few exceptions Crome’s subjects are taken from the familiar scenery of his native county. Fidelity to nature was his dominant aim. “The bit of heath, the boat, and the slow water of the flattish land, trees most of all—the single tree in elaborate study, the group of trees, and how the growth of one affects that of another, and the characteristics of each,”—these, says Frederick Wedmore (Studies in English Art), are the things to which he is most constant. He still remains, says the same critic, of many trees the greatest draughtsman, and is especially the master of the oak. His most important works are—“Mousehold Heath, near Norwich,” now in the National Gallery; “Clump of Trees, Hautbois Common”; “Oak at Poringland”; the “Willow”; “Coast Scene near Yarmouth”; “Bruges, on the Ostend River”; “Slate Quarries”; the “Italian Boulevards”; and the “Fishmarket at Boulogne.” He executed a good many etchings, and the great charm of these is in the beautiful and faithful representation of trees. Crome enjoyed a very limited reputation during his life, and his pictures were sold at low prices; but since his death they have been more and more appreciated, and have given him a high place among English painters of landscape. He died at Norwich on the 22nd of April 1821. His son, J. B. Crome, was his assistant in teaching, and his best pictures were in the same style, his moonlight effects being much admired.
A collection of “Old” Crome’s etchings, entitled Norfolk Picturesque Scenery, was published in 1834, and was re-issued with a memoir by Dawson Turner in 1838, but in this issue the prints were retouched by other hands.
CROMER, EVELYN BARING, 1st Earl (1841– ), British statesman and diplomatist, was born on the 26th of February
1841, the ninth son of Henry Baring, M.P., by Cecilia Anne,
eldest daughter of Admiral Windham of Felbrigge Hall, Norfolk.
Having joined the Royal Artillery in 1858, he was appointed
in 1861 A.D.C. to Sir Henry Storks, high commissioner of the
Ionian Islands, and acted as secretary to the same chief during
the inquiry into the Jamaica outbreak in 1865. Gazetted
captain in 1870, he went in 1872 as private secretary to his cousin
Lord Northbrook, Viceroy of India, where he remained until
1876, when he became major, received the C.S.I., and was
appointed British commissioner of the Egyptian public debt
office. Up to this period Major Baring had given no unusual
signs of promise, and the appointment of a comparatively
untried major of artillery as the British representative on a
Financial Board composed of representatives of all the great
powers was considered a bold one. Within a very short time
it was recognized that the Englishman, though keeping himself
carefully in the background, was unmistakably the predominant
factor on the board. He was mainly responsible for the searching
report, issued in 1878, of the commission of inquiry that had
been instituted into the financial methods of the Khedive Ismail;
and when that able and unscrupulous Oriental had to submit to
an enforced abdication in 1879, it was Major Baring who became
the British controller-general and practical director of the Dual
Control. Had he remained in Egypt, the whole course of
Egyptian history might have been altered, but his services were
deemed more necessary in India, and under Lord Ripon he
became financial member of council in June 1880. He remained
there till 1883, leaving an unmistakable mark on the Indian
financial system, and then, having been rewarded by the K.C.S.I.,
he was appointed British agent and consul-general in Egypt
and a minister plenipotentiary in the diplomatic service.
Sir Evelyn Baring was at that time only a man of forty-two, who had gained a reputation for considerable financial ability, combined with an abruptness of manner and a certain autocracy of demeanour which, it was feared, would impede his success in a position which required considerable tact and diplomacy. It was a friendly colleague who wrote—
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“The virtues of Patience are known, |
When he arrived in Cairo in 1883 he found the administration of the country almost non-existent. Ismail had ruled with all the vices, but also with all the advantages, of autocracy. Disorder in the finances, brutality towards the people, had been combined with public tranquillity and the outer semblance of civilization. Order, at least, reigned from the Sudan to the Mediterranean, and such trivial military disturbances as had occurred had been of Ismail’s own devising and for his own purposes. Tewfik, who had succeeded him, had neither the inclination nor character to be a despot. Within three years his government had been all but overthrown, and he was only khedive by the grace of British bayonets. Government by bayonets was not in accord with the views of the House of Commons, yet Ismail’s government by the kourbash could not be restored. The British government, under Mr Gladstone, desired to establish in Egypt a sort of constitutional government; and as there existed no single element of a constitution, they had sent out Lord Dufferin (the first marquess of Dufferin) to frame one. That gifted nobleman, in the delightful lucidity of his picturesque report, left nothing to be desired except the material necessary to convert the flowing periods into political entities.[1] In the absence of that, the constitution was still-born, and Sir Evelyn Baring arrived to find, not indeed a clean slate, but a worn-out papyrus, disfigured by the efforts of centuries to describe in hieroglyph a method of rule for a docile people.
From that date the history of Sir Evelyn Baring, who became Baron Cromer in 1892, G.C.B. in 1895, viscount in 1897, and earl in 1901, is the history of Egypt, and requires the barest mention of its salient points here. From the outset he realized that the task he had to perform could only be effected piecemeal and in detail, and his very first measure was one which, though severely criticized at the time, has been justified by events, and which in any case showed that he shirked no responsibility, and was capable of adopting heroic methods. He counselled the abandonment, at least temporarily, by Egypt of its authority in the Sudan provinces, already challenged by the mahdi. His views were shared by the British ministry of the day and the policy of abandonment enforced upon the Egyptian government. At the same time it was decided that efforts should be made to relieve the Egyptian garrisons in the Sudan and this resolve led to the mission of General C. G. Gordon (q.v.) to Khartum. Lord Cromer subsequently told the story of Gordon’s mission at length, making clear the measure of responsibility resting upon him as British agent. The proposal to employ Gordon came from the British government and twice Sir Evelyn rejected the suggestion. Finally, mistrusting his own judgment, for he did not consider Gordon the proper person for the mission, Baring yielded to pressure from Lord Granville. Thereafter he gave Gordon all the support possible, and in the critical matter of the proposed despatch of Zobeir to Khartum, Baring—after a few days’ hesitation—cordially endorsed Gordon’s request. The request was refused by the British government—and the catastrophe which followed at Khartum rendered inevitable.
The Sudan crisis being over, for the time, Sir Evelyn Baring set to work to reorganize Egypt itself. This work he attacked in detail. The very first essential was to regulate the financial situation; and in Egypt, where the entire revenue is based on the production of the soil, irrigation was of the first importance. With the assistance of Sir Colin Scott Moncrieff, in the public works department, and Sir Edgar Vincent, as financial adviser, these two great departments were practically put in order before he gave more than superficial attention to the rest. The ministry of justice was the next department seriously taken in hand, with the assistance of Sir John Scott, while the army had been reformed under Sir Evelyn Wood, who was succeeded by Sir Francis (afterwards Lord) Grenfell. Education, the ministry
- ↑ In 1892 Lord Dufferin wrote to Lord Cromer: “These institutions were a good deal ridiculed at the time, but as it was then uncertain how long we were going to remain, or rather how soon the Turks might not be reinvested with their ancient supremacy, I desired to erect some sort of barrier, however feeble, against their intolerable tyranny.” In 1906 Lord Cromer bore public testimony to the good results of the measures adopted on Lord Dufferin’s “statesmanlike initiative.” Such results were, however, only possible in consequence of the continuance of the British occupation.
