CHAPTER X MY PLEADING IN DOWNING STREET

Another visit I paid the same morning was to my cousin, Algernon Bourke (then generally known as "Button" to his friends). His rôle in Egyptian affairs that year was destined to be an important one, and his name, or rather his pseudo-name, constantly recurs in my diary. His position in life was that of a young man of fashion, closely connected with the official world, for he was a younger son of the Lord Mayo who had been Viceroy of India, and was nephew to the Rt. Hon. Robert Bourke (afterwards Lord Connemara), who had been Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and was now, in 1882, leader of the Tory opposition in the House of Commons on all questions of foreign politics. Button had also a position on the staff of the "Times," not as a writer, but as an intermediary for Chenery, the editor, with political personages. As a peer's son he had the entrée to the galleries of both Houses of Parliament, knew everybody and everything that was going on there, was intimate with people about the Court, with the high world of finance, and generally with the wire-pullers in the various departments of the State. Our friendship was a close one, and throughout the trying months that followed he was my chief confidant and adviser, having more worldly wisdom than I then could boast, and a fertility of resource in action altogether admirable. To him I owed three parts of the publicity I obtained for my views in the Press, and of the help given me in parliament. On arrival I narrated to him all that had happened during the past winter in Egypt as well as my plans for the future. His view of the position was a very different one from Hamilton's, for his intimacy with the Rothschilds made him aware of the financial strings that were being pulled in the City to bring about intervention, and he had a low opinion of Gladstone's ability to understand foreign questions or deal with a case