1892] Baron de Staal 67 



good talk, told us he had never in all his life been owner of a dog, and 

 did not care for pets — thought he might perhaps make friends with 

 a horse, if he had the time and opportunity. He showed us round 

 the printing press, where his Golden Legend sheets were hanging on 

 strings to dry, the printers being away for their Whit Saturday after- 

 noon. 



" $th June. — Whit Sunday at Crabbet. Staal the Russian Ambas- 

 sador came to lunch with his wife; and daughter. He is of all 

 foreigners the man with whom I can talk most intimately, for we were 

 fast friends thirty-three years ago at Athens, he then thirty-seven, I 

 eighteen. Now he is seventy, I fifty-one ; yet we talked just as of 

 old, and I doubt if we feel much older. He was never a young man, 

 even in those days. 



" yth June. — To Mark Napier's at Fulham. Mark was in his shirt- 

 sleeves, working at the building of a steam launch he is constructing 

 with his own hands in the upstairs drawing-room of Little Mulgrave 

 House, a beautiful room of the last century, full of china and bric-a- 

 brac, perhaps the most incongruous building yard ever chosen. The 

 difficulty will be to get the boat 'out of the window when finished. A 

 large circular saw stood in the dining-room downstairs. [The boat 

 was safely launched, nevertheless.] 



" 20th June. — Breakfast with George Wyndham and Sibell. George 

 and I discussed the prospects of the General Election. He says the 

 most optimistic Tory calculation is 14 majority, while Loulou Har- 

 court and the Liberals count on 100 for their majority. 



" $th July. — At Kelmscott Manor. I came here yesterday. Morris 

 in fine spirits, and inexhaustible energy over his new hobby, the print- 

 ing press. He is beginning a Chaucer, and there is great discussion 

 whether it is to be printed in single or double column. I am much in 

 favour of the single column. Burne Jones is to do illustrations. I 

 forgot to say that I was at Merton last week with the Morrises, when 

 we saw a brother of his, working in the dye vats there, a dreamy man 

 in workman's clothes, with his shirt sleeves turned up, and his arms 

 blue with indigo to the elbows. I asked Morris about him and, he 

 tells me that having begun life with a good fortune — he had a country 

 place in Herefordshire — he has gradually fallen in the world, and 

 after trying one thing and another to get a living is now glad to be 

 employed on weekly wages. He lives at Merton, and is quite happy, 

 indeed he looked so, dipping wool all day in the vats, in a shed open on 

 to the garden. It is, perhaps, the nearest thing to a conventual life 

 which can be found in the lay world. We walked to-day in the mead- 

 ows by the river. 



" 6th July. — The elections are going not too well for Gladstone, and 

 though he will probably get a majority, I fear Home Rule is doomed. 



