CHAPTER XXVII 



MY FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES I SIR JAMES BROOKE, PRO- 

 FESSOR ROLLESTON, MR. AUG. MONGREDIEN, SIR RICHARD 

 OWEN, DR. RICHARD SPRUCE 



About a year or two after I had returned home, Sir James 

 Brooke had also returned to England, and had retired to 

 a small estate at the foot of Dartmoor, where he lived in 

 a comfortable cottage-farmhouse amid the wild scenery in 

 which he delighted. I had met him once or twice in London, 

 and, I think in the summer of 1863 or 1864, he invited me 

 to spend a week with him in Devonshire, to meet his former 

 private secretary and my old friend in Sarawak, Mr. (now Sir 

 Spencer) St. John. We had a very pleasant time, strolling 

 about the district or taking rides over Dartmoor; while at 

 meals we had old-time events to talk over, with discussions 

 of all kinds of political and social problems in the evening. 

 At the same time Lady Burdett-Coutts, with her friend Mrs. 

 Brown, were staying near, and often drove over and took us 

 all for some more distant excursions. 



This meeting and my friendship with Sir James Brooke 

 led to my receiving several invitations to dine in Stratton 

 Street, where my friend George Silk was also a frequent 

 guest ; but my unfortunate habit of speaking my thoughts too 

 plainly broke off the acquaintance. The rajah's nephew, 

 Captain Brooke, who had been formerly designated as Sir 

 James's successor under the Malay title of Tuan Muda (young 

 lord), had done or written something (I forget what) to which 

 Sir James objected, and a disagreement ensued, which re- 

 sulted in the captain being deposed from the heirship, and 

 his younger brother Charles, the present rajah, being nomi- 

 nated instead. As I was equally friendly and intimate with 



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