394 A F' me Old West Sussex Farmer [ 1 9 12 



fashioned West Sussex farmer, one more distinguished than one sees 

 in East Sussex. He held this farm of me forty years ago (and moved 

 afterwards to Baker's over the way) ; an excellent farmer and a hard 

 worker, but hampered with the misfortune of a mad wife, whom he 

 was too kind to send to a hospital, and kept for many years at home, 

 and thus was unable to save money, and now in old age finds himself 

 too poor to carry on his business. He would not borrow money, and 

 for the last half dozen years has retired into a little cottage of mine, 

 his wife being at last dead, and is looked after by a girl. I found him 

 very tidy there in a clean shirt lying in bed, complaining of nothing, 

 but perplexed at small money troubles. A curious episode in his life is 

 that as a young man he was tempted away to Australia to dig gold at 

 the time of the gold fever there, but he made nothing of it, and came 

 back to his Sussex farming quite unchanged by his experience, a good 

 and honourable man, of a finer breed than can easily be found. 



" iyth Aug. — I entered my seventy-third year to-day. 



" 2yd Aug. — Patrick Butler, who is here, tells me that everybody 

 in India among the military men is aghast at the plan of a Trans- 

 Persian railway from the Caspian; also that the transfer of the new 

 capital to Delhi is disapproved. They have no great opinion of 

 Hardinge as Governor-General. Butler has been quite unexpectedly 

 ordered home from India to the depot in Ireland. They are in want 

 of Catholic officers there in view of the threatened rebellion in Ulster. 

 Most of the officers of the garrison at the Curragh would sympathize 

 too much with the rebel Ulstermen. 



" 2nd Sept. — We have just finished reading Balzac's great series 

 of romances, ' Illusions Perdus,' ' Splendeurs et Miseres,' and ' Vautrin.' 

 They are the most wonderful of all his work, and show him the 

 Shakespeare of novelists without any real competitor worthy of even 

 a second place. In it he runs through the whole gamut of civilized 

 human nature from the highest to the lowest note, and his women 

 are equal to his men. That is what distinguishes him from our own 

 novel writers with whom we compare him, from Scott and Thackeray, 

 who was his special imitator, down to Meredith. 



" 14th Sept. — My ' Land War in Ireland ' is published. The mo- 

 ment is very opportune as the anti-Home Rule campaign is once more 

 in full swing. The Government has lost the Midlothian seat, and 

 people are beginning to talk after all of the Bill not going through. 

 Belloc declares it will be abandoned, and Churchill has made a speech 

 at Dundee forecasting a multiplicity of Parliaments in the United 

 Kingdom. I have been reading a most amusing book, ' The Red Hand 

 of Ulster,' which has done more than anything yet written to popu- 

 larize Protestant Ireland. It has made the Orangemen interesting — 

 even to me. I must say it will serve Redmond right if the Bill col- 



