" In the meantime administration in the south will have to be carried on under English superintendence in district provinces, such, for instance, as Wady Haifa, Dongola, New Berber, and Suakin (including Kassala), Khartoum being the seat of government for such portions of the Soudan as may be eventually re-annexed.
" I wonder if Kitchener would care to be Governor- General of the Soudan, with residence at Khartoum, with Wingate or Slatin serving under him. He must be a military man in the first instance, and well acquainted with native ways and feelings. I should enjoy of all things talking these matters over with you and Bob together with points connected with them which are of such surpassing interest.
" This Crete business is most serious; everything falls upon us. Our little army does more useful work throughout the world than all the gigantic armies of Europe put together; while ours is free to act, not one of theirs dares stir for fear of its neighbour."
The journey up the Nile was the last of Sir Frederick's foreign travels. He refused a later invitation from Lord and Lady Wantage, who again asked him to go abroad with them in 1898. The letter containing his refusal shows how much he would have liked to accept the invitation, but home ties and the business connected with his brother's death, which had just taken place, prevented his feeling himself at liberty to leave England at that time.
He kept up his interest in all that was going on around him, and had correspondents in all places where great events were taking place. During the Boer War ( 1 899-1902) some of his most intimate friends
LADY WANTAGE'S FRIENDSHIP 53
were in places of high command, notably Lord Methuen, whom he loved as a son, and Sir Archibald Hunter, for whom he had the highest esteem and admiration, and both of whom wrote to him fully and frequently, a correspondence which must be of the greatest possible interest, and which one day will no doubt be published, but the events are now too recent.
Sir Frederick's greatest enjoyment as age came on was to receive visits from friends such as these, with whom he could talk over past and present events. He had an immense circle of friends and acquaintances, who almost fought for the privilege of entertaining him, and could have spent his life visiting from house to house; but gradually he gave up going about except to his most intimate friends, and the circle that surrounded him became a comparatively small one. One friendship he kept and enjoyed to the last hours of his life, that of Lady Wantage, who has written down some reminiscences of their intercourse during those many years for insertion in this memoir: —
" He was the truest and most faithful of friends — entering with hearty sympathy into all the joys, the sorrows, and the interests of our lives. As regards his ^own life, an almost over-sensitiveness of reserve held him)ack save in rare moments of confidence. He was the embodiment of the best type of an English gentleman jand a soldier; of any tinge of self-seeking he was absolutely devoid. At any moment he was ready to sacrifice is own interests or the success of his own career to the 'call of duty or of loyalty. His code of honour was a high one, but stern as could be his judgment, never have I heard him utter an ill-natured or unkind word, and always was he anxious to attribute to others the most charitable motives. No one could associate with him without feeling the ennobling and purifying influence of a character at once so simple and so great. He was a very frequent guest of ours at Lockinge, and for many years he spent Christmas with us, together with a small gathering of near relatives and close friends,
amongst his old fellow-Guardsmen, Colonel Haggarth, and frequently General Sir George Higginson and Sir Henry Brackenbury.