1903] Lord Salisbury's Death 69 



back to London, but as I was passing by the house one of them asked 

 me in and we all sat down in the great hall to a luncheon which stood 

 ready, but the lord of the palace lay dying in a room upstairs, as we 

 all knew, and the funeral baked meats stuck in our throats. I doubt 

 whether any one of us had the courage to eat more than a few mouth- 

 fuls. Then I went on for my walk alone and wandered an hour 

 in the park, where children were playing and shouting as if nothing 

 momentous were taking place in the great house. The deer were ly- 

 ing out in a cool place in the open, and rabbits were busy nibbling under 

 the great oaks, and the ownership of it all was passing from one 

 Cecil to another, for Robert Lord Salisbury died at sunset. 



"31st Aug. — At Clouds. Lord Salisbury is being buried, I believe 

 to-day, quietly at Hatfield, the offer of a grave in Westminster Abbey 

 having been rejected. This is in keeping with his life, which has 

 always scorned honours and hated publicity. He has been certainly 

 in his way a great man, and without much pomp or parade, one who 

 has achieved great things. People only half recognized these as yet 

 because he has never talked much about them, but they are very 

 real, and will some day be recognized for what they are; not that I 

 am in sympathy with his doings, only in the manner of their doing. 

 By far the largest of his achievements has been the partition of Africa. 

 This was imagined in secret and developed silently. It may be said 

 to have begun at Berlin in 1878, when the joint financial intervention in 

 Egypt was arranged with France and Tunis was given her in return 

 for Cyprus, a scandalous beginning, followed by the retention of Egypt 

 and the various deals with Italy, Germany, Belgium, Portugal, and 

 France, which have mapped out the whole Continent between the four 

 Powers, England getting the most valuable if not quite the largest 

 share. The reconquest of the Soudan was a policy wholly Lord Salis- 

 bury's, and I believe he had his full share in the intrigues which brought 

 on the reconquest of the Transvaal, though perhaps less directly respon- 

 sible than Chamberlain. At the Foreign Office he re-established in 

 large measure England's influence on the Continent. He engineered 

 the Entente Cordiale with America at the time of the Spanish War 

 and got round the Emperor William in anticipation of the Boer War. 

 All these were notable triumphs. Hardly less so at home has been 

 his rehabilitation of the monarchy as an effective force in politics, 

 the resurrection under his guidance of the House of Lords, and 

 the reducton of the House of Commons to impotence except as a 

 machine to support the Government. His anti-Home Rule policy in 

 Ireland alone has been a failure. It seems now to be breaking down 

 at all points, especially his idea that twenty years resolute government 

 would destroy opposition. I think, too, that he has sacrificed the real 

 interests of rural England, with which Conservatism is bound up on 



