Part 2 — CHAPTER V (continued 2)

Notwithstanding all this fine talk, on his return from Egypt Robertson did next to nothing when Parliament met, and soon allowed himself to be secured by Grey. He took the official shilling, a subordinate post in the Government.

“Sir William Wedderburn came to luncheon. He is an excellent man, and if he were only ten years younger would make a good successor to Cromer; as it is he thinks Lord Reay would do for it. He talked a good deal about India, and gave a history of the partition of Bengal, which he describes as a very serious matter. It was all Curzon’s doings, devised with a special purpose of weakening the power of the High Court at Calcutta. He would not hear of the Bengal Mohammedans as being otherwise than at one with the Hindoos in the affair. He spoke highly of the Amir of Afghanistan in spite of his Europeanized dress and ways, a hardworking, honest ruler, he said, in every way estimable.

“20th Feb.—George Wyndham and his brother Guy dined with me. Guy is appointed military attaché at St. Petersburg. George, when his brother was gone home, told me of his disgust with politics, and how he considered the Tory Party had ruined its prospects by forcing on the General Election after the Boer War, the Khaki election. It had been all Chamberlain’s doing, he, George, having strongly opposed it in the Cabinet. It was unfair according to the rules of Party politics, and they were suffering from it now.

“2nd March.—To London to vote against the Progressives at the London County Council elections. I do this as a protest against the running into debt by public bodies, especially for municipal trading; the Moderates very likely are as bad, but they are not in office and these are.

“5th March.—Sheykh Ali Yusuf has demanded a Parliament in the general assembly at Cairo. There is an article about it in the ‘Times,’ but the Radical press says nothing. What reptiles these party journalists are. They have been preaching the virtues of popular Government for months past in Russia, in Persia, in the Transvaal, and God knows where not else, but the moment it comes to our duty in Egypt they have not a word to say, all dumb dogs.

“6th March.—Sir Henry Cotton lunched with me. I had been reading his ‘New India,’ an excellent book. He spoke of my ‘Ideas about India,’ published twenty-two years ago, and said it applied very exactly to present conditions. He was surprised I should have been able to foresee these and understand India so well with such short experience as mine had been.

“7th March.—To see George Wyndham in Park Lane. He is strategically opposed to a continued occupation of Egypt, but I am not to repeat this. I understand such is Arthur Balfour’s opinion, too. George would therefore be in favour of establishing a National Government if one could be secured friendly to English interests. As to Cromer’s successor he thinks Gorst inevitable. I walked with him as far as Rotten Row and home by myself, the first time for two years I have ventured alone in the streets. At twelve John Dillon came and arranged questions with me to be asked in Parliament. He is doing all he can, pestering Grey constantly about Egypt.

“9th March.—The first number of the ‘Egyptian Standard’ is out at last. It mentions me as among its collaborators, in company with Madame Juliette Adam and Pierre Lôti.

“12th March.—Staal, our late Russian Ambassador here, died a fortnight ago, one of the very best men I have known in the world, and extremely kind to me, with good advice, when I was a boy at Athens. He has died at the age of eighty-four.

“I have been reading the life of Lafcadio Hearn, an interesting man, whom the accident of his life in Japan has made one of importance in literature. But for this piece of good fortune, he would never have been more than a very superior journalist. Accident, however, drove him into a region of romance which he had the wit to recognize as his proper home, and so has achieved a great work and enduring fame.

“14th March.—Lady Gregory dined with me in Chapel Street. She gave me a long account of the row that took place at her Abbey Theatre, over the production of Synge’s piece, ‘The Playboy of the Western World.’ The first night, she said, passed fairly well, with only a few hisses, but on the second night there was an organized opposition, and, fearing mischief, she sent for the police, and afterwards there was a tumult every night of the week till the last performance, when the opponents of the play got tired of their noise. She considers, therefore, that she has won a victory, but fears the incident will have harmed her in the provinces, where the play is resented more than in Dublin. At Gort, her county town, the local council has boycotted her, forbidding the school children to attend her teas and entertainments, lest their morals should be corrupted. She is going abroad for awhile with her son.

“15th March.—Fisher Unwin has agreed to publish the first volume of my Egyptian memoirs.

“Rothstein came to see me, the new London correspondent of the ‘Egyptian Standard.’ That paper seems likely now to make its way. Brailsford who was also here this afternoon has suggested to Mustapha the issue of a weekly edition, as no one can spare time for a foreign daily paper. M., who came to luncheon, told an amusing story about the late Queen Victoria, who when there was talk about the meeting of dead people in another world was huffed at the idea of allowing King David to be presented to her on account of his ‘inexcusable conduct to Uriah.’

“23rd March.—Mark Napier has returned from Egypt where he has been on business for me. All is quiet there, he says, politically. The Khedive has been frightened into submission by Cromer, and has withdrawn his support from the Nationalists, King Edward having written His Highness an autograph letter enjoining him to have nothing to do with Mustapha Kamel. He had this last from Carton de Wiart, and it was confirmed to him by Reuters’ agent, so it was probably true.

“24th March.—The ‘Pall Mall’ reports from Cairo that the press laws are to be put in force against the ‘Egyptian Standard.’

“28th March.—Mark Napier was here again to-day. He went to see Cromer before leaving Cairo, who spoke to him about my ‘Atrocity’ pamphlet, regretting that I should have published it, but pretending that he had not read it. Cromer, he says, appeared much broken in health, and he thinks will not stay on long at Cairo, though he intends to stay. He was touchy on the subject of the pamphlet.

“1st April (Easter Monday).—Ujda has been occupied by French troops, the first military act of the ‘pacific penetration’ of Morocco.

“11th April.—I have been writing an article for the ‘Daily News’ in answer to Cromer’s annual report, and had gone to bed as I usually do before dinner, and was fast asleep when a telegram was brought me signed by Meynell containing the joyous announcement of Cromer’s resignation. I was at once full awake and laughing so that the bed shook under me, nor could I stop for several minutes. I sent back in return the single word, Whoo-whoop! I am off to Chapel Street, and Clouds to-morrow, feeling like a huntsman at the end of his day’s sport with Cromer’s brush in my pocket, and the mask of that ancient red fox dangling from my saddle.

“Whoo-whoop!”