Garrett, that Garrett expected to receive news of a revolution in Johannesburg at any
moment on 30 December 1895. (9)
The difficulty which the initiates in London had in preparing a defense for the Select
Committee was complicated by the fact that they were not able to reach Rhodes, who was
en route from South Africa with Garrett. As soon as the boat docked, Brett (Lord Esher)
sent "Natty" Rothschild from London with a message from Chamberlain to Rhodes.
When Rothschild returned, Brett called in Stead, and they discussed the projected
defense. Stead had already seen Rhodes and given his advice.(10) The following day (5
February 1896), Brett saw Rhodes and found that he was prepared to confess everything.
Brett tried to dissuade him. As he wrote in his Journal, "I pointed out to him that there
was one consideration which appeared to have escaped him, that was the position of Mr.
Chamberlain, the Secretary of State. Chamberlain was obviously anxious to help and it
would not do to embarrass him or to tie his hands. It appeared to me to be prudent to
endeavour to ascertain how Chamberlain would receive a confidence of this kind. I said I
would try to find out. On leaving me he said, 'Wish we could get our secret society.'"
Brett went to Chamberlain, who refused to receive Rhodes's confession, lest he have to
order the law officers to take proceedings against Rhodes as against Jameson.
Accordingly, the view of the majority, a general denial, was adopted and proved
successful, thanks to the leniency of the members of the Select Committee. Brett
recognized this leniency. He wrote to Stead on 19 February 1897: "I came up with Milner
from Windsor this morning. He has a heavy job; and has to start de novo. The committee
will leave few of the old gang on their legs. Alas. Rhodes was a pitiful object. Harcourt
very sorry for him; too sorry to press his question home. Why did Rhodes try to shuffle
after all we had told him?"(11)
It is clear that the Select Committee made no real effort to uncover the real
relationships between the conspirators, The Times, and the Salisbury government. When
witnesses refused to produce documents or to answer questions, the committee did not
insist, and whole fields of inquiry were excluded from examination by the committee.
One of these fields, and probably the most important one, was the internal policies and
administration of The Times itself. As a result, when Campbell-Bannerman, an opposition
leader, asked if it were usual practice for The Times correspondents to be used to
propagate certain policies in foreign countries as well as to obtain information, Miss
Shaw answered that she had been excused from answering questions about the internal
administration of The Times. We now know, as a result of the publication of the official
History of The Times, that all Miss Shaw's acts were done in consultation with the
manager, Moberly Bell.(12) The vital telegrams to Rhodes, signed by Miss Shaw, were
really drafted by Bell. As The History of The Times puts it, "Bell had taken the risk of
allowing Miss Shaw to commit The Times to the support of Rhodes in a conspiracy that
was bound to lead to controversy at home, if it succeeded, and likely to lead to
prosecution if it failed. The conspiracy had failed; the prosecution had resulted. Bell's
only salvation lay in Miss Shaw's willingness to take personal responsibility for the
telegrams and in her ability to convince the Committee accordingly." And, as the
evidence of the same source shows, in order to convince the committee it was necessary
for Miss Shaw to commit perjury, even though the representatives of both parties on the
Committee of Enquiry (except Labouchere) were making every effort to conceal the real
facts while still providing the public with a good show.
Before leaving the discussion of Miss Shaw and the Jameson Raid, it might be fitting
to introduce testimony from a somewhat unreliable witness, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, a
member by breeding and education of this social group and a relative of the Wyndhams,
but a psychopathic anti-imperialist who spent his life praising and imitating the Arabs
and criticizing Britain's conduct in India, Egypt, and Ireland. In his diaries, under the date
25 April 1896, he says: "[George Wyndham] has been seeing much of Jameson, whom he
likes, and of the gang that have been running the Transvaal business, about a dozen of
them, with Buckle, The Times editor, and Miss Flora Shaw, who, he told me
confidentially, is really the prime mover in the whole thing, and who takes the lead in all
their private meetings, a very clever middle-aged woman."(13) A somewhat similar
conclusion was reached by W. T. Stead in a pamphlet called Joseph Chamberlain:
Conspirator or Statesman, which he published from the office of The Review of Reviews
in 1900. Stead was convinced that Miss Shaw was the intermediary among Rhodes, The
Times, and the Colonial Office. And Stead was Rhodes's closest confidant in England.
As a result of this publicity, Miss Shaw's value to The Times was undoubtedly
reduced, and she gave up her position after her marriage in 1902. In the meantime,
however, she had been in correspondence with Milner as early as 1899, and in December
1901 made a trip to South Africa for The Times, during which she had long interviews
with Milner, Monypenny, and the members of the Kindergarten. After her resignation,
she continued to review books for The Times Literary Supplement, wrote an article on
tropical dependencies for The Empire and the Century, wrote two chapters for Amery's
History of the South African War, and wrote a biographical sketch of Cecil Rhodes for
the eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica.
A third member of this same type was Valentine Chirol (Sir Valentine after 1912).
Educated at the Sorbonne, he was a clerk in the Foreign Office for four years (1872-
1876) and then traveled about the world, but chiefly in the Near East, for sixteen years
(1876-1892). In 1892 he was made The Times correspondent in Berlin, and for the next
four years filled the role of a second British ambassador, with free access to the Foreign
Ministry in Berlin and functioning as a channel of unofficial communication between the
government in London and that in Berlin. After 1895 he became increasingly anti-
German, like all members of the Cecil Bloc and the Milner Group, and was chiefly
responsible for the great storm whipped up over the "Kruger telegram." In this last
connection he even went so far as to announce in The Times that the Germans were really
using the Jameson episode as part of a long-range project to drive Britain out of South
Africa and that the next step in that process was to be the dispatch in the immediate
future of a German expeditionary force to Delagoa Bay in Portuguese Angola. As a result
of this attitude, Chirol found the doors of the Foreign Ministry closed to him and, after
another unfruitful year in Berlin, was brought to London to take charge of the Foreign
Department of The Times. He held this post for fifteen years (1897-1912), during which
he was one of the most influential figures in the formation of British foreign and imperial