Part 3

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--

"The virtues of Patience are known, But I think that, when put to the touch, The people of Egypt will own, with a groan, There's an Evil in Baring too much."

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 of the interior, and gradually every other department, came to be reorganized, or, more correctly speaking, formed, under Lord Cromer's carefully persistent direction, until it may be said to-day that the Egyptian administration can safely challenge comparison with that of any other state. In the meantime the rule of the mahdi and his successor, the khalifa, in the temporarily abandoned provinces of the Sudan, had been weakened by internal dissensions; the Italians from Massawa, the Belgians from the Congo State, and the French from their West African possessions, had gradually approached nearer to the valley of the Nile; and the moment had arrived at which Egypt must decide either to recover her position in the Sudan or allow the Upper Nile to fall into hands hostile to Great Britain and her position in Egypt. Lord Cromer was as quick to recognize the moment for action and to act as he had fifteen years earlier been prompt to recognize the necessity of abstention. In March-September 1896 the first advance was made to Dongola under the Sirdar, Sir Herbert (afterwards Lord) Kitchener; between July 1897 and April 1898 the advance was pushed forward to the Atbara; and on the 2nd of September 1898, the battle of Omdurman finally crushed the power of the khalifa and restored the Sudan to the rule of Egypt and Great Britain. In the negotiations which resulted in the Anglo-French Declaration of the 8th of April 1904, whereby France bound herself not to obstruct in any manner the action of Great Britain in Egypt and the Egyptian government acquired financial freedom, Lord Cromer took an active part. He also successfully guarded the interests of Egypt and Great Britain in 1906 when Turkey attempted by encroachments in the Sinai Peninsula to obtain a strategic position on the Suez Canal. To have effected all this in the face of the greatest difficulties--political, national and international--and at the same time to have raised the credit of the country from a condition of bankruptcy to an equality with that of the first European powers, entitles Lord Cromer to a very high place among the greatest administrators and statesmen that the British empire has produced. In April 1907, in consequence of the state of his health, he resigned office, having held the post of British agent in Egypt for twenty-four years. In July of the same year parliament granted L50,000 out of the public funds to Lord Cromer in recognition of his "eminent services" in Egypt. In 1908 he published, in two volumes, _Modern Egypt_, in which he gave an impartial narrative of events in Egypt and the Sudan since 1876, and dealt with the results to Egypt of the British occupation of the country. Lord Cromer also took part in the political controversies at home, joining himself to the free-trade wing of the Unionist party.

Lord Cromer married in 1876 Ethel Stanley, daughter of Sir Rowland Stanley Errington, eleventh baronet, but was left a widower with two sons in 1898; and in 1901 he married Lady Katherine Thynne, daughter of the 4th marquess of Bath.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] 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.

CROMER, a watering-place in the northern parliamentary division of Norfolk, England, 139 m. N.E. by N. from London by the Great Eastern railway; served also by the Midland and Great Northern joint line. Pop. of urban district (1901) 3781. Standing on cliffs of considerable elevation, the town has repeatedly suffered from ravages of the sea. A wall and esplanade extend along the bottom of the cliffs, and there is a fine stretch of sandy beach. There is also a short pier. The church of St Peter and St Paul is Perpendicular (largely restored) with a lofty tower. On a site of three acres stands the convalescent home of the Norfolk and Norwich hospital. There is an excellent golf course. The herring, cod, lobster and crab fisheries are prosecuted. The village of Sheringham (pop. of urban district, 2359), lying to the west, is also frequented by visitors. A so-called Roman camp, on an elevation overlooking the sea, is actually a modern beacon.

CROMORNE, also CRUMHORNE[1] (Ger. _Krummhorn_; Fr. _tournebout_), a wind instrument of wood in which a cylindrical column of air is set in vibration by a reed. The lower extremity is turned up in a half-circle, and from this peculiarity it has gained the French name _tournebout_. The reed of the cromorne, like that of the bassoon, is formed by a double tongue of cane adapted to the small end of a conical brass tube or crook, the large end fitting into the main bore of the instrument. It presents, however, this difference, that it is not, like that of the bassoon, in contact with the player's lips, but is covered by a cap pierced in the upper part with a raised slit against which the performer's lips rest, the air being forced through the opening into the cap and setting the reed in vibration. The reed itself is therefore not subject to the pressure of the lips. The compass of the instrument is in consequence limited to the simple fundamental sounds produced by the successive opening of the lateral holes. The length of the cromornes is inconsiderable in proportion to the deep sounds produced by them, which arises from the fact that these instruments, like all tubes of cylindrical bore provided with reeds, have the acoustic properties of the stopped pipes of an organ. That is to say, theoretically they require only half the length necessary for the open pipes of an organ or for conical tubes provided with reeds, to produce notes of the same pitch. Moreover, when, to obtain an harmonic, the column of air is divided, the cromorne will not give the octave, like the oboe and bassoon, but the twelfth, corresponding in this peculiarity with the clarinet and all stopped pipes or bourdons. In order, however, to obtain an harmonic on the cromorne, the cap would have to be discarded, for a reed only overblows to give the harmonic overtones when pressed by the lips. With the ordinary boring of eight lateral holes the cromorne possesses a limited compass of a ninth. Sometimes, however, deeper sounds are obtained by the addition of one or more keys. By its construction the cromorne is one of the oldest wind instruments; it is evidently derived from the Gr. aulos[2] and the Roman tibia, which likewise consisted of a simple cylindrical pipe of which the air column was set in vibration, at first by a double reed, and, we have reason to believe, later by a single reed (see AULOS and CLARINET). The Phrygian aulos was sometimes curved (see Tib. ii. i. 85 _Phrygio tibia curva sono_; Virgil, _Aen._ xi. 737 _curva choros indixit tibia Bacchi_).[3]

Notwithstanding the successive improvements that were introduced in the manufacture of wind instruments, the cromorne scarcely ever varied in the details of its construction. Such as we see it represented in the treatise by Virdung[4] we find it again about the epoch of its disappearance.[5] The cromornes existed as a complete family from the 15th century, consisting, according to Virdung, of four instruments; Praetorius[6] cites five--the deep bass, the bass, the tenor or alto, the cantus or soprano and the high soprano, with compass as shown. A band, or, to use the expression of Praetorius, an "accort" of cromornes comprised 1 deep bass, 2 bass, 3 tenor, 2 cantus, 1 high soprano = 9.

Mersenne[7] explains the construction of the cromorne, giving careful illustrations of the instrument with and without the cap. From him we learn that these instruments were made in England, where they were played in concert in sets of four, five and six. Their scheme of construction and especially the reed and cap is very similar to that of the chalumeau of the musette (see BAG-PIPE), but its timbre is by no means so pleasant. Mersenne's cromornes have ten fingerholes, Nos. 7 and 8 being duplicates for right and left-handed players. They were probably sometimes used, as was the case with the hautbois de Poitou (see BAG-PIPE), without the cap, when an extended compass was required.

The cromornes were in very general use in Europe from the 14th to the 17th century, and are to be found in illustrations of pageants, as for instance in the magnificent collection of woodcuts designed by Hans Burgmair, a pupil of Albrecht Durer, representing the triumph of the emperor Maximilian,[8] where a bass and a tenor Krumbhorn player figure in the procession among countless other musicians. In the inventory of the wardrobe, &c., belonging to Henry VIII. at Westminster, made during the reign of Edward VI., we find eighteen crumhornes (see British Museum, Harleian MS. 1419, ff. 202b and 205). The cromornes did not always form an orchestra by themselves, but were also used in concert with other instruments and notably with flutes and oboes, as in municipal bands and in the private bands of princes. In 1685 the orchestra of the Neue Kirche at Strassburg comprised two tournebouts or cromornes, and until the middle of the 18th century these instruments formed part of the court band known as "Musique de la Grande Ecurie" in the service of the French kings. They are first mentioned in the accounts for the year 1662, together with the tromba-marina, although the instrument was already highly esteemed in the 16th century. In that year five players of the cromorne were enrolled among the musicians of the Grande Ecurie du Roi;[9] they received a yearly salary of 120 livres, which various supplementary allowances brought up to about 330 livres. In 1729 one of the cromorne players sold his appointment for 4000 francs. This was a sign of the failing popularity of the instrument. The duties of the cromorne and tromba-marina players consisted in playing in the great _divertissements_ and at court functions and festivals in honour of royal marriages, births and thanksgivings.

Cromornes have become of extreme rarity and are not to be found in all collections. The Paris Conservatoire possesses one large bass cromorne of the 16th century, the Kgl. Hochschule fur Musik,[10] Berlin, a set of seven, and the Ambroser Sammlung, Vienna, a cromorne in E[flat].[11] The museum of the Conservatoire Royal de Musique at Brussels has the good fortune to possess a complete family which is said to have belonged to the duke of Ferrara, Alphonso II. d'Este, a prince who reigned from 1559 to 1597. The soprano (cantus or discant) has the same compass as above, while those of the alto, the tenor (furnished with a key) and the bass are as shown.

The bass (see figure), besides having two keys, is distinguished from the others by two contrivances like small bolts, which slide in grooves and close the two holes that give the lowest notes of the instrument. The use of these bolts, placed at the extremity of the tournebout and out of reach of the fingers of the instrumentalist, renders necessary the assistance of a person whose sole mission is to attend to them during the performance. E. van der Straeten[12] mentions a key belonging to a large cromorne bearing the date 1537, of which he gives a large drawing. A cromorne appears in a musical scene with a trumpet in Hermann Finck's _Practica Musica_.[13]

The "Platerspil," of which Virdung gives a drawing, is only a kind of cromorne. It is characterized by having, instead of a cap to cover the reed, a spherical receiver surrounding the reed, to which the tube for insufflation is adapted. The Platerspiel is also frequently classified among bagpipes. In the _Cantigas di Sante Maria_,[14] a MS. of the 13th century preserved in the Escorial, Madrid, two instruments of this type are represented. One of these has two straight, parallel pipes, slightly conical; the other is frankly conical with wide bore turned up at the end.

Other instruments belonging by their most important characteristics of cylindrical bore and double reed to the same family as the cromorne, although the bore was somewhat differently disposed, are the racket bassoon and the sourdine or sordelline. The latter was introduced into the orchestra by Cavaliere in his opera _Rappresentazione di anima e di corpo_, and is described by Giudotto[15] in his edition of the score as "Flauti overo due tibie all' antica che noi chiamiamo sordelline," a description which tallies with what has been said above concerning the aulos and tibia. (V. M. and K. S.)

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Crumhorne need not be regarded as a corruption of the German, since the two words of which it is composed were both in use in medieval England. _Crumb_ = curved; _crumbe_ = hook, bend; _crome_ = a staff with a hook at the end of it. See Stratmann's _Middle English Dictionary_ (1891), and Halliwell, _Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words_ (London, 1881).

[2] See A. Howard, "Aulos or Tibia," _Harvard Studies_, iv. (Boston, 1893).

[3] See also A. A. Howard, op. cit., "Phrygian Aulos," pp. 35-38.

[4] _Musica getutscht und auszgezogen_ (Basel, 1511).

[5] See Diderot and d'Alembert's _Encyclopedie_ (Paris, 1751-1780), t. 5, "Lutherie," pl. ix.

[6] _Organographia_ (Wolfenbuttel, 1618).

[7] _L'Harmonie universelle_ (Paris, 1636-1637), book v. pp. 289 and 290. Cf. "Musette," pp. 282-287 and 305.

[8] See "Triumphzug des Kaisers Maximilian I." Beilage zum II. Band des _Jahrb. der Sammlungen des Allerhochsten Kaiserhauses_ (Vienna, 1884-1885), pl. 20. Explanatory text and part i. in Band i. of the same publication, 1883-1884. A French edition with 135 plates was also published in Vienna by A. Schmidt, and in London by J. Edwards (1796). See also Dr August Reissmann, _Illustrierte Geschichte der deutschen Musik_ (Leipzig, 1881), where a few of the plates are reproduced.

[9] See J. Ecorcheville, "Quelques documents sur la musique de la grande ecurie du roi," _Sammelband d. Intern. Musik. Ges._ Jahrg. ii., Heft 4 (1901, Leipzig, London, &c.), pp. 630-632.

[10] Oskar Fleischer, _Fuhrer_ (Berlin, 1892), p. 29, Nos. 400 to 406.

[11] For an illustration see Captain C. R. Day, _Descriptive Catalogue_ (London, 1891), pl. iv. E. and p. 99.

[12] _Histoire de la musique aux Pays-Bas avant le XIX^e siecle_ (Brussels, 1867-1888), vol. vii. p. 336, and description, p. 333 et seq.

[13] Wittenberg, 1556; reproduced by A. Reissmann, op. cit., pp. 233 and 226.

[14] Reproduced in Riano's _Notes on Early Spanish Music_ (London, 1887), pp. 119-127.

[15] See Hugo Goldschmidt, "Das Orchester der italienischen Oper im 17. Jahrh." _Sammelband der Intern. Musikgesellschaft_, Jahrg. ii., Heft 1 (Leipzig, 1900), p. 24.