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NOTABLE BOOKS OF THE MONTH. 



A DIPLOMATIST'S WIFE. 



Beminisrenccs nf DiplonKifir Life. By 

 Lady Macdonell. (Black.) 



Sir Hugh Macdonell's career in the 

 diplomatic service took him to Madrid, 

 Berlin, Constantmople, Rio de Janeiro, 

 Munich, Copenhagen, and Lisbon. 

 Hence Lady Macdonell suffers from no 

 lack of material in her book of reminis- 

 cences of people and wanderings. All 

 the same, she has by no means given us 

 a full book. This in spite of the fact 

 that she draws even unon the history of 

 her father and her husband's father for 

 her stories. Some of the most interest- 

 ing pages in the book, indeed, are those 

 which describe the life and manners of 

 the people of the Argentine when her 

 father hrst went out there in his youth. 



Further, among all the diplomatic 

 adventures chronicled in the book, none 

 other is so exciting as the experience of 

 Sir Hugh Macdonell's father when, as 

 head of the British legation in Algiers, 

 he was thrown into prison by the Dey 

 along with the other foreign residents. 



When the Dey insulted nil the foreign re- 

 presentatives and too'k them prisoners, Mac- 

 donell was placed in a cage next to a lion. 

 Every day fresh tortures were practised on 

 t/iese" unfortunate captives. Macdonell's 

 beard was torn out, he saw his friend and 

 colleague the Danish representative tortured 

 before his eyes, and even witnessed an added 

 horror when the barbarians placed the cloak 

 of a man who had died of the plague in the 

 cage where his unfortunate colleague lay 

 more dead than alive. The Dane succumhed 

 to the ill-treatment. 



Sir Hugh himself began h;s career in 

 ihe Army. 

 ' THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON'S BODY. 



While a young officer, he formed 

 one of the guard who watched by the 

 Duke of Wellington's body when it was 

 lying in state, and a curious reminis- 

 .cence comes down from that time. 



Hugh had the honour of being on guard 

 during the lying in state of the Iron Duke 

 at Walmer Castle, where he died in 1852. 

 The senior officer cut off a small quantity of 

 the Duke of Wellington's hair and gave it as 

 a memento to the officers on duty. Hugh 

 religiously kept his .share, and I have the few 

 silver threads still in my possession. 



While Macdonell was at the Embassy 

 in Constantinople, he served under the 

 clever but eccentric Sir Henry Bulwer, 

 of whom a ludicrous picture is given : — 



He was a very little man, with extraor- 

 dinarily small feet and hands, and very eccen- 

 tric. Hugh used to tell a tale of how one 

 day he had to take a dispatch in to him for 

 signature, but oould not see him anywhere. 

 Presently a very weak voice came from a 

 sort of iiest arranged on a shelf high up in 

 one corner of the room, to which he a.scended 

 by a rooe ladder. He explained that the 

 room was so uncomfortable, and it was the 

 only place where he could avoid the draughts. 



But, eccentric though he was, Bulwer is 

 by no means the most eccentric figure in 

 Lady Macdonell's book. Her residence 

 with her husband at Munich naturally 

 leads her to talk about Ludwig, the mad 

 King of Bavaria: — 



First, as everyone knows, he was devoted 

 to Wagner, and built him a house exactly 

 like a .ship. He would have performances of 

 the Wagner operas given with himself as sole 

 audience, and had the house kept in total 

 darkness during the performance. He also 

 liad a private entrance into the theatre. On 

 the top of the Palace he had a lake with 

 black swans on it, and a small boat, in whicli 

 he would imagine him.self one of the heroes 

 of the Wagnerian operas, preferably Lohen- 

 grin. He became rapidly more eccentric, 

 and I am glad now that I waited two hours 

 in the deep snow at the back entrance of the 

 Palace to see him, wrapped in sables, start 

 out on one of his weird excursions in a 

 covered sleigh. Once out of the Palace the 

 two black horses were made to gallop at full 

 speed. 



It is not surprising that the peasants, 

 seeing him fly by, used to cross them- 

 selves, thinking he was a supernatural 

 spirit. 



THE kaiser's fun. 



The most interesting story m the book 

 relates to the present Kaiser, whom 

 Lady Macdonell knew when, still Crown 

 Prince, he was full of fun and a tease. 

 She is, we imagine, the only English- 

 woman living who can boast that she 

 has boxed the Kaiser's ears : — 



He liked our English teas, and afterwards 

 used to claim me for a game of draughts. 

 In the salon there was a I)ig window with a 

 deep seat that he especially favoured, to this 



