1907] Miss Petre at Storrington 179 



downcast eyes. Behind the house is a nice square plat of lawn and 

 garden, with a row of low buildings beyond, all adding to the cloistral 

 look. 



" Miss Petre is a young woman of about thirty-five, plain, but with 

 a pleasant, ruddy countenance, and a look of extreme honesty. I had 

 twenty minutes' talk with her, before Father Tyrrell appeared, on 

 matters connected with the establishment, a serious, good woman, large 

 minded, but without much humour; that was my impression of her. 



" 20th Aug. — Clouds. My birthday of sixty-seven was spent here. 

 To-day Sir Reginald and Lady Graham came for the afternoon. He 

 is an old friend of the Wyndhams of fifty years standing. He talked 

 to me of my Aunt Leconfield, who died in 1863, with great admiration, 

 as one always charming and kind, who had had a difficult part to play 

 at Petworth at times. Graham, poor man, had been badly crippled by 

 a fall, and suffers much pain. 



" I have been reading a collection of very delightful letters written 

 by old Lady Campbell, Madeline's mother, to Miss Emily Eden. These 

 show what a wonderfully attractive woman she was, with a vast fund 

 of life, wit, and broad-mindedness, just such another as is Madeline 

 herself. I remember Lady Campbell forty years ago, very what 

 Madeline now is, with snow-white hair and the same kindly ways. 

 There is a delightful description among the letters of Madeline's birth 

 in 1835. 



" 24th Aug. — Newbuildings. Meynell and his son Everard brought 

 Francis Thompson down by motor to stay a week with Everard at Gos- 

 brook, a cottage close by, belonging to me. The poor poet seemed to be 

 in the last stage of consumption, more like death than anything I have 

 seen since Bill Gordon was here, and he died a fortnight afterwards. 

 He is emaciated beyond credibility, his poor little figure a mere skeleton, 

 under clothes lent him for the occasion by the Meynells. He has the 

 smallest head and face of any grown man I ever saw, colourless, except 

 for his sharp nose, where all light is concentrated, and his bright eyes. 

 It is the face of a Spanish sixteenth-century Saint, almost that of a 

 dying child. When he had rested a bit at Gosbrook, I drove him down 

 to tea at Newbuildings, and he revived there a little and began to talk 

 with Everard and me. I took him a toddle round the garden, but he 

 does not know one flower from another any more than twelve years 

 ago, when he could not distinguish an oak from an elm. The poppy 

 was the only flower he recognized. ' Ah, that's a poppy,' he said, as if 

 greeting a friend. He has not been out of London for a year. 



" 26th Aug. — Thompson is distinctly better to-day. I fetched him 

 down from Gosbrook in the phaeton, and had a long talk with him after 

 luncheon. We first got into touch with each other over a common 

 hatred of European civilization and the destruction wrought by it on 



