The Foreign Service Journal, May 2009

1886, where Schuyler continued writ- ing and traveling. During this time, he wrote a lengthy reminiscence on his time with Count Leo Tolstoy that ap- peared in Scribner’s magazine in May 1889. When James G. Blaine became the new U.S. Secretary of State in March 1889, he tried to appoint Schuyler as his assistant secretary. But Schuyler’s nomination ran into some opposition in the U.S. Senate, reportedly because of his latest book. In a May 11, 1889, letter to a friend, Schuyler wrote: “Had I known of the Senate opposition to me, I should have declined sooner for a patriotic reason: it is essential to the success of an administration that the State Department and the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations should work well together. ... The ob- jections to me on the part of certain senators were not political, but from such petty, trifling, personal reasons, that, had I been inWashington, I could have stopped it all by threatening to tell the true cause.” However, there is no mention of the actual cause. Schuyler instead accepted an ap- pointment as consul general in Cairo, arriving on Oct. 1, 1889. Egypt fasci- nated him, and he spent all of his free time learning about its history and trav- eling along the Nile. In a letter to his sister dated Oct. 14, 1889, Schuyler wrote: “The moist heat at this season, when the Nile is overflowed, and the consequent flies, mosquitoes, etc., beggar all description.” As fate would have it, Schuyler con- tracted malaria sometime in early 1890, from which he never recovered. He died quite suddenly while conva- lescing in Venice, Italy, on July 16, 1890. Upon the 1901 posthumous publi- cation of his essays and memoirs, Eu- gene Schuyler: Selected Essays , a reviewer in the New York Times de- scribed Schuyler as “one of America’s most brilliant scholars, patriots and men of letters.” In testament to this talent, both his travelogue Turkestan and his biography of Peter the Great are still in print today. ■ 40 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A Y 2 0 0 9 During his time in Constantinople, Schuyler helped the new Bulgarian leadership draft their country’s first constitution.