Lord Edward Cecil on Kitchener.

Lord Edward Cecil
From: Lord Edward Cecil,
The Leisure of an Egyptian Official,
London, 1923

From: Lord Edward Cecil, The Leisure of an Egyptian Official. London, 1922

FOREWORD

THESE sketches were written by Lord Edward Cecil at various times during the eighteen years of his service in Egypt. “My Daily Life” and most of the other papers, including the unfinished “Going on Leave,” belong to a period long anterior to the War. Only two of them, “Lord Kitchener” and “An Official Correspondence,” are of comparatively recent date.

Though they were only written for the amusement of his family, it is thought that these pictures of the lighter side of Egyptian life may be of interest to a wider public. The characters introduced are, of course, not drawn from any individuals.

Three of the sketches, viz. “Lord Kitchener,” “An Official Correspondence,” and “A Day on the Suez Canal,” have already appeared in the National Review.

July 1921.

LORD KITCHENER

I AM writing this whilst nursing a bad lung at the top of a Swiss mountain. I have to hand neither my old letters, portions of diaries, nor other documents which might aid my memory. This is no attempt at more than a sketch from memory of those characteristics of the great man which impressed themselves on me in the personal contact with Lord Kitchener I had the honour to experience.

I cannot accurately remember when exactly it was that I saw him first. It was at Hatfield, and my father had asked him down. My mother, I think, had never seen him. My father, who had met him in the course of business, was much impressed with him. That I clearly remember, for my father was not often impressed.

I remember little of his visit except that he got up at what appeared to me then a godless hour—six. The day at Hatfield began at 9.30, if you felt energetic.

He subsequently came to dine with me on guard. I should like to think I patronised him, but I am pretty sure I did not, as one glance from that eye would have put me back in my proper place. I know I asked him to take me as his A.D.C. some day, and I can only explain my temerity by the fact that one drank plenty of champagne on guard in those days.

I cannot call to mind when I saw him again, but I think it was when he came to London after the incident when the young Khedive insulted him at Halfa. “Naughty boy, naughty boy!” he said, gravely shaking his head. He had very little vindictiveness, and when, years later, I told him how I disliked the Khedive, he could scarcely understand me. The Khedive was not important enough to dislike. He might hate some one who wrecked his plans, and he would even have gone (whatever others might think) very far to remove such an obstacle, but a man who merely insulted him did not seem important.

If one could say that there was a key to his character, that there was one predominating salient, it was that he thought of the end of the task he had in hand, the fulfilment of what he had set himself or others had set him to do, before—much before—everything else. Comfort, affections, personalities, all were quite inferior considerations. The aim before everything. He felt he was defrauding the Almighty if he did not carry out his task. This characteristic is mentioned by itself because, on its being understood and remembered, the comprehension of the character depends.

When the Nile Expedition of ‘96 began, I received a telegram offering to take me as A.D.C. I naturally accepted with enthusiasm. It must not be thought that I have or had any illusions as to the reason of his patronage. My father was Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister, and it was to please him it was done, and for that reason alone. Lord Cromer was not in favour of a forward Sudan policy, and Kitchener was. My father’s support was vital to his whole plan, and I, by reflected light, became of importance.

I served with him through the campaign, and cannot truthfully say that I liked him at that period. He was much more uncouth and uncivilised at that time than he was later. He used to have little consideration for any one, and was cassant and rude. He was always inclined to bully his own entourage, as some men are rude to their wives. He was inclined to let off his spleen on those round him. He was often morose and silent for hours together. He was an uncomfortable chief, too, as he never let you know when he was going to do anything. He liked to slip away by himself, but he did not like your letting him do so. He would take his meals at any hour, and after a tiring day in midsummer in the Sudan, the staff might have to wait till ten for their dinner, which maybe was then eaten in solemn silence. His “nerves” showed in roughness and harshness, and he was playing a very big game. The War Office, who thought the whole campaign should have been turned over to them, were against him, and would not have been brokenhearted at his failure. Lord Cromer openly disliked the campaign, and took a pessimistic view of the situation; and Lord Cromer meant not only the Egyptian Government, with Gorst, who was bitterly opposed to Kitchener, at its head, but also a large portion of Foreign Office opinion. So it was on my father’s support and that of those with him that Kitchener rested. He did not know my father well, nor how far he could be depended on, and he had to fight the campaign with a rope round his neck. If he failed, it was absolute and complete failure; no whitewashing or glossing over the awkward parts, nothing but failure and a definite end to his career and all the plans then in his head, which, alas! he never completed the foundation of the Viceroyalty of the Near East and North Africa.

The points that struck me as a simple onlooker were his aloofness, for he seemed to confide much in no one, and his extraordinary grasp of detail. It was almost true to say there was no department of the Egyptian Army which he did not know as well as the departmental officials; and though as a force it was tiny, a small force has just as many, or nearly as many, departments as a large one.

In his person he was very neat and always scrupulously clean. He tolerated laxity on these points with difficulty. On the other hand, his office was a sea of papers lying on tables, chairs, window-sills, the floor. No one but himself knew where any particular paper or subject was kept or could find anything. He never let any one touch them except Watson, Bailey, if there, and a few others in whom he had confidence. I have heard him ask an officer whom he had sent for not to stand on the Supplies returns.

He would wander off at that curious stalking stride of his soon after dawn to the railway yard, the embarkation place, the store yards, or whatever interested him for the minute. He saw everything—nothing escaped him; but he officially saw or did not see as much as he chose. Sometimes he seemed to like one with him, but more often he liked to walk ahead, plunged apparently in sombre meditation. He usually got three good hours” work done before breakfast. He worked on then, except for lunch, till six in the evening, when he liked very often to have a gin or vermouth and soda and talk. It was his most human time. He would then go back to work till dinner, which might be at any hour, and went early to his room. Whether he worked habitually at night I don’t know, but I often saw his light burning late.

In mind, from long experience of the East, he was cynical, and inclined to disbelieve that any action sprang from motives other than those of self-interest—or rather, he affected to be. He had in reality the greatest confidence in those who were worthy of it, and he was rarely if ever taken in. His cynicism was in a large measure a part of the curious shyness which declined to show any inside portion of his life or mind. He loathed any form of moral or mental undressing. He was even morbidly afraid of showing any feeling or enthusiasm, and he preferred to be misunderstood rather than be suspected of human feeling. Combined with this cynicism and suspicion, partly the result of many years” Eastern experience, and partly assumed as a cloak for other feelings, was a natural and almost childlike simplicity, both in his outlook on life and his display of what most of us hide with care.

He had not a trace of the hypocrite in his composition, nor even that quality which merges into the hypocrisy of moral decency. If he was going to break the moral law in any way, he said so. He used to shock and surprise the respectable terribly. This side of his character was naturally misunderstood. It depended on the dominant characteristic I have alluded to. If he wanted subscriptions for an object which he had decided was worthy, he took them or forced them out of people, if they could be got in no other way. If you examined it, he did not go much further than we all do, but he disdained to cover over his proceedings with any coat of obscuring varnish. We all get royal personages to open bazaars because we know it makes the receipts bigger. Lord Kitchener, when he found he had a price, so to speak, as a personage, coolly asked for a subscription to the Gordon College as the price of his being used as a figurehead. In the same way, for his own state and dignity, he needed plate which he could not afford to buy; instead of sending a roundabout message through three or four people that he would prefer a present of plate to a gold casket when he received the freedom of the city of Barchester, he told the Mayor and Corporation plainly what he wanted. His point was that this or that was, he considered, necessary, and the means of obtaining it were of secondary importance.

Another reason for his apparently surly disposition at this time was health. His digestion was bad and he suffered from the extreme heat, for in the summer of ‘96 we were with but little shelter in the hottest place, so it is said on good authority, on the globe. He was also all through his life subject to a most acute form of headache, which naturally did not tend towards geniality. Again, he had to maintain discipline amongst his officers and staff. The British officers of the Egyptian Army were not a very united body at that period. There was a frontier party, by far the largest, which believed in Hunter and did not like Kitchener, whose severity, and the economy he was forced by circumstances and superior authority to insist on, had not tended towards personal popularity. Very outspoken criticism was not uncommon, and a tight hand was needed to keep matters straight.

We stayed first at Halfa for some time, and then gradually, as the river rose and it was possible to bring up our boats, advanced, till finally we pushed back the dervishes and reached Dongola. It must not be imagined that the sailing was plain. The difficulty of supplying a force of even fifteen thousand men was immense; the only means of communication beyond camels (which then, as ever, died as fast as one could replace them, a camel being as fitted for regular supply transport work as a Bohemian for a domestic life) was a hastily laid railway, passing over very difficult country, with appalling gradients and curves, the rolling stock of which largely dated from the time of the Khedive Ismail. Thirty miles of this line were washed away in a night when we had only five days” rations for the whole army. Several of our best boats were much damaged coming through the cataracts, and the north wind was unusually late in starting that year, which made our sailing boats far slower than had been hoped. Cholera broke out, and at one time looked as if it would paralyse the whole operation.

All through these disasters Kitchener’s energy and determination never wavered, though he was querulous about them, with that queer simplicity to which I have alluded. He grumbled that he was doing his best, and if the powers above stopped him it was unfair and hard, and so on. The only time he at all broke down was over a matter which was in itself apparently of no really vital importance. We had built a new type of gunboat above the cataracts, and this was—both for its practical value, for great things were hoped from its speed and armament, and also because it was in a great measure his own idea—the apple of his eye. By straining every nerve it was ready in time for the advance to Dongola, but on its trial trip it blew out a low-pressure cylinder and had to be left behind.

This accident made him quite miserable, and affected him as accidents of far greater importance had not. We dared not speak of the matter for a couple of days, until the new parts were on their way up-country. Whether it was merely the proverbial last straw late on in a very hot summer and after many trials had been gone through, or whether he attached some importance of which we knew nothing to the presence of this particular boat in the advance, I don’t know. It was one of the many points one would have asked him some day on some favourable occasion, but which one will never know now.

As illustrating how little he knew of my father’s character at this time, he remonstrated with me for writing in too cold a style a weekly report I sent him by Kitchener’s direction. He gave me as a model a piece of prose he had dictated which would have made the most hardened ink-slinger of the Daily Mail blush. He did not insist when I demurred, but I am sure he was convinced I was wrong.

When he got back to Cairo, after keeping me in suspense for three days, he let me go back to England, where I met him later.

I went to Abyssinia in ‘97, and did not see him again till I joined his staff near Abu Hamed in ‘98 in the Khartoum Expedition. Though his general characteristics were of course the same, he had already softened a good deal. He felt more sure of his position and backing. His team pulled well together, and everything worked far more smoothly. Transport remained his great difficulty, as the stiffening of the force by a brigade of British had rendered any misbehaviour on the part of the Egyptian Army more unlikely. We got to the Atbara, proceeded up that river to dispose of Mahmud, and then went on by boat for the final stage of the campaign—the attack on Khartoum itself. When Omdurman had fallen I had the good luck to go over alone with Lord Kitchener to Khartoum as usual, he took no escort but his orderlies. He was certainly moved by the historical associations, taking trouble to identify the place where Gordon actually fell and that where his body lay unburied. He was, as he always was to the poor, gentle and kind to an old gardener, who came to him weeping, as he thought he would be sent away after fifty years” service, but his mind was really in the future. He was already rebuilding the capital of the Sudan, and his eyes were fixed on the south. The task first before everything—the reconquest of the Sudan and its re-establishment—was what he really cared for; and the intense interest of seeing the place to which so much historical and sentimental interest attached could not obscure this even temporarily.

In course of time we returned to Cairo, and I went home to rejoin my regiment. Lord Kitchener came home shortly after, and, owing to the mismanagement of the police, had the greatest difficulty in getting away from Victoria Station. He lived, as he usually did when in London, in Pandeli Ralli’s house in Belgrave Square, which he temporarily annexed. He was a dangerous man to go and see in London, as, quite regardless of the fact that you had other things to do, he seized you and set you to work on whatever he thought you could do efficiently. Few—I was going to say no one, and I am not sure it is not nearer the truth—dared refuse; and the result was that the house was always full of the most heterogeneous elements, grumbling over their servitude, but often, if they had any sense of humour, amused at the situation. A very proper friend of mine spent his time in burning, after seeing there was nothing important in them, the mass of love-letters which descended on Kitchener, and which would have offended him. He placed women on a far higher level than is usual in these days, and it really hurt him to hear or see anything which touched this ideal. Another “very sensitive man of great natural politeness spent his time in interviewing the most intimidating people, such as multimillionaires, corporations, big banks, and firms, to obtain from them contributions to the Gordon College. He used to come back in the evening, looking as if he had been at a disturbed mass meeting, and gloomily wonder what Kitchener would say to the result.

I saw Kitchener from time to time after this, but not in sufficient intimacy to see anything of his character. I met him for a few hours at Pretoria during the South African campaign, and afterwards from time to time in England, but I was never really close to him again till he came out to Egypt, when a terrified Government were trying to keep him out of the public eye. Whether he was then Inspector General of the Forces or High Commissioner of the Mediterranean, for the moment I forget. But I remember well how, without saying a word or asserting himself in any way, he took charge of us all and we dropped back into our old places. At Khartoum might be seen the curious sight of a Governor-General being severely spoken to by an unofficial traveller, and very frightened the Governor-General looked because the alignment of one of the streets had been altered.

Except casually, I saw no more of him till he came to Egypt again in 1912, when I saw him practically every day until the War broke out in 1914.

I have set down all these details as it is necessary to divide any appreciation, however humble, of his character into periods. No man was greater in one respect—he never ceased learning. He had none of that almost universal vanity which makes us conceal or slur over what we do not know. When he came to something he did not know, he immediately looked round for some one who did, and if the matter was one with which he saw he would be concerned in the future, he learnt as much as he could about it.

The Kitchener of 1912 was a genial man of the world, laughing at matters which would have irritated him profoundly in ‘96. During this time one naturally saw him more closely and under more normal conditions. The stress of a campaign and the magnitude of the immediate stakes temporarily deform the character. You would not say you knew a man, or be able to give a good picture of him, if you had only met him at a fire.

One appreciated more quietly the great qualities of Lord Kitchener when one saw him day by day, as one also became more acutely conscious of the oddities and contrasts of his character. What struck one almost first was the vitality of his mind. He was always doing something, planning something, and something big. He never was for a moment satisfied. No one understood more thoroughly and practically that life is far too short for all you ought to do. His mind was always devising something fresh, some new improvement, some move forward in the path he followed. This continual feeling of hurry was very stimulating, but very tiring. One lived, like the Jules Verne men dosed with oxygen, at a double rate. The mind might be middle-aged, the illusions of youth might be gone and a rough cynicism have taken their place, but the vitality of the young man was unimpaired—there was none of the hesitation or the let things-take-their-course of an old man.

This energy was sometimes misplaced, and he would assume the personal control of a lot of details which were really not within his province, and which he could not do efficiently. These periods were, as a rule, short, and his inferiors had ever to be ready to pick up the threads where they were dropped.

The second quality he shared with nearly all first-rate men, and that was the accuracy of his mental perspective. Big things only were big to him to quote the criticism on Bright, he went from headland to headland, and left to others the exploration of the bays and creeks between.

He instantly saw the dangers of the land problem in Egypt, the overcrowding, the land hunger, the absenteeism, and the inevitable discontent and political trouble that must arise. This led to his enormous drainage and irrigation projects, which had reached twenty-three millions when he left, and would have been nearer forty. He took up a policy like Lord Cromer’s of favouring the peasants, and constituted himself their protector and friend. He was quite civil to the intellectuals, and entered into any harmless schemes they put forward; but he was firmly convinced that they were of no importance from a political point of view.

He was naturally and ever on the side of the weak and the oppressed. No one was perhaps in a sense more dictatorial, but no one was more truly just or had more reverence for the rights of his poorer fellows. The oppression of the fellaheen, and the way in which the half-civilised upper classes of Egypt regard them as little better than animals, stirred Lord Kitchener to the depths of his character. I often used to wonder what the feelings of some of the pashas would have been if they could have seen his real opinion of them in his face.

		In 1902, Commander Charles N. Robinson, R.N., edited and published Celebrities of the Army, a collection of portraits and short biographies of senior offices and major heroes of the South African War. These include Baden-Powell and several officers with whom he served in India and Africa both before and during the war. The portraits are quite elegant and are presented along with biographical information.
		It was at the Siege and Defense of Mafeking during the South African (Anglo-Boer) War that Baden-Powell made his name and first gained public recognition. 1999-1902 marks the Centennial of the War. Developed as part of that observance, Perspectives on the South African War provides a collection of links to original and contemporary sources on the South African War.
		Robert Baden-Powell, Founder of the World Scout Movement, Chief Scout of the World. A Home Page for the Founder. Links Relating to Baden-Powell on the Pine Tree Web and elsewhere.

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