298 The Fashoda Quarrel [1898 



but was able to talk a little when the general conversation was not too 

 loud, and he seems good-hearted and quite unpretending. He has writ- 

 ten no poetry, Meynell tells me, now for some years, being cured of his 

 morphia. But Meynell thinks the fountain may some day break forth 

 again. Meanwhile, he gets a living by literary criticism in the ' Acad- 

 emy ' and other journals. When we all went out after luncheon to the 

 woods, I found him quite ignorant of the names of the commonest trees, 

 »;ven the elm, which he must have seen every day in London. I pointed 

 one out to him, and he said, ' I think, a maple.' On the whole, how- 

 ever, I liked him, for he was quite simple and straightforward. Only, 

 it was difficult to think of him as capable of any kind of strength in 

 rhyme or prose. Meynell has greatly improved conversationally with 

 years, and has become a most agreeable man. Thanks to him, the visit 

 was a pleasant one and they all went home in spirits. 



" i$th Oct. — All this week has been one of excitement over the 

 quarrel with France about Fashoda. A Blue Book has been published 

 giving the English case, and, imperial plunder being in question, all 

 parties, Tories, Whig, Radical, Churchmen, and Nonconformist have 

 joined in publicly extolling English virtue and denouncing the French. 

 For myself I see nothing in it more respectable than the wrangle of 

 two highwaymen over a captured purse, morally both sides are on a 

 level. The English position in the case is that there has long been a 

 scheme of appropriating the Soudan with all the Upper Nile to the 

 Lakes — this, in anticipation of the event which must some day happen, 

 of the British occupation of Egypt proper coming to an end, through 

 European intervention. The scheme has so far been disguised, and 

 whenever objection has been raised, the Egyptian claim to the old 

 Soudan provinces has been put forward and, as we have seen, the 

 Egyptian army has been made use of to do the rough work of re-con- 

 quest, only now and then have there been indications given of the truth. 

 In the present Blue Book there is one where Lord Salisbury instructs 

 Monson to declare at Paris that ' By the military events of last week all 

 the territories which were subject to the Khalifa passed, by right of 

 conquest, to the British and Egyptian Government.' Yet all the gobe- 

 mouche press is ringing the changes on our ' legality.' And what a 

 strange plea of legality as towards Egypt ! What would be said in 

 private life if a guardian and trustee who had undertaken to manage the 

 estate of a minor, as we forced the Egyptian Government in 1884 to 

 abandon the Soudan and leave it derelict, and then, the opportunity 

 having occurred, should take possession of those derelict farms as be- 

 longing to nobody and should do this with the approval of the whole 

 world, moral and religious ! Yesterday, there was a great public meet- 

 ing in favour of universal peace, and our leading Nonconformists on 



