54 London Adulates Kaiser Wilhelm t 1 ^ 1 



politics, discussing instead literature, and especially the influence of 

 Arabia on the Middle Ages. Balfour was agreeable and the conversa- 

 tion brilliant, and he showed especial amiability to me as if to make 

 up for past severities, offering me a place in his brougham to go home 

 in when we went away. Why, indeed, should we quarrel? He has 

 mitigated his prison rigours in Ireland and I am aloof from politics. 



" nth July. — Arabi's case has been brought forward in Parliament 

 by Labouchere, and the Foreign Office answer is fairly satisfactory. 

 Ferguson says that the Government has uttered no non possumus about 

 the exiles, and is seeing what can be done. 



" All the world is agog just now about the visit of the German Em- 

 peror to London, and the Liberals are just as absurd (in their adula- 

 tion) as the Tories. I met Justin McCarthy to-day in the street with 

 his son Huntly, and walked some way with them. They were jubilant 

 about the Carlow election and Parnell's collapse, but Huntly told me 

 he did not intend to come forward again in Parliament, but would 

 stick to literature. His talk about Egypt was quite in the Imperialistic 

 vein, justifying what I have always predicted that the Irish, once free, 

 would be more English than the English in enslaving the weaker na- 

 tions. 



" 15th July. — To see Cardinal Manning, taking with me a basket of 

 roses from Crabbet for his birthday, of which I was reminded by 

 Hedgecock's remark in the morning that to-day was ' Swithums.' The 

 old man is less infirm, I thought, and we talked politics and literature. 

 He told me of two new poets, Symons and Mrs. King. He is satisfied 

 with the way things are going in Ireland, and asked me what I thought 

 of the Pope's Labour Encyclical. It is, in truth, a rather colourless 

 pronouncement, saying too little. 



"6th Aug. — At Coombe, where I heard from Bertram Currie the 

 history of the Baring financial crisis, and the part he had played in 

 averting its being an absolute crash. The collapse was due to Revel- 

 stoke's having gambled outside the line of his ordinary business. He 

 had had his head turned by the million he had made over the Guinness 

 affair, and he had come to think that everything he touched must turn 

 to gold, and he went on to his ventures in South America, which let 

 him in. The House of Baring would have broken altogether if he, 

 Bertram, had not got the Bank of England to secure its liabilities for 

 a million and taken half a million himself and persuaded Lord Roths- 

 child as late as six o'clock in the evening to take another. The pros- 

 pects in South America are bad, as things there do not settle down and 

 Ned [Revelstoke] has only £500 a year settled income. [This was a 

 case that had made an immense sensation in the City. But the House 

 of Baring has happily survived it.] 



" yth August. — Lunched at Kelmscott House when Mrs. Morris 



