TRAVELS IN ARABIA AND INDIA
While these important events had been happening in Egypt I had been
away, still travelling with my wife on our new adventure in Central
Arabia, far removed from all knowledge of them or of the affairs of the
outside world.
On our way to Damascus, where we were to begin our serious campaign, we
had stopped for some days in Cyprus, being curious to look at the new
English possession, just acquired at the cost of so much scandal, which
we found receiving its first lessons in English administration at the
hands of Sir Garnet Wolseley. The island was still in its summer heat,
no rain having fallen, and seemed to us little better than a dusty
wilderness. We called on Wolseley at his government house at Nicosia,
and found him making the best of a rather forlorn and very isolated
position. In his talk with us he put as good a face as he could on the
outlook of this latest "gem of Empire," but it was clear that in his
professional mind the island had no great merit, and was rather in the
nature of that gross of spectacles brought home from the fair we read of
in the "Vicar of Wakefield." It was difficult, indeed, to see what use
it could be put to, or how it could be made to pay its cost of
management. Its acquisition had already begun to bring discredit to the
English name, and it was generally spoken of, we found among the
Mohammedans of Syria, as a _backshish_ taken by England for services
rendered to the Sultan.
At Damascus we met several interesting personages, among others the old
hero of the Algerian war with France, Seyyid Abd-el-Kader, and that
other in some ways hero, the ex-leader of the Turkish constitutional
party, Midhat Pasha. My impression of the latter, much as I was inclined
to sympathize with Mohammedan reform, was not favourable. Personally he
was unimpressive, of no distinguished appearance, and with a certain
boastful and self-assertive manner which suggested vanity as a leading
characteristic. In a long conversation I had with him on the subject of
Ottoman regeneration, I found his ideas shallow and of that commonplace
European kind which so often in the East do service for original thought
and depth of conviction. His ideas of reform for the Empire, and of the
Syrian vilayet of which he had just been appointed Valy, as he expounded
them to me, were wholly material ones, the construction of railroads,
canals, and tramways, all excellent things in their way, but leaving
untouched the real necessities of the administration and which, as he
had no funds whatever at his disposal for public works, were in his own
province quite illusory. Of the larger matters of economy, justice, and
protection for the poor, he did not speak, nor did he show himself in
the smallest degree in sympathy with the people of the province he had
come to govern. Indeed, he was imbued with more than the usual Turkish
contempt for everything Arabian, which he took no pains to conceal, and
his avowed methods in dealing with the Bedouins were brutal in the
extreme. This naturally repelled me. Nevertheless I cannot help
regretting now that I did not make some effort at the time of his
misfortunes to rouse public feeling in his favour in England, when such
might have perhaps saved him from the terrible punishment he suffered at
the Sultan's hands. I did not, however, at that time know all the facts,
and it was only in 1884 that I learned, from a source on which I could
rely, the true history of Midhat's trial on the false charge of murder
brought against him three years before. This is so important a matter
that I make no excuse for relating it here in detail.
It may be remembered that when I was at Constantinople in 1873 I had
been cared for during a serious illness by Doctor Dickson, the then
physician of the British Embassy, with whom I had formed a very pleasant
intimacy. This worthy old man, who had already at that time been some
thirty-five years in Turkey, had become thoroughly orientalized and
possessed a wider experience and more complete knowledge of all things
Ottoman than perhaps any other Englishman then living. He had, moreover,
a loyal sympathy with the people among whom he had so long lived, and
had retained with it a very high integrity and sense of old-fashioned
English honour, which made him the most capable and reliable witness
possible in regard to events which had come under his notice. His
evidence, therefore, on what I am about to relate may be considered as
absolutely final on the matter it touches. In 1884 I was again at
Constantinople, and it was then that he gave it me; and it seemed to me
so important as a corrective to history that I at once on the day I
heard it wrote it down. It is textually as follows:
"Nov. 3, 1884. Doctor Dickson was sent by the English Embassy to
investigate the circumstances of Abd-el-Aziz' death; and he gave us a
most precise account of all he had seen at the palace that day. The
party of doctors consisted of a Greek, Marco Pasha, of an old Englishman
who had been Lord Byron's doctor, and several others. They found the
body in the guard house and examined it carefully. The Sultan was
dressed in a silk shirt, such as the _caïquejis_ wear, plain without
stripes, and pink silk trousers. When stripped the body was found
without scratch or bruise, 'the most beautiful body in the world,' with
the exception of the cuts in the two arms on the inside where the
arteries are. The cut on the left arm was deep to the bone and Dr.
Dickson had put his finger into the wound. That on the right was
imperfect and the artery was not severed. They were manifestly the cause
of death. The other doctors were satisfied with this examination and
went away; but Dr. Dickson and the other English doctor insisted upon
taking the evidence of the Sultan's mother, and this was her account:
Abd-el-Aziz had twice since his deposition tried to destroy himself,
once by trying to throw himself down a well, once into the Bosphorus,
but had been prevented; and the Sultana had been warned to give him no
instrument with which he could effect his purpose. When therefore he had
asked her for a mirror and scissors to trim his beard she had chosen the
smallest pair she possessed, and thought it impossible he should harm
himself with them. She occupied the room next to his, and there were
always one or two girls on watch when she was not herself with him. It
happened, however, that one afternoon he had ordered the girls out and
bolted the door, saying he wished to be alone; and the girls did not
dare disobey. But when half an hour was passed they came and told her,
and at first she was not alarmed, but bade them wait at the door and
listen. Then they came back and said they heard nothing, and at the end
of the hour she herself went, followed by her women, and pushed the door
open. They found the Sultan leaning on his side on the sofa dead in this
position.
[Here in my journal is a sketch.]
"The sofa and the curtains of the room were of velvet, red on yellow
ground. And Dr. Dickson's colleague examined the place and found the
left arm of the sofa saturated with blood, and a great pool of
coagulated blood on the floor beneath; also on the middle of the sofa a
small mark of blood corresponding with the wound on the right arm, but
though he examined carefully there was not a speck elsewhere than close
to the sofa, so that it was impossible there could have been any
struggle or murder. As the Sultana said: 'If he was murdered the
murderer must have been myself, for I was in the next room and nobody
else could have come near him.' At the trial of Midhat and the rest for
murder, they produced a linen, not a silk, shirt, with a cut in the side
as from a sword thrust, a pair of green or yellow trousers, and a fur
dressing gown, not those which were on the corpse, and chintz covers of
the sofa and chintz curtains sprinkled with blood, not those of the room
where the body was found. Dr. Dickson had thereupon written a protest
stating what he knew, and had given it to Lord Dufferin, begging him to
have it handed as evidence to the President of the Court. But Dufferin
would not interfere without instructions, and while he telegraphed, or
pretended to telegraph, Midhat was condemned. Marco Pasha, he says, must
have been induced to give the evidence he did. The story of men having
been seen climbing in and out of the window was ridiculous, as it was so
high from the ground the men must have broken their legs jumping out.
Dr. Dickson is a very precise old gentleman, and the sort of witness
whose evidence would be accepted by any jury in the world. I therefore
entirely believe his account, improbable as at first sight it seems,
that a Sultan should not have been murdered and should have committed
suicide. Midhat and Damad died in chains at Taif some months ago, having
been starved to death. Midhat's end was hastened by a carbuncle, but he
was none the less made away with. The Sheykh el Islam has also recently
died there, who gave the _fetwa_ authorizing Abd-el-Aziz' deposition.
This act of terror has given Abdul Hamid the absolute power he now
holds."
Another person of importance to my narrative whom we met that autumn of
1878 at Damascus was Sir Edward Malet, at that time Secretary of Embassy
at Constantinople, and who was making a tour of Syria partly for his
amusement, partly to gather information. During my diplomatic career I
had served twice under his excellent father, and had been very intimate
with his family and with himself from the days when we were both
attachés, and I am therefore able to speak of his character, which has
been strangely misunderstood in Egypt, from intimate personal knowledge.
Malet was a man of fair ordinary abilities, gifted with much industry,
caution, and good sense. Having been born, so to say, in diplomacy and
put into the service by his father when he was only sixteen, he had had
a thoroughly professional training, and, as far as the traditions and
usages of his work went, he was an entirely competent public servant. He
could write a good plain despatch, and one which might be trusted to say
not a word more than his instructions warranted, and would commit his
Government to nothing not intended. He had the talents which are perhaps
the most useful under the ordinary circumstances of the service to which
he belonged, prudence, reticence and a ready self-effacement, those in
fact which should distinguish a discreet family solicitor,--and the duty
of a diplomatist, except in very rare cases, is in no way different from
that of a solicitor. Imagination, however, Malet had none, nor
initiative, nor any power of dealing on his own responsibility with
occasions requiring strong action and prompt decision. He was the last
man in the world to lead an intrigue or command a difficult situation.
Personally he was amiable, without being attractive, and he had retained
a certain boyishness of mind which in his unofficial moments was very
apparent. His industry was great and his conduct irreproachable. As a
quite young man this was very noticeable. He always preferred his work,
however little interesting, to any form of amusement, and even when on
leave would spend his spare afternoons copying despatches with us in his
father's chancery rather than be at the trouble of inventing occupation
for himself elsewhere. I record this because he has been credited in
Egypt with an ambitious and intriguing restlessness which was the
precise opposite of his very quiet character. Neither in pleasure nor in
work had he the smallest spirit of adventure. Otherwise it is possible
that he might have accompanied us, as I proposed to him to do, to
Arabia, but he was not one to leave the beaten track, and, though I
interested him as far as I could in my more romantic plan, he preferred
to follow the common tourist road, and so went on after a few days to
Jerusalem.
Our own journey was a very different one, and proved to be of even more
interest than I had anticipated. The full detail of it has been
published both in English and in French, under the title "A Pilgrimage
to Nejd," and so I will deal, with it here briefly. To narrate it in a
very few words: we travelled by the Haj Road as far as Mezarib and from
thence to the Jebel Hauran, where one of the Druse chiefs of the Atrash
family provided us with a _rafyk_ or guide, and so passed down the Wady
Sirhán by Kâf to Jôf where Mohammed el Aruk, son of the Sheykh of
Tudmor, who was with us, had relations. Thence, after some stay with
these, we crossed the Nefud, a hazardous passage of ten days through the
great sand desert to Haïl and, though we had no letters or introductions
of any kind, were received by the Emir Mohammed Ibn Rashid, the then
sovereign of independent Nejd, with all possible honour. Our quality of
English people was a sufficient passport for us in his eyes, and the
fact of our visits made the previous year to so many of the Anazeh and
Shammar Sheykhs, rumours of which had reached him. By this time we had
learned sufficient Arabic to be able to carry on a conversation, and we
found him courteous and amiable, and exceedingly interested to hear all
we had to tell him about the affairs of the great world from which Nejd
is so completely shut off by the surrounding deserts. On matters which
at all concerned Arabia he was curious to learn our opinion, and
especially as to the characters of the various Bedouin Chiefs, his
enemies or rivals. European politics interested him very little, and
hardly more the politics of Constantinople or Egypt, for at that time
the Sultan, though Nejd was called at Bagdad a province of the empire,
was in no way recognized by the Wahhabi Princes as their sovereign, and
the only relations they had had with him for a century had been those of
a hostile character. The recollection of Mohammed Ali's invasion of Nejd
was still a living memory, and Midhat Pasha's more recent seizure of El
Hasa on the Persian Gulf and his abortive expedition to Jôf were much
resented at Haïl. It stood us in good stead with Ibn Rashid that we had
come to him without the intervention of any Ottoman authority.
The result of this friendly visit to the capital of independent Arabia,
with the view I obtained there of the ancient system of free government
existing for so many centuries in the heart of that wonderful peninsula,
was to confirm me in the enthusiastic feelings of love and admiration I
already entertained for the Arabian race. It was indeed with me a
political "first love," a romance which more and more absorbed me, and
determined me to do what I could to help them to preserve their precious
gift of independence. Arabia seemed to me in the light of a sacred land,
where I had found a mission in life I was bound to fulfil. Nor do I
think that I exaggerated the value of the traditional virtues I saw
practised there.
By nearly all Orientals the Bedouin system of government is looked upon
as little else than brigandage, and on the confines of civilization it
has, in fact, a tendency to degenerate into such. But in the heart of
Arabia itself it is not so. In Nejd alone of all the countries of the
world I have visited, either East or West, the three great blessings of
which we in Europe make our boast, though we do not in truth possess
them, are a living reality: "Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood," names only
even in France, where they are written up on every wall, but here
practically enjoyed by every free man. Here was a community living as
our idealists have dreamed, without taxes, without police, without
conscription, without compulsion of any kind, whose only law was public
opinion, and whose only order a principle of honour. Here, too, was a
people poor yet contented, and, according to their few wants, living in
abundance, who to all questions I asked of them (and in how many lands
had I not put the same in vain) had answered me invariably, "Thank God,
we are not as the other nations are. Here we have our own government.
Here we are satisfied." It was this that filled me with astonishment and
pleasure, and that worked my conversion from being an idle onlooker at
the misfortunes of the Eastern world into one filled with zeal for the
extension of those same blessings of liberty to the other nations held
in bondage. Our journey back to the civilized but less happy world of
Irak and Southern Persia, which we visited in turn in the following
spring, only confirmed and intensified my conviction. How wretched a
contrast indeed to Nejd were the lands of the Lower Euphrates, inhabited
by the same Arab race, but a race demoralized, impoverished, and
brutalized by Ottoman rule! How still more wretched Persian Arabistan! I
cast about in my mind for some means of restoring them to their lost
dignity, their lost prosperity and self-respect, and, for a moment, I
saw in England's protection, if it could be given, a possible road for
them to salvation. It was with ideas of this sort taking shape and
substance in my mind that, after a most difficult land journey from
Bagdad to Bushire on the Persian Gulf and thence by sea to Kurrachi, I
found myself at last in India, where experiences of another kind were
awaiting me and a new lesson in the economy of Eastern things.
My reason for going on to India, after the severe journey we had just
made, was that on our arrival at Bushire we had found letters awaiting
us from Lord Lytton, who had for many years been my most intimate
friend, inviting us to pay him a visit at Simla. Lytton, of whose
endearing personal qualities I need here say nothing, for I have already
paid that tribute to his beloved memory, had been like myself in the
diplomatic service, and I had served with him at Lisbon in 1865, and we
had written poetry and lived together in an intimacy which had been
since continued. Now in 1879 he had been a little over two years Viceroy
in India, and at the time we arrived at Simla was just bringing his
first Afghan campaign to a successful conclusion, and he signed the
Treaty of Gandamak in the first month of our staying with him. Lytton,
who was a man of very superstitious temperament, though a rationalist in
his religious beliefs, spent much of his spare time during the war, hard
worker though he was, in making fire-balloons which he launched at
intervals, arguing from their quick or slow ascensions good or bad
fortune to his army. Not that he allowed such results to decide his
action, for he was a steady worker and sound reasoner, but it soothed
his nerves, which were always highly strung, to have these little
intimations of a supernatural kind in which he persuaded himself half to
believe. He connected my coming to Simla with the good turn the war had
taken, and looked upon me as a fortunate influence as long as I was with
him. He made me the confidant of all his thoughts, and from him I
learned many interesting things in the region of high politics which I
need not here particularize, though some of them will be found embodied
in this memoir. With my Arabian ideas, as a man of romance and a poet,
he at once professed his sympathy, and gave instructions to Sir Alfred
Lyall, who was then his Foreign Secretary, to talk the matter over with
me and give me all possible information.
The Indian Government was at that time not at all disinclined to make a
forward movement in the Persian Gulf. There had been for many years past
a kind of protectorate exercised by the Indian Navy of the Arabian
seaports, a protectorate which, being rigidly restricted to the
prevention of piracy and quarrels between the tribes at sea without any
attempt at interfering with them on shore, had been wholly beneficent,
and the recent assertion of the Ottoman claim to sovereignty over them
was resented at Calcutta. The Sultan Abdul Hamid too had already begun
to alarm our authorities by his Pan-Islamic propaganda, which it was
thought was affecting the loyalty of the Indian Mohammedans. Ideas,
therefore, of Arab independence were agreeable to the official view, and
Sir Alfred Lyall reported well of mine to Lytton, so well that there was
a plan half agreed to between us that I should return the following
winter to Nejd and should be the bearer of a complimentary message from
the Viceroy to Ibn Rashid. I am glad now, with my better knowledge of
the ways of the Indian Government, that this proposal led to no
practical result. I see plainly that it would have placed me in a false
position, and that with the best will in the world to help the Arabs and
serve the cause of freedom I might have made myself unconsciously the
instrument of a policy tending to their subjugation. It is one of the
evils of the English Imperial system that it cannot meddle anywhere
among free people, even with quite innocent intentions, without in the
end doing evil. There are too many selfish interests always at work not
to turn the best beginnings into ill endings.
These matters, however, were not the only ones I discussed with Lytton
and his subordinates. Sir John Strachey, his finance minister, put me
through a course of instruction on Indian finance and Indian economics,
the methods of dealing with famines, the land revenue, the currency, the
salt tax, and the other large questions then under discussion--Strachey
being the chief official advocate of what was called the forward policy
in public expenditure--and with the unexpected result that my faith, up
to that moment strong in the honesty of the Indian Government, as the
faithful guardian of native interests, was rudely shaken. The following
extracts from letters written by me at the time from Simla will show how
this short glimpse of India at headquarters was affecting me: "I am
disappointed," I wrote, "with India, which seems just as ill-governed as
the rest of Asia, only with good intentions instead of bad ones or none
at all. There is just the same heavy taxation, government by foreign
officials, and waste of money one sees in Turkey, only, let us hope, the
officials are fools instead of knaves. The result is the same, and I
don't see much difference between making the starving Hindoos pay for a
cathedral at Calcutta and taxing Bulgarians for a palace on the
Bosphorus. Want eats up these great Empires in their centralized
governments, and the only way to make them prosper would be to split
them up and let the pieces govern themselves." Also to another friend,
Harry Brand, Radical Member of Parliament, now Lord Hampden, "The
_natives_, as they call them, are a race of slaves, frightened, unhappy,
and terribly thin. Though a good Conservative and a member of the
Carlton Club I own to being shocked at the Egyptian bondage in which
they are held, and my faith in British institutions and the blessings of
British rule have received a severe blow. I have been studying the
mysteries of Indian finance under the 'best masters,' Government
secretaries, commissioners, and the rest, and have come to the
conclusion that if we go on _developing_ the country at the present rate
the inhabitants will have, sooner or later, to resort to cannibalism,
for there will be nothing but each other left to eat. I do not clearly
understand why we English take their money from these starving Hindoos
to make railroads for them which they don't want, and turnpike roads
and jails and lunatic asylums and memorial buildings to Sir Bartle
Frere, and why we insist upon their feeding out of their wretched
handfulls of rice immense armies of policemen and magistrates and
engineers. They want none of these things, and they want their rice very
badly, as anybody can see by looking at their ribs. As to the debt they
have been saddled with, I think it would be honester to repudiate it, at
least as a Debt on _India_. I never could see the moral obligation
governments acknowledge of taxing people for the debts they, and not the
people, have incurred. All public debts, even in a self-governing
country, are more or less dishonest, but in a foreign despotism like
India they are a mere swindle."
On the whole, this brief visit to India at headquarters had considerable
influence with me in the shaping of my ideas on the larger questions of
Imperial policy, and giving them the direction they afterwards took. I
still believed, but with failing faith, in the good intentions, if no
longer in the good results, of our Eastern rule, and I thought it could
be improved and that the people at home would insist upon its being
improved if they only knew.
One of my last recollections of my two months' stay with Lytton at
Peterhoff, as the Viceregal residence was then called at Simla, was of a
dinner at which I sat next to Cavagnari the evening before he set out on
his fatal mission to Kabul. He was an interesting man, the grandson, so
he told me, of a Venetian merchant who, when the French Republican army
occupied Venice, lent a large sum of money to Bonaparte, which was never
repaid. The Emperor, however, rewarded him by making his son his private
secretary, who became a devoted adherent of the Imperial family. Lewis
Napoleon Cavagnari, the grandson, was also a strong Bonapartist, and
believed himself, on account of his name, to have before him a very high
destiny. He had faith in his "star," and I can testify that in his talk
to me that night--and it was long and intimate--the last thing he seemed
to think of was failure or danger in his mission. Yet only a few days
before he must have had an admonition in the tragic news, of which we
also talked, of the Prince Imperial's death in South Africa. When we
parted it was with an engagement on my part and on my wife's that we
would go in the autumn to visit him at Kabul. "You must not come,
however," he said, "before the autumn, because I shall not have got the
Residency comfortable or fit to receive ladies." Of any more dangerous
reason he gave us no kind of hint.
Another acquaintance at that time with whom a tragic history is
connected was Colley, then Lytton's military secretary, who the year
following was to die on Majuba Hill. Lytton had the highest possible
opinion of his military talents, and between them they had in large
measure directed the Afghan campaign from Simla. His fault was, I think,
too great self-confidence and too much ambition. He occupied Majuba
because he could not bear to let the campaign end without gaining some
personal success. Melgund again, who is now Lord Minto, Pole-Carew, and
Brabazon, Lytton's aides-de-camp, were all three, with Lord Ralph Kerr,
among our friends of that time, and Plowden and Batten, the husbands of
their two fair wives. We made the voyage back from Bombay in Melgund's
company and that of Major Jack Napier, leaving India on the 12th of July
in full monsoon and arriving at Suez on the 25th, and on the same day by
train to Alexandria.
I think it was at Aden, as we passed it to the Red Sea, that we learned
the great news of the day in Egypt, the deposition of the Khedive
Ismaïl, a subject to us of great rejoicing, and no sooner had we arrived
at Alexandria than I learned the full details of his share in the affair
from that other intimate friend of my diplomatic days, Frank Lascelles,
whom I found acting Consul-General at the British Agency. What he told
me does not differ much from the account of it officially published, and
I need not repeat it here. What, however, is not generally known is the
part played in it by the Rothschilds, which Lascelles did not at that
time know but which I heard later from Wilson. Wilson, indeed, was able
to boast that through these he had had his full revenge. On his return,
he told me, from Egypt, crestfallen and abandoned by his own Government,
he had gone straight to the Rothschilds at Paris and had represented to
them the danger their money was running from the turn affairs had taken
at Cairo and Alexandria. The Khedive intended to repudiate his whole
debt and to shelter himself in doing so by proclaiming Constitutional
government in Egypt. If they did not prevent this, all would be lost. He
thus succeeded in alarming the Rothschilds and in getting them to use
the immense political influence they possessed in favour of active
intervention. At first, however, they had pulled the strings both at
Downing Street and on the Quai d'Orsay in vain. The English Government
was no longer in an intervening mood, trouble having broken out for them
in South Africa; and at Paris, too, there was an equal unwillingness. In
despair for their millions the Rothschilds then made supplication at
Berlin to Bismarck, who ever since his Frankfort days had extended a
certain contemptuous protection to the great Hebrew house, and not in
vain. The French and English Governments were given to understand by the
then all-powerful Chancellor that if they were unable to intervene
effectively in Egypt in the bond-holders' interests the German
Government would make their cause its own. This settled the matter, and
it was agreed that, as the least violent form of intervention, the
Sultan should be applied to to depose his too recalcitrant vassal. To
the last moment Ismaïl refused to believe that the Porte, on which he
had lavished so many millions and was still appealing cash in hand--for
he had hidden treasures--would desert him. The pressure from Europe was
too great. Wilson claims to have had the question of Ismaïl's successor
submitted to him as between Halim, whom the Sultan much preferred, and
Tewfik, and to have decided in favor of the latter as being known to him
to be of weak character and so the more convenient political instrument.
But be that as it may, the fatal telegram was despatched conveying to
Ismaïl the news of his fall, and that his Viceregal functions had passed
away from him to his son. It had been Lascelles' disagreeable duty to
convey the news to the old tyrant of eighteen irresponsible and ruinous
years. True to his rapacious habit, his last act had been to deplete the
treasury of its current account and to gather together all the valuables
he could anywhere lay hands on, and so retire to his yacht, the
"Mahroussa," with a final spoil of his Egyptian subjects amounting, it
is said, to three millions sterling. Nobody had cared to hinder him or
inquire, or bid him stay even for an hour.