MORE OF THE EAST
My return voyage was made on board the Messageries boat to Marseilles.
This gave me the Straits of Messina as well as those of Bonifacio. On
passing Ajaccio I don’t think a single French passenger gave a thought
to Napoleon. I was intent on taking in every detail of that place, as
far as I could see it through a morning mist. Corsica looked very grand,
crowned with great snow-capped mountains.
I lost no time in getting home to the children, and passed the rest of
the summer in the green loveliness of Ireland, returning to Egypt, in
the following October, _viâ_ Venice again. Every soldier’s wife knows
what it is to be torn in two between the husband far away abroad and the
children one must leave at home. The trial is great, no doubt of it.
Then there is this perplexity: whether it would be well to take one of
the children with one and risk the dangers of the journey and the
climate at the other end. Parents pay heavily for our far-flung Empire!
On the morning of my departure from Venice I woke to the call of the
sunbeams pouring into my room, and, behold, as I went to the window, the
dome of the “Salute” taking the salute, as we say in the Army, of the
sunrise! And the Dogana’s gilded globe responding, too. Joy! our start
at least will be calm. Till midday I had Venice to myself, and I could
stroll about the Piazza and little streets, and recollect myself in
peaceful meditation in St. Mark’s. What delicate loveliness is that of
Venice! Those russet reds and creamy whites and tender yellows, and here
and there bits of deep indigo blue to give emphasis to the colour
scheme. And that tender opalesque sky, and the gilded statues on domes
and towers, and the rich mosaics twinkling in the hazy light! These
things make one feel a love for Venice which is full of gratitude for so
beautiful a thing.
At 12.30 I took gondola and was rowed to my old friend the _Hydaspes_
lying in the Giudecca, and was just in time to sit down to a truly
Hydaspian luncheon, which was crowded. To my indescribable relief the
captain told me I should have a cabin all to myself as last time. At two
o’clock we cast off, and that effective passage all along the front of
the city was again made which so impressed me the preceding spring; and
then we turned off seawards, winding through the channel marked out by
those white posts with black heads which, even in their humble way, are
so harmonious in tone and are beloved by painters, carrying out as they
do the whole artistic scheme. Every fishing boat we met or overtook gave
one a study of harmonies. Now it was an orange sail with a red upper
corner in soft sunlight against the flat blue-purple of the distant
mountains and the vivid green of the Lido; now, composing with a line of
rosy, snowy mountain tops that lay like massive clouds on the horizon,
would rise a pale cool grey-white sail, well in the foreground, with its
upper part tinted a soft mouse-grey and its lower border deep
terra-cotta red. The sea, pale blue; the sky thinly veiled with clouds
of a rosy dove-grey. Nowhere does one see such delicacy of colouring as
here. Then the market boats looked well, full of vegetables, whose cool
green came just where it should for the completion of the colour study.
To think that the Local Board, or whatever those modern vulgarians are
called, of Venice are advocating the complete suppression of those
coloured sails, to be replaced by plain white ones all round. Hands off,
_mascalzoni!_ All this enchantment gradually faded away in the mists of
evening and of distance, and we were soon well out to sea.
“_Sunday._--At 9 a.m. Brindisi in bright, low sunshine,” says the Diary.
“To Missa Cantata; much pleasant strolling. What animation all day with
the loading and unloading, the coming and going of passengers, the cries
and laughter of the population thronging the quays! The _Britannia_ from
London was already in, and I watched the transfer of my heavy luggage
from her to the _Hydaspes_ with a hawk’s eye. I had a genuine compliment
on landing paid to my accent. Those pests, the little beggar boys, who
hang on to the English and can’t be shaken off, attacked me at first
till I turned on them and shouted, ‘_Via, birrrrichini!_’ One of them
pulled the others away: ‘Come away, don’t you see she is not English!’
The Italians still think _Gl’ Inglesi_ are all millionaires and made of
_scudi_.
“_November 12th._--What indescribable joy this afternoon to see the crew
busy with the preparations for our arrival to-morrow morning!
“_November 13th._--Of course I began to get ready at 3 a.m. and peer out
of the porthole on the waste of starlit waters as I felt the ship
stopping off the distant lighthouse. We lay to a long time waiting for
the dawn before proceeding to enter the harbour. The sun rose behind the
city just as we turned into the port. I looked towards the distant
landing stage. Half a mile off, with my wonderful sight, I saw Will,
though the sun was right in my eyes. I knew him not only by his height,
but by the shining gold band round his cap. We were a long time coming
in and swinging round alongside, and, before the gangway was well down,
Will sprang on to it and, in spite of the warning shouts of the sailors,
was the first to board the _Hydaspes_.”
I was back in Egypt; to be there once more was bliss. The now brimming
Mahmoudieh saw me haunting it again; the predominating red of the
flowering trees and creepers that I noted before had made place for
enchanting variations of yellow, and all the vegetation had deepened.
The heat was great at first. I was particularly struck by the enhanced
beauty of the date palms, whose golden and deep purple fruit now hung in
clusters under the graceful branches. But all too soon came a good deal
of rain, to my indignation. Rain in Egypt! The natives say we have
brought it with us. I never saw any in Cairo nor upstream.
The Governor of the city had invited us to make use of a little
_dahabiyeh_, the _Rose_, for a cruise on the Lower Nile, and on November
20th we started. My husband had already welcomed on their arrival, in a
worthy manner, the officers of the French fleet, with whom he was in
perfect sympathy; but my Diary records the happy necessity for our
departure by the scheduled time on board the _Rose_ on that very
November 20th. That morning the German squadron arrived and the thunder
of its guns gave us an unintentional send-off! They were duly honoured,
of course, but the General himself was away.
It was a nine days’ cruise to the mouth of the Nile and back. Quite a
different reading of the Nile from the one I have recorded in my letters
to my mother, and reproduced in “From Sketch Book and Diary.” Very few
tourists or even serious travellers have come so far down, so that one
is less afraid of being forestalled by abler writers in recording one’s
impressions there. It was pretty to see the big Turkish flag fluttering
at our helm, and a beautifully disproportionate pennon streaming in
crimson magnificence from the point of the little vessel’s curved
felucca spar. But our first days were damping: “_November 22nd._--Oh,
the rain! Alas! that I should know Egypt under such deluges, and see in
this land the deepest, ugliest mud in the world. We had to moor off the
residence of the Bey, to whom this _dahabiyeh_ belongs, last night, as
we wished to pay him our respects and tender him our thanks this
morning. He made us stay to luncheon, and a very excellent Arab repast
it was. I got on well with him as he spoke excellent French, but his
mother! Oh! it was heavy, as she could only talk Turkish, and my
translated remarks didn’t even get a smile out of her. I must say the
Mohammedan women are deadly.
“We proceeded on our voyage very late in the day, on account of this
visit which common civility made necessary. The weather brightened up at
sunset and nothing more weird have I ever seen than the mud villages,
cemeteries, lonely tombs, goats, buffaloes and wild human beings that
loomed on the banks as we glided by, brown and black against that sky
full of racing clouds that seemed red-hot from the great fiery globe
that had just sunk below the palm-fringed horizon. These canal banks
might give many people the horrors. I certainly think them in this
weather the most uncanny bits of manipulated nature I have ever seen. I
was fortunate in getting down in colour such a telling thing, a goatherd
in a Bedouin’s burnous, which was wildly flapping in the hot wind
against the red glow in the west, driving a herd of those goats I find
so effective, with their long, pendant ears, and kids skipping in impish
gambols in front. ‘Apocalyptic’ apparition, caught, as we left it
astern, in that portentous gloaming! I shall make something of this. As
to the inhabitants of those regions, to contemplate their life is too
depressing. As darkness comes on you see them creeping into their
unlighted mud hovels like their animals. On the Upper Nile, at least,
the fellaheen have glorious air, the sun, the clean, dry sand, but here
in that mud----!
“_November 23rd_.--No more rain. At Atfeh we left the canal at last, by
a lock, and I gave a sigh of relief and contentment, for we were on the
broad bosom of Old Nile. After a delay at this mud town to buy
provisions we pushed out into the current and with eight immensely long
‘sweeps’ (the wind was against sailing) we made a good run to Rosetta,
on whose mud bank we thumped by the light of a pale moon. The rhythmic
sound of those splashing oars and of the chant of the oarsmen in the
minor key, with barbaric ‘intervals’ unknown to our music, continued to
echo in my ears--it all seemed wild and strange and haunting.
“_November 24th_.--Began this morning a sketch of Rosetta to finish on
our return from rounding up our outward voyage at the western mouth of
the great river where we saw it emerge into a very desolate, grey
Mediterranean. I may now say I have a very good idea of the mighty
river for upward of a thousand miles of its course--a good bit further,
both below and above stream, than the authoress of ‘A Thousand Miles up
the Nile’ knew it, whom in my early days I longed to emulate and, if
possible, surpass! An old-fashioned book, now, I suppose, but all the
more interesting for that. Furling sail, for the wind had been fair
to-day, we turned and were towed back to Fort St. Julian, where we
moored for the night.
“_November 25th_.--After a nice little sketch of the Fort St. Julian,
celebrated in Napoleonic annals, we started off, and reached Rosetta in
good time, so that I was able most satisfactorily to finish my large
water-colour of the place. I was rather bothered where I sat at the
water’s edge by the small boys and a very persistent pelican, which kept
flying from the river into the fish market and returning with stolen
fish, to souse them in the water before filling its pouch, in time to
avoid capture by the pursuing brats.
“_November 26th_.--From Rosetta we glided pleasantly to Metubis, one of
the many shining cities, as seen from afar, that become heaps of squalid
dwellings when viewed at close quarters. But the minarets of those
phantom cities remain erect in all their beauty, and this city in
particular was transfigured by the most magnificent sunset I have ever
seen, even here.”
The wild town of Syndioor was our mooring place for the next night, and
at sunrise we were off homewards. Syndioor and the opposite city of
Deyrout were veiled in a soft mist, out of which rose their tall
minarets in stately beauty, radiant in the level light. The effect on
the mind of these ruined places, once magnificent centres of commerce
and luxury, is quite extraordinary. They are now, all of them,
derelicts. And so in time we slipped back into the canal, landing under
the oleanders of our starting place. The crew kissed hands, the _reis_
made his obeisance, and we returned to the hard stones and rattle of the
Boulevard de Ramleh, refreshed. The Germans were gone.
Balls, picnics, gymkhanas and dinners were varied by intervals of
water-colour sketching in the desert. One picnic, out at Mex, to the
west of Alexandria, was distinguished by a great camel ride we all had
on the soft-paced, mouse-coloured mounts of the Camel Corps, the
Englishwomen looking so nice in their well-cut riding habits, sitting
easily on their tall steeds. I managed to secure several sketches that
day of the men and camels of the corps, and have one sketch of ourselves
starting for our turn in the desert. Our ponies took us back home. The
sort of day I liked. As I record, the completeness of my enjoyment was
caused by my having been able to put some useful work in, as usual. I
had a Camel Corps picture _in petto_ at this time.
“_February 13th_, 1891.--We had the Duke of Cambridge to luncheon. He
arrived yesterday on board the _Surprise_ from Malta, and Will, of
course, received him officially, but not royally, as he is travelling
incog., and he came here to tea. To-day we had a large party to meet
him, and a very genial luncheon it was, not to say rollicking. The day
was exquisite, and out of the open windows the sea sparkled, blue and
calm. H.R.H. seemed to me rather feeble, but in the best of humours; a
wonderful old man to come to Egypt for the first time at seventy-two,
braving this burning sun and with such a high colour to begin with! One
felt as though one was talking to George III. to hear the ‘What, what,
what? Who, who, who? Why, why, why?’ Col. Lane, one of his suite, said
he had never seen him in better spirits. I was gratified at his praise
of our cook--very loud praise, literally, as he is not only rather deaf
himself, but speaks to people as though they also were a ‘little hard of
hearing.’ ‘Very good cook, my dear’ (to me). ‘Very good cook, Butler’
(across the table to Will). ‘Very good cook, eh, Sykes?’ (very loud to
Christopher Sykes, further off). ‘You are a _gourmet_, you know better
about these things than I do, eh?’ C. S.: ‘I ought to have learnt
something about it at Gloucester House, sir!’ H.R.H. (to me): ‘Your
health, my dear.’ ‘Butler, your very good health!’ Aside to me: ‘What’s
the Consul’s name?’ I: ‘Sir Charles Cookson.’ ‘Sir Charles, your
health!’ When I hand the salt to H.R.H. he stops my hand: ‘I wouldn’t
quarrel with her for the world, Butler.’ And so the feast goes on, our
august guest plying me with questions about the relationship and
antecedents of every one at the table; about the manners and customs of
the populace of Alexandria; the state of commerce; the climate. I answer
to the best of my ability with the most unsatisfactory information. He
started at four for Cairo, leaving a most kindly impression on my
memory. The last of the old Georgian type! ‘Your mutton was good, my
dear; not at all _goaty_,’ were his valedictory words.”
Mutton _is_ goaty in Egypt unless well selected. I advise travellers to
confine themselves to the good poultry, and to leave meat alone. What I
would have done without our dear, good old Magro, the major domo who did
my housekeeping out there, I dread to think. His name, denoting a lean
habit of body, was a misnomer, for he was rotund. A good, honest
Maltese, his devotion to “Sair William” was really touching. I was only
as the moon is to the sun, and to serve the sun he would, I am
convinced, have risked his life. I came in for his devotion to myself by
reason of my reflected glory. One morning he came hurtling towards me,
through the rooms, waving aloft what at first looked like a red
republican flag, but it proved to be a sirloin or other portion of
bovine anatomy which he had had the luck to purchase in the market (good
beef being so rare). “Look, miladi, you will not often meet such beef
walking in the street!” He laid it out for my admiration. This is the
way he used to ask me for the daily orders: “What will miladi command
for dinner?” “Cutlets?” (patting his ribs); “a loin?” (indications of
lumbago); “or a leg?” (advancing that limb); “or, for a delicate
_entrée_, brains?” (laying a finger on his perspiring forehead). “Oh,
for goodness’ sake, Magro, not brains!” When the day’s work was done he
would retire to what we called the “Ah!-poor-me-room”--his
boudoir--where, repeating aloud those words so dear to his nationality,
he would take up his cigar. Government gave him £250 a year for all this
expenditure of zeal.
While on the subject of Oriental housekeeping, I must record the
following. Our predecessors of a former time had what to me would have
been an experience difficult to recover from. They were giving a large
Christmas dinner, and the cook, proud of the pudding he had mastered the
intricacies of, insisted on bringing it in himself, all ablaze. It was
only a few steps from the kitchen to the dining-room. Holding the great
dish well up before him, he unfortunately set fire to his beard, and the
effect of his dusky face approaching in the subdued light of the door,
illuminated in that way by blue flames, must have been satanic.
“_March 14th_.--Lord Charles Beresford, who has relieved the other ship
with the _Undaunted_, invited us all to luncheon on board, but Will and
I could not stay to luncheon as we had guests; nevertheless, we had a
very interesting morning on board. On arriving at the Marina we found
Lady Charles, Lady Edmund Talbot, Colonel Kitchener,[10] whose light,
rather tiger-like eyes in that sunburnt face slightly frightened me, and
others waiting to go with us to the _Undaunted_ in the ship’s barge and
a steam launch. Lord Charles received us with his usual sailor-like
welcome, and we had a tremendous inspection of the ship, one of our
latest experiments in naval machinery--a belted cruiser. She will
probably cruise to the bottom if ever the real test comes. A torpedo was
fired for us, but it gambolled away like a porpoise, ending by plunging
into a mudbank. I wish they would diverge their direction like that in
war, detestable inventions!
“_April 1st_, 1891.--I am now quite in the full swing of Egyptian
enjoyment. No more Egyptian rain! Excellent accounts from home, and my
intention of going back is rendered unnecessary. How thankful I am, on
the eve of our departure for Palestine, for the ‘all well’ from home!”
My entries in the Diary during that unique journey, and my letters to my
mother, are published in my book, “Letters from the Holy Land.” I
illustrated it with the water colours I made during our pilgrimage, and
I was most delighted to find the little book had an utterly unexpected
success. It was nice to find myself among the writers! To have ridden
through this land from end to end is to have experienced a pleasure such
as no other part of the earth can give us. Had I had no more joy in
store for me, that would have been enough.
As the railway was not opened till the following year the mind was not
disturbed, and could concentrate on the scenes before it with all the
recollection it required. I called our progress “riding through the
Bible.” Many a local allusion in both Testaments, which had seemed vague
or difficult to appreciate before, opened out, so to say, before one’s
happy vision, and gave a substance, a vitality to the Scripture
narrative which produced a satisfaction delightful to experience.
Perhaps the strongest longing in my childhood’s mind had been to do this
journey. To do it as we did, just our two selves, and in the fresh
spring weather, was a happy circumstance.
As I look back to that time which we spent amidst the scenes of Our
Lord’s revealed life on earth, no portion of it produces such a sense of
mental peace as does the night of our arrival on the shores of the Sea
of Galilee. _There_ there were no crowds, no distractions, not a thing
to jar on the mind. Before and around one, as one sat on the pebbly
strand, appeared the very outlines of the hills His eyes had rested on,
and far from modern life encroaching on one’s sensitiveness, the cities
that lined those sacred shores in His time had disappeared like one of
the fleeting cloud shadows which the moon was casting all along their
ruined sites. His words came back with a poignant force, “Woe unto
thee, Chorazin! Woe unto thee, Bethsaida!... and thou, Capernaum, which
art exalted unto heaven....” Where were they? And the high waves raced
foaming and breaking on the shingle, blown by a strong though mild wind
that came across from the dark cliffs of the country of the Gadarenes.
One seemed to feel His approach where He had so often walked. One can
hardly speak of the awe which that feeling brought to the mind. He was
quite near!
Undoubtedly the effect of a journey through the Holy Land _does_
permanently impress itself upon one’s life. It is a tremendous
experience to be brought thus face to face with the Gospel narrative. We
returned to the modern world on May 1st. This time I left Alexandria in
company with my husband on June 3rd, and on landing at Venice we at once
went on to Verona, where he was anxious to visit the battlefield of
Arcole.