292 The Tichborne Claimant Dead [1898 



ing in a miserable plight of pain, but to-morrow Sibell (Lady Gros- 

 venor) is to take me to Holywell to be bathed by the miraculous foun- 

 tain there for my cure. Some Vandals, calling themselves the Town 

 Council, are claiming the well which they want to let to a soda water 

 company at £500 a year, but George intends to oppose this in Parlia- 

 ment. There is nobody here but the family, including little Percy 

 and Bendor, the latter grown into a very nice young man. George has 

 been entertaining Mr. Cecil Rhodes at my rooms in Mount Street 

 while I was away, using them, I fancy, as a place of secret communi- 

 cation between the Government and Rhodes, whom they dare not 

 publicly avow. 



" I see the old Tichborne claimant is dead, asserting his rights to 

 the last. Certainly there was something about the man not wholly 

 vulgar. I saw a good deal of him at Buenos Ayres in 1868, and, 

 though a mountain of flesh and of no very refined clay, he seemed to 

 me a gentleman born, gone down in the world, rather than a mere 

 plebeian. Richard Burton, who was there at the same time, and who 

 travelled across the Pampas with him in the Mendoza diligence, be- 

 lieved in him as authentic at the time, and so we all did. I remember 

 seeing him once involved in some vulgar dispute in a cafe, while play- 

 ing billiards, and he seemed to me to behave as a gentleman would 

 have done under somewhat trying circumstances, and now they have 

 buried him with considerable pomp and a coffin plate recording his 

 baronetcy, attended by the licensed victuallers who supported him as 

 a show in his last days. 



" 12th April. — I have been to St. Winifred's well at Holywell. 

 After a very bad night of pain I nevertheless made up my mind not 

 to put off the visit. Fortified with a dose of morphia I set out with 

 Sibell and George. We went by train from Chester, passing not far 

 from Hawarden, where the G.O.M. lies dying, and the sands of Dee. 

 We were fortunate in our day, which, though wild at starting, turned 

 into a perfect spring afternoon. Sibell had written to Father Beau- 

 clerk, the Jesuit at Holywell, to expect us, but he was away. I was 

 glad of it, as thus I was free to bathe as a plain pilgrim without re- 

 ligious supervision. I suppose no pilgrim ever washed there with less 

 Christian faith and at the same time with so little of the mocking 

 spirit. I have a belief in holy places and holy people quite apart from 

 all religious creeds, and I felt a great confidence in the Saint that she 

 would do me good. We arrived at the best moment of the day, at 

 one o'clock when everybody was away at dinner, so that we were alone 

 and there was no difficulty in that sweet old place in supposing our- 

 selves back in the fifteenth century. The girl in charge of the gate 

 gave me two towels, and I had brought a nightgown with me, and so 

 plunged in. It was cold work, though the water, they say, is 52 



