22 Rhodes' Death [1902 



five years have been always contradicted by events. Some people 

 say this was only an excess of roguery. I think he really olundered 

 and blustered and pretended to be wise to people who looked upon 

 him, on account of his first successes, as an oracle. I have seen just 

 the same thing at Homburg in the old gambling days, when a man 

 who had broken the bank once was followed by admiring crowds, 

 who credited him with supernatural intelligence, and went on be- 

 lieving in him till the day he lost all and disappeared. Rhodes had 

 the intelligence to go away with a large share of his winnings in his 

 pocket, but his friends have been ruined following his lead. 



" My niece Mary Milbanke is with me. I am very fond of her ; 

 there is something soothing in her phlegmatic nature and absence 

 of all ambition, personal or otherwise. 



" nth April. — 37 Chapel Street. I entertained Miss Hobhouse at 

 lunch with Meynell and Margaret Sackville, and we discussed Rhodes' 

 will, the topic of everybody's talk. It is astonishing the general adula- 

 tion bestowed on the man. People do not see that the £4,000,000 he 

 leaves to public purposes are £4,000,000 robbed from the public and 

 bequeathed to the ends of new robberies. Meynell was amusing and 

 pleasant as he always is. 



" iyth April. — St. George Lane Fox brought his cousin Lord Russell 

 with him to lunch with me to-day. We talked over matters connected 

 with Egypt and the attack I am making on Cromer as having tampered 

 with the Criminal Courts at Cairo. Russell, though wrong-headed, 

 is a very able man, and has legal experience and much practice in 

 speaking as alderman of the London County Council and in Com- 

 mittees of the House of Lords. He is also quite fearless of Gov- 

 ernments. I should not be surprised to see him some day Opposition 

 leaders in the Lords. He has a good presence, a good voice, and a 

 wonderful memory. Our luncheon was amusing. 



" 19th April. — Hunted from Fernycroft with the Foxhounds. 

 Young Bron Herbert was out ;and rode with me very pluckily, 

 poor fellow, with his cork leg replacing the one lost in the Boer 

 War. He is a very clever and very nice young man, but has been 

 captured for service on the ' Times ' — a bad education. His sister, 

 he tells me, has joined the Theosophists and gone off to live in 

 California. 



" 26th April. — Lady Gregory called and took me off to dinner with 

 her and Yeats and afterwards to a meeting of the Irish Literary 

 Society, where the Cuchulain Saga was discussed. I spoke on it and so 

 did O'Donnell, he partly in Irish, partly in English — an interesting 

 man. Yeats also spoke well. He is a pleasant talker on his own 

 subjects, and in appearance is of that most interesting dark Irish 

 type with pale face and lank hair. 



