القرن التاسع عشر ، رقم ١٨٢، أبريل ١٨٩٢ [ظ‎‎٣‎٨] (٢٤٤/٨١)

566 THE NINET
April
LORD LYTTON'S RANK
O n the 24th of November, 1891, Lord Lytton, diplomatist, Indian
administrator, and poet, after a six weeks' illness of great physical
pain heroically borne, died at Paris, where he was ambassador. To
the last, and in spite of bodily infirmities, he retained his fall clear
ness and activity of mind, and was able not only to transact official
business, but also to busy himself with that higher intellectual work
which had been the true motive of his life. His very latest care was
given to the correction of the verses which are the text of this paper.
He called them Mar ah, 1 for the waters of bitterness were at his lips;
and the morning of the day he died was spent in setting down on
paper its concluding lines, which he had thought out in the night.
It was a fitting ending to a life brimming over with the romance of
politics, of social success,; and of literature.
As his very intimate friend, of twenty-six years standing, I may
perhaps be allowed to say a word or two at the outset about this life
on its personal side, for it is that I knew best; and when all is said and
done, it is the personality of those who have played a great part in the
world that interests us most. I saw it in its most striking phases, and
what I did not see, I learned in our long intercourse from his lips.
He had an unhappy childhood, a Bohemian home where bitter
quarrels were rife, and poverty, or something very like it, stood often
at the door. Of his two parents, whom he equally tried to love,
the great novelist, his father, with all his brilliancy of wit and
literary sensibility, was a mere egotist in domestic life, and from first
to last fulfilled almost no duty of a parent towards him; while his Irish
mother was what the world has seen her, and what she has herself
published to the world. Lord Lytton's tenderness towards his father
was a touching trait of his affectionate character, and in all his many
talks I do not remember to have heard a single word of bitterness
escape his lips about him. It is pleasant to think that this filial piety
was rewarded late in the unbounded love of his own children, for
nothing really is lost to those who give freely, and their bread cast on
the waters returns to them always, though it may be after many days.
His one absorbing affection, however, in childhood was for his sister,
a year older than himself, whom he had the misery of losing when
1 Published by Longmans & Co.