Lucie Duff Gordon
To Dowager Lady Duff Gordon, LUXOR, January 8, 1865.
DEAR OLD LADY,
I received your kind letter in the midst of the drumming and piping and chanting and firing of guns and pistols and scampering of horses which constitute a religious festival in Egypt. The last day of the moolid of Abu-l-Hajjaj fell on the 1st January so you came to wish me ‘May all the year be good to thee’ as the people here were civil enough to do when I told them it was the first day of the Frankish year. (The Christian year here begins in September.)
I was very sorry to hear of poor Lady Theresa’s (Lady Theresa Lewis) death. I feel as if I had no right to survive people whom I left well and strong when I came away so ill. As usual the air of Upper Egypt has revived me again, but I am still weak and thin, and hear many lamentations at my altered looks. However, ‘Inshallah, thou wilt soon be better.’
Why don’t you make Alexander edit your letters from Spain? I am sure they would be far more amusing than mine can possibly be—for you can write letters and I never could. I wish I had Miss Berry’s though I never did think her such a genius as most people, but her letters must be amusing from the time when they were written. Alexander will tell you how heavy the hand of Pharaoh is upon this poor people. ‘My father scourged you with whips but I will scourge you with scorpions,’ did not Rehoboam say so? or I forget which King of Judah. The distress here is frightful in all classes, and no man’s life is safe.
Ali Bey Rheda told me the other day that Prince Arthur is coming here and that he was coming up with him after taking a Prince of Hohenzollern back to Cairo. There will be all the fantasia possible for him here. Every man that has a horse will gallop him to pieces in honour of the son of the Queen of the English, and not a charge of powder will be spared. If you see Layard tell him that Mustapha A’gha had the whole Koran read for his benefit at the tomb of Abu-l-Hajjaj besides innumerable fathahs which he said for him himself. He consulted me as to the propriety of sending Layard a backsheesh, but I declared that Layard was an Emeer of the Arabs and a giver, not a taker of backsheesh.