1896] Morris III at Hammersmith 227 



the Prince of Wales ' to our dear friend.' So he ought to sleep happy 

 to the Judgment Day. He was quite the last of the old D'Orsay set 

 in London, and remained a ' man of fashion,' dining out to the end, 

 though he died actually away from London at Burley, with his daugh- 

 ter, Edith Finch. 



" 28th April. — To London with Anne. Ralph came to luncheon in 

 Mount S'treet, and I afterwards dined with him. He showed me the 

 whole existing correspondence between Byron and Mrs. Leigh. 



" 14th May. — I have been down, for the most part alone, at New- 

 buildings, enjoying a wonderful fortnight, the woods lovely in green 

 and gold, nightingales singing night and day from every hedge, quite 

 a dozen close to the house so that one can hear them a't any hour of 

 the night chorussing when one opens a window. I have finished my 

 article on the ' Poetry of the Ignorance,' and am half way through 

 another on the ' Origin of the Arabian Horse,' for the June and July 

 numbers of the ' New Review.' George and I and Sibell, and one of 

 the girls, are to go 'to Stratford on Saturday. I lunched to-day with 

 them and young Rosslyn, a pleasant specimen of the golden youth of 

 the day. 



" Then to Hammersmith, where I found my poor old Morris looking 

 very ill and aged, toddling feebly in front of his house. We went in 

 together, and he brightened up, and told me of his maladies in a cheerful 

 not too desponding way, and I stayed on an hour or more and had tea 

 with him. My new tapestry, the Botticelli, is finished, and I am to 

 go with Mrs. Morris on Saturday to see it in Oxford Street. Morris 

 showed me the title-page of his Chaucer, which is about the finest 

 thing he has done, the whole has been subscribed for, a matter of 

 some £9,000. 



" Gill, whom I saw in Mount Street, repeated to me more of what 

 Cromer had told him about the Soudan. He asked Cromer whether 

 he should be in favour of an advance to re-occupy the los't provinces. 

 In reply to this Cromer had told him that some time or other the Soudan 

 would have to be reconquered from the Khalifa, but the question was 

 by whom. As for imposing such a task on Egypt he was most em- 

 phatic. ' I should never 'think,' he said, ' of proposing that the poor 

 fellahin in their blue shirts should be charged with it.' This, it is as 

 well to remember, was as late as the beginning of March, and within 

 a week of the expedition being ordered from England. 



"15th May. — Had tea with Lady Lytton at her house in Sloane 

 Stree't. She thinks it a pity I should have written what I have about 

 the Dongola campaign, which has set people against me just as I was 

 coming home. By ' people,' I suppose she means the Court, and I 

 strongly suspect that Her Majesty has been the determining cause of 

 the forward policy in Africa. Lady Lytton was at pains to persuade 



