We have had a very cold winter and I have been constantly ailing, luckily
the cough has transferred itself from the night to the day, and I get
some good sleep. The last two days have been much warmer and I hope
matters will mend. I am beginning to take cod-liver oil, as we can't
find a milch camel anywhere.
My boat has been well let in Cairo and is expected here every day. The
gentlemen shoot, and tell the crew not to row, and in short take it easy,
and give them 2 pounds in every place. Imagine what luxury for my crew.
I shall have to dismiss the lot, they will be so spoilt. The English
Consul-General came up in a steamer with Dr. Patterson and Mr. Francis.
I dined with them one day; I wish you could have seen me carried in my
armchair high up on the shoulders of four men, like a successful
candidate, or more like one of the Pharaohs in an ancient bas-relief,
preceded by torch bearers and other attendants and followers, my
procession was quite regal. I wish I could show you a new friend of
mine, Osman Ibraheem, who studied medicine five years in Paris. My heart
warmed to him directly, because like most high-bred Arabs, he is so like
Don Quixote--only Don Quixote quite in his senses. The sort of innocent
sententiousness, and perfectly natural love of fine language and fine
sentiments is unattainable to any European, except, I suppose, a
Spaniard. It is quite unlike Italian fustian or French _sentiment_. I
suppose to most Europeans it is ridiculous, but I used to cry when the
carriers beat the most noble of all knights, when I was a little girl and
read Don Quixote; and now I felt as it were like Sancho, when I listened
to Osman reciting bits of heroic poetry, or uttering 'wise saws' and
'modern instances,' with the peculiar mixture of strong sense of
'exultation' which stamps the great Don. I may not repeat all I heard
from him of the state of things here, and the insults he had to endure--a
Shereef and an educated man--from coarse Turkish Pashas; it was the
carriers over again. He told me he had often cried like a woman, at
night in his own room, at the miseries he was forced to witness and could
do nothing to relieve; all the men I have particularly liked I find are
more or less pupils of the Sheykh el-Bagooree now dead, who seems to have
had a gift of inspiring honourable feeling. Our good Maohn is one; he is
no conjuror, but the honesty and goodness are heroic which lead a man to
starve on 15 pounds a month, when he is expected to grow rich on plunder.
The war in Crete saddens many a household here. Sheykh Yussuf's brother,
Sheykh Yooris, is serving there, and many more. People are actually
beginning to say 'We hope the English and French won't fight for the
Sultan if the Moscovites want to eat him--there will be no good for us
till the Turks are driven out.' All the old religious devotion to the
Sultan seems quite gone.
Poor Mustapha has been very unwell and I stopped his Ramadan, gave him
some physic and ordered him not to fast, for which I think he is rather
grateful. The Imaam and Mufti always endorse my prohibitions of fasting
to my patients. Old Ismaeen is dead, aged over a hundred; he served
Belzoni, and when he grew doting was always wanting me to go with him to
join Belzoni at Abu Simbel. He was not at all ill--he only went out like
a candle. His grandson brought me a bit of the meat cooked at his
funeral, and begged me to eat it, that I might live to be very old,
according to the superstition here. When they killed the buffalo for the
Sheykh Abu-l-Hajjaj, the man who had a right to the feet kindly gave them
to Omar, who wanted to make calves' foot jelly for me. I had a sort of
profane feeling, as if I were eating a descendant of the bull Apis.
I am reading Mme. du Deffand's letters. What a repulsive picture of a
woman. I don't know which I dislike most, Horace Walpole or herself: the
conflict of selfishness, vanity and _ennui_ disguised as sentiment is
quite hateful: to her Turgot was _un sot animal_,--so much for her great
gifts.
Remember me kindly to William and tell him how much I wish I could see
his 'improvements,' Omar also desires his salaam to him, having a sort of
fellow feeling for your faithful henchman. I need not say he kisses your
hand most dutifully.