CHAPTER IV 



THE YOUNG KHEDIVE ABBAS 



1892 to 1893 



The year 1892 opened with an event which was to prove a turning- 

 point in Egyptian history, one where a new opportunity was given to 

 our Government of making a fresh start in the direction of that Na- 

 tional Government on constitutional lines, which Lord Dufferin had 

 promised and which might have enabled England to withdraw her army 

 of occupation in agreement with the Sultan, and the Powers of Europe, 

 but which was once more unfortunately let slip, mainly through Sir 

 Evelyn Baring's fault, who misjudged the character of those with 

 whom he had to deal, and found in it only an opportunity of taking the 

 reins of Government at Cairo more completely into his own hands. 

 On the 7th of January of the new year the Khedive Tewfik, still com- 

 paratively a young man, suddenly and unexpectedly died. He had 

 been ailing for a few days at his country palace at Helwan, and no one 

 had at all foreseen what was to happen. In the common view of native 

 Egypt he was supposed to have been poisoned, the memory of such 

 doings for political reasons being still strong in the popular mind, 

 though, in fact, it was a natural death hastened only by the mistake 

 of the doctors called in to attend him. 



" gth Jan. 1892. — Yesterday at eleven o'clock Mutlak (our Bedouin 

 horse rider), came to me and told me that the Khedive was dead, and 

 immediately afterwards Mohammed Nassr the Berberi porter repeated 

 the news, ' It is Husseyn Pasha the Prince,' the latter said, ' who has 

 done it, I was in his service, and he is a son of sin, ibn el haram.' On 

 the roof, old AH, the plasterer, who is a Halimist, and had just been to 

 the station at Matarieh for gossip, remarked with a wink to me, ' Are 

 you not going to the funeral? ' and he went through the pantomime of 

 drinking a cup of coffee (meaning he had been poisoned). This morn- 

 ing he tells me about it more precisely. ' It is the Dowlah that did it 

 (the Sultan's Government). Mukhtar had advised Tewfik many times 

 to try a change of air, for the air of Egypt did not agree with him, 

 but he would not listen.' I asked the old man whether he meant that 

 Mukhtar had had it done. ' Oh, no,' he said, ' they have sent some- 

 body on purpose from beyond the water' (from Stamboul). It cer- 



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