On September 11th, 1898, we received the terrible news of the assassination of the Empress of Austria. I had seen her every Sunday and feast day at our little Ventnor church, at Mass, during her residence at Steep Hill Castle. She had the tiniest waist I ever saw—indeed, no woman could have lived with a tinier one. She was beautiful, but so frigid in her manner; she seemed made of stone, yet she rode splendidly to hounds—altogether an enigma.
October 27th, 1898, I thoroughly enjoyed. It was a day after my own heart—picturesque, historical, stirring, amusing. Sir Herbert Kitchener, the Sirdar par excellence, was received at Dover on his arrival from the captured Khartoum with all the prestige of his new-won honours shining around him. My husband had decided that the regulation military honours “to be accorded to distinguished persons” were applicable to the man who was coming, and so a guard of honour (Highlanders) with the regimental colour was drawn up at the pier head, the regimental officers in red and the staff in blue. The crowd on the upper part of the pier was immense and densely packed all along the parapet, and the Lower Pier, reserved for special people, was crowded, too. It was a calm, grey, yet bright day, and the absence of wind made things pleasant. Great gathering of Cocked Hats at the entrance gates, and we all walked to the landing stage. There was a dense smudge of black smoke on the horizon. I knew that meant Kitchener. Keeping my eye on that smudge, I took but a distracted part in the small talk and frequent introductions of distinguished persons come from afar to welcome the man of the hour, “the Avenger of Gordon.” I was conducted to the head of the landing steps, together with such of the staff as were not to go on board the boat with the General. Then the smudge got hidden behind the pier end, but I could see the ever-increasing swish and swirl of the water on the starboard side of the hidden steamer, and soon she swept alongside; a few vague cheers began, no one in the crowd knowing the Sirdar by sight. When, however, the General went on board and shook hands, this proclaimed at once where the man was, and cheer upon cheer thundered out. I have never, before or since, seen such spontaneous enthusiasm in England. After a little talk (my husband and he were long together on the Nile) and after the delivery of letters (one from the Queen) and telegrams, during which the hurrahs went on in a great roar and multitudinous pocket handkerchiefs fluttered in a long perspective, the big, solid, stolid, sunburnt Briton stepped on English soil once more. While shaking hands with me he seemed astonished and amused at all that was going on and, looking over my head at the masses of people above, he lifted his hat, and thenceforth kept it in his hand as he was escorted to the Lord Warden Hotel. He had asked his A.D.C., on first catching sight of the reception awaiting him, “What is all this about?”
Then there was an Address at the hotel to which he listened with an ox-like patience, and after that the enormous company of invited guests went to lunch. In his speech my husband paid the Sirdar the compliment of saying that the traditional Field Marshal’s baton would be found in his trunk when the customs officers opened it at Victoria. Kitchener spoke so low I could not hear him. Had he been less immovable one could have plainly seen how utterly he hated having to make a speech. His travelling dress looked most interestingly incongruous amidst the rich uniforms and the glossy frock-coats as he stood up to say what he had to say. As we all bulged out of the hotel door the cheers began again from the crowds. I took care to look at the people that day, and I was struck by their unanimity. All ranks were there, and yet on every face, well bred or unwashed, I saw the same identical expression—one of broad, laughing delight. Such were my impressions, which I noted down, as usual, at the moment, and I have lived to see that remarkable man work out his life, and end it with a tragedy that will hold its place in history; my husband’s prophecy, put in those playful words at Dover, fulfilled; a threatening disaster to the Empire turned into victory with the aid of that extraordinary mind and physical endurance; and the burning fire of that personality quenched, untimely, in the icy depths of a northern sea.
CHAPTER XXII
THE CAPE AND DEVONPORT
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]