3° Sir Evelyn Baring at Cairo [1890 



ancient city. But I must not linger over these personal recollections, 

 interesting as they are to me, for they would take up too much space. 

 All I need notice is that, calling again at the Embassy, I found Lord 

 Dufrerin, to my pleasure, favourable to the pleading I made that he 

 should help if possible in any decision there might be in the direction 

 of re-establishing that free government at Cairo he had promised the 

 Egyptians in 1883, and recalling Arabi. On my last day at Rome I 

 attended a dinner at the Irish college, where I met the Maronite Arch- 

 bishop of Damascus, and where good old Dr. Kirby, rector of the 

 College, proposed my unworthy health, and where I was constrained to 

 speak at length to the students on the prospects of Home Rule. It was 

 my last public utterance about Ireland. On the morning of the 4th 

 we left for Naples, and there took ship for Alexandria, and by the 12th 

 found ourselves once more at Sheykh Obeyd, where we spent the rest 

 of the winter in the purely Oriental surroundings I have more than 

 once described. 



On the occasion of this second visit to Egypt of 1889-90 I adopted 

 a new attitude towards the British occupation and Baring, who repre- 

 sented it at Cairo as Consul-General and British Resident. When I 

 had been there the previous year I had avoided all intercourse with 

 the Anglo-official world, but now, on my return, influenced by the 

 conversation I had had with Dufferin at Rome and thinking that I 

 might perhaps thus help on the re-establishment of a more liberal 

 regime at Cairo, I took occasion of an informal message sent me that 

 he would be glad to see me to call on Baring, and from that time 

 remained in friendly relations with the Residency, which were not 

 without their advantage in a public way. In business matters I found 

 Sir Evelyn a pleasant man to deal with. He was quick to understand 

 a case, and straightforward in his replies, willing always to listen to 

 arguments, however opposed to his own opinions, and with nothing of 

 the conventional insincerities of diplomacy. It is to this, no doubt, that 

 he owed his success in converting to his view the many English Radical 

 M.P.'s who, arriving at Cairo with the idea of hastening on the evacua- 

 tion, left it persuaded that the proposal was impossible or at least 

 premature, and that the Occupation must be maintained. 



" 12th Jan. — Yesterday I called by appointment on Sir Evelyn 

 Baring. I had not done so since our meeting in 1883, but it came about 

 in this wise. When Prince Wagram (he had followed us to Egypt at 

 the end of the year) was here a fortnight ago he gave me a kind of 

 informal message from Baring to the effect that he would be pleased 

 if I came to see him. At the time I was not quite sure how to respond 

 to this, and I delayed taking any action, but last Sunday I received a 

 visit from Mohammed el Moelhi. who gave me news of how things 

 were going politically. He assured me that people were becoming 



