Chapter VIII: A Visit to Tunis and Tripoli

My winter’s journey this year began with a visit I had long designed to pay to my cousin, Terence Bourke, in Tunis, where he had bought land in the neighbourhood of Bizerta, and had made his home, having also the position there of unpaid British Vice-Consul. He was a younger brother of my old ally, “Button,” who figures so conspicuously in my former volumes, and, like him and all the Bourkes, was gifted with extreme natural ability for dealing with men and generally for affairs. Terence, by this special quality, had made for himself an exceptional position in the regency of Tunis. He had learnt to talk Tunisian Arabic perfectly, and had acquired an influence with the native Tunisians of all classes, unrivalled by any other European. Of all the men I have known who have had dealings with the East, and whom I have seen engaged with them in conversation, I place him first in his power of making friends with them, for he has what Englishmen so seldom possess, an inexhaustible patience equal to the Oriental’s own, which enables him to sit as they do, hour after hour, conversing with them, and show no weariness however dull their talk. This is a great power, and through it he has always been successful in acquiring their attentive sympathy, and in obtaining from them their confidence and help. I have often thought that if our Foreign Office had had the wit to name Terence its Ambassador at the Sultan’s Court, Abdul Hamid would have remained to this day the ally of England, instead of its obstinate enemy, but that is a kind of intelligence seldom found in Downing Street. This is my diary of my time with him.

“_21st Oct. (Sunday)._—Arrived after a smooth passage at Tunis. The weather still very hot here. Terence met me on the quay, and we came straight up to his house in the Moslem quarter, a lovely old tile- encrusted bit of _bric-à-brac_ as one would wish to live in. One enters by a side door in an arched passage, through which the street passes, and by a steep, tortuous stair to the upper floor. One has to stoop to pass into the apartment, and finds oneself in a marble _patio_ with four pillars, supporting a dome open from above, the walls partly tiled, partly in white marble, and the woodwork of the roof painted in red and green. From this central hall, which is about 20 feet square, the rooms branch off, the house being roughly speaking, though not exactly, cross- shaped, with stair and passage leading to the harem at two of the corners. The furnishing is simple and Oriental, but without pretence. Terence keeps one young man as house servant, a porter and two women, a widow and her sister, whom being in poor circumstances, he took into his house through kindness, Moslems though they are, without offence in the neighbourhood, and who are his servants, strong, able-bodied women who go silently about the rooms with arms and legs bare and unveiled.

“After an excellent breakfast, Terence took me to the bazaars, which are more beautiful and more purely Oriental than any I have seen, and then to the Bey’s town palace, built, but on a large scale, in the same style as his own little house, which I have just described. In contrast to all this we then passed through the French quarter, mean, noisy, and with stinks beyond description, whereas the Arab town is sedate and clean and quiet. I have never anywhere seen a contrast so entirely in favour of Islam. Tunis has recently been made a seaport by the French, through the device of banking up and dredging a State canal, across the shallow lagoon which divides Tunis from the sea, just as the Suez Canal crosses Lake Menzaleh, it is difficult to understand with what commercial object, as there is not sufficient space inside for many ships to lie. A better plan would have been to make the port at Goleta, the site of Carthage, which is near the sea, and is already connected by railway with Tunis.

“_22nd Oct._—Drove with Terence to the site of Carthage, where Cardinal Lavigerie has built an unsightly cathedral and monastery, with a _buvette_ attached to it for pilgrims to the shrine of St. Louis. St. Louis died here on his last unfortunate crusade and, Terence tells me, is venerated as a saint by the Moslems as well as by the Christians of the district, who affirm that on his death-bed he made profession of Islam. He is known to them as Sidi Abu Saïd, and they show his tomb at a village of that name hard by. The waiting room, nevertheless, of the monastery is adorned with huge cartoons in illustration of his victories and death as a Christian saint, coloured in the vilest form of French ecclesiastic art. The gasconading of these pieces is worthy of Lavigerie, an ambitious prelate who pushed himself into public notice, with the aid of French Chauvinism, intending to become Pope. This, however, was not in the decrees of Providence.

“From Carthage we went on to Marta, a summer seaside residence of rich Tunisians, and lunched with Drummond Hay, our Consul-General, and his family. They are moving in a few days to Beirout. With Hay I had much talk on North African affairs. He tells me the French are trying to work their frontier round by Merzouk to the south of Tripoli, where they are beginning to open markets, but he thinks that eventually they will find strong resistance in the Senussi confraternity. They are making friends, however, with the Tuaregs and the Negroid inhabitants of the southern oases. As to Egypt, he professes to share my view of the danger and uselessness of our holding it. He told me that he had recently been given the opinion of one of our high naval experts, and that it was to the effect that in case of war with France the garrison in Egypt would have at once to be withdrawn, and indeed the whole Mediterranean evacuated by our fleet. To hold Egypt would not be possible.

“I find it very difficult to carry on a conversation in the Tunisian dialect, even the commonest Arabic words are either unknown here or so travestied as to be unrecognizable. There is a fondness for diminutives and for throwing the accent on the last syllable. Amidst the more educated class a better Arabic is spoken, as also I believe by the Arabs of the South and the Bedouins generally, but the Berbers are nearly unintelligible to me. Terence speaks to all with the greatest fluency, a vile patois but with precisely the native Tunisian accent. His slightly falsetto voice completing his disguise as no European.

“_23rd Oct._—Called with Terence on Rifault, the French Resident in Charge, who told me nothing interesting, only the common banalities used to strangers on such occasions; and on General Leclerc, the French commander-in-chief. This done, we took carriage with a pair of mules for Bizerta, where Terence has a European house, a distance of some forty miles in less than five hours. A long, dull road with long stretches of brown fields, at this time of year empty of all life except that of a few poor tents, with cattle grazing on the stubbles. It is not till near Bizerta that the hills begin.

“_24th Oct._—At Bizerta. Terence’s house here is less interesting than the other, being modern and European in style. He has told me about his domestic life in Tunis. The two women who keep house for him there lived in his quarter and were very poor, and he has allowed them to inhabit his house, which they look after in return. At first, he said, the neighbours objected to these Moslem women living under the same roof with him, but now they have accepted him in their quarter and find no fault. Thus he has been able to lead a quite native life, has learned the language (Tunisian Arabic) thoroughly, and knows more of the people than any European in Tunis. Here in Bizerta he manages his large property, takes contracts of all kinds, speculates in oil, and acts as Her Majesty’s unpaid Vice-Consul at an office in the town. He seems beloved of all, and it is natural, for he is kindly and quiet and full of intelligent talk, and he has that rare virtue in an Englishman of being never in a hurry, or bored, or out of temper, or too busy to see and speak to the poorest man that calls on him. We went together to see a few details of his management.

“_25th Oct._—We went round the old town, once a famous pirate’s nest, now becoming little by little invaded by Europeans, but still interesting, and stopped to drink coffee with a fat citizen, one of Terence’s friends. In the evening we rode down into the village and talked again, but I am confounded to find that I understand hardly a word of what is said. Terence is happy and at home with everybody and has a fund of good humour which makes him everywhere _le bienvenu_. We played chess in the evening.

“_26th Oct._—We have had much talk all day on Oriental and religious subjects, and I find Terence to have ideas not unlike mine on these matters, and we have made a plan of going in the Spring to visit the Senussi in the Tripolitan desert and perhaps making profession of Islam, at least I hope some day to do so. I think a hermitage of the kind I have been seeking might be found in the country near Cyrene. In the evening we made a round of the eastern shores of the lake in a steam launch belonging to the Harbour Company.

“_28th October (Sunday)._—Back to Tunis. Terence tells me the agricultural colonists here are of a superior class to those of Algeria, there being some young Frenchmen of good family among them. These are opposed to annexation, and take the part of the natives as against the encroachments of the officials, but the town colonists are for making Tunis a French province. The worst of all are some from Algeria, where they are all rabid against ‘_les Arabes_.’

“_29th Oct._—Once more in Terence’s delightful house in Tunis, Rue des Silots, 41. A young Tunisian came in to-day to play chess with me and I won two games of him, but he has considerable ideas of play on the Arab lines, which I fancy were once also those of Europe. The principal differences in rule are that the pawns cannot advance two steps at a time at their first move and that castling is performed in three moves, the king having the right on the second occasion to manœuvre like a knight. This young man, who is well educated, talked a quite comprehensible Arabic, and I am beginning to understand the others.

“We went in the morning to see the cavalry _remonte_ and were shown sixty or seventy stallions, half-a-dozen of them Arab, none good, except one old horse said to be a _Shouey-man_ from Nablous. The best were four white barbs from the province of Oran, thick set, short legged, which would be handsome if they had less drooping quarters. The native Tunisians unfit to breed from in any country.

“_30th Oct._—Started with Terence for Kerouan by road with four horses abreast in a landau, very like the old _vetturino_ travelling in Italy of fifty years ago, very slow but pleasant in fine weather. We rested two hours at midday on the road under a Carob tree, and stopped for the night at a _fondouk_, a clean airy place the property of a Sherifa, a widow of Tunis, whose husband built it as a speculation forty years ago. It used to be a paying concern, but the new diligence service has spoiled its trade, the respectable keeper of it told us. These _fondouks_ are like the _khans_ in Turkey, a number of little empty rooms paved with tiles, where the traveller pays a few piastres for his night’s lodging and provides his own food. We paid five francs, which included a franc for stabling. I should be glad to be always as well lodged in Europe. The road passes over a series of plains, partly cultivated in the summer, but all bare now, the hills beyond very beautiful.

“_31st Oct._—Another long drive, crossing the Enfida estate. This caused at one time a political question between England and France, the facts of the case being these: Kheireddin Pasha (the same who was afterwards Grand Vizier at Constantinople) having got together this immense property sold it to a French land company, whereupon a right of pre- emption was claimed by a Jew, a protected British subject, as neighbouring proprietor. It was before the French Occupation, and both governments backed their own clients for political reasons. The Jew’s claim, however, was a rather doubtful one, and as the French company gave more than the land was worth, he was in fact no loser, and the British Government gave way. The estate consists of a vast tract of plain, most of it capable of cultivation, but exposed to the south winds. The company has planted many hundreds of acres with vines, but on the whole Terence says it does not pay. The high road passes for several miles through it, and through the chief farming establishment of which they are trying to make a town of the usual French kind, with poplars and eucalyptus trees.

“Beyond this there is nothing more in the shape of a house until one gets to Kerouan. We were so pleased with our night at the _fondouk_ that we determined to go to another at Kerouan instead of to the French Hôtel. (We were both travelling in Eastern dress.) And so after some wandering in the streets, it being already dark, we have taken up our quarters at a house of reception, which is entirely Arab, and entirely Moslem, about the centre of the town. It is an _okeilah_ or lodging house, where merchants hire rooms by the month in which to deposit their goods and sleep. We pass in it for an Indian Moslem merchant and his friend, a Syrian, from Damascus.

“_1st Nov._—The _okeilah_ is a poor place. We have one little room between us like a prison cell, opening on to a balcony which runs round the inner court, open at the top. It is dirty and bug ridden, but decent and essentially Oriental. The proprietor is a respectable merchant, originally from Sfax, who sits all day in a room on the ground floor, which is his shop and counting-house. His trade is to buy wool and other desert produce from the Bedouins, and to sell them linen cloth. A number of them have been all the morning in the courtyard, very noisy in their bargainings, most of them of the Slasi tribe who have a good robber reputation inherited from past times. Our driver, Rashid, pointed out to us yesterday the sandy passage in the road where caravans used to be attacked by them in the good old days, and even sometimes now of dark nights. This reminds me that about ten miles from the town we came upon a mounted Arab who shouted to us as he passed that a cousin of his had just been killed upon the road, and he was riding for help.

“The proprietor has a son, a simple-minded youth in a white turban, who comes to sit with us and talk, and there are two servants, one a merry man who makes coffee at the door, the other a vague old mendicant who occasionally sweeps out the rooms, and goes on errands. Both these are _hashish_ smokers openly, for at Kerouan there is no shame in the drug, and Terence, who went down to spend the evening below after I had gone to sleep, tells me the _kawaji_ was most amusing, indeed they were all in roars of laughter through the night.

“Terence is incomparable as a traveller for he has the readiest possible wit and a pleasant word for everyone, and wherever he goes smiles break forth, and a kindly feeling of goodwill from man and maid. He also is an admirable cook, and with Saleh his servant, has given us excellent dishes stewed over a spirit lamp. He can sleep anywhere, and all day long, and never is put out, or bored, or in a hurry, withal of an exceeding good sense and knowledge of the proportion of things, prudent, economical, persistent, the reverse in fact of all that distinguishes Europeans in the East, and astounding at his age (twenty-four).

“We went out last night in the streets, and again this morning, and I think that no one suspects us of a disguise, though they are somewhat puzzled at our affairs. We went to the Mosques directly after breakfast, first to Sidi Okba’s of which we entered the outer court only, for the inner shrine was being repaired, and a surly guardian refused us entrance, saying that without order from Sidna el Morákeb the doors could not be opened, so we had to be content with peeping in and complaining of the tyranny. We saw, however, pretty nearly all there was to be seen before we were turned out. At the other Mosque outside the town we were more fortunate. Here we were admitted, and saw all, and made our devotions at the tomb of Sidi Sáhabi unquestioned. It was very hot all day, and we lay stewing in the balcony of the _okeilah_ till the _asr_ and playing chess, to the wonder of the proprietor’s son, whom we told it was an Indian game. Then we went through the bazaars and outside the town to see the walls, all very interesting, and as yet little spoilt by the French invasion, and spent the evening on mats under the city walls, where there was an Arab coffee house, drinking lemonade, and so the long day ended.

“_2nd Nov._—This morning, being Friday, the Mueddhin chaunted the whole prayer from the Minarets—and there is one just outside the _okeilah_—beginning at four and going on more than half an hour, a fine old-world ceremony, disappearing alas from Islam. Kerouan, however, is a holy city, and preserves some at least of its traditions. We were up with the first light, and having drunk coffee prepared for us by our friend the _hashishi_, and induced his old companion to carry our baggage, which he did with great unwillingness for he was still drowsy with his opium, and paid our two nights’ score at the _okeilah_, three francs and a few coppers—it would have been the same if we had taken our rooms for a month, and the proprietor was too sleepy to get up and see to it—we went out through the half awake streets to the Eastern gate, and the office of the new tramway, where we waited an hour and saw the sun rise. Terence employed the time repeating to me a story told in the _okeilah_ by the merchant of Sfax, which is as good as most in the Arabian Nights. (It is too long to insert here, and I reserve it for another occasion.) Then we took our places in the tram, and went at a fine gallop across the desolate plains in four hours to the sea at Sus, where we once more put off our Moslem garments and washed and dined at a Frankish restaurant. The tram journey between Kerouan and Sus is a curious mixture of old and new. The coach runs on rails laid across the open fields, drawn by horses running beside it with a long loose trace, so that when it crosses ravines the horses gallop beside it up and down the steep places without checking their pace. The track is all more or less down hill, so that once started the coach goes by its own weight, and the horses have all they can do to keep up with it in certain places, not being harnessed to any pole, the only check on the coach being a brake worked by the conductor in the steepest parts, a most exhilarating way of travelling, and quite practical for that particular journey.

“Sus is a lovely old battlemented town as yet little spoilt, though the usual obscene French houses are springing up outside it. I walked all over and around it and through its bazaars. There is a fine citadel commanding the town on which a French flag is hanging half-mast high. The Emperor of Russia is dead.

“Here we both took ship, Terence to return to Tunis, I to go on to Tripoli, touching at Monastir and Mehadir, two lovely mediæval strongholds by the sea. In the latter I had the good luck to make a friend. Seeing a nice clean Arab coffee-house in front of the mosque, I sat down in it at the same time with a respectable Bedouin, whom I saluted. He ordered at once two cups of coffee, and we talked and made friends, he in good Arabic, a very worthy man, living, he told me, some ten miles from the town, and he has promised, if he passes through Egypt next year on the pilgrimage, to alight at Sheykh Obeyd. I have seldom met a better bred or more kindly man. At Sfax, where we arrived at daylight next morning, _4th Nov._, I had an odd adventure. Having made acquaintance with a respectable looking man in the boat which took us to the shore, I was glad to accept his invitation that he should show me round the town, which he did with all politeness, and then invited me to his house. This was in a by street of no very reputable appearance, the entrance being by a low door where a donkey stood tied, and on entering I saw at once that it was no Moslem house, as I had supposed my friend to be, for there were women there unveiled, and it flashed on me what was the truth, that they were Jews. This became clearly the case when they set a meal of greasy bread before me, and tried to make me drink absinthe, and I had some difficulty in finding excuse to get away and to explain that I was not myself a Jew, for my conductor had come to the conclusion that I must be one, for my having condescended to speak to him and enter his house, for in these North African towns the Jews are treated as pariahs by the Mohammedans, and he did not understand it as possible that I could be other than one of his own nation treating him with the politeness I had shown. It is no less characteristic of the position Jews hold in Tunis that as soon as I had explained to him the mistake he had made, his manner at once became changed from one of hospitable anxiety to please, to one of undignified begging for a _bakshish_, which I was of course only too glad to give, feeling that the fault had been mine.

“Sfax is an interesting, and except for the Jew quarter, a wholly Moslem town, inhabited mostly by Sherifs, every other man wearing the green turban. It was bombarded and barbarously treated by the French in 1881. The captain of our steamer, the _Ville de Tunis_, tells me that this was in some measure a mistake. When the town was summoned by the French fleet to capitulate, it happened that, being the 14th of July, in the interval before the answer was received, a salute was fired in honour of the day, and the people of Sfax, thinking it an attack and that the shots had fallen short of the town, refused terms of unconditional surrender offered to them. The town was then bombarded in earnest, two breaches were made in the walls, and the place was stormed. The French lost 700 men and gave the Moslem quarter over to sack for twelve hours (this the captain denies, but it is historical), during which the houses were broken into and the women ravished; the broken doors were long left unmended in token against them, and I noticed when I walked through the Moslem quarter in the morning that many doors showed new locks recently put in and new panels not yet painted. The city walls have been mended, but the town inside and the bazaars look poor compared with Sus. The wealth of the town lies outside in the gardens, several hundreds of which surround it, all belonging to the Moslem inhabitants. The French colonists have tried to buy them out but they will not go. There is a bitter feeling here against the conquerors. According to my Jew acquaintance, Braham ben Gabrail Mazuz, there are a thousand houses of Jews in Sfax, probably an exaggeration. These are divided in opinion about the French occupation, but most are in favour of it, as they were badly treated by the Moors. They are mostly very poor, the richer ones doing trade as middle men between the Moors and Franks. Young Braham came on board again to wish me good-bye, and brought some cake and roast chestnuts and bread for me, but he could not resist asking me for the fare of the steam launch he had taken passage in from the shore, and a franc over.

“Our party on board is reduced to the captain, the doctor, and two cabin passengers, so I have the ship practically to myself. There are very few European colonists in these parts except the small population of drink sellers and restaurateurs. The Arabs refuse to sell their good lands, and the bad are not worth buying, nor has the French Government yet found an excuse in rebellion to confiscate these as has been done in Algeria. The taxes are low, no land tax in coin but the old tenth of the gross produce and a poll tax of, I think, twenty-five francs levied on rich and poor. This last presses on the poor and causes discontent because in the old time it was not levied in extreme cases of poverty, whereas now under the French no one is exempt. Civilized governments always commit this injustice in Eastern lands, falsely pleading immemorial custom.

“_5th Nov._—Arrived by daylight at Gabez, a palm oasis watered by a small river which rises some five miles inland, they say in several hundred springs. This feeds the gardens, the rest of the country being desert. I found a ramshackle carriage with an Arab driver from Tripoli, who took me round and explained everything. There are but few Europeans here, some warehouses on the shore but nothing inland. The native population is Arab, not Berber. Under conduct of my Tripoli driver I visited the barrage, where there is a run of water about the size of our Mole at Leatherhead, much overgrown with reeds and weeds, an oozy unwholesome haunt of frogs and snakes. Then to the mosque and tomb of Abdul Barber, a pretty place on a hill, and so round. There was a tame gazelle running in the desert outside the villages, for there is no town of Gabez. My driver told me that before the French occupation this was a dangerous neighbourhood, as the Bedouins were always marauding. There is a certain trade here of _halfa_ grass, which they bring from two or three days’ journey inland, worth, my driver said, five francs the camel load.

“We left at noon and arrived at sunset off Jerba, a long, low island, wooded with olives and palms, the water so shallow that our steamer had to lie six miles from shore, so that we only saw it as an outline on the horizon. This they say is Calypso’s Island, a dreamy afternoon place, lying sweltering in a stagnant sea.

“_6th Nov._—Tripoli. A lovely white town with walls and minarets and an immense growth of palms. Here there is a natural port which could be improved if the Turkish Government would allow Europeans a concession to do it, but it wisely refuses, knowing the consequences. The foreign population consists of some 6,000 or 7,000 Maltese and Italians. There are many Jews, and a large population of Moslems, mostly of Arab race, manly and fanatical. The Tripolitans are not subject to conscription for the Ottoman army, but form a kind of militia having obtained certain terms of independence when the Sultan took possession, in return for their support given against the Bey.

“The palm gardens, which extend for ten miles, are wholly in their hands, and Europeans are discouraged, if not forbidden, from living outside the town. Beyond the gardens all is a sandy desert, and the general character of the place is like our own palm district at Sheykh Obeyd. I called at the British Consulate, and found my old friend Jago officially there, who sent his son with me in a covered cart through the palm groves and to the desert beyond. We stopped to see the Wali’s garden, newly reclaimed from the sand. It has all the features of our own garden in Egypt, but without the _lebbek_ trees. He is making a number of such gardens, using the soldiers to do the labour as is the way in Turkey. Then to a place they call the Hahneh, which is a bit of high, stony ground kept bare for the purpose of assemblies and festivities in the centre of the palm gardens. From it one sees nothing but palm tops all round.” [The palm district here described was the scene in 1911 of the abominable atrocities committed by the Italian soldiery when, in defiance of all right or even pretext, they made their raid on Tripoli, and massacred the Arabs of the oasis.] “Then to the Suk el Jumaa, and the Suk el Thalatha held on the seashore. Here we found a great concourse of Arabs with camels, horses, asses, and cows for sale, several thousands of them on the beach. Some had brought a load of _halfa_, others sheep, others woollen shawls. I bought a grey and white shawl for fifteen francs, more than their market value, though really beautiful pieces, like the best Scotch or Irish homespun, only better. I should say a good trade might be made by importing these to England.

“After this we went back to a midday meal at the Consulate, a good old Moorish house, but standing unfortunately in the Maltese quarter, which is noisy and filthy in the extreme, contrasting with the Moslem quarters, which are clean, silent and decorous. The Turks keep about 6,000 regular soldiers in Tripoli, but count the native militia at as many more. They have Mudirs and Kaimakams in the principal towns inland as far as Ghadamés, but the policing of the country district is done by the Arabs. They say these inland districts are fairly secure for native travellers, but a great caravan, which started for Wadai in the far south two years ago with £40,000 worth of goods, was plundered there by Rabagh Ibn Zebeyr when he attacked Wadai last year, and none of the merchants have yet returned. This has caused great lamentation and distress in Tripoli.

“We weighed anchor in the afternoon for Malta, there being no direct steam communication between Tripoli and Egypt.

“_7th November._—We arrived off Malta by daylight, and got inside the harbor at Valetta by nine o’clock, certainly a splendid place. I called at once on Count Strickland, to whom Terence had given me a letter. I was surprised to find him quite a young man, he is thirty-four, and he reminded me that we had met already at Cambridge, when he was an undergraduate and one of the chief officials of the Union and I was down there with John Dillon only seven years ago; now he has been for six years secretary to the Malta Government, a post of no small political importance, he being half a Maltese, through his mother, a Countess della Catena, and having married De la Warr’s eldest daughter, Lady Edeline Sackville. I found him very busy preparing for a debate on the estimates in the Maltese Legislative Council, an annual event, the principal political one of the year.

“The Council was to meet at half-past two, and he took me there with him to attend the debate, an interesting display. The Governor, Sir Arthur Freemantle, was in the chair, the six official members to his left, the fourteen elected members to his right, three or four benches at the end of the chamber being for the public. I was given an armchair behind the Governor’s. The Council Chamber is a splendid room, and the ceremonial was dignified, but with a certain air of unreality as in a debating club, though it was an important occasion, for politics are running high in Malta just now. The leader of the opposition, Savona, is a man of about fifty, keen-eyed, alert, professional, reminding me a little of Freycinet. He knows English well, and made his attacks sometimes in English, sometimes in Italian, for both languages are used optionally, the more animated speeches being in Italian. There seemed to be a very full liberty of speech, but no applause or dissent of the kind that makes our House of Commons a babel. To me it was most interesting, as the questions treated turned on Constitutional right, and were dealt with ably and with passion. Savona on some previous occasion had been taunted by an official member with having allowed the Estimates to pass untouched, and he was determined now to reduce this year’s on certain points in protest against an infringement made three years before by an order of the Colonial Government of the Maltese Constitution. Elected members had been deprived of their right to become members of the Executive. Strickland replied in an able, debating speech, but without, as I thought, having the better argument, or commanding the sense of the Council. One of Savona’s proposed reductions was of £10 for the repainting of the Government barge, and this he made fun of. He found, however, support on the point in one of the elected members, Mozu, and Savona lost the amendment, though he carried another reducing the vote by £266 in regard to other items. Freemantle then retired, and a rather noisy discussion followed about his successor in the chair, during which, as it was late, I too went out. On the whole I was pleased with the debate, which was ably conducted by the opposition, there being but one very foolish speaker, a deaf old man, who talked nonsense about _i poveri Maltesi_ in and out of season. There was certainly more reality in it than in the Viceregal Council meetings I attended at Calcutta, and must do good as putting a check on the Government’s autocratic vagaries, if nothing more.

“Dined with young Sitwell of the Rifles at the Club, and was glad to find him talking sensibly about the exclusion of the Maltese nobility from its membership. This is a notorious scandal and cause of ill- feeling. Looking through the Club list I can find no more than two Maltese names among the English ones, Strickland’s and Dingli’s. The tone of English society here, Sitwell tells me, is violent about the Maltese and absurd. He and his regiment are off next week for Bombay, where he will find race arrogance more violent still.

“_8th Nov._—Drove across the island through a series of lovely villages, all of hewn stone, to Hajar Kim, where there is an ancient temple of the Druidical kind, then with Strickland to his country house, on the way to Città Vecchia, a fine villa of the beginning of last century, with courts and fountains and an orange garden. This he inherits from his mother. He tells me there are about twelve families in the island which enjoy a _majorat_, his being one, in the rest property has been divided among all the children, and so has disappeared. This dates from the time of the knights. When the island was given to the Knights of St. John in 1530 by Charles V a proviso was made that it should revert to the Crown; consequently, when the English first occupied Malta it was in the name of the King of Naples that they did so. The French knights had betrayed the island to Bonaparte, who took possession of it as part of the French Republic, ill-treated the inhabitants, robbed the churches, and speedily made the French detested. The Maltese rose against them and invested the fortress for eighteen months and forced a capitulation which the French made, not to them but to Nelson—the annexation to England was an afterthought.

“Strickland explained Savona’s attitude of opposition as one caused by disappointment. Savona began life as a soldier in the hospital corps, but having learned English he bought his discharge, set up a school and newspaper, and attacked the Government. He was then taken in the Government to keep him quiet, but left it when the Constitution of 1887[12] was granted, he having opposed it and recorded in a minute his view that Malta should be governed as a Crown Colony of a severe type. This minute was thrown in his teeth when he seceded from the Government and set up as its violent antagonist. Strickland, of course, is officially prejudiced against him, and will not see in him any patriotic motive, but he admits that public opinion generally is anti-English among the educated Maltese, while the country people are indifferent. Savona, he assures me, is losing his popularity, but he, Strickland, is tired of the worry and would be glad to change his chief secretaryship for a Colonial appointment. I find him clever and interesting.

“_9th Nov._—Left Malta for Egypt _via_ Brindisi.”

The winter that followed that year and the following spring in Egypt was one that has left me few political records, the new National movement headed the last two years by the Khedive Abbas having lost its first impulse through the reasons I have already described, and I stood aside busying myself with other things, and beyond a single visit to the Khedive at Abdin Palace, my diary contains little worth transcribing. I arrived at Sheykh Obeyd on _15th Nov._ and found Anne and Judith already there, and on the 21st Fenwick Pasha, who for the last two years has been English adviser at the Home Office and head of the police, called on me. He had, compared with most Englishmen, been favourable to native self-government, and under the new _régime_ had become out of favour:

“Fenwick leaves Egypt immediately to join his regiment in India. He spoke strongly and rather bitterly of the recent change in the administration which has put the police once more under the Mudirs, and thinks it quite uncompensated by the appointment of Gorst as English Adviser at the Ministry of the Interior. He thinks Cromer may have yielded the point from a Macchiavellian motive of allowing the native Government to make mistakes of which he will profit later, but I do not think this.

“_29th Nov._—To-day being the Khedive’s birthday and a whole holiday, Tigrane Pasha came to see us; he is down on his luck politically and looks at things as going badly, regarding Gorst’s appointment to the Ministry of the Interior as a new encroachment.

“_30th Nov._—Sheykh Mohammed Abdu to lunch with us. He tells me the Khedive’s ideas are unchanged since last year, that he is still bitter against Cromer and the Occupation, that his visit to England was prevented last summer by the Sultan, and much else. The Khedive is very kind to him, Abdu, now, and gave him a private audience of thirty-five minutes, and he has obtained his long-wished for grant of £2,000 a year for the Azhar University. A committee is to be appointed to see to the spending of the sum. We talked over old events and he gave me again the history of the Mufettish Ismaïl Sadyk’s murder by Ishak Bey on board the Khedive’s steamer. Ishak strangled him with his own hands. He says this was certainly done on the river, immediately after Ismaïl Sadyk’s arrest by the Khedive Ismaïl opposite the Jesireh palace. He told us the story of Ali Pasha Sherif’s slavery adventure. Ali Pasha Sherif had been recently arrested by our people on a charge of slave dealing, he being the oldest and most respectable personage perhaps in Egypt, and President of the Legislative Council. The Pasha had behaved very foolishly, Abdu said, ‘like a child.’ The truth was he is in his dotage and has become foolishly attached to a woman on whom he spends his time and money, and it was for her that he had bought the slaves, and he told us also of Nubar’s moneymaking schemes now he is in office, and of other scandals that have taken place during the summer.

“_5th Dec._—Had luncheon with Riaz. He tells me the Khedive’s politics have not changed at all since last year. He (Abbas) hates Nubar, and is sorry now, ‘poor young man,’ for the mistake he made in allowing Cromer to change his Ministry. He would have gone to England in the summer, but was prevented by a French intrigue acting on the Sultan. He lamented the usurpation of new authority by Lord Cromer in the Ministry of the Interior, etc., etc.

“_10th Dec._—Saw the Khedive at Abdin Palace. He received me cordially, even affectionately, and on my congratulating him on a domestic event expected in his family, and which had been announced, said: ‘Yes, it came upon us quite as a surprise. Now I shall marry her. I wished to do so at once, but when I consulted our religious authorities they told me I must wait till the child was born. But I will marry her the very day afterwards, this is according to rule.’ I said: ‘There was no pleasure in life like that of being a father, and hoped that his son would be a blessing to him.’ He is evidently in the highest delight. Then he talked of his journey to Europe, and thanked me for my letter about the Prince of Wales. ‘I should have liked to go to England,’ he said, ‘but was prevented at Constantinople. It is impossible to do anything with _him_ (meaning the Sultan). Will you believe it, I was twenty days at Constantinople, and was watched all the time by spies. He gave me two of his aides-de-camp, who were constantly with me, even sleeping in my palace at night. Not once did he discuss any political subject with me, though I several times brought them forward when we were alone. Each time I did so he jumped up and shut the windows, lest we should be overheard, but I could get nothing from him. Even Mukhtar, who was there three months, got no more than a lecture for not preventing the Cairo newspapers from writing against him. He told Mukhtar to spend money—he might pay each newspaper £1,500 a year—but Mukhtar refused to have anything to do with it. Mukhtar will never be Grand Vizier. All who serve the Sultan are expected to bow to the ground and say, “Certainly, your Majesty.” We shall never come to any good with him for our Caliph and Emir el Mumenin.’

Abbas asked me if I had had any news of a new revolt in Arabia, and I told him I had seen paragraphs in the papers about it, but attached little importance to them, as such paragraphs always appeared when diplomatic pressure was being put at Constantinople, and just now the Armenian question was being pushed forward. The new friendship between England and Russia boded no good for the Ottoman Empire. He said: ‘I have information that an agreement has been come to between them by which Russia is to occupy Armenia.’ This seems most improbable, and with it the abandonment of Cyprus by us, as we could not consent to it without retiring from the Cyprus Convention, which guarantees the integrity of the Sultan’s territory in Asia. As to his visit to England he said: ‘The King of the Belgians invited me to stay with him, and I asked permission at Constantinople, but was told I should make pretext to decline, and avoid _all_ visits.’ He is evidently disgusted with the Sultan’s timidity and narrow-mindedness, but I noticed that he never once mentioned him by name, only as He.

“From this we went on to home matters, and the way in which Nubar’s hand had been forced in the matter of the new arrangement at the Ministry of the Interior. Nubar was old and stupid, he said, and had been made to appear to demand it. I am inclined, however, to suspect that this was merely Nubar’s way of excusing himself to his master. About the slave- trading case brought against Ali Pasha Sherif, the Khedive told me that it was without doubt a trap laid for him by Shäffer and the Slave Trade Bureau. Dr. Shafai was an accomplice, and the three slave women had been taught their parts. When Shafai was condemned to hard labour he was not really sent to Toura prison, but kept for a month at the caracol in comfortable rooms upstairs. He, the Khedive, had been asked to pardon him, but had said the law must take its course. Then they sent him to Toura, but made him second doctor there. It was all a political intrigue to discredit Ali Pasha and frighten the Legislative Council. He complained of the timidity and lack of fibre in the native Egyptian members of the Council. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘at Heshmet Pasha, we all looked upon him as a Nationalist and a Riazist, yet directly the trouble came last year he went round at once.’ It now being twelve o’clock, after a little talk about Tunis, the Khedive got up and, taking my hand with both his, thanked me and said he knew I was one he could depend on, and who had the welfare of Islam at heart. I am more struck than ever at the frankness of his character and the clearness of his ideas.”

The first three months of the New Year, 1895, were devoted by us almost entirely to desert travelling, when we explored the hill country that lies between the Nile and the Red Sea, a piece of desert land almost entirely unknown to Europeans, or indeed to the townspeople of Cairo and the fellahin of the Delta, and as yet unmapped, to me a great additional charm, and except for a few scattered Bedouins quite uninhabited. We had on this occasion my cousin Mary Elcho with us, who was spending the winter in Egypt, and we pushed our explorations as far as the Red Sea, and followed the coast line down it between the high mountain range of Kalála and the Gulf of Suez, a narrow strip of sandy shore seldom or never visited, there being barely room in places for camels to pass, a rugged shore, where the only sign of humanity is the occasional apparition of a distant ocean steamer far away on its road to India or Japan, and at the water’s edge a continuous jetsam of empty brandy and rum bottles cast up by the waves, and marking the unholy track of Western civilization. The whole of the precipitous Kalála chain, which runs in places to a height of four and five thousand feet, was in the ancient days before Islam the scattered abode of those early Christian hermits who were so picturesque a feature of the fourth and fifth centuries, and may still, some of them, be identified as former hermitages by the possession of a trickle of water and a palm or two still growing wild, and one monastery, still inhabited, the convent of St. Anthony. It lies in one of the ruggedest and most desolate places in the world, difficult of access for camels, and parted from the Nile Valley by eighty miles of inhospitable desert, and twenty from the seashore on the other side. In all that journey we had met with no inhabitant after our first day’s march, and it was with some difficulty that we made out our road to it, for the Bedouins with us had never been there, and we only had knowledge of it by the vaguest hearsay. The convent is hardly ever visited by Europeans, and ours was absolutely the first occasion on which women had been admitted within the Monastery walls since its foundation some 1,500 years ago. All this was intensely interesting, but descriptions of desert journeys lie outside the scope of my present memoirs. It is only here and there that in the interval of these expeditions I find a notice of public events, as for instance:

“_25th Feb._—The long expected Egyptian crisis seems at last approaching in Europe, if one may judge by the foreign newspapers which are threshing the question of the English Occupation once more out. I fancy Rosebery’s escapade with the Congo Company has set up the German Emperor’s back, and he is encouraging the French to push us out of Egypt. In spite of our swagger, and it is past all bounds, we shall have one day to go. Our papers repeat the bravado that a great nation like England does not yield to threats. My experience is that it is to threats only of very immediate chastisement that the British public does yield. Soft words never have effect with us.”

About the same time the announcement reached me of poor Randolph’s death, and on the 30th of March of Princess Hélène’s engagement to the Duke of Aosta, and lastly on the 11th of April of the huge scandal in London of Oscar Wilde’s arrest and prosecution. Of political events in Egypt there is no further record worth transcribing. The 27th of April saw us back at Crabbet.

This year I saw more than ever of George Wyndham, and spent much of my time with him. He was at the height just then of his literary activity, having become editor of the “New Review,” and being pushed forward by Henley as a writer, and at his instigation, and Henley’s, my thoughts took a more decidedly literary direction than before. He proposed that I should write for him on Arabian subjects, and this I, being full just then of desert memories, willingly agreed to.

“_12th May._—Henley proposes to bring out a selected edition of my poems under his auspices, and promises to run me into a more public place as poet than what I now occupy. I am not particularly anxious for this, but he and George may try. George is a good enthusiastic friend, and very dear to me. He has given me a touching description of Pembroke’s funeral, at which he was present in the little churchyard near Wilton, where they buried him; the Wilton gardens in their full Spring splendour, the birds singing their hearts out, and many men, the most distinguished in the land, in tears. Pembroke lived a noble, if an unproductive, life, a man of large sympathies and high ideals, but no fixed beliefs, and no results in action. He had at one time an opening in politics which might have led him to any sublimity when Disraeli gave him a place in his Government at the age of twenty-four, but his health was not sufficient for the strain, and he could not go on with it. The rest of his life was spent at Wilton, a paradise on earth, the possession of which I have always thought hinders its possessors, by its beauty, from engaging in the world’s ambitions. He lived honoured and beloved by women and by men.

“Sir Robert Peel, too, is dead. I met him on Friday at the St. James’ Club and had a talk with him about Japan and China. His death was sudden in the night. He was not a wise man, but interesting, a very good speaker, full of _bonhomie_ and sometimes of wit.

“_29th May._—My poor Locker is dead, not other than a worthy ending to a happy life. His last day was a cheerful one they all say, and he talked more strongly than for some time past. I had called in the evening at Rowfant and had seen him, and was there till seven, and then took his son Godfrey back riding with me, so that he must have died very shortly afterwards, for the announcement is in the ‘Times’ this morning.

“_Later._ I called again at Rowfant and found to my surprise the family not in mourning. My friend, instead of being dead, is a trifle better, and talks of outliving some of us. It is a mystery how the thing got into the ‘Times,’ from which it had been copied into all the evening papers with long obituary notices. [It was not till two days later that he died at the age of seventy-four.]

“_22nd June._—Yesterday when I was in London I called at half-past five on Margot, who is invalided. While we were talking Sir William Harcourt came in, and their talk turned at once to politics, the Cromwell statue debate, and other interests of the moment, but nothing presaged what at that very hour was happening in the House, namely, the defeat of the Ministry on St. John Broderick’s amendment in Supply. Poor Margot, as it happened, was in some measure responsible for the Government minority, for as I left her a little after six I found yet another visitor, John Morley, at her door, and she kept him so late giving him good advice that he missed the division! To-day I see the account of it in the papers.

“_24th June._—Rosebery has resigned, a feeble statesman though a clever man, whom we shall never, I fancy, see Prime Minister again. It seems there is to be a coalition between Lord Salisbury and the Duke of Devonshire, under Lord Salisbury’s leadership. I am glad the imposture of Whig Liberalism is defunct.

“Yesterday was my last day at Crabbet, for Crabbet is let for three years, perhaps for four, and we take up our abode at Newbuildings to- morrow. We have no need, with so small a family as ours is, of so large a house, and Newbuildings is enough for all our wants, and I am in a mood to loathe old things and pine for new; nevertheless, it was a melancholy day for me in spite of the brave sun.

“_25th June._—The day of Princess Hélène’s wedding to the Duke of Aosta. The Comtesse de Paris had sent us an invitation, and I drove down to Kingston with Judith, where the wedding was, and then to Orleans House at Twickenham. It was a day of heaven, a brilliant blue sky with a light north wind to freshen the sun’s heat. Judith, of course, was late at starting, and so we arrived too late to get inside the church, and the bride and bridegroom were already coming out in procession. The Duke is under-sized, of extremely dusky hue, his features good, but not imposing. Behind them came her brother, the Duke of Orleans, his broken leg still disabling him, and a little after the Prince and Princess of Wales with their daughters, and the Dukes of Coburg and Connaught, Tecks, Fifes, and a number of foreign Princes and Princesses. In the crowd of invited persons there were many French and a few Italians. There were hardly any English. Indeed, all the English I saw were not a dozen. Leighton was there and Lady Burdett Coutts, and a few men connected with the Court, but almost no one belonging to general society. Nor were there any English presents, which is strange, but though living so long in England, they hardly knew any English people. Then we all got into our carriages and drove in procession through Kingston and Twickenham, a really pretty sight, with multitudes of flags and large crowds cheering and every window filled in the old-fashioned houses. There was something Hogarthian in it all. In Orleans House tables were laid for the royal personages and Ambassadors, but we, the less distinguished, had to be content with what we could scramble for at buffets. Then we went into the garden where the bride and bridegroom were making their round of congratulations, and I had the privilege with others of kissing the bride’s royal hand. My wedding present of the Kelmscott poems was laid out with the rest. Sweet personage, may she be happy!

“_26th June._—Called on Lady Lytton. She has just been appointed Lady of the Bedchamber to the Queen in the Duchess of Roxborough’s place, and she showed me Her Majesty’s autograph letter, which was very kindly and even touchingly worded, saying she admired the way she had borne her troubles, recalling Lytton’s good services, and in a postscript saying she was glad of Victor’s recovery from his recent illness. Certainly the old Queen has the power of conveying her meaning in a few simple, not to say commonplace, words so as to give the impression of a true feeling, more than most women. It affected me to read the letter, I hardly know why.

“_29th June._—Called on Harry Cust at the ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ Office. He is much improved since last year and takes his editorship seriously. He told me that when he began with the ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ he had had a promise of office as soon as the Tories should come into power, but that is now all swept away.

“Then to Newbuildings, where I joined Anne, and we took formal possession. It pleases me much to be there, for it is far more of a hermitage than Crabbet was, and one can forget here the worries of the world.

“_6th July._—Called on Betty Balfour, whom I found in high spirits at the appointment of her husband as Chief Secretary in Ireland. Gerald is a very able fellow and will doubtless do well on his brother’s lines, and I had some talk with him about his prospects there.

“_11th July._—Pamela’s wedding to Eddy Tennant, and afterwards with Judith to a dance at Sibell Grosvenor’s in honour of it. George (Wyndham) was in delightful vein and supped with Judith and me, entertaining us with his Epicurean views of life. ‘What we want in modern life,’ he said, ‘is to have more feasting, song, and flowers, and noise, and to sit long and late with beautiful ladies, ourselves crowned with wreaths.’ Certainly his own entertainment, the first he has ever given, was perfection. He has just been returned for Dover unopposed, the first member of the new Parliament. His is a happy nature.

“_15th July._—To my Aunt Caroline Chandler’s funeral at Witley, driving there and back from Newbuildings, a full forty-five miles through the oak country of the Weald—an almost entirely uninhabited district. Witley village, with the exception of some half-dozen new cottages, is unchanged from what I remembered it as a boy or for that matter from what my mother knew it, as her drawings of it show thirty years earlier. Only the church is changed, the inside having undergone the modern rage of decoration. The funeral was a shock to me, as it was conducted with cheerful music and a merry peal of bells, which seemed to me absurd. The old English services are all made ridiculous now with pseudo-catholic ‘mummeries.’ They have lost their dignity of old days, but it is of a piece with the whole English character, which has changed from top to bottom in my short fifty years of recollection. Here was my poor old aunt, who, when she came to Witley first as a pretty bride in 1845, was wedded soberly and in all decorum, now in 1895 at the age of seventy-two launched into a grave piled up with flowers like a birthday cake, to the merriest strains of the organ, strains to which we might with no impropriety have danced. The only old-fashioned thing in the ceremony was that her son’s widow, who inherits the property, fainted and was carried out.

“_19th July._—Lunched with Lady Galloway. There has been a regular rout of the Liberals at the Elections. Harcourt, John Morley, Lefevre, Arnold Morley among the slain. Much talk of all this. Asquith has won or kept his seat.

“_13th Aug._—A visit from one Oppenheim, a Jew, who has been travelling in Mesopotamia, and wants to go to Nejd. [This Oppenheim was afterwards an agent of the German Government attached to the German Legation in Cairo, much concerned in his Government’s intrigues there.]

“_15th Aug._—Lunched with George Curzon at 5, Carlton House Terrace, which he has rented. We talked of things political, and of his own new position in the Government as Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs. He prefers this to a minor place without power in the Cabinet. About Armenia, in spite of the brave words in the Queen’s speech to-day, he agrees with me that they can do nothing. Russia, he says, will never consent to an Armenian buffer State, even if there were the materials to make one, and how can we put pressure on the Sultan? In truth it is impossible, and the sooner they drop it the better, which I fancy they will do. He told me all the same that the horrors were not exaggerated. I told him of Knowles wanting an article of me about Egypt. This he deprecated in due Parliamentary phrase. It was embarrassing the Government and defeating its own end. It would be better to wait a little till the Government had had time to look about it, and the rest which are the common excuses of Under Secretaries. He said that he himself was entirely opposed to evacuation, or change of any kind, that the French were out of court by their having refused the ratification of the Wolff Convention, and that he considered Lord Salisbury would be most unwilling to re-open the question, though as yet Lord Salisbury had said nothing to him on the subject, the matter was not pressing. The Government did not believe the rumours of any joint French and Russian action about Egypt. All this after luncheon.

“Then to Merton to see the new tapestry, Botticelli’s Spring, which Morris is making for me there, and on to Coombe where I dined with Bertram and Laurence Currie, Bertram full of old and interesting reminiscences.

“_25th Aug._—A visit to Cromer, Newhaven Court, the Lockers’ house.

“Francis Palgrave was here in the afternoon, an interesting man, garrulous, but in a good sense of the word, telling stories, principally of Tennyson, reminiscences of whom he is writing. He talked to me about his brother Gifford (the Arabian traveller), and told me that in the last three years of his life he was reconciled to the Church, and that this had made him much happier and more contented. I asked him how matters had been arranged about the wife and children, seeing that Gifford was a priest and had been a Jesuit. He said his brother had told him that no difficulty had been made, such cases having of course often happened before. He was allowed to continue his domestic life, only not conjugally; _that_ Gifford had told him laughing was no great privation. He was glad to hear me corroborate the accuracy of his brother’s account of the politics of Nejd and its social condition. He was anxious I should believe Gifford was never really, or ostensibly a Moslem.

“Miss Kate Greenaway is also staying in the house.

“_26th Aug._—I have come to Ockham for a night, where all is much improved since Ralph came into his inheritance. Miss Lawless, the novelist, is staying here, a well-informed, clever woman, and a good talker.”

On 8th September I left England once more for abroad.