1900] The "Yellow Terror" Scare 369 



manage to hold out in their mountains till then, they may turn the 

 tables yet. 



" 26th June. — I have moved to-day from my rooms in Mount Street 

 to 2>7> Chapel Street, Belgrave Square, having taken the whole of that 

 house, a small one, with Hampden, as Mount Street was too small for 

 us both. 



" 27th June. — Dined with Godfrey Webb and Hugh Wyndham at 

 the Travellers. The excitement of the moment is the trouble in China, 

 where the Foreign Embassies are in danger from the mob. The Chi- 

 nese, after a long course of bullying by the Powers, worrying by 

 missionaries, and robbing by merchants and speculators have risen, 

 and are, very properly, knocking the foreign invasion on the head. 

 Admiral Seymour, with two thousand men, mostly English, who was 

 sent up to relieve the Embassy, is himself blockaded, as is Tientsin be- 

 hind him, and the rumpus is general. 



" 28th June. — The Khedive has arrived at last in London at Buck- 

 ingham Palace. 



" yd July. — To London and lunched with Wilfrid Lawson, who 

 told me a number of splendid new stories, and took me to an Aborig- 

 ines Protection Conference. Dined with Charles Russell and his wife. 



" yth July. — Our Arab Sale Day. An immense concourse of guests 

 but few buyers, some five hundred sitting down to luncheon. Hamp- 

 den proposed my health as a poet, politician, and horse-breeder, which, 

 in my reply, I said was unkind, seeing that in the first two characters 

 I had been a failure, and I then gave them my idea of how to breed 

 horses for war. Many were prevented from coming by the news from 

 China, where all the European Ambassadors, they say, have been mur- 

 dered by the mob. People are shrieking against the Chinese, as in- 

 human barbarians, and there is wild talk about the Yellow Terror. 

 I wish I could believe that Europe stood in the smallest danger from 

 it. [This tale about the murder of the Ambassadors turned out to 

 be a Stock Exchange scare invented by the ' Daily Mail.'] 



" 13^/1 July. — Drove with Anne to Wotton, stopping on the way at 

 Holmwood to lunch with William Gibson and his wife, a pleasant 

 Frenchwoman. He is an odd creature, much engrossed in ecclesiasti- 

 cism and the Irish Celtic revival, in honour of which he wears a drab 

 kilt, being by birth a Dublin Irishman of the Castle persuasion. 



"15th July (Sunday). — At Newbuildings. Alfred Austin is stay- 

 ing here. We put him on a horse, but he was not happy on it, and 

 made ingenious excuses for ending the ride. We have had long talks 

 and discussions on theology, philosophy, and the Catholic church. He 

 is an acute and ready reasoner, and is well read in theology and science. 

 It is strange his poetry should be such poor stuff, and stranger still that 

 he should imagine it immortal. 



