Part 14 (2/2)
On September 11th, 1898, we received the terrible news of the assassination of the Empress of Austria I had seen her every Sunday and feast day at our little Ventnor church, at Mass, during her residence at Steep Hill Castle She had the tiniest waist I ever saw--indeed, no woman could have lived with a tinier one She was beautiful, but so frigid in her manner; she seeether an enighly enjoyed It was a day afterSir Herbert Kitchener, _the_ Sirdar _par excellence_, was received at Dover on his arrival froe of his neon honours shi+ning around hiulation uished persons” were applicable to the hlanders) with the regiimental officers in red and the staff in blue The crowd on the upper part of the pier was i the parapet, and the Lower Pier, reserved for special people, was crowded, too It was a cals pleasant Great gathering of cocked Hats at the entrance gates, and we all walked to the landing stage There was a dense se of black s e, I took but a distracted part in the suished persons coer of Gordon” I was conducted to the head of the landing steps, together with such of the staff as were not to go on board the boat with the General Then the sot hidden behind the pier end, but I could see the ever-increasing swish and swirl of the water on the starboard side of the hidden steaan, no one in the crowd knowing the Sirdar by sight When, however, the General went on board and shook hands, this proclaimed at once where the man was, and cheer upon cheer thundered out I have never, before or since, seen such spontaneous enthusias together on the Nile) and after the delivery of letters (one fro which the hurrahs went on in a great roar andperspective, the big, solid, stolid, sunburnt Briton stepped on English soil oncehands withon and, looking over my head at the masses of people above, he lifted his hat, and thenceforth kept it in his hand as he was escorted to the Lord Warden Hotel He had asked his ADC, on first catching sight of the reception awaiting him, ”What is all this about?”
Then there was an Address at the hotel to which he listened with an ox-like patience, and after that the enoruests went to lunch In his speechthat the traditional Field Marshal's baton would be found in his trunk when the customs officers opened it at Victoria Kitchener spoke so low I could not hear him Had he been less immovable one could have plainly seen how utterly he hated having to ly incongruous alossy frock-coats as he stood up to say what he had to say As we all bulged out of the hotel door the cheers began again from the crowds I took care to look at the people that day, and I was struck by their _unanimity_ All ranks were there, and yet on every face, well bred or unwashed, I saw the saht Such were my impressions, which I noted down, as usual, at the moment, and I have lived to see that reedy that will hold its place in history; my husband's prophecy, put in those playful words at Dover, fulfilled; a threatening disaster to the Empire turned into victory with the aid of that extraordinaryfire of that personality quenched, untimely, in the icy depths of a northern sea
CHAPTER XXII
THE CAPE AND DEVONPORT
On November 12th, 1898, my husband sailed for South Africa, there to take up the h Commissioner in place of Sir Alfred Milner, home on leave His staff at Dover loved hiht tears to his eyes I, C and the ADC saw him off from Southampton, to rejoin him in the process of time at the Cape We little knehat a dark period in his life awaited hiht about by the malice of those in power there and at home It is too sacred and too painful a subject for me to record it here further than I have done The facts will be found in his ”Autobiography” I left England on February 18th, 1899, with three of the children, leaving the two eldest boys at college It was a very painful leave-taking at the Waterloo Station My mother was there and all the dear ones, whoain for two or three years--ain Yet in a few months ere back there! My theory that one should try and not fret about the future, which is an absolutely unknown quantity, proved justified I have chronicled our voyage out in ht at Madeira--a night of enchanto over the days on the ”blue water” again, nor our strange life beyond the Equator, where, though I was filled with ads, I never felt the happiness which Italy, Egypt or Palestine had given me Very absurd, no doubt, and sentimental, but my love of the old haunts s I found down there The crescentside of the sunset, the hot north wind, the cold blast from the south, the shadows all inverted--no, I did not enjoy this contradiction to my well-beloved traditions There was, besides, a local e beauty I cannot describe All this may be put down to sentimentality, but a very real melancholy attaches to South Africa in my mind in connection with my husband, who suffered there for his honesty and devotion to the honour of the Enation of the Cape co the Government, and he accepted the command of the Western District in its place, which ust 22nd we all en of caluainst Sir Willia loose all the poison hich it was being supplied, and I consequently went through, at first, the bitter pain of daily trying to intercept the vilest anonymous letters, uage from the slums Not all the reparation offered to my husband later on--the bestowal of the Grand Cross of the Bath, his election to the dignity of Privy Councillor, his selection as the safest judge to investigate the South African war stores scandals, not to na the _amende honorable_--ever healed the wound
His offence had been a frank admission of sympathy for a people tenacious of their independence and, knowing the Boers as he did, he knehat their resistance would mean in case of attack He was appalled at the prospect of a war, not against an ars and all the horrors which our armies would have to resort to He would fain have seen violence avoided and diploent Dopper eleeneration of Boers,with the English, as they were already doing, would have brought about that very union of the two races within the E In case, however, war should be decided on he ee to warn those in power of the necessity for enormous forces in order to ensure success Some of his despatches were suppressed The idea at Headquarters was an easy march to Pretoria What I have alluded to as the n of calumny had caused the report to be spread that our initial defeats were owing to his wilful neglect in not warning the directing powers of the gravity of their undertaking
The chief interest I found in our new appointn men-of-hose captains were received officially and socially, and there were ad and a Lord and Lady Charles Scott were at the Ad our appointn sailors prevented the official functions froot a certain amount of pleasure out of this Devonport phase of our experiences I carried h thick and thin,” and did well, on the whole, at the Acade zeal”--a very necessary possession One year it was a big tent-pegging picture (I don't knohere its purchaser is nohich ell lighted at Burlington House Then a Boer War subject, ”Within Sound of the Guns”--well placed; followed by an Afghan subject, ”Rescue of Wounded,” which to iven an excellent place in the _Salle d'Honneur_ I also accoreat number of water colours It is a medium I like much I also prepared for the Press my ”Letters from the Holy Land” there which I have already mentioned My publishers, Messrs A and C Black, reproduced the water-colour illustrations very faithfully
Our French sailor guests were always bright, so were the Italians, but the japanese were very heavy in hand, and conversation was uphill work
It was mainly carried on by repeated s shi+ps caave them the first dinner, of course, and at the end the band a few bars out of Arthur Sullivan's ”Mikado” before the E in his repertory Sonised it ”Ah! no, no, no!” ca answer At the Port Admirals' I was to learn that in the navy you n's health, by order of Willia” and standing up for ”The Kaiser” There were the Gerht that very unfortunate[13]
Well, Devonport in su periods of fog and gloo of another trip to Italy, this ti on a dark wintry day in early March, 1900 Sir Willia with us
_Via_ Genoa to Rome lay our happy way Of course, it wasn't the Ro it four years before this present visit had already introduced me into the new order, and I nohat to see, enjoy, and avoid There were several new things to enjoy: above all, the Forum, now all open to the sky! In the dear old days that space was a rather dreary expanse of waste land where so under the delusion that they were excavating They grubbed up the tufts of grass and scraped the dust with pocket-knives, and the treasures below remained comfortably tucked away fronified sweep of its lines leads the eye up, as it follows the flow of the streanity of St Peter's, whereas, for houses tottered over the Tiber and gave that long-suffering river the reflections of their drainpipes Then, the two end arches of that elo are now cleared of the old mud which blocked the of its syood fortune to be present at two very striking Papal functions, striking as bringing together Catholics fro soht to me The first was the Pope's Benediction in St Peter's on March 18th We were standing altogether about three hours in the crowd at the To the Holy Father He was taken round the vast basilica in his _sedia gestatoria_, and blessed a wildly cheering crowd I never saw a hu so like a spirit as Leo XIII He looked as white as his mitre as he leant forward and stretched his arh above the heles, and a curious effect was produced by the whirling handkerchiefs, which made a white haze above the dark crowd I have often heard secular monarchs cheered, and that very heartily, but for a Pope it seems that more than ordinary loyalty proive out their whole being in their voices and gestures
The Diary says: ”I ah it carave At tihest pitch of both e sound to hear in a church”
A spring day spent at the well-known Hadrian's Villa, under Tivoli, is not to be allowed to pass without a grateful record It is a most exquisite place of old ruins, cypresses, olives and, at this ti peach trees, violets and ane site for a country house Hadrian chose well From there you see the delicately-pencilled dome of St Peter's on the rim of the horizon to the west, and behind you, to the north, rise the steep foot-hills of the mountains, some croith old cities The ruins of the villa are all _ which used to hide the brickwork, and poor Hadrian would have felt very woeful had he foreseen that all the white loveliness of his villa was to come to this But as bits of warm colour and lovely surface those brick spaces take the sun and shadow beautifully between the dark rey cloudiness of the olives Nowhere is the ”touch and go” nature of life ly put before the nificence in stone and marble andbrick
On March 26th we attended the Papal Benediction in the Sistine Chapel, which is a re The floor of the chapel was packed with pilgriions of the north-east, whose outlandish costumes were especially re to the knee, worn by both sexes One wondered how these people journeyed to Ro of the faithful we looked down on fro we had heard in St Peter's announced the entrance of Leo XIII There he was, the holy creature, blessing right and left with that thin alabaster hand, half covered with a white , I noticed how those peasants, who had so particularly attracted me, ren of the cross as he passed
They almost monopolised my study of the motley crowd, but I are of the many nationalities present, and the sareat consolation eases the eneral at faith in which one has to live one's ordinary life in the world After the Mass carims at the altar steps The Pope had kind words for all, bending down to hear and to speak to thee Muscovite peasant knelt long at his feet, and the Pope kept patting the roughhiht of this a wild ”_hourah_!” broke froe? In the mists of re the swarthy giant three sandy-haired Gerirt with rapiers, presented soe docureat many men and woued As he was borne out again he waved us an upward blessing with his white and most friendly countenance turned up to us
Our Roardens, which are part of the little tedom a Pope still possesses, and to his tiny ”country house” therein, where he goes for change of air(!) in the summer, about two stonethrows from the Vatican
I note: ”There are well-trimmed vineyards there; there are pet birds and beasts in a little 'zoological gardens'; there is the arbour where he has his meals on hot days; and, finally, ere conducted to his little villa bedroom from whoseone of the finest views of Rome is seen, do hands distance”
We heard the ”Miserere” at St Peter's on Good Friday--very ireat basilica! The unaccompanied voices of boys sounded in sweetest music--one hardly knehence it caelic sound in the waning light as one by one the candles at the altar were put out
At the last Psaluished, and the vast croith its wan faces relih s Then good-bye to Roht to be grateful for having had yet another reception by my Umbrian Hills! And such a reception that April afternoon, with the low sun gilding everything into fullest beauty! I did my best to secure that moment in miserably inadequate paint fro But no ia, nor of dear old Florence on our way to acadeetting home, and after!
CHAPTER XXIII
A NEW REIGN