72. Dante Gabriel Rossetti [1892 



power, but that he himself was unable. Having been rewarded, he 

 mounted his ass and rode away. Middleton believes that the manifesta- 

 tions produced were mesmeric, certainly no trick. The leaves of the 

 plant he kept for some time, but lost with other things in a shipwreck 

 on his way home." 



Middleton had known Kelmscott Manor in the early days when 

 Rossetti and Morris first took the house together at a rent of £60 a 

 year. The Tapestry Room, which is now the sitting-room, used to 

 be Rossetti's own room, and it was there that he wrote his poetry. 

 Rossetti, he tells me, was addicted to loves of the most material kind 

 both before and after his marriage, with women, generally models, 

 without other soul than their beauty. It was remorse at the contrast 

 between his ideal and his real loves that preyed on him and destroyed 

 his mind. It is touching to see still on the table at meals napkins 

 marked with the initials D. G. R. His ghost seems to me to be present 

 in all the rooms. From thence I drove on to Stanway, where I found 

 Arthur Balfour, to whom I narrated Middleton's experience in Mo- 

 rocco, which interested him greatly. We had a pleasant time there, 

 and I found Balfour most agreeable, glad to be relieved of office, Salis- 

 bury having just resigned. 



" 16th Aug. — It is announced that Rosebery has taken office after 

 all as Foreign Secretary under Gladstone. This will neutralise any 

 good that might have come of a change of Government to Egypt. 

 Rosebery will continue to represent the Bondholders. Gladstone has 

 made up his Ministry, every one of them Whigs. Asquith and Lefevre 

 are the only two who are at all advanced, the rest quite of the old gang, 

 only one surprise. Houghton is to go as Lord Lieutenant to Ireland, 

 a triumph for the Crabbet Club ! 



" From Stanway on to Batsford, which is now Bertie Mitford's. He 

 inherited it about five years ago from his cousin Lord Redesdale, and 

 has spent a vast amount of money pulling the old house down and 

 building a new Victorian Tudor one. He has also laid out the grounds 

 with elaborate rockeries and a multitude of trees and foreign shrubs, 

 stabling on a vast scale, a stud of shire cart mares, the most interesting 

 feature of the place. I remember Bertie as a very good-looking youth, 

 three or four years older than myself, with a great reputation for 

 ability, much talent for languages, and a player of the comet a piston — 

 this was in 1858. We went up for an examination the same day, he 

 for a clerkship in the Foreign Office, I for the diplomatic service." 



Thence (i&th Aug.) on to The Glen, where I found John Addington 

 Symonds staying in the house, and where I stayed ten days with Margot 

 and a number of young ladies, a very delightful time, of which my 

 diary is full, but again this is not the place for it. 



