TEMPORARY RECOVERY 307 



About a week later he " had slight set-back," 

 and no doubt Lady Avebury was very glad to 

 get him down to Kingsgate, on the 20th, away 

 from the many calls, to which he would always, 

 if it were possible, respond, that were made on 

 him in London. 



During July and August they had a succession 

 of visitors, chiefly from Friday or Saturday till 

 Monday. I see by his diary that I went there 

 on the last day of August, and it must have been 

 at this time that he played nine holes of golf, in 

 a foursome, as mentioned in the previous chapter. 

 I believe that this really was the last game he 

 ever played. 



They were at High Elms in September, where 

 also they had guests from time to time, among 

 them his sister Harriet, home from Canada. 

 " She was as bright and cheery as ever," he writes. 

 " She seems to like Canada." He finished in 

 this month his paper on " Pollen " for the Royal 

 Microscopical Society's Journal, and an article 

 on the Declaration of Paris for the Nineteenth 

 Century. At the beginning of October they were 

 back in London, and he was resuming his duties, 

 his breakfast parties, his attendance at the House 

 of Lords, and so on, almost as in past years. 



Yet, all the while, the pernicious anaemia 

 was upon him and, no doubt, strengthening its 

 hold, though with occasional relaxings. Lady 

 Avebury writes to me about the whole course of 

 his illness. " In that summer " (1910) " he got 

 a fearful cough, which was the real beginning of 

 everything. Then the following summer he had 

 that sudden attack of ptomaine poisoning in the 



