1912] Henry Laboucherc's Death Z77 



" 10th Jan. — The Russian Government has declared its intention of 

 taking possession of Mongolia. Grey seems to have committed us to 

 an approval of this as well as of the Persian robbery. 



" iyth Jan. — Labouchere is dead at the age of eighty, universally 

 esteemed after a life which began in disrepute. I remember old Paddy 

 Green, of Evans' music hall, with whose son I had been at school at 

 Stonyhurst, talking of him in pitying tones as ' Loboucheer, Loboucheer, 

 poor young man ! He was always his own worst enemy.' This was 

 somewhere in 1861, when Labby was still looked upon as something of 

 a greenhorn. My first acquaintance with him was of this date, when 

 he was living at Homburg entirely in the society of whores and croup- 

 iers. He had belonged to the Frankfort Legation, where I had suc- 

 ceeded him, and was nominally attached to the Embassy at St. Peters- 

 burgh, but had not proceeded there (pretending he was too poor to 

 pay his railway fare). At Frankfort he was considered too disreputa- 

 ble for admission into society, and I have a caricature I drew of him 

 walking with Madame d'Usedom, the Olympia of Bismarck's memoirs, 

 who on one occasion had given him her countenance. It is labelled 

 ' The Deformed transformed,' and was a very good likeness of him as 

 he then was (a chubby young man with little slant eyes and pink 

 cheeks). Later, I remember him at St. James' Club, the house in 

 James Street that had once been Crockford's, boasting to all who would 

 listen how he had bribed his way into parliament as member for 

 Windsor. It was a short lived glory as he was at once unseated. In 

 after years I saw much of him at his house in Queen Anne's Gate, 

 where I often lunched with him and his wife in the eighties and nineties, 

 and liked him greatly. He had become one of the very few quite 

 honest M.P.'s, who always told the truth, and was always amusing. 



"21st Jan. (Sunday). — Newbuildings. Belloc dined with us, and 

 gave us some good talk. The Italians have seized two French ships 

 as carrying contraband of war, which is making a commotion in France, 

 and may possibly lead to a stopping of the war in Tripoli. Grey has 

 been apologizing to his constituents in the North for his Foreign policy 

 so piteously that Belloc thinks he will resign. If so I imagine the 

 Foreign Office would be given to Haldane as the only member of the 

 Cabinet who knows French and German. In Ireland Carson is cam- 

 paigning on the Orange platform, threatening fire and flame if Winston 

 is allowed to speak at Belfast : ' Ulster will fight, and Ulster will be 

 right.' 



" 30th Jan. — Chapel Street. Lunched with Winston and Clementine. 

 He was in excellent form, and I had an interesting conversation with 

 him about Eastern politics, his private secretary, Masterman Smith, 

 being also there. About the Turco-Italian war I asked him which 

 way his sympathies lay. He said, ' I have my official sympathies, and 



