228 With George Wyndham at Stratford [1896 



me 'that it was entirely Lord Salisbury, and that nobody else had been 

 consulted about it. 



" 16th May. — Lunched with George and Sibell, and found Madeline, 

 his mother, there, looking fresh and well and younger than I have 

 seen her for years, and came on with them in the afternoon to Stratford, 

 where we now are. We have already been to the Church and the 

 Grammar School. George is a capital companion for a visi't of this 

 kind, as he enjoys sightseeing, and besides knows all about Shakespeare, 

 and has his theories about everything. We are at the Shakespeare 

 Hotel, a pleasant inn of the old kind. We have spent the evening 

 reading ' Venus and Adonis ' and ' Lucrece.' I have always been a 

 great admirer of these two pieces, which are the most elaborate and 

 sustained of their kind, and splendidly rhetorical. I did most of the 

 reading as George has a cold. 



" Vjth May. — A beautiful hot day which we spent driving round 

 the country with a jibbing horse. We went to Charlcote and wandered 

 about the park, and then to Mary Arden's cottage, and to Anne Hatha- 

 way's. Both cottages are interesting, and quite untouched and un- 

 restored, the latter inhabited still by a descendant of the Hathaways. 

 It is after all no such long way back to Shakespeare's time, seven gen- 

 erations in my own family, and I think people largely exaggerate the 

 changes tha't have taken place. Remote country villages can have 

 hardly at all changed. In the evening I read them translations from 

 the Moallakat, about which George is enthusiastic. My article for the 

 ' New Review ' has put him upon the track of discovery as to certain 

 features of chivalry in 'the Middle Ages in Europe, a subject not yet 

 properly traced to its origin in Arabia. We have had a thoroughly 

 literary two days, to me of much profit. 



" iSth May. — Mary joined us from Stanway with Miss Balfour, 

 and we all went to see the church and the tomb, then back to London in 

 'the afternoon. 



" 20th May. — Dined with Pamela, and then went to the Foreign 

 Office party in honour of Her Majesty's birthday, an immense crush, 

 but as always a fine sight, and many people one knows. 



" 2gth May. — The Morrises have been here at Newbuildings since 

 Tuesday. He, poor man, very feeble and aged. I fear from the look 

 of things that it is some form of consumption, and 'that he will not 

 recover. But his spirits are fairly good, and he talks at times as bril- 

 liantly as ever. The new piece of tapestry he has made me, Botticelli's 

 Spring, is up and is very decorative and brilliant in the drawing-room, 

 though 'the faces are hardly as good as they ought to be. It has been a 

 great difficulty to execute it, he says, and has turned out better than he 

 expected. We think the three figures with the flowers are March, 

 April, and May. We have had many interesting 'talks on art, politics, 



