1909] Lord Cardigan at Balaclava 281 



mean,' he said, ' to ask me to believe that it is possible a man should 

 be so lost to all sense of what is due to his public position, at a moment 

 like the present, in the very crisis of his country's fortunes, as to 

 indulge in an illicit connection with the wife of one of his own political 

 supporters, and to make use of that connection in the way you suggest.' 

 I asked George whether Mr. Gladstone negotiated the thing personally 

 with Mrs. O'Shea, and he said, ' Oh, no, not personally ; he did not see 

 her, but it was done through her.' He also told us about Minto, as 

 Viceroy of India, a mere nonentity in the Government, not even read- 

 ing the most important documents laid before him. On one occasion 

 they tested this by gumming the leaves slightly together, which he 

 returned unopened. A third thing George narrated a propos of Lady 

 Cardigan's memoirs, which have just been published. He went once 

 to Dene with his father to look at a house, as they were staying in the 

 neighbourhood at Apthorpe, and while they were being shown round 

 came to the portrait of Cardigan riding in front of the Balaclava 

 Charge, when his father nudged him and whispered that it was all 

 fudge ; Cardigan was not in the charge at all, being at the time on board 

 his yacht, and only arrived on the field of battle as his regiment was 

 on its way back from the Valley of Death. This sounds incredible, 

 but George says his father was very positive that the thing was so. 



" The chief excitement of the week has been the execution of Ferrar 

 in Spain for complicity in the Barcelona insurrection. It has roused all 

 the Socialism of the world to fury, and even in London there have been 

 demonstrations, in which Cunninghame Graham has taken a leading 

 part. 



" 1st Nov. — Two events have occurred in the last week; an attack 

 made on a convoy in Somaliland by the ' Mad Mullah,' in which three 

 Indian Sepoys have been killed, exactly proves the folly of continuing 

 to hold the Interior. The second is what is called a ' punitive expedi- 

 tion,' despatched by Gorst to Siwah. There my old friend Haboun has 

 got into a quarrel with the Egyptian authorities by shooting the Maoun 

 and two others, who had come to effect a domiciliary visit. A hundred 

 and fifty men are now being sent from Alexandria to arrest him and 

 restore order. [This resulted in the capture and hanging of Haboun.] 



" 6th A T ov. — Terence Bourke and Basil Blackwood are here. 

 Terence tells me things are going not so badly in Tunis for the natives ; 

 and there seems to be less violent feeling against the French there than 

 against us in Egypt. Basil has got an appointment at the Board of 

 Trade. He is a pleasant fellow, astonishingly like his father in manner 

 and voice. 



" 1 2th Nov. — Neville came to dine and sleep. He is much interested 

 just now in the Steinheil trial at Paris, through his intimacy with 

 Geoffroy, whose mother was M. Steinheil's sister, and he also knew 



