Lucie Duff Gordon
To Mrs. Ross, LUXOR, February 7, 1865.
Dearest Janet,
It is quite heartrending about my letters. I have ‘got the eye’ evidently. The black slave of the poor dragoman who died in my house is here still, and like a dog that has lost his master has devoted himself to me. It seems nobody’s business to take him away—as the Kadee did the money and the goods—and so it looks as if I should quietly inherit poor ugly Khayr. He is of a degree of ugliness quite transcendent, with teeth filed sharp ‘in order to eat people’ as he says, but the most good-humoured creature and a very fair laundry-maid. It is evidently no concern of mine to send him to be sold in Cairo, so I wait the event. If nobody ever claims him I shall keep him at whatever wages may seem fit, and he will subside into liberty. Du reste, the Maōhn here says he is legally entitled to his freedom. If the new French Consul-General will let me stay on here I will leave my furniture and come down straight to your hospitable roof in Alexandria en route for Europe. I fear my plan of a dahabieh of my own would be too expensive, the wages of common boatmen now are three napoleons a month. M. Prévost Paradol, whose company has been a real bonne fortune to me, will speak to the Consul-General. I know all Thebes would sign a round-robin in my favour if they only knew how, for I am very popular here, and the only Hakeen. I have effected some brilliant cures, and get lots of presents. Eggs, turkeys, etc., etc., it is quite a pleasure to see how the poor people instead of trying to sponge on one are anxious to make a return for kindness. I give nothing whatever but my physick. These country people are very good. A nice young Circassian Cawass sat up with a stranger, a dying Englishman, all night because I had doctored his wife. I have also a pupil, Mustapha’s youngest boy, a sweet intelligent lad who is pining for an education. I wish he could go to England. He speaks English very well and reads and writes indifferently, but I never saw a boy so wild to learn. Is it difficult to get a boy into the Abbassieh college? as it is gratuitous I suppose it is. I quite grieve over little Ach met forced to dawdle away his time and his faculties here.