1 891] First Visit to the Glen 57 



old Lady Tennant, a quiet little old lady, very well dressed, active and 

 alert, whom I found exceedingly pleasant and conversable, with a 

 heart overflowing with kindness. She showed me a book about Souls, 

 which gives diagrams of the various kinds of souls, the surface soul, the 

 deep soul, and the mixed soul, half-clever, half-childish (the book had 

 something to do, I think, with the name given to the set of which her 

 daughters were such notable members). 



" Talking about Gladstone, she tells me that Gladstone's grand- 

 father lived in this neighbourhood at Peebles. He was a baker, spelling 

 his name Gladstanes, but known locally as ' licht bap,' on account of his 

 selling his bread at false weight, ' bap ' being the name of a kind of 

 loaf. After luncheon we all drove to Traquhair, an interesting old 

 house much fallen into decay, the present owner taking no interest in 

 it. We were shown over the rooms by his brother, who might have 

 been one of Scott's Osbaldistones. The family pedigrees were lying 

 littered round the library, hardly legible for damp. 



" 30^/1 Sept. — To Kelmscott Manor, to wish the Morrises good-bye 

 for the winter. It was very perfect weather and we did our gudgeon 

 fishing and took our walks as usual there. Jenny is better than she 

 has been for several years. Her devotion to her father is most touch- 

 ing and his to her. Morris in high feather. He read us out several 

 of his poems of his best, including ' The Haystack in the Floods,' but 

 his reading is without the graces of elocution. He did it as if he were 

 throwing a bone to a dog, at the end of each piece breaking off with 

 ' There, that's it,' as much as to say, ' You may take it or leave it, as 

 you please.' He is to lecture on art at Birmingham on Friday. Politi- 

 cally he is in much the same position as I am. He has found his 

 Socialism impossible and uncongenial, and has thrown it wholly up 

 for art and poetry, his earlier loves. I fancy I may have influenced 

 him in this." 



The early autumn saw me once more in Paris, where the unrest of 

 the military party which had given Boulanger his chance two years 

 before, a chance which he had failed to take, had given place to apathy. 

 "Poor Boulanger," I write, 1st October, "has blown his brains out 

 over the grave of Madame Bonnemain. Politically he was already 

 defunct, and this is a graceful and dramatic exit " ; and a week later, 

 " Parnell is dead." 



Here I spent my time, as usual, mostly at the Embassy, where Lady 

 Salisbury was staying with her daughter, Lady Gwendolen, and her 

 sister-in-law, Lady Galloway, both very charming women. Lady Salis- 

 bury, too, was clever with much dry wit. I find the following in my 

 journal : " I sat between Lady Salisbury and Lady Galloway to-night 

 at dinner, and during it she told us a story of a visit she had paid long 

 ago to old Lady Palmerston, and how Lady Palmerston had said to 



