CHAPTER III

CROMER BEGINS TO MAKE MISTAKES

My visit to Gros Bois that autumn on my way Eastwards was a sad one,

Princesse Berthe having died in the course of the summer, and there were

no visitors and none of the bright talk I had so long enjoyed there.

“We arrived at Sheykh Obeyd on the 12th of November. That same evening

Sheykh Mohammed Abdu called and gave us a full history of his adventures

after leaving Newbuildings. At Oxford he had found a number of Arabic

manuscripts known by name only at the Azhar, and among them the

correspondence of a certain Arab philosopher, El Sebaïn, with Frederick

the Great. He is going to have a number of them copied with funds

supplied by the Awkaf (the Ministry of Endowments). He then went to

Switzerland and on to Algeria and Tunis. He drew a black picture of the

state of things in French North Africa, compared to which he said the

sufferings of native Egypt at the hands of the English were as light to

darkness. In Algeria the whole administration is directed in the

interests of the European Colonists at the expense of the natives. For

these there is hardly any legal protection, and absolutely no liberty.

There is neither freedom of the press nor even of speech, espionage is

worse than at Constantinople, nor is the state of things better in Tunis

than in Algeria. It had been proposed to him at Tunis to ask an audience

of the Bey, but he had been informed by the Austrian Consul General that

permission would have to be first asked of the French Resident, who

would have sent a Frenchman to be present at it. The Mohammedans of

Tunis had said to him, ‘Your journals in Egypt complain of their lot

under the English, but all we ask of Providence is to be given five

years of your _régime_ as a respite from the hell of our own.’ The Mufti

told me these details because I had seen it published in the ‘Figaro’

that he had expressed himself as entirely pleased with the condition of

things for his fellow-Moslems under French rule. His account accords

with all I have heard from other quarters about Tunis, and with what I

remember of Algeria in 1873. There is no doubt that the English _régime_

in Egypt is exceptional in the history of such _régimes_, which are in

their essence tyrannies and oppressions, and I think I may take some

credit to myself for having made it exceptional by forcing Egyptian

rights upon English public attention in 1882, and by keeping up the

publicity whenever these rights have been freshly attacked. In France

and Tunis no single voice is raised by any Frenchman against his

countrymen’s iniquities in North Africa, and crime is heaped upon crime,

and so it would be here in Egypt if the European colony were allowed to

have its way. Fortunately for Egypt there is practically no English

colony, and our officials live under fear of criticism in the London

press and parliament, otherwise we should have a purely military

government at Cairo. Already, in answer to what I published in the

‘Manchester Guardian’ last summer about the abuses prevalent in the

Ministry of Justice at Cairo, a move is being made by Cromer to get the

Kourbash reintroduced, but I think we shall be able to prevent this, or

at least to make it impossible for Cromer to do it on the sly.

“Finally the Mufti told us the latest doings of the Khedive. He has now

gone in wholly for money making and speculation. He has got Cassel (the

King’s friend) to lend him half a million sterling for various schemes

without interest, and he is projecting a building venture at Ghizeh, for

which purpose an exchange of land is being proposed with the Awkaf, all

to the Khedive’s advantage. Abdu, however, as Mufti, has a veto on such

transactions, and he will not allow any swindling of the public purse.

He has seen the Khedive lately, who is ostentatiously friendly, but

Mohammed Abdu knows he is intriguing to get him deprived of his

Muftiship. The Khedive will not tolerate anyone who does not fear him.

The unfortunate Minshawi was, it seems, basely sacrificed by Abbas, who

had commissioned him to find the stealers of his cattle, but who denied

it when questioned by Cromer.[4] There is also a quarrel, in which the

Khedive is concerned, about some emerald mines on the Red Sea coast.

Cromer, to his credit, stoutly discountenances all speculative mining.

“_22nd Nov._—Rowton, poor fellow, is dead at his house in Berkeley

Square.

“_23rd Nov._—Yesterday I sent the French edition of our ‘Pilgrimage to

Nejd’ to Mohammed Abdu to amuse him during Ramadan, and later he came to

see me. Speaking of Midhat Pasha, of whom an account is given in the

book, he told me Midhat was a man he had never liked in spite of his

sympathy with the constitutional cause at Constantinople which Midhat

had championed. Midhat, he said, was a hot head, and very imprudent,

especially in his cups, for he had a habit of drinking, and this was the

cause of his ruin. While Wali at Damascus Midhat had attended a large

dinner given at Tarablus, and had made a speech, in which he had

described himself as the destroyer of two Kings (alluding to Abd el Aziz

and Murad). This was reported to the Sultan, and was the cause of

Midhat’s disgrace. As a reformer he was shallow and Europeanized in the

worst sense, nevertheless his fall had been a real misfortune, and his

end a real tragedy.

“Mohammed Abdu has had another talk with the Khedive, who told him the

whole history of his not having kept his appointment with us at Crabbet

in the summer. The reason was precisely what I suspected. When the visit

was first proposed no objection had been made by the Englishmen

appointed to dry nurse the Khedive during his stay in England, but the

very morning of the Sunday when he was getting ready to start for

Crabbet, Cassel, whose guest he was, on behalf of the King in London,

spoke to him about it, and told him that his going to see me would

offend the King, that it would be interpreted at Court as meaning that

he had not been satisfied with the King’s reception of him. Cassel’s

words had been, ‘I do not say that you ought not to go, but if you do it

will be understood in this sense.’ The Khedive sent the explanation as a

message to me through the Mufti, but not for publication; he wishes me

to see him as usual, but I shall not go, and have told Abdu to say that

since the King has commanded the Khedive not to see me, and the Khedive

has thought fit to obey, I, as the King’s subject, am still more bound

to obedience.

“_24th Nov._—The papers give an account of Dora Labouchere’s marriage at

Florence to a son of the Minister Rudini. I am glad she has made a good

alliance, it will please her old father who deserves to be pleased.

“_2nd Dec._—The Mufti called to-day and gave me an account of what is

going on at headquarters in the matter of judicial reform. He had an

interview with Cromer yesterday, having been sent for to talk the

various projects over. Cromer asked him his opinion of the plan of

perambulating judges, and the Mufti said its value would all depend upon

whether these were appointed by the Government or by the Court of

Appeal. If the latter good men would be chosen, if the former not.

McIlwraith was then sent for, and in the Mufti’s presence received a

lecture from Cromer on the necessity of consulting the best native

opinion, and especially the Mufti’s. He is satisfied now that they will

adopt a reasonable scheme. He expostulated also against additional power

being put into the hands of the police in its present corrupt condition.

He tells me the Khedive is very angry with him for having insisted on

his paying the full price, £20,000, in his deal with the Awkaf, and that

he is doing what he can to get him deprived of his position of Mufti.

Abdu, however, is so firmly established now that it is of little

importance what the Khedive intrigues against him, and it seems really

as if at last his influence would become what it ought to have been from

the first, the supreme one in Egypt. He is in high spirits, and I

congratulated him on becoming Grand Vizier. Cromer supports the Mufti

now. The Khedive is very foolish, for he allows real evils to go on

unchecked and intervenes only in trifles.

“_7th to 9th Dec._—A short outing in the desert, in the hills behind

Cairo, exploring the cleft of Wadi Dijleh, where vultures still have

their roosting place, both the great vulture and the Egyptian. They are

getting rare now in Egypt, owing to our sanitary arrangement which

forbids the leaving of carcases, which were their food. The black and

white Egyptian vultures used to be as plentiful as domestic fowls;

‘Pharaoh’s chickens’ Frank travellers called them. When the French in

1801 had Suliman el Halabi impaled for the assassination of General

Kléber, the sentence passed on him by their Court Martial was that he

was to remain impaled until the vultures had devoured him. I have been

reading Jabarti’s Chronicle, which is intensely interesting. It shows

the French invasion of Egypt to have been a wanton and most criminal

proceeding, absolutely ruinous to the still prosperous country. Cairo

was almost completely destroyed by them, and when they evacuated, it was

left as a prey to the Bedouins to its complete destruction. Yet the

French are at this moment raising a monument at Cairo to Kléber and the

rest of them, inscribed: ‘To the heroic Martyrs of Civilization who died

during the campaigns of Egypt and Syria.’

“On our way back to Sheykh Obeyd we followed the Mokattam range to its

extreme edge overlooking Cairo. The view of the vast city, half

Oriental, half European, approached thus as we approached it suddenly

from the desert, is, I think, the most astonishing in the world. We

arrived after several days’ wandering in an absolute waste, the last

mile of the way being waster than all the rest, and difficult for camels

to cross, for the heights have been blasted with dynamite, and all is a

labyrinth of holes and heaps, I suppose to prevent a surprise by

artillery, the whole plateau being uninhabited and unvisited, except by

kites and vultures, a sheer naked wilderness of stones, nor could one

possibly guess the existence of life anywhere within miles of it, until

gradually one began to hear the roar of the city below. It is not until

one is actually within twenty yards of the cliff’s edge that one gets

the slightest hint of the living world spread out close beneath one’s

feet, the immense city of Cairo, with its citadels and towers, and

walls, and minarets stretching away for miles, the splendid ancient

city, and beyond it modern Cairo, with its turmoil of tramways,

railroads, and other modernities, and yet further still the Nile and the

Nile Valley, seven miles across and green as a spinach bowl, with the

yellow desert, far away in Africa with its Pyramids. The immediate

foreground is dazzlingly white, a huge stone quarry, where men in gangs

are at work like ants, quarrying the white limestone of which modern

Cairo is being built. The sudden contrast brought tears into my eyes as

sudden wonders are apt to do.

“_11th Dec._—More interesting talk with Abdu. The Khedive is still very

angry with him about the £20,000 of Wakf property, and is revenging

himself upon the Mufti by trying to get up a new quarrel with him on

religious grounds connected with the proposed savings’ bank, which gives

offence to old-fashioned Moslems, as allowing depositors to receive

interest on their money, a thing forbidden by their religious law. Abdu,

as Mufti, has issued a _fetwa_ on the subject, recommending a change in

the wording of the decree which institutes the Bank, but the Khedive has

taken up a high religious line against him, condemning the thing

altogether, this, although the Khedive puts his own money unscrupulously

out at interest everywhere, and makes no secret of it. Cromer, however,

supports Abdu, so that he is in no actual danger from the intrigue. In

all this, as in much else, the Khedive acts absurdly, allowing real

evils to go on without protest, and intervening only in trifles.

“_20th Dec._—The Ramadan fast is over to-day, a thing for which I am

always thankful. How much more comfortable the world would be without

its feasts and fasts. As I lie here on the roof watching the birds, who

care for none of these things, I realize what a long way humanity has

wandered out of the region of common sense. Three quarters of our man’s

miseries come from pretending to be what we are not, a separate creation

superior to that of the beasts and birds, while in reality these are

wiser than we are, and infinitely happier.

“_20th Dec._—Herbert Spencer is dead, poor old man, at the age of

eighty-three, and another death announced is that of Henry Stanley (Lord

Stanley of Alderley) at seventy-six. About Stanley, Blanche Hozier sends

me an excellent account of his character, written by her mother, who was

his sister. ‘I do not think,’ she writes, ‘that he has been a sad man,

for he has had joys of his own, being at one with his God, from whom he

takes all willingly without repining, and in this submission there is

great content, and he loved nature and real sport, and Oriental

learning, and order and obedience, and he had a fair estate to rule

over, and he enjoyed improving it in his own way. No, I think he had

been a happy man. He is dying in his small, frugal room he had from a

boy, when I was so much with him before I married. Alderley has been a

beloved place for many generations. God bless those who go out and those

who come in.’ I consider that a most touching account and most true. He

was one of the best and least selfish of men, a sincere Moslem without

parade. The last time I saw him I remember he was rather hurt with me

because I said something implying a disbelief in the divine ordering of

things in the world. In his domestic life he was unfortunate, his

Spanish wife, Fabia, being socially impossible and mad. Yet he was kind

to her, though she weighed like a mill-stone round his neck, and he

spent half of his time with her at Alderley. He told me once that he had

consulted the Grand Mufti at Constantinople as to whether he might avail

himself of his Moslem right and put Fabia away, but he never had the

heart to do so, nor would he do anything which might cause a scandal to

his religious profession. He did an enormous deal of good to those about

him whatever their beliefs, and helped to the best of his power in

Parliament all Orientals who were suffering wrong. For this he got scant

thanks and no credit. His deafness made public life almost an

impossibility, and his many eccentricities and strange manner and

appearance caused him to be more laughed at in the House of Lords than

listened to. Yet he achieved from time to time success by his insistence

for the causes he took up. Personally I had a great regard for him,

indeed affection, and we remained for forty-three years firm allies.

“_23rd Dec._—I have finished Jabarti, whose Chronicle is as good as

Stowe’s, and written much in the same style, and with certain characters

of men he had known as good as Plutarch’s.”

Jabarti was by birth a Somali and by position an Alem of the Azhar at

Cairo, who, finding himself there from the middle of the eighteenth

century till well into the nineteenth, in a position of knowledge,

though he took no part in public affairs, kept an accurate Chronicle of

Egyptian events, relating all with strict impartiality. His history

includes the episode of Bonaparte’s invasion, as seen through Egyptian

eyes, and is of the utmost value. He continued keeping it till the year

1820, when he was waylaid as he was riding home one evening on his ass

from Shubra and murdered—it has been asserted—by Mohammed Ali’s order.

“_25th Dec._—I am glad to see that Stanley was buried according to the

Mussulman rite, in his Park at Alderley, in presence of the Imam of the

Turkish Embassy and one of the Secretaries, as well as of members of his

own family.

“The Mufti came in the afternoon with Minshawi Pasha, the same who

played an honourable part at the time of the bombardment of Alexandria,

saving many Christian lives at Tantah, near which he lives. The English

Government gave him a decoration after the war for his humanity, but

Cromer has since persecuted him as a partisan of the Khedive. He is very

rich, and has recently given a large sum of money, £14,000, to the Mufti

for various Mohammedan purposes. The Mufti is still being worried by the

Khedive, who has been putting pressure on a number of the Sheykhs of the

Azhar to denounce him on grounds of impiety in the form of an _ardahal_

(petition) precisely as Mohammed Ali did against the Sheykh El Saadat of

Jabarti’s time. He tells me that in spite of all he has gone through in

his life, he has never lost but two friends, having made it a principle

always to forgive.

“_8th Jan._, 1904.—Greville, manager of the Bank of Egypt, came to

luncheon and brought news that war between Japan and Russia is nearly

certain. I have not myself seen how it could be avoided. The occupation

of Manchuria by Russia with her seizure of Port Arthur makes the

position of Japan in those waters too dangerous for her to acquiesce

without fighting, and it became a question between trying conclusions

now, and waiting to be swallowed up at leisure. The present moment is

favourable to Japan because the English Government has promised to help

Japan if a third power intervenes to help Russia. Of course, it is a

great risk but of the two Japan seems to be choosing the lesser, if not

the less imminent danger. I wish her all possible success, she being the

representative of Oriental independence against the European Powers. If

she succeeds in beating the Russians at sea, she may be able to get the

hegemony of China and so frustrate altogether the Western invasion.

Neither China nor Korea has the least chance of being able to stand

alone against Russia and would be gradually absorbed, as would Japan too

if she fails in the war.”

It had been part of our plan for the winter that Auberon Herbert should

spend it with us at Sheykh Obeyd, but for one reason and another though

he came to Egypt he had established himself the other side of Cairo, at

Helouan, and it had been a matter of much correspondence between us how

we were to meet, as neither of us liked going through the town, and it

was at last decided that we were to have a rendezvous in the Mokattam

Hills behind Cairo some ten miles away, at a certain hour on a certain

day, a plan which was attended with an almost certain risk of our not

meeting at all, for, though we knew the hills well, he had no knowledge

of them, nor was there any definite landmark. The result was as follows:

“_9th Jan._—To Wady Abensur, which Europeans call Wady Hof, and encamped

just above the great Sudd at noon, having left Sheykh Obeyd at 6.30. I

then sent Mutlak down in the direction of Helouan to meet Auberon and

Salem Aweymer on my _delûl_ to look for him in the valleys, as he had

proposed to walk from Helouan and the valleys are so intricate here that

I was sure he would not find us. At half past two I also went in search

of him on my mare and rode almost to Helouan and then back up the main

valley and I was just on the point of giving it up when I heard a shout

behind me. Auberon had been found, having wandered away up another

valley, Wady Melag, and presently he appeared with Salem, as

extraordinary a figure as one well could see. He was clad in grey

flannels, without a coat, and was carrying a lantern in one hand and a

staff in the other, with a wallet full of stones strapped to his back,

like the pictures of Christian with his bundle of sins in the ‘Pilgrim’s

Progress.’ I had the greatest difficulty in getting him to mount the

camel, though it was already late and the road along the edge of the

valley is a dangerous one to be in after dark and I was anxious to be

back at the tent. However, at last he mounted and we arrived just at

nightfall, and he stopped to dine with us and set to like a famished

man, which he was, for he had been wandering in the valleys since eleven

and had brought nothing with him but some coffee and milk in a bottle.

He stayed on with us talking afterwards, interestingly on many subjects,

including that of Herbert Spencer, whose influence over him as a young

man he described as immense. Spencer had given him for the first time

solid ground on which to stand, though he had since gone further than

Spencer in certain directions. On one subject, however, he talked as it

seemed to me not quite sanely, namely the stones he was carrying in his

wallet. He turned these out for us to examine. They were quite common

bits of limestone, flakes from the cliffs with which all the valleys

about here are strewn, but he insisted in seeing in them carved faces of

grotesque personages, with big noses and helmets, and declared them to

be the work of primitive men who had formerly inhabited the valleys. He

chose me out a few of the smaller ones and made them over to me with

much earnestness to examine at my leisure, handing me also the small sum

of five piastres as a present to those who had found him in the valley.

Then taking up his wallet and his stick and lighting his lantern he set

out, in spite of all remonstrances, in the direction he had come. I sent

Suliman with him as far as the Sudd, but he would not allow him to go a

yard further, saying it would spoil his night’s walk. It appears to be

his habit to spend his nights in the neighbourhood of Helouan with his

lantern looking for these stones, and he told me he had been accosted in

the dark on one occasion and nearly attacked by a man with a _nabut_. I

think he runs great risks, for the hills are frequented by convicts

escaped from the prison at Toura, and I told him so, and as he

nevertheless persisted in his midnight tramp, I made him write on a

scrap of paper that he absolved me from all responsibility in case of

accidents.”

This proved to be the last time we met. Two days later I heard from him,

that having wandered all night he had found himself at daybreak in an

unknown country but had made his way down to the Nile and so got back to

his hotel. He died the following year.

“_17th Jan. (Sunday)._—The Mufti has been to Alexandria where he has

seen the Khedive, who received him, as his way is, with smiles and

jokes, though he had been doing his best to get Cromer’s consent to

depose him. The Khedive has a new grief against him, his having issued

fetwas to certain Mohammedans from the Transvaal in answer to these

three questions:

“1. May a Moslem in a foreign country eat meat not killed according to

rule?

“2. May a Moslem in a foreign country wear a hat?

“3. May a Shafeite at prayer range himself in the same line with a

Hanafite?

To all these three questions Mohammed Abdu had answered in the

affirmative, and the Khedive, though he himself eats and wears a hat and

says no prayers when in Europe, affects to regard the decision as

atheism. Cromer, however, supports the Mufti; it is a queer position.

“_22nd Jan._—The Mufti was here to-day for his usual Friday’s luncheon

in the garden under the bamboos. He has a new worry in the death of one

of the chief Azhar Sheykhs, which will be the cause of fresh trouble

with the Khedive as to his successor. Fortunately, His Highness, ‘our

young man,’ the Mufti calls him, is to start on a journey in the

direction of the Tripoli frontier, which will give everybody about him a

little holiday and the Mufti hopes himself to be off then to Khartoum,

where he promises me to find out what the real state of feeling in the

Soudan is towards the present _régime_. We had a long and interesting

talk about the Mameluke days in Egypt, as also about the condition of

the Jews in Arabia before the coming of Mohammed, and other matters of

Eastern history in which he is very learned. I know no society so

pleasant as his or so improving, it is all the society we have here as

we see nothing of Europeans. We are in a kind of Coventry now with the

English officials, but no matter, as long as Egypt is not annexed to the

British Crown I shall go on with my opposition.

“He talked, too, about the Khedive’s commercial propensities which he

indulges without regard for his political position. He has taken to

hiring and reletting the ferries over the canals, and he has been trying

to get a concession of the fishing rights in various places at the

expense of poorer people. Cromer has taken him to task for this and has

told him that he must choose between being a Khedive and being a

tradesman, in which Cromer is in the right. All the family of Mohammed

Ali have been keen traders and Abbas cares for nothing now, Abdu says,

but money making.

“_23rd Jan._—The reason of Gorst’s return to Europe is explained. He

went to try and get the French Government to agree to an abolition of

the Caisse de la Dette, and has been at Paris seeing M. Delcassé with

that object. I have written to the Editor of the ‘Manchester Guardian’

about it, explaining how very necessary it is to preserve the Caisse de

la Dette as a check upon financial extravagance here. What our people

specially want just now is liberty to spend all the Egyptian money they

can get on the Soudan, which is an English, not an Egyptian interest.

There is a scheme of railway making between Souakim and Berber, and also

between Khartoum and Abyssinia, the Cape to Cairo line, and there is an

ultimate plan of great irrigation reservoirs to supply Manchester with

Soudanese cotton. It is only the Caisse de la Dette which stands in the

way of Egypt’s being made the milch cow of our African Empire. I hear,

however, that the French Government has refused to consent to the

abolition.”

[N.B. These were the first negotiations with the French Government,

which resulted some months later in the Agreement known as the _Entente

Cordiale_, whereby France gave England a completely free hand in Egypt

in return for a free hand given her in Morocco.]

“_4th Feb._—My letter to the ‘Manchester Guardian’ is published, and

comes in pretty opportunely, though I understand the French Government

has definitely refused to waive its rights on the Caisse de la Dette. It

appears that there was really a proposal into which Gorst entered of

some gigantic operation in the Soudan, a concession of Government lands

on a vast scale for twenty millions to Cassel, with irrigation works,

and a Government guarantee which required the consent of the Caisse;

also it was said an attempt was made to abolish the Caisse altogether, a

huge scheme of developing the Soudan at the expense of Egypt.

Fortunately this has been put a stop to by the French Government, and

the whole thing has fallen into the water. The Khedive was certainly

mixed up in it, and from what I can understand Cromer did not altogether

approve. Mohammed Abdu says that Gorst has been playing into the

Khedive’s hands of late financially, and there is talk of his leaving

the Egyptian service.

“_11th Feb._—The Russo-Japanese War has begun, and some Russian

ironclads have been sunk in Port Arthur.

“There is a split between George Wyndham and Redmond over the Catholic

University. As far as my politics are concerned I should be sorry to see

entire harmony between Ireland and England, for then we should have the

Irish as Imperialist as the worst of us.

“_14th Feb. (Sunday)._—The Mufti lunched with us and talked about

Egyptian history. He said that the Circassian Mameluke system in its

later development had an immoral foundation, but such had not been the

case with the earlier Mamelukes, who were principally those slaves

brought into Egypt by Salah ed Din (Saladin). Nothing had ever exceeded

the crimes of the later Mamelukes, Ottoman and French alike. It was

common with these to try the sharpness of their swords at the armourers’

shops on the passers by, by cutting off their heads or cutting them in

two at the waist. Good Mohammed Abdu sitting here on my sofa in his

turban telling these tales looked for a moment like a very terrible Turk

making passes as he spoke with an imaginary sword. He also cited a good

saying of Seyyid Jemal ed Din, ‘Justice is found where equal forces

meet,’ meaning thereby that unless the strength of the ruler is opposed

by the resisting strength of the ruled, there will always be tyranny.

This in allusion to the passivity of the Egyptians under wrong.

“There has been a new scandal at Cairo, the Khedive having invited his

Hungarian mistress to a Court Ball. The wives of the Consuls were

offended at this, and would have made a public matter of it, but Cromer

appeased them.

“_24th Feb._—Cockerell has arrived from England to spend some weeks with

us.

“_26th Feb._—Everything is going splendidly in Manchuria, and there

really seems to be a chance of the Russians being driven finally back

into Siberia. Their sea power seems broken, and there is a good chance

of the Japanese being able to cut their railway line, and so starve them

out at Port Arthur. It is not likely there will be much sympathy with

the Russian Government, though they are trying to get up a cry of

‘Christian civilization in danger.’ Apart from all special knowledge of

the rights and wrongs of an international quarrel between nations, I

think it a wise rule to give one’s good wishes to the power which is

fighting nearest home, that is to say, nearest its own capital and seat

of Government. It is preposterous that a Government should claim rights

of any kind a thousand miles away from home.

“_29th Feb._—Took Cockerell to call on the Mufti, whom we found in bed

with influenza, but he conversed with his usual wisdom. Talking about a

proposal made by Ali Yusuf at the General Assembly to create

Parliamentary Government in Egypt, I objected to the word creation,

seeing that parliamentary Government had been won in Egypt twenty-two

years ago, but Abdu says its revival now is only an intrigue, and that

he had opposed it, though ineffectually, for it was put to the vote and

carried by a majority. In this I think he was wrong, for, intrigue or

not, a parliament is the best chance there is in Egypt of getting rid of

English dictation. Cromer has declared such a proposal to be beyond the

competence of the Assembly. Abdu tells me that Gorst has been certainly

helping the Khedive in his commercial speculations, and there has been a

quarrel between him and Cromer on the subject. It is not expected that

he will retain his post here of Financial Adviser.

“_4th March._—There has been a good debate about the Somaliland war,

more or less in accordance with my programme, published on the 10th

February in the ‘Daily Chronicle.’ Ritchie reproduced some of my

arguments, and Willy Redmond rubbed them in. The campaign will now be

allowed to drop.

“_10th March._—The following is a story current about Gorst’s quarrel

with Cromer. It appears that last winter, or rather the winter before, a

lady, a friend of the King’s, came to Egypt and received what she

considered scanty attention at Lady Cromer’s hands, whereas Gorst made

himself agreeable to her, and an intrigue was started between them

favoured by the King, to whom the lady had complained, according to

which Cromer at the end of the year was to be retired, and Gorst to have

his place at the Cairo Agency. It was supposed that Cromer would be

willing either to join the Government at home, or perhaps take the Paris

Embassy. The King was dissatisfied at the time with Monson the actual

Ambassador at Paris, because, being poor, Monson did not, in the King’s

opinion, represent him with sufficient dignity. At any rate Gorst was

promised Cromer’s succession, and counted on it (an arrangement which I

had already heard of) as also that eventually Cromer’s son Errington was

to have the place in reversion. Cromer, however, himself does not seem

to have been told about it, and when the time came for the change

refused all offers inducing him to budge, and was very angry when he

learned what had been going on. Matters, moreover, have been further

complicated by money transactions with Cassel. Cassel had lent His

Highness half a million at 2½ per cent. to speculate with, while Gorst

as Financial Adviser granted Cassel concessions. All this made up an

elaborate intrigue, but it has been upset by Cromer who has put his foot

down, and now declares he means to stay on indefinitely in Egypt. The

Khedive, so Mohammed Abdu says, has been lectured, and told to choose

between being a Khedive and being a tradesman. Gorst has had to leave

Egypt, and is now through the King’s influence being provided with a

post at the Foreign Office, as Assistant Under-Secretary, with the

promise of an Embassy some day. Errington has been packed off to the

Legation at Teheran, and the lady is to come no more to Cairo. I must

say that I think old Cromer is to be sympathized with, and I am glad the

intrigue failed, though Gorst has been personally friendly with us here,

but these money speculations at the Finance Office are intolerable, and

Gorst deserves his disappointment. Yesterday Dormer (who is in the

Finance Office), came to luncheon, and added his share of information.

Gigantic financial operations are in progress. A concession of all the

Egyptian State railways is being given to a company of which Rivers

Wilson is head. For this the Company is to pay forty-two millions

sterling down. The present income from the railroads is sixteen hundred

millions, so that the company at actual rates will get three per cent.

for its capital, with prospect of indefinite extension. Cassel, too, has

been in treaty for a concession of all the Government lands in Upper

Egypt for some other prodigious sum. We suppose the idea is to convert

and pay off the whole public debt, and so get the Caisse de la Dette and

all other restrictions abolished. For the present, however, the French

Government holds out against all changes.

“In the evening I looked in on the Mufti and recounted to him the whole

story of the Gorst-Cromer quarrel. I always tell him everything, and he

tells me everything, and so between us we know everything. He said that

the account fitted in with all that he had himself heard and noticed

during the past year. The Khedive, when he was in London, had attempted

to open the question of Cromer’s retirement at the Foreign Office, but

had been stopped, and Cromer this winter had spoken to him (the Mufti)

impatiently of Gorst, so that he was quite prepared for what I had to

tell him, and he knew all about the financial intrigues which Gorst had

encouraged the Khedive in. Gorst had allowed the Khedive, for instance,

to purchase the large Mariout property of the Government for a very

trifling sum, and had helped him in other ways to make money, more or

less at the Government’s expense. He was much amused at the lady’s part

in the intrigue. It had come round to him through a friend who happened

to be on board the ship that took the Khedive last summer to

Constantinople, that His Highness had boasted to his fellow travellers

that a certain high English personage had promised to get rid of Sheykh

Mohammed Abdu for him. Abdu had talked the incident over with his

friend, Mustapha Pasha Fehmy.

“_15th March._—It is now decided we are all to go to Damascus on

Thursday. Anne and I, Cockerell and Miss Lawrence and Mutlak, to look

for horses. To-day the Mufti called. He had talked of going with us to

Damascus, but has reflected that it would not do. ‘If you and I,’ he

said, ‘were to go together to Damascus the Sultan would go mad. He would

think that we had come to proclaim the Arabian Caliphate.’

“_17th March._—I have written to George Wyndham to get him to stop the

Somali campaign, and to provide for the safety of the ‘friendly tribes,’

on the Arab principle of paying blood money so as to end the feud

between them and the Mullah. ‘The British forces should then retire to

the seaports and leave the interior strictly alone. If there are any

friendly chiefs who feel themselves too much compromised they should be

given handsome pensions and invited to live at Berbera under English

protection. The rest of the tribes will very soon come to terms with the

others, _only don’t leave British garrisons anywhere in the interior_,

and forbid all travelling and sporting expeditions by our officers for

some years to come. You should consult Zoheir’s Ode in the Moallakat as

to peacemaking by payment.’”

We left the same day for Damascus and arrived at Beyrout on the 20th by

sea from Port Said.

“_21st March (Sunday)._—By train to Baalbek, a slow business, the pace

being but little, if at all faster than formerly by diligence, which

used to run between Beyrout and Damascus, and was so capitally horsed.

We travelled from Zahleh with a respectable man and his wife, Christians

of the place who, finding we talked Arabic, gave us a good deal of

information. The country of the Lebanon is very prosperous now,

entirely, so he told us, through the emigration there has been to

America, the emigrants coming back with money made there in trade. Every

cultivable acre of land is taken up and prices have gone up

prodigiously. He pointed out to me a property in the Bekaa which had

been bought as derelict forty years ago by Dervish Pasha for £6,000 and

which is now worth £60,000 or £70,000. The taxation is not excessive,

certainly not as compared with Egypt. There is a yearly tax of 4 per

mil. on the capital value of all land, and 12½ per cent. is taken on the

gross produce besides being paid in kind. Certainly, the people look

prosperous, new houses and new plantations of mulberry trees everywhere,

children with rosy cheeks, and men and women well dressed. He puts the

population of the Lebanon at 150,000 Christians, 100,000 Moslems, and

40,000 Druses, with as many more Druses in the Hauran. I had no idea of

such prosperity.

“At Baalbek we went to the ruins which I had never seen. They are, I

think, the most splendid in the world. They have been to a certain

extent _remis à neuf_ for the Emperor William when he was here, and

there is an absurd tablet commemorating the event of his visit,

evidently of Constantinople origin, with the names of the Emperor and

the Sultan side by side. Otherwise the repairs have been sensibly done.

There are the usual American tourists here, fortunately not more than

half-a-dozen, the most senseless type of human nature, being quite

insensible to beauty or decorum and with the manners of shopboys, who

ramble through the gardens of the ancient world with as little knowledge

of their value as beasts have, defiling all and trampling all. Yet I

noticed that one of them, a thick-set porker with pendant chaps, little

cunning eyes, and a bullet head, after discussing the East in the

language of Wall Street, and with comparisons drawn from the gutter of

his financial mind, was able to give a sensible account to a neighbour

who questioned him on the subject of the licensing laws of his own New

England State. A proof that in its own environment there is no race

entirely without value. They should be kept at home, for they have no

business in these ancient lands.

“_22nd March._—On to Damascus by the new railway which is carried down

the wooded valley of the Baradah, very beautiful and very unlike any

other. The railway twists and twirls dangerously in and out among the

villages, and rounds sharp corners with no outlook 50 yards ahead; there

have been many accidents, a single line, and the trains rock

prodigiously. Here we are at a hotel, the Hotel d’Orient, a quiet place

where few tourists go, but hotels are novelties still at Damascus.

“_23rd March._—To the Consulate. Richards, who is in charge of it,

confirms the prosperity of the Lebanon and says that most of the

emigrants return with money from America, some few are Mohammedans, the

greater number Christian. The country is quite undisturbed and safe. He

sent a _kavás_ with us to visit our house in the Kassab quarter, which

we bought in 1881, and certainly never should have found without help.

(I had forgotten even the name of the street where it was.) When we came

to the door I recognized it so little that I was sure the _kavás_ was

mistaken. The little low door into the street had a chink opened when we

knocked, but there were only women inside, the man, our tenant, having

gone to market to sell his wheat. The _kavás_, however, got hold of a

watchman and so we were admitted. A funny little place it was, but nice

inside with an inclosure of about an acre walled round and planted with

lucerne, and a fine old stone wall, shutting us in from surrounding

gardens. Lady Ellenborough used to live next door, and the house belongs

now to her stepson, a son of her husband Mijwel, who lets it, and on the

other two sides lies the great garden, called Bostan el Basha, belonging

to Sheykh Hassan el Attar, a chief of the Damascus Ulema. Ours is almost

the last house at the extreme north-eastern end of Damascus on the road

to Palmyra. The name of the street is Shariah Musjid el Kassab. In the

afternoon we went there again and this time found the whole family of

our tenant assembled. Sheykh Saleh Tillo and his three sons. They are

well-off people and the rooms are richly furnished with good carpets and

pillows, and one or two really handsome inlaid chests, besides china and

glass, some old, some new. We are pleased with our little house and feel

inclined to make a part of it habitable for ourselves and spend six

weeks in it every year, but there would be a difficulty about getting

possession. The rent they pay is only eleven pounds a year.

“From there we went to the Maidan quarter and drank coffee with Ahmed

Ibn Jamil, a horse dealer, whom we had known in Egypt, but he showed us

no good horses.

“I find very little change in the town since I was here last except on

the north-western side, where the railroad has caused some building, and

a big barracks has been put up. The rest of the city is much what I

remember it in 1880, not at all Europeanized. The bazaars which were

burnt down in Midhat Pasha’s time have been rebuilt and are as busy as

ever. There are no modern shops or Frank innovations, or by-laws, or

other Christian tomfooleries; things are made too uncomfortable for

Europeans for there to be any resident foreign merchants. Newspapers of

all kinds are forbidden, the post is unsafe and irregular, and at the

Central telegraph office there are no printed forms. We were given with

difficulty a sheet of notepaper to write a message on.

“_24th March._—Visited the Ottoman Bank and reopened my account there,

finding £12 still to my name, which had been lying there for 23 years.

The house has been all these years in the care of the British Consul,

who has been changed many times in the interval, the consular dragoman

having been put in charge of it who, through lapse of time, had come to

consider the property his own. There has been a wonderful flight of

storks over the city, travelling in front of a storm from the south-

west, many hundreds of them on their annual migration.

“_26th March._—A night of tempest and a day of rain, but in the evening,

the weather having cleared, I walked with Cockerell to Salahieh, the new

quarter of the town where houses are being built, we were glad to see on

good Turkish models with overhanging stories made of wooden frames

filled in with plaster, cheap, practical, and pretty. Richards gives an

excellent character of the present Turkish Waly Nazim Pasha as honest,

sensible, and pacific, but he is building a huge Government house in

European taste which must disfigure that quarter of the town. The view

from Salahieh is among the first half-dozen great views of the world,

the others being perhaps the view over Cairo from the top of Mokattam,

(2) the harbour of Rio Janeiro seen from Corcovado, (3) the Lake of

Geneva from the hills above Lausanne (4) Constantinople, from the Tower

of Galata and (5) the Red Sea with Mount Sinai from the summit of

Kalala. All these will stop one’s breath for wonder and bring tears to

one’s eyes.

“_27th March._—We spent the day in the bazaars, which are the best and

cheapest in the world. It is a pleasure buying in them because the

sellers are so amiable and do not worry travellers to buy. Everything is

astonishingly cheap and one might live comfortably with one’s family in

Damascus on £100 a year. A man can dress himself well for £1 from head

to foot, a woman for 10_s._, a child for 2_s._ 6_d._, house rent is one

tenth what it is at Cairo.

“I am becoming converted to the Sultan’s mode of government; though it

is a wearisome tyranny for the rich, the poor are happy under it and are

more fortunate in the circumstances of their lives than any population

in Europe, and there is less discontent. The people in the streets here

are all well dressed and fat and healthy, many of them have beasts to

ride and there are very few beggars, food is plentiful, and all the

small industries flourish. Our European factory system is unknown.

Except for military conscription, an evil which they share with all the

peasantries of Europe, they have nothing to complain of, and do not

complain. I find an immense practical advance since twenty-five years

ago. On the other hand the educated and wealthy classes are treated like

children. No man may travel as far as Beyrout without a passport, or to

Europe without special leave or leaving a deposit behind him of £100, or

if he takes his wife with him, £200 more. No newspapers are allowed to

enter the country, or any to be published of more value than a childish

sheet of local news. What is extraordinary is that nearly all the

Government offices in Syria are filled with political exiles from

Constantinople. Nazim Pasha, the Governor, is the same person I remember

head of the police at Constantinople during the Armenian massacres, and

who was made a scapegoat of to save the Sultan’s face. The military

commandant is a Young Turk, and so are nearly all the functionaries,

that is to say, they were Young Turks, but now dare not express any

opinions. Constantinople has been emptied of late years of its political

notabilities, and as the Sultan will not allow them to go to Europe they

are sent in exile to the various provinces, the more dangerous of them

being provided with Government appointments to keep them quiet. The

wonder is that they do not combine and rebel, but in fact the population

is not with them, and except sporadically, there is no discontent. Such

is the impression I have formed of the present _régime_ at Damascus.

Peace has been made with the Druses and with all disaffected

communities.” [This state of things helps to explain the rapidity with

which the revolution, four years later, of 1908, spread through the

Ottoman provinces, when it had once declared itself at Constantinople.

Nazim was Commander-in-Chief against the Bulgarians later and was

assassinated in 1913 at Constantinople.]

“After luncheon I went with Cockerell to see the great Mosque, which is

being rebuilt, and in better taste than any rebuilding on a large scale

we have seen in Europe. It is a splendid piece of architecture, and the

view from its minaret is superb; only the tomb of Saladin has been badly

restored, it is said by a Russian Prince in Constantinopolitan taste,

the ancient wooden sarcophagus having been removed by him; also it is

still adorned with ribbons placed there by the irrepressible Emperor

William. We are to leave for Egypt again to-morrow morning.

“_28th March._—By train to Beyrout. We had for travelling companion, Ali

Pasha Abd el Kader, the old Algerian Emir’s second son, with whom we had

much talk. He is more of a Circassian in appearance than an Arab, and is

not unlike the late Sultan Abdul Aziz. He is a great personage in Syria,

and at all the stations where we stopped he was greeted by

acquaintances, who kissed his hand, for he holds a semi-religious

position here. He would not agree to my proposition that the people of

Damascus were prosperous or contented, but did not give his reasons. He

is a fat and heavy man, without great intelligence, but possessed of a

certain dignity. His elder brother, Mohammed, whom we knew in 1880,

lives now in Constantinople; another brother, he told me, was in

Morocco, taking part in the war there, but none of them are allowed to

go to Algeria. He has had news, he said, of an arrangement which had

been come to between France and England for the partition of Morocco. He

had travelled in France and England, but speaks no European language.”

[This news, casually given me by Ali Pasha Abd el Kader, was the first I

received of the Anglo-French Convention, afterwards known as the

Entente, whereby the two Governments agreed to divide Egypt and Morocco

between them, the first step of the coalition between England, France,

and Russia against Germany, the initial cause of the Great War of 1914.]

“_31st March._—Returned to Sheykh Obeyd yesterday. The Somali War has

been stopped, but whether through my letter to George Wyndham or

otherwise, I do not know.

“_3rd April (Easter Sunday)._—Dined with the Mufti, and discussed the

affairs of Islam. He told an amusing story of an episode which had

happened to him while an exile at Damascus. There was in London at that

time (1883) a certain Rev. Isaac Taylor, who had conceived the idea of

bringing about a union between the English reformed Church and Islam

upon a basis of their common monotheistic creed. In this he was

encouraged by the old Persian, Mirza Bakr, who carried the idea to

Syria, and made Propaganda for it, to a certain extent obtaining

Mohammed Abdu’s sympathy, who, with others, drew up a letter to Taylor,

which he signed with two more of the leading men of the Damascus Ulema.

Taylor was of course delighted, and had the letter at once published, as

being the general opinion of the Mohammedan learned of Damascus, and

arguing from it that the union between Christian and Moslem was on the

point of accomplishment; and as such it came to the knowledge of the

Sultan. No names had been mentioned in the published version, but the

Turkish Ambassador in London was at once telegraphed to, and ordered to

find out those of the five signatories, and thus, without suspecting the

danger, Taylor let the Ambassador know, and all five were expelled from

Syria. Abdu, however, before leaving Damascus protested, and had the

opportunity of arguing the matter out with the authorities, and it

transpired that the reason of the Sultan’s alarm had been the idea that

if England should be converted to Islam the English Sovereign would

_ipso facto_ become the most powerful personage in it, and the Caliphate

would naturally devolve on Queen Victoria to the Ottoman prejudice.

“_5th April._—Lunched with Carton de Wiart, who gave me a deal of

information about official doings, not much to the credit of the English

administration [I do not transcribe them here]. Cromer, according to

him, has become very slack and careless since his new marriage, and no

longer takes the trouble to master the details. He is largely under the

influence of his Secretary, Boyle, who, in his turn, is under the

influence of the Nimr brothers, the Syrian editors of the Mokattam

newspaper, who provide him with the bulk of his information on native

affairs. Cromer at the same time has become very obstinate, and nobody

dares contradict him. I asked him about the Khedive, and he confirmed to

me all that Abdu had told me about his speculations with Cassel, and he

gave me a curious instance of His Highness’s lack of the sense of what

is due to his position where money matters are concerned. It appears

that on the property he bought some time ago from the heirs of Halim

Pasha there was a certain disreputable house let at a high rent, the

payment of which was much in arrear. It was desirable to close the

house, but the Khedive, in his eagerness to get in the money due, kept

it open to its frequenters for six months on his own account, putting in

a man from his Daira (Estate Office) to receive the profits. Cassel’s is

a very bad influence for him, as he encourages him in all his

irregularities.

“He talked also about Cromer’s quarrel with Gorst. Cromer disapproves

his intimacy with Cassel, and had been also displeased because the

Khedive went to Gorst’s wedding. Gorst has left Egypt now, but in

Carton’s view will return at the end of a year or so, and get Cromer’s

place. I also went with Cockerell to the Museum, and had an interesting

talk with Maspero.

“_10th April._—We have left Sheykh Obeyd for England. Yesterday I wished

Mohammed Abdu good-bye. He has written a letter to Tolstoy which Anne is

translating for him into English (see Appendix). News has come of the

Anglo-French Agreement about Morocco and Egypt. I have been long

expecting it. As to Egypt the terms might have been worse, for the

political status is untouched, but it will be a bad day for Morocco.

Here there will be a rush of speculators, and Abdu has given me the

detail of the 100,000 feddans conceded to Cassel.

“_15th April._—We landed at Genoa on the 14th, and came on the following

day to Turin, where we are staying at the Palazzo della Cisterna with

the Duke and Duchess of Aosta. On landing, I found a copy of the ‘Times’

containing Cromer’s annual report with a long despatch from Lansdowne

explaining the Anglo-French Convention. Cromer’s report is in the usual

First Chapter of Genesis style, and nobody would guess from it what wars

and rumours of wars there have been at Cairo. Cromer publicly laments

Gorst’s departure, and no hint is given of the Khedive’s misdoings, or

of any of the tragi-comic events of the winter. Yet Cromer would

doubtless be indignant if it were said of him that he was not a

scrupulously truthful official narrator.

“Lansdowne’s despatch is a very important document, as it puts all the

dots upon the i’s of the Convention. It is clear now that the two

Governments understand it as a division of spoils, not quite yet

complete, but to be so in the near future. The French are to have the

same footing in Morocco that we have taken in Egypt, and as certain

clauses in the arrangement are to last for thirty years, the final

partition of Turkey is evidently foreseen in it, and so the permanent

incorporation of Egypt into the British Empire; at least this is how I

read the despatch and Convention taken together. One thing is clear,

viz., that the Anglo-Egyptian Government will now have a free financial

hand for both spending and borrowing, and that the old economy will be

abandoned in favour of a forward financial policy on the Indian model.

Egypt will be run for the Soudan. The best one can say is that Egypt

might have been annexed, or formally protected, and that the chapter of

accidents still remains open to prevent this last misfortune. For

Morocco it hardly could be worse, seeing what French methods are.

“Poor old Queen Ysabel of Spain is dead at the age of seventy-three, and

is to be buried at the Escurial. It is just forty years since I first

saw her at Madrid, but the recollection of her and her Court remains a

vivid picture in my mind, while so much else is forgotten. It gives me

the image of a great, fat, colourless, blue-eyed, good-humoured woman,

with arms like rounds of raw beef. Beside her, her husband Don Francisco

de Assiz, a little stiff man in a much embroidered coat, and the two

royal children, the Ynfanta, a thin anæmic girl of thirteen, and her

brother, the little Prince of Asturias, a child of six (he afterwards

was King), all four personages sitting on great gilt chairs in a row,

having their hands kissed by a long procession of Spanish Grandees and

Officers, the child fast asleep. We of the Diplomatic Corps had to stand

just opposite the throne and watch the _besa-manos_ for an hour or more

together, thus it is all photographed upon my memory.

“_16th April._—We are at the Palazzo della Cisterna, which has been

thoroughly furbished up since I was here three or four years ago, but it

is still a somewhat gloomy house, as few of the windows look out on open

spaces, and many are filled with opaque or coloured glass. We have been

given, however, a cheerful apartment of half-a-dozen small rooms looking

out on some chestnut trees in their first leafage filling the square

acre plot which is the Palace Garden. Here blackbirds are singing gaily,

though the day has turned to rain. We were handed over on arrival by the

porter, a splendid apparition in scarlet, to the Marquese de Torregiani

and his wife, Lord and Lady in waiting. He a Florentine brought up as I

was by the Jesuits at Stonyhurst, she an American who has never been in

America. These have made us very comfortable. The Princess is looking

her best with her two boys, Amadeo and Aymon, charming children, with

pretty manners, and talking already three languages, Italian, English,

and German. French they have not been taught as they are expected to

pick it up naturally later from their parents who talk it _en intimité_.

The Duke was not at luncheon as he is still crippled by a broken leg,

but he was wheeled in afterwards. In appearance he is altered greatly

for the better, as he no longer affects the coiffure of the Emperor

William, and he made himself very agreeable talking of horses and

travels, and the Japanese War, as to which I was glad to find we were

agreed.

“Another naval smash has befallen the Russians. Admiral Macaroff blown

up in his Flagship the Petropaulowski.

“I have been reading Lafcadio Hearn’s books lately which have increased

my interest in the Japanese. His explanation of Buddhism is I suppose as

lucid as is possible, though it passes European wit to understand it

entirely. He makes out the case well between Buddhism and the

monotheistic religions, but not I think as between Buddhism and

materialism, the latter occupying far sounder metaphysical grounds. The

weakness of Buddhism lies in this, that while accepting the eternity of

matter it insists also on the eternity of mind. This may or may not be

the truth, but it is a mere theory resting on no evidence or

probability. The Buddhist doctrine of the composite nature of the soul

is just as much a fancy as the Christian one of the soul’s simplicity.

Both exaggerate the importance of mental phenomena, which as far as our

experience goes are confined to an infinitesimally small fraction of the

material universe, and only seem of importance to us, because in

ourselves they so strongly predominate. The idea of a soul as something

possible, apart from an organized body, is a superstition like all the

rest, and when expounded by the Buddhist teaching, and put to the test

of practice becomes equally unthinkable, whether it is complex or

simple. To me as a pure materialist the soul cannot be logically

distinguished from sensation, and when the organized body ceases finally

to feel in death, the soul also ceases. The Buddhist theory of the

transmigration of souls, of being born again to a series of new lives,

rests on a fallacious reading of what birth is as well as what death is.

It is just as much a mistake in physics to suppose the soul enters a new

body at birth as to suppose it leaves an old one at death. Birth is

simply the continuation of an organic form by its dividing itself into

two. In the case of a tree this may occur by a seed growing up, or more

simply by a branch bending down and taking root. The seed, however, and

the root are in reality portions of the parent body extending and

multiplying itself. Peg down a branch of a lemon tree and you will see

it sprout; sever the branch and you have two lemon trees. Or again in

the case of sexual generation of two bodies prolonging themselves

together. There is no real solution of continuity, no real beginning of

a new body. Death is simply the wearing out of the original organism, or

of such part of the organism as has failed to multiply or extend itself.

If there are no offshoots from the parent stem the whole organism

perishes. If there are offshoots it continues to be alive in these. The

Japanese idea of Mr. So-and-so’s child dying, and its soul being

recreated in the womb of Mr. What’s-his-name’s wife is to ignore the

physical reality that the new infant is no new organism, but a joint

continuation of his two parents. There is no room for Mr. So-and-so’s

child’s soul to creep in. Thus the whole doctrine of transmigration is

to my mind absurd. We have had great discussions on these points with

the Princess who is interested in Buddhist philosophy.

“_18th April._—The Princess has given me a Buddhist catechism to read,

and I have been much interested in it, though it seems to be almost as

dreary a religion as our Western Christianity. Both take the same dark

view of life in this world, that it is an evil thing, and that we are to

reject all happiness if we are not to be more miserable, consoled only

by the dim prospect at the end of it of an unreal bliss in Heaven or in

Nirvana, of which there is no visible certainty. I would rather believe

in the Mohammedan heaven if I could, which at least is a tangible

possibility of happiness, but annihilation, of which there is much more

inherent probability, is, after all, more comforting than either of them

to those who have lived; an eternal, dreamless sleep without waking. I

have it in my mind to write a short treatise in development of this

thought, to be called ‘The Religion of Happiness.’

“In the afternoon there was a grand parade of all the Duke’s horses in

the royal stables, which have been made over to him by the King, and

which are kept up as no stables are that I have ever seen. He must have

quite forty animals, most of them English weight-carrying hunters in the

prime of life, and obtained at high prices, with as many men in livery

to look after them. He cannot spend less than £10,000 a year on his

hobby. In the morning we had been to see the two children ride in the

riding school, which they did wonderfully, considering their age. They

are courageous boys, thoroughly well brought up, and with the prettiest

manners in the world. The Duke has been most amiable, going the round of

the stables with us himself, wheeled in his chair.

“At dinner to-night I was interested to meet the Marchese di Guiccioli,

grandson of the husband of the famous Contessa of Byron’s days. I should

have liked to ask him what view the family took of this episode, but

refrained. He told me his family had left Ravenna early in the last

century, and had since lived in Venice. He is Prefect here in Turin at

the present moment, an intelligent man with much manner of the world,

reminding me a little of Sir Henry Layard, and like him, a good talker.

After it we discussed French poetry, especially Victor Hugo’s, and the

Princess quoted several of the best pieces of the ‘Legende des Siècles.’

In the morning she had taken me to the studio of the sculptor Canonico,

to see a bust he has made of her. It is good, better than anything we

could get done in England. Canonico is an intelligent young fellow, much

absorbed in his work, and talking fluently about it. He has done several

excellent busts of children, and two of our gracious King and Queen,

rather painful performances, and a terrible Pietà on a gigantic scale

for a cemetery, as is the taste just now in Italy.

“_19th April._—We left for England, and crossing Mont Cenis in floods of

rain, reached home on the 20th.

“_21st April._—The news is that Winston Churchill has just seceded from

the Tory party, and has been invited by half-a-dozen constituencies to

stand as an independent Free Trader at the elections.

“_23rd April._—At Park Lane I found both Sibell and George Wyndham, and

took George to lunch with me at the St. James’s Club. In Ireland he has

got into slack water with his Land Purchase, and his Catholic University

scheme is tied up. He wants to see Redmond, and I am to arrange a

meeting between them in Chapel Street. He has acted on my suggestion

about Somaliland, and has got the Prime Minister on his side and also

Arnold-Forster, and the war for the time is stopped. They have not,

however, yet withdrawn all the troops to the coast, nor made a final

settlement on my plan with the tribes, but he is working for both and

hopes to manage it. The chief obstacle lies in the Foreign Office, which

began the war, and does not like acknowledging a failure. From this we

passed on to India and George Curzon and the Japanese War, where we are

at one. George is getting sick of office, and longs to be away writing

poetry. He recited to me a sonnet he had just made, a very good one, and

told me as a great secret that he had been asked by Rowton’s executors

to write Disraeli’s Life, but has been obliged to decline, as he cannot

spare the time. I asked him why his party should wish to stay in office

for another year? He said there were two or three things they had to

finish first, the re-organization of the army and the reconstruction of

South Africa, then they would be glad to go.

“_26th April._—Saw Redmond at the House of Commons. The Land Purchase,

he says, is going on well, more estates sold than the Government have

money for, but it was lucky they got the Bill through last year, as this

year it would have been impossible. He gave me the history of O’Brien’s

secession from the Irish Party. I found him not very keen about meeting

George, though friendly towards him. ‘Wyndham,’ he said, ‘may be quite

ready to do everything for us, but he has no power.’ I asked about the

King, who has just gone to Ireland. ‘We all think him friendly to us,’

Redmond said, ‘and perhaps we may get Home Rule through him. But I don’t

myself believe that we shall get it except indirectly, and a bit at a

time. Meanwhile all is going well.’

“Elsa Wagram is engaged to marry the Prince de la Tour d’Auvergne.

“_4th May._—Saw George and arranged with him about a lunch with Redmond

next week. He tells me he believes he has succeeded now in getting a

final end put to the Somali Campaign. There has been a last splutter

there, the bombardment of a small seaport, Illig, but the army is to be

withdrawn, and the occupation of the country to be confined strictly to

the Coast towns. This is something accomplished. Strict orders have been

sent out to Swain the Consul General, that he is not to interfere with

the tribes.

“The victory of the Japanese at Yalu is now fully confirmed. We talked

also about George Curzon and the Tibet War. My relations with George

Wyndham are very pleasant ones now, as he consults me on all his

political affairs, and as Arthur Balfour consults him I am beginning to

have a practical influence on public events.

“_9th May._—Yorke Powell is dead, which grieves me. It is only a day or

two since I heard from him. He was the most sympathetic of men, and my

memory of him runs back to 1863, when I first met him, he being a boy,

with his mother in the Pyrenees. They were friends of Madame Bertrand de

Lis at Madrid, hence our acquaintance. He was fond of Spain and France,

and the East, and of much else that I loved. I lose much by his death. I

have written to George in the sense of our conversation of yesterday,

urging him to get the Tibetan expedition withdrawn, now that Russia has

been so smashed up in Manchuria, proposing also a scheme of settlement

for Egypt.

“_10th May._—Dined with Lady Gregory, Yeats, Gilbert Murray, and Robert

Gregory. Yeats is just back from America, where they have made a great

fuss with him, and he takes himself very seriously in consequence.

Though doubtless a man of genius, he has a strong touch in him of the

charlatan, and his verse is thin stuff, not so good as his prose.

Gilbert Murray is worth ten of him as a poet, and is bringing out his

‘Hippolytus’ this month at a London theatre. I walked home with Murray

as far as Hyde Park Corner. I like him, though he is rather dry in his

talk, a sayer of the obvious rather than of the exquisite, the antipodes

in this to Yeats, who is brilliant in conversation and full of

affectation, while Murray, in spite of his poetic gift, is dull. Yeats

talked to me about getting George Wyndham to grant them a patent at

Dublin for their new theatre. This I readily agreed to see to.

“_11th May._—Lunched in Park Lane. George promised at once to befriend

the Abbey Theatre as I was sure he would. Then we got on to Eastern

politics. George told me he had been adverse all along to the Tibet

expedition, and would be glad to stop it now if he could. On all these

matters he declares Arthur Balfour to be quite sound, and he explained

to me the standing Committee in the Cabinet on Foreign Affairs, and how

well it was working in the way of preventing Departmental extravagances.

I told him there was one thing that needed reform more than all, that

was that instead of promoting an official who had caused an unnecessary

war as they always do, he should be punished. I am glad to see him

taking an interest in foreign affairs, and if he could one day be

Foreign Secretary, my life’s hopes would be fulfilled.

“_18th May._—I have been reading Herbert Spencer’s autobiography, an

astounding document, one of those that console the least of us that he

is not a great man, comic too, and reminiscent of Happy Thoughts, and

the author of ‘Typical developments.’ Burnand must have known Spencer to

have written it.

“_30th May._—To the Lyric Theatre with Cockerell to see Hippolytus. I

expected to find it dull, and perhaps vulgar, in spite of the beauty of

the poetry as translated by Murray, but it was all the contrary. I have

never seen a tragedy like this, not even Salvini’s Othello, or

Annunzio’s Francesca da Rimini. Hippolytus stands upon a higher and

nobler plane. It has dramatic effects one does not dream of when reading

it, not that the acting was more than moderately good. Most of those on

the stage were amateurs, and rather clumsy, but I think this added to

the effect. Even the few professionals were sobered into a kind of good

taste. With the exception of Theseus and a nurse nobody was vulgar, and

the messenger (Granville Barker), who recites the catastrophe, was

admirable. Everybody enunciated well, a thing more necessary in verse

than prose, and the chaunting chorus seemed to me in its place. The slow

movement for the first act is an artistic preparation for the rest, and

throughout it is the piece that enthralls, no cleverness of the actors.

Compared with Shakespeare the superiority lies in the workmanship quite

as much as in the tragic atmosphere. The piece has an ordered sequence

no play of Shakespeare’s possesses. There are none of Shakespeare’s

vulgarities, his appeals to the gallery, his wearisome Elizabethan

jokes. The rhymed verse, too, I find more effective than blank verse, at

any rate than the very best, and a vast amount of Shakespeare’s is mere

wind. The climax of Hippolytus is tremendous, the catastrophe the most

powerful thing in dramatic literature. At the end of it we were all

moved to tears, and I got up and did what I never did before in a

theatre, shouted for the author, whether for Euripides or Gilbert Murray

I hardly knew. Nobody cared to call for the actors, this I consider the

most complete feature of the triumph. Percy and Madeline were there with

Dorothy, also Carlisle, sitting almost next to me, and his son-in-law

Roberts, and Mackail, and his wife. Murray with his family in a stage

box, and a full house behind us. When it was over I went to tea in

Belgrave Square.

“_31st May._—To Cambridge on a visit to Browne, whom I found with Sheykh

Hassan Towfik, the recently installed Arabic tutor. With Sheykh Hassan I

had a long talk in Browne’s rooms at Pembroke, and found him a most

interesting man, who had already gained much influence with such of the

undergraduates as were studying Arabic for employment in Egypt. (His

sudden death a few days afterwards was a great misfortune.) Then on to

Babraham where I dined and slept.

“_6th June._—Lunched with George and Sibell, he very full of the Montem

at Eton, to which he had gone on Saturday, an honoured guest with

George Curzon. The pair are to be given Doctor’s degrees at Oxford. ‘I

like honours and dignities,’ said George. He talked, too, with

enthusiasm about Rodin and Paris, from which he had just returned.

“_7th June._—I have it from the same source from which I originally

heard it, that Eldon Gorst is certainly to succeed Cromer at Cairo in

two years’ time. I wrote to Mohammed Abdu to tell him this, and of the

probability of a new régime being started at Cairo.

“_15th June._—Dined with George Wyndham, and among others Dunraven, a

pleasant party, with much talk about Ireland. Both George and Dunraven

enthusiastic in their praises to me of William O’Brien. Who would have

thought it possible fifteen years ago, and to me, but Time has strange

revenges.

“_17th June._—A large dinner in Park Lane. I had some talk with Lord

Percy after dinner about Arabian matters, he being Under Secretary for

Foreign Affairs. He is an intelligent young man, but without genius it

seemed to me, or special wit, inferior for instance to Winston

Churchill. There were also at dinner Lord Manners, a Dowager of

Westminster, Percy and Madeline Wyndham, with Dorothy, Charles Gatty,

Paget, a young Mahaffy, and Hugh Lane. George much bored between two

dowagers.

“_20th June._—Madeline Wyndham’s birthday dinner, always to me the

pleasantest of anniversaries. Each guest’s name, there were twenty-two

of them, was written on a card with a heart and wings. I had some talk

after dinner with Bendor about South Africa and the land he bought there

three years ago. It consists of 60,000 acres close to the Basuto

frontier, and he is letting it in 300 acre lots to farmers he is

bringing out from England. He has six thoroughbred stallions there from

the Eaton Stud, and spoke in high praise of the Arabs, wanting me to go

out and see it all.

“_24th June._—To see Dr. Andrews, of the Natural History Museum at

Kensington, who showed me fossil bones of primaeval horses, and other

ancient beasts, also the new Okapi stuffed. It is a miniature Giraffe,

striped on the hind quarters like a Zebra. Andrews is a queer, rough

little man, but a good fellow, who knows his trade, and mocks at

conventionalities. Lunched afterwards with Amir Ali and his English

wife. He has retired from the Indian service, and is domiciled now

permanently in England, bringing up his children at schools and

universities as Englishmen.

“_28th June._—To Yeats’ Irish play, ‘Where there is Nothing,’ a very

poor piece, without either wit or sense.

“_30th June._—Gave a scientific luncheon to Andrews, Lydekker, Cockerell

and his scientific brother from America, to discuss the origin of the

horse. This we did pretty thoroughly, deciding that it was quite

possible the Arab was a separate wild breed, that there might be

aboriginal wild horses in Africa, and also on an island in South

America, Chiloe. Lydekker considers both the existing Prevalsky horse

and the Tarpan to be wild breeds, though probably crossed with feral

stallions. Andrews believes that a heavy horse of the shire type existed

once wild in the Thames valley. All agree, I think, that the origin of

the wild horse was multiple. Andrews attaches much importance, as

indicating a separate wild origin for the Arab, to the depression found

in their skulls to receive the tear gland as also to the high setting on

of their tails level with the croup.

“_2nd July._—Good old Watts is dead, full of years and honour. His

pictures this year at the New Gallery were almost as good as ever they

were, and he was well and in good spirits down to a few days before his

end. He was a great painter—on the whole the greatest in England since

Reynolds.

“Another death is that of Stanley, the explorer, who has left £135,000,

got by doing dirty work for the King of the Belgians on the Congo, a

charlatan, who has had the cheek to express a wish he should be buried

in Westminster Abbey.

“_6th July._—Lunched with Margot, at her house in Cavendish Square. On

the doorstep I found myself with Coquelin père, to whom Margot gave an

effusive welcome. We had an amusing meal, Margot making her little girl

Elizabeth recite some verses of Stevenson’s about a butterfly, which the

child did prettily, dressed up in a Velasquez costume with stiff hoop

and petticoat. Coquelin good-naturedly suggested that ‘perhaps

Mademoiselle would be shy,’ but Margot would not hear of it, ‘There is

no shyness,’ she said, ‘in this family,’ nor was the child at all

embarrassed. Coquelin then gave a little entertainment of his own,

imitating an Englishman’s account of him, Coquelin, in absurd Anglo-

French.

“_13th July._—Lunched with George. He is dying to be out of office, and

live an irresponsible life away from politics, which he declares to be

an abomination. He says that I am the only person who has learnt the

secret how to live. We are to spend next Saturday to Monday together in

Worth Forest, where I have seen deer lately. They seem to have come

originally from Buckhurst, where the Park fence had been allowed to get

out of repair, and they have spread themselves over the whole Forest

district as far west as Shelley’s Plain and Leonardslee, a distance of

some twenty miles, and are to be found in small herds in all the great

woodlands. It is a reoccupation of the Forest by its ancient inhabitants

(not by strangers), where they do no harm, and so are preserved by

everybody, except the German Count Münster at Maresfield, who complains

that they interfere with his _chasse_. This comes of Harvey Pechell’s

snobbery in bequeathing Maresfield, an old Shelley property left him by

his wife, to the Prussian Ambassador, because he had been socially

polite to him.

“_16th July._—George has been with me in Worth Forest occupying a tent

we have pitched. He declares he will take five years holiday after the

General Election. We have ridden all over the Forest in Tilgate and

Smith’s Charity, talking always of past days, and the glories of the

Crabbet Club, and devising schemes of an ideal life in woods, with a

pleasant society of men and women on Boccaccian lines, which we are to

call the Fellowship of the Holy Ghosts, but George returns to his

parliament to-morrow.

“_9th Aug._—Went by appointment to see Winston Churchill at his rooms in

Mount Street. He is astonishingly like his father in manners and ways,

and the whole attitude of his mind. He has just come in from playing

polo, a short, sturdy little man with a twinkle in his eye, reminding me

especially of the Randolph of twenty years ago. He took out his father’s

letters which I had left with him six weeks ago, from a tin box, and

read them to me aloud while I explained the allusions in them, and gave

him a short account of the political adventures of the early eighties in

which Randolph and I had been connected. There is something touching

about the fidelity with which he continues to espouse his father’s cause

and his father’s quarrels. He has been working double shifts this

session in Parliament, and looks, I fancy, to a leadership of the

Liberal Party, and an opportunity of full vengeance on those who caused

his father’s death. I promised to let him see extracts from my diaries

of 1884-1885.

“Mary Milbanke is with me at Newbuildings. She is much enlivened and

improved by her trip to the West Indies last winter. I am very fond of

her, having acted as a parent to her from the time she was a child.

“_14th Aug._—Fernycroft. I drove here, starting on the 11th, with Miss

Lawrence and the two boys, Alfred Kensett and Harry Holman, taking tents

and camp equipments with us. We went by Fernhurst and Midhurst, and

nearly had an accident going up the steep hill at Holly Coomb, for we

were overloaded, and it was only by putting the four horses we had been

driving in pairs together with the four in hand harness we had with us

that I managed with a rush to get at full gallop to the top. There had

been heavy rain and the road was much broken up by it, and it was touch

and go whether they could do it. Holly Coomb is a romantic place with

great oak woods, where they used to boast in former times that they

could kill a woodcock every day of the year.

“I have had a long talk with Meynell, who is staying here, about Roman

politics and Catholic prospects. He tells me the true cause of quarrel

between the Vatican and France is that Combes has all along intended to

do away with the Concordat, and that Merry del Val is young and

imprudent. The first quarrel raised by Merry as to the French

President’s visit was so ill-chosen that it raised protests everywhere

in the Catholic world and so had to be abandoned. The other quarrel has

been forced upon the Pope. The Bishops of Laval and Dijon had two or

three years ago been denounced at Rome, the one for immorality with a

Carmelite Abbess, the other for being affiliated to a Freemasons’ Lodge.

He had been seen in plain clothes coming out of a house where the Masons

were holding a meeting, and at Rome his action was connected with the

story of there being a secret plot, supported with much money, for the

dissemination of Masonic ideas among the French priesthood. Young men

had been educated for the purpose in the seminaries, and it was supposed

the Bishop was one of them. On being summoned to Rome the Bishop refused

to go and declared a higher allegiance to be due to the French

Government. He is now excommunicated. As to the other’s immorality it

has been condoned whether proved or not, and he has been given an

archbishopric _in partibus_ at Rome and thus made his peace. Meynell

thinks it will lead to a rupture of the Concordat. The French Government

mean to appropriate the churches in France and lease them back to the

Catholic communities, but Meynell doubts whether these will be disposed

to pay a rent reckoned at £2,000,000. I am inclined to think that the

quarrel will eventually be of advantage to the faith, but Meynell

doubts.”

Here follows an account of a driving and camping tour ending at Clouds.

My arrival there is thus described. We had camped the night before on

the down above Wylye.

“_5th Sept._—We had arranged that I was to wait in camp till nine for

George Wyndham who was to ride from Clouds in the early morning; and

sure enough at 8:30 I heard the sound of galloping hoofs and presently a

view holloa and they arrived, George and his son Percy, both bareheaded,

and with them Dorothy, and I gave them tea in my tent. It was a joyous

meeting on a joyous morning, for George has cast his official cares to

the winds and is in his most expansive mood. Then we all went on to

Clouds, my four horses pulling double with the excitement of the

galloping outriders. There are two terrible hills on either side of

Hindon, and these we raced up at a gallop, the team going gallantly and

out-pacing the riders, all except George, who was well mounted and led

the way. What a morning! We spent the day discussing the Japanese

victories and international questions and building by-laws and religion.

The elder Percy was curious as to the exact extent of my beliefs. He

asked me whether I believed in nothing at all supernatural. I answered

‘Yes, I have a small belief in the evil eye.’ This was hailed as a great

pronouncement.

“_6th Sept._—A day of galloping on the downs to Whitesheet Castle, and

this afternoon I read them my version of Lebid’s ‘Ode’ and my play

‘Fand.’ I am satisfied with ‘Fand’ and believe it has even acting

capabilities. We had some discussion what to call it, a drama or what,

George maintaining that it should be called a tragedy, because it ends

in the hero going back to his wife.

“I asked him about Somaliland and what instructions had been given to

Swain. He told me he had pressed my views of pacification by blood

payment, and had no doubt Swain’s instructions for peace had been

stringent because all the military men were furious against him. As to

Thibet, Lhassa is to be really evacuated, another triumph of our joint

influence. We also talked about Egypt. I gave him my views of a new

régime there based on Mohammed Abdu’s letter. He said they were quite

aware that the present state of things at Cairo was unsatisfactory, but

the great obstacle to any change was Cromer, who was entirely satisfied

with all as it is. George had met the Khedive Abbas at a dinner party in

London, where the Khedive had treated him with obsequious politeness.

This had given him a contempt for him.

“_8th Sept._—George has left us, and with him the life of the party. He

is egotistical but not, I think, selfish, monopolizing attention to his

own talk and his own ideas. Some people resent this, but on me it has a

stimulating effect, rousing me to repartee; thus I am always happy in

his company, almost as his mother is who adores his self-glorifications,

which are a schoolboy’s in simplicity.

“_10th Sept._—Left Clouds. On my way back through Wilton I passed the

statue which has been put up there to George Pembroke. It is on a

colossal scale but very like him. It feels strange that I should have

known him as a boy.

“_17th Sept._—Chapel Street. To-day I signed the settlement, making over

Crabbet to Judith, thus ending my reign there after thirty-two and a

half years of it, though I still retain the Lordship of the Manors of

Worth and Oram, with Worth Forest, Springfield, and Newbuildings. It is

rather a leap in the dark but has not been taken without reflection.

George also signed the settlement and also Eddy Marsh, as witnesses.

George starts to-morrow, with his son Percy, for Frankfort in order that

he may learn German. He is a charming young man and George is immensely

proud of his good looks. For himself, his one thought now is to get back

to poetry.

“_18th Sept._—Dined with old Philip Webb at Caxtons and discussed

Tolstoy’s ideas with him which I quarrel with on two points. (1) His

belief that the world is improving in the direction of justice and (2)

His view that religion of any kind makes people unselfish.

“_23rd Sept._—Anne has left for Egypt. I am to follow in six weeks.

Herbert Bismarck is dead; his wife, Maggie Hoyos, was a nice, simple

girl when I used to go and see them at Paddockhurst, some fourteen years

ago. I see in the papers that she threw herself on her husband’s coffin

at the funeral; their marriage had been a very happy one.

“_28th Sept._—Dined in Belgrave Square, George being with us, having

returned from Germany. He has just published a letter in the ‘Times’

repudiating a programme put out in his absence by Dunraven of a kind of

Home Rule for Ireland. I know this kind of Home Rule to be in accordance

with his views, but he gets out of the difficulty by declaring, that it

is absolutely contrary to those of the Unionist Party, a distinction

which has so far escaped the criticism of opponents.” This was the first

mistake made by George Wyndham in his management of his Irish policy and

the beginning of great trouble for him, though he did not at the moment

foresee it. His short run to Frankfort was the first real holiday he had

taken during his three years at the Irish office, and he had given

orders not to be disturbed during his absence by having letters

forwarded to him. He was consequently unaware until his return that Lord

Dunraven, with whom he had been acting in concert, had launched their

scheme of ‘Devolution’ on the world and without due reflection he had

written his letter to the ‘Times,’ an unfortunate blunder which cost him

his political career.

“_1st Oct._—Sir William Harcourt is dead, the last of the great 1880

Liberals. I am sorry he did not live to see the return of his party to

power and the revival of the Harcourt earldom in his own person. He

lived just long enough to inherit Newnham. The last I saw of him was

some three months ago when I found him in his carriage in Green Park and

exchanged a few words with him. He was always pleasant and kind to me

and allowed me full liberty of laughter and plain speech, though he

never, I think, quite forgave me my gibes at ‘Paradise Lost.’ (I had

called Milton once ‘a bombastic windbag.’) This was touching a sacred

subject to him, but perhaps I exaggerate the incident. Politically he

was straighter than most of his fellow politicians, and when he condoned

the Jameson Raid at the inquiry, I believe it to have been out of

loyalty as a Privy Councillor to the Queen. His domestic life was very

beautiful, and at home he was adored.

“_10th Oct._—Alexandre de Wagram is here for a day or two’s shooting.

To-day our last beat was the Sprinks Plantation, where we got seventy-

two pheasants, all driven high overhead. The light happened to be

favourable and the shooting very good. For myself I got twenty-five

birds down at one stand with only thirty cartridges, the best I ever did

in my best days.

“_13th Oct._—Oliver Howard and his wife arrived here last night having

gone to a wrong station and wandered in flies for several hours. She is

a very pretty but rather captious little person, which perhaps accounts

for Oliver’s going to South Africa.

“I am working out a scheme of small holdings here with a bungalow

cottage and ten acres each at moderate rents, in pursuance of an article

I published on the by-law tyranny in the last ‘Nineteenth Century

Review.’

“_24th Oct._—An extraordinary incident has occurred. The Russian fleet

issuing from the Baltic, and bound for Japan, has at midnight attacked

the English fishing fleet on the Dogger Bank, sunk one or two of their

craft, killed two fishermen and wounded others. The newspapers treat the

affair as a mistake, or panic on the part of the Russian officer in

command. I do not take this view. The Russian aristocracy is immensely

irritated just now against us English and is in the condition of mind

when a man slaps another’s face, without regard to the consequences. I

am a man of peace, but under the circumstances were I in Arthur

Balfour’s place, I would stand on no ceremony, but should order out the

Channel fleet, and bring the Russian squadron into Spithead. The

commanding officer was in all probability drunk at the time, but that is

no excuse. [I wrote in the same sense to George and he answered me

briefly thus: ‘Many thanks for your letter on the North Sea outrage; it

was a shocking affair. We cannot contemplate the high seas of the world

becoming a vast imitation of a running camp poker saloon.’]

“_29th Oct._—The Russian Government has given in, thanks to the firmness

of our Cabinet. The Russian officers are to be submitted to an

International Inquiry, and punished if found guilty, and in the

meanwhile our Baltic Fleet is to stay where it is at Vigo. Arthur

Balfour has certainly managed things dexterously and well. Whether the

punishment will be very real I doubt, but the main object is already

accomplished, that of showing it is impossible to do these things with

impunity.

“_2nd Nov._—With Madeline Adeane to see Bernard Shaw’s new play, ‘John

Bull’s other Island.’ It is a roaring burlesque, the most amusing I ever

listened to. I laughed till I cried, sitting in the uppermost tier of

the gallery, for we could get no other seats. Shaw has certainly made an

epoch on the English stage, using it also as a platform for his

political fancies. In this play he hits all round, making all the

Parliamentary parties equally ridiculous, including the Irish.

“The arrangement of the Dogger Bank affair turns out less rosy than

Arthur Balfour announced it to be. The Czar has declared publicly his

belief in the torpedo story told by the Russian officers, and the

Russian Fleet, with its Admiral Rojesvenski, has left Vigo for Japan. It

will probably end in our having to pocket our slap in the face, and

perhaps in having the torpedo story saddled on us in history.

“_11th Nov._—I leave to-day for Egypt, after having taken all my male

servants down to Shipley to vote for Turnour, the Tory candidate.”

At Gros Bois from 14th November to 20th November.

“_17th Nov._—The great talk here at Gros Bois is of General André’s

resignation, a matter of domestic politics. They take no interest here

in the Baltic Fleet outrage, or much in the Russo-Japanese War, Wagram

being convinced that Russia must win in the end, otherwise it would mean

an invasion of Europe by ‘_les jaunes_.’

“This was a sad visit. On the 18th I went with Wagram and the rest of

the family to a memorial service he has performed monthly at Boissy for

poor Berthe, where she lies under her cold pyramid which marks the

family vault, though Wagram is preparing for her a less dreary resting

place outside in the sun hard by. Wagram had brought his little bunch of

violets, and we both prayed for her, but alas, what matter, she does not

know. ‘Though the Heavens and the Earth be broken, she shall not arise,

nor waken out of her sleep.’

“_20th Nov._—La Tour d’Auvergne is here, and Alexandre came to-day from

Saint Cyr, which he has joined for the Army. He was proud of having

driven his motor the distance (forty kilometres) in as many minutes, it

being the best and straightest road he says in France, and with the

fewest villages. We were taken out shooting as in former days, and

killed eight or nine _faisans vénérés_, with a number of the common

sort. These _vénérés_ have been thirty-four years wild at Gros Bois,

having escaped from their pens during the Prussian War and multiplied

greatly, but Wagram complains that the length of their tails has

suffered. Formerly the birds measured as much as 2 metres 10, whereas

now they seldom reach 1 metre 80. Otherwise they have flourished

exceedingly, we must have seen at least forty on one beat. They are

somewhat puzzling to shoot, as they are very sudden and irregular in

their movements, coming through the woods with a great noise and

flourish, and, when you expect it least, perching on the outer trees and

chattering like parrots. Thus many birds are missed.

“_22nd Nov._—Venice. With Button Bourke, to see the sights, he doing

_cicerone_ with considerable knowledge. I was pleased to find that the

loss of the great tower is really a gain to St. Mark’s, which one now

sees in its true proportion. The tower dwarfed it, and it is best away.

St. Mark’s is, I say once more, the most beautiful church in Europe, and

the most interesting. By good luck I find Tintoretto’s great ‘Paradiso’

picture taken down from its place where it was difficult to see, and set

in a good light on a gigantic easel, so that one can examine every

detail. It is a really splendid thing. Button has been now two years

living at Venice, and already has the ways and language of the ‘oldest

inhabitant.’ He occupies a little house in San Giacomo dell’ Orio, where

there is a large garden in which he stows the odds and ends of outdoor

sculpture he buys for the London market, a business by which he makes a

scanty living and which makes him happy, having found in it a vocation

in life. He is, as always, a delightful companion.

“_23rd Nov._—Lunched with Button and his chief friend here, Horatio

Brown, who has taken on old Rawdon Brown’s work at the Venetian

archives. I remember old Rawdon Brown when I was here with Anne thirty

years ago. Both are interesting men. I told Button the story of the

Gorst intrigue at Cairo, and he gave me in return the latest Egyptian

news which he got from a friend in the War Office, namely, that Cromer

has been in correspondence as to the withdrawal of the Army of

Occupation. Cromer has declared himself ready to do without any English

regiment beyond a Corporal’s guard at Alexandria. He says he can rely

absolutely on the Egyptian troops, that the English garrison is not

wanted, and that he declines to pay for it. The London War Office,

however, insists on keeping it on in Egypt, as they thus make a saving

of English expense, the cost of the army being put upon Egypt.

“_28th Nov._—After a stormy passage I find myself once more at

Alexandria and Sheykh Obeyd. During the voyage I read Frederick

Harrison’s novel which he has just published, a strange mixture of

historic fact of the most interesting kind, and melodrama of the most

conventional. The romantic episodes will not, I think, redound to

Harrison’s philosophic fame, for it is naïvely unreal, but these take up

but a few pages, and might as well have been omitted altogether, while

the historic background is vigorous and well told, only, as in every

historical novel, the parts that are true ought to be printed in sober

type, the parts untrue in red. As it is we don’t know what to make of

the cream-coloured Arabs and the coal-black Barbs, which would seem to

have been borrowed from Disraeli. I must write to him about it. The

Creevy Papers is another volume of good gossiping value.

“Here at Sheykh Obeyd things change slowly. The city creeps gradually

nearer us, and the old distant view of Cairo, which was so beautiful, is

half shut out by new houses. The garden remains, as always, an

unchanging refuge.

“Mohammed Abdu has given me an account of all that has happened during

the summer. The chief incident has been an escapade of Sheykh Ali

Yusuf’s, in which the Khedive has been mixed up. The Khedive, ever since

his first visit to London and the acquaintance he made with our King,

has taken to a life of amusement with ladies of doubtful character, and

has surrounded himself with boon companions. Sheykh Ali Yusuf, whose

connection with the Court was originally a literary one, but who is a

pleasant fellow, has been adopted into this set, and, though no longer

young, has put on the garments of youth in the Khedive’s company. Among

other ladies honoured by His Highness was a daughter of the Sheykh El

Saadat, whom her father from mercenary motives had not allowed to marry,

though she is now twenty-seven, his high position as head of the Moslem

nobility putting it into his power to exact rich presents from suitors

for her hand, to whom he afterwards refused consent. The young lady,

however, has been furious at the delay, and through the connivance of

the Sheykh el Bekri, who had married an elder sister, the Khedive had

made her acquaintance, and seems to have wished to establish her with

Ali Yusuf. Ali Yusuf was therefore put forward as a suitor, his suit

being supported by Abbas, but the old game of preliminary presents and

then delays was the only result, and Ali Yusuf getting tired of this,

arranged with El Bekri and the young lady that she should elope with

him. Now elopement is a quite unheard of thing in Islam, and bears the

character of a theft, inasmuch as it is stealing a man’s daughter

without paying the customary dower, and the scandal caused in Ali

Yusuf’s case has been everywhere immense, nor has it been made less by

Lord Cromer’s having ultimately settled the dispute by advising the

young person to return to her parents. Mohammed Abdu tells me that the

Khedive’s position at Constantinople is that of being made use of by the

Sultan as a spy for him on what goes on in Egypt, and for this he has

lost his popularity.

“_17th Dec._—I have been a week in bed with a strong fever, a soul-

crushing evil, and now feel twenty years older than when I left England

hardly a month ago. The things of this life seem very far away, or

seemed so till this morning, not merely the things of youth, love,

ambition, vanity, but equally so the things of the spirit, all hope, all

fear, all wish to live or die. In these depths, the problem of a future

life seems foolishness; God, heaven and hell, good and evil, duty of any

kind, responsibility, words without meaning. Above all the heart is

dead. Who is there that can help or heal? The good to us are as one with

the wicked. There is no voice in all the world that can reach us or

console. Only with the dead, those who have passed through the shadow

where we stand, are we able to converse as equal to ourselves in sorrow.

I seemed to grope in blind impotent search for a dead hand, Cowie’s, as

she used to be here sixteen years ago, when we lived like mendicants in

the little garden house, and as she had nursed me in Ceylon. Then I

could have howled like a wild beast in my desolation. Such were the last

few days.

“Now I am better, the fever almost gone.”

This was the beginning of a long illness which eventually declared

itself as Mediterranean fever, and from which for two years it seemed

unlikely I should recover.

It is with reluctance that I waste space in recording these ups and

downs of health which would be better passed over in entire silence, for

I am sufficiently old-fashioned to be of the opinion of our forefathers,

that bodily infirmities should be hidden as far as possible from public

view, and that self-respect should require us as men to follow the

dignified course of the wild creatures of the forest, who retire out of

sight when suffering, and end by dying of old age in some remote retreat

alone. It is, however, not possible for me, in the present volume, to

avoid all reference to those evil hours, seeing that they have covered

so large a section of my later years. It has been fortunate for me that,

however often pain has incapacitated me physically during the last

decade of my life, it has always left my mind its full vigour, and

allowed me to continue, with rare interruptions, its long acquired habit

of setting down my daily record in these diaries. So far, indeed, has

this been the case that during the years 1904 and 1905 I actually got

through more literary work than in any other half dozen years of middle

life. The necessity of bodily inaction forced me into activities of

another sort which, in their turn, enabled me to survive. For this I

thank a kindly Providence and the persistent devotion of not a few

untiring friends who encouraged me to work, and working to live on.