 Letter 102 of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon Luxor, April 19, 1867 Dearest Alec I have been much amused lately by a new acquaintance, who, in romances of the last century, would have been called an Arabian sage. Sheikh Abdu-Rakman lives in a village half a day's journey off, and came over to visit me and to doctor me according to the science of Galen and Avicenna. Fancy a tall, thin, graceful man, with a gray beard and liquid eyes, absorbed in studies of the obsolete kind, a doctor of theology, law, medicine, and astronomy. We spent three days in arguing and questioning. I consented to swallow a potion or two which he made up before me of very innocent materials. My friend is neither a quack nor superstitious, and two hundred years ago would have been a better physician than most in Europe. Indeed I would rather swallow his physique now than that of many an MD. I found him, like all the learned theologians I have known, extremely liberal and tolerant. You can conceive nothing more interesting and curious than the conversation of a man learned and intelligent and utterly ignorant of all our modern Western science. If I was pleased with him he was enchanted with me, and swore by God that I was a Mufti indeed, and that a man could nowhere spend time so delightfully as in conversation with me. He said he had been acquainted with two or three Englishmen who had pleased him much, but that if all Englishmen were like me the power must necessarily be in our hands, for that my achille, brain, intellect, was far above that of the men he had known. He objected to our medicine that it seemed to consist in palliatives, which he rather scorned, and aimed always at a radical cure. I told him that if he had studied anatomy he would know that radical cures were difficult of performance, and he ended by lamenting his ignorance of English or some European language, and that he had not learned our illum, science, also. Then we plunged into sympathies, mystic numbers, and the occult virtues of stones, etc., and I swallowed my mixture, consisting of licorice, cumin, and soda, just as the sun entered a particular house, and the moon was in some favorable aspect. He praised to me, his friend, a learned Jew of Cairo. I could have fancied myself listening to Abu Suleiman of Kordova in the days when we were the barbarians and the Arabs were the learned race. There is something very winning in the gentle, dignified manners of all the men of learning I have seen here, and their homely dress and habits make it still more striking. I longed to photograph my shake as he sat on the devan, pulling manuscripts out of his bosom to read me the words of El Hakim Lokman, or to overwhelm me with the authority of some physician whose very name I had never heard. The hand of the government is awfully heavy upon us. All this week the people have been working night and day cutting their unripe corn, because three hundred and ten men are to go to-morrow to work on the railroad below Sioud. This green corn is, of course, valueless to sell and unwholesome to eat, so the magnificent harvest of this year is turned to bitterness at the last moment. From a neighboring village all the men are gone, and seven more are wanted to make up the corvée. The population of Luxor is one thousand males of all ages, so you can guess how many strong men are left after three hundred and ten are taken. I don't like to think too much about seeing you and Maris next winter, for fear I should be disappointed. If I am too sick and wretched I can hardly wish you to come, because I know what a nuisance it is to be with one always coughing and panting and unable to do like other people. But if I pick up tolerably this summer I shall indeed be glad to see you and him once more. This house is falling, sadly, to decay, which produces snakes and scorpions. I sent for the hawi, snake-catcher, who caught a snake, but who can't conjure the scorpions out of their holes. One of my fat turkeys has just fallen a victim, and I am in constant fear for little Bob, only he is always in Omar's arms. I think I describe to you the festival of Sheikh Gibril, the dinner, the poets who improvised. This year I had a fine piece of declination in my honour. A real calamity is the loss of our good moan, Salim Effendi. The mutter hailed him from his steamer to go to Kenna directly with no further notice. We hoped some good luck for him, and so it would have been to a Turk. He is made overseer, to the poor people at the railway work, and only gets two pounds five shillings per month additional. He has to keep a horse and a donkey, and to buy them and to hire a saïse, and he does not know how to squeeze the fellowheen. It is true, however close you skin and onion, a clever man can always peel it again, which means that even the poorest devils at the works can be beaten into giving a little more. But our dear Salim, God bless him, will be ruined and made miserable by his promotion. I had a very woeful letter from him yesterday. CHAPTER XIV. All the chrysandum of Upper Egypt is in a state of excitement, owing to the arrival of the Patriarch of Cairo, who is now in Luxor. My neighbour, Mikael, entertains him, and Omar has been busily decorating his house and arranging the illumination of his garden, and today is gone to cook the confectionary. He being looked upon as the person best acquainted with the customs of the great. Last night the Patriarch sent for me, and I went to kiss his hand, but I won't go again. It was a very droll caricature of the thunders of the Vatican. Poor Mikael had planned that I was to dine with the Patriarch, and had borrowed my silver spoons, etc., etc., in that belief. But the representative of St. Mark is furious against the American missionaries, who have converted some twenty cops at Coose, and he could not bring himself to be decently civil to a Protestant. I found a coarse-looking man seated on a raised van smoking his chebuk. On his right were some priests on a low-devan. I went up and kissed his hand, and was about to sit by the priests, but he roughly ordered a kawas to put a wooden chair off the carpet to his left, at a distance from him, and told me to sit there. I looked round to see whether any of my neighbors were present, and I saw the consternation in their faces. So, not wishing to annoy them, I did as if I did not perceive the affront, and sat down and talked for half an hour to the priests, and then took leave. I was informed that the Catholics were Nass-Mecassine, poor, inoffensive people, and that the Muslims, at least, were of an old religion, but that the Protestants ate, meet, all the year round, like dogs, or Muslims, put in Omar, who stood behind my chair and did not relish the mention of dogs and the English religion in one sentence. As I went the patriarch called for dinner, it seems he had told Mikael he would not eat with me. It is evidently a judgment of a most signal nature that I should be snubbed for the offenses of missionaries, but it has caused some ill blood, the Qadi and Sheikh Yusuf and the rest, who all intended to do the civil to the patriarch, now won't go near him on account of his rudeness to me. He has come up in a steamer, at the postures at Spence, with a guard of Kawases, and, of course, is loud in praise of the government, though he failed in getting the mud-air to send all the Protestants of Coos to the public works, or the army. From what he said before me about the Abyssinians, and still more, from what he said to others about the English prisoners up there, I am convinced that the place to put the screw on is the Bataar Chain, patriarch's palace at Cairo, and that the priests are at the bottom of that affair. He boasted immensely of the obedience and piety of El Habesh, the Abyssinians. Saturday. Yesterday I heard a little whispered grumbling about the money demanded by the father. One of my copped neighbors was forced to sell me his whole provision of cooking-butter to pay his quota. This a little damps the exultation caused by seeing him so honored by the Effendina. One man who had heard that he had called the American missionaries beggars grumble to me, ah yes, beggars, beggars, they didn't beg of me for money. I really do think that there must be something in this dread of the Protestant movement. Evidently the Pasha is backing up the patriarch who keeps his church well apart from all other Christians, and well under the thumb of the Turks. It was pretty to hear the priests talk so politely of Islam and curse the Protestants so bitterly. We were very nearly having a row about a woman who formerly turned Muslima to get rid of an old, blind, copped husband who had been forced upon her, and was permitted to recant, I suppose, in order to get rid of the Muslim husband in his turn. However, he said, I don't care, she is the mother of my two children, and whether she is Muslim or Christian she is my wife, and I won't divorce her, but I'll send her to church as much as she likes. Thereupon the priests, of course, dropped the wrangle, much to the relief of Sheikh Yusuf in whose house she had taken up her quarters after leaving the church, and who was afraid of being drawn into a dispute. My new little Darfur boy is very funny and very intelligent. I hope he will turn out well. He seems well disposed, though rather lazy. Maybrook quarreled with a boy belonging to the quarter close to us about a bird, and both boys ran away. The Arab boy is missing still, I suppose, but Maybrook was brought back by force, swelling with passion and with his clothes most scripturally rent. He had regularly run amuck. Sheikh Yusuf lectured him on his insolence to the people of the quarter, and I wound up by saying, O my son, whither dost thou wish to go? I cannot let thee wander about like a beggar, with torn clothes and no money, that the police may take thee and put thee in the army, but say where thou desirest to go, and we will talk about it with discretion. It was at once borne in upon him that he did not want to go anywhere, and he said, I repent, but I am an ops, bring the corbache, beat me, and let me go to finish cooking the sit's dinner. I remitted the beating, with a threat that if he bullied the neighbors again he would get it at the police, and not from Omar's very inefficient arm. In half an hour he was as merry as ever. It was a curious display of negro temper, and all about nothing at all. As he stood before me he looked quite grandly tragic, and swore he only wanted to run outside and die. That was all. I wish you could have heard and understood my soirees, Eau Claire de la Lune, with Sheikh Youssef and Sheikh Abdul Rahman. How Abdul Rahman and I wrangled, and how Youssef laughed and egged us on! Abdul Rahman was wroth at my want of faith in physics generally, as well as in particular, and said I talked like an infidel, for had not God said, I have made medicine for every disease? I said, yes, but he does not say that he has told the doctors which it is, and meanwhile I say Hekmat Allah, God will cure, which can't be called an infidel sentiment. Then we got into alchemy, astrology, magic, and the rest, and Youssef vexed his friend by telling gravely stories palpably absurd. Abdul Rahman intimated that he was laughing at El-Ilam el-Muslamin, the science of the Muslims, but Youssef said, what is the El-Ilam el-Muslamin? God has revealed religion through his prophets, and we can learn nothing new on that point. But all other learning he has left to the intelligence of men, and the Prophet Muhammad said, all learning is from God, even the learning of idolaters. Why then should we Muslims shut out the light and want to remain forever like children? The learning of the Franks is as lawful as any other. Abdul Rahman was too sensible a man to be able to dispute this, but it vexed him. I am tired of telling all the plakarion of our poor people how three hundred and ten men were dragged off on Easter Monday with their bread and tools, how in four days they were all sent back from Kenna because there were no orders about them, and made to pay their boat hire. Then in five days they were sent for again. Meanwhile the harvest was cut green, and the wheat is lying out unthreshed to be devoured by birds and rats, and the men's bread was wasted and spoiled with the hauling in and out of the boats. I am obliged to send camels twenty miles for charcoal because the ababda won't bring it to market any more, the tax is too heavy. Butter too we have to buy secretly, none comes into the market. When I remember the lovely smiling landscape which I first beheld from my windows, swarming with beasts and men, and look at the dreary waste, now I feel the foot of the Turk heavy indeed. Where there were fifty donkeys there is but one. Camels, horses, all are gone, not only the horned cattle, even the dogs are more than decimated, and the hawks and vultures seem to me fewer. Mankind has no food to spare for hangers on. The donkeys are sold, the camels confiscated, and the dogs dead, the one sole advantage. Meat is cheap as every one must sell to pay taxes and no one has money to buy. I am implored to take cheap and poultry for what I will give. To Mrs. Austin, Luxor May twenty-third, eighteen-sixty-seven, dearest mutter. I have only time for a few words by Ghegar Pasha, who goes early tomorrow morning. My boat arrived all right and brought your tin box. The books and toys are very welcome. The latter threw the darfur into ecstasies, and he got into disgrace for playing with the sit instead of minding some business on hand. I fear I shall spoil him, he is so extremely engaging in such a baby. He is still changing his teeth, so cannot be more than eight. At first I did not like him, and feared he was sullen, but it was the usual cos, fear, the word that is always in one's ears. And now that is gone, he is always coming hopping in to play with me. He is extremely intelligent and has a pretty baby-nigger face. The darfur people are, as you know, an independent and brave people, and by no means savages. I can't help thinking how pleased Rainy would be with the child. He asked me to give him the picture of the English sultana out of the illustrated London news, and has pasted it inside the lid of his box. I am better, as usual, since the hot weather has begun. The last six days. I shall leave this in a week, I think, and Mustapha and Yusuf will go with me to Cairo. Yusuf was quite enchanted with your note to him. His eyes glistened, and he took an envelope to keep it carefully. Omar said such a letter is like a hagab, amulet, and Yusuf said truly it is, and I could never have one with more baraka, blessing, or more like the virtue, which went out of Jesus. If ever I wore one at all, I will never part with it. He had a very pretty festival for the Sheikh, whose tomb you have a photograph of, and I spent a very pleasant evening with Sheikh Abed el-Muta'ul, who used to scallot me, but now we are like brothers. I found him very clever and better informed than any Arab I have met, who is quite apart from all Franks. I was astonished to find that he abandée dans mon sens in my dispute with Sheikh Abdul Rahman, and said it was the duty of Muslims to learn what they could from us, and not to stick to the old routine. On Sunday the patriarch snubbed me, and would not eat with me, and on Monday a Wali, saint, picked out tit-bits for me with his own fingers, and went with me inside the tomb. The patriarch has made a blunder with his progress. He has come ostentatiously as the protege and prenam of the pasha, and he has eaten and beaten the felaeen. The cops of Luxor have had to pay fifty pounds for the honor of his presence, besides no end of sheep, poultry, butter, etc. If I were of a proselytizing mind I could make converts of several whose pockets and backs are smarting, and the American missionaries will do it. Of course the Muslims sympathize with the converts to a religion which has no idols and no monks, and whose priests marry like other folk, so they are the less afraid. I hear there are now fifty Protestants at Qus, and the patriarch was furious because he could not beat them. Omar cooked a grand dinner for him last night for our neighbor Mikhail, and the eating was not over till two in the morning. Our government should manage to put the screw on him about our Abyssinian prisoners. I dare not say who told me all he said, but he was a truthful man and a Christian. The patriarch answered me sharply when I asked about the state of the religion in Abyssinia that they were lovers of the faith and his obedient children. Whenever there is mischief among the cops the priests are at the bottom of it. If the patriarch chose those people would be let go, and so it would be, but he hates all Europeans bitterly. I should like to have the revue des Dumans of all things, but I don't know how it is to come here or what the postage would cost. They send nothing but letters above Cairo by post, as all goes on men's backs. Insha'Allah I am the bearer of good news, cries the postman, as he flings the letter over the wall. I am so glad of the chance of getting news to you quick by Giyafar Pasha, who came here like a gentleman, alone, without a retinue. He is on his way from two years in the Sudan, where he was absolute Pasha. He is very much liked and respected, and seems a very sensible and agreeable man, quite unlike any Turkish bigwig I have seen. Great potentate as he is, he made Yusuf Mustafa and Abdullah sit down, and was extremely civil and simple in his manners. End of Letter 104, Read by Subella Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. Letter 105 of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon, Benny Suif, June 30th, 1867. Dearest Alec, I write on the chance that this may go safe by post, so that you may not think me lost. I left Luxor on May 31st, got to Syut, half way in a week, and have ever since been battling with an unceasing, furious North and Northeast wind. I feel, like the much-traveled Odysseus, and have seen villages and men, unlike him, however my companions have neither grumbled nor deserted, though it is a bad business for them, having received their money at the rate of about twenty days' pay, for which they must take me to Cairo. They have eaten all, and are now obliged to stop and make bread here, but they are as good-humored as if all were well. My fleet consisted of my Dahabia, flagship, tender, a kiasa, cargo boat, for my horse and size, wherein were packed two extremely poor, shriveled old widows, going to Cairo to see their sons, now in garrison there, lots of hard bread, wheat, flour, jars of butter, onions and lentils, for all the lads of my family studying at Gamal-Azhar, besides, in my box, queer little stores of long-horted money for those megawarine students of Gamal-Azhar. Don't you wish you could provide for Maris with a sack of bread, a basket of onions, and one pound sixteen chillings? The handsome brown Sheikh el-Arab, Hassan, wanted me to take him, but I knew him to be a fast man, and asked use of how I could avoid it without breaking the laws of hospitality. So my father, the old Sharif, told Hassan that he did not choose his daughter to travel with a wine-viber and a frequenter of loose company. Under my convoy sailed two or three little boats with family parties. One of these was very pretty, whose steersman was a charming little fat girl of five years old. All these hoped to escape being caught and worried, by the way, by belonging to me, and they dropped off at their several villages. I am tolerably well better than when I started in spite of the wind. Poor Rais Mohammed had a very bad attack of ophthalmalia, and sat all of a heap, groaning all day and night, and protesting, I am a Muslim, equivalent to God's will be done. At one place I was known, and had a lot of sick to see, and a civil man killed a sheep and regaled us all with meat and fatira. The part of the river in which we were kept by the high wind is made cheerful by the custom of the harem, being just as free to mix with men as Europeans, and I quite enjoyed the pretty girls' face, and the gossip with the woman who came to fill their water-jars and peep in at the cabin windows, which, by the way, they always ask leave to do. The sheikh El Hawara gave me two sheep, which are in the cargo boat with four others, all presents, which Omar intends you to eat at Cairo. The sheikh is very anxious to give you an entertainment at his palace if you come up the river, with horse-riding, feasting, and dancing girls. In fact I am charged with many messages to El Kabir, the great master. End of Letters 105. Read by Cebella Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information please visit LibriVox.org. Letter 106 of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon, Cairo, July 8, 1867. Dearest Alec, I arrive today after thirty-eight days voyage, one month of ceaseless, furious wind. My men had a hard pull down against it. However, I am feeling better than when I left Luxor. Omar has just brought a whole cargo of your letters, the last of the twenty-sixth June. Let me know your plans. If you can go up the river I might send the boat beforehand to Minia. So far there is a railway now, which would break the neck of the tedious part of the voyage for you if you are pressed for time. I must send this off at once to catch early post tomorrow. Excuse haste I write in all the bustle of arrival. End of Letter 106. Read by Cebella Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information please visit LibriVox.org. Letter 107 of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. To Mrs. Austin, Bullock, July 28, 1867. Dearest Mutter, I know I can write nothing more sure to please you than that I am a good deal better. It has been intensely hot and the wind very worrying, but my cough has greatly abated and I do not feel so weak as I did. I am anchored here in the river at my old quarters and have not yet been ashore owing to the hot wind and the dust, which of course are far less troublesome here on the river. I have seen but very few people and have but one neighbor in a boat anchored near mine, a very bewitching Circassian, the former slave of a rich Pasha, now married to her respectable regalman, and staying in his boat for a week or two. She is young and pretty and very amiable, and we visit each other often and get on very well indeed. She is a very religious little lady and was much relieved when I assured her it was not part of my daily devotions to curse the prophet and revile the noble Koran. I am extremely glad that the English have given hearty welcome to the Amir el-Mornamin, commander of the faithful. It will have an excellent effect in all Muslim countries. A queer little Indian from Delhi who had been converted to Islam and spent four years at Mecca acting as dragoman to his own countrymen, is now settled at Karnak. I sent for him and he came shaking in his shoes. I asked why he was afraid. Oh, perhaps I was angry about something, and he was my Raya, and I might have him beaten. I cried out at him, Ask pardon of God, O man, how could I beat thee any more than thou couldst beat me? Have we not laws, and art thou not my brother, and the Raya of our queen, as I am and no more? Masha'Allah! exclaimed the six or eight fellow-heen who were waiting for physics in prodigious admiration and wonder. And did we not tell thee that the face of this sit brings good fortune and not calamity and stick? I found the little Indian had been a hospital servant in Calcutta, and was practicing a little physics on his own account. So I gave him a few drugs especially for bad eyes, which he knew a good deal about, and we became very good friends. He was miserable when I left and would have liked me to have taken him as a volunteer servant. I have come to a curious honor, Iqbin b'aym lebin g'adam lebin beisumdan. Several parties of real Arabs came with their sick on camels from the desert above Edfou. I asked that last what brought them, and they told me that a shayr, bard, or poet, had gone about singing my praises, as how the daughter of the English was a flower on the heads of the Arabs, and those who were sick should go and smell the perfume of the flower, and rejoice in the brightness of the light, noreen my name. Rather a high-flown way of mentioning the exhibition of a black dose. But we don't feel that a man makes a fool of himself here when he has romantic in his talk, even about an old woman. It is no use to talk of the state of things here. All classes are suffering terribly under the fearful taxation, the total ruin of the felaen, and the destruction of trade brought about by this much extolled pasha. My grocer is half-ruined by the improvements made à l'instaur du pari, long military straight roads cut through the heart of Cairo. The owners are expropriated, and there is an end of it. Only those who have half a house left are to be pitied, because they are forced to build a new front to the street on a Frankish model which renders it uninhabitable to them and unsayable. The rivermen are excited about the crews gone to Paris, for fear they should be forcibly detained by the Sultana Franzauea. I assured them that all will come home safe and happy with a good bachchiche. Many of them think it a sort of degradation to be taken for the Parisians to stare at like an antica, a word which here means what our people call a curiosity. I go on very well with my two boys. Maybrook washes very well and acts as marmitan. Darfur is housemaid and waiter in his very tiny way. He is only troublesome as being given to dirty his clothes in an incredibly short time. His account of the school system of Darfur is curious. How, when the little boy has achieved excellence, he is carried home in triumph to his father's house, who makes a festival for the master and boys. I suppose you will be surprised to hear that the Darfur niggers can nearly all read and write. Poor little Darfur apologized to me for his ignorance. He was stolen, he said, when he had only just begun to go to school. I wish an English or French servant could hear the instructions given by an aleem here to the serving men. How he would resent them! When thou hast tired out thy back, do not put thy hand behind it. Do not shirk the burden. Remember that thou art not only to obey, but to please thy master, who spread thou eatest, and much more of the like. In short, a standard of religious obedience and fidelity fit for the highest Catholic idea of the religious life. On the few who seek instruction it does have an effect. I am sure Omar looks on his service as a religious duty, but of course they are few, and those who don't seek it themselves get none. It is curious how all children here are left utterly without any religious instruction. I don't know whether it is in consequence of this that they grow up so very devout. END OF LETTER 107 Read by Cibela Denton. All Librivox files are in the public domain. For more information please visit Librivox.org. Letter 108 of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. Read for Librivox.org into the public domain. To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon, Bulak, July 29, 1867. Dearest Alec. Your letter has arrived to my great relief. Only I fear you are not at all well. About Maurice. If he wishes to see the Nile, let him come. But if he is only to be sent because of me, let it alone. I know I am oppressive company now, and am apt, like Mr. Woodhouse and Emma, to say, let us all have some gruel. We know nothing here of a prohibition of gunpowder. At this moment some Europeans are popping away incessantly at Mbaba just opposite. Evidently the Pasha wants to establish a right of search on the Nile. That absurd speech about slaves he made in Paris shows that. With three thousand in his harem, several slave regiments, and lots of gangs on all his sugar plantations, his impudence is wonderful. He is himself the greatest living slave trader as well as owner. My lads are afraid to go out alone for fear of being snapped up by co-osses and taken to the army or the sugar-works. You will be sorry to hear that your stalwart friend Hassan has had fifty blows on each foot-soul and had to pay six pounds. He was taking two donkeys to Shepard's hotel before sunrise for a French lady and gentleman to go to the pyramids. When a co-oss met him, seized the donkeys, and on Hassan's refusal to give them up, spat on the side-saddle and reviled Hassan's own harem and began to beat him with his corbache. Hassan got impatient, took the co-oss up in his arms, and threw him on the ground, and went on. Presently four co-osses came after him, seized him, and took him to the Zaptea, police office, where they all swore he had beaten them, torn their clothes, and robbed one of an imaginary gold watch, all valued at twenty-four pounds. After the beating he was carried to the prison in chains, and there sentenced to be a soldier. A friend, however, interfered and settled the matter for six pounds. Hassan sends you his best salam. Last night was very pretty, all the boats starting for the muleed of Saeed el-Betaoui at Tata. Every boat had a sort of pyramid of lanterns, and the Darwishes chanted, and the worldly folks had profane music and singing. And I sat and looked and listened, and thought how many thousand years ago just the same thing was going on in honor of Bubastus. To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon, Bulak, August 7th, 1867. My dearest Alec. Two sailors of mine went last year to Paris in the Dahabia for the empress, and are just come back. When I see them I expect I shall have some fun out of their account of their journey. Poor Adam's father died of grief at his son's going, nothing would persuade him that Adam would come back safe, and having a heart complaint he died. And now the lad is back, well and with fine clothes, but as much cut up I hear by his father's death. Please send me a tremendous whistle, mine is not loud enough to wake Omar at the other end of the cabin. A boat's one's whistle or something in the line of the last trump is needed to wake sleeping Arabs. My pretty neighbor has gone back into the town. She was a nice little woman and amused me a great deal. I see that a good, respectable Turkish harem is an excellent school of useful accomplishments, needlework, cookery, etc. But I observed that she did not care a bit for the pasha, by whom she had a child, but was extremely fond of her lady, as she politely called her, also that like every Circassian I ever knew, she regarded being sold as quite a desirable fate, and did not seem sorry for her parents as the Negroes always are. The heat has been prodigious, but I'm a good deal better. Yesterday the Nile had risen above ten cubits and the cutting of the Khalid took place. The river is pretty full now, but they say it will go down fast this year. I don't know why. It looks very beautiful, blood red and tossed into waves by the north wind fighting the rapid stream. Good-bye, dear Alec. I hope to hear a better account of your health soon. End of Letter 109, read by Cibella Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. Letter 110 of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. To Mrs. Austin, Bullock, August 8, 1867. Dearest Mutter. Two of my sailors were in Paris and have just come home. I hear they are dreadfully shocked by the dancing and by the French women of the lower class generally. They sit in the coffee-shops like shears, poets, and tell of the wonders of Paris to admiring crowds. They are enthusiastic about the courtesy of the French police, who actually did not beat them when they got into a quarrel but discolored the Frankish men instead and accompanied them back to the boat quite politely. The novelty and triumph of not being beaten was quite intoxicating. There is such a curious sight of a crowd of men carrying huge blocks of stone up out of a boat. One sees exactly how the stones were carried in ancient times. They sway their bodies altogether like one great lithe animal with many legs, and hum a low chan to keep time. It is quite unlike any carrying heavy weights in Europe. It is getting dusk and too windy for candles, so I must say good night and eat the dinner which Darfur has pressed upon me two or three times. He is a pleasant little creature, so lively and so gentle. It is washing-day. I wish you could see Mubrook squatting out there, lathering away at the clothes with his superb black arms. He is a capital washer and a fair cook, but an utter savage. The foregoing letter reached England the day after the death of my grandmother, Mrs. Austen, which was a great shock to my mother and made her ill and unhappy, so it was settled that my brother Maurice should go out and spend the winter with her on the Nile. End of Letters 110. Read by Cibela Denton. All LibriVox vials are in the public domain. For more information please visit LibriVox.org. Letter 111 of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff-Gordon. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. To Sir Alexander Duff-Gordon, Bulak, September 7, 1867. Dearest Alec. Many thanks for your letter and for all the trouble you have taken. I wish you were better. There is such a group all stitching away at the big new sale. Omar, the Raiese, two or three volunteers, some old sailors of mine, and little Darfur. If I die I think you must have that tiny nigger over. He is such a merry little soul. I am sure you would love him. He is quite a civilized being and has a charming temper, and he seems very small to be left alone in the world. I hope Maurice is not of the faction of the Anyees of this generation. I am more and more of Omar's opinion, who said with a pleased sigh as we sat on the deck under some lovely palm trees in the bright moonlight, moored far from all human dwellings, how sweet are the quiet places of the world. I wonder when Europe will drop the absurd delusion about Christians being persecuted by Muslims. It is absolutely the other way, here at all events. The Christians know that they will always get backed by some consul or other, and it is the Muslims who go to the wall invariably. The brute of a patriarch is resolved to continue his persecution of the converts, and I was urged the other day by a shake to go to the shake of Islam himself, and ask him to demand equal rights for all religions, which is the law on behalf of these Coptic Protestants. Everywhere the Ulima have done what they could to protect them, even at Siut, where the American missionaries had caused them, the Ulimas, a great deal of annoyance on a former occasion. No one in Europe can conceive how much the Cops have got the upper hand in the villages. They are backed by the government, and they know that the Europeans will always side with them. September 13. Omar is crazy with delight at the idea of Maurice's arrival, and Rais Mohammed is planning what men to take who can make a Fantasia and not ask too much wages. Let me know what boat Maurice comes by that I may send Omar to Alexandria to meet him. Omar begs me to give you and City Rainey his best salam and his assurance that he will take great care of the young master and keep him very tight. I think Maurice will be diverted with small Darfur. Maybrook now really cooks very fairly under Omar's orders, but he is beyond belief uncouth, and utters the wildest howls now that his voice is grown big and strong like himself. Moreover, he won't be spoken to, as our servants say, but he is honest, clean, and careful. I should not have thought any human creature could remain so completely a savage in a civilized community. I rather respect his savage hauteur, especially as it is combined with truth and honesty. End of Letter 111. Read by Cibella Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. Letter 112 of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon, Bullock, Boat, Mary Louise, October 17, 1867. Dearest Alec, you must not be wroth with me, because I have not written for a long time. I have been ill, but I'm much better. Omar will go down to Alexandria to meet Maurice on Monday. My boat is being painted, but is nearly finished. As soon as it is done, I shall move back into her. I got out into a little canjia, but it swarmed with bugs and wasps, and was too dirty, so I moved yesterday into a good boat belonging to a drageman, and hoped to be back in my own by Sunday. But oh Lord, I got a hold of the barber himself turned painter, and as the little canjia was moored alongside the uranium in order to hold all the mattresses, carpets, et cetera, I was his victim. First it was a request for three pounds to buy paint. None but the best of paint is fitting for a noble person like thee, and that thou knowest is costly, and I am thy servant, and would do the honour. Very well, say I, take the money and see, O man, that the paint is of the best, or thy back-sheesh will be bad also. Well he begins, and then rushes in to say, Come, O Bay, O Pasha, and behold the brilliancy of the white paint, like milk, like glass, like the full moon. I go and say, Masha'Allah, but now be so good as to work fast, for my son will be here in a few days, and nothing is ready. Fatal remark. Masha'Allah, bismillah, may the Lord spare him, may God prolong thy days. Let me advise thee how to keep the eye from him, for doubtless thy son is beautiful as a memlook of one thousand purses. Remember to spit in his face when he comes on board, and revile him aloud that all the people may hear thee, and compel him to wear torn and dirty clothes when he goes out. And how many children hast thou, and our master, thy master? Is he well, et cetera, et cetera? You are Allah, Allah's well with us, say I, but by the prophet paint, O Ma'alim, exactly the German meister, and do not break my head any more. But I was forced to take refuge at a distance from Hajj Ali's tongue. Read aloud the story of the barber, and you will know exactly what Ma'alim Hajj Ali is. And just as I got out of my boat, and he had begun, the painter whom I had last year, and with whom I was dissatisfied, went to the shake of the painters, and persuaded him to put my man in prison, for working too cheap. That was at daybreak. So I sent my raiz to the shake to inform him that if my man did not return by next day at daybreak, I would send for an European painter and force the shake to pay the bill. Of course my man came. My steersman, Hassan, and a good man, Hossein, who can wash and is generally nice and pleasant, arrived from al-Bastu'i a few days ago, and are waiting here till I want them. Poor little ugly black Hassan has had his house burnt down in his village, and lost all the clothes which he had bought with his wages. They were very good clothes, some of them, and a heavy loss. He is my raiz's brother, and a good man, clean and careful and quiet, better than my raiz even. They are a respectable family. Big stout Hossein owes me two hundred piastras which he is to work out, so I have still five men and a boy to get. I hope a nice boy, called Hederby, the lizard will come. They don't take pay till the day before we sail, except the raiz and Abdu-Sadig, who are permanent. But Hassan and Hossein are working away as merrily as if they were paid. People growl at the Bakshish, but they should also remember what a quantity of service one gets for nothing here, and for which, oddly enough, no one dreams of asking Bakshish. Once a week we shift the anchors for fear of their silting over, and six or eight men work for an hour. Then the mast is lowered, twelve or fourteen men work at this, and nobody gets a farthing. The other day Omar met in the market an agreeable merchant, an Abyssinian fresh from his own country, which he had left because of the tyranny of Kassah, alias Todoris, the sultan. The merchant had brought his wife and concubines to live here. His account is that the mass of the people are delighted to hear that the English are coming to conquer them, as they hope, and that everyone hates the king except two or three hundred scamps who form his bodyguard. He had seen the English prisoners, who, he says, are not ill-treated, but certainly in danger, as the king is with difficulty restrained from killing them by the said scamps, who fear the revenge of the English, also that there is one woman imprisoned with the native female prisoners. Hassan, the donkey boy, when he was marmitan in Cairo, knew the sultan Todoris. He was the only man who could be found to interpret between the king of Abyssinia and Muhammad Ali Pasha, whom Todoris had come to visit. The merchant also expressed a great contempt for the patriarch, and for their matram, or metropolis, whom the English papers call the Abuna. Abuna is Arabic for our father. The man is a Kyrene copped, and was a hanger-on of two English missionaries. They were really Germans here, and he is more than commonly a rascal and a hypocrite. I know a respectable Jew whom he had robbed of all his merchandise, only Ras Ali forced the matram to discourage. Pray, what was all that nonsense about the Armenian patriarch of Jerusalem writing to Todoris? What could he have to do with it? The Coptic patriarch, whose place is Cairo, could do it if he were forced. At last my boat is finished, so to-morrow Omar will clean the windows, and on Saturday move in the cushions, et cetera, and me, and on Sunday go to Alexandria. I hear the dreadful voice of Haj Ali, the painter, outside, and will retire before he gets to the cabin door, for fear he should want to bore me again. I do hope Maris will enjoy his journey. Everyone is anxious to please him. The sheikh of the Hawara sent his brother to remind me to stop at his palace near Ghirga that he might make a fantasia for my son. So Maris will see real Arab riding, and jireed, and sheep roasted whole and all the rest of it. The sheikh is the last of the great Arab chieftains of Egypt, and has thousands of Felaheen and a large income. He did it for Lord Spencer and for the Duke of Rutland, and I shall get as good a fantasia, I have no doubt. Perhaps at Kenna Maris had better not see the dancing, for Zainab and Latifah, or terribly fascinating, they are such pleasant jolly girls as well as pretty and graceful, but old Um as Zain, mother of beauty, so called on account of his hideousness, will want us to eat his good dinner. END OF LETTER 112 Read by Cibella Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. LETTER 113 Of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon, Urena, Bulak, October 21st, 1867. DEAREST ALEC So many things for the boxes and their contents. My slaves are enchanted with all that the great master has sent. Darfur hugged the horse-cloth and ecstasy that he should never again be cold at night. The waist-cuts of printed stuff and the red flannel shirts are gone to be made up, so my boys will be like Pasha's this winter, as they told the raiz. He is awfully perturbed about the evil eye. Thy boat, Masha'Allah, is such as to carry envy from all beholders. Now when they see a sun with thee, Bishmila, Masha'Allah, like a flower, barely, I fear, I fear greatly from the eye of the people. We have bought a tambourine and a tarabuka, and are on the look-out for a man who can sing well, so as to have Fantasia on board. October 22. I hear today that the Pasha sent a telegram hushed Eigenhandig to Kus, in consequence whereof one Stephanos, an old cop of high character, many years in government employ, was put in chains and hurried off within twenty minutes to Fazoglu with two of his friends, for no other crime than having turned Presbyterian. This is quite a new idea in Egypt, and we all wonder why the Pasha is so anxious to brush the coat of the cop to Patriarch. We also hear that the people up in the Syed are running away by wholesale, utterly unable to pay the new taxes and to do the work exacted. Even here the beating is fearful. My raiz has had to send all his months' wages to save his aunt and his sister-in-law, both widows, from the Korbash. He did not think so much of the blows, but of the shame. Those are women, lone women, from whence can they get the money? To Mrs. Ross, Bullock, November 3, 1867, dearest Janet. Maurice arrived on Friday week, and is as happy as can be. He says he never felt so well and never had such good snipe-shooting. Little Darfur's amusement at Maurice is boundless. He grins at him all the time he waits at table. He marvels at his dirty boots, at his bathing, at his much-walking-out shooting, at his knowing no Arabic. The dyke burst the other day up Bar-Yusuf, and we were nearly all swept away by the furious rush of water. My little boat was upset, while three men in her were securing the anchor, and two of them were nearly drowned. Though they swim like fish, all the dahabiyas were rattled and pounded awfully, and in the middle of the fracas at Noonday a steamer ran into us quite deliberately. I was rather frightened when the steamer bumped us and carried away the iron supports of the awning, and they cursed our fathers into the bargain, which I thought needless. The English have fallen into such contempt here that one no longer gets decent civility from anything in the myrie, government. Elanye has sent us a lovely little skiff, and I have had her repaired and painted, so Maurice is set up for shooting and boating. Darfur calls him the son of a crocodile because he loves the water, and generally delights in him hugely, and all my men are enchanted with him. End of Letter 114, read by Cebella Denton. All Librivox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit Librivox.org. Letter 115 of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. Read for Librivox.org into the public domain. To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon, Luxor, December 20th, 1867. Dearest Alec, we arrived here all safe three days ago. I think of starting for Nubia directly after Christmas Day, which we must keep here. We have lovely weather. Maurice is going with a friend of my friends, Abedoui, to shoot. I hope among the Ababdah he will get some gazelle shooting. I shall stop at Sayalia to visit the sheikh's mother, and with them Maurice could go for some days into the desert. As to crocodiles, inshallah, we will eat their hearts, and not they ours. You may rely on it that Maurice is on the head and in the eye of all of my crew, and will not be allowed to bathe in unclean places. Maurice Mohammed stopped him at Gebed Abdul Foda. You would be delighted to see how different he looks. All his clothes are too tight now. He says he is thoroughly happy, and that he was never more amused than when with me, which I think very flattering. Half of the old house at Luxor fell down into the temple beneath, six days before I arrived. So there is an end of the Maison de France, I suppose. It might be made very nice again at a small expense, but I suppose the consul will not do it, and certainly I shall not unless I want it again. Nothing now remains solid but the three small front rooms and the big hall with two rooms off it. All the part I lived in is gone, and the steps, so one cannot get in. Luckily Yusuf had told Mohammed to move my little furniture into the part which is solid, having a misgiving of the rest. He has the most exquisite baby and exact miniature of himself. He is in a manner my godson, being named Noor Eddin Hishan Abu El-Hajjaj, to be called Noor like me. End of letter 115, read by Cebella Denton. All LibriVox bios are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. Letter 116 of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon, on board the Urania, January 1868. Dearest Alec. Your letter of the 10th December most luckily came on to Edfu 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 Aswan, and there are no more marshes, but in revenge there are quails and kata, the beautiful little sand-grouse. I eat all Maurice's 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 Esna we fell in with Handsome Hassan, who is now shake of the Ababda, as his elder brother died. He gave us a letter to his brother at Sayela, 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 Bedouin women don't veil or shut up, and to judge by the men ought to be very handsome. Both Hassan and Abu Gord, who was with him, preached the same sermon as my learned friend Abu Rahman had done at Luxor. Why, in God's name, had I left my son without a wife? They are sincerely shocked at such indifference to a son's happiness. Aswan, Ten Ramadan I have no almanac, but you will be able to know the date by your own red pocket-book, which determined the beginning of Ramadan at Luxor this year. They received a telegram fixing it for Thursday, but Sheikh Yusuf said that he was sure the astronomers in London knew best and made it Friday. Tomorrow 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 hither, too. We are very comfortable with a capital crew who are all devoted to Marees. The shake of the Ababdah has promised to join us, if he can, when he has convoied some four hundred Bashi-Bazooks up to Wadi-Halfa, who are being sent up because the English are in Abyssinia. End of Letter 116 Read by Subella Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. Letter 117 of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon, Luxor, April 1868. 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. Marees also flourishes in the broil and protests against moving yet. He speaks a good deal of Arabic and his friends with everyone. It is Salaam-Alaikum-Yamaris on all sides. A Belgian has died here and his two slaves, a very nice black boy and an Abyssinian girl, got my little valet, Darfur, 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 copped who is a consular agent at Kenna. 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 Mustafa's harem till I go. I enjoyed Nubia immensely, and longed to go and live with the descendants of a great Ras, head, chief, who entertained me at Ibrim, 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 Sheikh Yusuf. 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 we'll see us start downstream. 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 Esna, second hand for 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 a fellowheen. He is everybody's brother or son. End of Letter 117 Read by Cibella Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. Letter 118 Of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon, Minia, May 1868 Dearest Alec, We are just arriving at Minia, once the railway will take letters quickly. We dined at Kenna and at Sioud with some friends, and had Fantasia at Kenna. Omar desires his dutiful salams 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 Esna lecture Maurice about evil ways, but she was an old friend of mine, and gave good and sound advice. Everyone is delighted about Abyssinia. Great 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 Kenna, one Pham, a cop, who has turned Presbyterian, and has induced a hundred others at Kuth to do likewise. An American missionary is their minister. Pham was sent off to the Sudan 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, wrapped 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 Jacose 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. End of LETTER 118 To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon, Bulak, June 14th, 1868. Dearest Alec, 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 damned niggers. All the crew kiss 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 Philahine, eating a good deal of what he called muck with great enjoyment, walking arm in arm with a crazy darwish, fetching home a bride at night, and swearing lustily by the prophet. The good manners of the Arab canai have rubbed off the very disagreeable varnish which he got at Brussels. Dr. Patterson wants me to go to Beirut, or one of the Greek aisles, 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 haji d'Abus 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. Cofer. 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 Beirut. 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 Ahmed Aga Abed El-Sadegh, a very good friend of ours at Aswan, coaxing and patting the eled, boy, when he dined here the other day, and laughing immoderately at Maurice's nonsense. He is one of the MPs for Aswan, and a wealthy and much respected man in the Said. 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. Gyafar Pasha baksishtmi and Abedah of crimson silk and gold, also a basket of coffee. I was obliged to accept them as he sent his son with him, 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 Khorosko on the Nile. Gyafar is viceroy of the Sudan, 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 Darfur expresses his intention of going with Maurice. Thou must give me to the young man Bakshish, as he puts it, because I have plenty of sense and shall tell him what to do. This is the little rascal's sauce. Terrence's slaves are true to the life here. End of Letter 119, read by Cibela Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. Letter 120 of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon, Bulak, October 22, 1868. The Unlucky Journey to Syria almost cost me my life. The climate is absolute poison to consumptive people. In ten days after I arrived the doctor told me to settle my affairs, for I had probably only a few days to live, and certainly should never recover. However, I got better and was carried on board the steamer, but am too weak for anything. We were nearly shipwrecked, coming back, owing to the Russian captain having his bride on board and not minding his ship. We bumped and scraped and rolled very unpleasantly. At Beirut the Sisters of Charity wouldn't nurse a Protestant, nor the Prussians a non-lutheran. But Omar and Darfur nursed me better than Europeans ever do. Little Blackie was as sharp about the physic as a born doctor's boy when Omar was taking his turn of sleep. I did not like the few Syrians I saw at all. End of Letter 120, read by Cibela Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. Letter 121 of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon, Bullock, November 6, 1868. Dearest Alec, I am sure you will rejoice to hear that I am really better. I now feel so much like living on a bit longer that I will ask you to send me a cargo of medicines. I didn't think it worth while before to ask for anything to be sent, to me, that could not be forwarded to Hades. But my old body seems very tough, and I fancy I still have one or two of my nine lives left. I hope to sail in a very few days. Maurice is going up to Cairo, so I send this by him. Yesterday was Little Rainy's birthday, and I thought very longingly of her. The photo of Layton's sketch of Janet I like very much. End of Letter 121. Read by Cibella Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. Letter 122 of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon, Aswan, January 25, 1869. We have been here ten days, and I find the air quite the best for me. I cough much less, only I am weak in short of breath. I have got a most excellent young raïse for my boat, and a sailor who sings like a nightingale. Indeed he is not a sailor at all, but a professional Cairo singer who came up with me for fun. He draws crowds to hear him, and at Esna the congregation prayed for me in the mosque that God might reward me for the pleasure I had provided for them. Lucy, desiring the prayers of this congregation for the welfare of the lady who gave me her opera-box last Saturday. If prayers could avail to cure, I ought to get well rapidly. At Luxor Omar killed the sheep he had vowed, and Mustafa and Mohammed each killed two, as thank-offerings for my life, and all the darwishes held two great zikirs in a tent pitched behind the boat, and drummed enchanted and called on the Lord for two whole nights, and every man in my boat fasted Ramadan severely from Omar and the crew to the little boys. I think Darfur was the most meritorious of all, because he has such a gargantuan appetite, but he fasted his thirty days bravely and rubbed his little nose in the dust energetically in prayer. On Christmas Day I was at Esna, it was warm and fine, and I made Fantasia and had the girls to dance. Zeneb and Hilalaya claimed to be my own special gazawe, so to speak, my ballerine de Camara, and they did their best. Now I did long to transport the whole scene before your eyes. Ramadan warbling intense love songs and beating on a tiny tambourine, while Zeneb danced before him and gave the pantomime to his song, and the sailors and girls and respectable merchants set pel-mel all around on the deck, and the player on the rabab drew from it a wail like that of ISIS for dead Osiris. I never quite know whether it is now or four thousand years ago, or even ten thousand, when I am in the dreamy intoxication of a real Egyptian Fantasia. Nothing is so antique as the gazawe, the real dancing girls. They are still subject to religious ecstasies of a very curious kind, no doubt inherited from the remotest antiquity. Ask any learned pundit to explain to you the czar, it is really curious. Now that I am too ill to write, I feel very sorry that I did not persist and write on the beliefs of Egypt, in spite of your fear that the learned would cut me up, for I honestly believe that knowledge will die with me which few others possess. You must recollect that the learned know books, and I know men, and what is still more difficult, women. The cataract is very bad this year, owing to want of water in the Nile, and to the shameful conduct of the Ma'un here. The cataract men came to me and prayed me to give them my voice before the mutur, which I will do. Allah Edin Bey seems a decent man and will perhaps remove the rascal whose robberies on travelers are notorious, and his oppression of the poor savages who pull the boats up odious. Two boats have been severely damaged, and my friend the raïse of the cataract, the one I threatened to shoot last year and who has believed in me ever since, does not advise me to go up, though he would take me for nothing he swears if I wished. So as the air is good here and Maurice is happy with his companions, I will stay here. I meant to have discharged my men, but I have grown so fond of them, having so good a set, that I can't bring myself to save twenty pounds by turning them adrift, when we are all so happy and comfortable, and the poor fellows are just marrying new wives with their wages. Good-bye, dearest Alec, forgive a scrawl, for I am very weak all over, fingers in all. Best love to my darling Rhaeny. Three boats have little girls of five to eight on board, and I do envy them so. I think Maurice had better go home to you when we get to Cairo. He ought to be doing something. End of Letter 122 Read by Cibela Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. Letter 123 of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon, Bullock, June 15, 1869. Dearest Alec. Do not think of coming here. Indeed it would be almost too painful to me to part from you again, and as it is I can patiently wait for the end among people who are kind and loving enough to be comfortable, without too much feeling of the pain of parting. The leaving Luxor was rather a distressing scene, as they did not think to see me again. The kindness of all the people was really touching, from the caddy who made ready my tomb among his own family, to the poorest fellow heen. Omar sends you his most heartfelt thanks, and begs that the boat may remain registered at the consulate in your name for his use and benefit. The Prince has appointed him his own drageman. But he is sad enough, poor fellow, all his prosperity does not console him for the loss of the mother he found in the world. But at Luxor wept bitterly, and said, poor I, poor my children, poor all the people, and kissed my end passionately, and the people at Esna asked leave to touch me for blessing, and every one sent delicate bread and their best butter and vegetables and lands. They are kinder than ever, now that I can no longer be of any use to them. If I live till September I will go up to Esna, where the air is softest and I cough less. I would rather die among my own people in the Said than here. You must forgive this scrawl, dearest. Don't think, please, of sending Mari's out again. He must begin to work now, or he will never be good for anything. Can you thank the Prince of Wales for Omar, or shall I write? He was most pleasant and kind, and the Princess too. She is the most perfectly simple-mannered girl I ever saw. She does not even try to be civil like other great people, but asks blunt questions, and looks at one so heartily, with her clear, honest eyes, that she must win all hearts. They are more considerate than any people I have seen, and the Prince, instead of being gracious, was, if I may say so, quite respectable in his manner. He is very well-bred and pleasant, and has the honest eyes that makes one sure he has a kind heart. My sailors were so proud at having the honour of rowing him in our own boat, and of singing to him. I had a very good singer in the boat. Please send some little present for my Rais. He is such a good man. He will be pleased at some little thing from you. He is half-Turk, and seems like whole one. Maurice will have told you all about us. Good-bye for the present, dearest Alec. END OF LETTER 123 Read by Cibela Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. Letter 124 of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon, Helwan, opposite Bedrashain, July 9, 1869. DEAREST ALEC. Don't make yourself unhappy, and don't send out a nurse. And above all, don't think of coming. I am nursed as well as possible. My two Raises, Ramadan and Yusuf, are strong and tender, and Omar is as admirable as ever. The worst is, I am so strong. I repeat, I could not be better cared for anywhere than by my good and loving crew. Tell Maurice how they all cried, and how Abed El-Halim foreswore drink and hashish. He is very good too, but my Raises are incomparable. God bless you. I wish I had seen your dear face once more, but not now. I would not have you here now on any account. END OF LETTER 124 END OF LETTERS FROM EGYPT by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. END OF LETTERS FROM EGYPT by Isabella Denton in Carrollton, Georgia for LibriVox.org