EGYPT UNDER TEWFIK, 1889
The summer of 1889 saw me occupied almost exclusively with literary
work. It was then that I wrote my poem, “A New Pilgrimage,” which with
many other pieces of more or less the same date I published in the early
autumn. This brought me once more into pleasant relations with my
friends, even those who had been most angry with me for my doings in
Ireland. Chief among these was my cousin, George Wyndham, who already
the year before had sent me a pleasant word. “We have so many grounds,”
he wrote, “for friendship, our common love of sport and of poetry, and
especially our common blood, that I think it would be very foolish to
allow differences of politics and opinion to interfere with it in any
way. I sincerely hope that you think so too.” Now, on my return to
England in 1889, I found him full of affectionate endeavour to make
things pleasant for me on my re-emergence into social life. In this he
showed himself no idle friend. I had hardly arrived in London when he
arranged occasions of meeting for me at his house in Park Lane with our
mutual friends, and eventually one with Arthur Balfour, at which we
buried our political hatchet in mutual amiabilities, an attitude we have
ever since preserved as often as we have met. Another friend, equally
dear to me with George, whom I recovered at this time, was Lytton. He,
too, had written me an affectionate letter, regretting that he had
missed seeing me on my passage through Paris. As to my women friends, my
prison adventures, I soon found, had done me no real discredit with
them. The only one of them that had been seriously shocked at it was
Princess Wagram, who, not being English, had made herself more English
in the matter than were my own countrywomen, and now she, too, was
reconciled. With the rest the episode was a title to romantic interest,
which made it easy for me to resume my place and more than my place in
society. Their kindness did me full amends, and for the next few years
strewed my path with flowers to the extent that politics lost their hold
over my mind, more than perhaps they should have done. My daughter
Judith, too, now growing up, was a new interest of a very absorbing
kind, and my diary, when it is resumed, I find dealing mainly with home
occupations and the details of my private life.
Nor must I omit another influence which was an important one with me
that summer in the direction of weaning me from home politics, that of
an intimacy which I then for the first time enjoyed with William Morris.
I had already for some years known the Morrises, my first acquaintance
with them having been begun in 1883, when I met Mrs. Morris at Naworth,
having been invited specially for the purpose by Mrs. Howard (Lady
Carlisle), and had spent a week there in her company, and we had made
friends, but of Morris himself I had as yet seen little except
occasionally when I called on them in Hammersmith. This summer, however,
of 1889 saw me for the first time at Kelmscott Manor, where I had an
opportunity of intimate intercourse with him during the many pleasant
days of gudgeon fishing we enjoyed together on the Upper Thames and the
evenings when we argued the questions, artistic and political, which
occupied his mind.
Morris was at that time in a mood of reaction from his socialistic
fervour. He had quarrelled with Hyndman, and was disgusted at the
personal jealousies of his fellow-workers in the cause and at their
cowardice in action. He never got over the pusillanimity they had shown
at the Trafalgar Square meeting two years before, when a few hundred
policemen had dealt with thousands of them as though they had been
schoolboys. Morris was too loyal and too obstinate to abjure his creed,
but the heart of his devotion to the cause of the proletariat had gone.
In some ways our two positions were the same. We had both of us
sacrificed much socially to our principles, and our principles had
failed to justify themselves by results, and we were both driven back on
earlier loves, art, poetry, romance. Morris, with one who understood him
and dared to argue with him boldly, was a delightful companion. He was
intolerant of the conventional talk of society, and had little sympathy
with ideas foreign to his own. He had little patience with fools, and
the prettiest woman in the world could not seduce him into listening to
nonsense if there was nothing of fact behind it. His time was too
precious to waste on them; and the fine ladies who affected artistic
tastes in his company without real knowledge put him straightway to
flight. To such he was rude and repellent, but to anyone who could
increase his stock of knowledge on any subject he lent a willing ear,
whether artist or artisan, with absolute indifference as to his social
position. In his domestic life Morris was too busy to be unhappy, and of
too sanguine a temperament to worry himself much over past
disappointments; yet disappointments cannot but have been his. He had a
strong and affectionate heart, and had centred his home affections on
his two children, and the younger, May, had just made an engagement he
disapproved, while the elder, Jenny, who had been his pride as a child
for her intellectual faculties, had overworked her brain and was now
subject to epileptic fits. It was touching now at Kelmscott to watch
Morris’s solicitude for this poor girl on whom his chief home love was
bestowed.
Kelmscott Manor was a romantic house, and the life there extremely
primitive. There were few of the conveniences of modern life. The rooms
below and also on the upper floor were all passage rooms opening one
into another, and in order to reach the tapestried chamber in which we
sat in the evenings, it was necessary to pass to and fro through
Morris’s own bedroom, in which he lay at night in a great square
Elizabethan four-post bed, an arrangement which would have been of
extreme discomfort to anyone less tolerant of such things than he, and
less indifferent to his personal convenience. It was the same thing in
the day time. He worked at the designs he was making for his carpets,
and at his drawings, and the corrections of his proofs in a room where
he was liable every minute to disturbance. Such discomforts had been
submitted to by our forefathers, and why not, he thought, by us. It was
this insensitiveness to his surroundings that enabled him to deal with
the prodigious volume of work which he daily assigned himself, both
manual and intellectual.
Such was the house. Out of doors the river—an upper branch of the
Thames—was a constant attraction, and there Morris each afternoon took
complete holiday. He loved boating, as it reminded him of his Oxford
days, and he loved sitting hour after hour in a punt with rod and line,
capturing the local gudgeon, a sport requiring skill, on which he prided
himself, not without modest reason. In all matters concerning the river
he took a passionate and proprietary interest, cherishing a special
grudge against the Thames Conservancy, a body which interfered with
individual rights, and whose legitimate authority he denied. Against
these he constantly inveighed. He loved, too, in memory of Oxford, to
engage in wordy warfare with the bargees, and had a strong vocabulary of
abuse for them which he did not spare. When on the river he affected a
rough manner even with his fellows in the boat, and scorned to apologize
if accidents through his fault occurred, all which was in keeping with
his appearance, which was that of a Norwegian sea captain rather than a
poet, and of this he was proud. He was very dogmatic, with violent likes
and dislikes. He used to say that St. Peter’s was the ugliest building
in the world after St. Paul’s, and of these things he would discourse
when the fish were off their feed, for when they were biting he was too
absorbed in his catch to have a thought for anything else.
Of poetry he affected to have little knowledge, and of the work of those
he was averse to, he would pretend never to have read a word. I remember
that on one boating excursion in which we all took part, we were
compelled to take refuge from heavy rain in a little inn by the river
side, and that we found in it a book of poetical extracts which we
amused ourselves by reading, and that among the rest were those lines of
Byron, perhaps his best and quite his best known:
There was a sound of revelry by night.
This he declared to be rubbish, and that he had not a notion whom they
were by. Morris in these playful moods was very attractive, and of all
the great men I have been in close relations with, I reckon him
intellectually the strongest. He had an astonishingly firm grasp of
things, and an immensely wide range of knowledge. I never knew him
deceived by a false argument, and he was difficult to overcome in
discussion even on subjects his adversary knew the best. One thing only,
I think, he did not know, much as he had written about it, the love of
women, and that he never cared to discuss. My talks with him that summer
confirmed me in my resolution politically to retire into my shell, and I
think my resolution had a corresponding influence on him.
“_13th Oct._, 1889. _Paris._—I have left home once more for the winter,
and with a lighter heart than I have lately had. My last act before
leaving England was to write two letters severing the last links which
bound me to political life. One was to the Kidderminster electors
telling them that they must not depend on me to stand again for
Parliament, the other to T. P. O’Connor resigning my directorship of the
‘Star.’ I have intended this for more than a year, but have taken time
to reflect, and am sure now that the step is a wise one. As a matter of
principle I cannot go on pretending to believe in the Liberal Party,
with which I have not an idea in common, beyond Irish Home Rule. As a
matter of personal ambition, politics have nothing more to give me. I
will not be a parliamentary drudge, and I cannot aspire to lead a party.
“Of doing good in the world in any public way I also despair. I do not
see clearly in what direction good lies. I do not love civilised
humanity; and poor savage human nature seems a lost cause. I have done
what I could for it. I have, I think, saved Egypt from absorption by
Europe, and I have certainly, by stopping the Soudan war in 1885, put
back the clock of African conquest for a generation, perhaps for a
century. But the march of ‘Progress’ is irresistible in the end; and
every year the old-fashioned idea of the rights of uncivilised man dies
more completely out. Even in Ireland, the National cause is putting
itself in line with nineteenth century thought. The moonlighters and
cattle-houghers and rebels of all kinds are disappearing; and, instead,
we see Parnell manœuvring and deceiving in Parliament neither more nor
less than Gladstone himself, and declaring with Rosebery for Imperial
Federation! In all this I have no real lot or part. Ireland will
doubtless get something of what she wants, and she has all my good
wishes still. But Imperial Federation is not worth going to prison for a
second time nor even standing another contested election. I have done
enough—possibly too much—and am sick and weary of the machinery of
English public life.
“On the other hand stands the world of art and poetry. In this I can
still hope to accomplish something, and with an advantage of experience
not every poet has. I have a great deal to accomplish before old age
takes me and little time. My poems, my memoirs, my book of maxims (the
‘Wisdom of Merlyn),’ my book of the Arab horse. These are work enough
for all my remaining strength. Then, how delightful life is in perfect
liberty! Never have I felt more capable of enjoyment, of the pleasures
of friendship, of the casual incidents of romance, of the continuous
happiness of life at home. These harmonize with a literary, not with a
political ambition, and so it is best it should be. Am I not right?”
The three weeks that I spent at Paris on this occasion were delightful
ones passed all in this mood. I found Lytton at the Embassy, and our old
intimate intercourse was renewed. He, older than me by nine years, was
already entering that valley of the shadow of old age from which he was
never to emerge, and which ended in his death two years later. It was
that in which his last volume of verse was written, and he made me the
confidant of his sorrows, but this is not the place in which to give
them more publicity than the volume itself gave them when it was
published after his death. They served to accentuate my own mood of
aversion from public affairs, and I spent most of my time with him at
the Embassy, the same well-known house and garden where I had spent so
much of my early youth officially as a member of it in the days of Lord
Cowley and the Second Empire. I paid a visit, too, to the Wagrams at
Gros Bois, where I mixed again in French society. The château was at
that time undergoing repair of a substantial kind, an experience it had
not had since 1830, and my hosts were living in the _dépendance_, an
interesting suite of little rooms once the abode of Marshal Berthier’s
aides-de-camp, and possessed of a certain historic charm, with their
Empire furniture and decorations. We shot each day in the great woods.
“Gros Bois, Wagram tells me, has been an oak wood ever since the time of
the Druids. It was a royal domain, and had been given over and over
again to different favourites of the kings of France. The last instance
was when it was bestowed by Napoleon on the Prince’s grandfather, as the
inscription over the door records, his ‘companion in arms.’ The estate
is of about 4,000 hectares, of which fully half are woodlands, 1,200
being inside the park wall, an ancient enclosure dating from 1650. I
never saw so completely isolated a place, nor one quite so enjoyable.
The woods are laid out formally (as French woods are) with straight
rides or rather drives of grass cut through them, and though there is no
old timber, all having been levelled with the ground in 1814, the oak
trees grown up again from the stub are very beautiful, and the place is
full of woodpeckers, jays, and magpies, besides game. There is a stone
recording the death of the late Prince’s first roebuck: _Ici mon fils a
tué son premier chevreuil_, with the date 1826. This was Wagram’s
father, who went on till 1888, killing something every day in season and
out of season, partridges on their nests if he could find no other,
dogs, and sometimes beaters. All is recorded in a book; and he might
have been the original of Carlyle’s Baron: _qui centum mille perdices
plumbo confecit et statim in stercore convertit_. (I am not sure of the
Latinity.) He died at the beginning of last year, being about eighty
years old, but shooting on to the last week of his life.
“I have received a nice letter from Kidderminster in answer to mine, and
the ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ announces my retirement publicly from political
life. The Princess is triumphant at this retirement, as she was always
opposed to my politics.”
All this was very demoralizing from a public point of view. On the 25th
I was joined by my family at Paris, and on the 2nd November we moved on
to Rome and Egypt. At Rome, where we spent a month, I found myself once
more within the sphere of the serious life of two years before, having
many friends among the Irish clergy, who formed so strong an element at
the Vatican, and I find many entries in my diary connected with Irish
politics, some of which are worth transcribing here.
“_4th Nov._—To see Monsignore Stonor, who has inherited much of Cardinal
Howard’s position, being a sort of diplomatic go-between with the Papal
court as well as having been made an archbishop. He tells me that
Lintorn Simmons is coming here on an official mission to the Vatican.
When he, Stonor, saw Lord Salisbury in London this summer, Lord
Salisbury told him that diplomatic relations would have to be
established with the Pope, but that there was such fear of opposition
from the Nonconformists that it would have to be done cautiously.
Rosebery had told him much the same thing. Now the pretext is a
settlement of ecclesiastical disputes at Malta. This, Stonor says, is a
pretext only, as the disputes were settled some time ago through
himself. He also told me what happened between the Pope and the German
Emperor. There was no rudeness intended by the Emperor nor offence taken
by the Pope. An arrangement had been come to between the Emperor and
Prince Henry, that Prince Henry and Herbert Bismarck should come to the
Vatican half an hour after the Emperor, but owing to the slow pace of
the Emperor’s carriages Prince Henry arrived too soon by ten minutes.
Herbert Bismarck thereupon made a scene, declaring that he and Prince
Henry would leave the Vatican if not at once announced. They were
consequently announced, although the Pope had given orders that he and
the Emperor should be undisturbed for half an hour, ten minutes before
the time, but the Emperor told them to wait. Stonor assures me that this
was all. It has, however, I fancy been agreed to hush up whatever
happened, and the Emperor has made whatever amends was required.
“_5th Nov._—Made a round of visits with Stonor, among others to the
Embassy. The Dufferins arrived last night, but we did not see them. With
Dering [the first Secretary], however, we had some talk. Simmons is to
arrive next week and with him as secretary, Ross of Bladensburg. This
will make a storm in Ireland, where Ross is known to have had much to do
with the Papal Rescript against the Plan of Campaign. [See my ‘Land War
in Ireland.’]
“_6th Nov._—We breakfasted at the Palazzo Caetani, and went on in the
afternoon in a storm of thunder and lightning with the Duke and Duchess
[of Sermoneta] and their daughter Giovanella to Fogliano. Fogliano,
however, we were not destined to reach, for the rain was quite
equatorial, and we stopped for the night at Cisterna, where the Duke has
a half-deserted palace, and there we are camped. The floods on the
Campagna were beyond belief, torrents of red water pouring over the
edges of the railway cuttings, and in some places the train having to
drive its way against a strong and deep current. Every water course was
a raging flood and broad streams were forming themselves rapidly in the
fields and still broader lakes. At Villetri we left the train and took
carriage, but stopped here as it was thought dangerous to go farther. I
never in Europe saw such continuous lightning or such rain over so long
a space of time. It has been like the breaking of the monsoon in India.
The torrent in one of the valleys gave one an idea of what the world may
have been in the tropic age when the great valleys were first formed.
“This palace here at Cisterna has many remains of grandeur, fresco
paintings by Zucchero, and fine marble chimney-pieces. The weather, too,
in spite of the rain is warm, and we are lodged comfortably enough. We
play dominoes in the evening on an old fire screen propped on two chairs
to serve as table.”
We went on next morning with the first light to Fogliano, just in time
to get across the Pontine Marshes, for the floods were rising and in one
place had already covered the road. Here we spent four days in this the
most delightful country place in Italy. I have already described
Fogliano in one of my previous volumes and need not repeat it here. We
occupied our time pleasantly enough duck shooting on the lagoons, which
lie between the great oak forest and the sea, in the early mornings, and
riding in the afternoons to visit the Duchess’s stud, which she has
established very successfully here, and for which she had bought a
couple of Arab stallions a year or two ago. The Duke much busied with
public affairs, and the municipal elections now going on at Rome. He was
on the committee of selection, and after much telephoning to and from
headquarters ended by sending in his resignation. This was an early
stage of his public career which led him later to the mayoralty of Rome,
and later still to office in the Government. “The Duke,” I write, 9th
November, after much talk on these subjects, “is certainly a most
distinguished man, not a man of genius but of very superior talents. He
has read enormously, philosophy, science, history, and can talk well on
most subjects. He is president of the Italian Geographical Society and
the Italian Alpine Club, an honest man in public affairs, but
disenchanted with knowledge and doubtful of the ends of life like all
the rest of us. ‘Neither the moral law nor the law of beauty,’ he says,
‘can be found in nature, and without these the world must be lacking in
interest.’ He is not religious, but supports religion as being the
reason of these two ideas, at least so I gather from what he has told
me.”
It was in accordance with this view of religion, and out of politeness
to us, that on Sunday the 10th it was arranged that mass should be said
in a little movable hut on wheels like a bathing machine, evidently a
new experiment, a talked-of chapel not being finished or apparently
likely to be. “The Duke is clearly a latitudinarian though he attended
mass, and the Duchess enjoys life too much to be very _dévote_. There
were some thirty servants and peasant neighbours brought in and a
sprinkling of dogs to make up the congregation, which was all out of
doors in front of the house, the celebrant a mass priest brought in from
a distance. Altogether a quaint admixture of mediæval simplicity with a
nineteenth century lack of faith, but it is not for me to criticize.” On
our return to Rome the same afternoon, 10th November, I found letters
and newspapers with news from Egypt. “The Stanley expedition has come to
grief in Africa, and Wadelai was really captured by the Mahadists just
as Osman Digna declared it to be more than a year ago. Stanley and Emin
are now reported to be together endeavouring to get to the coast, but an
end will have been put to their filibustering projects of re-conquest on
the Upper Nile. The German, Peters, too, has been knocked on the head by
the Somalis, and Islam triumphs all along the equatorial line. The
German Emperor, meanwhile, is at Constantinople being fêted with all
honour by Abdul Hamid.”
The news inspired me with a fresh longing for the East, where my true
heart lay, and hastened our departure for Egypt, the rest of our time at
Rome being spent partly, as I have said, with my old friends the Irish
priests in the various colleges and monasteries, partly with new
artistic acquaintances, of whom there are so many resident in the
ancient city. But I must not linger over these personal recollections,
interesting as they are to me, for they would take up too much space.
All I need notice is that, calling again at the Embassy, I found Lord
Dufferin, to my pleasure, favourable to the pleading I made that he
should help if possible in any decision there might be in the direction
of re-establishing that free government at Cairo he had promised the
Egyptians in 1883, and recalling Arabi. On my last day at Rome I
attended a dinner at the Irish college, where I met the Maronite
Archbishop of Damascus, and where good old Dr. Kirby, rector of the
College, proposed my unworthy health, and where I was constrained to
speak at length to the students on the prospects of Home Rule. It was my
last public utterance about Ireland. On the morning of the 4th we left
for Naples, and there took ship for Alexandria, and by the 12th found
ourselves once more at Sheykh Obeyd, where we spent the rest of the
winter in the purely Oriental surroundings I have more than once
described.
On the occasion of this second visit to Egypt of 1889-90 I adopted a new
attitude towards the British occupation and Baring, who represented it
at Cairo as Consul-General and British Resident. When I had been there
the previous year I had avoided all intercourse with the Anglo-official
world, but now, on my return, influenced by the conversation I had had
with Dufferin at Rome and thinking that I might perhaps thus help on the
re-establishment of a more liberal _régime_ at Cairo, I took occasion of
an informal message sent me that he would be glad to see me to call on
Baring, and from that time remained in friendly relations with the
Residency, which were not without their advantage in a public way. In
business matters I found Sir Evelyn a pleasant man to deal with. He was
quick to understand a case, and straightforward in his replies, willing
always to listen to arguments, however opposed to his own opinions, and
with nothing of the conventional insincerities of diplomacy. It is to
this, no doubt, that he owed his success in converting to his view the
many English Radical M.P.’s who, arriving at Cairo with the idea of
hastening on the evacuation, left it persuaded that the proposal was
impossible or at least premature, and that the Occupation must be
maintained.
“_12th Jan._—Yesterday I called by appointment on Sir Evelyn Baring. I
had not done so since our meeting in 1883, but it came about in this
wise. When Prince Wagram (he had followed us to Egypt at the end of the
year) was here a fortnight ago he gave me a kind of informal message
from Baring to the effect that he would be pleased if I came to see him.
At the time I was not quite sure how to respond to this, and I delayed
taking any action, but last Sunday I received a visit from Mohammed el
Moelhi, who gave me news of how things were going politically. He
assured me that people were becoming more reconciled to the state of
affairs, that Riaz was allowing rather more personal liberty, and that
Tewfik had retired altogether from political action. Nearly all the
exiles had been allowed to return, and Mohammed Abdu had been appointed
judge at Benha. Under the circumstances he strongly advised me in
Arabi’s interest to respond to Baring’s advance. He said it would
increase my opportunities of influence, for now people were afraid to
come to me for fear of Baring’s displeasure. He did not think that Riaz
was hostile, though the Khedive doubtless was. The Khedive, however, was
malleable, and if he saw that Baring was friends with me he would think
it safest to follow suit. I believed this to be sound advice, and I
consequently wrote a note to Baring saying that I had received this
informal message from Wagram and asking when I could see him. He replied
very politely and so my visit was arranged.
“I found Baring at two in his study, and stayed with him for about half
an hour. People say that he is stiff and ill-mannered. I did not find
him so. On the contrary he was courteous and kindly. We spoke pretty
frankly about things. I said I had not called before because I was not
sure whether he would wish to see me. He replied that the only thing he
had thought unfair in our political quarrel was Randolph Churchill’s
having accused him in the House of Commons of having attacked me through
my property in Egypt; he had not been there to answer him, and he
thought it unfair; as a fact he had entirely forgotten the existence of
my property, and he certainly had had nothing to do with the proceedings
taken against me concerning it. I answered that to the best of my
recollection I had never supposed him to have intervened personally in
the affair, and that it was doubtless the Khedive’s doing. Randolph had,
moreover, exceeded my instructions in pushing the case as far as he had
done. We did not discuss this long. I told him the Khedive had had me
spied upon, and he said it was natural his Highness should not be very
friendly to me, and should want to know what I was doing in Egypt, but
the Khedive had not spoken to him about me for a long while.
“We then went on to the state of the country, and I told him I thought
things were going better now he had got rid of Nubar and was working
with a Mohammedan Ministry. He said the Nubar Ministry was a mistake,
but the difficulty is to get Mohammedans who are capable of the work.
They are either of the old-fashioned sort who will hear of no
improvement, or else young fellows who take some modern European plan,
and wish to pitchfork it into Egypt whether it is suitable or not. I
said that as to that it was just Arabi’s merit that he stood between
these two extremes. Arabi knew nothing of Europe, but wanted to improve
on Oriental lines. I mentioned that I had heard Mohammed Abdu had
returned and received an appointment, and he gave the Sheykh a high
character, and said that nearly all the exiles were now recalled. I told
him that I hoped the amnesty would be general and would include Arabi
and the other exiles who are in Ceylon. To this he demurred, and said
that Arabi, having made an unsuccessful revolution had to pay the
penalty, ‘not, however,’ he added, ‘that I have ever accepted the theory
that his was a _military_ revolt, but it was unsuccessful.’ ‘On the
contrary,’ I said, ‘it was altogether successful, except for the British
Army.’ ‘That,’ he said, ‘was one of the elements he should have reckoned
with’; and I ‘a British army of 20,000 men is too strong an element for
any Oriental calculation.’
“He then went on to talk of practical improvements and said he was
pleased that I had recognized these, but it would be necessary for many
years to come to have some European guidance, and he believed English
guidance to be better than French or any other. Lastly, we discussed
agricultural methods and a school of agriculture which was being
founded, and agreed that schools of this sort were a doubtful benefit.
[_N.B._—The school in question which had been started under a Scotchman
proved a comical failure, the professors after several years of
experiments having had to call in their fellah neighbours to show them
how crops could be grown successfully.] We parted on cordial terms, and
he invited Anne and me to luncheon for to-day. I declined as I do not
wish to go into town again, but I accepted for Anne, and so she and
Judith are to go in there this morning. I trust this may all be for the
best.
“I have been reading Gordon’s ‘Letters to his Sister,’ and find them
very consoling in their resignation to Providence; his doctrine is
entirely Mohammedan.”
This extract has its importance as showing in connection with other
extracts of a later date that the difficulty about recalling Arabi,
which was the essential condition of any true intention of restoring the
National Party in Egypt, resided not in the Khedive only but in Lord
Cromer. The following, too, will have its interest as indicating perhaps
the point of departure taken by him so markedly at a later date in
Arabian affairs.
“_20th Feb._—Sháhir Ibn Nassár, son of the chief Sheykh of the Dhaheri
Harb tribe of Hedjaz came to Sheykh Obeyd on the 25th of January with
his cousin Seyid and a friend, Ali, from Mecca. Sháhir is a pleasing
young man and we invited him to stay with us, and he has been ever since
at Sheykh Obeyd. He came to Cairo to claim a debt of £350 due to his
tribe for the hire of camels supplied to the Haj last year, and was very
angry because Riaz and the Khedive had refused to see him
notwithstanding his having brought letters, also the money had been
refused him, and the Khedive had refused his gift of a delul. After
waiting in ante-rooms all this month he made up his mind to go back to
his people, who have it in their power to block the pilgrim road, or at
least to make things very uncomfortable for the pilgrims, but I proposed
to him as a last resource to see Baring. This he did on Tuesday, I
having spoken about him the day before to Baring when I lunched at the
Residency. Baring received him, by Zeyd’s account who went with him,
with all honour and sent at once for Riaz and told him Sháhir was under
his protection, and he must see justice done. Riaz then went to the
Khedive, who already knew of Sháhir’s being with me, and they sent
Thábit Pasha to Sháhir and another Pasha Abderrahman, and all together
went to the Emir el Haj and gave him a wigging and made him acknowledge
the debt. Sháhir is to have his money in a few days, and is, of course,
highly delighted. He has given me the delul, which is rather a white
elephant as I shall have to give him a present in exchange.”
This Sháhir was a most interesting man, being a quite wild Bedouin, and
his father, the chief Sheykh of the most important tribe between Mecca
and Medina, the hereditary occupants of the mountain passes through
which the pilgrimage yearly has to pass. From very early times they have
been subsidized by the Caliphs and Sultans who have been responsible for
the safe conduct of the pilgrims to grant a free passage, but of late
years the subsidy had remained unpaid through the dishonesty of the
agents entrusted with its delivery, a neglect which brought about much
trouble, and occasionally loss of life, through the hostility of the
tribe. Sháhir had had little dealing with civilization, even that of
Mecca, and found himself more at home with us than at Cairo, sharing
Zeyd’s tent on the desert edge outside our garden wall. He was a
wonderful camel-rider, performing strange feats of agility with his
delul, but was unable to ride a horse, for the Harb are not horse
owners, at least not that section of the tribe which inhabits the
Hedjaz. When he left us to return to his home by sea from Suez, his
delul, an Udeyhah, remained with me, I giving him in exchange £50, a
very full price, for the expense of his journey.
Another matter which I took up that winter with Lord Cromer was one that
lay at the root of all sound progress in Egypt, as it does wherever a
Mohammedan population finds itself subjected to a Christian government,
that of its demoralization by drink. I am no fanatic on the question of
drink in Europe, where the use of wine and strong drinks stands in no
direct opposition, except by its abuse, to morals. But in Mohammedan
lands the case is entirely different. There the abstention from wine is
a fundamental principle of the moral code, and those who transgress on
this point become reprobate in their own eyes, and lose all sense of
decency and decorum. This was beginning to show itself markedly in Egypt
as a consequence of the establishment of English rule. It had been
against the spread of drink as much as anything that the revolution of
1881 had acquired its moral strength in public opinion and, with the
suppression of the Nationalists after Tel-el-Kebir, and the
reinstatement of European control, the evil had returned in double
force. It is hardly too much to say that we had intervened in Egypt to
reinstate the Greek drink sellers, who combined it with moneylending in
the villages of the Delta. The country district where I had my home was
a good instance of how the evil worked. The villages in our immediate
neighbourhood at Sheykh Obeyd were inhabited entirely by Mohammedans; in
the whole of them there were not half-a-dozen Copts or Christians of any
sect and there was no demand whatever for drink in any of them. On my
return there, however, in this year I found that a small local railway
had been opened, joining these with Cairo, and that at each station on
the line as the first sign of the coming civilization a drink shop had
been established, kept by a Greek moneylender in the interest of his
financial business. It was calculated that if the fellahin could be
tempted inside his doors to taste the forbidden liquor the rest of his
morality would soon give way, and with it his independence of borrowing.
Against this coming evil the respectable heads of the villages were
doing their best to make opposition, and one morning they called on me
to advise what they should do. I advised them to make formal protest to
the Government, and offered if they should fail in obtaining a
favourable answer, to plead their cause with Baring, who alone had it in
his power to put pressure not so much on the Khedivial officials as on
the Greek Consulate. The Greek drink-sellers were most of them Hellenic
subjects, and as such protected by the international agreements known as
the Capitulations against interference in their trade by the Khedivial
police, and the privileges thus enjoyed by them had been re-established
in full force with the overthrow of the National Government, and it
rested with Baring, who exercised all real power, to decide to what
extent the privileges should be permitted to go. The whole question of
the drink shops might, if he was willing, be treated as a police matter
to be dealt with as a common nuisance, and it would not have been
possible for the Greek Consul-General to make a serious question of it
if Baring should insist. The secret reason, however, of the protection
extended to them at the Consulate was, that they bought their immunity
there in part with cash paid down, in part with threats of complaints
laid against the Consul-General at Athens, a form of black-mailing much
in vogue amongst the Greeks.
“_25th March._—Saw Sir Evelyn Baring on the drink question, especially
with regard to our being threatened here at Sheykh Obeyd. I told him of
the deputation which had come to me from Merj and Kafr el Shórafa (in
protest against the drink shops being open in those villages in
connection with the new railway), and he expressed his general sympathy
and desire to help in stopping the spread of drink in Egypt, but said it
was a large question, and a question of law; he would see Riaz (the
Prime Minister), and find out how the law was; Riaz was very hostile to
the Greeks, and so would be likely to do what he could. He would let me
know the result, and then, if there was a possibility, the inhabitants
of Merj and the other villages should protest, and he would do all in
his power to help them.
“_6th April._—Called again on Baring to show him the petition against
the drink shops. It had been signed by seventy-three of the principal
Sheykhs and notables of Merj, Kafr el Jamus, Kafr el Shórafa, and Birket
el Haj, also by Salaam Abu Shedid and Hassan Abu Tawil, Sheykhs from the
Howeytat and Aiaidéh tribes. He seemed pleased with it, and I left him a
translation, and we discussed the question together and with Tigrane
Pasha, who had come in and whom Baring sent off at once with the
original to Riaz. Tigrane [he was the Armenian Under-Secretary for
Foreign Affairs] declared that the case could be dealt with without
infringing upon National rights. I argued strongly against its being
treated fiscally, but rather as a matter of police and public morals. In
this Tigrane agreed with me, and Baring said he would do all in his
power to stop the spread of the drink shops, if according to the ruling
of the International Courts, and if not, he would submit a modification
of the law to the Powers. We discussed also several other cases,
especially that of the Government salt tax, an imposition which pressed
hardly upon the people, and that of certain Bedouins imprisoned at
Ghizeh. He showed himself anxious to intervene in all these matters,
sent for the persons responsible, and promised to see into the cases. A
good morning’s work.”
The above will give some idea of the practical way in which Lord Cromer
did the work of administration at Cairo, and of the kind of questions I
was able to bring before him. That he had the reformation of abuses at
that date, 1890, the period of his first and best practical energies,
much at heart, is certain, nor did I then suspect him of working, as he
did so flagrantly later, less for the good of Egypt than in English
political and financial interests. It is, however, necessary to remark
that, in spite of his promises of assistance and the undoubted good
faith of Riaz Pasha on the drink question, nothing at all was ever done
to protect these villages from the Greek intruders, who ply their trade
in them unchecked to the present day. Their case was as strong a one as
could well have been brought forward, for it was one where the demand
for alcohol needed to be created in the midst of a totally abstaining
population, and it worked the ill results we foresaw. The drink shops
were put under regulations good enough in their way, but the sale was
not suppressed, and like many another regulation in Egypt where no
advantage of revenue was concerned, they were not insisted on; energy in
introducing them, however sincere at the outset, soon slackened, and the
regulations became a dead letter.
I will add to this, because they are amusing, a couple of extracts from
my diary, conversations I put down in it, with Zeyd, my Bedouin horse
master, of the Muteyr tribe in Nejd, as I was riding with him on two
occasions on the desert edge in the evening that winter. They have an
interest worth preserving, as they show the way the Arabs of Arabia
think in contrast to the Egyptian fellahin whom they come in contact
with during their visits to Cairo, a contrast which has a significance
in view of the political developments we have witnessed in these last
years.
“_Zeyd._ The fellahin are a timid folk, if they see a cat cross their
path after dark they think it an _afrit_, they believe in all manner of
foolish things.
“_I._ What then? Are there no _afrits_ in Nejd?
“_Zeyd._ Wallah! The belief in _afrits_ is foolishness. There are no
_afrits_, neither in Nejd nor here. But the fellahin have no heart. They
are without blood. They are afraid.
“_I._ You are a philosopher. Do all in Nejd think like you?
“_Zeyd._ The men of Nejd have brave hearts. They are used to being
alone. They journey alone through the desert, ten days, twenty days,
forty days perhaps. They know nothing of _afrits_. There is none other
but God.
“_I._ Truly none. But do they see nothing?
“_Zeyd._ They fear nothing. There is of course Shaitan, who sometimes
appears to them in the likeness of a goat or a cow. But they are not
afraid. He does not harm them.
“_I._ And do they speak to him?
“_Zeyd._ Shaitan will sometimes journey with them in disguise. There was
once a man of Bereydah who was riding his delul alone in a storm. There
was lightning amid the darkness. He heard a voice in front of him asking
what he was doing there in such tempestuous weather, and if he was not
afraid. A flash revealed to him the figure of a sheep set on the neck of
his camel. It was Shaitan, who was speaking to frighten the man. The
man, however, put out his hand and caught the sheep by the fleece,
saying, ‘I know you are a sheep by your wool.’ But Shaitan answered,
‘And you. I know you are a sheep by your wits!’ and he slid down the
camel’s neck to the ground and disappeared.
“_I._ Yet you do not believe in _afrits_.
“_Zeyd._ No. That is a vulgar superstition.
* * * *
“_I._ What is this to the right of us? A tomb?
“_Zeyd._ Ay, verily. The tomb of a saint. The fellahin have a hundred
thousand saints. They are a credulous people. They kill sheep for Abu
Seriyeh still, though he has been dead a thousand years.
“_I._ And we, too, killed a sheep when we went on the pilgrimage to Abu
Seriyeh three years ago.
“_Zeyd._ Yes, to bring a blessing on your camels. And one of your camels
died within the year. How can a Sheykh, a holy man who has been dead so
long, help any one, beast or man?
“_I._ This, too, is philosophy.
“_Zeyd._ No. It is truth. An uncle or a grandfather, I can understand
that one should give them a sheep, but not to Abu Seriyeh. This land is
full of the tombs of holy men. The fellahin are a credulous people.
* * * *
“_Zeyd._ This road from Kafr el Shórafa to the bridge, how often I used
to think of it when I was journeying from Syria with the Seglawi horse,
the grey Seglawi, and the Jilfa mare. I used to ask of God that he would
grant me this, that I might ride along the sand just here with them in
safety. And see, I arrived with them and rode along this very road.
“_I._ Thank God.
“_Zeyd._ Yes, thank God. There is no word it does one more good to say
than this, ‘thank God,’ when a danger is past. _El hamdu l’Illah; el
hamdul l’Illah!_”
* * * *
Another conversation of nearly the same date has the additional interest
that it concerns a mission I had sent him on the year before, to
purchase a stallion for me from the Anazeh in Northern Arabia.
“_Zeyd._ I will tell you how I bought the Seglawi [this was the stallion
‘Azrek,’ see General Stud Book]. I did not, of course, tell them the
truth, that I was the servant of the Bey (meaning me). There is no shame
in this. It is policy (_siasa_). I am a master of policy. I made a
deceit. I said to them that I was of the Agheylat, looking for horses
for India, horses from the north and tall ones, for those are the horses
that bring most price in India. What did I want with the pure bred? I
wanted to make money. And so I went to the Sebáa. I alighted at Ibn ed
Derri’s tent, as it were by accident. But I made a mistake. It was not
the tent of Mishlab Ibn ed Derri, but of his brother Fulan (the name
_Fulan_ is used as we say So-and-So). There are four brothers. Fulan and
Fulan and Fulan and Mishlab. Mishlab was the owner of the Seglawi. I
stayed there for three days, without speaking of the Seglawi. The horse
was at pasture and I did not see him. On the fourth day came Mishlab to
breakfast with his brother, and they killed a lamb—and behold the
Seglawi was with him—he did not bring him to sell, but, as the custom is
with strangers, that I might see him. He stood tethered outside the
tent, but I did not even turn his way. Only lifting up my eyes
stealthily, I saw him, and the sight of his forehead and of his eyes
gave me joy. For you know the Seglawi’s face is of those which, if a
man, a sorrowful man, sees, he needs must rejoice. Only it made my heart
beat terribly, and I said to myself, ‘Zeyd must never more return to the
Bey—he must die—if he do not obtain that horse.’ Then, after we had
eaten, I arose as one who wishes to go outside for a private purpose;
and I walked past the Seglawi with my face to the ground as though I did
not see him, and hardly putting one foot before the other, like a thief.
And when I returned Mishlab was alone with his son Sakr in the tent, and
we talked of the buying of horses. And I told them of my desire of tall
horses for the Indian market.
“And after a while I said to the father that I had something that I
should wish to speak to him of in private—for I knew that his son would
not consent to the sale, seeing that it was he who received the money of
the Arabs when their mares were served, and I knew, too, that the father
was displeased at this. All that is customary is that those who bring
mares should also bring flour for the stallion, and it may be a _kiswah_
(a complimentary robe), but not money. But Sakr had taken money, to his
father’s displeasure. So I said to the young man, when we had gone
outside, ‘O Salameh, stay you here on one side, for I have something to
speak of with your father. And you may watch us, and, if you see me
strike your father, then come to his assistance, but if I do not raise
my hand to him, then wait till we have finished, for it is not necessary
you should hear.’ And to my friend who was with me, I told him to take
his spear, and sent him on another errand to fetch my dromedary.
“Then when we were alone, I said to Mishlab: ‘O Mishlab, it is time I
went on my business, for I am engaged in the purchase of horses. But
before I go I would see your horse. I cannot buy him, for I am looking
only for horses from the North at a low price, but yours, the Seglawi,
would I see. For I am of the Muteyr and you are of the Sebáa, and I am a
master of fortune (_sáhib el bukht_), and you are a master of fortune,
and it would be a shame that I did not name a price or put a value on
him, for otherwise, you might think that I did not know his worth.’ And
Mishlab said, ‘So be it.’ And I named £100, as if it were a great price.
And when I had named it, I saw that Mishlab put his hand under his
kefiyeh to scratch his head and stroke his beard. And at last he spoke:
‘Nay, it would be a sin.’ And I pressed him, for I saw by his manner
that he was in doubt, and I could hardly believe in my fortune that
there should be a hope of his consenting. And again my heart beat so
that you might hear it. And at last I said, as if rising to go, ‘There
shall be another ten added to the hundred.’ And I gave him my hand, and
he gave me his hand. And I said, ‘O Mishlab, listen. The Seglawi is the
Seglawi, and the men of the tribe send their mares to you on his
account. But he is but flesh and blood, and a shot might destroy him,
and then where would be the £110?’ And he said, ‘If it were not for my
son’s ill doing, I would not do it. And I do not want money, for God has
blessed me with many camels and I have all I need. But I fear that Sakr
will bring disgrace on me, for he takes money for the mares, which thing
is forbidden; and I fear lest my good fortune should fail me.’
“And so it was settled in that one talking, and immediately I called for
my delul, and having given him the advance money (_arbun_), I begged him
to send his son with me to Aleppo to receive the full price. And I
mounted in haste, fearing that the rest would return and would make him
change his mind.”