74 Gladstone [1892 



a ' Quarterly Review ' article and said no more. That, I fancy, is his 

 common domestic life. 



" Mary Drew's little girl Dorothy was there, running about without 

 shoes or stockings, and the Spitz dog which Margot had described to 

 me and which had brought in a stick with it to the drawing-room, but 

 I did not notice that Mr. G. paid attention to either. He did not im- 

 press me much with the matter of his conversation, impressive as it 

 was in manner. All he said was essentially commonplace. Once he 

 corrected George for pronouncing ' mythological ' short as ' mithologi- 

 cal.' Meanwhile Mrs. Gladstone gave me an account of an adventure 

 Mr. G. had had two days before with a cow in the park. ' It was a 

 strange cow,' she said, ' which had got in by accident and found itself 

 in Mr. G.'s path as he was walking alone, and when he would have 

 driven it out of his way, it turned on him and knocked him down. It 

 stood over him but did not gore him. This,' said Mrs. Gladstone, ' was 

 very unusual in a cow. He tried to rise, but at first he could not, for 

 he had not the breath, but afterwards he managed to get behind a 

 tree and the cow trotted away.' Poor old soul, she touched me with 

 her devotion for him. Of himself I carried away the mixed impres- 

 sion I have had of him before, one of disappointment at finding less 

 than I should have found to worship. 



" Hawarden House, the modern castle, is one of the end of last 

 century, very comfortable and nice inside with no great pretension to 

 architecture - — outside it is a poor castellated gothic structure. The 

 old castle, which stands in the grounds a little way off, and to which I 

 ran up after tea, is a very interesting ruin. On the whole, we agreed, 

 as we drove home, that we had enjoyed our visit, and that the pilgrim- 

 age had been well worth making. The G.O.M. saw Sibell to the door 

 himself, with Mrs. Gladstone and the others. The younger men had 

 been out shooting meanwhile in the Park. 



" 3rd Sept. — Travelled in the train on my way home with Frank 

 Villiers. He has just been made Private Secretary to Rosebery at the 

 Foreign Office, and professes great admiration for him as ' a statesman 

 without personal ambition.' We discussed the Egyptian question pretty 

 thoroughly and the release of Arabi. With regard to evacuation he 

 said that everybody was agreed it would be dangerous and impossible 

 to hold Egypt permanently. Baring had been doing what he could to 

 prepare things for a withdrawal of the troops, but he could find no men 

 among the Egyptians capable of carrying on reforms. Baring had 

 told them at the Foreign Office of my idea of having a Fellah Min- 

 istry, but could not get capable men. He would be very glad if he 

 could find them, but where were they? I said that I had given Baring 

 the names of suitable Fellah Ministers, but that he had told me the 

 late Khedive would never consent to employ them. I was at one with 



