MY PLEADING IN DOWNING STREET
Such is the history faithfully and fully told of the part I played that
winter in Egypt. In telling it I have relied for the accuracy of my
memory of the main incidents on such letters and short notes as I have
been able to find among my papers, and especially on an account of it
drawn up by me while the war of 1882 was in progress, and published in
the September number of the "Nineteenth Century Review" of that year. Of
this, my present memoir is little more than an amplification. What
follows will be comparatively new matter, for though most of it has long
been written in a disjointed way, I have never found a moment suited to
its completion. For dates and incidents, however, I am supplied with
ample materials of a contemporary value, first in a brief diary which
from the time of my arrival in England I now once more regularly kept,
and next in the many published and unpublished letters still in my
possession, which passed between me and various public personages with
whom I had found myself in correspondence during the four months which
elapsed between my arrival in England and the bombardment of Alexandria;
and again after Tel-el-Kebir with those who on my behalf were conducting
Arabi's trial. These form a body of evidence which I shall quote where
needful, either in the text of my narrative or in an appendix to it.
Taken together, with the necessary thread of explanation, they of
themselves form an almost complete history of the causes of the war.
The political situation which I found on my arrival, 6th March, in
London, was a wonderful contrast to that which I had left behind me a
week before at Cairo. Gladstone had been now nearly two years in office,
and the enthusiasm for Eastern nationalities and Eastern liberty, which
at the elections of 1880 had carried him into power, had cooled down
everywhere, and in official circles had given place to ideas of imperial
coercion, especially in the case of the Nationalists of Ireland, which
were by no means of good augury in regard to Egypt. The Cabinet was
divided into two sections of opinion. The great Whig leaders who
controlled the chief departments of the Administration, Hartington,
Northbrook, Childers, and the rest were all for strong measures,
Gladstone, with Harcourt and Bright, almost alone for conciliation, and
the general feeling of the country was violent against all "lawlessness"
everywhere. The Habeas Corpus Act had been suspended in Ireland, and
Parnell and a score more of the Nationalist members of Parliament were
actually shut up, untried, in Kilmainham Gaol. Business in the House of
Commons was being obstructed by the remainder of the Irish members, and
the very name of Nationalism to the Liberal Party had become a byword
and reproach. The atmosphere of Westminster and the public offices was
therefore not at all favourable to my propaganda of nationalism on the
Nile. The only persons really interested in Egypt were those few who
held Egyptian bonds, and these had been persuaded by Colvin's
manipulation of the Press that Arabi and the National Party were a set
of fanatical incendiaries who would burn down the Stock Exchange if they
could get the chance, and who had already succeeded in lowering the
value of securities and making dividends precarious.
At the Foreign Office the position about Egypt was this. Granville, old
and deaf and very idle, finding himself relieved from the incubus of
Gambetta's forward policy, was following his instinct of doing nothing
and letting things settle themselves as placidly as circumstances would
allow him. He did not want to intervene or to take action hostile to the
Nationalists or, indeed, action of any kind. He did not even give
himself the trouble to read the despatches, and he left the work of
learning what was going on to his private secretaries, and more
especially to the Under-Secretary of State, Sir Charles Dilke, who was
able to sift the news for him and set before him such facts as he
selected, and such views as suited him. Dilke, who had been with
Gambetta the responsible author of the Joint Note of 6th January, was,
now that Gambetta had disappeared from the direction of affairs in
France, become a prime mover on his own account in the policy of
intervention, and was working with Colvin and the financiers to bring
things to such a pass that his unwilling chief, in spite of himself,
should be obliged to intervene. Though not himself a Cabinet Minister,
Dilke in this had behind him the powerful support in the Cabinet of
Chamberlain, a personal friend and ally, whom on foreign matters, which
Chamberlain did not affect to understand, he could securely count on.
The two together had the reputation of being the most advanced Radicals
in the Ministry, and so carried great weight with just that section of
the Liberal Party which was least inclined on principle to foreign
adventures. The mass of the Radicals in the House of Commons knew
nothing and cared nothing for questions in dispute so far away.
Nevertheless I found that personally I could command considerable
attention. My letters to the "Times" had been widely read, and there was
a certain curiosity to hear what I had to say. Gregory and I had managed
to invest Arabi with that halo of romance which as champion of the
fellah wrongs was certainly his due, and on that ground, if no other, I
could always obtain a hearing. Rumours of all kinds were afloat about
him, ludicrous tales which portrayed him as a Frenchman or a Spaniard in
Egyptian guise, as the paid agent, in turn of the ex-Khedive Ismaïl, of
the pretender Halim, and of the Sultan--as everything in fact but what
he really was. I, who had seen him, could explain. It was a matter not
of serious interest with anybody, but, as I have said, of considerable
curiosity. And so I was listened to.
My first visit on arrival was to 10, Downing Street. Here, though I did
not see Mr. Gladstone himself, I found my friend Hamilton, his private
secretary, and had with him an altogether satisfactory talk. I was a
little doubtful, seeing that I had quarrelled with Malet, how I might be
received. But he hastened to assure me that my "interference" with
Malet's diplomacy was in no way resented by his chief. On the contrary,
Mr. Gladstone was very much obliged to me for my letters, and for the
line I had taken in Egypt. It was a busy time for him, however, just
then, the busiest of the official year, the weeks before Easter, and the
thoughts of ministers were elsewhere than in Egypt. The Irish question
was priming everything in Mr. Gladstone's mind. I might, however, make
my own mind comfortable about the dangers which seemed to threaten at
Cairo. They could not lead to serious trouble. Whatever might be the
ideas "over the way" (meaning the Foreign Office), Mr. Gladstone would
see that they were not put in practice. Armed intervention with Mr.
Gladstone in power was an "impossibility." The mere thought of it was
ridiculous. We would talk of it again and I should see Mr. Gladstone
later. In the meanwhile Hamilton would let Lord Granville know that I
was come. I left him entirely reassured.
Another visit I paid the same morning was to my cousin, Algernon Bourke
(then generally known as "Button" to his friends). His rôle in Egyptian
affairs that year was destined to be an important one, and his name, or
rather his pseudo-name, constantly recurs in my diary. His position in
life was that of a young man of fashion, closely connected with the
official world, for he was a younger son of the Lord Mayo who had been
Viceroy of India, and was nephew to the Rt. Hon. Robert Bourke
(afterwards Lord Connemara), who had been Under-Secretary for Foreign
Affairs, and was now, in 1882, leader of the Tory opposition in the
House of Commons on all questions of foreign politics. Button had also a
position on the staff of the "Times," not as a writer, but as an
intermediary for Chenery, the editor, with political personages. As a
peer's son he had the _entrée_ to the galleries of both Houses of
Parliament, knew everybody and everything that was going on there, was
intimate with people about the Court, with the high world of finance,
and generally with the wire-pullers in the various departments of the
State. Our friendship was a close one, and throughout the trying months
that followed he was my chief confidant and adviser, having more worldly
wisdom than I then could boast, and a fertility of resource in action
altogether admirable. To him I owed three parts of the publicity I
obtained for my views in the Press, and of the help given me in
parliament. On arrival I narrated to him all that had happened during
the past winter in Egypt as well as my plans for the future. His view of
the position was a very different one from Hamilton's, for his intimacy
with the Rothschilds made him aware of the financial strings that were
being pulled in the City to bring about intervention, and he had a low
opinion of Gladstone's ability to understand foreign questions or deal
with a case where the money interests of all the Stock Exchanges of
Europe were so largely concerned. Still he advised me to maintain the
footing I had acquired in Downing Street, and use my influence there to
the best of my ability, holding in reserve, if Gladstone should fail me,
his own friends of the Opposition, whose assistance, in case of need, he
promised me. For the moment the best I could do would be to talk to
everybody I knew who was in Parliament on both sides of the House, and
to go on writing letters to the "Times." This sound advice I accordingly
proceeded without delay to follow.
I find in my diary that on the 9th of March I went to see George Howard
and his wife (now Lord and Lady Carlisle), and succeeded in enlisting
their sympathies, especially hers, to my plans. She was then, as now, a
strong politician, and was an absolute believer in Gladstone, and she
advised me to put my whole trust in him and he would certainly prevent
any mischief being done to liberty. Her husband was less sanguine, but
he readily agreed to take me to the House of Commons, of which he was a
member, that afternoon, and introduce me to his friends there of the
Liberal Party, such as he thought could help me best. And so together we
went, and I made the acquaintance of Dilwyn, Bryce, and other
influential members who had been specially interested in the affairs of
Bulgaria and Armenia at the time of the Berlin Congress. These all
promised me their assistance, as did that excellent man Mr. Chesson,
with whom, and with Howard's brother-in-law, Lyulph Stanley, we had a
long talk in the tea-room. Chesson, though not a Member of Parliament,
was a person of considerable political power, as he made it his
business, as secretary of the Aborigines Protection Society, to organize
agitations on all questions where aggression on non-European peoples was
threatened, and he proved throughout of the greatest assistance to me,
as he was in daily communication with the best of the Radical members.
Howard, however, advised me not to put my case into the hands of the
"professional non-interventionists," but rather to work my propaganda on
an independent basis. I was at that time quite new and inexperienced in
English politics, so new that though I was forty-one years of age this
was the first time I had ever been inside the lobbies of the House of
Commons. I was, however, from that date a frequent visitor there,
across to the inner lobby being at that time almost free.
The same day I had a talk with Philip Currie at the Foreign Office, and
a long discussion about Egypt. I found him at first rather put out with
me at what I had been doing at Cairo, the effect of Malet's complaints
of me, and affecting to believe that I had been playing a "large
practical joke at the expense of the Foreign Office." But this did not
last, and I was able to convince him of the seriousness of the matter,
and of my own earnestness, if not that I was right in my views, and he
arranged that I should see Dilke the next day, and also Granville.
I find also at this date that I had a talk with Lord Miltown, an Irish
peer, which shows the curious connection between Egypt and Ireland in
the political ideas of the day. "His, Miltown's, account of Ireland is
singularly like that of Egypt by the European officials. He thinks the
difficulty in Ireland got up by agitators; that the Irish fellahin are
not really with the National Party, and that armed intervention would
set things right."
On the 10th I saw Dilke at the Foreign Office, having first gone to his
house in Sloane Street. He was in a hostile mood, and instead of
listening to what I had to say, poured out a string of complaints
against the new Egyptian ministry, telling me "that Arabi's government
had spent half a million sterling on the army since they came into
office," and other absurdities. I knew this story could not be true, as
the Nationalists had only been in power six weeks, and went to
Sanderson, who was then Lord Granville's private secretary (now Sir
Thomas Sanderson and head of the Foreign Office), and made him look up
the question of the fabulous half million, when, on referring to the
despatch about it, we found that the sum had been spent, not as Dilke
had told me in the last _six weeks_, but in the last _year_. This
extraordinary misstatement of Dilke's, which he had made to me as a
matter beyond dispute, may of course have been only a gross blunder, but
it was repeated in the newspapers of the day, several of which were
under Dilke's inspiration, and is a good example of the way in which
news, however absurd, prejudicial to the Egyptian Nationalists, was then
being circulated by him. Morley was one of the channels he principally
used, and all through the spring and early summer of 1882, the "Pall
Mall Gazette" (the only paper Gladstone read attentively) was, through
Dilke's influence, and Colvin's, made a channel of preposterous lies and
the most uncompromising advocate of intervention. Morley, I am willing
to believe, persuaded himself that the things they told him were true,
and acted in good faith, but it is nevertheless certain that on him more
than on any other journalists of the time lies the responsibility of
having persuaded Gladstone to the act of violence in Egypt which was the
chief sin of Gladstone's public career. Morley's position, however, was
then not an independent one, and he was hardly the master of his own
published thoughts. He was not yet in Parliament, but waiting for a
seat, and all his hope of a political career lay in the patronage of his
political friends, Dilke and Chamberlain, so that he had practically no
choice, if he was not to sacrifice his ambition, but to follow the lead
Dilke gave him about Egyptian affairs. He was afterwards sorry for the
evil he had done, and has never, I think, liked to recall to memory the
part he then played. But without doubt his responsibility for bringing
on the war was great. The whole of the Egyptian episode in Morley's
"Life of Gladstone," it may be noticed, has been slurred over in a few
pages. But history is history, and his mistake needs to be recorded.
This matter settled with Sanderson, Currie took me in to see Lord
Granville, whom I did not as yet know, and another conversation
followed. Lord Granville was a man of singularly urbane manners, and
began by inquiries after my stud of Arab horses, paying me a number of
polite compliments about them. Then, turning to the subject of Egypt, he
"informed me plump that he had certain knowledge that Arabi had been
bought by Ismaïl, and that the whole thing in Egypt was an intrigue to
restore the ex-Khedive!" This was another of the preposterous stories
that were being foisted on the Foreign Office and the public to
prejudice opinion against the Egyptian cause. It had reached the Foreign
Office, as far as I have been able to ascertain, in a despatch or
private letter from Sir Augustus Paget, then British Ambassador at Rome,
to whom the ex-Khedive appears to have boasted at Naples that he had "ce
gaillard là," meaning Arabi, in his pocket.
It is hardly necessary to inquire what motive of the moment Ismaïl may
have had for making this assertion, for his word was never of any value,
while the whole tenor of Arabi's career proves it to have been the
absolute reverse of fact. Arabi's attitude at the date in question was
more than ever one of hostility to the Circassian pashas, Ismaïl's
adherents, who were actively intriguing with Tewfik against him. Ismaïl,
however, had purposes of his own to serve in making it appear that the
trouble in Egypt had come about on his account. He always clung to the
idea that the day would come when the Powers of Europe would repent of
having deposed him, and would return to him as the only possible ruler
of a country distracted because he was no longer there to control it. At
the moment I did not know the quarter from which the story was derived,
nor could I do more to refute it than by telling Lord Granville how
utterly opposed to the ex-Khedive the National fellah leader had always
been.[11] This I did, and I delivered also the message Arabi had
entrusted me with for Mr. Gladstone. His only answer was "Will they give
up the claim of the Chamber to vote the Budget?" I told him that I
feared it was hopeless to expect this, as the Deputies were all of one
mind. "Then," he said, "I look upon their case as hopeless. It must end
by their being put down by force." I told him I could not believe the
English Government could really intervene, on such a plea, to put down
liberty. But he maintained his ground, and I left him much dissatisfied,
resolving that I would waste no more time upon trying to persuade the
Foreign Office, but would put what pressure I could on them from the
outside. "I must see Gladstone."
I also, the same day, saw Morley at his newspaper office, to try to
neutralize the effect of the falsehoods with which he was being flooded,
but I feared without success. He believed implicitly in Colvin, who was
his regular correspondent at Cairo, and there were other influences
besides, as we have seen, at work upon him and which were too strong for
me to combat in his mind.
On the 11th I dined with Button, who had invited a party specially to
meet me. These were Sir Francis Knollys, the Prince of Wales's
secretary, Reginald Brett (now Lord Esher), who was then Lord
Hartington's secretary, Clifford, a leader writer of the "Times," and
General Sir John Adye, who was a friend of Wolseley's and served under
him that year in the Egyptian Campaign, remaining, nevertheless, a warm
sympathizer with the Egyptians throughout, and, as will be seen,
rendering good service to the cause of humanity after Tel-el-Kebir. We
had a pleasant evening, and all showed themselves interested in my
Egyptian views, and I remained talking with some of them till one in the
morning. Knollys I know was impressed by what I told him, but Brett, who
was a friend of the Rothschilds and other financiers who were clamouring
for intervention, proved afterwards one of our bitterest enemies. He was
working at the time for Morley in the "Pall Mall Gazette," and inspired,
if he did not write, some of the articles which so influenced Gladstone.
On the 13th I saw Goschen, having been sent to him by Hamilton, on Mr.
Gladstone's suggestion, as a man who, though not a member of the
Government, was much trusted by them and advised them, especially on
Egyptian affairs. With him I went more thoroughly than with either Dilke
or Granville into the details of the National case. He affected much
sympathy with me, more probably than he felt, and was particularly
anxious to impress on me the notion that he was not taking a financial
view of the situation. This was, doubtless, because his past connection
with Egypt had been as representative of Ismaïl's creditors. I found him
agreeable in manner, with much charm of voice, and I was with him quite
two hours. His last words to me were: "You may be sure at least of one
thing, and that is, that whatever the Government may do in Egypt they
will do on general grounds of policy, not in the interests of the
Bondholders." This was satisfactory and seemed to be in harmony with the
situation of the moment, for that very morning the news had been
published of de Blignières' resignation of his post at Cairo of French
Financial Controller. The event had been interpreted in London as
signifying a quarrel between the French Government and the Nationalist
Ministry, but I knew that this was not the case. De Blignières had been
even more and earlier than Colvin a worker for intervention, and I read
his resignation for what it really was, a sign that his Government had
thrown him over. If Colvin at the same time had been made to resign--and
things, I believe, were very near it--all the subsequent trouble might
have been avoided. Colvin, however was too strongly backed up by Dilke
just then to be displaced.
I went on from Goschen's to lunch with Button, and found him with Lord
De la Warr, a very worthy Tory peer and country neighbour of my own in
Sussex, who had been the year before in Tunis, and had there imbibed,
during the French invasion, a certain sympathy with the Arabs. Later we
worked a good deal together on the Egyptian question, and he proved of
considerable assistance when things came, in July, to a crisis. I was at
that time urging that a Commission of Inquiry should be sent to Cairo,
and it seemed that he, perhaps, might fill the post.
The same afternoon I saw Hamilton in Downing Street. A violent article,
headed "Smouldering Fires in Egypt," had just appeared in the "Pall
Mall," which was little better from beginning to end than a tissue of
the old malicious stories, with some new ones prejudicial to the
Nationalists. To these Hamilton pointed as a convincing proof, seeing
they were in the "Pall Mall," that I must be wrong, "Or why," he said,
"should Morley, who is so good a Liberal, take such a very illiberal
line?" I explained to him Colvin's position in regard to Morley, which I
had not yet done, and urged him again to let me speak with his chief. Up
to this point, from a feeling of loyalty to men who had been my friends,
and with whom I had acted during the earlier stages, I had refrained
from making complaints against them, though Malet had not scrupled to
complain of me. But now I saw that further silence on my part would be
only mischievous, and I was resolved to tell Gladstone all the truth
about them. Morley had the day before warned me of the impending article
as one to which I would not assent, and had invited an answer to it. But
I was too angry to reply, except with a short private note, which I
followed next day by a visit to Northumberland Street, where I
reproached him with printing the malicious nonsense. The evil, however,
had been done, for the publication had immediately preceded a motion in
the House of Commons brought forward by Sir George Campbell in regard to
Egypt where the defamatory tales had been made use of. I was present at
the debate on the motion, in which the principal speaker for the
Government was Goschen, who adopted a conciliatory attitude, but less
than a quite friendly one to Egyptian Nationalism. My conversation with
him in the morning may have saved us from a worse pronouncement. Still
there was no definite declaration made favourable to liberty.
My diary for 14th March notes a talk with Sir Henry Rawlinson, the
former Minister to Persia, a distinguished Oriental historian, his views
being of the strongest Anglo-Indian official type. The Egyptians had
always, he said, been slaves, and slaves they would remain. Their
country would be absorbed with the rest of Asia by England or
Russia. He knew Asiatics too well to believe they had any taste for
self-government. Also another talk with Walter, the proprietor of the
"Times," whom Button had suggested I should see. He conversed in
platitudes for half an hour, and in the end, promised he would send a
special correspondent to Cairo for independent news. (This, however, was
not done, Macdonald, the manager, objecting on the score of needless
expense.)
On the 15th I went to see Sir Garnet Wolseley at the Horse Guards, and
had with him a conversation which needs special mention. "After a little
talk about Cyprus, we got upon Egypt and the chance of resistance on the
part of the Nationalists in the case of intervention, and he asked me my
opinion. I said, of course, they would fight, and not only the soldiers
but the people also, and afterwards, perhaps, use other methods. He
refused to believe that the army would fight at all. But I maintained
the contrary, and told him if they sent him out to conquer Egypt in its
present mood, he must be prepared to take with him at least 60,000 men."
In this I no doubt exaggerated the case, for my object was to represent
it as a very difficult one, which the Government should think twice
about before attempting. "He volunteered the information that he had
been consulted two or three times during the winter with a view to
immediate occupation. He assured me, however, that nobody wanted to
intervene, that the occupation of Egypt would be most unpopular with the
army, and that he himself should be very sorry to have to go there. He
would far rather the Egyptians should disband their army and trust to
European protection. But I told him I could not advise them to do that,
and that people were not often attacked who really meant fighting. He
said, 'Well, of course there is no such thing as honour in war, and if
there were really any question of fighting, they ought not to trust us
more than other people.'" He then talked about the various military
routes to Cairo, Bonaparte's, by the left bank of the Nile, and
especially the desert way between the Suez Canal and the Delta, so that
I felt pretty sure that if troops were landed it would be on that side.
But I was careful to give him no information which could be of the least
use to him, and I only laughed when he half seriously asked me whether I
would go with him and show him the way if it came to a campaign. My
impression of Wolseley was of "a good smart soldier, an Irishman, with a
rough touch of brogue, good humoured, and I should fancy enterprising.
But he does not impress me as a man of genius--what Napoleon used to
call a '_général à dix mille hommes_.'" It is worth noting that in
writing to Sheykh Mohammed Abdu, through my secretary, Sabunji, soon
after this conversation, I alluded to the danger there might be, in case
of intervention, of their being attacked from the Ismaïlia side, and I
believe it was in consequence of this hint that the lines of Tel-el
Kebir were begun to be traced by Arabi's order.
The same day I saw Lyall, whom I found just starting for India, where he
had been named Lieutenant-Governor of the North-West Provinces. I found
him much less sceptical about the National Party in Egypt than was the
case then with most Anglo-Indians. In the evening I dined with Hamilton
and Godley, Gladstone's two private secretaries, and showed them the
draft of a letter I had written to Lord Granville, in which I had
formally delivered Arabi's message of goodwill to the English
Government, and also his complaint against Colvin and Malet, which I had
not mentioned to him, for the reason already given, when I saw him at
the Foreign Office. Of this draft the two secretaries highly approved,
and especially Godley, who was the senior of the two, and he made me
strike out a phrase I had introduced of apology for my interference in
this important public matter. He said emphatically, "Your interference
needs no excuse." Godley was a singularly high-minded man, representing
the better and more enthusiastic side of Gladstone's public character,
the large sympathy with what was good in the world and the scorn of what
was base. Except that he had great practical ability for his official
work, he was absolutely unlike the men usually found in our public
offices, and throughout the Egyptian crisis he gave me his warmest
support and sympathy. Hamilton, though also sympathetic, was more so
because he was my personal friend than from any natural enthusiasm for
the kind of cause I was defending. My letter ended with a suggestion
that something in the nature of an official inquiry should be sent to
Cairo to examine into the facts in a spirit friendly to the Egyptians.
They both urged me to send in the letter, and I consequently did so four
days later, under the date 20th March. Its importance justifies my
giving it here _in extenso_:
"London, _March 20th_, 1882.
"The kindness with which your Lordship was good enough to listen to
me on certain points of the political situation in Egypt,
encourages me to offer you the following suggestions for your
further consideration:
"If I rightly understood your Lordship, Her Majesty's Government
are not desirous of precipitating matters in that direction, but
would be willing to accept a peaceable solution, could such be
found, of the question in dispute between the Control and the
Egyptian Government, and would only resort in the last instance to
force were the political interests of England to be seriously
impaired, or international engagements actually broken by the
National Party now in power.
"Now, I am sufficiently well acquainted with the views of that
party, or, at least, of their most prominent leaders, to be able to
speak positively to the fact that there is nothing nearer to their
wishes than a good understanding with Her Majesty's Government.
Indeed, I have the authority of Arabi Bey to assure your Lordship
that, if addressed in a friendly manner, he will use his utmost
influence with his party, and it is very great, to allay the bitter
feelings which have arisen between the Egyptians and the English
and other officials employed in the country, and that he would meet
half-way any negotiations which may be entered into with a view to
a peaceable arrangement. He has begged me, however, to lay before
you the difficulties of the position in which he is placed by the
attitude of personal hostility displayed towards him by the English
Controller-General, and to a certain extent also by Her Majesty's
Minister.
"Sir Auckland Colvin, as your Lordship is well aware, has taken a
prominent political part in the various ministerial changes, and in
what it is perhaps necessary to call the revolution, which the last
six months have witnessed in Egypt. On the 9th of September it was
he who advised the Khedive to arrest and shoot this very Arabi Bey,
now Minister of War; and he has taken no pains to conceal the fact,
having himself, as I understand, communicated the details of what
then happened to the English newspapers. It is also well known to
the Egyptians that he has been and still is in communication with
the press in a sense hostile to the National Party, and especially
to the army, and that on the occasion of Sherif Pasha's resignation
he unreservedly stated his intention to 'use every means in his
power to ruin the National Party and bring about intervention.' If
these things were known only to Arabi, he might, he assures me,
overlook them; but, unfortunately, they are matters of public
notoriety, a fact which makes it impossible for him to show himself
on terms of intimacy with their author.
"Of Sir Edward Malet he has expressed himself less decidedly, but
still partly in the same sense. It has been a misfortune of Sir
Edward's position with the Egyptians that his visit to
Constantinople closely coincided with the strong advocacy of
Turkish intervention which the English press displayed last autumn,
and I am myself convinced that the French Government are
responsible for the belief, which is ineradicable in all minds at
Cairo, that he has at various times suggested military action. I
know, myself, that this is untrue, and that Sir Edward has, on the
contrary, deprecated any such solution of his difficulties; but
certain facts remain, which lend a colour to the idea. Thus to the
very date of the assembling of the Egyptian Chamber he refused to
recognize the National demand for Constitutional Government as a
serious matter; again, he joined Sir Auckland Colvin in displaying
a marked partisanship for Sherif in his quarrel with the deputies;
and he has since given offence by expressing his belief in a
story, wholly unfounded and peculiarly irritating to those
deputies, namely, that their President, Sultan Pasha, a man
universally respected, had been personally insulted by Arabi.
"Be this as it may, it is certain both Sir Edward Malet and Sir
Auckland Colvin, instead of being in a position to advise and
restrain are practically 'in Coventry' with the Egyptian
Government. They are shut out from all true sources of information
regarding their plans, and are compelled to leave the field open to
intriguers of other nationalities who have no interest in advising
moderation or desire to avert a rupture.
"If your Lordship should find that there is any reason in my
argument thus stated, I may perhaps be permitted to make the
following suggestion.
"The National Ministers are now engaged in preparing a series of
grave complaints against the working of the system established by
England and France and sanctioned by the Control, some of which
complaints are certainly well founded. They are willing to approach
the inquiry in a moderate and friendly spirit, but they will
certainly approach it in a hostile one if the Control and diplomacy
continue hostile. The matters in dispute are largely matters of
fact which, if justice is to be observed and an undoubted moral
standing ground acquired by Her Majesty's Government, should be
examined in an absolutely impartial mood and on the evidence no
less of the Egyptians than of the Europeans. That evidence, I
submit, it is out of the reach of Her Majesty's representatives,
diplomatic and financial, to procure, and that impartiality will
certainly be suspected in their case by the Egyptians. Would it not
then be advisable, during the six months which must elapse before
the Egyptian Parliament reassembles and the conflict be engaged, to
send something in the nature of a commission of inquiry to examine
into the facts complained of in a friendly spirit, the only spirit
which can possibly avert disaster."
To continue from my diary I find that on the 16th I wrote, with
Sabunji's help as scribe, a long letter to Arabi, telling him that I was
asking for a Commission to be appointed and that I was in good hopes,
but entreating him to be cautious; and also to Gregory, who was still at
Cairo. The situation in Egypt then was that the Chamber of Delegates,
having insisted upon the right they had claimed to vote that half of the
Budget which was not affected to the payment of the interest on the
debt, a new _Leyha_, or organic law, granting a Constitution on European
models had been signed, as we have seen, by the Khedive and published.
The Ministers had also presented to the Chamber of Deputies a list of
practical reforms, all of which were much needed and most of which have
since, after many years, been carried out. Which done, the Chamber had
been adjourned till the autumn. Absolute tranquillity had meanwhile
prevailed throughout the country, and the sole cause of quarrel with
Europe was the financial one of the vote, a dispute which could not
become acute for at least six months, when the next new budget would be
framed. There is not the smallest doubt that if Colvin had been induced
to join his French colleague, de Blignières, in retiring from Egypt, and
my suggestion of the Commission had been adopted, things in Egypt would
have quieted down and all cause for armed intervention would have
disappeared. The Egyptian Ministry desired nothing more than to live at
peace with the whole world and to come to an understanding with the Dual
Governments on all disputed questions.
On 20th March I lunched at Button's to meet his uncle, Robert Bourke,
who was to bring forward the Egyptian question next week formally in
Parliament. With him was another Tory member, Montague Guest, who had
interested himself in the cause of Tunis. These were among the second
strings to my bow, if Gladstone should fail me. Then I attended a
meeting of the Asiatic Society, to which I had just been elected, and in
the evening dined with Rivers Wilson. With Wilson I "quarrelled
fearfully about Egypt." He told me he had helped to draw up a new Note,
at the Foreign Office, which was now being despatched to Malet,
"insisting on the fulfilment of all International engagements," a Note
intended to be a new menace to the National Party, but which I think was
never sent, or perhaps cancelled, as it does not appear in the Blue
Book. My letter to Granville may have been the cause of its suppression.
Wilson insisted that the whole National movement was an invention of
Ismaïl's, and that "if the ex-Khedive were to land to-morrow at
Alexandria, every Egyptian would come to him on his hands and knees."
From this dinner I went on to a party at Lady Kenmare's, where I met
Lady Salisbury, who took me aside, and cross-questioned me with much
appearance of sympathy about the Egyptian cause, and I laid it before
her to the best of my ability, knowing that what I said would be
repeated to her husband. Of course there could be no real sympathy in
any of the Tories, especially in Lord Salisbury, for my views on
Egyptian liberty, but it suited the Opposition to take me up to just the
extent that would help them to bring the Government into discredit,
Salisbury himself was throughout a thoroughgoing advocate of
intervention. I walked home that evening with Hamilton, whom I had found
at the party, and told him of Wilson's boast about the new Note, and
entreated him to get me immediate audience of his chief, and he urged me
to send in my letter at once to Granville, and also a copy of it to
Gladstone. This I did the following morning, entrusting both to Hamilton
for delivery. He had already, 21st March, arranged an interview for me
with his chief for the next day. A dinner in the evening at Robert
Bourke's, General Taylor, the Opposition Whip, Lady Ely, and a number
more Tories.
_March 22._--This was a most important day. I had now been a full
fortnight in England, and, though I had certainly not let any grass grow
under my feet, I had nevertheless failed as yet to get speech of the
Prime Minister. To-day, however, made me ample amends. I went a little
before the hour appointed to Downing Street, so as to have time for a
few words with Hamilton, who told me his chief had read my letter; and
at twenty minutes past eleven I was received by him. Mr. Gladstone I
found looking far better and younger than when I had seen him last,
nearly two years before. Then he had seemed on his decline, but now he
seemed vigorous and singularly alert in mind and body. He received me
very kindly. My letter to Lord Granville was before him on the table,
and he was evidently prepared and eager for what I had to say. He told
me to tell him all, and, without talking much himself, listened. His
manner was so encouraging and sympathetic that I spoke easily and with
an eloquence I had never had before, and I could see that every word I
said interested and touched him. He let me speak on for perhaps a
quarter of an hour, only from time to time interjecting some such words
as "you need not tell me this, for I know it," as when I would prove
the reality of the National feeling in Egypt. His sympathy was obviously
and strongly with the movement.
Then he asked me a question about the position of the army and the
reason of the prominent part taken by it in public affairs. Of this he
was suspicious. I explained the history to him and assured him that the
interference of the soldiers had been greatly exaggerated, and the
stories of their intimidation of the Deputies were quite untrue; that
the sole reason for the present military preparations was the dread of
foreign intervention. I explained the feeling of the Party towards the
Sultan and the Viceregal family--towards Tewfik, the ex-Khedive, and
Halim. He asked me whether I had told all this to Lord Granville. I
said: "He stopped me at the outset by telling me that Arabi had been
bought by Ismaïl! What could I say?" Just at that moment somebody looked
in and told Mr. Gladstone that Lord Granville was in the house and had
sent up his name, and I was terribly afraid Mr. Gladstone was going to
let him in, which would have prevented me from telling my full story.
But with a look of annoyance he went out for an instant, and sent Lord
Granville away, and then came back with a sort of skip across the room
and rubbing his hands as one might do on having got rid of a bore. The
gesture was an extraordinary encouragement to me, and he at once made me
go on.
I delivered all Arabi's messages about the Slave Trade and the other
projects of reform, and then went on to explain Colvin's position and
Malet's. He said, almost pathetically, "What can we do? They are
esteemed public servants and have received _honours_ for their work in
Egypt." He insisted upon the word _honours_. He then asked me to tell
him something about the civilian leaders of the National Party, and I
explained the position of some of them, Mohammed Abdu, Ahmed Mahmud,
Saadallah Hallabi, Hassan Shereï, and others of the Deputies, and,
lastly, Abdallah Nadim, journalist and orator. This designation at once
excited Mr. Gladstone, and the account of his eloquence, and he took
down his name upon a slip of paper. Thus time slipped away till it was
twelve o'clock, and he had another appointment. I had been with him
forty minutes--a very fast forty minutes too. As I was going out I
turned and asked him, with a sudden thought, whether I might not send
Arabi some message from him in answer to his messages. He thought an
instant and said, "I think not." And very slowly and deliberately: "But
you are at liberty to state your own impression of my sentiments," and
then in a sort of House of Commons voice, which was in strange contrast
with the extremely personal and human tone in which he had been
conversing: "If they wish to judge of these, let them read what we say
in Parliament, especially what I say, for I never speak lightly in
Parliament. In our public despatches we are much hampered by the opinion
of Europe, which we are bound to consider, and this is not favourable to
Liberal institutions in Egypt. But they should read our speeches." He
had turned to the table, for we were half-way across the room, and took
up a paper which was on it, a despatch already signed, and which I felt
sure was that which Wilson had told me he had helped to draft, and
seemed on the point of showing it to me--and then refrained and put it
down again. Once more his manner became natural and intimate. He thanked
me again for my letters and all that I had told him, and begged me to
let him hear if any new combination arose. His extreme kindness as he
shook hands with me moved me greatly and I was near shedding tears, and
went away feeling that he was a good as well as a great man, and
wondering only how any one with so good a heart could have arrived at
being Prime Minister. "_El hamdu l'Illah. El hamdu l'Illah_," I kept
repeating to myself, "_El nasr min Alah, wa fathon karibon_."
Such was the Gladstone I saw unveiled for a moment that day--a man of
infinite private sympathy with good, and of whom one would affirm it
impossible he should swerve a hair's breadth from the path of right.
But, alas, there was another Gladstone, the opportunist statesman, who
was very different from the first, and whom I was presently to see
playing in public "such fantastic tricks before high Heaven as make the
angels weep." I will attempt a character, drawn from my observation of
him, which was a close one, during the next ten years, of this very
remarkable personality.
Gladstone, as I have said, was two personages. His human side was very
charming. He had an immense power of sympathy, and what I may call a
lavish expenditure of enthusiasm for such things as attracted him, and
he had also a certain humility of attitude, often towards persons far
inferior to himself, which compelled their affectionate regard, as did
certain little human weaknesses which have found no place in any
memorial of him that has yet been published. All this made him beloved,
especially by the young, by the women who knew him well, both those who
were good and those who were less good. This was the happy, the
consistent part of him. His public life was to large extent a fraud--as
indeed the public life of every great Parliamentarian must be. The
insincerities of debate were ingrained in him. He had begun them at
school and college before he entered the House of Commons, and by the
time he was thirty he had learnt to look upon the "Vote of the House" as
the supreme criterion of right and wrong in public things. In deference
to this he had had constantly to put aside his private predilections of
policy, until towards the end of his life his own personal impulses of
good had assumed the character of tastes rather than of principles. They
were like his taste for music, his taste for china, his taste for
_bric-à-brac_, feelings he would like to indulge, but was restrained
from by a higher duty, that of securing a Parliamentary majority. This
was his ultimate reason of all action, his true conscience, to which his
nobler aspirations had constantly to be sacrificed. His long habit, too,
of publicity, had bred in him, as it does in actors, a tendency to
self-deception. From constantly acting parts not really his own, he had
acquired the power of putting on a character at will, even, I believe,
to his inmost thoughts. If he had a new distasteful policy to pursue,
his first object was to persuade himself into a belief that it was
really congenial to him, and at this he worked until he had made himself
his own convert, by the invention of a phrase or an argument which
might win his approbation. Thus he was always saved the too close
consciousness of his insincerities, for like the tragedian in Dickens,
when he had to act Othello, he began by painting himself black all over.
I believe this is not an unfair estimate of Gladstone's public
character. Certainly it is the light in which his actions showed him to
me in his betrayal that year of the Egyptian cause.
As yet, however, I had no misgiving, and in the next few days wrote
letters to my friends at Cairo detailing the good news. With Gladstone
on our side, what more was there to fear? Only I prayed them to be
patient till the Commission I had asked for should arrive. That some
attempt was made by Lord Granville to carry out my suggestion is clear
from the Blue Books. But Granville's heart was also as clearly not in
it, or he was thwarted by Dilke or others in the Foreign Office. He
wrote me a note on the 24th asking me to luncheon, when I should have an
opportunity of discussing the question of the Commission, but by an
accident, which was probably not an accident, the note did not reach me
till too late, a manoeuvre which was repeated with the same result a
week later. The Blue Books record a little abortive negotiation with
France for a special inquiry, but it was soon dropped, and Lord
Granville's favourite method of dawdling things out is responsible for
the rest. Before many weeks had passed, the intriguers at Cairo had
effected their purpose of a new disturbance, and the difficulties of
conciliation had become enormously increased.
The rest of the short session before Easter in London may be briefly
told. I went down for a few days to Crabbet to see after my private
affairs, but that did not prevent me from writing to my friends in
Egypt, Arabi and Mohammed Abdu and Nadim, telling them of my success
with Gladstone and imploring their prudence. On the 26th I received a
letter from Button, enclosing a note from a person in a very responsible
position, which I find still among my papers. It is so short and
instructive that I give it as it stands:
"_22nd._ I am very anxious that Mr. Wilfrid Blunt should meet and see
Natty Rothschild, whose Egyptian interests require no explanation. He
goes to Lord Granville and the Foreign Office so constantly, and in this
matter, like St. Paul, 'dies daily.' To bring them to an intelligent
understanding on this vexed question would be a real service. I am
desired to ask if you could bring W. Blunt to luncheon at New Court on
Friday next at 1 P.M. _Do_ if you possibly can. It will be _useful_ in
many ways."
Here, of course, was the real crux of the situation, the nine millions
of the Rothschild loan supposed to be in danger in Egypt, half of which,
Button told me, was still held by the Rothschilds themselves. I
consequently went up to London on the morning of the 27th, the day
named, and under Button's wing to the City, but by misfortune only to
find that "Natty" had been called that morning abroad on account of the
illness or death of a near relation, I forget which. We consequently did
not see him, but he had left a message instead, begging me to write him
my views. I regret the accident which prevented the meeting, for it
would have been interesting, though I do not suppose it would have
effected any good. I have often wondered since what would have been the
nature of the "intelligent understanding" so much desired; and I have
sometimes suspected that the common financial argument might have been
tried with me in the shape of shares to bring about an arrangement with
Arabi for the betrayal of his political trust. Some such, it seems, was
tried upon Arabi two months later through another channel. Nothing,
however, came of the visit, except that I wrote my memorandum, too long
a one here to quote, the object of it being to recommend, as a matter of
policy, that financiers who had interests in Egypt should accept the
revolution that had occurred and make the best of it, and predicted that
bondholders would lose more by a war than by conciliation. I have since
been told that Rothschild, who, after great tribulation and anguish of
mind at the time of the bombardment of Alexandria and nearly in despair
thinking he had lost his millions eventually recovered the value of all,
resented my prediction of evil as that of a false prophet. But that does
not greatly concern me. My memorandum was drawn up not in his interest
as creditor but in that of his Egyptian debtors.
Another curious entry, 28th March, gives a hint of the ideas current in
Printing House Square. This was the first time I had been to the "Times"
office, and Button was again my _cicerone_. We saw there Macdonald, the
manager, with the object of trying to get him to send out a new
correspondent to Cairo, who should give the "Times" independent news,
and Mackenzie Wallace had been thought of for the purpose. But
Macdonald, with Scotch caution, would not go to the expense. He was
quite satisfied from a business point of view, he said, with the kind of
news Scott, their correspondent at Alexandria, was sending them. English
people, he said, had only two interests in Egypt, the Suez Canal and
their bonds, if they held any, and Scott's views on these two matters
were what they wanted. Beyond this they did not care in any special way
about the truth. He complimented me all the same on my own letters,
which as I was not paid for them they were obliged to me for, and they
would always be glad to print whatever more I had to say. But a special
correspondent just then was not needed.
I was in correspondence about this time with Allen, the Secretary of the
Anti-Slave-Trade Society, a very worthy man but of extremely narrow
views. Sir William Muir had taken me to task in the "Times" for having
asserted in one of my letters that it was part of the National program
in Egypt to suppress what remained of slavery in Egypt, and he had been
at the pains to prove by chapter and verse from the Koran, that slavery
was and must always be an institution of a religious character with
Mohammedans. Allen, too, I found indignant at the idea of Arabi's being
actively in favour of its suppression, which he, Allen, seemed to
consider was the sole business of the Society's anti-slavery agents at
Cairo. His anger was very much what a master of foxhounds might express
at the unauthorized destruction of foxes by a farmer. Mohammedans, he
considered, had no business to put down slavery on their own account, or
what would become of the Society. This at least was the impression his
argument left on me.
Lastly, I find a note of having been asked, 1st April, to meet the
Prince of Wales, who wanted to see me, at dinner, _en partie carrée_. My
host on this occasion was Howard Vincent, who was at that time on
intimate terms with H. R. H. I was stupid enough not to go to the
dinner, which would have been interesting. But I unfortunately had a
previous engagement for the same day to meet Princess Louise of Lorne at
the Howards, and did not like to break my engagement, which was also an
important one. I went, however, in the evening to Vincent's and had some
talk with the Prince of Wales about Egypt, though not on the subjects
connected with it that most interested me.
Here the first Act of my English campaign may be said to end. Up to this
point all, in spite of huge difficulties, had gone well with my
propaganda. My preaching of the National Egyptian cause had been almost
everywhere well received, and the talk of intervention had subsided. At
one moment my hopes were very high, for Button had ascertained that the
Commission I had asked for was to be sent, and he named to me even the
person said to have been chosen. But, alas, it proved a vain rumour.
Then everybody went out of London for the Easter recess, and before they
returned the news of the Circassian plot was upon us. It was the
beginning of the pitiful end.
FOOTNOTES:
[11] Since the above was in print I have lit on the following entry in
my diary of 1884, which at the same time confirms and corrects what is
said of Paget's connection with this colony: "Vienna, Sept. 20. Dined at
the Embassy. Sir A. Paget very amiable, talked about Egypt. He remembers
Nubar Abba's dragoman. He asked my opinion of Arabi, and I asked him in
turn whether it was true that Ismaïl had told him that Arabi was in his
pay. He said he had never talked to Ismaïl about Arabi, but he remembers
having heard that Ismaïl said, 'ce gaillard là m'a conté les yeux de la
tête.'"