Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo
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William Makepeace Thackeray >> Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo
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Towards evening we arrived at the town of Atfeh--half land, half
houses, half palm-trees, with swarms of half-naked people crowding
the rustic shady bazaars, and bartering their produce of fruit or
many-coloured grain. Here the canal came to a check, ending
abruptly with a large lock. A little fleet of masts and country
ships were beyond the lock, and it led into THE NILE.
After all, it is something to have seen these red waters. It is
only low green banks, mud-huts, and palm-clumps, with the sun
setting red behind them, and the great, dull, sinuous river
flashing here and there in the light. But it is the Nile, the old
Saturn of a stream--a divinity yet, though younger river-gods have
deposed him. Hail! O venerable father of crocodiles! We were all
lost in sentiments of the profoundest awe and respect; which we
proved by tumbling down into the cabin of the Nile steamer that was
waiting to receive us, and fighting and cheating for sleeping-
berths.
At dawn in the morning we were on deck; the character had not
altered of the scenery about the river. Vast flat stretches of
land were on either side, recovering from the subsiding
inundations: near the mud villages, a country ship or two was
roosting under the date-trees; the landscape everywhere stretching
away level and lonely. In the sky in the east was a long streak of
greenish light, which widened and rose until it grew to be of an
opal colour, then orange; then, behold, the round red disc of the
sun rose flaming up above the horizon. All the water blushed as he
got up; the deck was all red; the steersman gave his helm to
another, and prostrated himself on the deck, and bowed his head
eastward, and praised the Maker of the sun: it shone on his white
turban as he was kneeling, and gilt up his bronzed face, and sent
his blue shadow over the glowing deck. The distances, which had
been grey, were now clothed in purple; and the broad stream was
illuminated. As the sun rose higher, the morning blush faded away;
the sky was cloudless and pale, and the river and the surrounding
landscape were dazzlingly clear.
Looking ahead in an hour or two, we saw the Pyramids. Fancy my
sensations, dear M -: two big ones and a little one -
! ! !
There they lay, rosy and solemn in the distance--those old,
majestical, mystical, familiar edifices. Several of us tried to be
impressed; but breakfast supervening, a rush was made at the coffee
and cold pies, and the sentiment of awe was lost in the scramble
for victuals.
Are we so blases of the world that the greatest marvels in it do
not succeed in moving us? Have society, Pall Mall clubs, and a
habit of sneering, so withered up our organs of veneration that we
can admire no more? My sensation with regard to the Pyramids was,
that I had seen them before: then came a feeling of shame that the
view of them should awaken no respect. Then I wanted (naturally)
to see whether my neighbours were any more enthusiastic than
myself--Trinity College, Oxford, was busy with the cold ham:
Downing Street was particularly attentive to a bunch of grapes:
Figtree Court behaved with decent propriety; he is in good
practice, and of a Conservative turn of mind, which leads him to
respect from principle les faits accomplis: perhaps he remembered
that one of them was as big as Lincoln's Inn Fields. But, the
truth is, nobody was seriously moved . . . And why should they,
because of an exaggeration of bricks ever so enormous? I confess,
for my part, that the Pyramids are very big.
After a voyage of about thirty hours, the steamer brought up at the
quay of Boulak, amidst a small fleet of dirty comfortless cangias,
in which cottons and merchandise were loading and unloading, and a
huge noise and bustle on the shore. Numerous villas, parks, and
country-houses had begun to decorate the Cairo bank of the stream
ere this: residences of the Pasha's nobles, who have had orders to
take their pleasure here and beautify the precincts of the capital;
tall factory chimneys also rise here; there are foundries and
steam-engine manufactories. These, and the pleasure-houses, stand
as trim as soldiers on parade; contrasting with the swarming,
slovenly, close, tumble-down, Eastern old town, that forms the
outport of Cairo, and was built before the importation of European
taste and discipline.
Here we alighted upon donkeys, to the full as brisk as those of
Alexandria, invaluable to timid riders, and equal to any weight.
We had a Jerusalem pony race into Cairo; my animal beating all the
rest by many lengths. The entrance to the capital, from Boulak, is
very pleasant and picturesque--over a fair road, and the wide-
planted plain of the Ezbekieh; where are gardens, canals, fields,
and avenues of trees, and where the great ones of the town come and
take their pleasure. We saw many barouches driving about with fat
Pashas lolling on the cushions; stately-looking colonels and
doctors taking their ride, followed by their orderlies or footmen;
lines of people taking pipes and sherbet in the coffee-houses; and
one of the pleasantest sights of all,--a fine new white building
with HOTEL D'ORIENT written up in huge French characters, and
which, indeed, is an establishment as large and comfortable as most
of the best inns of the South of France. As a hundred Christian
people, or more, come from England and from India every fortnight,
this inn has been built to accommodate a large proportion of them;
and twice a month, at least, its sixty rooms are full.
The gardens from the windows give a very pleasant and animated
view: the hotel-gate is besieged by crews of donkey-drivers; the
noble stately Arab women, with tawny skins (of which a simple robe
of floating blue cotton enables you liberally to see the colour)
and large black eyes, come to the well hard by for water: camels
are perpetually arriving and setting down their loads: the court
is full of bustling dragomans, ayahs, and children from India; and
poor old venerable he-nurses, with grey beards and crimson turbans,
tending little white-faced babies that have seen the light at
Dumdum or Futtyghur: a copper-coloured barber, seated on his hams,
is shaving a camel-driver at the great inn-gate. The bells are
ringing prodigiously; and Lieutenant Waghorn is bouncing in and out
of the courtyard full of business. He only left Bombay yesterday
morning, was seen in the Red Sea on Tuesday, is engaged to dinner
this afternoon in the Regent's Park, and (as it is about two
minutes since I saw him in the courtyard) I make no doubt he is by
this time at Alexandria, or at Malta, say, perhaps, at both. Il en
est capable. If any man can be at two places at once (which I
don't believe or deny) Waghorn is he.
Six o'clock bell rings. Sixty people sit down to a quasi-French
banquet: thirty Indian officers in moustaches and jackets; ten
civilians in ditto and spectacles; ten pale-faced ladies with
ringlets, to whom all pay prodigious attention. All the pale
ladies drink pale ale, which, perhaps, accounts for it; in fact the
Bombay and Suez passengers have just arrived, and hence this
crowding and bustling, and display of military jackets and
moustaches, and ringlets and beauty. The windows are open, and a
rush of mosquitoes from the Ezbekieh waters, attracted by the wax
candles, adds greatly to the excitement of the scene. There was a
little tough old Major, who persisted in flinging open the windows,
to admit these volatile creatures, with a noble disregard to their
sting--and the pale ringlets did not seem to heed them either,
though the delicate shoulders of some of them were bare.
All the meat, ragouts, fricandeaux, and roasts, which are served
round at dinner, seem to me to be of the same meat: a black
uncertain sort of viand do these "fleshpots of Egypt" contain. But
what the meat is no one knew: is it the donkey? The animal is
more plentiful than any other in Cairo.
After dinner, the ladies retiring, some of us take a mixture of hot
water, sugar, and pale French brandy, which is said to be
deleterious, but is by no means unpalatable. One of the Indians
offers a bundle of Bengal cheroots; and we make acquaintance with
those honest bearded white-jacketed Majors and military Commanders,
finding England here in a French hotel kept by an Italian, at the
city of Grand Cairo, in Africa.
On retiring to bed you take a towel with you into the sacred
interior, behind the mosquito curtains. Then your duty is, having
tucked the curtains closely around, to flap and bang violently with
this towel, right and left, and backwards and forwards, until every
mosquito should have been massacred that may have taken refuge
within your muslin canopy.
Do what you will, however, one of them always escapes the murder;
and as soon as the candle is out the miscreant begins his infernal
droning and trumpeting; descends playfully upon your nose and face,
and so lightly that you don't know that he touches you. But that
for a week afterwards you bear about marks of his ferocity, you
might take the invisible little being to be a creature of fancy--a
mere singing in your ears.
This, as an account of Cairo, dear M-, you will probably be
disposed to consider as incomplete: the fact is, I have seen
nothing else as yet. I have peered into no harems. The magicians,
proved to be humbugs, have been bastinadoed out of town. The
dancing-girls, those lovely Alme, of whom I had hoped to be able to
give a glowing and elegant, though strictly moral, description,
have been whipped into Upper Egypt, and as you are saying in your
mind-- Well, it ISN'T a good description of Cairo: you are
perfectly right. It is England in Egypt. I like to see her there
with her pluck, enterprise, manliness, bitter ale, and Harvey
Sauce. Wherever they come they stay and prosper. From the summit
of yonder Pyramids forty centuries may look down on them if they
are minded; and I say, those venerable daughters of time ought to
be better pleased by the examination, than by regarding the French
bayonets and General Bonaparte, Member of the Institute, fifty
years ago, running about with sabre and pigtail. Wonders he did,
to be sure, and then ran away, leaving Kleber, to be murdered, in
the lurch--a few hundred yards from the spot where these
disquisitions are written. But what are his wonders compared to
Waghorn? Nap massacred the Mamelukes at the Pyramids: Wag has
conquered the Pyramids themselves; dragged the unwieldy structures
a month nearer England than they were, and brought the country
along with them. All the trophies and captives that ever were
brought to Roman triumph were not so enormous and wonderful as
this. All the heads that Napoleon ever caused to be struck off (as
George Cruikshank says) would not elevate him a monument as big.
Be ours the trophies of peace! O my country! O Waghorn! Hae tibi
erunt artes. When I go to the Pyramids I will sacrifice in your
name, and pour out libations of bitter ale and Harvey Sauce in your
honour.
One of the noblest views in the world is to be seen from the
citadel, which we ascended to-day. You see the city stretching
beneath it, with a thousand minarets and mosques,--the great river
curling through the green plains, studded with innumerable
villages. The Pyramids are beyond, brilliantly distinct; and the
lines and fortifications of the height, and the arsenal lying
below. Gazing down, the guide does not fail to point out the
famous Mameluke leap, by which one of the corps escaped death, at
the time that His Highness the Pasha arranged the general massacre
of the body.
The venerable Patriarch's harem is close by, where he received,
with much distinction, some of the members of our party. We were
allowed to pass very close to the sacred precincts, and saw a
comfortable white European building, approached by flights of
steps, and flanked by pretty gardens. Police and law-courts were
here also, as I understood; but it was not the time of the Egyptian
assizes. It would have been pleasant, otherwise, to see the Chief
Cadi in his hall of justice; and painful, though instructive, to
behold the immediate application of the bastinado.
The great lion of the place is a new mosque which Mehemet Ali is
constructing very leisurely. It is built of alabaster of a fair
white, with a delicate blushing tinge; but the ornaments are
European--the noble, fantastic, beautiful Oriental art is
forgotten. The old mosques of the city, of which I entered two,
and looked at many, are a thousand times more beautiful. Their
variety of ornament is astonishing,--the difference in the shapes
of the domes, the beautiful fancies and caprices in the forms of
the minarets, which violate the rules of proportion with the most
happy daring grace, must have struck every architect who has seen
them. As you go through the streets, these architectural beauties
keep the eye continually charmed: now it is a marble fountain,
with its arabesque and carved overhanging roof, which you can look
at with as much pleasure as an antique gem, so neat and brilliant
is the execution of it; then, you come to the arched entrance to a
mosque, which shoots up like--like what?--like the most beautiful
pirouette by Taglioni, let us say. This architecture is not
sublimely beautiful, perfect loveliness and calm, like that which
was revealed to us at the Parthenon (and in comparison of which the
Pantheon and Colosseum are vulgar and coarse, mere broad-shouldered
Titans before ambrosial Jove); but these fantastic spires, and
cupolas, and galleries, excite, amuse, tickle the imagination, so
to speak, and perpetually fascinate the eye. There were very few
believers in the famous mosque of Sultan Hassan when we visited it,
except the Moslemitish beadle, who was on the look-out for
backsheesh, just like his brother officer in an English cathedral;
and who, making us put on straw slippers, so as not to pollute the
sacred pavement of the place, conducted us through it.
It is stupendously light and airy; the best specimens of Norman art
that I have seen (and surely the Crusaders must have carried home
the models of these heathenish temples in their eyes) do not exceed
its noble grace and simplicity. The mystics make discoveries at
home, that the Gothic architecture is Catholicism carved in stone--
(in which case, and if architectural beauty is a criterion or
expression of religion, what a dismal barbarous creed must that
expressed by the Bethesda meeting-house and Independent chapels
be?)--if, as they would gravely hint, because Gothic architecture
is beautiful, Catholicism is therefore lovely and right,--why,
Mahometanism must have been right and lovely too once. Never did a
creed possess temples more elegant; as elegant as the Cathedral at
Rouen, or the Baptistery at Pisa.
But it is changed now. There was nobody at prayers; only the
official beadles, and the supernumerary guides, who came for
backsheesh. Faith hath degenerated. Accordingly they can't build
these mosques, or invent these perfect forms, any more. Witness
the tawdry incompleteness and vulgarity of the Pasha's new temple,
and the woful failures among the very late edifices in
Constantinople!
However, they still make pilgrimages to Mecca in great force. The
Mosque of Hassan is hard by the green plain on which the Hag
encamps before it sets forth annually on its pious peregrination.
It was not yet its time, but I saw in the bazaars that redoubted
Dervish, who is the master of the Hag--the leader of every
procession, accompanying the sacred camel; and a personage almost
as much respected as Mr. O'Connell in Ireland.
This fellow lives by alms (I mean the head of the Hag). Winter and
summer he wears no clothes but a thin and scanty white shirt. He
wields a staff, and stalks along scowling and barefoot. His
immense shock of black hair streams behind him, and his brown
brawny body is curled over with black hair, like a savage man.
This saint has the largest harem in the town; he is said to be
enormously rich by the contributions he has levied; and is so
adored for his holiness by the infatuated folk, that when he
returns from the Hag (which he does on horseback, the chief Mollahs
going out to meet him and escort him home in state along the
Ezbekieh road), the people fling themselves down under the horse's
feet, eager to be trampled upon and killed, and confident of heaven
if the great Hadji's horse will but kick them into it. Was it my
fault if I thought of Hadji Daniel, and the believers in him?
There was no Dervish of repute on the plain when I passed; only one
poor wild fellow, who was dancing, with glaring eyes and grizzled
beard, rather to the contempt of the bystanders, as I thought, who
by no means put coppers into his extended bowl. On this poor
devil's head there was a poorer devil still--a live cock, entirely
plucked, but ornamented with some bits of ragged tape and scarlet
and tinsel, the most horribly grotesque and miserable object I ever
saw.
A little way from him, there was a sort of play going on--a clown
and a knowing one, like Widdicombe and the clown with us,--the
buffoon answering with blundering responses, which made all the
audience shout with laughter; but the only joke which was
translated to me would make you do anything but laugh, and shall
therefore never be revealed by these lips. All their humour, my
dragoman tells me, is of this questionable sort; and a young
Egyptian gentleman, son of a Pasha, whom I subsequently met at
Malta, confirmed the statement, and gave a detail of the practices
of private life which was anything but edifying. The great aim of
woman, he said, in the much-maligned Orient, is to administer to
the brutality of her lord; her merit is in knowing how to vary the
beast's pleasures. He could give us no idea, he said, of the wit
of the Egyptian women, and their skill in double entendre; nor, I
presume, did we lose much by our ignorance. What I would urge,
humbly, however, is this--Do not let us be led away by German
writers and aesthetics, Semilassoisms, Hahnhahnisms, and the like.
The life of the East is a life of brutes. The much maligned
Orient, I am confident, has not been maligned near enough; for the
good reason that none of us can tell the amount of horrible
sensuality practised there.
Beyond the Jack-pudding rascal and his audience, there was on the
green a spot, on which was pointed out to me a mark, as of blood.
That morning the blood had spouted from the neck of an Arnaoot
soldier, who had been executed for murder. These Arnaoots are the
curse and terror of the citizens. Their camps are without the
city; but they are always brawling, or drunken, or murdering
within, in spite of the rigid law which is applied to them, and
which brings one or more of the scoundrels to death almost every
week.
Some of our party had seen this fellow borne by the hotel the day
before, in the midst of a crowd of soldiers who had apprehended
him. The man was still formidable to his score of captors: his
clothes had been torn off; his limbs were bound with cords; but he
was struggling frantically to get free; and my informant described
the figure and appearance of the naked, bound, writhing savage, as
quite a model of beauty.
Walking in the street, this fellow had just before been struck by
the looks of a woman who was passing, and laid hands on her. She
ran away, and he pursued her. She ran into the police-barrack,
which was luckily hard by; but the Arnaoot was nothing daunted, and
followed into the midst of the police. One of them tried to stop
him. The Arnaoot pulled out a pistol, and shot the policeman dead.
He cut down three or four more before he was secured. He knew his
inevitable end must be death: that he could not seize upon the
woman: that he could not hope to resist half a regiment of armed
soldiers: yet his instinct of lust and murder was too strong; and
so he had his head taken off quite calmly this morning, many of his
comrades attending their brother's last moments. He cared not the
least about dying; and knelt down and had his head off as coolly as
if he were looking on at the same ceremony performed on another.
When the head was off, and the blood was spouting on the ground, a
married woman, who had no children, came forward very eagerly out
of the crowd, to smear herself with it,--the application of
criminals' blood being considered a very favourable medicine for
women afflicted with barrenness,--so she indulged in this remedy.
But one of the Arnaoots standing near said, "What, you like blood,
do you?" (or words to that effect). "Let's see how yours mixes
with my comrade's." And thereupon, taking out a pistol, he shot
the woman in the midst of the crowd and the guards who were
attending the execution; was seized of course by the latter; and no
doubt to-morrow morning will have HIS head off too. It would be a
good chapter to write--the Death of the Arnaoot--but I shan't go.
Seeing one man hanged is quite enough in the course of a life. J'y
ai ete, as the Frenchman said of hunting.
These Arnaoots are the terror of the town. They seized hold of an
Englishman the other day, and were very nearly pistolling him.
Last week one of them murdered a shopkeeper at Boulak, who refused
to sell him a water-melon at a price which he, the soldier, fixed
upon it. So, for the matter of three-halfpence, he killed the
shopkeeper; and had his own rascally head chopped off, universally
regretted by his friends. Why, I wonder, does not His Highness the
Pasha invite the Arnaoots to a dejeuner at the Citadel, as he did
the Mamelukes, and serve them up the same sort of breakfast? The
walls are considerably heightened since Emin Bey and his horse
leapt them, and it is probable that not one of them would escape.
This sort of pistol practice is common enough here, it would
appear; and not among the Arnaoots merely, but the higher orders.
Thus, a short time since, one of His Highness's grandsons, whom I
shall call Bluebeard Pasha (lest a revelation of the name of the
said Pasha might interrupt our good relations with his country)--
one of the young Pashas being rather backward in his education, and
anxious to learn mathematics, and the elegant deportment of
civilised life, sent to England for a tutor. I have heard he was a
Cambridge man, and had learned both algebra and politeness under
the Reverend Doctor Whizzle, of--College.
One day when Mr. MacWhirter, B.A., was walking in Shoubra Gardens,
with His Highness the young Bluebeard Pasha, inducting him into the
usages of polished society, and favouring him with reminiscences of
Trumpington, there came up a poor fellah, who flung himself at the
feet of young Bluebeard, and calling for justice in a loud and
pathetic voice, and holding out a petition, besought His Highness
to cast a gracious eye upon the same, and see that his slave had
justice done him.
Bluebeard Pasha was so deeply engaged and interested by his
respected tutor's conversation, that he told the poor fellah to go
to the deuce, and resumed the discourse which his ill-timed outcry
for justice had interrupted. But the unlucky wight of a fellah was
pushed by his evil destiny, and thought he would make yet another
application. So he took a short cut down one of the garden lanes,
and as the Prince and the Reverend Mr. MacWhirter, his tutor, came
along once more engaged in pleasant disquisition, behold the fellah
was once more in their way, kneeling at the august Bluebeard's
feet, yelling out for justice as before, and thrusting his petition
into the Royal face.
When the Prince's conversation was thus interrupted a second time,
his Royal patience and clemency were at an end. "Man," said he,
"once before I bade thee not to pester me with thy clamour, and lo!
you have disobeyed me,--take the consequences of disobedience to a
Prince, and thy blood be upon thine own head." So saying, he drew
out a pistol and blew out the brains of that fellah, so that he
never bawled out for justice any more.
The Reverend Mr. MacWhirter was astonished at this sudden mode of
proceeding: "Gracious Prince," said he, "we do not shoot an
undergraduate at Cambridge even for walking over a college grass-
plot.--Let me suggest to your Royal Highness that this method of
ridding yourself of a poor devil's importunities is such as we
should consider abrupt and almost cruel in Europe. Let me beg you
to moderate your Royal impetuosity for the future; and, as your
Highness's tutor, entreat you to be a little less prodigal of your
powder and shot."
"O Mollah!" said His Highness, here interrupting his governor's
affectionate appeal,--"you are good to talk about Trumpington and
the Pons Asinorum, but if you interfere with the course of justice
in any way, or prevent me from shooting any dog of an Arab who
snarls at my heels, I have another pistol; and, by the beard of the
Prophet! a bullet for you too." So saying he pulled out the
weapon, with such a terrific and significant glance at the Reverend
Mr. MacWhirter, that that gentleman wished himself back in his
Combination Room again; and is by this time, let us hope, safely
housed there.
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