Chapter VI: Cromer’s Heavy Hand (2)

I was absent from Cairo on a desert tour when the clash between Cromer and the Khedive took place. That a new _coup d’état_ was in contemplation by the former had already begun to be rumoured is shown by an entry in my journal of _January 21_. “Mohammed Abdu and Mohammed Moelhi called. Moelhi declares that Riaz’ Ministry will not last, that Cromer and Reverseaux have come together, and that they mean to appoint Nubar in his place. He thinks the Khedive will consent to this. Tigrane is on bad terms with Nubar and will not join. It will be practically a renewal of the Dual Control. I think there is probably something in this, though I doubt the Khedive’s consenting.” Two days later, 23rd January, we started on our journey, one of those purely desert journeys on camels in the Western Desert, where one is absolutely cut off from all communication with the civilized world, as much so as if one were in a different planet, nor did we return till the 4th of February. It was a pleasant and interesting tour among the then isolated monasteries of the Natron Valley, and in the great uninhabited wilderness beyond it. It was Judith’s first experience of a long camel ride, and we had with us Everard Fielding who was spending the winter in Egypt, and the weather was beautiful, and all went well, but this is not the place for these out of the world adventures, and I reserve my description of it for another occasion. My first informant about what had happened was my friend Osman Bey Ghaleb who looked in the following day, and gave the exciting news of what is known in official Egyptian history as “The Frontier Incident.”

To make this understandable it must be explained that Kitchener, who held the position of Sirdar of the Egyptian army, was already busying himself with preparing things on the Soudanese frontier for the advance he had in contemplation beyond Wady Halfa against the Khalifa (who had succeeded on the Mahdi’s death to his power at Omdurman), by endeavouring to obtain the alliance of the various tribal Sheykhs in Nubia and Upper Egypt. These proceedings were veiled in extreme military secrecy, the details being carefully withheld from the Khedive, notwithstanding the fact that Abbas was nominally Commander in Chief of his own Egyptian army. This the young man resented, among other British encroachments on his Vice-regal power, and it was a matter that was much discussed between him and his intimates, some of whom were young officers who encouraged him to assert himself as a reply to Cromer’s call a year before for British reinforcements. Cromer on his side, as has been seen, though unwilling for financial reasons to make any new move in the direction of a Soudan campaign, kept the necessity of such a campaign in reserve as a useful argument for deferring the evacuation among those which he brought forward when the possibility of withdrawing our troops was under discussion with the home Government. It will be understood by this, how in the present instance he had a double reason for supporting Kitchener in his not originally serious dispute with the Khedive, and making it the occasion of a new trial of strength with Abbas, and a new change of Ministers.

“_5th Feb._—Osman Ghaleb came and stopped to luncheon, and gave me the whole history of what had happened in my absence. According to him the Khedive, while making a tour on the Upper Nile, was determined to find out exactly the state of affairs in regard to the Soudan, and insisted upon being shown everything and seeing everybody. Kitchener, who was with him, and had heard of this intention, tried to prevent it, and to keep him especially away from visiting the prisons, where a number of political persons were detained, Sheykhs of tribes and others connected with the Soudanese hostilities. But the Khedive insisted, and the prisoners appealed to him, and told him their grievances, and he ordered a number of them to be released. It has been a system on the frontier to pay subsidies to certain Sheykhs of tribes (friendlies), who are allowed to harry the others, and complaints on this head were made to Abbas. Kitchener, who does everything up there in the name of England, being unable to contest the Khedive’s right to pardon, ordered the pardoned prisoners to be released, but in Queen Victoria’s name. There was also some trouble about a hospital which Kitchener did not wish his Highness to see, saying there were seventy cases of smallpox in it, but the Khedive went and found there were but sixty patients in all, and no smallpox case.

“Again on the frontier, Abbas insisted on receiving certain Sheykhs who assured him he could travel in safety anywhere with them, even to Khartoum, while Kitchener objected to his going outside the lines, saying there was danger. But the Khedive rode out with the Sheykhs notwithstanding,—Kitchener remaining behind. Lastly, at a review the 2nd battalion of a black regiment officered by Englishmen got into disorder while marching past. Kitchener said it was through the fault of the band, but the Khedive said they had marched disgracefully. At this Kitchener took offence, and offered to resign, but the Khedive refused to accept his resignation, and the thing was explained and settled, and it was agreed that nothing further should be said about it. Kitchener, however, made use of the incident later as a pretext to get the Khedive recalled from the frontier, and telegraphed to Cromer, who telegraphed to Rosebery, who telegraphed to Paris and St. Petersburg to say that he must deal separately with the case (independently of the other Consuls General). The French and Russian Governments agreed to this. Pressure was then put on Riaz, who telegraphed to the Khedive to return.

“The conditions imposed by Cromer were a commendatory order by the Khedive to the troops; the dismissal of Maher Pasha, whom Kitchener accused of having instigated the Khedive’s conduct, and as third condition that the English officers in the Khedive’s army should have the right to be tried by court martial in England. Abbas is said to have accepted all these conditions. If it is true that he was unsupported by France or the Sultan, he was probably right to do so, but he has reserved to himself the right of explaining the matter in his own way, through Tigrane.

“Osman Bey is far from friendly to Abbas, being a partisan of Prince Halim, and having a grudge against Ismaïl and all his house, because Ismaïl had his brother strangled at Senaar in 1878. He gave us a tragic history of this. He says the Sultan has been bought over to English interests, that he communicated everything that passed at Constantinople between him and Abbas to the English Embassy, and that he has £20,000,000 sterling invested in English securities, especially with the Ottoman Bank.

“_6th Feb._—Captain Broadwood (afterwards General Broadwood) came. He told me the story of the Khedive’s quarrel with Kitchener as he had heard it from Colonel Settle, a good authority. According to this, the Khedive when receiving the officers, native and English, after the review expressed his satisfaction with all, except the infantry, under Colonel Lloyd’s command. Kitchener was not present, and coming back a few moments afterwards said to Lloyd, ‘Go and tell the men the Khedive is pleased with them,’ taking for granted that it had been so. ‘I am afraid I can’t quite do that,’ said Lloyd, ‘for His Highness has just expressed disapproval of my part of it.’ Thereupon Kitchener went after the Khedive, and no one knows exactly what took place between them as they were alone. ‘It is all the more curious,’ said Broadwood, ‘because just before the Khedive left for the south, he received us at Abbassieh and spoke in quite a friendly tone.’ I have no doubt Kitchener made a quarrel of it purposely to get the Khedive back from the frontier, and that Cromer still further exaggerated it for political reasons. The ‘Daily News’ has an article anything but unfavourable to my article, though in common with all the English papers it has been full of violent words lately against the Khedive.

“Gerald Portal is dead in England. I am sorry for this on Lady Edmund Talbot’s account, as she and her sister had reckoned on his succeeding Cromer here. I see the newspapers make great count of him, but he was a man of very ordinary abilities, pushed on by Cromer, whose faithful pupil and understudy he was. I don’t know that he is any loss to us politically here.

“_7th Feb._—Spent the day wading through nearly a hundred newspapers from England, the arrears of the last fortnight. It is quite astonishing the lies and false arguments they contain about everything Egyptian, only another proof of the fact that the Press is in reality an engine for the concealment of historic truth, the most complete ever invented. There is not a single English paper that treats the recent incident here with even a semblance of fair dealing. Lying hypocrisy and violence are everywhere the order of the day. The French have pushed a military column forward and have occupied Timbuctoo! I am curious to know the exact position here of the Egyptian Government towards the French, and have written to Tigrane proposing a visit.

“_8th Feb._—Lunched with Tigrane and discussed the ‘Frontier incident’ with him at length. It would seem that the Khedive did several things while on his journey that were irregular. Maher Pasha, who travelled with him, was formerly Governor of the Frontier Province, and put him into communication with everybody Kitchener least wished him to see. At Luxor he found Minshatti, the Sheykh of the Abdabdeh, who was condemned to death five years ago, but whose sentence had been commuted, and who was made to reside at Luxor. Him Abbas made much of, took on board his _dahabiyah_ with him and released. This is the same Minshatti who appealed on one occasion to me, and about whom I wrote to Grenfell. He was at that time specially obnoxious to Kitchener, then head of the Intelligence department on the Upper Nile.

“Again, it is true that His Highness insisted upon making a desert expedition farther than Kitchener approved; and again, that Kitchener had had some Soudanese soldiers, five of them, shot on the plea of desertion without the Khedive’s sanction. Tigrane, however, is not very certain of details, and urged my seeing the Khedive.

“As to the final quarrel with Kitchener he says it was a small affair, and the story given me by Ghaleb Bey substantially correct. Kitchener, after resigning and then withdrawing his resignation, had assured the Khedive that it should go no further. Cromer, however, had taken it up beyond all measure, had insisted on Riaz, and then the Ministry, accepting his terms without waiting to hear the Khedive’s story, and had threatened consequences which they dared not face. I asked him what these were, but this he said he could not tell me, but it was not merely their own dismissal as Ministers, I fancy it was that the Khedive’s army should be put under the English Commander-in-Chief. They had no option but to get the Khedive out of the scrape as they best could. The French Agency had gone entirely against them, owing, he said to _des circonstances personelles_ on the part of Reverseaux. This being so, the position is of course a very dangerous one. Tigrane thinks that, if the English Government were to ask the French Government’s leave to depose Abbas, the French Government would consider it so distinct a diplomatic gain that it would consent.

“Tigrane told me that the idea of addressing a circular letter explaining the ‘Incident’ to the Powers had been abandoned, and even that of addressing such a letter to Cromer, though he, Tigrane, was in favour of it. There was danger of a new publication of Blue Books. Cromer has been compiling things against the Khedive all the last year. I asked him if these were things affecting the Khedive’s moral character and he said: ‘Oh no. But the Khedive has once or twice made complaints against English officers which he had been unable to substantiate, of drunkenness and the like, and it would be sought to prove that he was mendacious and was animated by ill-will.’ He thought I might publish an explanation without committing the Khedive. But I cannot do this unless I see him, nor do I think it would be as good a way as officially through the Foreign Office. He assured me there was no truth in the report of a quarrel between the Khedive and his Ministers. ‘We got him out of his scrape,’ Tigrane said, ‘as we best could, and the Khedive knows it.’

“_9th Feb._—The London papers are really too monstrous. It is evident to me that Cromer and his partisans have determined upon Abbas’ removal by fair means or foul, and that do he what he will, nothing now will satisfy them. I am anxious all the same that he should at least put his true conduct on record, and I have written to suggest my seeing him.

“Yesterday coming home I met young Gordon, General Gordon’s nephew, who gave me yet another account of the frontier incident. He says that there are eight battalions of native troops on the frontier under Lloyd, who has local rank as Pasha, and that there is great dislike and jealousy between the black troops and the Egyptian troops. The blacks, he says, would like nothing better than to have a go in at the Egyptians, whom they hate and despise. He himself inspected the troops on the frontier a few weeks ago as head of the Store department, and found the Egyptian battalions, the 6th and 7th, in a very slovenly condition. It was just these that the Khedive picked out to praise, and not the others, of which he said they were a disgrace to the army. Lloyd, he tells me, has been a great upholder of the Egyptian soldiers, maintaining, contrary to all other opinion, that they are as good as the Soudanese, ‘but I fancy,’ he added, ‘he has changed his opinion now.’ Gordon is very severe on the Khedive, but his post, if I mistake not, is one of those newly-made ones as to which there was an objection raised (by the Legislative Council).

“_11th Feb._—Brewster Bey called on me this afternoon, having been sent by the Khedive to thank me for my article in the ‘Nineteenth Century,’ and to talk over the situation. He is a little man of about thirty-five or perhaps more, an Englishman, he told me, born in Devonshire, but who has contracted a slightly foreign accent. He came to Egypt the same year we did, in 1876, first as a clerk in the customs at Alexandria, and then at the time of the Suakim campaign for three years at Suakim, where he served under Kitchener, when Kitchener was Military Governor there. He did not tell me how he happened to get the post of private secretary to the Khedive, but he is clearly an honest man, who, from his sympathy with native Egypt, has fallen into disfavour with our people. ‘I am on the black list,’ he said, ‘at the Agency, and beyond leaving cards once a year, I see nothing of any of them.’

“He spoke in the warmest way of his young master, Abbas, and was indignant at the treatment he had received in the affair of the frontier. ‘Will you believe it,’ he said, ‘but to the present moment the Khedive does not know precisely what he has been accused of saying? He has never been informed.’ I urged him very strongly to get the Khedive to put his own story on paper, and not by word of mouth, to Lord Cromer, who would repeat it to our Government after his own fashion. It ought to be done officially through Tigrane and at once. I asked him exactly what the true story was, and he told me that what the Khedive had told him was that after the review at Wady Halfa, the second battalion, which is an Egyptian, not a black one, under English command, had got out of order in the manœuvres; that when alone with Kitchener he had expressed himself strongly about it, saying that it was a disgrace to see good troops so badly handled; that Kitchener had resigned and then withdrawn his resignation, and had told the Khedive the matter should remain a secret between them, and that they travelled back together amicably to Assouan; but that there Kitchener, who seems in the meantime to have telegraphed to Cairo, represented to His Highness that before leaving Upper Egypt he should issue an order declaring his satisfaction with the frontier force; that the Khedive had demurred to this, and on being further pressed His Highness had said, ‘You mean, then, to make it a political matter? I consider this is a question within my limits to decide.’ Whereupon Kitchener replied, ‘I am not sure what Your Highness’ limits are.’ What more happened Brewster does not know. But he says that, knowing Kitchener well and knowing the Khedive, he would infinitely sooner take the latter’s word than the former’s. I asked him what sort of man Kitchener was, and he told me he was of no particular ability, and that he was especially ignorant, for a man who had seen so much employment here, of native character and native ideas. At Suakim he had committed the grossest blunders in this way. Kitchener’s original quarrel with Maher (this was told me by Kennedy) was about a large sum of secret service money, as to which Kitchener refused—Maher being Under Secretary at the War Office—to give any account. This was the beginning of the trouble, as far as Kitchener was concerned.

“Brewster spoke bitterly of the French and Russian Agents, who had turned against Abbas in this difficulty, as they had done the year before. With regard to Constantinople, he also does not trust the Sultan, ‘who will do whatever the English Government tells him.’ As for Mukhtar, he had been against Abbas all through, and was now playing entirely into Cromer’s hands. ‘He has not forgotten,’ he said, ‘the Khedive’s telegram to Constantinople at the beginning of his reign, when he asked who was the Sultan’s representative here in Egypt, himself or Mukhtar?’ Brewster considers the situation a very dangerous one for Abbas—in which I agree with him. ‘If he goes,’ he said emphatically, ‘I shall not stay a day longer in Egypt.’ Nevertheless, the Khedive is full of courage, and Brewster promised to back up my advice about the note of explanation addressed to our Government. He thinks I can do no good by explaining matters to the English Press. A very honest fellow is Brewster, of a kind one would wish to be served by, but does not often meet.

“_17th Feb._—I have written a long private letter to the Editor of the ‘Daily News’ for his instruction, not for publication, explaining the true state of affairs here.

“_19th Feb._—Lady Dunmore, who was here with her daughters a few days ago, gave us a thrilling account of her life and sufferings in Kashmir, where they were taken, she being an invalid, to spend two summers, by her husband, but after all it seems to have done her good, and the girls were enthusiastic about it. She told me to-day a curious story, which shows how things are done in Russia. When her husband started from India on his journey through the Pamir country, the Emperor of Russia—Dunmore has Russian relations—gave him a private letter which secured him free passage through the Russian lines. On his return the Emperor wrote to him begging that he would come and see him at St. Petersburg and give him an account of what he had seen, the Emperor being very anxious to have unbiassed evidence of the state of things in Central Asia. To this Dunmore responded, and wrote as many as three letters expressing his willingness to come, but never any further message, until quite lately he has learned that none of his letters were received by the Emperor. It appears that the men about the palace exercise an absolute supervision over all the Imperial correspondence, and even the Princess of Wales finds difficulty in communicating with her sister. Now Dunmore has asked at the Foreign Office that his letter of explanation should be presented by the Ambassador, or rather the Chargé d’Affaires, in private audience. The Emperor it appears has been furious at getting no answer, and Lady Dunmore says: ‘When he finds out the truth there will be journeys to Siberia for some of those concerned.’

“_22nd Feb._—Dormer called. He gave us the alarming intelligence that there is a scheme on foot for bringing the Cairo sewage into this neighbourhood. It is indeed the abomination of civilization standing in the Holy Place. We have always looked upon the desert as the one pure, imperishable possession, but if this is to be made a stink-pot for our nostrils we are indeed lost.” This plan, which was already in an advanced stage with coloured surveys on a large scale, entitled derisively “Projets d’assainissement,” I was the means under Providence of preventing. I wrote to Lord Cromer representing the economical folly of the project which had chosen the only district in the neighbourhood of Cairo suitable for building a rural suburb, seeing that it was the only one which possessed an abundance of good water in a sandy soil, and he yielded to my argument, with the result of what is now the populous suburb of Heliopolis having grown up there. Dormer, who became afterwards Lord Dormer, was at that time employed in the Egyptian Financial Department.

“_23rd Feb._—Lady Francis Osborne came full of serious advice to me about my ‘radical politics,’ and the stir my writings were making among the officials here. ‘Why do you take pleasure in making your fellow men unhappy?’

“A visit from three little journalists, Sheykh Ali Yusuf, Editor of the ‘Mowayad’ (the first Nationalist newspaper at Cairo since Tel el Kebir), Mohammed Mesaoud, and Abderrahman Ismaïl. A worthy man is Ali Yusuf, with nothing of civilization about him. Just a little Azhar student in a turban, clever and sympathetic, but without knowledge of the western world. The others with a slight veneer of Europe, but hardly deeper than their clothes.” This is the first mention in my diary of Sheykh Ali Yusuf, who played so important a part later in Cairo’s journalistic history.

“_27th Feb._—Princesse Hélène and her brother the Duc d’Orléans spent the afternoon here. They have been up the river in a _dahabiyah_ to Wady Halfa, and enjoyed themselves immensely. He is a good young fellow, manly and intelligent, and extremely nice to her. He tells me that in Somaliland he has seen as many as 500 ostriches together. They go in packs in the autumn and winter months, males and females separately, but pair in the early spring. The buffaloes even there are almost extinct. It was nearly dark when they left, and I rode back with them as far as the obelisk.

“_28th Feb._—Heavy rain, enough to make the spouts on the roof run, the first time they have done so since the house was finished more than two years ago. There is a great deal of nonsense talked about the increase of rain in Egypt since the Suez Canal was made—and of fogs since the British occupation. It is pure rubbish. Reading old accounts of travellers two and three hundred years ago, I see that they generally remark that there is but little rain in Egypt, never that there is none, and so it is now. All the change there has been is a certain increase of morning fogs and dampness through the increased irrigation of the Delta, but I am a sceptic about the increase of rain. Old West, our Consul at Suez, told me ten years ago that in his experience there of forty years he had remarked no change.” I tested this once later by questioning my chief Bedouin, Suliman, whose home is the desert between Cairo and Suez, on this head. “Do you not find, Suliman,” I said, “a great change in the climate here in your recollection?” “Oh, yes,” he answered, “there is a great one, and sadly for the worse. When I was a boy, we had beautiful rains on the upper country with _eshub_ (green spring herbage) every year for our camels, now not a single drop, all is burnt up, a sad change certainly.”

“_4th March._—Gladstone has really retired from public life. He went to Windsor yesterday, so the telegrams say, and gave in his resignation, recommending Rosebery as his successor. I suppose now he is gone there will be a general chorus of praise, but for my part I shall not join it. He has betrayed too many good causes not to be an evil doer in my eyes, and his one remaining cause, Ireland, he leaves in the lurch to-day by his retirement. I am glad to see that Labouchere and twenty more members of Parliament have protested against Rosebery’s succession.

“_6th March._—It is announced in the ‘Bosphore’ and other local papers that the Sultan has telegraphed his entire approval of the Khedive’s action in the late crisis, and has instructed his Ambassador in London to protest against the accounts of it published in our newspapers. This, if true, is most important. The Sultan has also presented Abbas with a palace on the Bosphorus, a gift of more doubtful omen.

“_7th March._—It appears that Rosebery has carried the day and is to be Prime Minister. He is an astute Whig of the Palmerston type, and the Radicals have got what they deserve. The policy in Egypt can hardly long remain unchanged, and I should not be surprised to see Rosebery entering on a scheme for the partition of the Ottoman Empire. It cannot well, however, be carried into effect without war, and so I hope that under Providence it may result in the partition rather of that other Empire for the sake of which we in England have sold our old principles of freedom and respect for International right. The Radical jingo is the ugliest feature of our modern politics.” Though Lord Rosebery did not remain in office long enough to carry out this plan in person, it was put in practice later by his Under Secretary at the Foreign Office, and understudy, Sir Edward Grey, with the result we have all witnessed.

“_13th March._—Young Aldridge called. He tells me he was at the celebrated review at Halfa when the Khedive was supposed to have insulted the officers. He was staying with these officers, and none of them were aware of anything in the way of a crisis having occurred till three days after it. He says the opinion of the officers of the Egyptian army on the spot was that the Khedive had said nothing but what he had a right to. He had praised the Camel Corps and the artillery and the cavalry, but had criticized the infantry, which in fact had been a bit in disorder. The remarks, whatever they were, had been made half a mile away from the men, and the men knew nothing about them, nor ever would have known except for the newspapers. ‘What,’ says Aldridge, ‘was the Khedive there for if not to make remarks?’ This doubtless reflects the view of the English officers concerned, as Aldridge is Broadwood’s half- brother.

“_15th March._—Frank Lascelles is made Ambassador at St. Petersburg. It seems but the other day that we were _attachés_ together at Madrid, sharing all things in common; he deserves his promotion, for he has worked hard for it in many a dull, forgotten post. Another promotion is Rendell’s to the House of Lords. He also deserves it for his great humility.

“_20th March._—Kitchener has just come back from Suakim from a military promenade in the neighbourhood of Tokar, where the country was found green and well watered with streams running and full of wild creatures, ariels and gazelles. All this because for five years the abominable animal, man, has been excluded. All the world would be a paradise in twenty years if man could be shut out.

“_14th April._—To Cairo with Anne and Judith, and had luncheon with Riaz Pasha and his son Mahmud. The old man was gay at luncheon, and talked history and poetry apparently without a care on his mind, but when the ladies were gone to pay a visit to his Harem and we were left alone, he suddenly told me that he had just that morning, that very morning, sent in his resignation and that of his fellow ministers to the Khedive. I asked him, ‘And did the Khedive accept it?’ He answered, ‘_A peu près_.’ Then he told me that ever since the affair of the frontier there had been a lack of confidence on the Khedive’s part, that he and the Ministers had not been supported, and that the palace paper, the ‘Journal Egyptien,’ had entered on a campaign against them. It did not suit his dignity, and it injured the public service to remain under those conditions. He had given many years of loyal service to his country, and he was an old man, and he should retire now once and for ever. A tear stood in the poor old Minister’s eye, and I grieved with him over his fall with all sincerity. He then talked bitterly of the change that had come over the face of the world since he began his official life. How the English used to be trusted and believed in as the one honest nation the whole East over. But he talked more bitterly still of the French, and yet more of his rival, Nubar, who he thinks is to succeed him. It is doubtless to the French that he owes his present reverse, though Cromer will profit by it to the extent of making a split between Abbas and the National party. Riaz said it was a little of all their doing. He talked kindly of Rivers Wilson. Of Rosebery, he said he had seen him twice at Cairo, once with Cromer, once alone. When alone Rosebery had asked him whether it would not be better to have an English Under Secretary in every department, but that, said he, ‘I told him would be putting two captains to a ship, it would go down.’ I told him Rosebery was a dangerous man in power as far as Egypt and the East were concerned, that I should not wonder if he solved all difficulties by a partition of the Ottoman Empire, a gloomy view in which the old man shared. ‘Poor Egypt,’ he said, ‘poor Egypt!’ It is a strange chance that has made me, in spite of 1882, the confidant of his political griefs, but in truth our views on most things are identical. He hates Western civilization almost as bitterly as I do myself. He sent us away with benedictions and loaded with roses from his door.

“_15th April (Sunday)._—Mohammed Abdu spent the day with us. He says the National party is in despair at Riaz’ resignation, and still more at Nubar’s return to power, for Nubar means a reign of money makers and speculators, and the government of Egypt by Europeans and Syrians, strangers from every land.

“_17th April._—To Koubbah Palace (Abbas’ country residence, three miles from Sheykh Obeyd). I was taken to the garden and found Abbas sitting under some trees near the stables, looking at Arab mares which were being paraded before him. With him was the old Soudanese Mohammed Taher, whom the Khedive introduced to me as a loyal Shaggia. We talked first about the horses, six of them, for which Abbas said he was offering £800. But only two of them were good ones. These were a brown mare, like our Queen of Sheba, and a little grey with a fine shoulder, perfectly level back, and tail grandly carried.

“Presently the young Khedive began on politics. He went through the whole story of the frontier incident and Riaz’ resignation, and his appointment of Nubar. As to the first his account was much what I had already heard. He said that it was originally a quarrel between Kitchener and Maher Pasha—that when Maher was appointed Under Secretary at the War Office, Kitchener had tried to persuade him to refuse, but Maher had persisted, though his pay was reduced thereby from £120 to £100 a month. When Abbas started for the frontier, Kitchener had tried to prevent Maher going with him. However, all went well till the famous review at Wady Halfa when he had found fault with the second battalion, and had told the English officer that his battalion had done very badly—this in the presence of Kitchener and eleven officers, some English, some Egyptian. Afterwards he had had a private talk with Kitchener, and had told him it was a shame good Egyptian troops should be so badly handled, and Kitchener had tendered his resignation. But the Khedive had begged him not to take it in so serious a way, and the resignation was withdrawn and the thing ended.

“After this they travelled two days together on excellent terms, till on the third they came to Assouan. There the Khedive wanted to telegraph to Riaz, but found the wires occupied by Kitchener. Nevertheless he sent his telegram to Riaz, telling him what had occurred and that it was of no importance. Later, Kitchener came to him and asked him to send two words of commendation to the officers of the frontier garrison before leaving, as he said the officers were offended and were tendering their resignations. The Khedive asked him whether he wished to make a political question of it, and asserted that it was within his prerogative to send or not to send such a message. To which Kitchener replied that he was not sure whether it was so. Nevertheless the dispute ended in Kitchener’s promising to say no more about it. Riaz had been weak in allowing his hand to be forced. As to the change of Ministry, Abbas said that when he had seen Lord Cromer he had consulted him as to whom he should send for, and Lord Cromer had said Nubar. Abbas had objected that he was a Christian, Lord Cromer had advised against a Christian Prime Minister last year. Lord C. then said there was no choice unless the Khedive would like Mustafa Fehmi. The Khedive then proposed Fakri and Mazlum. But Lord Cromer said they were both insignificant. In the end Abbas had given way about Nubar, and there was a compromise about the rest of the Cabinet. Fakri goes to Public Instruction, Mustafa Fehmi to the War Office, Mazlum to Finance, and Butros, who, Abbas said, had betrayed the secrets of the late Cabinet all through to Lord C., to Foreign Affairs. He asked me what I thought of it. I said that I had no confidence in Nubar, but recommended him as soon as he was tired of Nubar to have back a Nationalist Ministry, strengthening it by adding some European he could trust for Foreign Affairs. He promised to remember my advice.

“The Khedive then talked of his camel ride to Suez, and lastly consulted me about going to England this next summer. I said I would try and find out for him what line would be taken there about his reception, and especially by the Prince of Wales, and let him know. He begged me to write to him. As to publishing anything he would leave that to my discretion. Then he made the old Soudani sit near and talked about Zebeyr, who is evidently out of his favour, and so after about an hour he got up and took me to see his camels, and then with a few more words about my writing to him we said good-bye.

“Although extremely friendly and nice to me personally, I confess that he impressed me less favourably this time than before. He has clearly made a dreadful hash of things, and seems to attach more importance to the getting rid of Kitchener than to the larger political questions. I can see that he is in the hands of the intriguers that surround him, and that he is no match for Cromer, who has won the game against him through the Khedive’s own mistakes. Not that Nubar’s appointment is much advantage to English policy, for Nubar is in French interests, but Lord Cromer has certainly won a personal victory. The future to me looks very black. The young man has lost something of his frankness, and of his first sublime self-confidence, which was his strength, and I fear he will degenerate into the shifty intriguer his father was before him. Still he is more manly than that, and with honest advice may yet go well. But who is to give it him?

“_18th April._—Our Mowled of Sheykh Obeyd. A calf was killed for the labourers in the garden, and the girls and those who have been at work on the new house, and a lamb for the Sheykhs, with recitations and chauntings in the evening. [This was a religious festival held annually in our garden at the tomb of Sheykh Obeyd.]”

The Bee Birds have been wonderful this year, three or four hundred roosting every night in the trees near the house. I cannot quite make out what they do in the day-time, for they all disappear from the garden, coming back about half an hour before sunset. Most of these birds travel north at this time of year, but a few stay on during the summer. There are also some of the large spotted cuckoos in the garden just now.

“_20th April._—Our last day at Sheykh Obeyd. I am grieved to leave it this year more than any year before, and have half made up my mind that this shall be my last visit to England. My true home is more and more in Egypt.”

We left the following day, and here I close this chapter. With it ends the episode as far as I was personally concerned in it of the National movement of 1892-1894. It failed through the absence of any strong leader to take direction of it; through the youth and inexperience of the Khedive Abbas; through the unscrupulous determination of Lord Cromer acting in what he considered English Imperial interests, and through the still more unscrupulous money interests worked through Lord Rosebery from London and Paris. Lord Rosebery’s family connection with the Rothschilds is a sufficient explanation of this last influence. French diplomacy at Cairo seems to me to have been very weakly managed by M. de Reverseaux, the French Consul General there, though how much of the vacillation between encouragement given to the Nationalists when they made a forward move, and their abandonment when the advance had been made, was due to the French Representative at Cairo or to the Ministers at the Quai d’Orsay, I cannot determine. Be it as it may, the spring of 1894 saw the movement lose its force, and brought to a complete standstill a year later by the retirement in his turn of Nubar Pasha, and Lord Cromer’s installation as absolute despot ruling Egypt through a dummy Minister, Mustafa Pasha Fehmi, while the Khedive Abbas, cut off from all legitimate exercise of his viceregal rights, consoled himself with the follies of youth, money speculations, and impotent intrigue.

It was the history repeated a hundred times over of the English manipulation of the native States of India. To me it was a mournful spectacle, a blank period during which, though still maintaining a deep interest in what went on, I held a position entirely of spectator, keeping touch with the local politics of the day during my winter visit to Sheykh Obeyd mainly through Sheykh Mohammed Abdu, whom I established on a corner of my property in a country house within half a mile of my own. He had an advantage for me as historian and diarist of being personally intimate with Mustafa Fehmi who concealed nothing from him, while Abdu concealed nothing from me. It was as an historian only that I followed the development of the Cromerian _régime_, until in 1906 Cromer’s astonishing blunders of that year once more gave life to Egyptian Nationalism, and it found a voice in Mustafa Kamel. My diary in the meagreness of its political entries corresponds with my political abstention during this weary interval. Nevertheless there were moments when I said my say with our politicians on Egyptian affairs, and in the London “Times,” notably in the year of the new invasion of the Soudan under Kitchener in 1896, of Fashoda, and of the fatal entente with France in 1904. The entries then have a renewed importance, the rebirth of Nationalism in 1906 having lured me once more into the field as an active combatant for Egypt’s independence.