CHAPTER II 



EGYPT UNDER TEWFIK, 1889 



The summer of 1889 saw me occupied almost exclusively with literary- 

 work. It was then that I wrote my poem, " A New Pilgrimage," which 

 with many Other pieces of more or less the same date I published in 

 the early autumn. This brought me once more into pleasant relations 

 with my friends, even those who had been most angry with me for my 

 doings in Ireland. Chief among these was my cousin, George Wynd- 

 ham, who already the year before had sent me a pleasant word. ' We 

 have so many grounds," he wrote, " for friendship, our common love 

 of sport and of poetry, and especially our common blood, that I think 

 it would be very foolish to allow differences of politics and opinion 

 to interfere with it in any way. I sincerely hope that you think so 

 too." Now, on my return to England in 1889, I found him full of 

 affectionate endeavour to make things pleasant for me on my re- 

 emergence into social life. In this he showed himself no idle friend. 

 I had hardly arrived in London when he arranged occasions of meeting 

 for me at his house in Park Lane with our mutual friends, and event- 

 ually one with Arthur Balfour, at which we buried our political hatchet 

 in mutual amiabilities, an attitude we have ever since preserved as 

 often as we have met. Another friend, equally dear to me with 

 George, whom I recovered at this time, was Lytton. He, too, had 

 written me an affectionate letter, regretting that he had missed seeing 

 me on my passage through Paris. As to my women friends, my prison 

 adventures, I soon found, had done me no real discredit with them. 

 The only one of them that had been seriously shocked at it was Princess 

 Wagram, who, not being English, had made herself more English in the 

 matter than were my own countrywomen, and now she, too, was recon- 

 ciled. With the rest the episode was a title to romantic interest, which 

 made it easy for me to resume my place and more than my place in 

 society. Their kindness did me full amends, and for the next few 

 years strewed my path with flowers to the extent that politics lost their 

 hold over my mind, more than perhaps they should have done. My 

 daughter Judith, too, now growing up, was a new interest of a very 

 absorbing kind, and my diary, when it is resumed, I find dealing mainly 

 with home occupations and the details of my private life. 



22 



