poetry, he thawed to me and we walked across Hyde Park together and he took tea in my little house in Kensington Gore opposite the park. I made up a dinner party soon after with Frederick Harrison, who was an old friend of his, and Lord and Lady Folkestone; and after the dinner, having primed Lord Folkestone to ask me, I told the company what Browning had meant to me; evidently he was pleased.
Harrison afterwards said my praise was too enthusiastic-'over-pitched,' he called it, but that's a good fault. After this Browning treated me with some cordiality. He came to my house twice or three times but he wouldn't drink, was indeed of an astonishing sobriety. He told me that health came through self-denial; yet he was a little too stout for my ideal of perfect health. He was not as wise in physical things as he thought himself, but he was kindly till I 'presumed,' I supposed he'd have called it. I tried one day to find out from him where he got the passion of James Lee's Wife. I wanted to know whether he had learned the whole gamut of passion from one woman, his wife. At once he drew into himself like a hurt snail and tried to be indignant. I told him Shakespeare was infinitely franker. He quoted the last three lines of his poem to me, beginning with Wordsworth's statement, which he prints in italics. … 'With this same key Shakespeare unlocked his heart; once more!
Did Shakespeare? If so, the less Shakespeare he.'
Which seemed to me a dire example of the smaller man judging the greater and in itself mere drivel. I undertook to prove to him that Shakespeare had told a good deal even about his own sensual experiences. I cited the sonnet on lust:
Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight, Past reason hunted, and no sooner had Past reason hated, as a swallow'd bait On purpose laid to make the taker mad.
'The man who could write that at thirty-five must have been very weak,' I began. 'It's a confession of weakness: the ordinary healthy man doesn't hate lust after enjoyment; on the contrary-'
But Browning would not discuss or even consider it. 'There are things that should not be told,' he persisted, 'things that the public has no right to know'; whereas I was just as sure that all men could learn even from the weaknesses of a great man. Blake knew that The errors of a wise man make your rule Rather than the perfections of a fool.
I could not get Browning even to argue or think; he preferred to take my wish to know as an impertinence and we parted in some coldness, though of course as soon as I saw that I could not prevail, I drew back and sought to excuse myself. We met afterwards half a dozen tunes half casually; he never came to my house again nor had I ever again the chance of a private talk with him.
And now he was gone … to where on high
Love weighs the counsel of futurity
Browning-that vivid soul-
Covered with silence and forgetfulness.
The passing of such men makes life poorer.
When I heard that Browning was to be buried in the Abbey I was heart-glad; an everlasting rest in the great Temple of Silence and Reconciliation was surely due to him. I spoke to Froude about this ceremony on the last day of the dying year and he asked me to go with bun. Of course I was only too glad to promise.
It was a foggy, gloomy morning, bleak, too: in the Abbey itself Froude introduced me to Lecky. I was glad that I had read his Rationalism with great interest, for he became friendly when I told him what his phrase for prostitutes-'the sisterhood of sorrow'-had meant to me. 'One of the great phrases of our literature,' I called it, but I could not help wondering whether with a little loving-kindness the oldest profession could not be made 'a sisterhood of joy.' But neither he nor Froude would consider it; they called it 'a poor French invention,' and when I cited what I think the noblest thought in Proudhon, f they still remained entirely unconvinced. Proudhon proposed that the lowest forms of labour, the cleansing of sewers and the most dangerous trades, should be undertaken by the chivalry of youth-a sacred band of volunteers. Men become soldiers, he said, for scant pay and risk their lives for almost nothing. Why not hearten them to take up the vilest and most dangerous work in the same chivalrous spirit? 'The sewer brigade would soon win distinction,' Proudhon declared, and in the same way it seemed to me that the sisterhood of sorrow might accept even the degradation of lust as a new distinction!
But they would not have it; the majority of even able men cannot take up a new idea and give it a reasonable hospitality.
While we were talking, the great bell began to toll and the deep tones brought a solemn silence. The whispering was at once hushed.
As I looked about me, I was astonished by the number of well known faces even I with my short sight could distinguish: Meredith and Wolseley and, strange to say, Whistler and Irving and Frederic Harrison, Bret Harte, too, and du Maurier. The whole space was crowded and the faces gleamed oddly in the grey mist shot through by the gold of a few candles and lamps.
Suddenly the organ rang out in Purcell's burial mass and the bier, preceded by choir and clergy, with Browning's son as chief mourner, was borne to the chancel steps. The papers next day gave a long list of those who followed the coffin, but I could only recognize the fine head of Sir Frederick Leighton.
The choristers sang a hymn: the young voices brought tears to my eyes and I was not the only one so affected: Huxley's handkerchief was before his eyes as the music ceased.
The coffin was lowered to its place by Chaucer's tomb; the Dean said the benediction and the great organ boomed out the Dead March from Saul.
Slowly we all began to move, and when I stood by the grave, great spirits seemed to people the place: Chaucer and Shakespeare, Spenser and Ben Jonson were there, and the great Doctor with his stout figure and reverent soul; and the spirit of Robert Browning met them and words of his seemed to stir the sentient air:
O lyric love half angel and half bird
And all a wonder and a wild desire.
Other lines of his floated into my head, unforgettable lines: the woman's confession in The Ring and the Book:
He was ordained to call and I to come.
And how Browning thanks God that each man has two soul-sides: … one to face the world with One to show a woman when he loves her.
But does the light come after the darkness and will the woman-soul be wailing? Who knows? Who can tell?
Out of the throng in the great church into the foggy great gloom. Even Froude is affected; I hear him whispering: 'Soon, soon. He giveth his Beloved sleep,' and then aloud: 'What a great ceremony!' he went on, 'and a great man.' I bowed my head.
In the summer of 1888 Rhodes startled English society by giving?. 10,000 to Parnell on condition that he'd work for the retention of Irish Members in the British House of Commons, for he believed, as he told Parnell, that 'Irish Home Rule would lead to Imperial Home Rule.' Suddenly it dawned upon English politicians that they must enlarge their views or the ablest men from their own colonies would be against them. I had already helped to found the Imperial Federation League, so I was heart and soul with Rhodes from the beginning. A very notable Englishman, I thought him, without 'side' or pose of any sort, using British snobbery with some disdain to forward his own schemes. He spoke of Parnell as 'the most reasonable and sensible man I have ever met.' People forget many of Rhodes's achievements. In 1887 Lord Salisbury was quite willing to accept Portugal's extravagant claim to a continuous dominion from Angola on the west coast to Mozambique on the east, which would have finally limited England's empire in Africa. Luckily Rhodes had won Sir Hercules Robinson over to his, or rather Bartle-Frere's idea, that England should annex the whole high central plateau of Africa from the Cape to Cairo. W. H. Smith was opposed to granting a charter to the Rhodes' Exploration Company till Sir Hercules Robinson talked of 'the amateur meddling of irresponsible and ill-advised persons in England.' In April, 1889, Lord Gifford, Rhodes, Rudd and Beit applied for a charter and Lord Knutsford commended the proposal to Lord Salisbury as likely to save the heavy expenses that had been incurred in British Bechuanaland; and Rhodes was informed privately that he would get what he wanted if he put influential persons on his board. Thereupon he got the Duke of Abercorn as Chairman: the Duke got the Prince of Wales's son-in-law, the Duke of Fife, to consent to join the board, and best of all Albert Grey, whom Courtney called 'the Paladin of his generation,' and the most distinguished member of the South African Committee. Though warned by Chamberlain, Albert Grey finally agreed to throw in his lot with Rhodes. The trick was turned and the Chartered Company came into existence.
All through these negotiations I met Rhodes twice or thrice a week and learned to know him intimately, and
