Part 8

I hope to go home next month, as soon as it gets too hot here and is likely to be warm enough in England. I do so long to see the children again.

October 19, 1863: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

ALEXANDRIA, October 19, 1863.

We had a wretched voyage, good weather, but such a petaudiere of a ship. I am competent to describe the horrors of the middle passage--hunger, suffocation, dirt, and such canaille, high and low, on board. The only gentleman was a poor Moor going to Mecca (who stowed his wife and family in a spare boiler on deck). I saw him washing his children in the morning! 'Que c'est degoutant!' was the cry of the French spectators. If an Arab washes he is a sale cochon--no wonder! A delicious man who sat near me on deck, when the sun came round to our side, growled between his clenched teeth: 'Voila un tas d'intrigants a l'ombre tandis que le soleil me grille, moi,' a good resume of French politics, methinks. Well, on arriving at noon of Friday, I was consoled for all by seeing Janet in a boat looking as fresh and bright and merry as ever she could look. The heat has evidently not hurt her at all. Omar's joy was intense. He has had an offer of a place as messenger with the mails to Suez and back, 60 pounds a year; and also his brother wanted him for Lady Herbert of Lea, who has engaged Hajjee Ali, and Ali promised high pay, but Omar said that he could not leave me. 'I think my God give her to me to take care of her, how then I leave her if she not well and not very rich? I can't speak to my God if I do bad things like that.' I am going to his house to-day to see the baby and Hajjee Hannah, who is just come down from Cairo. Omar is gone to try to get a dahabieh to go up the river, as I hear that the half-railway, half-steamer journey is dreadfully inconvenient and fatiguing, and the sight of the overflowing Nile is said to be magnificent, it is all over the land and eight miles of the railway gone. Omar kisses your hand and is charmed with the knife, but far more that my family should know his name and be satisfied with my servant.

I cannot live in Thayer's house because the march of civilization has led a party of French and Wallachian women into the ground-floor thereof to instruct the ignorant Arabs in drinking, card-playing, and other vices. So I will consult Hajjee Hannah to-day; she may know of an empty house and would make divan cushions for me. Zeyneb is much grown and very active and intelligent, but a little louder and bolder than she was owing to the maids here wanting to christianize her, and taking her out unveiled, and letting her be among the men. However, she is as affectionate as ever, and delighted at the prospect of going with me. I have replaced the veil, and Sally has checked her tongue and scolded her sister Ellen for want of decorum, to the amazement of the latter. Janet has a darling Nubian boy. Oh dear! what an elegant person Omar seemed after the French 'gentleman,' and how noble was old Hamees's (Janet's doorkeeper) paternal but reverential blessing! It is a real comfort to live in a nation of truly well-bred people and to encounter kindness after the savage incivility of France.

Tuesday, October 20.

Omar has got a boat for 13 pounds, which is not more than the railway would cost now that half must be done by steamer and a bit on donkeys or on foot. Poor Hajjee Hannah was quite knocked up by the journey down; I shall take her up in my boat. Two and a half hours to sit grilling at noonday on the banks, and two miles to walk carrying one's own baggage is hard lines for a fat old woman. Everything is almost double in price owing to the cattle murrain and the high Nile. Such an inundation as this year was never known before. Does the blue God resent Speke's intrusion on his privacy? It will be a glorious sight, but the damage to crops, and even to the last year's stacks of grain and beans, is frightful. One sails among the palm-trees and over the submerged cotton-fields. Ismail Pasha has been very active, but, alas! his 'eye is bad,' and there have been as many calamities as under Pharaoh in his short reign. The cattle murrain is fearful, and is now beginning in Cairo and Upper Egypt. Ross reckons the loss at twelve millions sterling in cattle. The gazelles in the desert have it too, but not horses, asses or goats.

October 26, 1863: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

ALEXANDRIA, October 26, 1863.

DEAREST ALICK,

I went to two hareems the other day with a little boy of Mustapha Aga's, and was much pleased. A very pleasant Turkish lady put out all her splendid bedding and dresses for me, and was most amiable. At another a superb Arab with most grande dame manners, dressed in white cotton and with unpainted face, received me statelily. Her house would drive you wild, such antique enamelled tiles covering the panels of the walls, all divided by carved woods, and such carved screens and galleries, all very old and rather dilapidated, but superb, and the lady worthy of the house. A bold-eyed slave girl with a baby put herself forward for admiration, and was ordered to bring coffee with such cool though polite imperiousness. One of our great ladies can't half crush a rival in comparison, she does it too coarsely. The quiet scorn of the pale-faced, black-haired Arab was beyond any English powers. Then it was fun to open the lattice and make me look out on the square, and to wonder what the neighbours would say at the sight of my face and European hat. She asked about my children and blessed them repeatedly, and took my hand very kindly in doing so, for fear I should think her envious and fear her eye--she had none.

Tuesday.--The post goes out to-morrow, and I have such a cold I must stay in bed and cannot write much. I go on Thursday and shall go to Briggs' house. Pray write to me at Cairo. Sally and I are both unwell and anxious to get up the river. I can't write more.

October 31, 1863: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

KAFR ZEYAT, October 31, 1863.

DEAREST ALICK,

We left Alexandria on Thursday about noon, and sailed with a fair wind along the Mahmoudieh Canal. My little boat flies like a bird, and my men are a capital set of fellows, bold and careful sailors. I have only seven in all, but they work well, and at a pinch Omar leaves the pots and pans and handles a rope or a pole manfully. We sailed all night and passed the locks at Atleh at four o'clock yesterday, and were greeted by old Nile tearing down like a torrent. The river is magnificent, 'seven men's height,' my Reis says, above its usual pitch; it has gone down five or six feet and left a sad scene of havoc on either side. However what the Nile takes he repays with threefold interest, they say. The women are at work rebuilding their mud huts, and the men repairing the dykes. A Frenchman told me he was on board a Pasha's steamer under M. de Lesseps' command, and they passed a flooded village where two hundred or so people stood on their roofs crying for help. Would you, could you, believe it that they passed on and left them to drown? None but an eyewitness could have made me believe such villainy.

All to-day we sailed in such heavenly weather--a sky like nothing but its most beautiful self. At the bend of the river just now we had a grand struggle to get round, and got entangled with a big timber boat. My crew got so vehement that I had to come out with an imperious request to everyone to bless the Prophet. Then the boat nearly pulled the men into the stream, and they pulled and hauled and struggled up to their waists in mud and water, and Omar brandished his pole and shouted 'Islam el Islam!' which gave a fresh spirit to the poor fellows, and round we came with a dash and caught the breeze again. Now we have put up for the night, and shall pass the railway-bridge to-morrow. The railway is all under water from here up to Tantah--eight miles--and in many places higher up.

November 14, 1863: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

CAIRO, November 14, 1863.

Here I am at last in my old quarters at Thayer's house, after a tiresome negotiation with the Vice-Consul, who had taken possession and invented the story of women on the ground-floor. I was a week in Briggs' damp house, and too ill to write. The morning I arrived at Cairo I was seized with haemorrhage, and had two days of it; however, since then I am better. I was very foolish to stay a fortnight in Alexandria.

The passage under the railway-bridge at Tantah (which is only opened once in two days) was most exciting and pretty. Such a scramble and dash of boats--two or three hundred at least. Old Zedan, the steersman, slid under the noses of the big boats with my little Cangia and through the gates before they were well open, and we saw the rush and confusion behind us at our ease, and headed the whole fleet for a few miles. Then we stuck, and Zedan raged; but we got off in an hour and again overtook and passed all. And then we saw the spectacle of devastation--whole villages gone, submerged and melted, mud to mud, and the people with their animals encamped on spits of sand or on the dykes in long rows of ragged makeshift tents, while we sailed over where they had lived. Cotton rotting in all directions and the dry tops crackling under the bows of the boat. When we stopped to buy milk, the poor woman exclaimed: 'Milk! from where? Do you want it out of my breasts?' However, she took our saucepan and went to get some from another family. No one refuses it if they have a drop left, for they all believe the murrain to be a punishment for churlishness to strangers--by whom committed no one can say. Nor would they fix a price, or take more than the old rate. But here everything has doubled in price.

Never did a present give such pleasure as Mme. De Leo's bracelet. De Leo came quite overflowing with gratitude at my having remembered such a trifle as his attending me and coming three times a day! He thinks me looking better, and advises me to stay on here till I feel it cold. Mr. Thayer's underling has been doing Levantine rogueries, selling the American protege's claims to the Egyptian Government, and I witnessed a curious phase of Eastern life. Omar, when he found him in my house, went and ordered him out. I was ill in bed, and knew nothing till it was done, and when I asked Omar how he came to do it, he told me to be civil to him if I saw him as it was not for me to know what he was; that was his (Omar's) business. At the same time Mr. Thayer's servant sent him a telegram so insolent that it amounted to a kicking. Such is the Nemesis for being a rogue here. The servants know you, and let you feel it. I was quite 'flabbergasted' at Omar, who is so reverential to me and to the Rosses, and who I fancied trembled before every European, taking such a tone to a man in the position of a 'gentleman.' It is a fresh proof of the feeling of actual equality among men that lies at the bottom of such great inequality of position. Hekekian Bey has seen a Turkish Pasha's shins kicked by his own servants, who were cognizant of his misdeeds. Finally, on Thursday we got the keys of the house, and Omar came with two ferashes and shovelled out the Levantine dirt, and scoured and scrubbed; and on Friday afternoon (yesterday) we came in. Zeyneb has been very good ever since she has been with us, she will soon be a complete 'dragowoman,' for she is learning Arabic from Omar and English from us fast. In Janet's house she only heard a sort of 'lingua franca' of Greek, Italian, Nubian and English. She asked me 'How piccolo bint?' (How's the little girl?) a fine specimen of Alexandrian. Ross is here, and will dine with me to-night before starting by an express train which Ismail Pasha gives him.

On Thursday evening I rode to the Abbassieh, and met all the schoolboys going home for their Friday. Such a pretty sight! The little Turks on grand horses with velvet trappings and two or three sais running before them, and the Arab boys fetched--some by proud fathers on handsome donkeys, some by trusty servants on foot, some by poor mothers astride on shabby donkeys and taking up their darlings before them, some two and three on one donkey, and crowds on foot. Such a number of lovely faces--all dressed in white European-cut clothes and red tarbooshes.

Last night we had a wedding opposite. A pretty boy, about Maurice's size, or rather less, with a friend of his own size, dressed like him in a scarlet robe and turban, on each side, and surrounded by men carrying tapers and singing songs, and preceded by cressets flaring. He stepped along like Agag, very slowly and mincingly, and looked very shy and pretty. My poor Hassan (donkey-driver) is ill--I fear very ill. His father came with the donkey for me, and kept drawing his sleeve over his eyes and sighing so heavily. 'Yah Hassan meskeen! yah Hassan ibn!' (Oh poor Hassan! oh Hassan my son!); and then, in a resigned tone, 'Allah kereem' (God is merciful). I will go and see him this morning, and have a doctor to him 'by force,' as Omar says, if he is very bad. There is something heart-rending in the patient, helpless suffering of these people.