kindness and civility. I came up last Thursday by railway with the American Consul-General, a charming person, and had to stay at this horrid Shepheard’s Hotel. But I do little but sleep here. Hekekian Bey, a learned old Armenian, takes care of me every day, and the Amerian Vice-Consul is my sacrifice. I went on Sunday to his child’s christening, and heard Sakna, the ‘Restorer of Hearts.’ She is wonderfully like Rachel, and her singing is hinreisend from expression and passion. Mr. Wilkinson (the Consul) is a Levantine, and his wife Armenian, so they had a grand fantasia; people feasted all over the house and in the street. Arab music schmetterte, women yelled the zaghareet, black servants served sweetmeats, pipes, and coffee, and behaved as if they belonged to the company, and I was strongly under the impression that I was at Nurreddin’s wedding with the Vizier’s daughter. Yesterday I went to Heliopolis with Hekekian Bey and his wife, and visited an Armenian country lady close by.
My servant Omar turns out a jewel. He has déterré an excellent boat for the Nile voyage, and I am to be mistress of a captain, a mate, eight men and a cabin boy for £25 a month. I went to Boulak, the port of Cairo, and saw various boats, and admired the way in which the English travellers pay for their insolence and caprices. Similar boats cost people with dragomans £50 to £65. But, then, ‘I shall lick the fellows,’ etc., is what I hear all round. The dragoman, I conclude, pockets the difference. The owner of the boat, Sid Achmet el-Berberi, asked £30, whereupon I touched my breast, mouth and eyes, and stated through Omar that I was not, like other Ingeleez, made of money, but would give £20. He then showed another boat at £20, very much worse, and I departed (with fresh civilities) and looked at others, and saw two more for £20; but neither was clean, and neither had a little boat for landing. Meanwhile Sid Achmet came after me and explained that, if I was not like other Ingeleez in money, I likewise differed in politeness, and had refrained from abuse, etc., etc., and I should have the boat for £25. It was so very excellent in all fittings, and so much larger, that I thought it would make a great difference in health, so I said if he would go before the American Vice-Consul (who is looked on as a sharp hand) and would promise all he said to me before him, it should be well.
Mr. Thayer, the American Consul-General, gives me letters to every consular agent depending on him; and two Coptic merchants whom I met at the fantasia have already begged me to ‘honour their houses.’ I rather think the poor agents, who are all Armenians and Copts, will think I am the republic in person. The weather has been all this time like a splendid English August, and I hope I shall get rid of my cough in time, but it has been very bad. There is no cold at night here as at the Cape, but it is nothing like so clear and bright.
Omar took Sally sightseeing all day while I was away, into several mosques; in one he begged her to wait a minute while he said a prayer. They compare notes about their respective countries and are great friends; but he is put out at my not having provided her with a husband long ago, as is one’s duty towards a ‘female servant,’ which almost always here means a slave.
Of all the falsehoods I have heard about the East, that about women being old hags at thirty is the biggest. Among the poor fellah women it may be true enough, but not nearly as much as in Germany; and I have now seen a considerable number of Levantine ladies looking very handsome, or at least comely, till fifty. Sakna, the Arab Grisi, is fifty-five—an ugly face, I am told (she was veiled and one only saw the eyes and glimpses of her mouth when she drank water), but the figure of a leopard, all grace and beauty, and a splendid voice of its kind, harsh but thrilling like Malibran’s. I guessed her about thirty, or perhaps thirty-five. When she improvised, the finesse and grace of her whole Wesen were ravishing. I was on the point of shouting out ‘Wallah!’ as heartily as the natives. The eight younger Halmeh (i.e., learned women, which the English call Almeh and think is an improper word) were ugly and screeched. Sakna was treated with great consideration and quite as a friend by the Armenian ladies with whom she talked between her songs. She is a Muslimeh and very rich and charitable; she gets £50 for a night’s singing at least.
It would be very easy to learn colloquial Arabic, as they all speak with such perfect distinctness that one can follow the sentences and catch the words one knows as they are repeated. I think I know forty or fifty words already, besides my ‘salaam aleikum’ and ‘backsheesh.’
The reverse of the brilliant side of the medal is sad enough: deserted palaces, and crowded hovels scarce good enough for pigstyes. ‘One day man see his dinner, and one other day none at all,’ as Omar observes; and the children are shocking from bad food, dirt and overwork, but the little pot-bellied, blear-eyed wretches grow up into noble young men and women under all their difficulties. The faces are all sad and rather what the Scotch call ‘dour,’ not méchant at all, but harsh, like their voices. All the melody is in walk and gesture; they are as graceful as cats, and the women have exactly the ‘breasts like pomegranates’ of their poetry. A tall Bedaween woman came up to us in the field yesterday to shake hands and look at us. She wore a white sackcloth shift and veil, und weiter nichts, and asked Mrs. Hekekian a good many questions about me, looked at my face and hands, but took no notice of my rather smart gown which the village women admired so much, shook hands again with the air of a princess, wished me health and happiness, and strode off across the graveyard like a stately ghost. She was on a journey all alone, and somehow it looked very solemn and affecting to see her walking away towards the desert in the setting sun like Hagar. All is so Scriptural in the country here. Sally called out in the railroad, ‘There is Boaz, sitting in the cornfield’; and so it was, and there he has sat for how many thousand years—and Sakna sang just like Miriam in one war-song.
Wednesday.—My contract was drawn up and signed by the American Vice-Consul to-day, and my Reis kissed my hand in due form, after which I went to the bazaar to buy the needful pots and pans. The transaction lasted an hour. The copper is so much per oka, the workmanship so much; every article is weighed by a sworn weigher and a ticket sent with it. More Arabian Nights. The shopkeeper compares notes with me about numerals, and is as much amused as I. He treats me to coffee and a pipe from a neighbouring shop while Omar eloquently depreciates the goods and offers half the value. A water-seller offers a brass cup of water; I drink, and give the huge sum of twopence, and he distributes the contents of his skin to the crowd (there always is a crowd) in my honour. It seems I have done a pious action. Finally a boy is called to carry the batterie de cuisine, while Omar brandishes a gigantic kettle which he has picked up a little bruised for four shillings. The boy has a donkey which I mount astride à l’Arabe, while the boy carries all the copper things on his head. We are rather a grand procession, and quite enjoy the fury of the dragomans and other leeches who hang on the English at such independent proceedings, and Omar gets reviled for spoiling the trade by being cook, dragoman, and all in one.
I went this morning with Hekekian Bey to the two earliest mosques. The Touloun is exquisite—noble, simple, and what ornament there is is the most delicate lacework and embossing in stone and wood. This Arab architecture is even more lovely than our Gothic. The Touloun is now a vast poorhouse, a nest of paupers. I went into three of their lodgings. Several Turkish families were in a large square room neatly divided into little partitions with old mats hung on ropes. In each were as many bits of carpet, mat and patchwork as the poor owner could collect, and a small chest and a little brick cooking-place in one corner of the room with three earthern pipkins for I don’t know how many people;—that was all—they possess no sort of furniture, but all was scrupulously clean and no bad smell whatever. A little boy seized my hand and showed where he slept, ate and cooked with the most expressive pantomime. As there were women, Hekekian could not come in, but when I came out an old man told us they received three loaves (cakes as big as a sailor’s biscuit), four piastres a month—i.e., eightpence per adult—a suit of clothes a year, and on festive occasions lentil soup. Such is the almshouse here. A little crowd belonging to the house had collected, and I gave sixpence to an old man, who transferred it to the first old man to be divided among them all, ten or twelve people at least, mostly blind or lame. The poverty wrings my heart. We took leave with salaams and politeness like the best society, and then turned into an Arab hut stuck against the lovely arches. I stooped low under the door, and several women crowded in. This was still poorer, for there were no mats or rags of carpet, a still worse cooking-place, a sort of dog-kennel piled up of loose stones to sleep in, which contained