158 "The Doctor's Dilemma" [1906 



at the War Office absurd, ' a Chancery barrister,' he said, ' of twenty 

 years' standing.' He has a great respect for Hugh Cecil, none for 

 Arthur Balfour. 



" i$th Nov. — Mine. Arcos (the Empress Eugenie's lectrice and lady- 

 in-waiting) came to tea with me. Talking about the memoirs of Dr. 

 Evans, the Paris dentist, she assured me they were in no way due 

 to co-operation with the Empress. There was much exaggeration in 

 Evans' account of his intimacy with Her Majesty. She recommended, 

 as more exact, a book by Miss Stothard, which is just out and very 

 accurate. She took away with her a copy of my pamphlet for the 

 Empress, who, she said, would be delighted with it, as she dislikes 

 Cromer. He was rude to her in Egypt two years ago. 



"21st Nov. — A splendid letter has come from Madame Juliette 

 Adam in praise of ' The Wind and the Whirlwind,' worth many 

 rude articles in the ' Times.' 



" 23rd Nov. — My dear friend, Hampden, is dead, one of my few 

 quite old friends. Politically we found ourselves always in opposite 

 camps. During the Egyptian revolution, he being an under secretary 

 in Gladstone's Government, ranked himself with the financiers for in- 

 tervention, then when Home Rule came four years later, he and I 

 changed sides, he following Hartington into the Unionist camp, and 

 this went on till the other day when he rejoined the Liberals. He 

 was away for four years in Australia as Colonial Governor, and on 

 his return he shared my rooms with me in Mount Street and Chapel 

 Street. During my illness he was very good to me. Then suddenly, 

 fifteen months ago, old age seemed to take him, and he went away 

 to a house of his own, and last summer to a place he had hired 

 in Westmorland for his health. His death is a great loss to me. 



" To sec Shaw's play ' The Doctor's Dilemma,' the wittiest ever 

 put upon the stage, and admirably acted, its medical absurdities ap- 

 pealing to me personally, remembering as I did how old Sir Douglas 

 Powell urged me, ' as he would urge his own son or order a man in 

 a hospital ward, to submit to a slight operation, the merest touch 

 with an instrument,' to relieve an imaginary something on my right 

 lung, an operation which I afterwards learnt would have been almost 

 certainly, in my weak state, fatal, while the lung was sound. When 

 I met Shaw at Neville's last Spring, I told him my experience, and I 

 daresay it has been among the contributory causes of his play. I have 

 written to tell him how much I admired it. 



" 24th Nov. — To call on Margot at her house in Cavendish Square, 

 who came out to talk to me, bareheaded, where I lay in my wheeled 

 chair at her door. Though she has lost some of her old prettiness, 

 her wit and all her charm have survived it. We stayed on in the 

 street talking for quite twenty minutes, and she is to come to lunch 



