CHAPTER III 



BRIGANDAGE IN EGYPT 



The summer of 1890 I spent in large part at Paris with Lytton at 

 the Embassy, and was one of the most delightful in my experience, but 

 it contained little of a political nature or that can be repeated here. 

 Our talks were mainly of literature, and more especially of dramatic 

 literature, on which he was just then engaged, the detail of his official 

 work being left principally to his staff, though I would not be under- 

 stood to mean that he was a mere figurehead. As Ambassador, on the 

 contrary, his political influence at Paris was greater than that of his 

 predecessor, Lord Lyons. With all the latter's dignity and discretion 

 and solid good sense, he had never succeeded in obtaining any kind of 

 popularity, and in his time the relations between France and England 

 had become the reverse of cordial. Lytton, however, by the very 

 qualities which had proved his defects when in India, had obtained an 

 immediate personal success at Paris, and had in large measure restored 

 the international good feeling. His literary Bohemianism and lack of 

 pomposity, his devotion to the stage, his ready patronage of artists, 

 actors, and those litterateurs who count for so much in Paris journal- 

 ism, had been a passport for him to favour with the Press, and through 

 the Press to public opinion. Lytton was by taste a Bohemian, and 

 Paris, which is also so largely Bohemian, recognized him as a brother 

 artist. It was impossible to regard him as representative of the 

 morgue britannique, of which not only Lord Lyons but Lord Cowley 

 before him had been such notable examples. Treated with a light 

 hand, many a difficult question was in his time easily circumvented, if 

 not permanently solved, and this at the expense of no real dignity. It 

 was felt that he wished well to Frenchmen and French views of life, 

 and that was sufficient. 



In the intervals of my Paris visits I find notices of my life in Eng- 

 land, showing that I, too, had learned to take life more lightly than in 

 previous years. I busied myself not at all with parliamentary politics, 

 and even about Ireland I ceased to take any absorbing interest. The 

 prospects of Home Rule were better assured just then in all appearance 

 than they had been since Gladstone's defeat in 1886. The result of the 

 great " Times " prosecution had been a notable victory for the National- 



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