33° Kitchener "Such a Stem Man" [1899 



Sutton Place as long ago as the year 1855, when it was occupied by 

 my cousins, the Lefevres. In those days there was a Catholic chapel 

 in the east wing to which we used to be sent on Sundays from West 

 Horsley. The east wing was then uninhabited, a melancholy romantic 

 vacancy with a great staircase, hung with family portraits mouldering 

 on the walls. The chapel was in an upper room used for mass on 

 Sundays, according to an old endowment. Now the wing has been 

 restored and is occupied and the chapel placed elsewhere. 



" 2Cjth Sept. — Back to London. Lady Lytton tells me that Kitchener 

 is a great favourite at Court. She was with the Oueen and Kitchener 

 when they went to Natley Hospital, and was impressed with Kitchener's 

 manner to the wounded soldiers. ' What these Royal personages ad- 

 mire,' she said, ' is that he is such a stern man.' 



"30th Sept. — My cousin, Gerald Henry Blunt and his wife (she is 

 General Gordon's niece and sister to Colonel Bill Gordon) is here at 

 Newbuildings to dine and sleep, and I have heard from her the whole 

 story of the digging up of the Mahdi at first hand, or rather, as her 

 brother told it her. ' Bill,' she said, ' was entrusted with the bombard- 

 ment of the tomb from the gunboat on the river during the battle of 

 Omdurman, and after it he was ordered to blow up the ruined remains 

 of the dome, as being already shattered and unsafe. This he did, but 

 it was no part of his orders to interfere with the body of the Mahdi. 

 It was left untouched under the ruins until Kitchener's return from 

 Fashoda, when Kitchener had it dug up and thrown into the river. 

 Bill was not present at this, nor was the job assigned to him, but Kitch- 

 ener and most of his staff were present, and Kitchener ordered the 

 head to be kept, intending to send it to the College of Surgeons, as the 

 head was a very large and remarkable one. It was sent on board the 

 steamer in a kerosene tin and taken down to Cairo, but was never in 

 Bill's charge, and he disapproved of the whole business. Eventually 

 when the scandal was made about it, the head was entrusted to two 

 English officers to take up the river again to Wady Haifa.' These re- 

 ported that they ' buried it at night, somewhere in the desert,' they 



don't know where, so very possibly D 's account of its having been 



' put behind the fire ' is correct. Mrs. Gerald Blunt thanked me pro- 

 fusely for the letter I had written to the ' Daily News ' in her brother's 

 defence, and said that Bill considered that Kitchener had treated him 

 unfairly in the affair. They had all made a scapegoat of him because 

 he did not stand in with them in certain not very straightforward 

 things. She is a nice, cheerful little woman, enthusiastic about her 

 ' Uncle Charlie,' and not at all conventional about the military nonsense 

 of the day. 



" 30th Sept. — To the Hoo, where I found a family party. Hampden 

 and his wife, and sons and daughters. Nothing is talked of but the 



