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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 Schouvalof 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.