SAINTS AND SINNERS.
I bring a message from across the seas. I am requested by the venerable
Father Antoine, of the monastery of La Trappe, at Staouëli, near
Algiers, to make it known that the Trappists of Africa are very anxious
to have an English brother among them. The monastery is delightfully
situated. Its advantages are that you take a vow of perpetual silence;
you only have one meal a day, which never includes meat; you labour
healthfully in the fields, and, by way of recreation, you dig your own
grave. The English brother will occasionally be relieved of the vow of
perpetual silence, because his duties will be to receive the English
visitors and conduct them over the monastery. I am absolutely in
earnest. The request is a _bonâ-fide_ one; and an English Roman Catholic
willing to enter the order will be most heartily and cordially received.
I was much inclined to stay myself. I didn’t mind the work and the
grave-digging and the vegetarian diet. I am sure many of my ailments
would have disappeared under the treatment. My stumbling-block was the
vow of silence. In the interior of the monastery silence is rigorously
enforced. Even visitors, after they pass the inner portals, are
requested to hold their tongues. I couldn’t do that even for ten
minutes. I tried hard, but every now and then I found myself whispering
a remark to my companions. The good Père Antoine smilingly rebuked me
with a warning finger, and the silent Trappists gazed at me in mild
remonstrance. No ladies are under any circumstances admitted. The utter
impossibility of a woman remaining silent anywhere or under any
circumstances is probably the reason for this rigorous exclusion.
On the day that I drove to Staouëli and visited the famous monastery,
the African sun was pouring down its fierce rays from a sky of the
deepest and intensest blue. The vast fields of scented geranium, from
which the Trappists distil a famous perfume, were bathed in a great
white heat. There hundreds of cattle lay about and lolled in the sun,
and the great palm-trees in the glorious gardens of the monastery cast
their long shadows over such a wealth of fruit and flower as I have
never seen before. ‘If it is sad to live at La Trappe, how sweet it is
to die there,’ says an inscription on the walls. I don’t want to die
there, but I am sure I should not have found it sad to live and labour
amid such calm and beautiful surroundings, ‘the world forgetting, by the
world forgot.’ It must be a very comfortable existence. All the brothers
I saw looked very happy. No posts, no telegraphs disturbed the calm
serenity of their labours, and they all sat down to their one daily meal
with an appetite and a digestion that filled me with a great envy.
I breakfasted at La Trappe. Brother Dominic spread the feast, and Father
Antoine himself uncorked the wines--made on the premises--with which the
dainty fare was washed down. I was the only visitor, so I breakfasted in
solemn state alone. I had first an excellent omelette, then some cold
sweet potatoes, then some cheese and salad, then some bread and honey,
then some raisins, some oranges, and some bananas, and after I had
drunk a bottle of red wine, the good father produced a bottle of
exquisite white sweet dessert wine; and after that I had coffee and a
glass of the famous Trappistine liqueur. Father Antoine and Brother
Dominic waited upon me hand and foot. They piled my plate and filled my
glass until I was obliged to cry, ‘Hold! enough!’ only I expressed
myself more politely. And then I was shown to the shaded seat in the
garden, and told that if I liked to enjoy a cigar under the palm-trees,
the brother would look the other way.
I have a few pleasant memories to look back upon--green oases in the
arid desert of my life; but there are none so fraught with calm and holy
peace as that hot January day I spent with the good kind brothers of La
Trappe in their African home. They showed me everything--their cells,
their beds, their library, their kitchen, their farm, their winepresses,
their _laboratoire_, their stables, their cattle, their thousands of
cocks and hens and pigeons and rabbits, and then they loaded me with
ripe oranges and bananas plucked from their own trees, and choicest
roses gathered from their own gardens; and all they asked me in return
was to mention in my book that they wanted an English brother to come
and live among them. Go, English brother, go; and I promise you you will
be happy--far happier than staying in the turmoil of the world, to
endure its thousand worries and heartaches and disappointments. Go and
tell Father Antoine that the Englishman who smoked a pipe, and who
_would_ keep talking in spite of the rules, kept his promise, and sent
you out to dig your own grave, and to make the English visitors who
don’t speak French welcome to the African home of the world-famed monks
of La Trappe.
On the evening of the day that I visited La Trappe, I assisted at a very
different scene. I received an invitation to be present at the Feast of
the Assaouaï, a kind of religious fête, held in a Moorish house in the
Rue Ben Ali, a narrow street in the top of the Arab quarter. The Arab
quarter is a sight in itself. It is a labyrinth of narrow streets of
steps and jumbled houses. You can only pass along two abreast, and the
roofs of the houses hang over and almost join. To get to any given
house, you must have a guide; for there are scores of streets crossing
and recrossing one another, and they are all alike. Achmet conducted me
at night to the Rue Ben Ali, and I witnessed a scene the like of which
is to be seen nowhere else in the civilized world. I found myself in the
courtyard of a Moorish house, open to the sky. Above me glittered the
bright stars in a vault of blue. The courtyard was crammed with Arabs,
and French and English ‘strangers.’ Next to me, standing on a chair, was
Miss Jones of Clapham, with her mamma. I wondered how they got there,
and what they thought of the Moorish ladies, who, dressed like the
chorus in the Eastern extravaganza at the Gaiety Theatre, sat outside
many of the houses in the narrow streets, and addressed endearing
blandishments to the male passers-by. I blushed a little at much that I
passed on my journey up the Arab quarter; but Miss Jones of Clapham and
her mamma were possibly protected by their innocence from knowing what
it meant. Before the Feast of the Assaouaï was over, they must have had
their innocence severely put to the test; but I am bound to say they
never blushed once.
The performance commenced with a dance of Moorish girls. The girls were
lovely, and they were gorgeously dressed. They danced the Oriental
dance, which is, perhaps, as absolutely and indelicately suggestive as
any dance known to ancient or modern times. The French ladies present
muttered ‘Mon Dieu!’ under their breath. Miss Jones of Clapham struggled
for a closer view. Mamma pursed her lips a little, and once I thought I
heard her groan, but she stood on tiptoe until a Moor’s fez got in her
line of sight. After the dance, the girls sang a love-song. Achmet
explained the burthen of it to me, when I heard Miss Jones say to her
mamma that it was very ‘sweet.’ I felt convinced that Arabic didn’t form
part of a young lady’s education at Clapham seminaries. What the natives
who understood the song and appreciated the dances must have thought of
the English young woman who almost jumped on the Arabs’ backs to get a
good view of the proceedings, I have been wondering ever since.
After the songs and dances, the dervishes commenced their performances.
A young dervish jumped into the ring, and swayed himself backwards and
forwards for ten minutes, shouting, ‘Allah! Allah!’ while his motions
became so rapid that I felt giddy. Then, having reached the required
pitch of fanatical fervour, he began to cram live scorpions into his
mouth, and bite off their heads and tails. I confess that if I could
have got out of the crowd, I should gladly have been sick. Miss Jones of
Clapham only murmured that it was very wonderful. Another fanatic, after
swinging round till he fell down foaming at the mouth, ran skewers
through his nose and under his eyelids, and left them hanging there
while he bit pieces out of a glass bottle and chewed them to powder.
Then he had an epileptic fit, or a paralytic stroke, and, as soon as he
had recovered, sat down to rest on a pan of live charcoal. He then ran a
knife through his tongue, turned his eyes out on to his cheeks, twisted
his ears upside down, and stuck his nose full of red-hot needles. After
this he bowed and retired, amid much applause, Miss Jones of Clapham
almost splitting her dainty little kid gloves in her demonstrations of
approval. Mamma, I am bound to say, whispered to her dear and
enthusiastic child that she was not quite sure that she could stand very
much more.
I didn’t think there could be much more to stand; but a very old Arab
gentleman stepped into the ring with a huge sharp-pointed sword in his
hand. The sword was passed round, and we all felt the edge and the
point. Miss Jones wouldn’t let it go for at least two minutes. The sword
was then held on the ground, point upwards, by two strong men, who lay
down to do it. The old Arab gentleman then coolly proceeded to roll up
his shirt round his neck, so as to leave his entire stomach bare. He
then turned to the audience to show them that it was bare. At last Miss
Jones of Clapham was disconcerted. Truth compels me to admit that she
ejaculated, ‘Oh, mamma!’ and for one short moment she looked as though
she would like to retire. But she recovered herself in a moment, and
nearly knocked an elderly French gentleman’s hat over his eyes in her
endeavour to get a nearer view. The Arab ‘undressed,’ after trying the
sword to see that it was firmly fixed, stepped back a foot or two; then,
with a little run, sprang in the air, and, throwing himself out, fell
with his bare stomach flat on to the point of the upright sword. He was
absolutely impaled, and in this position he spun round and round. I
turned away, and fancied I was on board ship again. If only there had
been a steward handy, I should have called him to my assistance with the
accompanying crockery; but Miss Jones of Clapham gave a little giggle,
and cried out in maiden wonderment, ‘Lor, ma! however can he do it?’
I stopped to see no more. Calling on Achmet to accompany me, I quitted
the dancing girls and the juggling Arabs and the self-mutilating
dervishes, and went out into the Rue Ben Ali. As I left the courtyard of
the Moorish house, I looked up, and high above me in the starlight, upon
the galleries of the house, I saw veiled Arab women looking down upon
the scene. I wondered what they thought of the unveiled, bare-faced
English girls who assisted, without a blush or a shudder, at such
disgusting and depraved exhibitions. When I told Achmet that many of
these young English girls would not be allowed to go to a stage-play in
England, except at the Crystal Palace, for fear their modesty should be
shocked, he opened his large Eastern eyes to such an extent that they
looked like a couple of full moons. He says the Arabs can’t understand
the Giaour women at all, and I don’t wonder at it. The French people in
the town are themselves shocked at the idea of unmarried girls assisting
at these exhibitions; but they are the first things that the English
girls ask to be taken to see. If I had a son, I should be very sorry for
him to accompany me to one. But English mothers take their daughters,
and so I am driven to the conclusion that either I am extra squeamish,
or that they are extra innocent. But the innocence that can detect
nothing improper in the dance of the Moorish girls ought to be wrapped
in cotton-wool, and taken back to the Garden of Eden in the days before
Eve ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. That is the only
place, and the only period, in which anyone would accept it as genuine.
In bygone times the Assaouaï were a powerful religious fraternity. The
founder of the order was an Arab, one Sidi Mohammed Ben Aïssa, and the
members, whose mission it was to fan the fanaticism of the people in
times of war, were all Arabs. But the Assaouaï of to-day are a mixed lot
of Arabs, Berbers, and Negroes. Nevertheless, they still exercise
considerable power over the imagination of their fellow-countrymen in
the more remote districts of Morocco and Tripoli, where they are often
the secret agents of rebellion. But in Algeria, owing to the revolts
fomented by them, ending all in slaughter and defeat, they have lost
their prestige; they are no longer ‘invincibles,’ only showmen living
upon the profits of their performances.
The climate of Algeria is fearfully trying to the temper. If the
Archbishop of York and the Archbishop of Canterbury came to stay here
together, they would have words in a week. I won’t say they would come
to blows in a month, because they are Archbishops; but I think that two
bishops would probably fight. Everybody in Algeria who is not a native
becomes irritable and hasty and snappy very soon after landing. I, of
course, retain my usual placidity of manner; but Albert Edward is awful.
He bullies the landlords of our hotels; he challenges the post-office
officials to come outside and fight; he even presumes at times to
lecture me smartly upon my unreasonableness; and when he scolds the
waiters, I blush for very shame. I generally go afterwards to these poor
people and apologize for his violence. But I have to do it in secret,
for I am myself afraid of him. The other day he fell over a piece of
broken pavement in the Rue Bab el Zoued at Algiers, and his new hat went
flying into the mud. This accident he declared was due to the culpable
negligence of the authorities, and before I could stop him he had rushed
off to the Hotel de Ville, rung up the concierge, and was flourishing
his stick about, and giving most insulting messages to the mayor. His
language to the clerk at the Poste-Restante was really shocking. Here I
must say he had an excuse.
The method of doing business at the Poste Restante is not calculated to
put an Englishman in a good temper. If he comes and gives in his card,
he is handed all the English letters, and told to help himself. From
Mustapha (the English colony, and at once the Clapham and South
Kensington of Algiers) there comes a porter from the hotels. He
generally takes all the English newspapers as a matter of course. The
idea that anybody not residing on the Mustapha (a height above the town)
should have anything from England is scouted as absurd. My English
papers I only recovered after employing mounted Arabs to scour the hills
in every direction, inquiring at every villa and every hotel and every
farm where an English person resided.
I received a batch of letters nine days after their leaving London. They
were due in four. I believe that they had been given to a sailor who
came from an English yacht in the bay for letters, and mine evidently
went for a short cruise before they were brought back. One thing I would
impress on English people coming to Algiers--don’t have your letters
sent to the Poste Restante. If you do your time will be wasted, your
correspondence delayed, and your temper will become as uncontrollable as
my companion’s.
The Post-office clerks cannot read English names. To show the hash that
is made of them, I will quote from the list of fashionable arrivals at
an hotel given in a local paper. The arrivals are all classified under
the heads of French, Spanish, Italian, English, etc. Here is the English
list _literatim et verbatim_:
‘The Mistress Macandraw, Mr. Boom, Mr. Fegin, Mr. Fosdick, Mr. Dosgoity,
Mr. Billies, Mr. Plumb, Mr. Sliebel, the O’Rori, the Mistress Lady Jon.’
If the names are right, it is about the queerest collection of surnames
I ever came across.
Achmet has just come in to tell me that a lion has appeared at a village
some miles from where I am now encamped, and that his roaring has kept
the inhabitants awake all night. I am off. To see a real live lion
looking about for his breakfast, free and unfettered, is an unfulfilled
ambition of my life. Hastily we grasp our firearms, leap upon our Arab
steeds, and dash across the desert towards the hill where the lion is
seeking whom he may devour. Whether I shall be able to let you know the
result of our day’s sport will depend very much upon which gets the
better of the encounter--we or the lion.
Achmet, who brought me my letters and newspapers, also told me there had
been an execution in Algiers of an Arab who had been found guilty of a
very cruel murder. The guillotine is a fearful punishment for a Moslem,
because the guillotine cuts the head off, and Mahomet takes the faithful
when they are dead by the hair of the head in order to lift them up into
Paradise. The poor fellows who are cut in two at the neck are in a
fearful state, because when Mahomet takes hold of them by the hair of
the head the body will naturally remain behind on earth. In the
Mahomedan Paradise a gentleman with only a head would not be able to
thoroughly enjoy himself.
A public decapitation strikes terror into the hearts of the Arab
populace. The guillotine at Algiers is erected on a large open space in
front of the Arab quarter, and the ceremony is made as imposing as
possible, _pour encourager les autres_. Achmet told me that once when a
friend of his had been guillotined, the relatives had gone to the
Governor and begged the body and head back again. As a great favour they
had been given up to them on condition that they said nothing about it
to the other Arabs. When these people got the two pieces of their
departed friend home, they sewed his head on again with a thick string,
and then they practised holding him up by the hair to see if the
stitches would stand when Mahomet came to lift him into Paradise.
The Arabs are none too well treated by _their_ master. They have had to
suffer for France’s colonial policy. I don’t fancy that France makes
Algeria pay. It is a trinket on her watch-chain, and not the watch at
the end of it. Algeria is in debt. She costs France far more to keep
than she gives in return. The expenses of military occupation of the
Government are great, and the produce is small. The Arabs complain
bitterly of the excessive taxation; but they have suffered even more at
the hands of the Jews than of the French.
Nearly all the Arab farmers and landed proprietors are in debt to the
Jews. Their crops are mortgaged before they are gathered. One after the
other their houses and lands have fallen into the hands of the
Israelites. Money is dear. The legal rate of interest is from twelve to
thirteen per cent., but the Arab pays forty, and sometimes more. I have
been on some magnificent properties which only a few years ago belonged
to Arab Caïds and Sheiks; to-day the gaudy villa of the Jewish owner has
replaced the Arab house. They have passed from race to race at about
one-third of their value. The extortionate interest has accumulated, and
the property has gone to pay it.
Between the French Government and the Jew money-lender, the Arab
proprietors of land in Algeria have come to the ground, or, to speak
more correctly, have gone from it. How deeply the Arabs of Algeria feel
their position was expressed in 1871. Gambetta appointed Crémieux, a
Jew, Governor-General of Algeria. The great Arab chiefs flung down their
French decorations, resigned their official positions, and called on
their kinsmen to throw off the yoke of France. The rebellion was
crushed, the Arabs were slaughtered and fined and impoverished, and
to-day they sit and brood in a state of sullen resignation. The French
have good reason for keeping a strong military force in Algeria.
But I am wandering into a political discussion. Good gracious me! and
all my own personal adventures are going to the wall. I have spent so
many nights in the Arab cafés with Achmet, and heard so much of these
things from the natives, that they have saturated my mind. I hasten to
unsaturate it. Bother the Arabs and their grievances! let us go and see
the sights.
I told you I was just off to kill a lion. You will gather from the fact
that these lines appear in print that the lion did not kill me. We found
him, after a long search, in a lonely part of the Atlas Mountains. I
never shot anything in my life, so when Albert Edward handed me his
rifle I said, ‘No. Perhaps the poor beast is the father of a family who
are entirely dependent on him for support.’ ‘Oh, nonsense!’ was the
reply; ‘pray don’t let any idea of that sort interfere with legitimate
sport. Besides, fancy the triumph of bringing home a lion that you have
shot yourself. If you don’t shoot him I will.’ He levelled the gun. The
lion saw it. A piteous look came into the animal’s face. He gave one
roar of terror, turned round, and bolted off with his tail between his
legs. But he was not quick enough. Bang went the rifle, and the lion
rolled over on his side a corpse!
Then I felt that I ought to share in the honours of the day. I assisted
to pick the poor beast up, and we made a litter, and put him on it, and
carried him in triumph to the next village. We expected a grand
reception. To our intense surprise, when the inhabitants beheld the
dead lion, they burst out into savage cries, and shook their fists at
us, and cursed us in Arabic. We were arrested and dragged before the
Caïd, and then we learnt for the first time what our offence was.
We had killed the ‘show’ lion of the district--a lion that had been
imported at vast expense from the Zoological Gardens, London, and tamed
and taught to run about the mountains for the amusement of tourists. The
Caïd fined us £50 for destroying the property of the inhabitants, and
discharged us with a caution. We asked for the skin, and were refused.
That skin is to be stuffed and put up on the mountains in a natural
position. African travellers who visit this district can shoot the first
lion they meet now in perfect safety. They will injure nothing but the
stuffing.
One cherished illusion I shall, alas! leave behind me in the Sahara. You
know those beautiful lines the Arab addressed to his steed in the
poetry-book of our youth--
‘My beautiful, my beautiful, that stands so meekly by,
With thy proudly arched and glossy neck, thy dark and fiery eye;
Fret not to roam the desert now, with all thy wingèd speed,
I may not mount on thee again--thou’rt sold, my Arab steed.’
The poem is long. But it shows that the Arab is devoted to his horse.
Well, I have seen the Arab’s devotion to his horse, and I’m very sorry
for the animal. The cruelty of the Arab to his steed is something beyond
expression. The Arab starves his steed and beats it mercilessly. He
works it to death. The steed is covered with raw and bleeding wounds,
and when the Arab wants to make his steed go faster he runs a sharp
stick into one of the open wounds. ‘My beautiful, my beautiful!’ O,
Poetry, what sins you have to answer for! I shall never read those
beautiful verses again without saying ‘Bosh!’ The Arab who loved his
horse, and the horse that was so beautiful, have gone over for ever, so
far as I am concerned, to the great majority--the majority of lost
illusions.
While in Algiers I was indebted to my coachman for much of my
information. My coachman was a Gascon, and he Gasconaded to his heart’s
content. He drove us about day by day, and told us stories which would
have made Baron Munchausen look to his laurels. I let him have his
fling, and then, in the language of the ring, I ‘took him on.’ I began
to tell him stories of England. He listened at first in calm and
childlike faith, but at last he saw that I was playing him at his own
game. Then the old African hills resounded with his Homeric laughter,
and he became my sworn friend. He slapped me on the back and said I was
a fine fellow, and he liked the English because they were not proud like
the French, but cracked jokes with a coachman.
My coachman’s friendship became gradually a little too obtrusive. One
day, having to rest his horses in order to take us a sixty-mile drive
into the interior the next day, and having drawn twenty francs on
account of his fare, he spent his spare time in drinking my health.
Unfortunately, he strolled about the town as well, and was continually
meeting me. Every time we met he insisted on shaking hands and slapping
me on the back. I didn’t mind it at quiet corners, but when I was
talking to the Governor-General and his charming daughters on the Place
du Gouvernement, I must confess that I was taken aback to find myself
suddenly embraced by my affectionate Jehu, who, in accents slightly
thick and alcoholised, called me his brother, and implored Heaven to
witness that I was his best friend. The Governor smiled, the lovely
daughters tittered, and I felt that my dignity as a distinguished
stranger had suffered a slight concussion.
But my coachman was quite sober on the morning of our departure. He
drove us to the quay, and refused any fare. He wept on both our
shoulders, and as the Arab boatman rowed us out to the ship, the brave
Gascon fell upon his knees upon the African soil and prayed that we
might soon come back and gladden his eyes and shake his hand and tell
him stories again.
Achmet, too, came to see us off. Achmet was married the day before we
left. I made up his five pounds, and he bought his little wife and took
her home. ‘Well, Achmet,’ I said, ‘did the old woman tell you the
truth?’ ‘Ah, Sidi,’ replied the young man, ‘I am the happiest young Arab
in all Algiers. Give me your name, that I may call the first son that
Allah shall bless me with after my benefactor.’ I didn’t give him my
real name, but I gave him my _nom de plume_, and so I dare say before I
visit Algiers again the followers of the Prophet will number among them
for the first time in the history of the faith a Mohammedan named
Dagonet.