Chapter XI: The Jameson Raid (1)

“_5th Jan._—There is excellent news. Those blackguards of the Chartered Company in South Africa, under Doctor Jameson, have made a filibustering raid on the Transvaal and have been annihilated by the Boers, Jameson a prisoner. I devoutly hope he may be hanged. I have seen this business coming on for some weeks past in articles from the ‘Times.’ That other high-placed filibuster, Chamberlain, is, I am sure, responsible, or the ‘Times’ would never have taken up the matter in the way it has. They seem to have been encouraged in the sort of way these things are encouraged unofficially, by Chamberlain, who would have scored a victory for himself if they had succeeded. As it is he will disavow them. I am much mistaken if Chamberlain, with his three Colonial wars on hand in Ashanti, Venezuela, and now in the Transvaal, involving quarrels with France, America, and Germany, will not upset Lord Salisbury’s government, if he does not upset the British Empire.

“Lord and Lady Cromer came here to tea. I had a good deal of talk with him. He says the Jameson episode will do a ‘deal of harm’ here, as people will consider it a British defeat (which it is). He added: ‘These filibustering enterprises are only justifiable by success. I don’t say that they are justifiable at all, but if they don’t succeed the actors in them should pay the penalty.’ I think he is rather uneasy in his mind. We talked also about Egyptian affairs. He told me the Khedive was spending money very foolishly and would soon, at the present rate, be bankrupt, also that complaints had been made to him by fellahin in the neighbourhood of Koubbah, whose land he had been attempting to take, reviving obsolete claims against squatters on abandoned land, but he was not sure the complaints were true, the complainants refusing to come forward openly. They stated that they had been bullied by the palace people and beaten with _kurbajs_. He asked me if I had received complaints on the subject, but it is new to me. He told me that Ibrahim Bey Ibn Saoud had been to him twice, the first time to evoke his protection against the Sultan, to which he had replied that, as long as he, Ibrahim Bey, remained unamenable to Egyptian law he had nothing to fear. The second time he had brought him a ‘ridiculous paper,’ the copy of one he had submitted to the Khedive, charging the Sultan with all sorts of crimes, and appealing to the Khedive to occupy Nejd. He had had to give him ‘a piece of his mind’ and tell him that if he meddled with politics and the Sultan heard of it and demanded his extradition, he should not interfere to protect him; if he wanted to talk Arabian politics he had better go to Bagdad.

“We also discussed the appointment of Alfred Austin to the post of Poet Laureate. He, Cromer, thought William Watson would have been better. The Empress Frederick had tried to get Rennell Rodd appointed. He had never heard of Austin. Indeed, Austin’s appointment is a ridiculous one, for, with the exception of three sonnets, Austin has never written anything in the smallest degree good. His sole claim is that he has been a solid supporter of the Conservative party in the press. I remember him well as a young man about thirty-eight years ago, when he first came up to London and published his earliest verses, ‘The Season, a Satire,’ and the rest. Some of them rather smart. He was a Catholic and moved in a small way in Catholic society, but later married an Irish Protestant and, I believe, joined the English church. He was the most absurd little cock sparrow of a man ever seen, and childishly vain of his talents. He has improved with years, but not in his verses. His principal poem, ‘Madonna’s Child,’ is about the dullest and silliest tale in meagre blank verse ever produced. He has floated in at last to the Laureateship on the success of a prose volume about his garden in Kent. There really was no choice, however, for the post. William Morris refused, the Queen objected to Swinburne, old Patmore was a Catholic, the rest were, if possible, worse than Austin. He is better anyhow than Lewis Morris, the Liberal candidate, or than Watson, Dobson, Davidson, and the rest of the sons of their own penny trumpets.

“_9th Jan._—The German Emperor has telegraphed his congratulations to Kruger, and this seems to have produced great anger in England. We have now managed in the last six months to quarrel violently with China, Turkey, Belgium, Ashanti, France, Venezuela, America, and Germany. This is a record performance, and if it does not break up the British Empire nothing will. For myself I am glad of it all, for the British Empire is the great engine of evil for the weak races now existing in the world—not that we are worse than the French or Italians or Americans—indeed, we are less actively destructive—but we do it over a far wider area and more successfully. I should be delighted to see England stripped of her whole foreign possessions. We were better off and more respected in Queen Elizabeth’s time, the ‘spacious days,’ when we had not a stick of territory outside the British Islands, than now, and infinitely more respectable. The gangrene of colonial rowdyism is infecting us, and the habit of repressing liberty in weak nations is endangering our own. I should be glad to see the end.

“My old woodreeve, Bates, at Crabbet has hanged himself in his cart shed—a man of genius in his way of life, who, beginning as a day labourer, rose to be the best judge of timber in Sussex, as well as a successful farmer and churchwarden of the parish. Having completed eighty-four years of life and fifty of honest service in the Crabbet Estate, and having entertained his friends the night before, he went out in the early morning to his shed and was found there dead hanging from a beam. I can imagine the old man carefully tying the noose, as his manner was, without mistake. It was noticed by those who had been with him at dinner the night before that during the meal he had a hank of rope on his knees with which he was playing. In the morning he had got up by candlelight, asked his old wife ‘How are you, old girl?’ and had gone out to the cart shed, where he was found hanging.

“_11th Jan._—Took Anne and Judith to Koubbah to see the Khedive. He received us with great _empressement_, talked a good deal about the petty vexations and the affronts put upon him by the English officials, and showed us his stud. He has got together some nice mares, but nothing quite first class, except two of Ali Pasha Sherif’s, one of which is our horse Mesaoud’s dam, a very splendid mare, with the finest head in the world. He has bred some promising colts and altogether the thing is well done. He invited us to go out with him some day on a desert expedition, and sent us to the station in his barouche.

“There seems a good chance now of the Egyptian question being re-opened as a European one, for the feeling against us in Germany is very strong over the Transvaal affair, and Egypt is the point where they can best put on the screw. I am sorry it should come in this way, though it is what I have always foreseen, for Egypt internationalized to the profit of Europe is not a pleasant prospect. It comes of Cromer’s wrong-headed administration, where the one object has been to Anglicize, not to establish a National Government. Egypt, too, has been scandalously used for the creation of highly paid posts for not very capable Englishmen. I foresaw all this and protested years ago, but it was of no use. Now we shall evacuate the country not for the benefit of the Egyptians, but for that of the scoundrel European Colonies.

“Yesterday Dawkins and his wife were here—he a new man sent in Milner’s place, and a friend of Milner’s. I talked to him a good deal about Cromer’s policy, in which I think he partially agreed with me, as they all do when it is plainly put before them that we _cannot_ stay on for ever in Egypt. But, when things are quiet, and they see a chance of holding on, then they harden their hearts.

“_15th Jan._—I see in the papers that negotiations are likely to come on between our Government and the French about Egypt. I have therefore put my ideas about a possible agreement for evacuation on paper, and shall probably send it to Lord Salisbury through Pom McDonnell. It ought to be a quite easy thing to arrange if only Lord Salisbury was willing. His great necessities just now should be our occasion.

“_16th Jan._—Mohammed Abdu and M. Arminjan to luncheon. I talked the matter of evacuation over thoroughly with Abdu. He tells me that, much as he is attached to the Khedive, it would not do to trust him with power—the Ministry should be independent of him as far as possible, and supported by some sort of Constitution. He thinks this essential. There are good men to be found who would hold their own as ministers against Khedivial encroachment, but not the men now in office, who are mere dummies. The ministers ought to be irremovable as long as they have the support of the Chamber of Deputies. If we could get the French to agree to this, evacuation would be quite simple. It really looks as if it might come. Lord Salisbury has quarrelled with everybody, and it is about time he should patch up matters with some of them—and France is the most dangerous. I should prefer, myself, to see the British Empire break up. It has become a curse to the world, but, for Egypt’s sake, an arrangement with France would be better at the present moment.

“_23rd Jan._—The English papers are sickening about the Transvaal, a mixture of swagger and poltroonery. One would have thought the less said about Jameson’s ignominious defeat by the Boers the better, but our blessed public must needs make a hero of him, a man who fought for thirty-six hours, and had only fifteen men killed and then surrendered, not a pretence of its being in any better cause than money-making and land-grabbing. The ‘Times’ prints a poem in praise of him by the new Poet Laureate. Austin has managed to turn off some spirited doggerel, and to get it recited at a music hall, so low are we sunk. I have been busy writing my letter to McDonnell, and also finishing my article about the evacuation of Egypt for the ‘Nineteenth Century.’

“We have had several visitors here. Madame d’Hautpoul and her cousin, Miss Pereira, Lady Decies and a pretty daughter, and Mr. Douglas Murray. The latter told me one or two new things about Egyptian history. Lesseps had told him that it was he who dissuaded the French Government from joining in the bombardment of Alexandria or occupying the Suez Canal, thinking that the English would get into military difficulties; also that when our fleet entered the Canal, Admiral Hoskins threatened Victor Lesseps to hang him from the yard-arm if he interfered with the operations. Lesseps was a vain old fool.

“_25th Jan._—Lady Galloway has arrived at Cairo. I went in to see her at the Legation, where she is staying with the Cromers. She told me that it was out of the question to think of our evacuating Egypt, that if we went out the French would come in, or there would be massacres and a lot more rubbish, which I fear represents Lord Salisbury’s view. She also blamed Rosebery for the Armenian policy, but excused Lord Salisbury for continuing it on the ground that he had a real sympathy for Armenia, and real hatred for the Turks. The Russo-Turkish alliance is announced by the ‘Pall Mall,’ it cannot but be true. I fancy the Russian Government is glad to ally itself with a fellow suppressor of Nihilism, whether Russian or Armenian. The Armenians seem likely now to be exterminated between them, our Government playing the most foolish figure imaginable. Lady Galloway is coming to Sheykh Obeyd on Monday.

“_27th Jan._—Lady Galloway was here for luncheon to-day. I have written my memorandum on the evacuation of Egypt, and am sending it to Lord Salisbury through Pom McDonnell. In my letter to Pom I say: ‘I have drawn it up very carefully, and after consultation with some of my Egyptian friends, who best know the situation, and in whom I have most confidence as honest and patriotic men. I have also some reason to believe that Monsieur Cogordan, the present French Minister, would enter into some such plan were it suggested to him. He is a far fairer and more intelligent man than any of his predecessors here. I have said nothing of it, however, directly to him, as I only know him very slightly. You know how anxious I am that Egypt should be allowed to work out her political destiny in peace, and I foresee that if Lord Salisbury does nothing towards a solution of the question now, it will be forced upon him later in a way which will lead to the sacrifice of all Egyptian hopes. With the support of Germany withdrawn from our occupation, it is impossible that Europe should long delay making the question its own. This sensible Egyptians fear as a worse evil than anything in their present condition, for it would mean Egypt for all the speculators of Europe.’

“Our policy at Constantinople has certainly gone an absolute smash, and Philip must be feeling small. A treaty is announced between Russia and Turkey, which, whether quite true or not, must be very near the truth. I strongly suspect that the famous incident of Saïd Pasha taking refuge at the British Embassy was an ingenious trick to spy out the real ideas of the Ambassador. Saïd may very well have gone there with the knowledge and privity of the Sultan, and the result may have convinced the Sultan that England was his bitterest personal enemy. Certainly from the day of Saïd’s return to his own house things have altered at Constantinople, and the Sultan has gone his own way without seeking any more to be on terms with us.[15]

“_30th Jan._—Anne and I start on Monday for a considerable journey in the southern desert beyond Kalala. Judith goes up the Nile with Lady Decies, and Sheykh Obeyd will be shut up. I feel better and in better spirits, though the future is dark for me. If this next summer brings me nothing of value to my life I shall not return to England again. Perhaps I may find my hermitage this Spring in truth and reality, but I must go to England once again first, to solve one or two questions and complete my memoirs.

“_3rd Feb._—Our party at Sheykh Obeyd is broken up. Judith went this morning to Cairo, and will stay there till she starts up the Nile. Anne and I leave to-morrow for our long desert journey, it ought to be an interesting one. I went to-day to the War Office, and saw Wingate, and looked over maps with him. I find that almost nothing is known of the country south of Kalala, so that we shall be exploring a new region. I have taken tracings of such maps as they have in the Intelligence Department, and they are not much. Floyer has also sent me tracings. I had some talk with Slatin, a commonplace little German, quite unworthy of ever having served the Mahdi. He talked a great deal about the prospects of reconquering the Soudan. I have been reading Kipling’s new ‘Jungle Book,’ and the story of the Indian Minister who became a fakir. It seems to me the only worthy ending of a public, perhaps of a private life; but it wants great physical courage to endure.”

February 4th to 26th in my journal is taken up with the diary of a camel journey made by Anne and me, with Suliman Howeyti and two other Bedouins of the Howeytat, under the guidance of Sobeyeh Ibn Zeydan of the Maaze tribe, through the Maaze country south of the Kalala mountains to the granite range of Jebel Gháreb southwards to Kúfra, Dokhán, and Kitár, regaining the Nile at Keneh, a journey of 400 miles of uninhabited desert, made in twenty days, of the greatest possible interest. My diary, however, is little more than an itinerary of each day’s march, suited rather for a paper in the Royal Geographical Society than for the present volume, and I do not transcribe it here. It was for the most part through an entirely unexplored and unmapped region. We returned from Keneh by steamer to Cairo. All that I will say of it here is that it was the last and perhaps the hardest of all the many desert journeys Lady Anne and I undertook alone together, and as such stands out in my memory as one of the most delightful. I made a rough map of our route for private use, not for the Geographical Society (of which I am almost the oldest member), because I have long convinced myself that it makes itself the precursor and instrument of Europe’s penetrations and conquests against the wild races of mankind.

“_7th March._—Back at Sheykh Obeyd. Great things have happened since we were away. First and foremost the Italians have been smashed in Abyssinia, thoroughly and I hope finally. They have most richly deserved it. The whole history of their doings on the Red Sea has been a disgrace even to this graceless nineteenth century. They went there at our bidding in 1884, a job of Lord Northbrook’s when we were in straits with the Mahdi and thought they might help us. We gave them Massowa, which did not belong to us, but to Egypt, Egypt, of which we said we were acting as guardians and trustees. At first they occupied the island only, then little by little they encroached upon the mainland on the plea of wanting a hill station, then they made leonine treaties with the king and encroached more and more, and then they put forward pretensions for a protectorate. Next they made a dash at Kassala and captured it from the Soudanese. This turned their vanitous heads, and nothing would serve them but they must make war again with Menelik, wanting to grab the whole country. Menelik pretended to yield, for the Abyssinians are cunning, but let loose an army of Chouans upon them. The Italians were defeated and shut up in a fortress. The fortress was invested and at last capitulated on good terms granted them by Menelik, who, though victorious, asked for peace. His magnanimity, however, was put down at once in Italy to cowardice, the ‘heroic’ Italian defenders of the fortress were treated as if they had been conquerors, and pretensions were put forward of annexing the whole of Abyssinia. Menelik, however, calmly went on, all sections of the Abyssinians joining him, and proposed as an alternative condition of peace, that the Italians should return to their original quarters at Massowa; and war was renewed. The Italians then sent 50,000 men from Italy, but their General would not wait for the supports, fearing to be superseded, and with 15,000 men gave battle, and has now been entirely destroyed. The Italians have lost 60 cannons and 10,000 men, all most probably killed, and are being swept into the sea. This is a righteous ending to their iniquities. It is enough to make one repent of ever having wasted sympathy on liberty, to see these Italians, hardly released from their Austrian bondage, counting it a glory for their mushroom kingdom of Italy to attack and enslave the oldest free people and kingdom in the world—for the Abyssinian monarchy dates from before the time of King Solomon—and there was not a voice in Europe to cry shame! All the English papers applauded. ‘The wiping out of the little kingdom of Abyssinia won’t make much difference,’ they said, ‘on the Stock Exchange.’ But for once Providence has answered ‘No.’ Crispi, the Italian minister, formerly a revolutionist, now a renegade tyrant, has fallen. He will be lucky if he does not get torn to pieces in the streets, and it will fare hard with the Italian monarchy. The Duke of Sermoneta, who was at Cairo amusing himself, has been sent for to Rome. He has always been an opponent of the Colonial policy, but he will be too late even if they make him minister.

“Next the Transvaal business has developed. Jameson and his band have been fêted in London, and old Kruger must, I think, be sorry he did not hang them. It would have been the best policy, for Englishmen are cowards in the face of hanging, and we should have had no more filibustering for at least a generation. Rhodes, too, has been to England, and seems to have squared the Opposition. The inquiry is to be put off, and, if possible, shirked, and I fancy Chamberlain has saved his bacon. It is more obvious, however, than ever that he was in with Rhodes and Jameson, though possibly they acted without his exact knowledge at the last moment. But the British public is easily gulled, and Chamberlain’s protestations of innocence have been swallowed even by the opposition papers and Sir William Harcourt. It is a base world and will not prosper—but it tries one’s patience to have to wait to see the end of it.

“T. P. Gill has been here twice this week. He has come here for his health and to pick up ideas about evacuation, and I have got him an audience of the Khedive. He saw Cromer on Thursday, who told him all the usual story about the wickedness of Abbas and his unfitness to reign. Gill’s impression is that he will try to get him deposed. Cromer also fancies the French will come to terms which will leave him, Cromer, still in power here, but this will not be. It seems, however, certain that negotiations are going on between the French and English governments relative to the evacuation. McDonnell has acknowledged the memorandum I sent to Lord Salisbury, who ‘thinks I will understand that he cannot write just now on the subject of it’—which is the case. At any rate Lord Salisbury has read it, and that is something.

“Gill was very interesting in his account of Parnell’s last days. He saw much of him in all the time, both before the divorce trial and during the party split which followed. It was he who carried on the negotiations with Dillon and O’Brien when they were at Paris, and he left the party when these failed. He tells me that Parnell had a complete case in defence against O’Shea, O’Shea having connived throughout and profited in a money way. The house at Eltham was really Parnell’s, and O’Shea went there to blackmail him. He showed his whole defence to Gill before the trial. But Mrs. O’Shea would not allow him to defend himself as she wanted a divorce so as to marry him. She was a woman quite unworthy of him, who neither sympathized with his politics nor at all appreciated the height of his position. Later again when Parnell would have agreed to retire for a while from the party, and was quite willing to make peace, she always stood in the way of it—and he used to come back from Brighton changed and uncompromising. Lastly his devotion to her and the worry of his public life was too much for him, and she really hastened his end by her exigencies. I asked him whether he committed suicide. But he was emphatic that it was not so. ‘Parnell,’ he said, ‘was the last man in the world to do it. He was a fighter to his last breath, and would not give in. It was the worry and the strain of fighting that ended him.’

“Evelyn has come and is staying with us.

“_12th March._—Evelyn and Gill have gone. The Armenian Blue Books are published. They show, as far as I can judge by the extracts given, that our Government has made a complete diplomatic fiasco. Philip seems to have had really nothing to go upon for his trust in Russian and French co-operation, and it has been exactly the old game of taking a threat to be as good as a blow, which Lord Granville was so fond of. Of course the whole truth is not given in the Blue Book. The reason for taking up the question in 1895, rather than at any other time was, I have no doubt, to make a diversion for the Egyptian question. It was probably the reason, too, why Lord Salisbury was so foolish as to continue his predecessor’s error. Nothing can excuse his having put the threat to Turkey into the Queen’s speech if he was not prepared to act up to it.

“_13th March._—The English papers have come, telling of the Italian defeat at Adowa, no trace in any of them of the smallest sympathy with the Abyssinians or of disapproval of the wanton invasion of their country. All sense of the rights of weaker nations is lost in Europe even among the best and most generous of nations.

“_14th March._—Mohammed Abdu was here to-day and tells me there is some prospect now of Arabi’s being allowed to return first to Cyprus, then to Egypt. Mustapha Fehmy, the Prime Minister, has spoken to him about it, and says that Lord Cromer is willing if the Khedive consents. If this is so the thing ought to be managed.

“_15th March._—Sheykh Saleh, the Sheykh of the _muhajjerin_, the refugees from Dongola, called to-day. He says that Kitchener has told him the Government intends to advance to Abu Hamad and Berber as soon as the railway is finished to Wady Halfa. This can hardly be, however, for several years. He assures me the people of Berber would be willing, and of Abu Hamad, but the Khalifa is still powerful. Berber he declares to be the key of the Soudan, as all roads converge there.

“_16th March._—It is announced that an advance is to be made immediately to Dongola by arrangement with the German and Austrian Governments, so as to make a diversion in favour of the Italians at Kassala. There is no doubt that troops have been forwarded up the river for some time past, as long ago as when we were on our way down from Keneh (a fortnight ago), but the final decision to advance must have been come to suddenly. Even now I can hardly believe it, it would be a most flagrant sacrifice of Egyptian for European interests, although there would probably be little resistance at Dongola; it must entail a re-opening of the war with the Soudan, and what has Italy done for Egypt to deserve Egyptian help?

“_20th March._—I wrote to the ‘Times’ in the sense of my first impression of the affair, but I find that the facts are even more damning to our government than I had supposed, and for once I have done Cromer an injustice. Anne saw Lady Cromer on Thursday and she complained bitterly to her of the thing having been decided by Lord Salisbury ‘over Lord Cromer’s head,’ who had strongly disapproved of it. Moreover, Mohammed Abdu, who was here yesterday, tells me that the Egyptian Ministry was also opposed, Mustapha Fehmy saying that they had no money, and that it was impossible. Even the Khedive, who was keen on an advance to Dongola two years ago, objected to fighting for Italy, though I hear from Hadji Mahmoud that His Highness is to start up the river the day after to-morrow. Hadji Mahmoud got the news from Ali Pasha Lalla, and the vice-regal camels have already been despatched by train to Girgeh. I am sorry he should intend this, as he will get into trouble if he has done it off his own bat, and if at the suggestion of Kitchener or Cromer they will turn it to his disadvantage. Mohammed Abdu, however, was to see him to-morrow, and I hope will give him good advice.

“I sit most of the day at Sheykh Obeyd’s tomb, watching the birds through a glass. There are half-a-dozen kinds nesting in the _sont_ bushes there: the Nubian shrike, a kind of blackcap with a black throat, the Palestine redstart, and two small warblers. There are also the thrush, the Egyptian dove, the crow, a pair of spotted cuckoos, a hoopoo, and a chat.

“_22nd March._—A large party of visitors. Lady Galloway, who has come back from a journey up the Nile, which she has made with Lady Jersey. Then the Potocki party, Joseph and his wife, Zamoyski and his wife, Prince Radziwill and two other Poles. We had tea at the tomb and showed off the horses.

“It is certain now that Cromer had nothing to do with the new Soudan campaign, the thing having been arranged between the Emperor of Germany and Frank Lascelles (this was the account given me by our Polish friends). The Emperor, I imagine, has promised to support our staying on in Egypt in return for the help given by us vicariously to his ally the King of Italy. I notice already an announcement that Germany does not intend to be otherwise than friendly to Japan, which is also probably part of the arrangement. It means in any case that we are to have a new lease of occupation here. About the advantage or disadvantage to Egypt nobody seems to have thought or cared. I have written to John Morley, giving him my view of what is going on, as I see he has brought the matter forward in Parliament. It was through him that we stopped the Soudan war eleven years ago.

“_24th March._—Sheykh Mohammed Abdu called to tell me what is going on at the palace. He sees the Khedive now twice a week, and leads the prayer on Fridays at Koubbah, omitting the Sultan’s name. He was with the Khedive some little time ago, and while he was there, a letter came from Lord Cromer, complaining of the Khedive’s having privately expressed disapproval of the Dongola campaign. The Khedive was very angry at this, and afterwards saw Lord Cromer, who repeated the complaint. The Khedive answered that upon this point he was in agreement with his Lordship, to which Lord Cromer did not dissent, but said that now that the thing was resolved on, it was necessary to put a good face on it, and hoped that the Khedive would speak in that sense to the soldiers. The Khedive has done so since. Lord Cromer, too, has brought him a message from Lord Salisbury, apologizing for an ‘error of form’ on the part of the English Government in ordering an advance on Dongola without first informing His Highness. Lord Salisbury explained that the advance was decided on ‘to satisfy Egyptian opinion.’ The Khedive narrated all this to Mohammed Abdu, and I have no doubt it is true.

“_25th March._—The English papers of the 17th and 18th came today. Lord Salisbury’s statement in the House of Lords is amazing. He has made no such deliberate misstatement of an important truth since the Congress of Berlin.

“A large party to spend the afternoon, brought over by Lady Galloway; Lord Yarborough, Benson, the author of ‘Dodo,’ and others. She brought with her Arthur Balfour’s speech and Lord Salisbury’s declaration.

“_26th March._—Sheykh Hassan Abu Towil called to tell me that the Government had assembled the Sheykhs of the tribes between Assouan and the Mediterranean Sea, to confer with them as to the raising of 7,000 horsemen for the Soudan war. Their answer so far has been that they have neither horses nor arms. He asked my advice. I advised him strongly to get out of the matter if he could, as the war will prove a bad business for Bedouins engaged in it. I doubted if one in five would return. He told me that in former wars the Bedouins had never been called to go out of their own district where they had acted as guards. It would be better to say at once the men were unwilling to go to a distance. He promised to bring Abu Shedid (head Sheykh of the Howeytat) with him to-morrow to consult.

“_27th March._—A letter from Lady Lytton. She tells me: ‘Rhodes knew about Jameson’s advance on the Transvaal, but certainly _not_ Chamberlain, though he may have encouraged Rhodes too much.’ Just so. It means that Chamberlain told Rhodes not to tell him the details, but gave him to understand that he would be pleased at the _fait accompli_. About the Soudan expedition she had great confidence in Lord Salisbury, though ‘one knows that what comes out in Parliament is all arranged.’

“_30th March._—Received a note from Abdin, granting me audience of the Khedive for to-day, so to-day I went there. He asked me first about our journey to Ghareb and Keneh, which interested him much, but we soon got to politics. He gave me a full account of what happened regarding the advance on Dongola. The question was begun soon after the battle of Adowa by the arrival in Egypt of our military attaché at Rome (Slade?), when a council was held,[16] consisting of Knollys, Kitchener, the attaché, and Cromer. At this they decided to send a force from Tokar to Kassala to take over that town from the Italians and garrison it with Egyptian troops—this with the consent of Italy, and Cromer telegraphed their decision to Lord Salisbury. The Egyptian Government were not consulted, only _informed_ of this, and gave consent. After this they knew nothing till, on the 13th March, Lord Cromer received a telegram from London, saying an immediate advance on Dongola had been ordered. Kitchener was in bed, and not at all expecting it. Neither he nor Cromer had recommended it; and, in fact, they disapproved. The next day was Beiram, and after the mosque, Mustapha Fehmy was informed of it by Cromer or Kitchener, I am not sure which, and it was not till 7.30 that the Khedive learnt it from Mustapha Fehmy. He refused his consent until a Council of Ministers had been called, especially because of a demand made that Suakim should be handed over to England. He disapproved of the expedition on account of the hot time of year and the suffering of the men and the increased cost of land transport at Low Nile, also because it was made in no Egyptian interest. At the Council Kitchener withdrew the demand for Suakim. When asked about it, he said that it was not in question. Consent was then formally given to the rest of plan. Cromer had since come to complain of his, Abbas’, having talked against the war, and had threatened to write against him in the Blue Books. Abbas had answered that he objected on account of the time of year and the cost, not in itself to the re-occupation of Dongola. ‘Oh,’ said Cromer, ‘in that I am with you, but you ought to be glad to help the King of Italy. He gave hospitality to your grandfather for many years at Naples.’ ‘Yes,’ answered Abbas, ‘and made him pay pretty heavily for it too.’ (Ismaïl lent a very large sum to the King, which I believe was never repaid.) Cromer asked the Khedive to write for publication an address to the Army approving the objects of the campaign; but Abbas declined, saying it was not necessary to talk politics to soldiers. He promised, however, to exhort them to obey orders and do their duty. This he has repeatedly done. I asked him whether Kitchener had recommended the Dongola campaign, and he said ‘No; he knew nothing of it till he woke up out of his bed.’ Also as to the Duke of Cambridge, whom I suspected of having arranged it, ‘No, he is an old man, too old to conceal anything, and as we had a deal of talk together I should have found out.’

“The Khedive also told me the detail of letters written to the Queen and to himself by King Mangasheh of Abyssinia, complaining, to the first, that he, being an old ally of England, England had nevertheless supplied arms to the Italians. Mangasheh is a son of King John, whom we put on the throne. His letter to the Egyptian Government was to propose joint action against the Khalifa, in order to recover his crown, which had been taken from him and carried away to Omdurman. In his letter to the Queen he asked England’s good offices with Italy for a peace. Both these letters were written before the battle of Adowa, and were conveyed to Cairo by a cousin of Mangasheh. They were translated at the Cairo War Office. The Queen’s answer was in general terms, hoping that peace would be made. The answer sent by Lord Cromer, in the name of the Egyptian Government, was a proposal that Mangasheh should advance on Omdurman, when they would together get back the crown, and Mangasheh should be recognized King of Abyssinia. Mangasheh, however, Abbas said, would never go against Menelik, as his father John had specially recommended him to recognize Menelik as Emperor. Mangasheh’s envoy went away dissatisfied, especially with the presents given him, which had been supplied by the Secret Service Fund of the Egyptian War Office, namely, a gold watch, a musical box, a red umbrella, and some dresses, which he told the Khedive he should be ashamed to deliver to the King, as they were the same as those worn by prostitutes in Abyssinia. They were chosen by Kitchener. The Khedive said it would be a good thing if I wrote an article in conformity with what he had told me; and I promised to do so, but without compromising him. In going away I asked him to allow Arabi to return to Egypt; and he questioned me about him, and I told him what an honest patriot he was, and that I would make myself answerable for his loyalty. He promised me that he would speak to Mustapha Fehmy about it, and I think he means it. He said: ‘What you tell me about him I must believe, for nobody who knows you can doubt that you are the best friend that Egypt has.’ And so we parted. I was again much struck with his great intelligence and power of expressing his thoughts.

“_3rd April._—I have been writing an article, ‘The Truth of the Dongola Adventure,’ for the ‘Nineteenth Century.’

“I see they have been pushing George Curzon with questions in the House of Commons about Cromer’s approval of the campaign—this I doubt not in consequence of a letter I wrote to Morley, telling him that Cromer had certainly not recommended it.

“_7th April._—Dawkins (the new financial adviser) was here to-day, and tells me that the half million sterling taken from the Caisse de la Dette has been spent already. The whole savings of Egypt will have been used up before the campaign seriously begins.

“Young Somerset and his bride, Lady Katherine, came on Saturday, a pleasing pair, who propose going to the Natron lakes on camels. I tried to dissuade her, as she has never yet been on a camel, and there was the chance of great heat so late in the year, but on Sunday, Easter night, there was a thunder shower, and the weather has become almost cold.

“_10th April._—Gorst and his sister came to luncheon. He, like Dawkins, evidently disapproves of the war. He says that it will end in England’s having to make the campaign at her own cost, as Egypt has neither the money nor the men. I am, however convinced that it will be put a stop to as soon as a convenient pretext occurs. There is a report that the Italians have evacuated Kassala. Also the Matabeles have risen and killed a number of the Chartered Company’s people, and are besieging Bulawayo. The Chartered Company have no troops, and English regiments will have to be sent to the Cape, and there will be none to spare for a Soudanese campaign. I wish the Matabeles all possible good fortune, and trust they may capture Rhodes, who is said to be on his way from Fort Salisbury to Bulawayo. The man, however, is too sly, I fancy, to be caught, or to run any personal risks, and a telegram to-day says he is laid up with a fever, and unable to move! The Dongola expedition, therefore, will, in my opinion, get very little farther than Akasheh. Gorst tells me it is true that Rhodes took away with him 200 negroes from Cairo. He says they ‘volunteered.’ But the grounds of his belief seem slight. ‘I inquired,’ he said, ‘whether they were going willingly, and was told that they were.’ He is much averse to the seizure of black men, as practised by the Sirdar Kitchener, for the Egyptian army, and told me confidentially that he had had the intention of putting a stop to it, as it is quite illegal. But the campaign had interfered with his project. There has been a general raid on all negroes in Egypt. They are seized and forced to serve in the army on very small pay—I think thirty piastres a month, twopence half-penny a day—and are there practically slaves for life—or rather for as long as they are able to serve—for when past work in the army, they are pitilessly cast adrift without pension or provision of any kind. Yet we English pretend that our mission in Africa is to put down slave-raiding and slavery. The English officers at Wady Halfa told me last autumn that it was as precisely slavery as any existing in the world.

“We are leaving for England on the 17th. I am glad to go, having been seven months away.

“_12th April._—Young Gordon (General Gordon’s nephew, Bill) is here with his wife. He confirms about the spending of the half million by Kitchener, but says the expedition is being done very cheaply. He has the ordering and arranging of the supplies, and says that the new equipments, saddles, arms, etc., have only cost £20,000. He, like Gorst and Dawkins, considers the Intelligence Department absurdly overrated and overpaid. Wingate and Slatin between them get £1,700 a year. Gordon has had some experience of the department, having been employed under it at Souakim, and he knows how the information brought in is cooked, and how the spies suit their news to the demand. I asked him about the negroes taken away by Rhodes. He thinks it likely that they were handed over by the agent of the Zanzibar Government (which had been recruiting in Egypt). He himself supplied Rhodes with uniforms for them out of the public stores ‘at a good price.’ He saw a great deal of Rhodes during the few days Rhodes was at Cairo.

“_15th April._—They are apparently at a deadlock on the frontier, the Finance Ministry being angry with Kitchener for spending all the money. It must eventually fall on the English exchequer, if persisted in. But I still hope Lord Salisbury will be satisfied with the demonstration and go no farther.

“_17th April._—We leave to-morrow morning for England. Mohammed Abdu was here yesterday with a young Turk of the Liberal party from Constantinople. He was employed till lately in the Ottoman bank. He seems not very hopeful of things on the Bosphorus, there being too many persons in high places interested in keeping the present system going. The army, though no better affected than the rest to the Sultan, is without any leader for a revolt, and as long as it can be paid it will do nothing. The civilian population has no power to move.

“Mohammed Abdu gave me particulars about the raid there has been made on the negroes in Egypt. Over 800 have been seized by the police for Kitchener and put into the army. In some of the provinces every black man of whatever age was taken and sent to Cairo, where the valid ones were retained, the rest turned adrift in the streets. Yet our Government talks of putting down the Slave Trade as one of its objects in this Soudanese war. There seems to be no doubt that the 200 negroes taken by Rhodes to South Africa were practically purchased from the Government of Zanzibar, which has ‘recruited’ them here. In the recent raid negroes holding respectable positions were seized, among them a son of the Khedive’s porter, the servant of El Abbasi, Sheykh of the Azhar, and a writer employed at £7 a month in the Native Courts at Cairo. These were rescued, but very many others were driven off.

“I spent my last day, a very lovely one, in the garden—the roses well in bloom, the nightingales singing, bee birds flying about, a roller sitting near the tomb, and in the evening a jackal. I lit two candles there for Sheykh Obeyd to get us a good passage home. We had our Mowled there on Monday. Old Sheykh Abderrahman Faki promises to say prayers for me in my absence, but expostulates that I do not go to his mosque. I prefer to recite my Fatha at the tomb.”

We reached London on the evening of the 24th, and slept there.

“_25th April._—Breakfasted with George Wyndham. We are to go together on a pilgrimage to Stratford in connection with a monograph he is writing on Shakespeare. He has the practical editorship now of the ‘New Review,’ and in Parliament is making a cave against Chamberlain, whom he agrees with me in considering as at the bottom of all the Government mischief. He says there is no doubt in the world that Chamberlain was in with Rhodes and Jameson in their attack on the Transvaal, and he is angry with him for having backed out of it, and ruined the plot at the last moment to save his own bacon. He has been seeing much of Jameson, whom he likes, and of the gang that have been running the Transvaal business, about a dozen of them, with Buckle, the ‘Times’ editor, and Miss Flora Shaw who, he told me confidentially, is really the prime mover in the whole thing, and who takes the lead in all their private meetings, a very clever middle-aged woman. George made, it appears, a good speech in the House ten days ago, attacking the Government on the line of their having disarmed the Outlanders, and left the Chartered Company defenceless. Chamberlain has since been making overtures to him of friendship, and has been walking about with him ostentatiously in the Lobby; but, seeing this did not stop George’s mouth, he has since shown animosity. I warned George that Chamberlain was a man who would do him a mischief if he could. George is very happy with all this busy work.

“My article will be out on the 1st duly corrected in the ‘Nineteenth Century,’ and George has asked me to write him another for his June number of the ‘New Review.’ I shall give him one on the Moallakát with my translation of Antar’s Ode.

“Old Alfred Montgomery is dead, and buried with a wreath from the Prince of Wales ‘to our dear friend.’ So he ought to sleep happy to the Judgment Day. He was quite the last of the old D’Orsay set in London, and remained a ‘man of fashion,’ dining out to the end, though he died actually away from London at Burley, with his daughter, Edith Finch.

“_28th April._—To London with Anne. Ralph came to luncheon in Mount Street, and I afterwards dined with him. He showed me the whole existing correspondence between Byron and Mrs. Leigh.

“_14th May._—I have been down, for the most part alone, at Newbuildings, enjoying a wonderful fortnight, the woods lovely in green and gold, nightingales singing night and day from every hedge, quite a dozen close to the house so that one can hear them at any hour of the night chorussing when one opens a window. I have finished my article on the ‘Poetry of the Ignorance,’ and am half way through another on the ‘Origin of the Arabian Horse,’ for the June and July numbers of the ‘New Review.’ George and I and Sibell, and one of the girls, are to go to Stratford on Saturday. I lunched to-day with them and young Rosslyn, a pleasant specimen of the golden youth of the day.

“Then to Hammersmith, where I found my poor old Morris looking very ill and aged, toddling feebly in front of his house. We went in together, and he brightened up, and told me of his maladies in a cheerful not too desponding way, and I stayed on an hour or more and had tea with him. My new tapestry, the Botticelli, is finished, and I am to go with Mrs. Morris on Saturday to see it in Oxford Street. Morris showed me the title-page of his Chaucer, which is about the finest thing he has done, the whole has been subscribed for, a matter of some £9,000.

“Gill, whom I saw in Mount Street, repeated to me more of what Cromer had told him about the Soudan. He asked Cromer whether he should be in favour of an advance to re-occupy the lost provinces. In reply to this Cromer had told him that some time or other the Soudan would have to be reconquered from the Khalifa, but the question was by whom. As for imposing such a task on Egypt he was most emphatic. ‘I should never think,’ he said, ‘of proposing that the poor fellahin in their blue shirts should be charged with it.’ This, it is as well to remember, was as late as the beginning of March, and within a week of the expedition being ordered from England.

“_15th May._—Had tea with Lady Lytton at her house in Sloane Street. She thinks it a pity I should have written what I have about the Dongola campaign, which has set people against me just as I was coming home. By ‘people,’ I suppose she means the Court, and I strongly suspect that Her Majesty has been the determining cause of the forward policy in Africa. Lady Lytton was at pains to persuade me that it was entirely Lord Salisbury, and that nobody else had been consulted about it.

“_16th May._—Lunched with George and Sibell, and found Madeline, his mother, there, looking fresh and well and younger than I have seen her for years, and came on with them in the afternoon to Stratford, where we now are. We have already been to the Church and the Grammar School. George is a capital companion for a visit of this kind, as he enjoys sightseeing, and besides knows all about Shakespeare, and has his theories about everything. We are at the Shakespeare Hotel, a pleasant inn of the old kind. We have spent the evening reading ‘Venus and Adonis’ and ‘Lucrece.’ I have always been a great admirer of these two pieces, which are the most elaborate and sustained of their kind, and splendidly rhetorical. I did most of the reading as George has a cold.

“_17th May._—A beautiful hot day which we spent driving round the country with a jibbing horse. We went to Charlcote and wandered about the park, and then to Mary Arden’s cottage, and to Anne Hathaway’s. Both cottages are interesting, and quite untouched and unrestored, the latter inhabited still by a descendant of the Hathaways. It is after all no such long way back to Shakespeare’s time, seven generations in my own family, and I think people largely exaggerate the changes that have taken place. Remote country villages can have hardly at all changed. In the evening I read them translations from the Moallakát, about which George is enthusiastic. My article for the ‘New Review’ has put him upon the track of discovery as to certain features of chivalry in the Middle Ages in Europe, a subject not yet properly traced to its origin in Arabia. We have had a thoroughly literary two days, to me of much profit.

“_18th May._—Mary joined us from Stanway with Miss Balfour, and we all went to see the church and the tomb, then back to London in the afternoon.

“_20th May._—Dined with Pamela, and then went to the Foreign Office party in honour of Her Majesty’s birthday, an immense crush, but as always a fine sight, and many people one knows.