2 Longing for the East [1888 



my return from Kilmainham by a deputation consisting of three Irish 

 M.P.'s and Langridge, our local cobbler and only Radical. It revealed 

 the full nakedness of the land for me at home, on any lines but those 

 of silence and abstention. And thus the summer passed. I occupied 

 myself once more with my Arab horse breeding, I wrote verses and 

 enjoyed my physical life in the green Sussex woods as in former days, 

 but with the sadness a sense of failure brings. I left off keeping my 

 journal, so little there was of happy interest to record, so much tha't 

 was unhappy. An unfortunate family quarrel about this time, in which 

 I was constrained, unwillingly, to take a part, added to my bitterness in 

 regard to the public situation, and a gap of four months occurs in the 

 entries. It was not till quite the end of the summer that I was able 

 to rouse myself into any more profitable line of thought than that of 

 vain regrets and hopes made void. 



By the middle of autumn, however, tired of inaction, a longing 

 seized me once more to visit Egypt and those desert lands in which so 

 many of my winters had been spent. With the Arabs I had a second 

 home, less estranged from me than the other, and I should find myself, 

 I knew, in that " rut of centuries " which is so soothing to the Japhetic 

 soul troubled with Europe's ephemeral ills. Thus, on the 9th of 

 November my journal is resumed, and shows me on my way eastwards 

 with my wife and my daughter Judith, now taken for the first time 

 abroad with us, at Paris, enjoying, for a few days, something of my 

 old life with my cousin, Francis Currie, whom I had not for some 

 years seen. 



" 1 oth Nov. — Bitters and I breakfasted together this morning and 

 took one of our familiar walks in the afternoon, visiting Richelieu's 

 tomb at the Sorbonne and the Pantheon and the Hotel de Cluny. The 

 tomb is a fine thing in the best style of French sculpture. We also 

 stopped and looked at the new monument to Gambetta [by Aube, then 

 an unknown name to me] which I like better than I could have thought 

 possible. It has good proportion and a certain movement and original- 

 ity which have merit. We could not have produced anything half 

 so good in England. They are pulling down the sheds on the site of 

 the Tuileries, leaving the Carousel open to the garden. This has a 

 poor effect, but it leaves a fine opportunity of rebuilding to Boulanger, 

 or whoever else succeeds to the French throne. 



" nth Nov. — Hearing that Lady C. was in Paris, I called on her, 

 and through her persuasion was introduced to her friend Lacretelle, 

 the painter, whose brother, a prominent deputy, was intimate with 

 Boulanger, and he invited me to call upon the brave general. Lady C. 

 had already made Boulanger's acquaintance, and had spoken to me 

 about him when I had seen her in London. Her description of him 

 reminded me not a little of Napoleon III, ' very amiable, but rather 



