Volume 1.
WHILE THE LAMP HOLDS OUT TO BURN
THE PRICE OF THE GRINDSTONE-AND THE DRUM
THE DESERTION OF MAHOMMED SELIMON
THE REEF OF NORMAN’S WOE
Volume 2.
FIELDING HAD AN ORDERLY
THE EYE OF THE NEEDLE
A TREATY OF PEACE
AT THE MERCY OF TIBERIUS
ALL THE WORLD’S MAD
Volume 3.
THE MAN AT THE WHEEL
A TYRANT AND A LADY
Volume 4.
A YOUNG LION OF DEDAN
HE WOULD NOT BE DENIED
THE FLOWER OF THE FLOCK
THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS
INTRODUCTION
To the FOREWORD of this book I have practically nothing to add. It
describes how the book was planned, and how at last it came to be
written. The novel--‘The Weavers’--of which it was the herald, as
one might say, was published in 1907. The reception of Donovan Pasha
convinced me beyond peradventure, that the step I took in enlarging my
field of work was as wise in relation to my art as in its effect upon my
mind, temperament and faculty for writing. I knew Egypt by study quite
as well as I knew the Dominion of Canada, the difference being, of
course, that the instinct for the life of Canada was part of my very
being itself; but there are great numbers of people who live their lives
for fifty or seventy or eighty years in a country, and have no real
instinct for understanding. There are numberless Canadians who do not
understand Canada, Englishmen who know nothing of England, and Americans
who do not understand the United States. If it is so that I have some
instinct for the life of Canada, and have expressed it to the world
with some accuracy and fidelity, it is apparent that the capacity for
understanding could not be limited absolutely to one environment. That I
understood Canada could not be established by the fact that I had spent
my boyhood there, but only by the fact that some inner vision permitted
me to see it as it really was. That inner vision, however, if it was
anything at all was not in blinders, seeing only one section of the life
of the world. Relatively it might see more deeply, more intimately in
that place where habit of life had made the man familiar with all its
detail, but the same vision turned elsewhere to fields where study
and sympathy played a devoted part, could not fail to see; though the
workman’s craft, which made material the vision, might fail.
The reception given Donovan Pasha convinced me that neither the vision
nor the craftsmanship had wholly failed, whatever the degree of success
which had been reached. Anglo-Egyptians approved the book. Its pages
passed through the hands of an Englishman who had done over twenty
years’ service in the British army in Egypt and in official positions
in the Egyptian administration, and I do not think that he made six
corrections in the whole three hundred pages. He had himself a great
gift for both music and painting; he was essentially exacting where any
literature touching Egypt was concerned; but I am glad to think that,
whatever he thought of the book as fiction, he did not find it necessary
to grant absolution as to the facts and the details of incidents in
character and life pourtrayed in Donovan Pasha.
Who the original of ‘Donovan Pasha’ was I shall never say, but he was
real. There is, however, in the House of Commons today a young and
active politician once in the Egyptian service, and who bears a most
striking resemblance to the purely imaginary portrait which Mr. Talbot
Kelly, the artist, drew of the Dicky Donovan of the book. This young
politician, with his experience in the diplomatic service, is in manner,
disposition, capacity, and in his neat, fine, and alert physical frame,
the very image of Dicky Donovan, as in my mind I perceived him; and when
I first saw him I was almost thunderstruck, because he was to me Dicky
Donovan come to life. There was nothing Dicky Donovan did or said or saw
or heard which had not its counterpart in actual things in Egypt. The
germ of most of the stories was got from things told me, or things that
I saw, heard of, or experienced in Egypt itself. The first story of
the book--‘While the Lamp Holds out to Burn’--was suggested to me by an
incident which I saw at a certain village on the Nile, which I will not
name. Suffice it to say that the story in the main was true. Also the
chief incident of the story, called ‘The Price of the Grindstone--and
the Drum’, is true. The Mahommed Seti of that story was the servant of
a friend of mine, and he did in life what I made him do in the tale. ‘On
the Reef of Norman’s Woe’, which more than one journal singled out as
showing what extraordinary work was being done in Egypt by a handful of
British officials, had its origin in something told me by my friend Sir
John Rogers, who at one time was at the head of the Sanitary Department
of the Government of Egypt.
I could take the stories one by one, and show the seeds from which this
little plantation of fiction sprang, but I will not go further than to
refer to a story called ‘Fielding Had an Orderly’, the idea of which was
contained in the experience of a British official whose courage was
as cool as his wit, and both were extremely dangerous weapons, used at
times against those who were opposed to him. When I read a book like
‘Said the Fisherman’, however, with its wonderfully intimate knowledge
of Oriental life and the thousand nuances which only the born
Orientalist can give, I look with tempered pride upon Donovan Pasha.
Still I think that it caught and held some phases of Egyptian life
which the author of ‘Said the Fisherman’ might perhaps miss, since the
observation of every artist has its own idiosyncrasy, and what strikes
one observer will not strike another.