Transcribed from the 1902 R. Brimley Johnson edition by David Price,
email ccx074@pglaf.org
Lady Duff Gordon's
Letters from Egypt
REVISED EDITION
WITH MEMOIR BY HER
DAUGHTER JANET ROSS
NEW INTRODUCTION BY
GEORGE MEREDITH
_SECOND IMPRESSION_
[Picture: Decorative symbol]
LONDON: R. BRIMLEY JOHNSON
1902
[Picture: Photograph of Lady Duff Gordon from sketch by G. F. Watts,
R.A., about 1848]
INTRODUCTION
The letters of Lady Duff Gordon are an introduction to her in person.
She wrote as she talked, and that is not always the note of private
correspondence, the pen being such an official instrument. Readers
growing familiar with her voice will soon have assurance that, addressing
the public, she would not have blotted a passage or affected a tone for
the applause of all Europe. Yet she could own to a liking for flattery,
and say of the consequent vanity, that an insensibility to it is inhuman.
Her humour was a mouthpiece of nature. She inherited from her father the
judicial mind, and her fine conscience brought it to bear on herself as
well as on the world, so that she would ask, 'Are we so much better?'
when someone supremely erratic was dangled before the popular eye. She
had not studied her Goethe to no purpose. Nor did the very ridiculous
creature who is commonly the outcast of all compassion miss having the
tolerant word from her, however much she might be of necessity in the
laugh, for Moliere also was of her repertory. Hers was the charity which
is perceptive and embracing: we may feel certain that she was never a
dupe of the poor souls, Christian and Muslim, whose tales of simple
misery or injustice moved her to friendly service. Egyptians, _consule
Junio_, would have met the human interpreter in her, for a picture to set
beside that of the vexed Satirist. She saw clearly into the later Nile
products, though her view of them was affectionate; but had they been
exponents of original sin, her charitableness would have found the
philosophical word on their behalf, for the reason that they were not in
the place of vantage. The service she did to them was a greater service
done to her country, by giving these quivering creatures of the baked
land proof that a Christian Englishwoman could be companionable, tender,
beneficently motherly with them, despite the reputed insurmountable
barriers of alien race and religion. Sympathy was quick in her breast
for all the diverse victims of mischance; a shade of it, that was not
indulgence, but knowledge of the roots of evil, for malefactors and for
the fool. Against the cruelty of despotic rulers and the harshness of
society she was openly at war, at a time when championship of the lowly
or the fallen was not common. Still, in this, as in everything
controversial, it was the [Greek text] with her. That singular union of
the balanced intellect with the lively heart arrested even in advocacy
the floods pressing for pathos. Her aim was at practical measures of
help; she doubted the uses of sentimentality in moving tyrants or
multitudes to do the thing needed. Moreover, she distrusted eloquence,
Parliamentary, forensic, literary; thinking that the plain facts are the
persuasive speakers in a good cause, and that rhetoric is to be suspected
as the flourish over a weak one. Does it soften the obdurate, kindle the
tardily inflammable? Only for a day, and only in cases of extreme
urgency, is an appeal to emotion of value for the gain of a day. Thus it
was that she never forced her voice, though her feelings might be at heat
and she possessed the literary art.
She writes from her home on the Upper Nile: 'In this country one gets to
see how much more beautiful a perfectly natural expression is than any
degree of the mystical expression of the best painters.' It is by her
banishing of literary colouring matter that she brings the Arab and Copt
home to us as none other has done, by her unlaboured pleading that she
touches to the heart. She was not one to 'spread gold-leaf over her
acquaintances and make them shine,' as Horace Walpole says of Madame de
Sevigne; they would have been set shining from within, perhaps with a
mild lustre; sensibly to the observant, more credibly of the golden sort.
Her dislike of superlatives, when the marked effect had to be produced,
and it was not the literary performance she could relish as well as any
of us, renders hard the task of portraying a woman whose character calls
them forth. To him knowing her, they would not fit; her individuality
passes between epithets. The reading of a sentence of panegyric
(commonly a thing of extension) deadened her countenance, if it failed to
quicken the corners of her lips; the distended truth in it exhibited the
comic shadow on the wall behind. That haunting demon of human eulogy is
quashed by the manner she adopted, from instinct and training. Of her it
was known to all intimate with her that she could not speak falsely in
praise, nor unkindly in depreciation, however much the constant play of
her humour might tempt her to exalt or diminish beyond the bounds. But
when, for the dispersion of nonsense about men or things, and daintiness
held up the veil against rational eyesight, the _gros mot_ was demanded,
she could utter it, as from the Bench, with a like authority and
composure.
In her youth she was radiantly beautiful, with dark brows on a brilliant
complexion, the head of a Roman man, and features of Grecian line, save
for the classic Greek wall of the nose off the forehead. Women, not
enthusiasts, inclined rather to criticize, and to criticize so
independent a member of their sex particularly, have said that her entry
into a ballroom took the breath. Poetical comparisons run under heavy
weights in prose; but it would seem in truth, from the reports of her,
that wherever she appeared she could be likened to a Selene breaking
through cloud; and, further, the splendid vessel was richly freighted.
Trained by a scholar, much in the society of scholarly men, having an
innate bent to exactitude, and with a ready tongue docile to the curb,
she stepped into the world armed to be a match for it. She cut her way
through the accustomed troops of adorers, like what you will that is
buoyant and swims gallantly. Her quality of the philosophical humour
carried her easily over the shoals or the deeps in the way of a woman
claiming her right to an independent judgement upon the minor rules of
conduct, as well as upon matters of the mind. An illustrious foreigner,
_en tete-a-tete_ with her over some abstract theme, drops abruptly on a
knee to protest, overpowered; and in that posture he is patted on the
head, while the subject of conversation is continued by the benevolent
lady, until the form of ointment she administers for his beseeching
expression and his pain compels him to rise and resume his allotted part
with a mouth of acknowledging laughter. Humour, as a beautiful woman's
defensive weapon, is probably the best that can be called in aid for the
bringing of suppliant men to their senses. And so manageable are they
when the idea of comedy and the chord of chivalry are made to vibrate,
that they (supposing them of the impressionable race which is overpowered
by Aphrodite's favourites) will be withdrawn from their great aims, and
transformed into happy crust-munching devotees--in other words, fast
friends. Lady Duff Gordon had many, and the truest, and of all lands.
She had, on the other hand, her number of detractors, whom she excused.
What woman is without them, if she offends the conventions, is a step in
advance of her day, and, in this instance, never hesitates upon the
needed occasion to dub things with their right names? She could
appreciate their disapproval of her in giving herself the airs of a man,
pronouncing verdicts on affairs in the style of a man, preferring
association with men. So it was; and, besides, she smoked. Her
physician had hinted at the soothing for an irritated throat that might
come of some whiffs of tobacco. She tried a cigar, and liked it, and
smoked from that day, in her library chair and on horseback. Where she
saw no harm in an act, opinion had no greater effect on her than summer
flies to one with a fan. The country people, sorely tried by the
spectacle at first, remembered the gentle deeds and homely chat of an
eccentric lady, and pardoned her, who was often to be seen discoursing
familiarly with the tramp on the road, incapable of denying her
house-door to the lost dog attached by some instinct to her heels. In
the circles named 'upper' there was mention of women unsexing themselves.
She preferred the society of men, on the plain ground that they discuss
matters of weight, and are--the pick of them--of open speech, more
liberal, more genial, better comrades. Was it wonderful to hear them,
knowing her as they did, unite in calling her _coeur d'or_? And women
could say it of her, for the reasons known to women. Her intimate
friendships were with women as with men. The closest friend of this most
manfully-minded of women was one of her sex, little resembling her,
except in downright truthfulness, lovingness, and heroic fortitude.
The hospitable house at Esher gave its welcome not merely to men and
women of distinction; the humble undistinguished were made joyous guests
there, whether commonplace or counting among the hopeful. Their hostess
knew how to shelter the sensitively silent at table, if they were unable
to take encouragement and join the flow. Their faces at least responded
to her bright look on one or the other of them when something worthy of
memory sparkled flying. She had the laugh that rocks the frame, but it
was usually with a triumphant smile that she greeted things good to the
ear; and her own manner of telling was concise, on the lines of the
running subject, to carry it along, not to produce an effect--which is
like the horrid gap in air after a blast of powder. Quotation came when
it sprang to the lips and was native. She was shrewd and cogent,
invariably calm in argument, sitting over it, not making it a duel, as
the argumentative are prone to do; and a strong point scored against her
received the honours due to a noble enemy. No pose as mistress of a
salon shuffling the guests marked her treatment of them; she was their
comrade, one of the pack. This can be the case only when a governing
lady is at all points their equal, more than a player of trump cards. In
England, in her day, while health was with her, there was one house where
men and women conversed. When that house perforce was closed, a light
had gone out in our country.
The fatal brilliancy of skin indicated the fell disease which ultimately
drove her into exile, to die in exile. Lucie Duff Gordon was of the
order of women of whom a man of many years may say that their like is to
be met but once or twice in a lifetime.
[Picture: George Meredith's signature]