 242 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST made for the reception of the young couple. On the ist of October their entry into Stockholm took place in great state. We had now left our villa and re- turned to the Rydberg Hotel, where from our rooms, to which we had asked several colleagues, together with Lady Garvagh and Mrs. Charles Cadogan, we had a perfect view of the royal procession. It was indeed a remarkably pretty sight. The gay string of handsome Court carriages, with its brilliant military escort, debouched on the big, closely- packed square, and, passing through cheering crowds over the long Norrbro bridge, entered the great portal of the palace by the inclined plane that leads up the Lejonbacken, or hill of lions, to the main entrance of one of the most admirably placed and imposing of royal residences. The pageant was favoured by splendid weather, and the Stockholmers, who are reputed to be rather unde- monstrative, showed unusual enthusiasm, notwith- standing the fact that the date chosen for the royal entry was said to be very unpopular with these orderly Northerners, as interfering with their long-standing custom of changing their quarters [fiyttning, as it is called) on the ist of October. At night the whole town was splendidly illu- minated, and although the illuminations merely consisted of the old device of placing rows of lighted candles in every available window, I cannot remember ever seeing anything more strikingly effective before or since, so universally was this FAERY LIGHTS 243 simple scheme carried out. We had tickets for the palace garden, which overlooks the wide channel dividing the principal island, called Staden, on which the great pile itself stands, from the hulk of the city on the mainland with its long rows of houses. The perfect hlaze of lights that faced us, reflected in the glittering mirror of the Baltic ; the beautiful outlining of the numerous islands and inlets, and of the shores of Lake Malar with festoons of fairy lights again multiplied by reflection ; and the flit- ting to and fro on the broad waters of a number of small steam launches — the gondolas of this " Venice of the North" — profusely decorated with coloured lanterns, altogether made up a scene of truly magi- cal beauty. To the fair princess, whose singularly winsome manner and graceful figure had at once con- quered all hearts, her new northern home must that evening have seemed little short of fairyland. The palace itself — designed with consummate taste by the father of Count Tessin, the statesman tutor of young Gustavus III. — is a noble building of vast dimensions, reared on a massive granite base, and bearing a somewhat severe and gloomy aspect. \N e entered it the first time 00 one of our early morning walks, and when, passing under the front portal, I found myself in tin* great central quad- rangle, a weird story I had heard in my boyhood suddenly recurred mosl vividly to in\ memory. Mj father's sisters had known at the Congress of Vienna I wunt Ldwenhjelm, who had bees one of t he great 244 RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST officers of the household of King Gustavus IV. in the opening years of the century. One night, so the Count had told them, he was present at the royal supper-table in the palace, and in virtue of his high rank at Court was seated next to the young King. On the other side of the table, facing the King, was the Queen, and on her right hand a prince of the house of Baden who had been on a visit to the Swedish Court, but was to leave very early the next morning on his return to Germany. Suddenly, half-way through the supper, the King let drop his knife and fork, and, turning to Lowenhjelm, said, with evident signs of disturbance, " Look ! don't you see ? " at the same time gazing anxiously across the table. On Lowenhjelm, who was of course taken aback, venturing to inquire to what his Majesty referred, Gustavus addressed the same question to his other neighbour — likewise a high Court official — and, receiving from him a similar reply, closed the incident by curtly saying to the puzzled courtiers, " (Jest bien ! " There was a short cercle after supper, during which the German prince took a final leave of his royal hosts, the King then retiring to his private apart- ments, whither, in accordance with the etiquette of the period, he was preceded by Lowenhjelm and his colleague bearing lighted candelabra. Instead, how- ever, of being as usual dismissed at the threshold, they were detained by the King and told to come in, as he wished to explain to them the cause of A ROYAL WRAITH 245 the perturbation he had allowed to appear at Bupper. ''When 1 asked you both," Gustavus said to them, "whether you saw anything, I had myself just distinctly seen the double, or wraith, of the Prince of Baden enter the room, and, passing round the table, place itself behind that prince's chair, where it quickly faded away and vanished." "You know," added the King, " the terrible import attached in our country to such apparitions, and having given von the key to what you may well have thought unaccountable conduct on my part, 1 must now request you to keep strictly to yourselves what T have imparted to you." The following evening and at the same hour, concluded Count Lowenhjelm, while the Court was seated as usual at supper, the clatter of horse's hoofs was heard in the palace quadrangle, and a courier was speedily announced, who brought tidings of a disastrous carriage accident in which the Prince of Baden had lost his life while posting on his way south from the Swedish capital. Standing in the vast, gloomy quadrangle, the <■<<la<-e on the occasion of the Koyal marriage gave as ample opportunities of becoming acquainted with the interior of the great Palace. On Sunday there \\;' s a Bolemfl thanksgiving and '/'■ //< <■ enfilade without separate exits, but they were numerous and easily housed our large family even during the holidays, while the reception rooms were very fairly good, and with their gilded panellings and ceilings of the best eighteenth-century period, were quite in the style of a 'petit hdtel Louis Quinze. The old Italian embroideries I have already spoken of came in here most appropriately, being hung with great effect on the walls of my wife's boudoir. The arrangement and furnishing of our new home gave us plenty to do. We spent many a pleasant hour ransacking the queer old shops — half pawnbrokers, half antiquaires — which abounded in the more remote quarters of the town, and were of a most primitive character, displaying at first sight chiefly cast-off clothes and rows of ancient boots, from behind which peeped out here and there some genuine old cabinet or choice bit of bois