1893] Burne-Jones on Morris ill 



Harcourt, a very pleasant party, and a day of tropical heat. The party 

 had been invited to meet the Teck family, who arrived for tea, with 

 the Duke of York and Princess May. 



"21st June. — To a party at Lady Salisbury's, where I again met 

 Prince George and Princess May. 



" 2jth June. — Lunched with Lady Galloway, where I met Mackenzie 

 Wallace ; then on to Grosvenor Square, where Margot was entertain- 

 ing Princess Helene and a dozen more ladies to see the performance of 

 a Spanish dancer, Candida Lopez. 



" 2&th June. — To an open air play at Pope's Villa at Twickenham, 

 where Labouchere was our entertainer, a queer omnium gatherum, 

 conspicuous among the guests being Sir William Harcourt, Monty 

 Corry, and numerous Irish members. Most of these last I had not 

 seen since my retirement from Home Rule politics. They were very 

 cordial. ' We treated you very badly,' Healy said, ' in not giving you 

 an Irish seat, we ought to have made an exception in your favour.' 

 ' Indeed,' I said, ' I am very glad you did not.' Dr. Kenny and John 

 Redmond spoke to me in the same sense. I was especially glad to meet 

 Dillon, and had some talk with him about Egypt. He told me the last 

 two years had been the hardest and most thankless work he had ever 

 had to do. 



" The play was ' The Tempest/ done with Sullivan's music, pretty 

 but quite inept. Certainly Shakespeare was here at his very worst. 

 What can be stupider than Caliban and the drunken sailors ? The other 

 characters pompous and flat. But beautiful songs. Ariel was wonder- 

 fully well acted by Dora Labouchere, a child of ten. 



" 3,0th June. — With Judith to lunch with Burne-Jones, where he had 

 asked her to sit to him. His wife and son, and sister-in-law, Mrs. 

 Kipling, were there. During the two hours' sitting he had of Judith 

 he was most entertaining, telling us stories of William Morris's oddities. 

 One of the chairs in the studio we observed was rickety. ' Yes,' he 

 said, ' Morris has sat in them all, and he has a muscular movement in 

 his back peculiar to himself, which makes the rungs fly out.' He and 

 Morris are devoted friends, and Morris comes every Sunday to spend 

 the morning with him, and has done so for, I think he said, thirty years. 

 ' I have never taken a fortnight's holiday away from London,' he went 

 on, ' for twenty-three years. That is because I am constitutionally idle. 

 Millais used to say of me, when we were young men, that I was so 

 lazy that when I began to work, I was too lazy to stop. And so it has 

 always been. I have constantly wished to get away to Egypt and to 

 Mount Sinai and to Jerusalem, but I am deterred by the thought that I 

 can get to any of these places in a week. I should like it to take at 

 least six months, travelling slowly through France and Italy, and ar- 

 riving gradually, so as to be two years away. As this is impossible 



