Her brother, the former Home Secretary, has in the interval developed
astonishing talents which have fitted him for the Colonial Office, the
India Office, and the Treasury, in rapid succession--and would doubtless
have fitted him for the Foreign Office but for the determined opposition
of the permanent officials. During the four years in which it had been
arranged to let the other batch of professional politicians have a suck
at the salaries, he acted as President (at £2,500) of the Commission
for the Second Reduction of Wages, wrote a book of reminiscences
(£3,000 Gubbins & Gubbins 42_s._). He was badly stoned during the
progress of the fifth General Strike--some call it the seventh, but I
follow the usual numeration. He had been taken by the mob for Henry
Gaston, a man nearly forty years younger and twenty times as able--which
only shows how important it is to educate the poor, and also, by the
way, how important it is not to print in the papers pictures of people
taken hundreds of years before the date of their appearance.
[Illustration: _Last portrait of Professor de Bohun, a sketch
reproduced in the "Figures Modernes"
of Berne (Switzerland)._]
William de Bohun is still Professor of Crystallography in the
University, where he has still further attained a European reputation.
He is now mentioned not only in Swiss papers, but occasionally in German
ones. He is not more than seventy-nine, and there is every chance of his
retaining the position for a few more years. He has not made it up with
the reader in Crystallogy, Mr. Bertran Leader.
I am sorry to say that these two distinguished men actually had a fight
in the main street of their academic town, their weapons being
umbrellas. Nor would the victory of the younger champion, Mr. B. Leader,
have been for a moment doubtful had it not been that the umbrella of the
elder, Professor de Bohun, was suddenly blown open by a gust of wind,
affording him a sure and certain shield against the frenzied blows of
his opponent.
McTaggart has gone under for good. It seems shameful, considering the
excellent position on the British Intelligence into which he had been
put on a weekly contract at fifteen pounds by the influence of the Home
Secretary, who thought some reparation due to him, and still more by the
influence of Victoria Mosel, who had squeezed Lord Bernstein's hand. On
the other hand it hurts nobody but himself. He is still unmarried.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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