Chapter II: Sir Evelyn Baring Arrives at Cairo (1)

THE events briefly narrated in the last chapter will explain the bitterness of heart with which in the late summer of 1883 I once more prepared to leave England for Egypt on my road to India. What little belief I may have retained in the honour or indeed the common honesty of Mr. Gladstone’s Government in its relations with the unfortunate people, which it had first passed under the harrow of its arms and then mocked with the jibes of its diplomacy, had given place in me to a resentment which seemed to impose it as a duty henceforth of my life to take sides with the poor Nile dwellers against their European betrayers, and to do my utmost to counterwork the financial and Foreign Office rogues in their design of perpetuating their subjection.

In Egypt itself there seemed little for the present to accomplish. With Churchill’s help I had succeeded in putting a stop to the worst excesses of the restored regime. Malet and Colvin were both being removed to less dangerous spheres of official activity, and the appointment of Major Baring in their place at Cairo seemed a guarantee against any violent renewal. Baring, who was afterwards to be Lord Cromer, had a reputation at that time for large-mindedness which imposed upon the public, in spite of his financial connections, and caused it to be believed that he would do his best to hasten, not delay, the evacuation of Cairo. He was supposed to represent Mr. Gladstone’s policy of a reconstruction of the Khedivial autonomy on a basis of free institutions as declared in his famous speech of 9th August, when he promised that “having given Egypt a fair start England would wish her God speed.” It is worth recalling this, and also John Morley’s testimonial to Major Baring’s sound Liberal ideas, published at the time of his appointment in the “Pall Mall Gazette,” if only for the contrast of his prediction with the notorious sequel of Lord Cromer’s career. This is how Morley announced the event:

“Major Evelyn Baring is now semi-officially announced to have been appointed Consul-General in Egypt in place of Sir Edward Malet. The selection is a good one. Major Baring is something more than an eminent Anglo-Indian; he is an experienced Anglo-Egyptian, familiar both with men and affairs in the Nile Valley. His appointment will help to reassure the public both at home and abroad as to the tendency of English policy in Egypt, for it is well understood both at Cairo and in London that Major Baring is not an advocate of a forward policy, and that he is free from any delusions as to the possibility of inaugurating a millennium in Egypt by placing it under ‘the masterful hand of a British Resident.’ It is not in that direction that Major Baring will lead the country in which he will be the accredited representative of England.”

I had disburdened my mind to a certain extent of its anger by writing my diatribe in verse (see “Secret History”) “The Wind and the Whirlwind,” but I felt that a more active campaign was required of me, and Egypt being, as it seemed for the present, closed to me, I had made up my mind before publishing what I still had in view, a true history of the Egyptian revolution and the intrigues which had ruined it, to pay a visit to Arabi and his fellow exiles in Ceylon, and from there to go on northwards and make good my knowledge of the Islamic situation by visiting Mohammedan India. In this last design I had been encouraged by that early apostle of Mohammedan reform, Seyd Jemal-ed-Din Afghani, a sketch of whose biography has been given elsewhere, and whose acquaintance I had made that spring in London. Since the time of his having been expelled from Egypt in 1879 by the Anglo-French control, Jemal-ed-Din had wandered through many lands both east and west, in India first, whence he had been driven by the persecution of the political police; and then in the United States, where he had endeavoured to qualify by residence as an American citizen; and then, after passing through London, lastly at Paris, where he had gathered around him a group of Nationalist exiles banished from Egypt after Tel- el-Kebir. I had talked my intended visit to India over with him, and he had thought it might be of use; and it had been fixed that I was to leave England at the beginning of September for the East, when the incident occurred to which allusion has been made in my “India under Ripon,” and which sent me once more to Egypt. As it relates to a point which has been challenged by Lord Cromer in his “Modern Egypt,” I will give some further account of it here, and it will serve as yet another proof of the half intention there was still in Downing Street to recall Arabi.

A few days before the date fixed for my departure an unexpected message reached me from Mr. Knowles, the editor of the “Nineteenth Century Review,” who, an old friend of Gladstone’s, had once before been used by the Prime Minister to convey a message to me, and whom I knew to be interested in Arabi’s case, begging me to call on him before starting on my journey; and I consequently went to breakfast with him at his house at Clapham on the morning of the 29th August. Knowles then informed me that he had recently seen the Prime Minister, and that it was in Gladstone’s mind, notwithstanding all that had occurred during the past year, to recall Arabi to Egypt, and that he only needed an excuse of some public kind to do so. His idea was that according to the new Constitution decreed in harmony with Lord Dufferin’s despatch, Arabi might be elected to one of the two consultative bodies which were to form the basis of Egyptian self-government. Elections to the General Assembly were about to be held, and, if it could be arranged that Arabi should be returned as a member of it, it would serve as a reason for urging his pardon on the Egyptian Government, and his recall from exile. It was thought, too, that during my passage through Egypt I might usefully suggest such a course to my friends there and so arrange the matter. This plan, with its parliamentary device so characteristic of Gladstone’s mind, was one which I could not refuse to fall in with—though I knew how difficult it would be to carry out. It would, of course, be impossible to do anything at all without our Government’s help at Cairo. Knowles, however, told me that Malet, already for some time appointed to Brussels, was to leave for his new post in a few days, and that Baring, who was to succeed him at the Agency, was expected to inaugurate the new regime in full accordance with Liberal principles. Colvin, too, was on the point of leaving Egypt to resume his place in India as before in the Civil Service. The field was therefore open, and anything might be expected. I have a record of this conversation in letters which I wrote at the time to Mrs. Howard, whose guest at Nawarth I had recently been, and to Lady Gregory. These say:

“_30th August_, 1883.

“At James Street I found many important letters, among others a note from Knowles, asking me to breakfast at Clapham; there he gave me the news. He had seen Mr. Gladstone lately, and is assured he will both stay in office, and, if he can find some way for his pride, restore the National Party in Egypt. It appears they are quite aware the present state of things cannot be made to go on, and Sir Evelyn Baring has been appointed with _carte blanche_ to devise a new policy in place of Malet’s and Dufferin’s, which have proved failures. Baring has written an article for the ‘Nineteenth Century’ on Lord Ripon’s policy in India, full of the most Liberal ideas, which will come out in October, and Knowles thinks he will receive me with open arms. So he advises me to be there soon after he arrives, and thinks the Government will be delighted if we can get Arabi returned for Cairo, and other Nationalists for other places.”

Lord Cromer’s article here referred to, and which will be found in the October number of the “Nineteenth Century Review” of 1883, though not a very striking one, is of importance in connection with the view taken of it at the time in the minds of those who appointed him and with his later views. It is a somewhat feeble plea for local self-government in India and a free press. He declares himself to be on the side of those “who have established a free press, who have promoted education, who have admitted natives more and more largely to the public services in various forms, and who have favoured the extension of Local Self- Government.” The most forcible passage in the article says: “No one who watches the signs of the times in India with even moderate care can doubt that we have entered upon a period of change. The spread of education, the increasing influence of a free press, the substituting of legal for discretionary administration, the progress of railways and telegraphs, the easier communication with Europe, and the more ready influx of European ideas, are beginning to produce a marked effect upon the people. New ideas are springing up. New aspirations are being called forth. The power of public opinion is growing daily. Such a condition of affairs is one in which the task of Government, and especially of a despotic Government, is beset with difficulties of no light kind. To move too fast is dangerous, but to lag behind is more dangerous still. The problem is how to deal with this new born spirit of progress, raw and superficial as in many respects it is, so as to direct it into a right course, and to derive from it all the benefits which its development is capable of ultimately conferring upon the country, and at the same time to prevent it from becoming, through blind indifference or stupid repression, a source of serious political danger. It is only what ought to be expected by every thoughtful man, that after fifty years of a free press, and thirty years of expanding education, with European ideas flowing into the country on every side, and old indigenous customs, habits and prejudices breaking down, changes should be taking place in the thoughts, the desires and the aims of the intelligent and educated men of the country, which no wise and cautious Government can afford to disregard, and to which they must gradually adapt their system of administration, if they do not wish to see it shattered by forces which they have themselves called into being, but which they have failed to guide and control.”

Again, in a second letter a week later, I wrote:

“_8th Sept._, 1883.

“We have taken our places for Suez by the French steamer which leaves Marseilles on the 16th, and so hope to arrive at Cairo about the 25th. By that time Malet and Colvin will have gone their ways, let us hope for _ever_, and if there is anything in Knowles’s argument I shall find the field open for me with Baring. At the same time I confess I am far from sanguine. In the first place I do not trust Mr. Gladstone as you do, and then I _know_ the difficulties; these will be immense, and without really cordial co-operation from Baring I could do nothing at all that would be any good. I rather suspect, too, that the Foreign Office may be trying to make use of me by encouraging just so much opposition to the elections as to make them appear spontaneous. But we shall see; half an hour’s talk with Baring will probably be enough to show me whether it is worth my while staying in Egypt or whether I should not rather go on to India. . . . I had a very interesting talk with an Oriental yesterday who tells me . . . that there are still strong influences about the Sultan in favour of Arab independence in Egypt, and that, if the English Government chooses, the party can be restored, but it all depends upon the action of our Government.”

Parliament at the date of this letter had not long been prorogued, and all the world was out of town. Gladstone, among the rest, was away; he had gone yachting with Sir Donald Currie, his host on the occasion, Sir Algernon West, and a party of his other friends, and was actually, I believe, on the coast of Norway, and I could not wait for his return, my own departure from England being fixed for the 12th of September. Nevertheless, while I was considering the matter I received a note from Sir Edward Hamilton, Gladstone’s private secretary, asking to see me before I went, and the morning before I was to start I heard again from him that he wished to see me. I went therefore to him the same morning to Downing Street, and talked the matter of the restoration of the National Party over with him, as described in “India under Ripon,” and it was agreed between us that I was to call on Baring while passing through Cairo, and that if Baring would help I would try to get the Nationalist leaders elected at the elections; but all depended on the co-operation of our officials. He asked me whether I was going to take anybody with me to Egypt, and I said I had been thinking of taking Sabunji, my Oriental secretary,[10] but that as he was looked upon with so much suspicion by the Foreign Office I had resolved not to do so. Later, however, I found it necessary to take him, and I let Hamilton know my change of plan. The next day I started with my wife for Paris, where, as I have explained in my other volume, I saw Sheykh Jemal-ed- Din, and arranged with him the details of my Indian journey.

It was on this occasion that I first made acquaintance with James Sanua, better known as Sheykh Abu Naddara, who was living in a little lodging in the Avenue de Clichy, where he edited his paper and gained a precarious livelihood as a master of languages. About this very worthy Egyptian patriot, who has resided now in Paris for upwards of thirty years and has gained a considerable position in the French journalistic world, I will here say a few words. James Sanua was one of the earliest sufferers for liberty on the Nile. An Egyptian Jew by birth, and a man of considerable wit and education, he had become acquainted with Sheykh Jemal-ed-Din, Sheykh Mohammed Abdu, and others of the Mohammedan reformers, who with their wide ideas of religious tolerance received him into their circle in the Azhar, and put him in the way of literary work. They then, seeing that he had a pleasant wit, encouraged him in a plan he had of starting a puppet show, which, under the guise of amusement, was to spread political ideas among the lower class. This had an immediate success, the butt of Sanua’s wit being, under various disguises, always the Khedive Ismaïl. The Polichinelle of the puppet show was a personage in spectacles, called _Abu Naddara_, Father of Glasses, from whom Sanua took his adopted name—he was himself half blind with a neglected ophthalmia. From this commencement he went on to publishing a small newspaper, at first in manuscript, and then lithographed, which was distributed by hand at Cairo and Alexandria. In it the same tone of nonsense was kept up, and with good political effect, among the people of the streets. It was continued for two or three years; Ismaïl himself, who came to hear of it, joining, it is said, in the laughter, until at last it overstepped the bounds of what his despotism considered allowable, when it was suppressed and its author summarily exiled. Sanua, however, was not to be beaten so easily, and with the help of his friends found a refuge in Paris, and there continued to print his “Abu Naddara” as a monthly sheet, and to get it distributed as regularly as before in Egypt. At one time it had considerable political importance, and was of sufficient interest to induce the British Museum to desire a complete series of its numbers, which I helped them to obtain. (See also Appendix E.)

About the actual condition of things in Egypt Sanua told me there were two parties, the clerical, which looked to Constantinople for help, and the lay, which was powerless because it had no leader. He and Jemal-ed- Din were at that time on intimate terms with each other, and we spent most of our time with them during the few days we were at Paris. On the 17th we left for Marseilles; and from this point I am able to take up my narrative by transcription from my journal.

“_16th Sept._—On board the Pei Ho. Sat at dinner next a well-known Syrian merchant of Alexandria, Naghib Zogheb, and learned his views, which, no doubt, represent those of the commercial class generally. He is all for continued occupation, annexation, or anything else that shall secure commercial stability. He looks upon the English policy as ‘_très fin_. It says little, and does a great deal.’ All posts are being filled up with Englishmen. The low class Europeans do not like this, as it takes the bread out of their mouths, but he and all respectable men are pleased. He believes Egypt to be perfectly solvent, but the English have been persuading the fellahin not to pay their debts to the usurers. Zogheb is too great a man to be a usurer with the fellahin himself, so as to assist the collection of the revenue, and thinks the English will end by being not unpopular except with the ‘fanatics.’ The Khedive and his Ministers are only dummies. Tewfik is _un homme nul_, disliked by the _indigènes_, and despised by the Europeans.

“_17th Sept._—My Syrian neighbour is amusingly naïve. It appears that he does lend money, but only in hundreds and thousands; indeed Sabunji tells me he is the greatest of all the Alexandrian usurers, and at dinner to-day he detailed to me some of his transactions. ‘To get money from the Arabs,’ he says, ‘_il faut de la ruse_. They owe you £100; they have not the money; you take produce from them worth £200, or you lend them another £100 on the value of £200. Yet there are some of them who, when brought before the Court, are so shameless as to deny their signatures.’ I asked him at how much he reckoned the private debts of the fellahin, and he told me to guess. I said, ‘Our Government pretends they owe ten millions.’ He said, ‘Say twelve or fifteen, but their creditors would be content with eight millions, if it was secured or paid off and they could leave the country. The whole thing could be well settled for ten millions.’ ‘There is no difficulty,’ he added, ‘in Egypt except what is to be done with the _indigènes_. All the rest is simple. Egypt should be colonized by Europeans, by Englishmen, and made to pay all her debts.’ But the soil was getting worked out by overcropping, losing about 15 per cent. yearly, set off by about 15 per cent. more land being cultivated. He was again eulogistic of English cunning in getting hold of Egypt. ‘They spent a deal of money in buying the Bedouins, but it was money well spent. At Port Said they had had the face to say when they disembarked that they came as friends to help the Khedive; but all is fair when one’s own interest is concerned.’ For himself he was glad they came and hoped they would remain.

“_18th Sept._—I have a new neighbour at table, another moneylender, a Greek of Cairo. His views are not very different from the other’s, and he thinks that the English Government is really serious about withdrawing the troops.” [_N.B._—It was intended at the time to withdraw the Cairo garrison at the end of the year, leaving only 3,000 men at Alexandria as an “army of observation.”] “‘The misfortune is,’ he says, ‘that Mr. Gladstone is too loyal. He promised not to annex, and he thinks it necessary to keep his promise. But you will see, the day the English troops go, there will be another massacre of Europeans. The army under Sir Wood will join the Arabs; they are all savages together. To know the Arabs you must have lived with them. They are like beasts. You take an Arab servant, you treat him well, he poisons you on the first opportunity; you beat him, perhaps he loves you. The English have destroyed respect for the Khedive. He will be the first person killed. There is no government in Egypt. The Khedive hates the English. The Arabs hate the Khedive. The poor Europeans join the Arabs against the English. Every one who is interested in the country prays for Mr. Gladstone’s retirement from office. Then the country will be annexed.’ I asked him about Arabi, whether the Arabs still talked of him. He said: ‘They talk of him only as a vagabond. They do not love any one except a man to beat them. Lord Dufferin was told by his Government to give them a Constitution. He has given them one. But if you ask him what he thinks of the Arabs, he will tell you the same as I do. Commerce is ruined in the country because we are all waiting to see what will happen. Business does not go on. We keep our money in our pockets for fear. The uncertainty destroys our confidence.’ Poor usurers!

“_19th Sept._—Another talk with Zogheb. He says: ‘The whole question in Egypt is this—to what extent could the fellah be replaced by other labour? If he alone can dig and plough Europe _must_ come to terms with him.’ I have written out my programme for the restoration of a National Government in Egypt carefully, and have given it to Sabunji to translate. He is also translating the ‘Wind and the Whirlwind.’

“_20th Sept._—Sabunji has made acquaintance with a young Circassian, a naval officer. In common with the rest of the Egyptian navy he took no part in the war, and detests the English cordially. The Circassians, he said, were all against Tewfik because he was a fool, and because he had betrayed the country to the English. If it had not been for Tewfik and Sultan Pasha, the English would have been driven out of Egypt with the courbash. Tewfik gave all the plans of Tel-el-Kebir and the Wady to Wolseley, and Sultan Pasha helped them with the Bedouins. He was very wroth with Sultan Pasha, ‘a dog, the son of a Coptic dog.’ Asked about possible substitutes for Tewfik, he said, ‘Nobody thinks of Halim. A few would like Hassan but he is not so popular as his father. Ismaïl is the man we all want.’ He was with Dervish Pasha when he was arrested on his return to Constantinople. He says Dervish was condemned to three years imprisonment, but is now at large. He is young and a sailor, and has probably spoken the truth as regards the general feeling of the Circassians. They were all with Arabi in the last days and during the war, just as the Sultan was. They hate the Arabs, but they hate the English more.

“About three o’clock we sighted the P. and O. homeward mail, with Malet probably on board.

“_21st Sept._—I asked my moneylending friends to-day at breakfast their opinion of our various officials in Egypt. Colvin they said was a stupid fellow, quite ignorant of finance. He had come as an officer of the Cadastral Survey, and had been pushed on by influence into positions he was quite unfit for. Blignières was really a financier, but Colvin, oh no! Baring? That was quite a different thing. He was a man in a million. He and Blignières had done everything between them that had been done for Egypt. Baring was a master of finance, a man who knew his mind, and was as firm as a rock. His appointment had made Egyptian stock go up already. Malet was a diplomatist; he knew nothing of finance, he was neither liked nor disliked; he was neither capable nor incapable. Dufferin had been a great success; he was charming, gave parties, went to the theatre, played cricket with the officers, conciliated everybody, even the foreign Consuls. His report on Egypt was founded on the truth, but it was full of _plaisanteries_. Wood[11] was an able man; he knew how to manage the natives. The Arabs were like machines; they obeyed their officers. Zogheb is of opinion they will continue to obey them, even after the Army of Occupation is withdrawn.

“_22nd Sept._—Arrived at Port Said during the night, and sent Sabunji like a raven from the Ark to get intelligence. He came back with the news that Ibrahim Tewfik is governor of the place, the same agent of the Khedive who got up the trouble with the Bedouins in Boheyra. He has, of course, been promoted and rewarded. Sabunji got hold of a fellah and went the round of the shops with him, looking in at the windows. In one of them there was a picture of Arabi, and the man asked him if he knew it. Sabunji feigned ignorance, and when the man told him it was Arabi, asked if the people still thought of him. The man answered ‘Some do.’ ‘How many?’ asked Sabunji, ‘the greater or the smaller number?’ ‘Perhaps the greater,’ said the man.

“_24th Sept._—Landed about midday at Suez, and spent the remainder of the day with the Wests (the British Consul and his wife). Senior wrote about them thirty years ago that they were ‘looking forward daily to their final departure from Suez,’ and here they still are. West is a man who knows Egypt as well as, if not better than, any Englishman in the country. His knowledge, however, is a little out of date, though he spent three weeks as acting Consul at Alexandria between the riots and the bombardment last year. I had a long discussion of the financial position with him. He was surprised when I told him of Colvin’s opinion of its hopelessness. Colvin was here only the day before yesterday on his way to India, but did not talk to him about finance. With regard to the elections, he said that people would elect the man in the district they were most afraid of. At Suez they had chosen the Sub-Governor. In most places they would choose the chief of the police.

“I asked him about the riots at Alexandria. He was of opinion that they were planned. He could not say who planned them. If it was Omar Lutfi it must have been also the Khedive, for Omar Lutfi was, and had always been, a devoted partisan of Tewfik. But he had been of opinion when at Alexandria that it was Arabi. If it was in fact the Khedive, the Foreign Office did quite right not to enquire into it. Tewfik was our king in our game of chess, and our business was to defend him. If anybody upset him we must put him on his legs again. It didn’t do to enquire too closely into those things. He had never seen Arabi, so could not judge of his character.

“West talked a good deal about the Palmer expedition; thought Palmer had much overrated his power of bringing the Bedouins over to the English side. Palmer had not seen the Terrabin Arabs or the Howeytat. He, West, had thought his second expedition with Gill and Charrington a very foolish one. All the Bedouins believed that the Sultan had given Arabi the sword of Islam and that he must be victorious. Of Colonel Warren’s method of examining the ‘guilty ones’ he gave a graphic account. He used to pretend friendliness with them, and drink coffee and smoke cigarettes and endeavour through his interpreters—for he knew no word of Arabic—to trip them up in conversation, and make them contradict each other. On this kind of evidence he satisfied himself as to the identity of five Bedouins as the men who had been actually told off to shoot Palmer and his companions, but they were only the executioners. Ibn Mershid was the Sheykh who gave the order, but Ibn Shedid, the Howeytat Sheykh at Cairo, was afraid of him, and let him go. They had got Ibn Mershid’s wife and children still in prison at Suez, and twelve Bedouins in all charged with the affair. This is monstrous. I shall apply to Baring for an order to see them, and get them released.

“_25th Sept._—To Cairo by the morning train. On the road there are still some traces of the war, at Shaluf some human bones and a skull or two lying about, but less than one would expect. The principal remains are the iron hoops of packing cases, and broken tins of preserved meat. The celebrated lines of Tel-el-Kebir are, after all, but a low bank and a very shallow dry ditch. They would hardly stop a hunting field. Cairo looks absolutely unchanged, but by reason of the time of year there are hardly any foreigners in the town. The hotels are empty; we have the Hôtel du Nil almost entirely to ourselves. The only sign of English occupation that I have seen since landing in Egypt has been three men in English uniform.

“At dinner to-day I sat next Colonel Kelly, who is working the police and constabulary under Baker Pasha. He gives an absurd account of their functions, which are restricted to paying and clothing the men, and ordering their promotion. They take all their orders from the Prefect of police, who unites the functions of chief constable, judge, jury, and framer of the laws. The Prefect has under him a private service of spies, and neither Baker nor this Colonel have any right to enquire either why people are arrested, or what becomes of them afterwards. The Englishmen are supposed to have a right of inspecting the prisons, but out of Cairo and Alexandria they are prevented from really doing this by the Mudirs who refuse them all access. Amongst the constabulary are two battalions, 500 men each, one mounted, the other on foot, composed entirely of Turks from Turkey. [This constabulary corps was sent three months later with Baker to Souakin, where all composing it were routed and slain by the Mahdists under Osman Digna.]

“_26th Sept._—Sent a note to Baring early, asking for an interview to talk over the political situation, and got a very amiable answer, inviting me to breakfast. Baring, who looks about fifty [he was really forty-two], imposes on one a good deal as a man of sense and integrity, and, without being exactly brilliant, seems capable of original ideas. He breakfasted with his suite, among whom I found Aranghi, Malet’s Greek dragoman, still in his same office, and from the circumstance I did not augur well of any change of policy. We talked about India, the Rajputs, Salar Jung, and other interesting topics. Baring said that Salar Jung was the finest looking Oriental he had ever met, with admirable manners, and great dignity. The present state of things at Hyderabad was much ‘mixed’ since his death, as all had depended on his personal character.

“After breakfast we went down to his room, which I knew so well as Malet’s, and he asked me my views about the state of things in Egypt. I gave him a sketch of the position two years ago, of the parties in the Azhar, and the manner in which the Liberal party there had been alienated from England, and the triumph of the fanatical party on the restoration of the Khedive. He seemed to agree with me that a reform should have a religious basis, but would not admit that the Turks and Circassians were incapable of this. He explained that he had come to Egypt originally as representative of the Bondholders, and that he had always held the interests of these and of Egypt to be identical. The Control had, in fact, done great good. While Controller he had always refused to act in too close concert with the Consul-General, as he held himself to be above all things one of the Khedive’s officers. He had found that by showing the chief personages, even Riaz, that he only wished their good he had generally succeeded in making them do as he wanted. I objected that he had not prevented Riaz’s cruelty, his arbitrary arrests and persecutions. He said that Riaz’s fault was that he saw things too _couleur de rose_, he would not believe that neglecting the just claims of the soldiers would raise a rebellion. With regard to finance, which we next discussed, I was glad to find that Baring held sound views on the point of the fellahin’s debts. He was for settling them down to date, and restoring the old state of the law, making mortgage impossible. He quite understood the evils attending the mixed tribunals, as similar to those of the Civil Courts in India. He said that they should be his first care. He did not, however, seem at all hopeful of Egypt’s solvency. With the introduction of a new system of government and the abolition of the courbash, the financial prospect was a very doubtful one. He talked about the elections as a novel experiment, which, if it had not succeeded this time, might another. I explained to him that there was no such novelty in it whatever, and that two years ago there had been elections which _had_ succeeded, and if these last had not, it was because all liberty had been crushed. How could a man vote independently as long as there was nothing in the nature of _habeas corpus_ to secure him from arbitrary arrest? These arbitrary arrests were, with the debts, the reason of the rebellion, and would be again. He promised to have this provided against though ‘perhaps _habeas corpus_ was too much to give _all at once_.’ What the country wanted above all was order and peace. I asked him if he did not think of restoring the National Party, at least the civilian exiles; but he said this was quite out of the question. They could not restore the National Party without another revolution, and another revolution could not be. He asked me whether the Nationalists had no leader in Egypt; I said none that I knew of, the Reign of Terror had crushed all courage out of the few who had not been exiled or imprisoned. In conclusion he said, that as far as he was concerned, he should support the Khedive and the Circassians with all his power. I saw that it was useless talking further. Whatever Gladstone may dream of, or pretend to dream, it is clear the Foreign Office has not changed its mind.”

This conversation, which I transcribe as it stands in my diary, is extremely interesting as showing the ideas with which Lord Cromer started on his long career as Resident in Egypt. The last part of it had been carried on in rather a heated tone, for I had spoken my mind strongly on the impossibility of any attempt either at carrying out the promised constitution, or even of introducing practical reforms for the emancipation of the fellahin, through the instrumentality of the Circassian ruling class. At the time Baring refused to believe me, but he afterwards acknowledged the truth of my view, though it was not till many years later, by practically discarding all the Circassian Pashas from active participation in the government. I did not speak to him of the part Gladstone had had in my coming to consult him, saying only that I had come from Downing Street, and that I understood that something in the nature of a restoration of the National Party was there desired. I should have spoken more plainly had he shown any indication of sharing that idea, but it was clear from the outset that our views on this subject were at a hopeless disaccord, and I left him much disappointed. “This is an end therefore,” I wrote, “to any plans we may have had in Egypt, and I have decided that we shall sail in the British India boat on the 3rd.”

As this was the first occasion on which I met the present Lord Cromer of the many meetings of which mention will be made in these memoirs, I will here, for the benefit especially of Egyptian readers, attempt a sketch of his very remarkable personality, not merely as I saw him first, but as it revealed itself to me in after years. A member by birth of the well-known London banking family, Baring Brothers, of Dutch, it is generally said of Jewish, origin, Lord Cromer belonged from the beginning of his career to the inner ring of the high finance of Europe, and owed to it the cosmopolitan character, along with the energy for work, and the clear business head distinguishing those who compose it. Several members of the Baring family have in the last hundred years entered English political life, and have been raised to the peerage, and this with their great wealth has given the family an influence in the official world, wider perhaps than that of any other that can be named. Evelyn Baring himself was sixth son of the head of the firm, and having but a younger son’s portion was given the army as a profession. He made his education at Woolwich, and served for fourteen years in the artillery, without however seeing any active service, and then in 1872 when his cousin, Lord Northbrook, also a Baring, was appointed Governor- General of India, went to India with him as his private secretary. Thus removed to civil employment, and having left the army with the rank of Major, he found himself more in his true element than as a soldier, and was able for the first time to prove his administrative worth, and he did so with such credit that, on Northbrook’s term of office in India coming to an end in 1876, a well-paid financial post was found for him in Egypt, first as Commissioner of the Public Debt, and then as Comptroller-General of Finance. This was the beginning of Lord Cromer’s Egyptian career.

In 1880, the Whigs having once more come into office, Baring got further advancement and returned to India with Lord Ripon, as his Finance Minister. In all these posts he showed his family aptitude, having precisely the qualities which money-dealing on a large scale demands. He was a man of integrity and prudence, with sufficient imagination, and no more, to foresee events likely to affect the financial situation, and he had the promptitude of will and ready self-reliance required to deal with each as it arose successfully. The same qualities served him, though in a less degree, as administrator. Incapable, as I judge him, of any very original conceptions, and with small powers of sympathy outside the narrow school of English or rather European political thought in which he was bred, he spent half a life time in the East without understanding it or attempting to understand; also his judgement of individuals was very fallible. Like all business men of practical ability, his views were necessarily short ones, and he judged men rather by a rapid calculation of averages, than by any clear individual insight. Time in his busy life was too valuable to waste in long deliberation, or in reconsidering a course once resolved on; a judgement pronounced, whether on men or things, was always with him the _chose jugée_, which was not worth further discussion. It must stand or fall on the merits assigned to it, and could not block the way to new cases.

Personally I liked Lord Cromer. He had a reputation for rudeness, but I do not think it was justified; at least he was never rude to me. On the contrary, I found it a pleasure to talk with him, as I often did in later years at Cairo on public business. He was always so concise and to the point. He did not affect the mystery diplomatists mostly indulge in, nor care to deceive or flatter, unless it might be a travelling journalist or a too inquisitive M.P., whom he had an object in cajoling. In talk with me he was generally sincere, whether in agreement or disagreement; our views were not often the same, but when they differed he did not resent speech in me as plain as his own. Above all he was quick to understand, and as quick to decide; it was the secret of his long success on his own lines in Egypt. His failure, when it came, was due, I think, to what the French call the defect of his qualities, his excessive economy of time which limited his view to work immediately in hand, and his lack of the larger imagination which once or twice at critical moments left him blind.

Such I found him personally. With a pen in his hand, however, and when writing with a view to publicity, Lord Cromer was by no means the plain direct man I found him in his private talk. His yearly reports, so far from being straightforward, are models of insincerity, especially those written in his later years, when the habit of political make-believe had grown upon him with the double part he was daily called to play in the “Veiled Protectorate.” No one knew better than he how, with a show of frankness, to conceal an inconvenient truth, and how by the admission of a minor error of judgement a larger mistake could be left undealt with. He understood, too, in great perfection the art, through praise of his subordinates, to praise, without seeming it, himself. Year after year his reports used to be published, making an impression on the public mind of being the simple record of great things performed by one careless of personal fame, and at the same time so superior to his readers in his knowledge of his subject as to have the right to say: “This, I and those with me did; that we left undone; the result is what you see.” To me, who knew more of Egypt than the public knew, his reports revealed themselves as less candid, and very much less modest. Reading them, they always reminded me of those first chapters of the Book of Genesis in which at the end of each day of Creation “The Lord saw all the work that he had done, and found it very good.” Yet, if we turn to the same reports now in the light of later experience, we recognize easily enough how vain-glorious and how fallacious most of them are. As to his value as a historian, his book, “Modern Egypt,” is not history at all in any sense of being a dependable record of things which actually happened as they happened. It is a long piece of special pleading in regard to his own administrative achievements, in which the defects concealed at the time have latterly become very visible. Lord Cromer never seems to have taken the trouble to consult any native authority, or to have gone further afield than the Blue Books for his knowledge of events unconnected with his own special work. Even about these he is occasionally inaccurate, and seldom quite sincere. As a diagnosis of the land he lived in for so many years without really seeing it—for his mornings were spent at his desk, and his evenings in the European society of Cairo—his final judgements are fallacious through ignorance, the work of a stranger to Egypt rather than of one so long resident there. His prediction of the future of Islam is a fallacy already proved; and his adoption of Lord Milner’s foolish phrase about Egypt being the “Land of Paradox,” a confession of ignorance inexcusable in one with such long experience, and not a trifle absurd.

But to resume my journal.

The few days that I still spent in Egypt before taking steamer for Colombo showed me only too clearly how hopeless the political position was. On the 27th I called on Sir Benson Maxwell, who had recently been appointed Adviser to the Egyptian Government in the Department of Justice, which it was designed to reform. “He received me with great cordiality, saying that, although rowing in a different boat from mine, he had great sympathy with my ideas. He is a most liberal-minded man, but, like Baring, he thinks he has discovered a vein of liberal feeling among the Turks. Tewfik, Sherif, and Fakri, he believes, are opposed to Constantinople and jealous of Egypt’s independence. He thinks the Turks born to rule, the Arabs to obey. The Turks could be taught justice under English guidance; they wished the English to stay and help them. Ali Mubarak (but he is an Egyptian) had besought him not to desert them till their scheme of justice was in working order. He had a great respect for Sherif (the then Prime Minister) as an honest and good man. I told him the first thing he ought to do was to abolish arbitrary arrest, and he explained that something of the sort was included in his plan, but nothing will be so much as begun before Christmas. I told him of the case of the Bedouin women and children in prison at Suez, which moved his indignation. It was military law, he said, not justice. We will see if anything comes of it. Maxwell is an honest man and really believes what he says, which is more than most of them do, but I am afraid the Turks are making a fool of him. He will do his best and fail, and go home, as many another has done before him. He goes home on leave in a couple of days; his business of reforming justice being at a standstill. He thought very little of Dufferin’s charter, but the odd thing is, they all imagine it to be the first suggestion in the direction of free government ever made in Egypt.”

The prediction I have just quoted of Sir Benson Maxwell’s failure in Egypt was amply verified the following year, when, failing to get his reforms adopted by the Khedive’s Government, and being ill-supported by Baring, he finally retired from Egypt.

“Met Lionel Moore (formerly Oriental secretary at the Embassy at Constantinople) and went shopping with him in the Bazaar. He was very communicative, and told me amusing stories connected with the events of June and July at Alexandria. He was staying with Cookson on the day of the riot, and had been out driving in the direction of Ramleh. On coming in to the Consulate at 3, Cookson asked him to go to the Governor’s, Omar Lutfi’s, because he, Cookson, had been wounded, and might not survive the day. He was to deliver this message: he was to ask Omar Lutfi if he could put down the riot with the soldiers, or whether he, Cookson, should ask help from the ships. He had accordingly gone to the Governor’s house, and had found him sitting with Tulba at about 3.30, and, on delivering his message, Omar Lutfi had referred him to the officers, who rudely answered that there would be safety for all ‘_Amàn li jamia_’; he had accordingly gone up to Tulba and called him a rascal, and bade him provide for the safety of the town. On this Tulba, who had his sword across his knees, half drew it, and Moore, who had provided himself with a heavy stick, put himself in a defensive attitude, and defied him to come on and he would take his sword from him, whereupon Omar Lutfi and the rest had pushed him out of the room, and downstairs, and out of the house. Another story was that he had gone with Beresford to help him to sketch one of the forts, and had detained the soldiers talking while the other made his drawing. Then he had gone away to Syria, and did not come back till after the war. We talked about Malet. He said he was the most incapable man in diplomacy. He knew how to turn a dispatch so as to please the Foreign Office, but he was absolutely ignorant of everything that went on in Egypt. I reminded him of what he had told me last year of the arrangement made at that time (January 1882) between the English and French Governments, whereby it was agreed that in case of intervention, a French force should land, and the English fleet should watch the seaports. The agreement held good till Gambetta’s fall. Going up the Mouski he told me that Tewfik had not a single friend in the country. The Circassians and all were against him. Halim would be a better man. He thought Arabi honest, but Tulba and Mahmud Sami were poor scoundrels. He did not believe in the Arabs. Baring had promised him a place, because he was the only Englishman in Cairo, with Rogers, who knew Arabic.” [N.B.—An entire libel on Mahmud Sami, who was a very distinguished man. But Tulba was of small account.]

This Lionel Moore was an Irishman by birth, a man of ability, much wit, and a great knowledge of the East and Eastern languages. He had been born in Syria, his father having been Consul at Jerusalem, and he spoke Arabic almost as his mother tongue, so that he was commonly known in diplomacy as the Irish Arab. He was brother of the Colonel Moore mentioned in my “India under Ripon” as A.D.C. to the Duke of Connaught; and he himself, as Oriental secretary at Constantinople, had accompanied the then Prince of Wales in his tour in Palestine, and had remained a favourite with the Prince. He was one of the _habitués_ of Marlborough House when in England. He had, however, been obliged to leave the diplomatic service on account of a mysterious illness which had attacked him, and kept him, if I remember rightly, for two years semi-unconscious at the Buckingham Palace Hotel. On recovery he was a changed man, and had never fully regained the use of his wits, though he remained talkative and amusing. But for this weakness, he would undoubtedly have been given the re-employment he sought, for there was no man in Egypt who could speak Arabic as he did of the purest kind and with a knowledge of its literature, and a power of quotation such as he possessed. He lived on for several years after this, and died some time in the eighties.

“Anne went yesterday to see Arabi’s wife, and has gone to-day to see some of the other ladies. They tell her that all the people here have the idea that the exiles will soon come back, that they are protected by a high personage in England, and that Tewfik is to go away. The soldiers, too, think this.

“_28th Sept._—To breakfast with Moore, who told us much what he had told me yesterday. He said most emphatically that Tewfik had not a single friend in the country, and could not stay when the English were gone. Then to Ali Fehmy’s house, a sad visit. Last time I was there I sat with him and Arabi in the garden talking about the Sultan; now all is empty. The old porter was full of tears and thanks, and told us how happy the world would be if his master returned. We went on to another small house to see Ali Fehmy’s daughter, a nice little Egyptian girl with a pleasant voice, who talked sensibly about things. She is not married yet, and I went upstairs with Anne to see her. I have written to Eddy Hamilton telling him of my disappointment at the state of things here, and to Sanua. I have also applied to the Domains Commissioner for the title- deeds of my property at Sheykh Obeyd.

“_29th Sept._—Hotter than ever. Started at 5.30 for our garden (Sheykh Obeyd) and stopped at Matarieh to meet Sabunji and his friend Count Gerouais, with whom he had been staying at Ramleh. The Gerouais are Syrians, ennobled some generations back by the Papal Court, and, what is strange, they are ardent Nationalists. We found Sabunji disguised in his proper dress of an Abbé, which gives him a most respectable appearance. They brought us news, though less than we expected, the most important being that Gerouais had sent his black servant to Damanhur to look for Sheykh Mohammed Khalil, and had returned with the tale that he had died a month before of cholera. His account showed the suspicion and terror of the country districts, for the people he enquired of besought him one and all to depart out of their coasts, an account which exactly corresponds with one brought me yesterday, in answer to enquiries I had made for other friends, of the Boab (gate-keeper) of the Azhar.”