ioo Sultan of JoJiore in Honour [ 1 &9Z 



he was. " Je ne connais pas de Sultan de Johore, mais il y a un prince 

 de ce nom qui a demande audience de sa Majeste le Sultan." Nelidoff 

 was curious to know how many subjects Johore contained, and when I 

 told him " only half a million " was greatly disappointed. He had been 

 reckoning on him, I think, as a possible ally for Russia on the borders of 

 India. 



Going on the same afternoon (25th April) to a hotel where he was 

 staying " I found the Johore suite in the seventh heaven of delight over 

 their reception last night by the Sultan. Two state carriages had been 

 sent for them with an escort of cavalry — this had been denied them 

 in London at the Queen's Jubilee. They had been entertained at a 

 state banquet, and Sultan Abdul Hamid had embraced his brother 

 monarch and had bestowed on him the First Class of the Order of 

 Osmanieh in diamonds, and on the suite correspondingly high decora- 

 tions. I did not see the old gentleman himself, he being with the 

 dentist. Mohammed Moelhi alone was not decorated, though as a 

 matter of fact it was entirely owing to him that Johore had been re- 

 ceived at all. The Sultan had refused at first, saying he was only an 

 Indian Rajah, but Moelhi managed to persuade the palace people 

 through Jemal ed Din, and the brilliant reception accorded was the 

 result. Jemal ed Din was at the banquet, and according to Ibrahim's 

 account, is now in high favour at Yildiz, having succeeded with Abdul 

 Hamid by his plainspoken audacity. The Sultan has offered him all 

 kinds of grades and decorations, but Jemal ed Din has wisely refused, 

 and the other day, on being turned back by the master of ceremonies at 

 one of the Bairam Court functions, Jemal ed Din pushed his way 

 through notwithstanding, and so attracted the Sultan's notice, who sent 

 for him and made him stand close to him behind his chair, nearer even 

 than the Grand Eunuch. So Jemal ed Din is the man of whom to 

 solicit favours, and I am to be taken to call on him to-morrow, the 

 episode of the umbrella in the back room at James Street being con- 

 signed to oblivion. How foolish Drummond Wolff was to change his 

 mind at Vienna and not take the Seyyid with him to Constantinople in 

 1885, as I had arranged he should do. He would have got his Con- 

 vention ratified and succeeded where he failed. 1 



" 26th April. — With Judith to luncheon at the Embassy. The Ger- 

 man Ambassador was there, with a Swedish Count and Countess and 

 Carnegie, a cousin of the -Ambassador, of a branch of the Southesk 

 family settled in Prussia, also Nicholson, our Secretary of Embassy, 

 next to whom I sat. I found both Nicholson and Ford professing 

 opinions favourable to the evacuation of Egypt; indeed, Ford intro- 



1 For Seyyid Jemal ed Din Afghani's earlier career and his visit to me in Lon- 

 don see my volume, " Gordon at Khartoum." See also Professor Browne's ac- 

 count of the Seyyid in his book on Persia. 



