166 Sir Henry Cotton's "New India" [1907 



reading his ' New India,' an excellent book. He spoke of my ' Ideas 

 about India,' published twenty-two years ago, and said it applied very 

 exactly to present conditions. He was surprised I should have been 

 able to foresee these and understand India so well with such short 

 experience as mine had been. 



u yth March. — To see George Wyndham in Park Lane. He is 

 strategically opposed to a continued occupation of Egypt, but I am 

 not to repeat this. I understand such is Arthur Balfour's opinion, too. 

 George would therefore be in favour of establishing a National Gov- 

 ernment if one could be secured friendly to English interests. As to 

 Cromer's successor he thinks Gorst inevitable. I walked with him 

 as far as Rotten Row and home by myself, the first time for two years 

 I have ventured alone in the streets. At twelve John Dillon came and 

 arranged questions with me to be asked in Parliament. He is doing 

 all he can, pestering Grey constantly about Egypt. 



" gth March. — The first number of the ' Egyptian Standard ' is out 

 at last. It mentions me as among its collaborators, in company with 

 Madame Juliette Adam and Pierre Loti. 



' 12th March. — Staal, our late Russian Ambassador here, died a 

 fortnight ago, one of the very best men I have known in the world, 

 and extremely kind to me, with good advice, when I was a boy at 

 Athens. He has died at the age of eighty-four. 



" I have been reading the life of Lafcadio Hearn, an interesting 

 man, whom the accident of his life in Japan has made one of import- 

 ance in literature. But for this piece of good fortune, he would 

 never have been more than a very superior journalist. Accident, how- 

 ever, drove him into a region of romance which he had the wit to recog- 

 nize as his proper home, and so has achieved a great work and enduring 

 fame. 



" 14th March. — Lady Gregory dined with me in Chapel Street. 

 She gave me a long account of the row that took place at her Abbey 

 Theatre, over the production of Synge's piece, ' The Playboy of the 

 Western World.' The first night, she said, passed fairly well, with 

 only a few hisses, but on the second night there was an organized oppo- 

 sition, and, fearing mischief, she sent for the police, and afterwards 

 there was a tumult every night of the week till the last performance, 

 when the opponents of the play got tired of their noise. She considers, 

 therefore, that she has won a victory, but fears the incident will have 

 harmed her in the provinces, where the play is resented more than in 

 Dublin. At Gort, her county town, the local council has boycotted her, 

 forbidding the school children to attend her teas and entertainments, 

 lest their morals should be corrupted. She is going abroad for awhile 

 with her son. 



