ENGLISH POLITICS IN 1880
Cavagnari's tragical death at Kabul, which took place before the summer
of 1879 was over, a disaster which involved Lytton in a new war and
endless political trouble, effectually ended any projects we had made of
fresh travel for that year, either in Afghanistan or Arabia. I spent,
therefore, a full twelve months in England, the busiest as yet in some
ways of my life. Up to that date, though I was now in my fortieth year,
I had not only taken no public part in politics, but I had never so much
as made a speech to an audience or written an article for a review, or a
letter to a newspaper. Constitutionally shy in early life I had shrunk
from publicity in any shape, and the diplomatic training I had had had
only aggravated my repugnance to being _en évidence_. Diplomacy, whether
it has or has not anything to hide, always affects secrecy and
entertains a distrust of public speaking and an extreme jealousy of the
indiscretions of the Press. Now, however, having persuaded myself that I
had a mission in the Oriental world, however vague and ill defined, I
began to talk and write, and even overcame my timidity to the extent of
appearing once or twice upon a platform. The first occasion on which I
ever thus spoke was at a meeting of the British Association at Sheffield
on the 22nd of August, to which I was invited as a distinguished
traveller in the company of M. Serpa Pinto, M. de Brazza, and Captain
Cameron, all of African fame, and where I opposed Cameron's advocacy of
a Euphrates Valley Railroad. I was able to speak on this matter with
more authority than he, for, though he had gone out with much beating of
drums the year before to explore the route, he had turned back from the
difficult part of it--that which lay between Bagdad and Bushire--while
we had made the whole route from sea to sea; and I followed up my
opposition in an article on the same subject, the first I ever wrote,
in the "Fortnightly Review." John Morley was at that time editor of the
"Fortnightly," and I had an introduction to him from Lytton, and managed
to interest him in my Eastern ideas. Both these little ventures with
speech and pen brought me credit and encouraged me to do more in the
direction of what was now my propaganda. I was busy too with poetry;
and, again, I had my wife's book of travels, "A Pilgrimage to Nejd," to
arrange and edit. The multiplied work occupied me fully all the winter.
With home politics I troubled myself not at all, though it was a time of
crisis, and Gladstone, with the General Election of 1880 at hand, was in
the full fervour of his Midlothian preaching. My sympathies, as far as
England was concerned, were still rather with the Tories, and on
Oriental questions I looked upon Gladstone, little as I loved the Turks,
as an ignoramus and fanatic. My personal friends, with the exception of
two or three, Harry Brand and Eddy Hamilton, were all Tories, and my
love for Lytton covered in my eyes the worst of Disraeli's Imperial
sins. I clung to the thought that England in the East might yet, through
the Cyprus Convention properly interpreted, be made an instrument for
good, and I was swayed backwards and forwards in regard to her Imperial
position by opposing hopes and fears. It was not till I had cleared my
thoughts by putting them into print that I gradually came to any
settled plan. One great pre-occupation, too, I had that year in the
establishment of my stud of Arab horses at Crabbet, about which I was in
constant correspondence with the world of sport, including a public one
with the Jockey Club. Curiously enough, it was in connection with my
views on horseflesh that I first came into epistolary communication with
Mr. Gladstone. His well-known hobby about ancient Greece had made him
curious to learn my opinion about the horses of antiquity, and
especially the probable breeding of those of Greece and Troy; and a
message was conveyed to me through Mr. Knowles, the editor of the
"Nineteenth Century Review," asking a memorandum on their genealogy.
This, and the accident of his naming Edward Hamilton, with whom I was
intimate, his private secretary when he took office in April in
succession to Disraeli, were the links which led to our correspondence
later on Egyptian affairs.
A few extracts from a fragmentary journal I began to keep in 1880 will
show the chaos of ideas, literary, social, and political in which during
that year, I lived. The extracts are only such as have some relation to
Eastern affairs, and I find them embedded in a mass of notes recording
events of private and ephemeral interest no longer of any value. The
first gives a picture of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, for so many years
our Ambassador at Constantinople, and who was now living in retirement
and extreme old age with his two daughters on the borders of Kent and
Sussex:
"_March, 1880._--A visit to Lord Stratford de Redcliffe at Frant. Lord
Stratford has given me a paper on reforms for Turkey, which he is
thinking of sending to the 'Times,' and I read it in bed. It is an old
man's work, rambling and vague, with hardly an occasional touch of
vigour. Old men should write nothing but their recollections, and Lord
S. is ninety-four. A wonderful old man, nevertheless, with a countenance
of extreme benignity, a complexion of milk and rose leaves, clear blue
eyes, and hair as white as snow. Though rather deaf, he still talks
well. I wrote him in return a memorandum with my ideas for Asiatic
Turkey, and later spent the morning with him listening to his old-world
recollections. He was _Chargé d'Affaires_ at Constantinople when Byron
passed through on his Childe Harold journey, and had ridden with him
every day for six weeks. Byron had been very agreeable, and there was
nothing at that time _scabreux_ in his conversation. He had also (before
that) in 1805 met him at Lord's Cricket Ground at the Eton and Harrow
match, both of them playing in the elevens on opposite sides. Byron
played cricket 'as well as could be expected considering his infirmity.'
He, Lord S., had never been willing to think there had ever been
anything really wrong between B. and Lady Caroline Lamb. The impression
Lord S. gives me is one of extreme kindness, gentleness, and benignity,
quite foreign to his reputation. I had rather sit listening to these
old-world confessions than to the talk of the prettiest woman in
London."
"_March 16._--Breakfasted with Rivers Wilson and discussed Colonel
Gordon's character. All the world is agreed about his being a very
wonderful man. He has ruled the Soudan for four years single-handed, and
has repressed the slave trade completely. Now he comes home to England
and nothing is done for him. Neither Lord Beaconsfield nor any of the
Ministers will so much as see him. He made a mistake at starting (in his
relations with them). Passing through Paris (on his way home) he called
on Lord Lyons (at the Embassy), and begged him to see to the appointment
of a European successor to himself in the Soudan, and in the course of
conversation held out the threat that, if the English Government would
not do this, he would go to the French Government. Whereupon a
correspondence ensued with Lord Lyons, in which Gordon wrote a last very
intemperate letter ending in these words: 'I have one comfort in
thinking that in ten or fifteen years' time it will matter little to
either of us. A black box, six feet six by three feet wide, will then
contain all that is left of Ambassador, or Cabinet Minister, or of your
humble and obedient servant.' This has stamped him (in official eyes) as
a madman. Now he has left Europe, shaking the dust off his feet, for
Zanzibar."
This little anecdote is very characteristic of Gordon and is in harmony
with much of his correspondence, four years later, with Sir Evelyn
Baring. Our officials always detested him, for he habitually violated
the rules of their diplomacy and the conventions of their official
intercourse. Some thought him mad, others that he drank, and others
again that he was a religious fanatic who, when he was in doubt between
two courses, consulted his Bible for an oracle, or as a last solution
"spun a coin." Not one of them understood or trusted him. At the moment
of which I am writing, the early spring of 1880, he was very angry with
the English Government for the part it had taken in deposing Ismaïl.
Gordon for some reason or other liked Ismaïl, and hated his successor
Tewfik, and as soon as he learned at Khartoum what had happened, he had
thrown up his Governorship, and was now especially angry because a
Turkish pasha, and not a European, had been appointed in his place.
Gordon was a man of genius, with many noble qualities, but he was also a
bundle of contradictions, and the officials were probably right when
they looked upon him as not being at all times quite of a sound mind.
This, as will be seen, was the official opinion even at the very moment
of his being charged at the Foreign Office with his last mission to
Khartoum.
The following, too, of the same date, 16th March, is interesting:
"Called on Cardinal Manning. Our conversation was on politics. He asked
me which way I should vote at the Elections. I said, 'I should vote only
on one consideration, a £5 note,' _Cardinal_: 'You mean you will not
vote at all?' _I_: 'I can get up no interest in these things. I look
upon European civilization as doomed to perish, and all politics as an
expedient which cannot materially delay or hasten the end.' _Cardinal_:
'I take the same view, though probably on different grounds. Europe is
rejecting Christianity, and with it the reign of moral law. The reign of
force is now beginning again, as in the earliest ages, and bloodshed and
ruin must be the result. Perhaps on the ruins the Church may again build
up something new.' Talking of Asia, he said that Ralph Kerr had told him
that the inhabitants of India attributed the mildness of our rule to
fear. They respect the Russians because they govern by military law.
_I_: 'The Russians are Asiatics. They govern in the Asiatic way--by
fraud if possible--if not, by force. This Asiatics understand.'
_Cardinal_: 'The Russians, as you say, are Asiatics; and I will tell you
more: their Nihilists are Buddhists. Nihilism is a product not of the
West, but of the East.'"
The General Elections, it must be remembered, of 1880 were fought to a
very large extent on questions of Eastern policy. Gladstone in his
Midlothian campaign had attacked with tremendous violence the whole of
Disraeli's scheme of imperial expansion, and had denounced as grossly
immoral his intervention at Constantinople and Berlin in favour of the
Turks, his acquisition of Cyprus, his purchase of the Suez Canal shares,
and his aggression on Egypt--as also Lytton's two Afghan campaigns and
the Boer War still raging in South Africa. With regard to Egypt,
Gladstone had as long before as the year 1877 made known his views in
print, and in an article in the August number of the "Nineteenth Century
Review" of that year, "Aggression on Egypt and Freedom in the East," had
declared himself in the clearest and strongest terms opposed to the
undertaking by England of any form of responsibility on the Nile. This
article is so remarkable and so wonderfully prescient of evils he was
himself destined to inflict upon Egypt that it deserves quoting. He
objects in it to such aggression on various grounds: first, as
increasing England's burden of Eastern rule, already too great;
secondly, because extensions of imperial rule can only be effected by
immoral means; thirdly, as regarded Egypt, that the pretence of
protecting the route to India by occupying the Nile Valley was a false
one, the route by the Cape of Good Hope being England's true line of
communication; and, fourthly, because intervention of any kind, whether
on the Suez Canal or at Cairo, must inevitably lead to farther and
farther adventures in Africa. "Our first site in Egypt," he writes, "be
it by larceny or be it by emption, will be the almost certain egg of a
North African Empire that will grow and grow till another Victoria and
another Albert, titles of the lake sources of the White Nile, will come
within our borders, and till we finally join hands across the Equator
with Natal and Cape Town, to say nothing of the Transvaal and the Orange
River on the south or of Abyssinia or Zanzibar to be swallowed by way of
_viaticum_ on our journey--and then, with a great empire in each of the
four quarters of the world ... we may be territorially content but less
than ever at our ease." He had made also a plea for the continuation of
Mohammedan self-government at Cairo. "The susceptibilities which we
might offend in Egypt," he says, "are rational and just. For very many
centuries she has been inhabited by a Mohammedan community. That
community has always been governed by Mohammedan influences and powers.
During a portion of the period it had Sultans of its own. Of late, while
politically attached to Constantinople, it has been practically governed
from within, a happy incident in the condition of any country and one
which we should be slow to change. The grievances of the people are
indeed great, but there is no proof whatever that they are incurable.
Mohammedanism now appears in the light of experience to be radically
incapable of establishing a good or tolerable government over civilized
and Christian races; but what proof have we that in the case of a
Mohammedan community, where there are no adverse complications of blood
or religion, or tradition or speech, the ends of political society, as
they understand them, may not be passably obtained." Lastly, he had
foreseen the quarrel which an attempt by England to seize Egypt would
create with France: "My belief is that the day which witnesses our
occupation of Egypt will bid a long farewell to all cordiality of
political relations between France and England. There might be no
immediate quarrel, no exterior manifestation, but a silent, rankling
grudge there would be like the now extinguished grudge of America during
the Civil War, which awaited the opportunity of some embarrassment on
our side and on hers of returning peace and leisure from weightier
matters. Nations have long memories." He had ended his article by a
solemn warning and an appeal to the hand of the Most High to confound
the intrigues of Cabinets, and secure the great emancipation of the
East. "No such deliverance," he concludes, "has for centuries blessed
the earth. We of this country (England) may feel with grief and pain
that we have done nothing to promote it. Whatever happens, may nothing
still worse than this lie at our door. Let us hope ... that to abdicate
duty we may not have to add a chapter of perpetrated wrong."
With these noble declarations, reiterated in a score of speeches during
the Election campaign of 1880, I could not but be in sympathy, had it
been possible to take them as quite sincere or as representing a policy
intended by the Liberal Party to be carried out when they should be in
office. But Gladstone did not at that time inspire me with any
confidence, and between Whigs and Tories there seemed to me to be but
little difference.
"_March 20._--John Pollen (then private secretary to Lord Ripon) dined
with us. We talked of the Elections and agreed there was not much to
choose between Whigs and Tories. I shall not vote. Though Lord
Salisbury's policy is less contemptible than Lord Granville's or
Gladstone's, it is coquetting too much with the Germans to please me. To
bring Germany down to Constantinople would be a greater misfortune than
anything Russia can accomplish."
"_April 6._--Paris (the Elections being over and having resulted in a
large Liberal majority). Godfrey Webb and I breakfasted with Bitters (my
cousin Francis Gore Currie), and I then went to the Embassy. Sheffield
(Lord Lyon's private secretary) very important about the new Liberal
Government--what he said to Hartington, and what Granville said to him.
Though I abstain from politics, I confess I think the Gladstonian
triumph a great misfortune. They are so strong now that we shall have
all sorts of experiments played with our British Constitution. The game
laws, the land laws, and all the _palladiums_ will be dismantled. Our
policy in Asia will suffer. The Whigs know nothing of the East and will
be afraid to reverse the Tory policy, and afraid to carry it logically
out. They will try to reform Turkey, and, finding it impossible, will
lose their temper and very likely drift into a war. Personally the
change is annoying to me, as now Lytton will resign with the Ministry
and we shall be baulked of our Indian visit next winter. But all these
things are trifles in the march of history."
"_April 9._--(Still at Paris.) A letter from Anne full of politics....
'Hartington is to be Premier, Goschen Admiralty, and Gladstone finance
... nothing in the foreign policy will be changed! Cyprus kept, Russia
thwarted, and Turkey administered from Gallipoli.... Lord Ripon does not
know his _own_ place, if any. I hear Mme. de Novikoff[5] still described
as the Egeria of Gladstone.'... Dined with Adams (first secretary of the
Paris Embassy) and met there Rivers Wilson, who goes to-morrow to Egypt
with Dicey, and Arthur Sullivan the composer--all pleasant company."
(This was Wilson's final mission in which he arranged the law of
liquidation.)
"_April 26._--Home to England, where Gladstone is the talk of the hour.
He has taken office (as Prime Minister) and has surrounded himself with
ineptitudes, Childers, Bright, Granville! Hartington, who is a good
second-rate man, takes the India Office and Ripon goes to India. This
last arrangement is a secret."
Lord Ripon's appointment to India as Viceroy was the only quite sincere
attempt made in foreign policy by Gladstone to carry out in office what
he had preached when in opposition. Ripon was a thoroughly honest man,
of no very brilliant parts but straightforward and in earnest. He took
seriously the mission with which he was entrusted by the new Government
of making and keeping the peace on the Indian frontiers, and of
inaugurating a new policy having for its object to carry out the Queen's
proclamation of self-government among the natives. To the astonishment,
and indeed scandal, of the official world, he took with him as his
private secretary Gordon, whom all looked upon as mad--than which no
better proof could have been given of his _bona fides_ towards Native
India. Gordon, however, was not of the stuff of which private
secretaries, even with a chief like Ripon, are made, and he had hardly
landed at Bombay before he resigned. I do not think that Ripon was in
fault in this, but rather Gordon's restless chafing against all rules
and conventions. I shall have later to describe Ripon's viceroyalty when
I come to my second Indian journey in 1884. Now it will be enough to say
that, if it achieved comparatively little, it was through the
pusillanimity of the Ministry at home rather than his own. He valiantly
went on in the course traced out for him at the start, but like boys who
sometimes in a race, to make a fool of their companion who is in front
of them, hang back and stop, he found out to his confusion after a while
that he had been running alone and that the Ministers who had changed
their minds without letting him know had long been laughing at him for
his persistence. It must have been a bitter moment for him when he, too,
had to give in. The other appointments made were all, as far as
the highest offices went, given by Gladstone to the Whigs. Lord
Granville--the matter which interested me most--got the Foreign Office,
an amiable old nobleman with a good knowledge of French, but very deaf
and very idle, whose diplomacy was of the old procrastinating school of
never doing today what could possibly be put off till to-morrow, or, as
he himself was fond of putting it, of "dawdling matters out" and leaving
them to right themselves alone. Of such a Minister nothing in the way of
a new policy could be expected, and none was attempted either in Turkey,
or Egypt, or elsewhere. The Cyprus Convention was neither repudiated nor
turned to account for any good purpose, and beyond a little sham
pressure put upon the Sultan in the matter of Montenegro and the Greek
frontier, things were left precisely as they were. The only change made
was that Layard, the author of the Convention, was recalled from
Constantinople and Goschen appointed in his place, the same Goschen who
had made the leonine arrangement for the bondholders in Egypt three
years before, his own family firm of Göschen and Frühling being one of
them. The only act of the new Foreign Secretary which showed that he
remembered Mr. Gladstone's denunciations of the Turks was that, in order
to prove that Gladstone had been right and Disraeli and Salisbury wrong
about them, he in defiance of the ordinary rule in such matters at the
Foreign Office published a secret despatch of Layard's which
contradicted everything the Ambassador had written about the situation
at Constantinople in his public despatches. In this unfortunate document
he had laid bare the secret vices and weaknesses of the Sultan Abdul
Hamid, his personal cowardice especially being insisted on and
emphasized with details then unknown to the world, but now notorious, of
his system of spy-government. Its publication was a gross act of
treachery to Layard, and was, moreover, an act of folly from the effects
of which our diplomacy at Constantinople has not yet recovered; Layard
had been, so to say, Abdul Hamid's bosom friend and had received from
him favours of a kind not usually accorded to European Envoys. The
Sultan had shown himself to Layard as to a comrade on whom he could
rely, and the disclosure of what he considered Layard's treachery
alienated for ever his goodwill from England.
Nevertheless, and notwithstanding the unpromising position at the
Foreign Office, I was resolved in the interests of my propaganda to make
a bid for sympathy for my plans with the new Prime Minister. I was
encouraged to this by the appointment he had made on taking office of
one of my most intimate friends, Eddy Hamilton (now Sir Edward Hamilton,
K.C.B.), to be his private secretary, from whom I learned that, whatever
might be the public exigencies of the moment abroad, Mr. Gladstone's
sympathies with Oriental liberty were no whit abated. From Hamilton I
had no secrets as to my own views and plans, and all that he thought
necessary to win his master to them was that I should give them a wider
publicity in print. There were other channels, too, through which it was
judged that Gladstone might be influenced, and some of these are
referred to in my journal.
"_June 12._--Hamilton Aidé took me to call upon Mrs. L, who lives in a
big house in M ... Square, a plump, good-natured Irishwoman of fifty,
impulsive, talkative, but without trace either of beauty or anything
else. She is one of Gladstone's _Egerias_, and our visit was partly
diplomatic, as I want to indoctrinate her with my Arabian ideas, and
through her the Prime Minister. She is already enthusiastic about such
Arabs as she has seen, and affects a serious interest in the East. She
read us with much spirit a drama she had been writing about Herod,
Cleopatra, and Julius Caesar--sad stuff, which she assured us Gladstone
admired exceedingly.
"Rolland, John Pollen and Lawrence Oliphant to dinner. The last a very
attractive man. He has just come back from Constantinople, where he has
been trying to get a concession from the Sultan for lands beyond Jordan
to be colonized by the children of Israel."
"_June 22._--The Plowdens to dinner and Eddy Hamilton, who is now
Gladstone's private secretary. Plowden goes to Bagdad to-morrow as
Resident. I indoctrinated him and Eddy on the Eastern question."
"_June 26._--Lord Calthorpe, Percy Wyndham, and Captain Levitt joined us
at Crabbet, and we had a show of horses. Lord C. tells me he has shown
my letter about Arab horse-racing to several members of the Jockey Club,
and he will bring the matter forward at one of the club meetings next
month; so that it is to be hoped we shall succeed. If I can introduce a
pure Arabian breed of horses into England and help to see Arabia free of
the Turks, I shall not have quite lived in vain. My fourth letter to the
'Spectator' (on the politics of Central Arabia) has appeared to-day, and
my article in the 'Fortnightly' ('The Sultan's Heirs in Asia') is
advertised.... Later to the Admiralty, where Lord Northbrook
complimented me on my letters (they were the first I had ever written to
a newspaper). Sir Garnet Wolseley was there, a brisk little jerky man,
whom it is difficult to accept as a great general. I reminded him of our
visit to Cyprus. He said, 'I believe Lady Anne is writing a book.' 'Yes,
but we have said nothing about Cyprus in it.' 'Oh, you didn't stay long
enough.' 'We thought it best to say nothing.'"
The article here spoken of, "The Sultan's Heirs in Asia," was, as I have
said, a bid for Gladstone's serious attention to my ideas, and through
Hamilton's help, who brought it under his notice, it was completely
successful, though characteristically the feature of it which interested
him most was that which has proved least politically practical, and was
to me the least important, namely, the future of the Armenian provinces
as an independent state. The idea I propounded was, that in the same way
as a large portion of European Turkey had been given its independence,
so in the decline of the Ottoman Empire the Asiatic provinces should
also be encouraged to form themselves into independent states, according
to their prevailing nationalities; and I appealed by name to Mr.
Gladstone to make good his words, so freely and so recently uttered in
favour of Eastern liberty, by making use of the instrument devised by
his predecessors in office, the Cyprus Convention, not for the selfish
purposes of English imperialism, but for the good of the peoples of the
East. Its publication in the July number of the "Fortnightly" led to my
being invited to Downing Street, where I had an opportunity of pressing
my views personally on the Prime Minister. It will be seen that I was
not on that first occasion much impressed by him; but I was encouraged
to develop my ideas, and from that time my opinion, conveyed to him
generally through Hamilton, was of some account with Gladstone in regard
to Eastern affairs.
"_June 27._--Called on A. with whom I found Queensberry. He began at
once to expound to us his religious doctrines, talking in an excited,
earnest way. These doctrines seem to me mere Comtism. There is some sort
of Supreme Being, not a personal God, and a conscience by which man is
guided in his search of perfection. The principle doctrine, 'faith in
humanity,' and the principal duty, 'the perfectioning of body and soul,'
especially body. The Marquess is not a very lucid expounder, and
proposed to recite us a poem instead--a poem he had written. While we
were expecting this in came Philip Currie and a little old man with a
long nose and very black eyes, Malkum Khan, the Persian Ambassador.
These sat down and listened while Queensberry recited. The poem was in
blank verse, vague, doctrinal, fantastic, beginning with the Matterhorn
and going on to Humanity. When he had finished the Oriental spoke. He
said, 'Perhaps it would interest you to hear the story of a religion
which was founded some years ago in Persia, and of which I was at one
time the head. It will exemplify the manner in which religions are
produced, and you will see that the doctrine of Humanity is one at least
as congenial to Asia as to Europe. Europe, indeed, is incapable of
inventing a real religion, one which shall take possession of the souls
of men; as incapable as Asia is of inventing a system of politics. The
mind of Asia is speculative, of Europe practical. In Persia we every day
produce "new Christs." We have "Sons of God" in every village, martyrs
for their faith in every town. I have myself seen hundreds of Babis
suffer death and torture for their belief in a prophet whose doctrines
were identical with those of Jesus Christ, and who, like Him, was
crucified. Christianity is but one of these hundred Asiatic preachings,
brought into notice through its adoption by the Greek mind and given a
logical form and a material complexion. If it had remained an Asiatic
faith it would long ago have perished, as a hundred moral and mystic
teachings have perished before and after it. When I was a young man I,
too, as I told you, founded a religion which at one time numbered 30,000
devotees. I was born an Armenian Christian, but I was brought up among
Mohammedans, and my tone of thought is theirs. I was foster-brother to
the Shah and when he came to the throne he made me his Prime Minister.
At the age of twenty I was practically despotic in Persia. I saw the
abuses of government, the decline of material prosperity in the country,
and I was bitten with the idea of reform. I went to Europe and studied
there the religious, social, and political systems of the West. I
learned the spirit of the various sects of Christendom, and the
organization of the secret societies and freemasonries, and I conceived
a plan which should incorporate the political wisdom of Europe with the
religious wisdom of Asia. I knew that it was useless to attempt a
remodelling of Persia in European forms, and I was determined to clothe
my material reformation in a garb which my people would understand, the
garb of religion. I therefore, on my return, called together the chief
persons of Teheran, my friends, and spoke to them in private of the
need which Islam had of purer doctrine. I appealed to their moral
dignity and pride of birth. There are in Persian two words, each
signifying Man--_insan_, from the Arabic, and _adhem_ (Adam), more
strictly Persian in derivation. The second signifies Man as a genus, a
particular kind of animal--the first man as an intellectual and
distinguished being (the _homo_ and _vir_ of Latin). You all, I said,
pride yourselves that you are more than _adhem_; you are also _insan_.
And it is to enable you to justify that pretension that I will advise
you to do this and that. They all found my reasoning good, and in a
short time I had got together 30,000 followers. Under the name of a
Reformation of Islam I thus introduced what material reforms I could.
To my doctrine is due the telegraph, the reorganization of the
administrative departments, and many another attempted improvement since
gone to ruin. I had, however, no intention at the outset of founding a
religion. The character of saint and prophet was forced on me by my
followers. They gave me the title of "Holy Ghost," and the Shah that of
"Reformer of Islam." I wrote a book, a bible of my creed, and
enthusiasts maintained that I worked miracles. At last the Shah was
alarmed at my power, which in truth had become superior to his own. He
sought, in spite of our old friendship, to kill me, and my followers
sought to kill him. For two months we both lived in great fear of
assassination, and then we came to an explanation. I loved and revered
the Shah, and I asked permission to travel. My followers took leave
of me with tears, even the Mollahs kissing my feet. I went to
Constantinople, thinking to get permission from the Sultan to reside at
Bagdad, and I in fact went there and gained new converts from among the
resident Persian and Bagdad Shiahs. But the Turks deceived me, and I had
to leave my work unfinished. My followers in Persia urged me to return,
but I was deterred through several motives; first, I feared to find my
death for a religion in which I did not believe, secondly, my health
broke down, and, thirdly, I had married a wife. I wrote to the Shah, who
replied, offering me any appointment I would, so I would remain abroad;
and I accepted the position of Ambassador-General to all the Courts of
Europe.' It was strange to hear this little old man, in European clothes
and talking very good French, recounting a tale so purely Oriental. I
walked home with him afterwards (he lived on the other side of Hyde
Park), and he detailed to me his ideas about the East and West, both of
which he knows, and knows thoroughly. I left him with the impression
that he was the most remarkable man I had ever met, and more convinced
than ever of the superior intelligence of the Eastern mind. Who is there
in Europe that could have made one thus feel like a child?"
This chance meeting, at a fine lady's house in Belgravia in the middle
of the London season, affected me profoundly, and to a certain extent
revolutionized my ideas. I trace to it, and to other talks which I had
later with this singular personage, the conviction which rapidly
overcame me that in all my thought of freeing and reforming the East I
had begun at the wrong end, and that, if I was to effect anything either
for the Arabs or for any other of the Moslem peoples subject to the
Turks, I must first make myself thoroughly acquainted with their
religious ideas. As yet I had passed among them, in spite of my
political sympathy, as a stranger to their more serious thought; without
religious prejudice myself of the ordinary Christian kind, I had learned
to respect Islam, but I did not comprehend it, nor had I ever discussed
its teachings with any one learned in its law or conversant with its
modern thought. I saw at once the weakness, nay the absurdity of my
position, and I resolved before I went any farther to devote the
following winter to a study of at least the main features of the
Mohammedan doctrines as they affected Mohammedan politics. With this
view I made my plans for the winter. My thought was to go to Jeddah at
or about the time of the pilgrimage, and there inform myself as I best
could, and then take any occasion that might offer for further action. I
wished to penetrate once more into Arabia, if possible through Hejaz, or
perhaps Yemen to Nejd. I had an idea that among the Wahhabis I might
find a teacher who would give me the Arabian as opposed to the Ottoman
view of Islam, and that I might devise with him a movement of reform in
which I should suggest the political, he the religious elements. It was
a sufficiently wild idea, but I entertained it seriously at the time,
and the confession of having done so will explain to Egyptian readers
how it came about that I took the line I did at Cairo a year later.
I was influenced, too, at that time in London by another learned
Oriental, one Sabunji, whose acquaintance I had made in the character of
Arabic teacher. He, too, like Malkum Khan, was of Christian origin, a
member of one of the Catholic sects of Syria, and he had even taken
priest's orders and served the Congregation of the Propaganda at Rome;
but he had latterly thrown off the cassock and, like the Ambassador, was
much more in sympathy with Islam than with his own faith. As an Arabic
scholar he was very remarkable, and he had a wide acquaintance with the
questions, half political, half religious, which were being discussed
just then among Mohammedans. He had done the main work for the late Dr.
Badger in compiling the Arabic-English Dictionary which goes by Dr.
Badger's name, and in 1880 was carrying on in London an Arabic newspaper
called "El Nakhleh," the Bee, in which religious reform was preached to
Mohammedans once a month, on the most advanced lines of modern thought.
There was a mystery about the financing of this little journal, and the
motives prompting its issue, which I never quite fathomed. His own
account of it was that his chief patron was the Sultan of Zanzibar, a
very enlightened and liberal-minded ruler. But I was never quite
satisfied with this explanation, and I have since had reason to believe
that the funds to support it, and the suggestion of its politics came,
in part at least, from the ex-Khedive Ismaïl. Ismaïl was at that time
very angry with the Sultan for his betrayal of him to Europe, and the
"Bee" was violent against Abdul Hamid, and denounced him especially as
an usurper of the title of Emir el Mumenin and Caliph. I do not well
remember whether it was from this Sabunji or from Malkum Khan that I
first came to understand the historical aspect of the caliphal question
and its modern aspects, but, opposed as I was to Ottoman rule, it struck
me at once as one of high importance to the kind of reform I was
beginning now to look for. There is notice in my journal of my having
sent in a memorandum to Mr. Gladstone on the subject, and I have a
letter from Hamilton, showing that the idea was considered one of
importance by members of the Cabinet and generally in Downing Street.
"_July 3._--A tea party at A.'s, a 'collection of mystics,' old Rolland,
Dunraven, and Oliphant. The two latter and I had a conference in a back
room which resulted in our agreeing to act in common on the Eastern
question, so as to influence public opinion in England. We are to have a
preliminary meeting at Dunraven's on Thursday."
"_July 8._--Called on Percy Wyndham and converted him to my political
creed. Also received a visit on the same subject from Mr. Boyce, M. P.
Dined with Dunraven, Oliphant, Otway, Percy Wyndham, Harry Brand, and
Whittaker, editor of the 'Levant Herald,' at Limmer's Hotel, to arrange
a course of action with a view to influencing public opinion in England
respecting Asia. Nothing more definite settled than the formation of a
committee for receiving news. Later to Bryce's, where I met one
Robertson Smith, who has been lately in the Hejaz." (This was the
well-known professor.)
"_July 13._--Went to a party at Mrs. Gladstone's. We arrived early,
before other people had come, and I had twenty minutes' conversation
with the great man. I detailed to him my ideas about the regeneration of
the East, in which he seemed to take an interest, as far as a man can
who is totally ignorant of the A B C of a question. His remarks struck
me as the reverse of profound, and his questions contrasted unfavourably
with those put to me three years ago by Lord Salisbury. A British
steamer had been fired on by some Arabs on the Tigris, and he began by
remarking that he feared this fact showed a marked antagonism towards
England on the part of Arabia. The state of the Ottoman Empire he
considered most _critical_. Probably the East had never been in a more
_critical_ state than now. If the Treaty of San Stefano had been carried
out Turkey could hardly have been more _critically_ situated than she
was. I succeeded however, I think, in grafting him with two ideas, one
that the Caliphate was not necessarily vested in the House of Othman,
the other that Midhat Pasha was a fool. He has evidently made up his
mind about nothing, and will let himself drift on till the smash comes."
"_July 15._--Attended a meeting of Philo-Asiatics. In the afternoon to
Aldermaston, a fine park with a tiresome modern house; Sir Henry Layard
doing the honours. I had a great prejudice against him, but find him
agreeable and without pretension, considering his position. He talks
well, especially of his travels, and he really understands the East,
reminding me a little of Skene and Rolland, both fellow travellers of
his in old days.... Layard's memoirs would be the most interesting of
any man's of the present century. His rise from the position of a
wandering outcast among the Kurds, almost himself an outlaw, to that of
British Ambassador to the Porte, contains all the romance of human
life."
"_July 17._--An interview with Sir Charles Dilke (Under-Secretary of
State) at the Foreign Office. I explained to him my idea of going to
Nejd this autumn with Abdallah Ibn Saoud, and to my surprise he seemed
to acquiesce. Although our conversation was not a long one, it left me
with the impression of Dilke being a superior man. His questions were
plain and to the point, and, once understood, he wrote the draft of a
despatch to Goschen at Constantinople, referring me for further details
to Tenterden (the permanent Head of the Foreign Office), and I am now
full of the notion of going to Arabia and heading a movement for the
restoration of the Arabian Caliphate. People have been called great who
have sacrificed themselves for smaller objects, but in this I feel the
satisfaction of knowing it to be a really worthy cause."
Sir Charles Dilke, who was destined to play a considerable part in the
events of 1882 in Egypt, had in 1880 been only a few months at the
Foreign Office. He and Chamberlain, who were great political friends,
represented with Bright the Radical element in the new government.
Chamberlain got the Local Government Board and a seat in the Cabinet,
and Dilke the Foreign Under-Secretaryship, which, with his chief, Lord
Granville, in the House of Lords and an idle man besides, was a position
of great power Dilke knew how to take advantage of. Neither of the two
men belonged to the class from which Ministers in England are usually
chosen, but were looked upon as middle-class men, and I remember the
disgust with which Dilke's appointment was received at the Foreign
Office, where aristocratic pretensions are traditional among the clerks.
Dilke, however, soon showed his mettle by the way he took his work
in hand, and, what was even more to the purpose with them, by
certain Gallicisms in conversation which were also a Foreign Office
characteristic, so that in a very few weeks he found himself not only
tolerated but popular. The Abdallah Ibn Saoud referred to in my journal
was a certain Abdallah Ibn Theneyyàn Ibn Saoud, of the old princely
family of Nejd, who had found his way to Constantinople, and had there
applied to the British Embassy for help to gain or regain a political
position in his own country. I had heard of him from Currie, and had
jumped to the conclusion that this might be the opportunity I sought in
Arabia, and so applied to the Foreign Office to put me in communication
with him and favour my projected journey. The plan, however, came to
nothing, though, as has been seen, not altogether disapproved at the
Foreign Office, for when the matter was referred to Lord Tenterden, the
permanent Under-Secretary, he demurred, on the ground that the thing if
undertaken with the cognizance of the Foreign Office would be liable to
be regarded as a "secret mission," and such missions were contrary to
the traditions of the Office. And so the plan was abandoned. Just at
this time, too, the news of the disgraceful defeat of the British army
under Burrows at Candahar by the Afghans reached London, and I fancy
made them doubly cautious in Downing Street. The defeat was a final blow
to Lytton, and to the policy of adventure beyond the Indian frontier he
had made his own, and at no time within recollection did the imperial
fortunes of England seem so low. All the world was depressed by it, even
I, little of a Jingo as I had become.
"_August 5._--To Portsmouth by train, having got a telegram to say the
Lyttons are expected to-night or to-morrow. Portsmouth is a strange,
old-fashioned town, still without a decent inn; and we are at a
pot-house called the 'Star and Garter.' In the house opposite there is a
bust of Nelson, and from the windows one can see the 'St. Vincent' and
the 'Victory.' Little as one may care for one's country--and Heaven
knows I am no Chauvin--it is impossible not to be touched by these
relics of England's greatness. I never till this moment quite realized
the decay of her fortunes since sixty years ago. What a shock it would
be for Nelson and his companions if he could read the papers to-day,
full of dastardly congratulations at the discovery that not 2,000 but
only 1,000 men were lost on the Helmund, and at General Burrows not
having positively run away; of fears lest England should embark
single-handed on a war with Turkey, and an abject hope that France may
think fit to see us through our difficulties in the East--all this, with
Lytton's arrival at Portsmouth, Lytton who, if things go wrong with
India, will leave a name in history as the first of the unsuccessful
Viceroys of the British Empress and the one most responsible for India's
loss. All this, I say, gives one a feeling of sorrow impossible to
describe. Yet I do not join with those who cry out on Lytton's policy,
still less on its execution. His policy was a necessary one, and its
execution has been bold and successful. He has been conspicuous in the
history of England's decay only because he is himself conspicuous. He
could not have stemmed the tide of events. He went with them, guiding as
he could but powerless to do more. England's decay rests upon causes far
more general than any one man or party of men can be responsible for. We
fail because we are no longer honest, no longer just, no longer
gentlemen. Our Government is a mob, not a body endowed with sense and
supported by the sense of the nation. It was only by immense industry,
immense sense, and immense honour that we gained our position in the
world, and now that these are gone we find our natural level. For a
hundred years we did good in the world; for a hundred we shall have done
evil, and then the world will hear of us no more."
"_August 6._--After several false alarms the 'Himalaya' was signalled;
and, having fortunately met the rest of the small party of friends come
to greet Lytton, we went out to meet her and were taken on board just
opposite Osborne. At the gangway, brown as a berry and very ill dressed
in clothes of four years ago and a flap-away Indian hat, stood Lytton
with that cigarette in his mouth which cost him his Viceroyalty. On what
trifles success depends! If he could have refrained from smoking out of
season, and if he could have gone to church with his wife, all his sins,
though they had been like scarlet, would have been forgiven him by the
Anglo-Indian public. As it was, he had this against him throughout his
reign, and it turned the scale when he was politically defeated. But for
this he would never have been recalled. He himself, conscious of having
done his best and done well, cares nothing for such things, and he is
right. I could envy him this feeling almost as much as I envy him the
delight of going home to Knebworth. When we had seen them on shore and
taken tea with them at the inn, we wished them good-bye. 'Oh, the dear
drunken people in the streets!' Lady Lytton exclaimed, 'how I love
them!'"
"_September 7._--Knebworth. In the morning I wrote and read, but in the
afternoon I went down with Lytton to the fishing house and talked over
the Eastern question, in which I find his views not very divergent from
my own. We are both agreed that the day of England's _empire_ is fast
ending--for my own part I do not care how soon. Lytton has more
patriotism."
"_October 29._--Crabbet. Spent the day with Lytton ... he read me his
defence for the House of Lords. He has an immensely strong case, and
should make one of the most remarkable speeches of the age if he is
allowed to bring forward all the documents in his possession. He showed
me these, the Russian correspondence taken at Kabul and the draft of a
secret treaty between Shere Ali and the Russians. He also told me that
when he was going to India Schouvaloff called on him and proposed to him
to divide Afghanistan between Russia and England."
This is nearly the last entry in my journal of 1880, which unfortunately
I discontinued till two years later. The full explanation Lytton was
never allowed to make in Parliament, and his speech, robbed of its
strongest points, fell comparatively flat when he made it before the
House of Lords. I will, however, add an extract from a letter he wrote
me on the 18th of November, which will complete this chapter of my
story. It is of value as giving a very accurate epitome of the political
situation of the date: "I saw," Lytton writes, "in one of the papers the
other day a statement that the new Sherif of Mecca (Abdul Mutalleb), who
is completely a tool of the Sultan, is working actively under orders
from Constantinople to put the Mohammedans against us in all parts of
the world. The cry is now, 'The Caliph in danger.' This was to be
expected, and I fear the opportunity has passed for the good which might
have been effected a year ago through the Arabs. The only result of
Gladstone's action, so far as I can see, has been to destroy our
influence at Constantinople and transfer it to Germany, without
substituting for it any other means of controlling the Mohammedan world.
The Mansion House speech (Gladstone's), expected with so much curiosity,
seemed to me a weak confession of utter failure in the policy of the
Government. They drop Greece and Armenia, and everything else, with the
admission that their fingers are scorched by the burning end of the
stick at which they grasped so wildly nine months ago. And in Ireland
they are drifting into great difficulties which may even break up the
Cabinet. The fact is the policy which the Government wants to carry out
is everywhere rejected by the Nation; and the policy which the Nation
wants carried out the Government naturally shies at, not wishing to
stultify its promises and declarations. So the result is, for the
present, no policy at all. As for myself I keep silence, _morne et
profond_, till Parliament meets, though my heart burns within me."
The last weeks of my stay in England that autumn were, however, less
occupied with politics than with the publication of a volume of poetry,
to which I had been persuaded by Lytton, and the proofs of which I left
to him to correct. This was "The Sonnets of Proteus," which had a
considerable success and which has since gone through many editions. It
gave me almost at once a certain rank in the literary world which was
not altogether without its influence on my subsequent relations with my
political friends.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] Madame de Novikoff, a very charming woman, who was in the confidence
of the Russian Government, had come to England for the first time a
little before this date, her very earliest English visit being paid to
us at Crabbet. She had brought an introduction to us from Madame de
Lagrené, a Russian friend of ours living in Paris, and as yet knew no
one. She stayed with us a week, but finding me unsympathetic with her
anti-Islamic views, went on and soon after made a political capture of
Mr. Gladstone.