268 " MY KINGDOM FOR A HORSE ! " 



and has at last had to be cut out by years of devastating 

 war. 



The Zulu, Afghan and first Boer Wars had at least 

 dispelled British apathy to a considerable extent, and for 

 my part I longed for a chance to really gird at the Glad- 

 stonians if only it were possible : but The Whitehall Review 

 was not much of a medium for such efforts. In fact, the 

 society side of it was overdone. Legge had as he has 

 since demonstrated in several excellent books very 

 considerable sources of information about royal person- 

 ages, not only of this country, but also, in particular, 

 the Empress Eugenie and the late Empress of Austria. 

 Almost too much of this went into the paper ; and the 

 opposition dubbed the editor " Whitehall Jenkins." 



Nevertheless I remember we published a very favourable 

 critique of Mrs Langtry, when she first appeared on a 

 stage, and this she did in company with Mrs Labouchere. 

 Nothing that Truth had written about " Whitehall 

 Jenkins " marred The Whitehall Review's full appreciation 

 of that performance. 



It was shortly afterwards that I first met Mrs Langtry, 

 and we have been very good friends ever since, though my 

 sphere of influence was diverted to her horses after she 

 had taken to racing ; and I never posed seriously as a 

 dramatic critic. 



Little did I dream at the time under notice that I 

 should long afterwards buy for her an Australian horse 

 (Merman) with which to win the Cesarewitch, and that he 

 would win it. 



Another friend I made in 1881, and that was Richard 

 Belt, the sculptor, whose work was then all the rage, 

 and it was Queen Victoria's wish that caused his relief 

 profile of Lord Beaconsfield to be placed over the tablet 

 in Hughenden Church. It is an old story how the great 

 and increasing success of Belt led to attacks by jealous 

 rivals, whose libels were published in Vanity Fair, the 

 gist of them being that he did not himself execute the 

 works which purported to be his, but employed a " ghost," 



