Man does this run deeeep........

Career[edit]

Agent in the Balkans[edit]

Private adventurer[edit]

Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1868

After resolving to leave Göttingen, Arthur and Lewis planned an adventure in Bosnia and Herzegovina starting immediately in August 1875. They knew that the region, a part of the Ottoman Empire, was under martial law, and that the Christians were in a state of insurrection against the BosnianMuslim beys placed over them. Some Ottoman troops were in the country in support of the beys, but mainly the beys were using mercenaries, the Bashi-bazouks, private armies recruited from anywhere, loosely attached to the Ottoman military. Large numbers could be assembled on short notice. Their notorious cruelty, which they practised against the natives, helped to turn the British Empire under Gladstone against the Ottoman Empire, as well as to attract Russian intervention at Serbian request, the very sequence of events that, when the region was under the Austro-Hungarian Empire, would result in world-wide conflagration. At the time of Arthur's and Lewis's initial adventure, the Ottomans were still trying to lessen the threat of intervention by placating their neighbors. Arthur sought and obtained permission to travel in Bosnia, even though at war, from its Turkish military governor.

The two brothers experienced little difficulty with either the Serbs or the Ottomans but they did provoke the neighboring Austro-Hungarian Empire, and spent the night in "a wretched cell." After deciding to lodge in a good hotel in Slavonski Brod on the border, having judged it safer than Bosanski Brodacross the Sava River, they were observed by an officer who saw their sketches and concluded they might be Russian spies. Politely invited by two other officers to join the police chief and produce passports, Arthur replied, "Tell him that we are Englishmen and are not accustomed to being treated in this way." The officers insisted and, interrupting the chief at dinner, Arthur suggested he should have come to the hotel in person to request the passports. The chief, in a somewhat less than civil manner, won the argument about whether he had the right to check the passports of Englishmen by inviting them to spend the night in a cell.^[24]

On the way to the holding cell the two young men were followed by a large crowd, whom Arthur lost no opportunity to harangue, even though they understood only German. He threatened the authorities in the name of the British fleet, which, he asserted, would sail up the Save. He demanded the mayor, offered the jailer a bribe for food and water, but went into the cell unfed and without water. Meanwhile, the incident came to attention of Dr. Makanetz, leader of the National Party of the Croatian Assembly, who happened to be in Brod. The next day he complained to the mayor. Arthur and his brother were released with profuse apologies forthwith.^[25]

They crossed the Save into Bosnia, which Arthur found so different that he regarded the Save as the border between Europe and Asia. After a number of interviews with Turkish officials, who attempted to dissuade them from travel on foot, the passport from the pasha prevailed. They were given an escort – one man, enough to establish authority – as far as Dervent. From there they traveled directly south to Sarajevo and from there to Dubrovnik (Ragusa) on the coast, actually in Croatia. In Sarajevo they learned that the region through which they had just passed was now "plunged in civil war."^[26] They were escorted to the British consulate. The consul was away at Mostar, but the young men were greeted by a familiar figure, Edward Augustus Freeman, Chargé d'Affaires, and "his amiable daughters." Edward was assisting his good friend, the Prime Minister, to keep an eye on the situation. They relaxed in "the quiet of an English garden."

The English Protestants of Sarajevo, some of whom had come in a missionary capacity, were packing to leave the country, as were other "resident Europeans." Shortly the revolt reached lower Bosnia. Turkish garrisons were massacred, in response to which the irregular Turkish troops began to massacre. The Christian population streamed across the Save into Austria. The pasha of Sarajevo, however, was determined to keep the peace. The young men spent their last day there shopping quietly. Then they headed south to Ragusa, where Arthur later was to spend so many happily married years in his own villa on the sea.

Reporter for the Manchester Guardian[edit]

Home again, Arthur wrote of his experiences, working from his extensive notes and drawings, publishing Through Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was so popular it came out in two editions, 1876 and 1877. He became overnight an expert in Balkan affairs. The Manchester Guardian hired him as a correspondent, sending him back to the Balkans in 1877. He reported on the suppression of the Christian insurrectionists by the armed forces of the Ottoman Empire, and yet was treated by that empire as though he were an ambassador, despite his anti-Turkish sentiments. His older interests in antiquities continued. He collected portable artifacts, especially sealstones, at every opportunity, between sending back article after article to the Guardian. He also visited the Freemans in Sarajevo whenever he could. A relationship with one of the winsome daughters, Margaret, had begun to blossom. In 1878 the Russians compelled a settlement of the conflict on appeal by the Serbs. The Ottomans ceded Bosnia and Herzegovina to the Austro-Hungarian Empire as a protectorate.

In 1878 Arthur proposed to Margaret, Freeman's oldest daughter, three years his senior, an educated and literate woman, and until now secretary for her father. The offer was accepted, to everyone's great satisfaction. Freeman spoke affectionately of his future son-in-law. The couple were married near the Freeman home in Wookey, at the Parish Church. After a celebration they took up residence in a Venetian villa Arthur had purchased in Ragusa, Casa San Lazzaro, on the bluffs overlooking the Adriatic. One of their first tasks was to create a garden there. They lived happily, Arthur pursuing his journalistic career, until 1882. They were hoping to conceive, but the longed-for event never happened, even though Margaret returned to England for six months for an operation. They were bitterly disappointed. Ultimately Arthur's continued stance in favour of native government led to a condition of unacceptability to the local regime within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He did not see the Austro-Hungarian regime as an improvement over the Ottoman. He wrote: "The people are treated not as a liberated but as a conquered and inferior race...."^[27] The Evans's sentiments were followed by acts of personal charity: they took in an orphan, invited a blind woman to dinner every night. Finally Arthur wrote some public letters in favor of an insurrection.

Arthur was arrested in 1882, to be put on trial as a British agent provocateur stirring up further insurrection. His journalistic sources were not acceptable friendships to the authorities. He spent six weeks in prison awaiting trial, but at the trial nothing definitive could be proved. His wife was interrogated. She found most offensive the reading of her love letters before her eyes by a hostile police agent. Arthur was expelled from the country. Gladstone had been apprised of the situation immediately, but, as far as the public knew, did nothing. The government in Vienna similarly disavowed any knowledge of or connection to the actions of the local authorities. Whatever deal may have been struck remains unknown, at least to the public. The Evans's returned home to rent a house in Oxford, abandoning their villa, which was turned into a hotel.^[28] However, Arthur's reputation among the Slavs assumed unassailable proportions. He was invited later to play a role in the formation of the pre-Yugoslav state. In 1941 the government of Yugoslavia sent representatives to his funeral.^[29]