London, 12 September 1882 

Dear Moor, 

Postcard* and Laura’s letter received. Am glad to hear you are 
having good weather at last and hope dt will continue. We have 
been back here since Saturday; Tussy and Johnny spent a week at 
Yarmouth with us. 

I remember Songeon very well; I often used to wonder what des- 
tiny might lie in store for that patronising, bonhomous countenance, 
until I eventually found it in the paper— chairman of the municipal 
council! That, in fact, was what was already written all over his face 
in 1850. 

Many a bill on London from Genton & Co. has passed through my 
hands! 

If you are planning to see something more of Switzerland, you 
could hardly take a better or more convenient route than that from 
Geneva via Berne to Interlaken and Brienz, thence over the Brinig 
Pass (only 3,150 feet up) to Lake Lucerne and, if you feel like it, from 
there to Zurich. It’s an easy trip for a convalescent and would take 

* See previous letter. 

you to some of the loveliest spots in Switzerland. You could make 
a longish halt at Interlaken and Lucerne or some other place on the 
shores of that lake. Morges, on Lake Geneva, is also a pretty spot and 
from it you get the finest view of Mont Blanc. 

It is becoming increasingly evident that the Egyptian affair 95> was 
contrived by Russian diplomacy. Now that Gladstone has been suf- 
ficiently soft-sawdered by sweet Olga,’ he is to be entrusted to a wilier 
mentor for treatment of a more drastic kind. England has got to occupy 
Egypt in the midst of peace so that, in self-defence, poor old Russia 
may thereby be compelled to occupy Armenia, likewise in the midst 
of peace. The Caucasian army has already moved up to the border, 
and there are 48 battalions at Kars alone—a constantly mobile 
army, this. And in order to prove that Gladstone assents to the libera- 
tion of yet another ‘Christian’ country from the yoke of the unspgak- 
able Turk, this particular moment has been chosen for the ostentatious 
recall of the English commissions despatched to Asia Minor after the 
Congress of Berlin ?’° to supervise the reforms, and for the publica- 
tion of their reports which show that they have been fooled by the 
Turks and that everything remains as before, official corruption be- 
ing ineradicable. Palmerston est mort, vive Gladstone! Vive Gambetta,” who 
would also have gladly put his seal to the Russian alliance in Egypt. 
Alas, the good old times are a thing of the past, and Russia no longer 
backs Russian diplomacy, but confronts it. 

I’d be damned glad if I could come over and see you, but were 
anything to happen to me, even temporarily, all our financial ar- 
rangements would be thrown out of gear. There’s not a soul here to 
whom I could give power of attorney or entrust what are really rather 
complicated cash transactions. Sam Moore would have been the only 
possible man, but he is away and these matters can only be attended 
to on the spot. Besides I had been hoping that you might come over, 
at any rate this summer, if only for a brief spell. It was obvious to me 
even before you left England and suffered your relapses that you 
wouldn’t be able to spend next winter here, and I said as much to 
Lenchen. Now, having had relapses, it is absolutely essential for you 
to spend a winter that takes the form of spring, and I was glad when 
I heard that Dourlen and Feugier had said so unequivocally, and 
with one voice. Lonely though it is here without you, there’s nowt as 
we can do about it, and everything must be subordinated to your 

* Olga Novikova-> Palmerston is dead, long live Gladstone! Long live Gambetta