April 30th.—I am very glad you will revert to the North Pacific. You should refer to your excellent article of 1880, which I have read over again. It seems to exhaust the subject as far as relates to the settlements on the Amoor, and even as to Vladivostock; but I suppose that thirteen years have materially augmented the strength of Russia on the Pacific, and any additional information would be valuable.
Foxholes, May 23rd.—I am much obliged to you for your interesting article. I think the best heading would be 'Russia on the Pacific.' As I am much pressed for room, I have ventured to excise some of your introductory remarks, which are not essential to the main objects of the paper; but when you come to positive business at Vladivostock, all that you say is most excellent and important. I believe the Siberian railroad—like the line to Samarkand—is only a single line. Such a line 5,000 miles long is a very ineffective instrument for military and commercial purposes. How much can it carry, allowing for return trains, chiefly empty? Where is Russia, with a debt equal in charge to our own, to find forty millions sterling for such a work, which would be wholly unproductive? It is true that, by employing troops and Turkomans, the work may be done cheaply; but all this will take a long time.
I am very glad you touch on the question between France and Siam: it is a serious one.
In the early days of July the Reeves settled down for the summer at Foxholes, avoiding the great heat, with the thermometer at 80° F. when in London it was reaching as high as 93° F. In the beginning of September Reeve, together with his wife, returned to London, crossed over to Boulogne, and so to Chantilly, where, as the guests of the Due d'Aumale, they spent his 80th birthday. They stayed there till the 12th, and returned, again by Boulogne and London, to Foxholes. It was his last visit to the France he had loved so well. The year was in many respects a sad one. His own health was becoming very uncertain, and gout, feverish colds, and violent bleeding of the nose laid him up for weeks at a time. The deaths of his friends, too, recurring in rapid succession, were frequent reminders of what he had written nearly sixty-two years before: 'Between seventy and eighty there rarely remains more than one change to be made.' [Footnote: See ante, vol. i. p. 17.] He had now exceeded the higher limit, and it happened that the obituary of 1893 contained an unusual number of men of high literary and scientific distinction. Through all, however, Reeve's head remained clear, and his work was seldom disturbed. There is no sickness or feebleness in the following:—
To Mr. T. Norton Longman
Foxholes, October 3rd.—I have read a great part of the 'Life of Pusey'—an appalling book from the length of the letters in it. In my opinion it lays bare, as nothing else has done, the total weakness and inconsistency of the Tractarians, and their absolute disloyalty to the Church of England. It is very difficult and very important to find a suitable person to review such a work, for it must be done in the spirit of the articles of Arnold, Tait, and Arthur Stanley, which express the principles of the 'Edinburgh Review.' I incline to think it had better be done by a layman. The parsons are all hostile to their own Church.
To Rear-Admiral Bridge
62 Rutland Gate, November 12th.—We are come to town, and I hope it will not be long before I have the pleasure of seeing you. Meanwhile, I have been reading again the article on Mediterranean Politics which you gave us last autumn. The combination of the French and Russian fleets seems to me to be a matter of grave importance. Both those countries are unhappily animated by very hostile intentions to us. They have discovered that it is only by a superiority of sea power in the Mediterranean that they can accomplish their twofold object, which I take to be for Russia to force the Dardanelles and for France to compel us to evacuate Egypt. This seems to me to be the but of the alliance, in as far as it is an alliance. It is all very well to talk of our maritime supremacy, but have we got it? You know, and I do not. But to my mind, the worst is that we have got a Government—or rather a minister—profoundly incapable of foreseeing a great emergency or providing against it. It is quite possible that the Gladstone administration may be blown up by a tremendous catastrophe. These thoughts perplex me; but I hope you will tell me that I am quite wrong and that Britannia rules the waves.
An exceptional chance gives us a picture of Foxholes, at this time, when twenty years' occupation had enabled its owner to perfect all the details which go to make up comfort.
During his absence in London in the beginning of 1894, he let it, for the only time, to his friend, Lord Hobhouse, for many years a member of the Judicial Committee, and just then convalescent after a serious illness. A couple of notes which Lord Hobhouse wrote during his four weeks' tenancy may be classed as 'Interiors' or 'Exteriors' from the practical point of view.