Letters from Egypt, Lucy Duff Gordon [best color ebook reader .txt] 📗

little furniture to the part which is solid, having a misgiving of the rest. He has the most exquisite baby, an exact minature of himself. He is in a manner my godson, being named Noor ed-Deen Hishan Abu-l-Hajjaj, to be called _Noor_ like me.


January, 1868: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

_To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon_.

ON BOARD THE _URANIA_,
_January_, 1868.

DEAREST ALICK,

Your letter of the 10 December most luckily came on to Edfoo by the American Consul-General, who overtook us there in his steamer and gave me a lunch. Maurice was as usual up to his knees in a distant swamp trying to shoot wild geese. Now we are up close to Assouan, and there are no more marshes; but _en revanche_ there are quails and _kata_, the beautiful little sand grouse. I eat all that Maurice shoots, which I find very good for me; and as for Maurice he has got back his old round boyish face; he eats like an ogre, walks all day, sleeps like a top, bathes in the morning and has laid on flesh so that his clothes won't button. At Esneh we fell in with handsome Hassan, who is now Sheykh of the Abab'deh, as his elder brother died. He gave us a letter to his brother at Syaleh, up in Nubia; ordering him to get up a gazelle hunt for Maurice, and I am to visit his wife. I think it will be pleasant, as the Bedaween women don't veil or shut up, and to judge by the men ought to be very handsome. Both Hassan and Abu Goord, who was with him, preached the same sermon as my learned friend Abdurrachman had done at Luxor. 'Why, in God's name, I left my son without a wife?' They are sincerely shocked at such indifference to a son's happiness.

ASSOUAN,
10 _Ramadan_.

I have no almanach, but you will be able to know the date by your own red pocketbook, which determined the beginning of Ramadan at Luxor this year. They received a telegram fixing it for Thursday, but Sheykh Yussuf said that he was sure the astronomers in London knew best, and made it Friday. To-morrow we shall make our bargain, and next day go up the Cataract--Inshallah, in safety. The water is very good, as Jesus the black pilot tells me. He goes to the second Cataract and back, as I intend to stay nearly two months in Nubia. The weather here is perfect now, we have been lucky in having a lovely mild winter hitherto. We are very comfortable with a capital crew, who are all devoted to Maurice. The Sheykh of the Abab'deh has promised to join us if he can, when he has convoyed some 400 Bashibazouks up to Wady Halfa, who are being sent up because the English are in Abyssinia.


April, 1868: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

_To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon_.

LUXOR,
_April_, 1868.

DEAREST ALICK,

I have been too weak to write, but the heat set in three days ago and took away my cough, and I feel much better. Maurice also flourishes in the broil, and protests against moving yet. He speaks a good deal of Arabic and is friends with everyone. It is _Salaam aleykoum ya maris_ on all sides. A Belgian has died here, and his two slaves, a very nice black boy and an Abyssinian girl, got my little varlet, Darfour, to coax me to take them under my protection, which I have done, as there appeared a strong probability that they would be 'annexed' by a rascally Copt who is a Consular agent at Keneh. I believe the Belgian has left money for them, which of course they would never get without someone to look after it, and so I have Ramadan, the boy, with me, and shall take the girl when I go, and carry them both to Cairo, settle their little business, and let them present a sealed-up book which they have to their Consul there, according to their master's desire, and then marry the girl to some decent man. I have left her in Mustapha's hareem till I go.

I enjoyed Nubia immensely, and long to go and live with the descendants of a great _Ras_ (head, chief,) who entertained me at Ibreem, and who said, like Ravenswood, 'Thou art come to a fallen house, and there is none to serve thee left save me.' It was a paradise of a place, and the Nubian had the grand manners of a very old, proud nobleman. I had a letter to him from Sheykh Yussuf.

Since I wrote the above it has turned quite chilly again, so we agreed to stay till the heat really begins. Maurice is so charmed with Luxor that he does not want to go, and we mean to let the boat and live here next winter. I think another week will see us start down stream. Janet talks of coming up the Nile with me next year, which would be pleasant. I am a little better than I have been the last two months. I was best in Nubia but I got a cold at Esneh, second hand from Maurice, which made me very seedy. I cannot go about at all for want of breath. Could you send me a chair such as people are carried in by two men? A common chair is awkward for the men when the banks are steep, and I am nervous, so I never go out. I wish you could see your son bare-legged and footed, in a shirt and a pair of white Arab drawers, rushing about with the fellaheen. He is everybody's 'brother' or 'son.'


May, 1868: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

_To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon_.

MINIEH,
_May_, 1868.

DEAREST ALICK,

We are just arriving at Minieh whence the railway will take letters quickly. We dined at Keneh and at Siout with some friends, and had fantasia at Keneh. Omar desires his dutiful salaams to you and hopes you will be satisfied with the care he has taken of 'the child.' How you would have been amused to hear the girl who came to dance for us at Esneh lecture Maurice about evil ways, but she was an old friend of mine, and gave good and sound advice.

Everyone is delighted about Abyssinia. 'Thank God our Pasha will fear the English more than before, and the Sultan also,' and when I lamented the expense, they all exclaimed, 'Never mind the expense, it is worth more than ten millions to you; your faces are whitened and your power enlarged before all the world; but why don't you take us on your way back.'

I saw a very interesting man at Keneh, one Faam, a Copt, who has turned Presbyterian, and has induced a hundred others at Koos to do likewise: an American missionary is their minister. Faam was sent off to the Soudan by the Patriarch, but brought back. He is a splendid old fellow, and I felt I looked on the face of a Christian martyr, a curious sight in the nineteenth century: the calm, fearless, rapt expression was like what you see in noble old Italian pictures, and he had the perfect absence of 'doing pious' which shows the undoubting faith. He and the Mufti, also a noble fellow, sparred about religion in a jocose and friendly tone which would be quite unintelligible in Exeter Hall. When he was gone the Mufti said, 'Ah! we thank them, for though they know not the truth of Islam, they are good men, and walk straight, and would die for their religion: their example is excellent; praise be to God for them.'


June 14, 1868: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

_To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon_.

BOULAK,
_June_ 14, 1868.

DEAREST ALICK,

The climate has been odious for Egypt--to shiver in cold winds of June on the Nile seems hard. Maurice inherits my faculty for getting on with 'd------d niggers'; all the crew kissed him on both cheeks and swore to come back again in the winter; and up the country he was hand and glove with all the fellaheen, eating a good deal of what he called 'muck' with great enjoyment, walking arm in arm with a crazy derweesh, fetching home a bride at night and swearing lustily by the Prophet. The good manners of the Arab _canaille_, have rubbed off the very disagreeable varnish which he got at Brussels.

Dr. Patterson wants me to go to Beyrout or one of the Greek isles for a change. I am very feeble and short of breath--but I will try the experiment. Would you be shocked if a nigger taught Maurice? One Hajjee Daboos I know to be a capital Arabic scholar and he speaks French like a Parisian, and Italian also, only he is a real nigger and so is the best music-master in Cairo. _Que faire_? it's not catching, as Lady Morley said, and I won't present you with a young mulatto any more than with a young _brave Belge_. I may however find someone at Beyrout. Cairo is in such a state of beggary that all educated young men have fled. Maurice has no sort of idea why a nigger should not be as good as anyone else, but thinks perhaps you might not approve.

You would have stared to see old Achmet Agha Abd el-Sadig, a very good friend of ours at Assouan, coaxing and patting the _weled_ (boy) when he dined here the other day, and laughing immoderately at Maurice's nonsense. He is one of the M.P.'s for Assouan, and a wealthy and much respected man in the Saeed. The Abyssinian affair is an awful disappointment to the Pasha; he had laid his calculations for something altogether different, and is furious. The Coptic clergy are ready to murder us. The Arabs are all in raptures. 'God bless the English general, he has frightened our Pasha.'

Giafar Pasha backsheeshed me an _abbayeh_ of crimson silk and gold, also a basket of coffee. I was obliged to accept them as he sent his son with them, and to refuse would have been an insult, and as he is the one Turk I do think highly of I did not wish to affront him. It was at Luxor on his way to Khartoum. He also invited Maurice to Khartoum, and proposed to send a party to fetch him from Korosko, on the Nile. Giafar is Viceroy of the Soudan, and a very quiet man, who does not 'eat the people.'

My best love to Janet, I'll write soon to her, but I am _lazy_ and Maurice is worse. Omar nearly cried when Maurice went to Alexandria for a week. 'I seem to feel how dull we shall be without him when he goes away for good,' said he, and Darfour expresses his intention of going with Maurice. 'Thou must give me to the young man backsheesh,' as he puts it, 'because I have plenty of sense and shall tell him what to do.' That is the little rascal's sauce. Terence's slaves are true to the life here.


October 22, 1868: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

_To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon_.

BOULAK,
_October_ 22, 1868.

DEAREST ALICK,

The unlucky journey to Syria almost cost me my life. The climate is absolute poison to consumptive people.