I believe this is the 5th. These 'chits' help one to remember dates;
they are little cards presented you when you order soda water or wine,
or are solicited for subscriptions to sports or sweepstakes. They have
the date marked on them, and you add your name, and number of berth, and
away goes your steward to the bar or wine man, and you get what you
ordered; it may be ages afterwards, when you have almost forgotten what
it was you ordered, but punctually at the end of the week, you get them
in a bundle and pay up. "I find," to quote Carlyle again, "I have a
considerable feeling of astonishment at the unexpected size of the
bundles. It's a most excellent system, and if there wasn't such a crowd
it would work out all right here."
It is uncomfortably warm now and damp. Last night we on the main deck
had to sleep with ports closed, so we had to live with very little air;
I do not know what the temperature was, not having a thermometer with
us, as we are almost amidship and near the engine, it must have been
considerable.
... The Red Sea does not grow in my affections; as we go south there is
too much of the sensation of being slowly stewed. At Babel Mandeb I
believe the temperature of the sea rises to 100 deg. F.
The islands we pass on the shore to the east, distant about fifteen
miles as I write, are interesting enough. I suppose the inhabitants are
somewhat irresponsible, and were we to land there in the boats unarmed,
might find us full occupation for the rest of our lives as slaves in
the interior. There was a ship wrecked on this coast some years ago,
and her boat's crew landed, and were either killed or are up country
slaving. R. tells me the wife of one of them lives beside his people in
Fife, which makes us feel almost in touch with the sandy shore. What an
anomaly--a modern steamship packed with western civilisation reeling off
twenty knots an hour--past a desert land of lawless nomadic Arab tribes.
[Illustration]
As we get south nearer Aden the sand spits tail out south and slope off
inland like wide glaciers, through which appear dark coloured rocky
islets.
... We had rather bad luck yesterday and to-day; the iron wind catcher
put out at our port to make a draught caught a sea, and threw it all
over our cabin. G.'s maid had just opened my overland trunk to give the
contents an airing, and now my collars are pulp and rose pink from the
lining of the collar box, so I must call on the barber who runs a shop
on board. We had the carpet taken up and our clothes hung up to dry, but
they won't, for the air is so hot and damp--with the least exertion you
steam! Imagine the joy of having to dress for dinner in such cramped
space and heat--you drop a stud and a year of your life in finding it! I
think most people realise that their feelings under these circumstances
cannot be exactly described in decorous language, so they set their
teeth in grim silence; and after all there is something laughable about
all the trouble--we needn't go in for white shirts and black coats and
trousers in the tropics unless we like. Everyone feels them horribly
uncomfortable and unsuitable, but no one dares to be so utterly radical
as come to dinner in anything else. If a flannel shirt and shorts were
the fashion, if only for the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, how many valued
lives would be prolonged. The penance in India is not so bad; there your
_Boy_ hunts your stud whilst you sit and cool.
A number of passengers sleep on deck now; I suppose three and four in a
cabin is intolerable. They have their mattresses brought up on deck by
their cabin steward, and he chalks their number on the deck at their
feet; you can thus sleep in a strong wet draught under the officers'
deck. There is a great deal of pleasure in sleeping in the open, but you
should have nothing but stars overhead and a shelter to windward, if it
is only a swelling in the ground or a sod or two. The ladies have a part
of the deck reserved, and the floor of the music room round the well
that opens into the dining-saloon below. Their part of the deck is
defended at night by a zereba of deck chairs, piled three or four feet
high; it suggests privacy!
We had our port open last night again--my fault--and just as G. came to
my end of the cabin to tell me the waves were getting near the port, in
one came! So we spent the small hot hours rearranging things, shut the
port and slept the sleep of the weary, and awakened more dead than alive
from too little air and too much water.
Yesterday the ship went on fire. It started on the woodwork of the
companion way, where there was a place for stationery; there was a
mighty mess of water and smell of smoke and a panel or two burned, and
no great damage done, as far as I can hear. I am surprised we don't go
on fire every day with so many smokers chucking cigarette ends
overboard. The wind-catchers sticking out of the ports of course catch
these, and they blow into the berths. Yesterday, however, to prevent
this, two or three buckets with sand in them were put down on deck in
which cigarette ends are to be buried and pipes knocked out, so there's
a chance for us all yet!
This morning I made a water-colour for my engineer friend, as a return
for the wine vase he gave me. I thought he'd like a sketch of a Highland
burn in spate--thought it would be cooling. How it came about I cannot
explain, but I did him a recollection of a burn within five to seven
miles, by sea, of his birthplace in Jura! I'd put him down as coming
from the Clyde.
The biggest event for me in this day's reckoning was the discovery that
the distinguished judge I observed contemplating the blue waves for some
minutes, was an artist before he took to Law! You might have knocked me
down with a feather--five years in Lauren's studio in Paris, and three
pictures on the line the year he was called to the bar and two of them
sold! We had a great talk about art and all the rest of it. He and
Jacomb Hood and others were fellow students, and he and Jacomb Hood and
this writer, and various artists and newspaper men are to meet at his
board in Calcutta and have a right good Bohemian evening as in days of
yore.
Is it not curiously sanguine this belief, to which I've seen quite old
men clinging--that you can repeat a good time. It is possible we will
have a good evening, and talk lots of shop, for we all know far more
about it now, than we did then; but it was what we did not know, that
gave the charm to student days.
We talk art and technique pretty hard, but I can't quite get over the
shock--an artist--become a judge--A Quartier Latin Art Student--a Judge
of the High Court--with a fixed income, and on his way to Calcutta,
perhaps to hang folk!
We had sports to-day and a sing-song in the evening. The sports were
very amusing; the bolster fight on a spar doesn't sound interesting, but
it was; it got quite exciting towards the end as the wiry cavalry
colonel, hero of many a stricken field, knocked out all comers, young or
old. Egg and spoon races and threading needles were a little stupid, but
what tableaux the groups of fair women made, with the bright dresses
and complexions, and the jolly brown young men, all in the soft light
that was filtering through the awning and blazing up from under its edge
from the sea.
[Illustration]
Sunday--at Aden--loafed all morning--vowed I'd not paint--bustle and
movement too great--painted hard in afternoon--horribly difficult--too
many people--ladies skirt in palette--man's hoof in water tin--chucked
it.
[Illustration: Aden, and Fan-sellers]
This is verbatim from my log and expresses a very little of one's
feelings; everyone is so jolly and polite too, you just have to stop, or
go on and show temper. Two or three of the passengers tried to paint
effects, each formed a centre of a group of people, who looked over
their shoulders, the onlookers one after another remarking with
ingratiating smiles, "You don't mind my looking, do you?" Why on earth
do people look over the shoulders of persons painting, when they would
never dream of looking over the shoulder of any one writing?
Notwithstanding the crowd and polite requests to be "allowed to look,"
and the untenable effort required to give soft answers, I did manage to
make a sketch or two at Aden--one of stony hills and government houses
in the background, and in the front green water and the vendors of fans
and beads, and curious brown, naked, active fellows in sharp stemmed
light coloured boats, which they could row! Some of them had turbans,
pink or lemon yellow, or white skull caps, and there were also
Egyptian officials and soldiers in white uniform and red turbash, in
white launches that raced about through the green water, cutting a great
dash of white with their bows; there was colour enough, and movement and
sun galore.
[Illustration]
I suppose these "ragged rocks and flinty spires" are the rocks that
inspired the Pipe-Major with the cheery farewell to "The Barren Rocks of
Aden"--here they are the rocks you see from Aden--everyone knows the
tune.
7th October.--The lady artist and I compared sketches. We both worship
Whistler, and various writers we agree about, but I fear we are only in
sympathy so far. I gathered from her to-night that I ought to study
native character in India, for our countrymen in India had no
picturesqueness, no art about them, and to associate with them one had
better be at home. I felt saddened and went on deck and saw the people
she called "Anglo-Indians" (more than two-thirds Scots, Irish, Cornish,
and Welsh, with a negligible fraction of possible Angles) all lying
like dead men in rows, with no side or show about them as they lay; some
in contorted positions, with here and there a powerful limb or well
rounded northern head showing in the half dark. Rulers of the Indian
Empire, by Odin! or Jove! damp and hot, and in the dark, in a strong
draught, without a pick of gold lace, prostrate, sweating uncomfortably,
sleeping; and travelling as their innumerable predecessors have ever
travelled, from the North to rule the South.
[Illustration]
They may be inartistic, but they look mighty touching, pathetic, and
wonderful, not only the individual whose legs you step over but that
almighty race combine--whatever you call it[4]--which he represents....
Ladies were stealing to their lairs in the zereba on deck, and in the
music room; they look quite Eastern, all muffled up in tea gowns and
gauzy draperies. The music room has only recently been reserved for them
at night; a mere man who had camped there with wife and child did not
know of the change; and Mrs Deputy-Commissioner told us they were all
lying out there in the dark when the man entered in pyjamas and had
stepped over a dozen prostrate forms when Mrs D.-C. said incisively, "We
are all ladies here," and he murmured "Good Lord," and his retreat was
rapid--what a scare he had!
[4] British or English.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
[Illustration]
Only one more day's dull reckoning and we will be ashore. I expect
everyone is getting rather sick of the crowded life. A fancy dress ball
pulled through last night. Most ingenious dresses were made up, and
prizes were given to the best. All those in fancy dress formed up and
walked past the judges in single file. There were pretty much the usual
stock costumes, and nothing original amongst the ladies. The very
black-eyed belle with red cheeks wore a mantilla of course, and gripped
a fan and had a camellia in her hair, and was called Andalusian,
but her walk and expression were "made in England"--a Spanish
girl's expression and walk can't be got up in a day or two.
The-most-beautiful-lady-in-the-ship was--upon my word, I don't know what
her dress was called, something of the "Incroyable" period; whatever it
was called, she carried it well and could walk, the rest merely toddled.
She is Australian, still, I'd have given her First Prize. The lady who
did get it, was really very pretty, and dressed as a white Watteau or
Dresden shepherdess. Amongst the men "The British Tourist" was
perfection--answered all requirements, and suggested the tourist of old
and the tourist of to-day; he had check trousers, chop whiskers, a sun
hat, umbrella, blue spectacles, and the dash of red Baedeker for colour.
Then an Assistant-Commissioner, an Irishman, was splendidly got up. I'd
noticed he had been out of sight a good deal lately--he had been sewing
his own clothes, and they were really well made! "An Eastern Potentate"
he called himself, or a Khedive, and ran to riot in a jumble of orders
and jewellery and gold chains. Trousers and jacket were pale cinnamon
with scarlet facings and a red turbash, and how well the clothes fitted!
clever Mr B.; he knows so much about many subjects, and can sew! He and
my Judge acquaintance were arguing last night. The Judge is a
Cornishman. When you get a highly educated Cornishman and an Irishman
together, however long they have been in England, and they begin to
talk, it's worth while sitting out. B. explained in soft and winning
words to the Judge that his life was a giddy round of society, long
leave, and high pay, whilst he in the far North led a lonely life of
continuous hard work and no pay to speak of; and the Judge, with equal
if not greater fluency, described B.'s up-country life as perpetual
leave on full pay, a long delightful picnic, and so on and so forth. My
sympathy went with the Judge; I think his life is the least pleasant,
but one had to allow for his greater rapidity of speech and practice in
courts before juries, besides his art studies in Paris. Later R. joined;
he is an advocate in Calcutta and hails from the Hebrides. Then came a
Welsh Major, a gunner. That made a party of an Irishman, two Scots (one
of them anglicised), a Welsh, and a Cornishman, and they discussed
everything under the sun except the Celtic Renaissance: for they spend
their days on the confines of the Empire, and the brain takes time to
make the tail wag.