1893] Abbas and Abdul Hamid 113 



the last few years, especially as to judicial reforms, and agreed with 

 many of my own views on other points. He said of Dufferin that he 

 had been a failure in Paris. Dufferin had left Paris in a huff at the 

 continued attacks made on him in the French press. George Curzon 

 was very amusing. 



" 2nd Aug. — My news from Paris is (from a source within the 

 Embassy) that Dufferin has been undoubtedly a failure there ; he is too 

 fond of paying little insincere compliments, and his wife is too un- 

 genial. There is a very bitter feeling in all classes now against Eng- 

 land, and just at this moment it is at fever heat about Siam. After a 

 deal of swagger Rosebery has knuckled down. It is a robbers' quarrel 

 over their spoils. 



" lyth Aug. — Osman Bey Ghaleb was here at luncheon, a very in- 

 telligent man. He left Egypt in the middle of June, and stayed a month 

 or more at Constantinople, being there when the Khedive came to do 

 homage. He tells me that great preparations had been made to receive 

 Abbas, but at the last moment the Sultan was frightened and counter- 

 ordered everything, so that Abbas was received meanly by half-a-dozen 

 inferior officials, none above the rank of Bey. In public this attitude 

 was maintained throughout towards him, but privately, Osman says, 

 it was different, and the Sultan received the Khedive four or five times 

 quite alone and had long talks with him. On going away Abbas de- 

 clared openly to his suite that his journey had been a failure, but this 

 he thinks was merely to throw dust in English eyes, for he said, ' Abbas 

 is a proud young man, and if he had really been ill received by the 

 Sultan he would never have returned to Cairo, he would have thrown 

 himself overboard first.' It is difficult to understand the Sultan's object 

 in all this. Osman lays it entirely on his timidity. The English Am- 

 bassador, he says, bullied him (poor Ford!) on the Armenian question, 

 and frightened him with threats of intervention, but what folly! Even 

 Gladstone could hardly bombard Constantinople or seize the ports of 

 the Hedjaz. 1 



"2yd Aug. — We had a private performance this evening of my 

 play, ' The Bride of the Nile,' the Lytton girls acting it, and Lady Clare 

 Feilding and Judith." [N.B. I had written this extravaganza while 

 in Egypt as a relief to my feelings, and to make fun of Baring and 

 the British Occupation, taking as my text an incident narrated by 

 Abulfeda as having happened at the time of the Arab invasion by Amru, 

 when the relations between Egypt and the Roman Empire were not un- 

 like those now existing with the British Empire. The play with our 

 home circle at Crabbet had a considerable success.] 



I spent the month of September in Scotland making a family tour of 



1 This Osman Ghaleb became afterwards the principal friend and supporter of 

 the National Leader, Mustapha Kamel. 



