'Philip Currie, who as head of the Turkish department was managing the affairs of Cyprus, did not want to lose it, and asked to be allowed to prepare a memorandum in the opposite sense, and Lord Granville wrote, "I do not expect to be converted by Currie's memorandum. Do you? If not, the Colonial Office will have to bolt it." The Colonial Office did have to bolt it, for the island was soon handed over to them!'
By the close of the year, as has been seen, Sir Charles was able to report to his constituents "that, acting under the instructions of Lord Granville, he had secured a greatly improved administration for this island."
On May 21st—
'Egypt began to trouble me, and I was not to be clear of the embarrassment which it caused for several years. I wrote to Lord Granville to say that I had been sounded through Rivers Wilson as to how the Government would take the appointment of a Nubar Ministry with an English Finance Minister,' and Sir Charles again warned Lord Granville of dissensions between the English representatives in Egypt.
It became the most serious of all the embarrassments which involved Mr.
Gladstone's Government. On May 8th—
'I had to see Lord Ripon, who had appointed Colonel Gordon to be his private secretary, and to inform him privately that the Foreign Office feared that he would find him too excitable to be possible as a secretary, which, indeed, very speedily proved to be the case.'
Gordon resigned before Lord Ripon reached India, and on June 14th telegraphed to Sir Charles—
'to know whether we would let him take service again with the Chinese. I saw a friend of his in London, one of the Chinese Commissioners of Customs, and asked whether Gordon could be got to telegraph that he would refuse any military command in the event of war between China and Russia. He said he thought so, and I told Lord Granville, who wrote back, "I have told the Duke of Cambridge that on these conditions he might have leave."'
Lord Ripon wrote on his arrival:
"… So, you see, your warnings about Gordon came true. It is fortunate that the arrangement came to an end before I got here. As it is, there is no real harm done; we parted the best of friends, and I learned to my astonishment, after I left him at Bombay, that he was off for China."