Notes from Egypt

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.