I have just received your letter of the 3rd inst., and am glad to get
such good tidings. You would be amused to see Omar bring me a letter and
sit down on the floor till I tell him the family news, and then
_Alhamdulillah_, we are so pleased, and he goes off to his pots and pans
again. Lord and Lady Spencer are here, and his sister, in two boats.
The English 'Milord,' extinct on the Continent, has revived in Egypt, and
is greatly reverenced and usually much liked. 'These high English have
mercy in their stomachs,' said one of my last year's sailors who came to
kiss my hand--a pleasing fact in natural history! _Fee wahed Lord_, was
little ragged Achmet's announcement of Lord Spencer--'Here's a Lord.'
They are very pleasant people. I heard from Janet to-day of _ice_ at
Cairo and at Shoubra, and famine prices. I cannot attempt Cairo with
meat at 1s. 3d. a pound, and will e'en stay here and grill at Thebes.
Marry-come-up with your Thebes and savagery! What if we _do_ wear ragged
brown shirts? ''Tis manners makyth man,' and we defy you to show better
breeding.
We are now in the full enjoyment of summer weather; there has been no
cold for fully a fortnight, and I am getting better every day now. My
cough has quite subsided, and the pain in the chest much diminished; if
the heat does not overpower me I feel sure it will be very healing to my
lungs. I sit out on my glorious balcony and drink the air from early
morning till noon, when the sun comes upon it and drives me under cover.
The thermometer has stood at 64 degrees for a fortnight or three weeks,
rising sometimes to 67 degrees, but people in the boats tell me it is
still cold at night on the river. Up here, only a stone's-throw from it,
it is warm all night. I fear the loss of cattle has suspended irrigation
to a fearful extent, and that the harvests of Lower Egypt of all kinds
will be sadly scanty. The disease has not spread above Minieh, or very
slightly; but, of course, cattle will rise in price here also. Already
food is getting dearer here; meat is 4.5 piastres--7d.--the _rotl_ (a
fraction less than a pound), and bread has risen considerably--I should
say corn, for no bakers exist here. I pay a woman to grind and bake my
wheat which I buy, and delicious bread it is. It is impossible to say
how exactly like the early parts of the Bible every act of life is here,
and how totally new it seems when one reads it here. Old Jacob's speech
to Pharaoh really made me laugh (don't be shocked), because it is so
exactly what a fellah says to a Pasha: 'Few and evil have been the days,'
etc. (Jacob being a most prosperous man); but it is manners to say all
that, and I feel quite kindly to Jacob, whom I used to think ungrateful
and discontented; and when I go to Sidi Omar's farm, does he not say,
'Take now fine meal and bake cakes quickly,' and wants to kill a kid?
_Fateereh_ with plenty of butter is what the 'three men' who came to
Abraham ate; and the way that Abraham's chief memlook, acting as Vakeel,
manages Isaac's marriage with Rebekah! All the vulgarized associations
with Puritanism and abominable little 'Scripture tales and pictures' peel
off here, and the inimitably truthful representation of life and
character--not a flattering one certainly--comes out, and it feels like
Homer. Joseph's tears and his love for the brother born of the _same
mother_ is so perfect. Only one sees what a bad inferior race the Beni
Israel were compared to the Beni Ishmael or to the Egyptians. Leviticus
and Deuteronomy are so very heathenish compared to the law of the Koran,
or to the early days of Abraham. Verily the ancient Jews were a foul
nation, judging by the police regulations needful for them. Please don't
make these remarks public, or I shall be burnt with Stanley and Colenso
(unless I suffer Sheykh Yussuf to propose me El-Islam). He and M. de
Rouge were here last evening, and we had an Arabic _soiree_. M. de Rouge
speaks admirably, quite like an Alim, and it was charming to see Sheykh
Yussuf's pretty look of grateful pleasure at finding himself treated like
a gentleman and a scholar by two such eminent Europeans; for I (as a
woman) am quite as surprising as even M. de Rouge's knowledge of
hieroglyphics and Arabic _Fosseeha_. It is very interesting to see
something of Arabs who have read and have the 'gentleman' ideas. His
brother, the Imam, has lost his wife; he was married twenty-two years,
and won't hear of taking another. I was struck with the sympathy he
expressed with the English Sultana, as all the uneducated people say,
'Why doesn't she marry again?' It is curious how refinement brings out
the same feelings under all 'dispensations.' I apologized to Yussuf for
inadvertently returning the _Salaam aleykoum_ (Peace be with thee), which
he said to Omar, and which I, as an unbeliever, could not accept. He
coloured crimson, touched my hand and kissed his own, quite distressed
lest the distinction might wound me. When I think of a young parsonic
prig at home I shudder at the difference. But Yussuf is superstitious;
he told me how someone down the river cured his cattle with water poured
over a _Mushaf_ (a copy of the Koran), and has hinted at writing out a
chapter for me to wear as a _hegab_ (an amulet for my health). He is
interested in the antiquities and in M. de Rouge's work, and is quite up
to the connection between Ancient Egypt and the books of Moses,
exaggerating the importance of _Seyidna Moussa_, of course.
If I go down to Cairo again I will get letters to some of the Alim there
from Abd-el-Waris, the Imam here, and I shall see what no European but
Lane has seen. I think things have altered since his day, and that men
of that class would be less inaccessible than they were then; and then a
woman who is old (Yussuf guessed me at sixty) and educated does not
shock, and does interest them. All the Europeans here are traders, and
only speak the vulgarest language, and don't care to know Arab gentlemen;
if they see anything above their servants it is only Turks, or Arab
merchants at times. Don't fancy that I can speak at all decently yet,
but I understand a good deal, and stammer out a little.