“Places are not easy to get,” he assured me. “You will be in the best of company,—peeresses, professional beauties, members of Parliament.”
A lady wishing to take us to the play advised, “‘Cleopatra’, with your pretty compatriot, Mrs. James Brown Potter, and Kyrle Bellew.” This was New Orleans over again!
At the Royal Academy everybody talked of John Sargent’s seven magnificent portraits;
“Have you seen Sargent’s Wertheimer? Best thing in the show—perfectly rippin’.”
It certainly was. More to my liking was a portrait of a different Hebrew type, a young chemist in his laboratory,—subtle, delicate, all spirit, in strong contrast to that other, which was of the flesh “fleshly.” At the exhibition of the Society of Portrait Painters we saw an excellent portrait of Paderewski by the Princess Louise of Lorne, which was deservedly much noticed.
In the House of Commons Mr. Gladstone was still the leading figure: he was supported by Lord Rosebery—who now looked almost grown up—and Sir Vernon Harcourt. Sir Randolph Churchill was much in evidence and Mr. Arthur Balfour was already a recognized leader.
Thoughtful people were feeling the menace of Germany’s growing aggression and of the constantly increasing host of Germans holding positions of trust in the business world.
“From the Bank of England down, German clerks are employed everywhere,” a friend complained. “They work for less money than our own people and they know our resources, our strength, and our weakness better than we do ourselves!”
The comic papers were full of cartoons of the Emperor William, now as Jack-in-the-Box-Universal, popping up unexpectedly in the affairs of the army, the navy, art, science, society, education, and religion: again under the caption “Cuts, or we never speak as we pass by”, turning his back upon Bismarck. A few prophetic voices were lifted by men of imperial mold who saw with the wide world vision, like Rudyard Kipling and Lord Roberts. Kipling, with his “flanneled fools”, had angered the England he attacked, and though “Little Bobs” was listened to indulgently for the great love borne him, he was not heeded. London, as a whole, was taking the comfortable Little Englander point of view. If she did not stone her prophets, neither did she heed them. At a military tournament we heard Lord Roberts sound his note of warning for “preparedness.” His was a small martial figure, with close-cropped white hair and moustache and eagle eyes. There was a sort of desperate earnestness in voice and gesture that I well recall and now, in the light of the World War he foresaw, understand.
“An English friend is a friend for life,” was a saying of my mother’s. As if in proof her old friends gathered around her and her days were filled with pleasant engagements. J. R. Seeley, the historian, now Sir John, invited us to Cambridge. He writes, “You must, however, give up the expectation of hearing me.” She regretted this, as she had much enjoyed hearing him speak on earlier visits. A note from Eva McLaren mentions an appointment to meet Mrs. Fawcett, and one from Mrs. Ormiston Chant gives a picture of the political activity of the time, in which we took some part.