1908] A Move to Downing Street 197 



are a hopeless lot. When they get into Parliament they are at once 

 bitten with the absurd idea that they are to be no longer working men, 

 but statesmen, and they try to behave as such. ' I tell them,' said 

 Graham, ' that they would do more good if they came to the House 

 in a body drunk and tumbling about on the floor.' 



"13th March. — Spent an hour with Margot at her house in Caven- 

 dish Square. She is talking already about her impending move to 

 10 Downing Street, for Asquith is to have Campbell Bannerman's 

 succession as Prime Minister and so she will at last gain the object of 

 her ambition. She intends to do things splendidly as Prime Minister's 

 wife; neither Mrs. Gladstone nor Lady Salisbury had taken advantage 

 of the social side of her duties, only she will be terribly hampered for 

 a sufficient income to do it on. Among other things she talked about 

 Cromer, with whom she had been playing bridge yesterday, and how 

 he had told her of his wish to re-enter political life. ' He fancies,' she 

 said, ' that he can make a party with George Curzon and a few other 

 free trade Unionists. His difficulty is that he cannot swallow old age 

 pensions.' This is funny, considering his own old age pension of 

 £50,000 which he swallowed without winking. 



" igth March. — John Redmond lunched with me. Pie says a reso- 

 lution in favour of Home Rule will certainly be passed this session, 

 binding the Liberal party once more to them, and they will bring in a 

 Catholic University Bill, but he thinks that if Asquith dissolves, the 

 Liberals would be beaten at the new election, mainly on account of 

 the Licensing Bill. He has a small opinion of them. About Morley 

 at the India Office he was very scornful, and repeated what he has 

 more than once told me, that Morley was the weakest and worst Chief 

 Secretary they ever had in Ireland. 



" 20th March. — Nicholas O'Conor is dead at Constantinople, our 

 Ambassador there, a very worthy fellow, a Catholic Irishman of 

 no great ability, but amiable and good natured. He got shoved on 

 early in his profession by Philip Currie, to whom he had proved 

 serviable at the Paris Embassy, paying attention to English ladies 

 there, and helping them to buy their bonnets. He was rather a friend 

 of Sarah Bernhardt's, and I remember meeting him in the green room 

 of whatever the theatre was, when Sarah first came over to England 

 in the seventies. He is said to have done well at Constantinople. 



" 26th March. — Several new books. Sarah Bernhardt's ' Memoirs,' 

 exceedingly well written and most amusing. Shelley's letters to Miss 

 Hitchener, also most amusing as well as amazing. Gosse's ' Father 

 and Son.' How Gosse can have written so good a book I cannot 

 imagine, but it is altogether admirable. 



" 1st April. — To see Lady C. who had written after a long interval. 

 She talked about the Duke of Devonshire, just dead, repeating what 



