254 Harry Cust's Verse [!909 



with Mme. Adam, I got the Duchess to introduce me to him, but found 

 him less amiable than I had reason to expect. We spoke of Mme. 

 Adam and Mustapha Kamel, but his tone about them was not enthusi- 

 astic, and gave me the impression that there must have come a coolness 

 between him and Mustapha since the day when they were photo- 

 graphed together. I mentioned having read Mustapha's letters to Mme. 

 Adam recently published, which are really very pretty, and in which 

 the photograph is reproduced, but my remark brought no response at 

 all. Perhaps their publication had displeased him. Then we were 

 separated by other claimants on his attention. He did not impress me 

 favourably." There was much else of an amusing nature connected 

 with this party but which I cannot transcribe here. 



' loth July. — Good old Lord Ripon died last night at half-past eight 

 in the evening. One of the few honest men in public life, and the 

 only Whig who ever showed real sympathy with Eastern liberty. 



" I am reminded by having met Pamela Plowden last night of the 

 beautiful lines Harry Cust once wrote to her, and which I think have 

 never been published except in an ephemeral ' Book of Beauty.' I 

 transcribe them here. 



Beautiful face ! 



Is your heart broken that you look so sad? 



Is there no heart on earth that once made glad 



Your heart, to hearten yet your flower of grace? 



Is God untender towards you? Or can Man, 



Loving such dear eyes, 



Or, save despairing 



For too much caring, 



Grudge his uncrownedness in the race he ran, 



And squandered life and lived and lost the prize? 



They pay the worthiest cost 



Whose lives for you were lost. 



" 13th July. — Spent the day at Caxtons with Professor Osborne, 

 head of the Natural History Museum at New York, and his daughter. 

 He is a highly intelligent man, a pupil of Huxley's and is writing a 

 book on horse history. He has read my controversy with Professor 

 Ridgeway on the origin of the Arab horse in Arabia and takes my 

 side in it, holding the Arab to have been the descendant of a distinct 

 wild breed in the Peninsula. He wants the United States Government 

 to start an Arabian breeding stud in some of the dry districts of the 

 Western States. 



" 16th July. — Late on Tuesday night I got a telegram from Meynell 

 saying that Father Tyrrell was dying at Storrington, and this morn- 

 ing the ' Times ' announces his death. His loss is a great one, both 

 personally to me and to the world at large, though perhaps for himself 



