ON November 12th, 1898, my husband sailed for South Africa, there to take up the military command, and to act as High Commissioner in place of Sir Alfred Milner, home on leave. His staff at Dover loved him. Their send-off brought tears to his eyes. I, C. and the A.D.C. saw him off from Southampton, to rejoin him in the process of time at the Cape. We little knew what a dark period in his life awaited him out there, brought about by the malice of those in power there and at home. It is too sacred and too painful a subject for me to record it here further than I have done. The facts will be found in his “Autobiography.” I left England on February 18th, 1899, with three of the children, leaving the two eldest boys at college. It was a very painful leave-taking at the Waterloo Station. My mother was there and all the dear ones, whom I did not expect to see again for two or three years—my mother perhaps ever again. Yet in a few months we were back there! My theory that one should try and not fret about the future, which is an absolutely unknown quantity, proved justified. I have chronicled our voyage out in my former little book, and described one night at Madeira—a night of enchantment under the moon.

I need not go over the days on the “blue water” again, nor our strange life beyond the Equator, where, though I was filled with admiration for the beauty of our surroundings, I never felt the happiness which Italy, Egypt or Palestine had given me. Very absurd, no doubt, and sentimental, but my love of the old haunts made me feel resentful of the topsy-turvy state of things I found down there. The crescent moon on what (to me) was the wrong side of the sunset, the hot north wind, the cold blast from the south, the shadows all inverted—no, I did not enjoy this contradiction to my well-beloved traditions. There was, besides, a local melancholy in that strange beauty I cannot describe. All this may be put down to sentimentality, but a very real melancholy attaches to South Africa in my mind in connection with my husband, who suffered there for his honesty and devotion to the honour of the Empire he served. The authorities accepted his resignation of the Cape command which he tendered for fear of embarrassing the Government, and he accepted the command of the Western District in its place, which meant Devonport. So on August 22nd we all embarked for Home.

There we found the campaign of calumny, originated in South Africa against Sir William, in its acutest phase. The Press was letting loose all the poison with which it was being supplied, and I consequently went through, at first, the bitter pain of daily trying to intercept the vilest anonymous letters, many of them beer-stained missives couched in ill-spelt language from the slums. Not all the reparation offered to my husband later on—the bestowal of the Grand Cross of the Bath, his election to the dignity of Privy Councillor, his selection as the safest judge to investigate the South African war stores scandals, not to name other acts conveying the amende honorable—ever healed the wound.

His offence had been a frank admission of sympathy for a people tenacious of their independence and, knowing the Boers as he did, he knew what their resistance would mean in case of attack. He was appalled at the prospect of a war, not against an army but against a people, involving the farm-burnings and all the horrors which our armies would have to resort to. He would fain have seen violence avoided and diplomacy used instead, knowing, as he did, that the old intransigent Dopper element would die out in time, and the new generation of Boers, many of whom were educated at our universities, intermarrying with the English, as they were already doing, would have brought about that very union of the two races within the Empire which has been reached to-day through all that suffering. In case, however, war should be decided on he employed the utmost vigour allowed to official language to warn those in power of the necessity for enormous forces in order to ensure success. Some of his despatches were suppressed. The idea at Headquarters was an easy march to Pretoria. What I have alluded to as the malice which prompted the campaign of calumny had caused the report to be spread that our initial defeats were owing to his wilful neglect in not warning the directing powers of the gravity of their undertaking.

The chief interest I found in our new appointment was caused by the frequent arrivals of foreign men-of-war, whose captains were received officially and socially, and there were admirals, too, when squadrons came. It was interesting and amusing. Lord and Lady Charles Scott were at the Admiralty and, later, Sir Edward Seymour, during our appointment. The foreign sailors prevented the official functions from becoming monotonous, and we got a certain amount of pleasure out of this Devonport phase of our experiences. I carried my painting “through thick and thin,” and did well, on the whole, at the Academy. I had the “consuming zeal”—a very necessary possession. One year it was a big tent-pegging picture (I don’t know where its purchaser is now), which was well lighted at Burlington House. Then a Boer War subject, “Within Sound of the Guns”—well placed; followed by an Afghan subject, “Rescue of Wounded,” which to my great pleasure was given an excellent place in the Salle d’Honneur. I also accomplished other smaller works and exhibited a great number of water colours. It is a medium I like much. I also prepared for the Press my “Letters from the Holy Land” there which I have already mentioned. My publishers, Messrs. A. and C. Black, reproduced the water-colour illustrations very faithfully.

Our French sailor guests were always bright, so were the Italians, but the Japanese were very heavy in hand, and conversation was uphill work. It was mainly carried on by repeated smiles and nods on their part. When their big ships came in on one occasion the Admiralty gave them the first dinner, of course, and at the end the bandmaster had the happy thought of giving a few bars out of Arthur Sullivan’s “Mikado” before the Emperor’s health was drunk, the National Air not being in his repertory. Some one asked the Jap admiral if he recognised it. “Ah! no, no, no!” came the usual smiling and nodding answer. At the Port Admirals’ I was to learn that in the navy you mustn’t stand up for our Sovereign’s health, by order of William IV. This resulted one evening in our sitting for “The King” and standing up for “The Kaiser.” There were the German admiral and officers present. I thought that very unfortunate.[13]

Well, Devonport in summer was very delightful, but Devonport in winter had long periods of fog and gloom. I had the blessing of another trip to Italy, this time with our eldest daughter, starting on a dark wintry day in early March, 1900. Sir William’s work prevented his coming with us. Vi Genoa to Rome lay our happy way. Of course, it wasn’t the Rome I first knew, but the shock I received when revisiting it four years before this present visit had already introduced me into the new order, and I now knew what to see, enjoy, and avoid. There were several new things to enjoy: above all, the Forum, now all open to the sky! In the dear old days that space was a rather dreary expanse of waste land where some poor old paupers were to be daily seen, leisurely labouring under the delusion that they were excavating. They grubbed up the tufts of grass and scraped the dust with pocket-knives, and the treasures below remained comfortably tucked away from public view. Then the much-abused Embankment. The dignified sweep of its lines leads the eye up, as it follows the flow of the stream, to the dignity of St. Peter’s, whereas, formerly, in its place, unbeautiful masses of mouldering houses tottered over the Tiber and gave that long-suffering river the reflections of their drainpipes. Then, the two end arches of that most estimable Ponte Sant’ Angelo are now cleared of the old mud which blocked them up malodorously and docked the lovely thing of its symmetry. Then, finally, Rome is clean!

We had the good fortune to be present at two very striking Papal functions, striking as bringing together Catholics from a wide-flung circle embracing some remote nationalities unknown by sight to me. The first was the Pope’s Benediction in St. Peter’s on March 18th. We were standing altogether about three hours in the crowd at the Tomb, well placed for seeing the Holy Father. He was taken round the vast basilica in his sedia gestatoria, and blessed a wildly cheering crowd. I never saw a human being so like a spirit as Leo XIII. He looked as white as his mitre as he leant forward and stretched his arm out in benediction from side to side, borne high above the helmets of the Noble Guard. One heard cheers in all languages, and a curious effect was produced by the whirling handkerchiefs, which made a white haze above the dark crowd. I have often heard secular monarchs cheered, and that very heartily, but for a Pope it seems that more than ordinary loyalty prompts the cheerers. The people seem to give out their whole being in their voices and gestures.

The Diary says: “I am glad I have seen that old man’s face and his look, as though it came to us from beyond the grave. At times the cheers went up to the highest pitch of both men’s and women’s voices. A strange sound to hear in a church.”

A spring day spent at the well-known Hadrian’s Villa, under Tivoli, is not to be allowed to pass without a grateful record. It is a most exquisite place of old ruins, cypresses, olives and, at this time, flowering peach trees, violets and anemones. It is an enchanting site for a country house. Hadrian chose well. From there you see the delicately-pencilled dome of St. Peter’s on the rim of the horizon to the west, and behind you, to the north, rise the steep foot-hills of the mountains, some crowned with old cities. The ruins of the villa are all minus the lovely outer coating which used to hide the brickwork, and poor Hadrian would have felt very woeful had he foreseen that all the white loveliness of his villa was to come to this. But as bits of warm colour and lovely surface those brick spaces take the sun and shadow beautifully between the dark masses of the cypresses and feathery grey cloudiness of the olives. Nowhere is the “touch and go” nature of life more strikingly put before the mind than in dead Rome, where so much magnificence in stone and marble and mosaic and bronze has fallen into lumps of crumbling brick.

On March 26th we attended the Papal Benediction in the Sistine Chapel, which is a remarkable thing to see. It was a memorable morning. The floor of the chapel was packed with pilgrims, some of them rough men and women from remote regions of the north-east, whose outlandish costumes were especially remarkable for the heavy Cossack boots, reaching to the knee, worn by both sexes. One wondered how these people journeyed to Rome. What a gathering of the faithful we looked down on from our gallery! The same ecstatic cheering we had heard in St. Peter’s announced the entrance of Leo XIII. There he was, the holy creature, blessing right and left with that thin alabaster hand, half covered with a white mitten. With all their hoarse barbaric cheering, I noticed how those peasants, who had so particularly attracted me, remembered to bend their heads and most devoutly make the sign of the cross as he passed. They almost monopolised my study of the motley crowd, but I was aware of the many nationalities present, and the same enthusiasm came from them all. At such times a great consolation eases the mind, saddened, as it often is, by the general atmosphere of declining faith in which one has to live one’s ordinary life in the world. After the Mass came the presentation of the pilgrims at the altar steps. The Pope had kind words for all, bending down to hear and to speak to them, and often stroking the men’s heads. One huge Muscovite peasant knelt long at his feet, and the Pope kept patting the rough man’s cheek and speaking to him and blessing him over and over again. At the sight of this a wild “hourah!” broke from his fellow villagers. Where in the world was their village? In the mists of remoteness, but here in heart, unmistakably. Following the swarthy giant three sandy-haired German students, carrying their plumed caps in their hands and girt with rapiers, presented some college documents to receive the Papal benediction, and a great many men and women knelt and passed on, but the Pope seemed in no way fatigued. As he was borne out again he waved us an upward blessing with his white and most friendly countenance turned up to us.

Our Roman wanderings included a visit to the Holy Father’s Vatican gardens, which are part of the little temporal kingdom a Pope still possesses, and to his tiny “country house” therein, where he goes for change of air(!) in the summer, about two stonethrows from the Vatican. I note: “There are well-trimmed vineyards there; there are pet birds and beasts in a little ‘zoological gardens’; there is the arbour where he has his meals on hot days; and, finally, we were conducted to his little villa bedroom from whose window one of the finest views of Rome is seen, dominated by the Quirinal, within (let us hope) shaking hands distance.” We heard the “Miserere” at St. Peter’s on Good Friday—very impressive, that twilight service in the apse of the great basilica! The unaccompanied voices of boys sounded in sweetest music—one hardly knew whence it came—and the air seemed to thrill with the thin angelic sound in the waning light as one by one the candles at the altar were put out. At the last Psalm the last light was extinguished, and the vast crowd with its wan faces remained lighted only by the faint glimmer that came down from the pale sky through the high windows. Then good-bye to Rome. We left for Perugia on April 22nd. I certainly ought to be grateful for having had yet another reception by my Umbrian Hills! And such a reception that April afternoon, with the low sun gilding everything into fullest beauty! I did my best to secure that moment in miserably inadequate paint from the hotel window immediately on arrival. Better than nothing. But no more of Perugia, nor of dear old Florence on our way to academic Padua; no more of Verona. I have much yet to record on getting home, and after!