'_Oh que l'hirondelle est bien la type de la vraie sagesse, elle qui
a su effacer de son existence, ces longs hivers qui glacent et
engourdissent! Dès que le soleil commence à décroître, sitôt que les
plantes jaunissent et qu'aux chaudes haleines du Zéphyr succèdent les
froides rafales de l'aquilon, elle s'envole prudemment à tire d'ailes,
vers les douces régions embaumées du Midi._'
[Illustration: 9221]
E come down the hills and back to Algiers, to find the winter in full
bloom, and the 'winter swallows' in great force, In fact, so full of
bustle is the town, and so frequent is the sight of English faces, and
the sound of English voices, that it hardly seems like the place we had
left a few weeks since.
It has been said that English people love sunshine and blue sky more
than any other nation, and that the dwellers under the 'ciel nebuleuse
du nord,' will go anywhere to seek a brighter clime; and it is a fact,
the importance of which is hardly realised in England, that the African
sun is producing a crop of English residents that is growing rapidly,
and taking firm root in the soil, in spite of siroccos, in spite of
earthquakes--without a thought of colonization in the strict sense of
the word, and without, it must be added, any particular love for the
French people.
The visitors, or tourists, are increasing also, and they are naturally,
rather vulgarising our favourite places. Thus we hear of picnics at the
Bouzareah, of balls at Mustapha, of 'trips' to Blidah by railway, and of
'excursions to the gorge of La Chiffa and back' in one day.
An amusing chapter might be written upon Algiers from the traveller's
point of view, but one or two touches will suffice, to show the easy and
familiar terms, on which our countrymen and country-women invade this
stronghold of the French; once the 'city of pirates' and the terror of
Mediterranean waters.
There is the cosmopolitan traveller, who, having 'done Europe,' finds
Algiers, of course, rather 'slow,' by contrast; and there is the very
matter-of-fact traveller, who finds it all vanity, and says,--'Take
ever so copious a stock of illusions with you to the bright Orient,
and within half-an-hour after landing, you are as bankrupt as a bank
of deposit... and the end of it all is, that this city of the "Arabian
Nights" turns out to be as unromantic as Seven Dials.' There are lady
travellers, who (enjoying special advantages by reason of their sex, and
seeing much more than Englishmen of Moorish interiors) are perhaps
best fitted to write books about this country; there are proselytizing
ladies, who come with a mission, and end by getting themselves and their
friends into trouble, by distributing tracts amongst the Moors; and
there are ladies who (when their baggage is detained at one of the
ports), endeavour to break down the barriers of official routine in an
unexpected way. 'The douane did not choose to wake up and give us our
luggage,' writes one, 'it was such a lazy douane; and though I went
again and again and said pretty things to the gendarmes, it was of no
use.'
Another form of invasion is less polite, but it has been submitted
to with tolerable grace on more than one occasion. Here is the latest
instance. *
* 'Under the Palms,' by the Hon. Lewis Wingfield. London,
1867.
'Being anxious to obtain a sketch of one of the quaint streets of the
upper town, I wandered one morning up its dark alleys and intricate
byeways; and wishing to establish myself at a window, I knocked at a
promising door, and was answered by a mysterious voice from behind a
lattice; the door opened of itself, and I marched upstairs unmindful of
evil. In the upper court I was instantly surrounded by a troup of women,
in the picturesque private dress of the Moorish ladies, unencumbered
with veil or yashmak.
'These ladies dragged at my watch-chain, and pulled my hair, until
finding myself in such very questionable society, I beat a hasty
retreat, flying down stairs six steps at a time, slamming the doors in
the faces of the houris, and eventually reaching the street in safety,
while sundry slow Mussulmans wagged their beards and said that Christian
dogs did not often enter such places with impunity.'
It is pleasant to see with what good tempered grace, both the Moors and
the French take this modern English invasion. We settle down for the
winter here and build and plant vineyards, and make merry, in the same
romping fashion that we do in Switzerland. We write to England about it,
as if the country belonged to us, and of the climate, as if we had been
the discoverers of its charms. But it is all so cozy and genial, and so
much a matter of course, that we are apt to forget its oddity; we have
friends in England who speak of Algiers with positive delight, whose
faces brighten at the very mention of its name, and who always speak of
going there, as of 'going home.'
We have principally confined our remarks to places near Algiers,
omitting all mention of Oran and Constantine, because it is impossible
to work to much purpose if we travel about, and these places are worthy
of distinct and separate visits. The longest journey that we would
suggest to artists to make in one winter, would be to the cedar forests
of Teniet-el-Had, because the scenery is so magnificent, and the forms
of the cedars themselves, are perhaps the wildest and most wonderful to
be met with in any part of the world. Hitherto, almost the only
sketches that we have seen of this mountain forest have been by our own
countrymen and countrywomen, for French artists do not as a rule go far
from Algiers.
With a few notable exceptions, * our experience of the works of
Frenchmen in Algiers, has been anything but inspiring; we have known
these artists closetted for weeks--copying and re-copying fanciful
desert scenes, such as camels dying on sandy plains, under a sky of
the heaviest opaque blue, and with cold grey shadows upon the
ground--drawing imaginary Mauresques on impossible housetops, and in
short working more from fancy than from facts; producing, it may be,
most saleable pictures, but doing themselves and their _clientelles_,
no other good thereby. It seems ungracious to speak thus of people
from whom we invariably received civility and kindness; but the truth
remains, we found them hard at work on 'pot-boilers' for exportation,
and doing, like the photographers, a flourishing trade.
* We shall not be accused of alluding in this category to
such painters as the late Horace Vernêt; or to Gérome,
Frère, and others who study here in winter time.
We should endeavour to spend most of our time in the country, if we wish
to make progress. If we stay in Algiers we shall of course be liable to
some interruptions; we shall be too comfortable and perhaps become too
luxurious. We must not dream away our time on a Turkey carpet, or on our
_terrasse_, charming though the view may be. There is too much scent of
henna, too strong a flavour of coffee and tobacco, there are, in short,
too many of the comforts of life; we had better be off to the hills,
where the air is cooler, and where we can live a free life under canvass
for a while. *
* It may not be thought very practical to suggest much
sketching in the open air, as the light is generally
considered too trying, and the glare too great, for any very
successful work in colour.
The tropical vegetation in Algeria gives continual shade and shelter,
and the style of architecture, with cool open arcades to the houses, is
admirably adapted for work; but failing the ordinary means of shelter,
much may be done under a large umbrella, or from an ordinary military
tent. In the Paris Exhibition of 1867, there were some portable, wooden
Swiss houses, that seemed constructed for sketching purposes, as they
could be taken down almost as easily as a tent, and removed from one
place to another.
A few months, spent amongst the mountains, will have a wonderfully
bracing effect on Europeans, because both the eye and the mind will
be satisfied and refreshed; although, it is a curious fact that on the
uneducated, such scenes have little, or no, influence.
We shall not easily forget 'the splendid comet of Arab civilization that
has left such a trail of light behind it,' but cannot help remarking
that neither the Arab in a state of nature, nor the Moor surrounded by
every refinement and luxury, seem to be much influenced by the grace and
beauty around them; and in this they do not stand alone, for it is, as
we said, a notable fact? that contact with what is beautiful in scenery
or in art, is of itself of little worth. *
* To reverse the position--it is a fact, which may be proved
bystatistics, that there is as much, if not more,
benevolence, forbearance, and mutual help, existing amongst
the lower classes in the 'black country,' as in any other
part of the United Kingdom.
What shall we say of the Sicilian peasant girl, born and bred on the
heights of Taormina?
What of the Swiss girl who spends her life, knee-deep in newly-mown hay?
Does beautiful scenery seem to inspire them with noble thoughts? Does
being 'face to face with Nature,' as the phrase goes, appear to give
them refined tastes, or to elevate their ideas? Does it seem to lead
to cleanliness, to godliness, or any other virtue? The answer is almost
invariably, 'No;' they must be educated to it, and neither the present
race of Arabs nor Moors are so educated. They do not seem to appreciate
the works of their fathers, and will, probably before long, fall into
the way of dressing themselves and building dwellings, after the style
of their conquerors.
With Europeans it is just the reverse, and the most educated and refined
amongst us, are learning more and more to value, what an Eastern nation
is casting off. We submit to the fashions of our time not without
murmurs, which are sounds of hope. We put up with a hideous costume and
more hideous streets--from habit or necessity as the case may be--but
even custom will not altogether deaden the senses to a love for the
beautiful. In costume this is especially noticeable.
What is it that attracts the largest audiences to 'burlesque'
representations at our theatres? Not the buffoonery, but the spectacle.
The eye robbed of its natural food, seeks it in a number of roundabout
ways--but it seeks it. What made the American people crowd to Ristori's
performances in New York, over and over again? Not the novelty, not
alone for the sake of being able to say that they had been there; but
for the delight to the eye in contemplating forms of classic beauty,
and the delight to the ear in hearing the poetry of the most musical
language in the world, nobly spoken, although but few of the audience
could understand a word. It was a libel upon the people to suggest that
their attending these performances was affectation; it was an almost
unconscious drawing out of that natural love for the beautiful, which
is implanted somewhere, in every human breast, and which, in this case
perhaps, gave the American audience a temporary relief from smartness,
and angularity of body and mind.
[Illustration: 0233]
[Illustration: 0235]