274 Gorst's Failure t I 9°9 



Through Mme. d'Usedom I made acquaintance with him and his bride, 

 whom I had known as Miss MoncriefF, and formed a high opinion of 

 him in the character of middle-aged husband with a quite young bride. 

 Though it was anything but a love marriage at starting (for she was 

 in love with another man, Lord Tyrone, who had failed to marry her, 

 and took Dudley as a pisallcr), he was so assiduous and tactful with 

 her that he succeeded in gaining her full devotion, and eventually she 

 bore him sons and daughters not a few, and remained through life 

 attached to him, although he was unfaithful to her. Blanche Hozier 

 confirms my version of the story as being that told her by her mother, 

 Lady Airlie, who knew Miss de Burgh well at the time of her marriage. 

 She says that Dudley died of a too violent passion he indulged in for 

 Sarah Bernhardt. I have a special recollection of a picnic in which 

 we all took part at S. Maurice, and of Dudley's having challenged me 

 to race him a hundred yards down hill, one which, being then young 

 and for a short distance light of limb, I won easily enough to his 

 chagrin and, as I think, to his bride's. She was a lovely girl, tall and 

 framed like a goddess, but with an unlovely voice. 



' ist Oct. — Belloc was here to-day wanting to buy cord-wood for 

 his winter's firing. He tells me that Gorst is now looked upon at the 

 Foreign Office as a complete failure, and that he himself acknowledges 

 that the whole of his policy has broken down. He wants to leave 

 Egypt for another post, but they cannot find anybody willing to replace 

 him. ' They missed their opportunity,' Belloc said, ' of making a 

 deal about Egypt with Germany.' This was to have been in connec- 

 tion with the Bagdad railway, but the revolution at Constantinople 

 spoilt that. Gorst's policy was what I always said it was, to convert 

 the Egyptians through the Khedive to English ideas, and, of course, 

 it has failed egregiously. Even the wretched old Legislative Council 

 has rebelled, and has addressed a remonstrance against Gorst to Grey 

 for what he said in his last annual report, and claiming a sort of Con- 

 stitution. Lastly, Ronald Storrs writes from Cairo that he has just 

 been given the succession to Boyle's place at the Agency, another in- 

 dication of a change of plan there. Boyle has been chief adviser of 

 the Agency for the last twenty years, and has engineered the Cabal 

 against the Nationalists, with the help of the Mokattam newspaper and 

 the Syrians. Storrs has just been at Damascus. He knows Arabic 

 well, and is an extremely clever fellow, and his appointment is signi- 

 ficant. It probably means a change of policy, perhaps, a reversion to 

 Cromerism, perhaps, though I don't expect it, something really liberal 

 at last, only all this is dependent upon politics at home and the fate 

 of the General Elections. 



" 2nd Oct. — Our shooting party arrived late last night, Winston and 

 Clementine and Harry Cust and his wife; and we had an exceedingly 



