186 Rivers Wilson at Fox Hills [ l 9®7 



girl had been driven in his fiacre from Vienna by a well-known char- 

 acter named Bratfisch, who must have known all about it, but whose 

 mouth remained afterwards for ever absolutely closed. Bratfisch was 

 an amusing personage, a cabdriver, who used to be had in by the 

 young men of fashion to entertain them with his talk, as he knew all 

 the scandalous stories of Vienna. Horace supposes that the girl finding 

 the Prince was dead, and herself so entirely compromised, committed 

 suicide, but either story might be true. Nobody would ever know. 

 The Emperor, Francis Joseph, never allowed the subject to be men- 

 tioned before him. He considered it too mean an affair and too great 

 a family disgrace.' 



" 22nd Sept. — I am staying for the week end with Rivers Wilson at 

 his country house, Fox Hills, near Chertsey. With us has been Sir 

 Lepel Griffin who has entertained us with many anecdotes of Gladstone 

 and other personages. From Rivers I have received a detailed account 

 of the Mufettish Ismail Sadyk's death at the Khedive Ishmail's hands 

 in 1876. Rivers told how some time before it happened, he (Rivers) 

 was coming home one night from seeing the Khedive at his palace at 

 Ghezireh when, passing through the garden, he observed a figure issu- 

 ing from the shadow of the trees in the moonlight, and a man had 

 seized his arm, crouching to him, and imploring him not to leave Egypt. 

 It was the Mufettish, and Sherif Pasha, who was walking with Rivers, 

 translated what the suppliant said, and explained the situation, for 

 Rivers knew no word of Arabic, and was alarmed, thinking he might 

 be an assassin. The Mufettish's aopeal was very pitiful. When the 

 old man's arrest became known the American Consul had gone to 

 Ismail, and had threatened him with Consular displeasure if anything 

 violent should happen, and the Khedive had become alarmed and sent 

 at once to stop the execution of his orders, but his messenger had been 

 met on the way by another coming from the steamer, who had thrown 

 up his arms and given the news that it was too late. Lepel Griffin, 

 once my adversary on Indian affairs, is a little white-haired rotund 

 personage with some humour in conversation, self-indulgent and cyni- 

 cal as Anglo-Indians often are. An Ulster Irishman by birth he affects 

 an English lisp and drawl, and talks about himself as an Englishman. 

 We have had also here Allen, the Canadian head of the Allen line of 

 steamers, with whom Rivers as head of the Canadian Pacific railroad 

 has business relations, a highly intelligent man. 



" Fox Hills is a very beautiful place of which Rivers has a seven 

 years' lease. The domain was formerly a common, which Charles 

 James Fox planted with Scotch firs, many of which are now splendid 

 trees. There are a number, too, of very large birch trees grown from 

 the stub in a way one seldom sees. The ground is finely tossed about 

 and covered with fern and heath, a sanct solitude in which Rivers 



