1899] Kegan Paul's Memoirs 337 



The letter, very simply written, gave a powerful picture of the hap- 

 hazard character of modern warfare, and of the extreme helplessness 

 of the units of an army while in action. The letter said nothing of the 

 surrender of the third column, which was perhaps not known at the 

 time by the writer, or it may have been purposely omitted, for what 

 George showed me was a typewritten copy of the letter made for family 

 reading. He was going down with it to his mother at Clouds in the 

 afternoon, where there is naturally a great anxiety. Of the victory in 

 the Soudan, and the death of the Khalifa, he seemed to admit that it, 

 like Methuen's victories, had been timed to coincide with the Emperor 

 William's visit to Windsor, just as the Dundee victory was for the 

 Parliamentary vote. Personally, George was in the highest spirits, 

 amply consoled for his disappointment at his not getting the Foreign 

 Office instead of the War Office last summer. 



" I have been reading Kegan Paul's Memoirs, which are extremely 

 interesting. His description of his first school at Ilminster might stand 

 for my own experience at Twyf ord, a mere hell upon earth — and I 

 notice that the Ilminster master had been a Twyford boy, under Bed- 

 ford, whom I remember as a very old man living on in retirement, near 

 the school, when I first went there in 1847. The caning cupboards, on 

 either side the head master's throne at Ilminster, were clearly modelled 

 on the Twyford ones. I received a letter only the day before I left 

 home from old Roberts who used to cane me in them, begging piteously 

 for pheasants to eat in his old age. Now I am reading Aubrey De 

 Vere's Memoirs. The two books are much on the same lines, and both 

 interest me greatly, recalling memories of people I have known, and 

 phases of thought gone through. Nevertheless Kegan Paul's is by far 

 the best, being simpler and less literary. De Vere bores one a little 

 with his poems, and his explanations of them. I remember him well 

 when we lived at Mortlake for a year in 1853. He used to come and 

 see my mother while he was staying with the Taylors at Shene. Mrs. 

 Cameron was another of his friends, but Taylor was the central figure. 

 For Taylor, Mrs. Cameron affected a great devotion, and had a portrait 

 of him by Watts hung in a recess of her drawing-room before which a 

 lamp continually burned. De Vere posed as a poet, and we children 

 thought him a bore. All the same I have a very high respect 

 for him now. An homme de bien, if ever one was in the world. 

 Many years later, I came into communication with him regarding the 

 letters of ' Proteus and Amadeus,' which he edited at Newman's sugges- 

 tion. At one time Newman had almost consented himself to do the 

 editing, for Dr. Meynell, the ' Amadeus ' of the letters, was much at 

 Edgbaston just then. But for one reason or another the old man 

 changed his mind, and De Vere undertook the thing for him and wrote 

 the preface. 



