I am a good deal better again; the weather is delightful, and the Nile in
full flood, which makes the river scenery from the boat very beautiful.
Alick made my mouth water with his descriptions of his rides with Janet
about the dear old Surrey country, having her with him seems to have
quite set him up. I have seen nothing and nobody but my 'next boat'
neighbour, Goodah Effendi, as Omar has been at work all day in the boat,
and I felt lazy and disinclined to go out alone. Big Hassan of the
donkeys has grown too lazy to go about and I don't care to go alone with
a small boy here. However I am out in the best of air all day and am
very well off. My two little boys are very diverting and serve me very
well. The news from Europe is to my ignorant ideas _desolant_, a
_degringolade back_ into military despotism, which would have excited
indignation with us in our fathers' days, I think. I get lots of
newspapers from Ross, which afterwards go to an Arab grocer, who reads
the _Times_ and the _Saturday Review_ in his shop in the bazaar! what
next? The cargo of books which Alick and you sent will be most
acceptable for winter consumption. If I were a painter I would take up
the Moslem traditions of Joseph and Mary. He was not a white-bearded old
gentleman at all you must know, but young, lovely and pure as Our Lady
herself. They were cousins, brought up together; and she avoided the
light conversation of other girls, and used to go to the well with her
jar, hand in hand with Joseph carrying his. After the angel Gabriel had
announced to her the will of God, and blown into her sleeve, whereby she
conceived 'the Spirit of God,' Joseph saw her state with dismay, and
resolved to kill her, as was his duty as her nearest male relation. He
followed her, knife in hand, meaning always to kill her at the next tree,
and each time his heart failed him, until they reached the well and the
tree under which the Divine messenger stood once more and said, 'Fear not
oh Joseph, the daughter of thy uncle bears within her Eesa, the Messiah,
the Spirit of God.' Joseph married his cousin without fear. Is it not
pretty? the two types of youthful purity and piety, standing hand in hand
before the angel. I think a painter might make something out of the
soft-eyed Syrian boy with his jar on his shoulder (hers on the head), and
the grave, modest maiden who shrank from all profane company.
I now know all about Sheykh Seleem, and why he sits naked on the river
bank; from very high authority--a great Sheykh to whom it has been
revealed. He was entrusted with the care of some of the holy she camels,
like that on which the Prophet rode to Jerusalem in one night, and which
are invisible to all but the elect, and he lost one, and now he is God's
prisoner till she is found.
A letter from aunt Charley all about her own and Rainie's country life,
school feasts etc., made me quite cry, and brought before me--oh, how
vividly--the difference between East and West, not quite _all_ to the
advantage of home however, though mostly. What is pleasant here is the
primitive ways. Three times since I have been here lads of most
respectable families of Luxor have come to ask hospitality, which
consists in a place on the deck of the boat, and liberty to dip their
bread in the common dish with my slave boy and Achmet. The bread they
brought with them, 'bread and shelter' were not asked, as they slept _sub
dio_. In England I must have refused the hospitality, on account of
_gene_ and expense. The chief object to the lads was the respectability
of being under my eye while away from their fathers, as a satisfaction to
their families; and while they ate and slept like beggars, as we should
say, they read their books and chatted with me, when I was out on the
deck, on perfectly equal terms, only paying the respect proper to my age.
I thought of the 'orphanages and institutions' and all the countless
difficulties of that sort, and wondered whether something was not to be
said for this absence of civilization in knives, forks, beds, beer, and
first and second tables above all. Of course climate has a good deal to
do with the facility with which widows and orphans are absorbed here.
Goodbye dearest Mutter: to-day is post day, and Reis Mohammed is about to
trudge into town in such a dazzling white turban and such a grand black
robe. His first wife, whom he was going to divorce for want of children,
has brought him a son, and we jeer him a little about what he may find in
Luxor from the second, and wish him a couple of dozen.