238 Mr. Khapardc [1909 



qualities, liberal hospitable, and kindly, he found them entirely en- 

 grossed in money-making, and it was impossible to get them to take any 

 interest in Indian questions. His visit to England had convinced him 

 that it was useless to appeal to any sense of justice, there must be 

 more than talk in India before any change could come about and 

 violence there would be. He was scornful about Morley's reforms, 

 they would be useless except to the few hangers-on to the Govern- 

 ment who would get places and pay. They would never have been 

 given at all but for the bombs, and the reforms were not intended 

 now to be effective. The Indian Government had got all it wanted — 

 special powers of arrest and imprisonment and of putting down the 

 freedom of the Press. I asked him whether this would stop the revo- 

 lutionary movement. He said on the contrary, it would accelerate it, 

 they would work on all the same in secret and more effectively. 

 Khaparde has adopted European dress but still wears his red turban ; 

 he has great intelligence and his ideas are precise and strongly ex- 

 pressed. He is to come again. 



"16th March. — Poor Peploe Brown is dead. Yesterday his serv- 

 ant Fred called on me and gave me a long account of his master's 

 illness and death. It was a pathetic story told in that odd cockney 

 language ' Fwed ' was famous for. I had never heard exactly about 

 Peploe's early life, for great talker as he was, he never spoke of it 

 to anyone, and Fred had only learned it from a brother who came 

 to him in his last days, for all that he had ever said to Fred was that 

 ' God had been hard to him in his youth.' It appears that forty-six 

 years ago, being a young lieutenant in the army, he had married a girl 

 he loved and who loved him, but almost in their honeymoon she had 

 been taken with a fever and died. This destroyed his life. He left 

 the army, wandered about the world, took up painting and adopted 

 Bohemian ways. For the last twenty years he had occupied a studio 

 in York Place, where he died. He had squandered all his money 

 and lived there in the greatest poverty. I knew him through his 

 fellow-painter, Molony, who had made friends with him many years 

 before at Madrid. He was the kindest of men, and when Molony 

 grew old he nursed him and took great care of him notwithstanding 

 Molony's somewhat scornful protests, who used to swear at him as 

 'that damned fellow Peploe.' About the time Molony died he him- 

 self got a return of malarial fever which attacked his spine (much 

 as my case was), and for the last twelve years he has been practically 

 paralysed and has remained day and night sitting in his armchair, never 

 going to bed or lying down, and often at a loss how to get a meal, 

 for he could not sell his pictures. He could not have lived but for 

 his servant Fred's good care, who for the last fifteen years had done 

 all for him with wonderful devotion, coming each morning at a very 



