A memoir of Sir John Drummond Hay, P.C., K.C.B., G.C.M.G., sometime minister at the court of Morrocco

								




                              A MEMOIR OF

                       SIR JOHN HAY DRUMMOND HAY

                                Oxford

                HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY

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