1909] Miss Frances Jennings 263 



jaub, where the feeling between the two communities, Hindoo and 

 Moslem, was still very bitter. 



' This afternoon we had quite a garden party, over twenty guests 

 sitting down to tea in the Jubilee Garden. Among them Miss Frances 

 Jennings, who came with one of the Meynell girls. Miss Jennings is 

 a most interesting girl, pretty in the Burne-Jones way, with a rose- 

 leaf complexion, strange blue eyes and flaxen hair. Meynell tells me 

 she is of Welsh origin, but she herself said her father was from Cum- 

 berland, her mother from Devonshire. She came up quite young to the 

 Slade School in London, where everybody, girls and boys, fell in love 

 with her, and she having a romantic fancy for Olivia Meynell, became 

 a Catholic, inflicted on herself all kinds of austerities, and wanted 

 to be a nun. In the meantime her drawing at the Slade School became 

 famous, and she went over to Paris to study art there. She was alone, 

 and failed to find a lodging in an inn in the Quartier Latin, and was 

 picked up by a charitable Englishman there, who has ever since wanted 

 to marry her. Then she returned to England, and last Spring was 

 found by her friends sitting outside St. Etheldreda's church in the rain 

 with severe influenza, and she has since been paralysed. I had some 

 talk with her. She has all the look of a Saint, with strange unearthly 

 eyes which seemed as if looking at spirits in the air, and a wonderful 

 ecstatic smile and still more wonderfully sweet voice; her features 

 rather irregular with a wide unshaped mouth, I can imagine her at- 

 tracting a young man's devotion. Khaparde has talked brilliantly all 

 day. 



" iyth August. — My birthday of 69. They have done me the honour 

 of choosing the day for Dingra's execution, thus making of it an anni- 

 versary which will be regarded as one of martyrdom in India for 

 generations. 



" Another long talk with Khaparde. He is very angry with the In- 

 dian Government, which has just closed five Schools which he had 

 founded in Berar, as seditious. He talked more plainly than he has 

 yet done about the future of India. I asked him whether they could 

 set up a form of Government there which would replace the English, 

 and if so what would be its character? He answered that it could 

 easily be done. First, they would redistribute the provinces, so as to 

 make them coincide with ethnical conditions, each to be governed by a 

 Provincial Council, which in its turn would send delegates to a Central 

 Council. The Provincial Councils would have the management of all 

 provincial affairs, while the Central Council would control the army, 

 the posts and telegraphs, foreign affairs, and other matters called 

 Imperial. Thus, in a way, the old Hindoo Empire and the Empire of 

 Akbar would be refounded. Who should be the head of it would 

 probably be determined by events ; it might be a successful soldier, or 



