A MEMOIR OF
SIR JOHN HAY DRUMMOND HAY
Oxford
HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
| Barraud’s Photo. | Walker & Boutall Ph. Sc. |
J. H. Drummond Hay
A MEMOIR OF
SIR JOHN DRUMMOND HAY
P.C. K.C.B. G.C.M.G.
SOMETIME MINISTER AT THE COURT OF MOROCCO BASED ON HIS JOURNALS AND CORRESPONDENCE
WITH A PREFACE BY
SIR FRANCIS W. DE WINTON K.C.M.G.
PORTRAITS & ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY ALBEMARLE STREET
1896
PREFACE
On his retirement from public service in 1886, Sir John Hay Drummond Hay, at the instance of many friends, undertook to set down the recollections of his life. Some of these notes were published in Murray’s Magazine in 1887 under the title of ‘Scraps from my Note-book’; others were laid by to be incorporated in a complete volume. The work was, however, interrupted by an accident to one of his eyes which rendered it impossible for him to write. For a time he confined himself to dictating to my sister, who acted as his amanuensis, quaint stories and detached incidents connected with the Moors, intending to resume the continuous tale of his life when his sight grew stronger. But, shortly after the recovery of his eyesight, and before he had proceeded much further in ‘unwinding the skein of his memories,’ he was prostrated by a severe illness, followed by influenza, of which he died in 1893.
It has fallen therefore to my sister, Miss Drummond Hay, and myself, his two daughters, to endeavour to unite, to the best of our ability, these scattered notes and memoranda, and to add to them such details as could be supplied from our own recollections. In this task we have been naturally somewhat restricted. In the first place, we have been obliged to omit from the memoirs of one who lived and died so recently much that might have been published twenty years hence. In the second place, as we have been necessarily debarred from using any official documents except those published in the Blue Books, our work can scarcely do full justice to the life of a public servant. These restrictions have not lightened our task; and, had it not been for the kindly help and advice of friends, we should have had still greater difficulty in tracing, from my father’s notes and private correspondence, the course of his lifelong labours in Morocco.
The main portion of Sir John’s letters are addressed to his mother—to whom he was a devoted son—and, later, to his eldest sister, Mrs. Norderling, who was during her lifetime the sympathetic and intelligent sharer of his confidences. Except with his mother and sister he carried on but little private correspondence, principally on account of his sight, which was enfeebled after an illness in 1859. But he wrote occasionally to friends, several of whom preserved and have kindly lent us his letters. Some of these have been utilised, and for all of them our thanks are most gratefully tendered.
On my father’s account of his school days at the Academy in Edinburgh and at the Charterhouse in London, on his early life at Tangier, or on his apprenticeship to diplomacy at Constantinople under Lord Ponsonby and the great Elchi, it is unnecessary to dilate. The recollections and impressions of boyhood and youth break off when more serious work presses on him after his appointment as Consul General in Morocco in 1845. Though considered very young for such a post, for he was only twenty-eight, his training in Egypt and Turkey well qualified him for a position which was destined to give scope to a character eulogised by one of his chiefs as vigorous, temperate, and straightforward. He was aided by his great facility in writing and speaking foreign languages, as at that time he had perfect command of Turkish, Italian, Spanish, French, and Arabic; and to the end he retained his fluency in the last three.
From the moment that he was appointed Consul General in Morocco, his letters are animated by the one great aim on which his public career was concentrated—the increase and consolidation of British influence in Morocco. British interests, he believed, could best be furthered by the encouragement of commerce, by the amelioration of the condition of the Moors, and also by personally gaining the respect of the people. Extracts from his diary of 1846 tend to show how he set himself to attain these objects; and his endeavours bore good fruit. The account of the arrest of piracy in Rif, through his intervention, may be taken as an instance of his direct personal influence in dealing with the wild mountain tribes.
His power of talking familiarly in their own tongue with natives of every degree was of great advantage to him in gaining a personal hold on the people, and many illustrations might be quoted from the stories which he tells of his meetings with various governors of the provinces through which he travelled in the course of his frequent journeys to the Court at the cities of Marákesh, Fas, Meknes, or Rabát. In fact his purity of motive, tenacity of purpose, his ever ready and shrewd advice, won the respect and good opinion of the people of Morocco. Implicit confidence was placed in him by high and low alike.
On his influence with successive Sultans it is unnecessary to enlarge. The offer of Sultan Sid Mohammed to place in his hands the entire control of the foreign affairs of Morocco speaks for itself. The story of Benabu, again, relates how the latter entrusted untold gold to my father’s keeping, assured that his treasure would reach its destination, though no witness or written paper attested to the transaction. Lastly, to take an instance in humble life, we may point to the pitiful faith placed in him by a wretched Rifian criminal when on the point of surrendering himself to the authorities.
Nor were this reliance in his uprightness and this respect for his judgment confined to the Moors. During the war between Spain and Morocco, when he alone of all the Foreign Representatives remained at his post, he was appealed to by the Spanish friars to protect their church and its sacred contents from the insults of the angry Moslems. Their confidence was not misplaced: his protection secured the sacred building from the slightest injury.
The Spanish war at first seemed likely to check the development of trade in Morocco at the moment when it was on the point of revival. The promise of prosperity was due to the Commercial Convention negotiated by my father in 1856, a convention which an old resident in Morocco, one well qualified to appreciate its value, has termed the Magna Charta of that country. But when peace was declared, the result of the contest proved eventually to be rather a blessing than a curse. The necessity of raising a loan to pay the war indemnity impelled the Sultan to ask help from Great Britain, thus enabling my father the more forcibly to impress upon H.S.M. the necessity of introducing into the administration of the Customs reforms which immediately and substantially increased the revenues of Morocco.
Yet in spite of the good results which in this instance followed the acceptance of his advice, the apathetic and ignorant Moors could rarely be induced to take active steps in the path of reform. It was only under the pressure of necessity that any advance was made. This lethargy did not, however, proceed from any want of plain speaking on my father’s part. As is shown by the account of his private interview with Sultan Sid Mohammed at Marákesh in 1872, he indicated to that potentate, in the clearest and most emphatic language, the debased condition of his realm, and the iniquities of the system under which his subjects were governed.
But it was not with the recalcitrant Moorish Government alone that my father had to contend. His later letters recount his failure to put a check on the abuses caused by the protection of natives by foreigners, and the consequent downfall of his hope that the end of his career might be signalised by another and more extended commercial treaty. The Moorish Government was not inclined to promote foreign trade, contending that greater facilities for commerce would inevitably cause an influx of alien traders, each of whom would have his native agents and servants under the protection of a foreign flag, and that such protected subjects, not being immediately amenable to the native authorities, would only increase friction, lessen the Sultan’s authority, and diminish the exchequer.
Her Majesty’s Government recognised my father’s value by repeated promotion, and honours were bestowed on him under various administrations; but he was given to understand that his services could not be spared from the country where, it may be said, he was an acknowledged power. Indeed, the principal aim of my father’s life during his long career in Morocco—the preponderance of British influence over that of all other nations—may be said to have been attained and maintained during his tenure of office. In 1885, the last year of his official life, he writes with reference to his unceasing anxiety that neither France nor any other country should by any means obtain a footing in Morocco, ‘As a sentinel of the Straits, I fire my gun, as a warning, when I know of a move to obtain that object.’
Sir Francis de Winton, in his kindly and graceful introduction, touches on the expedition to the lower slopes of the Atlas made by the Mission, of which he was a member, in 1872, when the heights to the eternal snow were climbed by Capt. Sawle and Mr. Drummond Hay, and when the cordial reception offered by the wild natives left a pleasant impression on my father and his party. He also refers to my father in the light of a sportsman. The latter’s recollections of many of the happiest days of his life spent in pursuit of wild boar and other game were noted by himself, and some of them have been embodied in this work. A keen and hard rider, an unerring shot in his earlier days, before his eyesight was impaired, and of almost reckless courage, he was well fitted to become the elected leader and head of the native hunters. Under his rule sport flourished in the environs of Tangier, the ground allotted for the purpose by the Sultan was properly guarded, and the close season strictly observed: it was then that pigsticking in Morocco reached its highest perfection, and gave pleasure to many of every rank and condition, whether Europeans or natives.
It is doubtful whether sport could again flourish in the environs of Tangier as it did in my father’s day. An increasing armed European population, the introduction of weapons of precision, and the denudation of the woods, render such a prospect unlikely. His stories therefore of narrow escapes and exciting days may prove of interest to the lover of the chase; and to some, who in those bygone years shared his sport, may perhaps recall the memory of pleasant times spent with him in the field.
L. A. E. BROOKS.
INTRODUCTION
To this memoir of the late Sir John Hay Drummond Hay I have been asked by his daughters to write a few introductory lines.
My acquaintance with Sir John began in the year 1870. At that time I was quartered at Gibraltar, being on the staff of Sir William Fenwick Williams of Kars, who was then Governor of the fortress.
They were old comrades, Sir John and Sir Fenwick, having served together in Constantinople, and the friendship begun in Turkey was continued at the gates of the Mediterranean. Often and often Sir John and Lady Drummond Hay, with their two daughters, visited the Convent at Gibraltar; and in return the doors of the Legation at Tangier were ever open, and always gave us a hearty welcome.
It was between 1870 and 1875 that this intercourse took place, and to me it is filled with happy recollections. The quaint old town of Tangier, full of the decaying influences of Moslem rule, yet keeping up the struggle of life after an existence of over a thousand years; racial and religious differences, civilisation and barbarism, struggling along together, while Jews and Arabs, unchanged for five hundred years, jostled with Christendom of the present day. It was a strange medley: and out of it all stands one figure prominent, nay pre-eminent, in the history of Morocco during the past forty years.
I do not think Sir John’s reminiscences sufficiently convey the enormous influence he wielded in the empire, so called, of Morocco. Throughout the Sherifian dominions his name was known and respected; and after the Emperor and the Sheríf of Wazan, his was the most powerful influence in the state. His long residence in the country; his intimate acquaintance with the manners and customs of the people; his perfect knowledge of Arabic; his love of justice; his absolute fearlessness; his keen appreciation of their sports and amusements, in which he often joined; not only made him the trusted friend of the late Emperor and his predecessors, but also the chosen friend of the people.
In the many expeditions in which I had the good fortune to be one of Sir John’s companions, I had abundant opportunities of observing the power he possessed over the different tribes with whom we came in contact; and especially among the hill tribes of Jebel Musa, who occupy the country between Tangier and Tetuan. These people held him in great esteem, and often sought his advice and counsel in their tribal differences; thus enabling him to be of service to the Emperor in the constant struggles between that ruler and his people.
A description of Morocco and its government has often been essayed by various writers; but no one could give an adequate idea of Sir John’s influence who had not personally witnessed his intercourse with the discordant elements which constitute the government of that country.
On one occasion I had the pleasure of being on Sir John’s staff when he paid a visit to the Emperor, who was then residing at Marákesh. What a pleasant journey it was! The daily ride, the evening camp, our first view of the great Atlas range of mountains, the entry into Marákesh, our reception by the Sultan, and the six weeks we spent in the city but little known to Europeans; and it was, perhaps, the events of that journey which impressed one more than anything as to the individuality and power of the British Representative.
By many Sir John will also be remembered as an ardent sportsman. Whether he was organising a boar-hunt, or a day after partridge, or enjoying a run with the Calpe hounds, there was always the same keen interest, the thorough enjoyment of sport, which characterised the man. Under his guidance you were always sure of finding boar, or of getting a good bag of partridge; and it was through Sir John that, some twelve miles South of Tangier, where the ground was favourable, the exciting sport of pigsticking was introduced into Africa. Well do I remember after a day’s sport the evening camp fire, round which we gathered after dinner, when Sir John would tell us of some of his earlier hunting recollections. He was an excellent story-teller, keeping his audience in a state of the deepest interest to the end; and then, with a merry twinkle in his eye, he would finish his narrative by a description of some ludicrous incident in which he was often the chief actor, and no one joined more heartily in the laughter which followed than he himself.
It is not possible, within the short space of an introduction, to give more than a mere outline of the personality of Sir John Drummond Hay. His recollections furnish the true index to his character. In them are reflected the sterling honesty, the integrity, and the courage and capacity of the man who, though working in a country but little known and full of prejudice and fanaticism, made England respected and trusted. He belonged to that band of the men of Great Britain who serve their country wherever they are placed, and who, while mindful of her interests and her honour, gain the good will of the rulers and the people to whom they are accredited.
In conclusion, I shall ever remember him as a friend whom I respected, and for whom I always had a true affection; and when asked to write these few lines, while wishing the duty had fallen to an abler pen than mine, I felt that, having been honoured with his friendship, I might, in affectionate remembrance of that friendship, write this brief tribute to his memory.
F. DE WINTON.