Notes from Egypt

Dearest Alick,

We are in Ramadan now, and Omar really enjoys a good opportunity of ‘making his soul.’ He fasts and washes vigorously, prays his five times a day, goes to mosque on Fridays, and is quite merry over it, and ready to cook infidels’ dinners with exemplary good-humour. It is a great merit in Muslims that they are not at all grumpy over their piety. The weather has set in since five or six days quite like paradise. I sit on my lofty balcony and drink the sweet northerly breeze, and look at the glorious mountain opposite, and think if only you and the chicks were here it would be ‘the best o’ life.’ The beauty of Egypt grows on one, and I think it far more lovely this year than I did last. My great friend the Maōhn (he is not the Nazir, who is a fat little pig-eyed, jolly Turk) lives in a house which also has a superb view in another direction, and I often go and sit ‘on the bench’—i.e., the mastabah in front of his house—and do what little talk I can and see the people come with their grievances. I don’t understand much of what goes on, as the patois is broad and doubles the difficulty, or I would send you a Theban police report; but the Maōhn is very pleasant in his manner to them, and they don’t seem frightened. We have appointed a very small boy our bowàb, or porter—or, rather, he has appointed himself—and his assumption of dignity is quite delicious. He has provided himself with a huge staff, and he behaves like the most tremendous janissary. He is about Rainie’s size, as sharp as a needle, and possesses the remains of a brown shirt and a ragged kitchen duster as turban. I am very fond of little Achmet, and like to see him doing tableaux vivants from Murillo with a plate of broken victuals. The children of this place have become so insufferable about backsheesh that I have complained to the Maōhn, and he will assemble a committee of parents and enforce better manners. It is only here and just where the English go. When I ride into the little villages I never hear the word, but am always offered milk to drink. I have taken it two or three times and not offered to pay, and the people always seem quite pleased.

Yesterday Sheykh Yussuf came again, the first time since his brother’s death; he was evidently deeply affected, but spoke in the usual way, ‘It is the will of God, we must all die,’ etc. I wish you could see Sheykh Yussuf. I think he is the sweetest creature in look and manner I ever beheld—so refined and so simple, and with the animal grace of a gazelle. A high-bred Arab is as graceful as an Indian, but quite without the feline Geschmeidigkeit or the look of dissimulation; the eye is as clear and frank as a child’s. Mr. Ruchl, the Austrian Consul here, who knows Egypt and Arabia well, tells me that he thinks many of them quite as good as they look, and said of Sheykh Yussuf, Er ist so gemüthlich. There is a German here deciphering hieroglyphics, Herr Dümmichen, a very agreeable man, but he has gone across the river to live at el-Kurneh. He has been through Ethiopia in search of temples and inscriptions. I am to go over and visit him, and see some of the tombs again in his company, which I shall enjoy, as a good interpreter is sadly wanted in those mysterious regions.

My chest is wonderfully better these last six or seven days. It is quite clear that downright heat is what does me good. Moreover, I have just heard from M. Mounier that a good donkey is en route in a boat from El-Moutaneh—he will cost me between £4 and £5 and will enable me to be about far more than I can by merely borrowing Mustapha’s horse, about which I have scruples as he lends it to other lady travellers. Little Achmet will be my sais as well as my door-keeper, I suppose. I wish you would speak to Layard in behalf of Mustapha A’gha. He has acted as English Consul here for something like thirty years, and he really is the slave of the travellers. He gives them dinners, mounts them, and does all the disagreeable business of wrangling with the reis and dragomans for them, makes himself a postmaster, takes care of their letters and sends them out to the boats, and does all manner of services for them, and lends his house for the infidels to pray in on Sundays when a clergyman is here. For this he has no remuneration at all, except such presents as the English see fit to make him, and I have seen enough to know that they are neither large nor always gracefully given. The old fellow at Keneh who has nothing to do gets regular pay, and I think Mustapha ought to have something; he is now old and rather infirm, and has to keep a clerk to help him; and at least, his expenses should be covered. Please say this to Layard from me as my message to him. Don’t forget it, please, for Mustapha is a really kind friend to me at all times and in all ways.

February 14th.—Yesterday we had a dust-storm off the desert. It made my head heavy and made me feel languid, but did not affect my chest at all. To-day is a soft gray day; there was a little thunder this morning and a few, very few, drops of rain—hardly enough for even Herodotus to consider portentous. My donkey came down last night, and I tried him to-day, and he is very satisfactory though alarmingly small, as the real Egyptian donkey always is; the big ones are from the Hejaz. But it is wonderful how the little creatures run along under one as easy as possible, and they have no will of their own. I rode mine out to Karnak and back, and he did not seem to think me at all heavy. When they are overworked and overgalloped they become bad on the legs and easily fall, and all those for hire are quite stumped up, poor beasts—they are so willing and docile that everyone overdrives them.