The Map of Love (12 page)

Cairo
10 March 1901

Dear Sir Charles
,
I was delighted to receive your last, so generous in recounting recent events and the conversation of friends that it made me quite long to be in London again. It is melancholy to me to think of the house shut and desolate and cold, but I assure you next winter we shall be our old selves again — or as close to our old selves as possible — and when you come to see me in the evening, I shall have your whisky and water waiting and fires burning in all the grates.

I dined earlier tonight in pleasant company, among whom were your old friend Sir Hedworth Lambton and Lady Chelsea, who both promised to call on you in London next month and give you a good account of me! Lady Anne Blunt was also there (the invitation to visit their house in Heliopolis was not forthcoming — so I have no prospect as yet of meeting Mr Blunt and will have to wait until you can arrange a dinner in London) with her daughter Judith, who is very lively and pretty, and we talked much of England and our common friends and acquaintances.

Yesterday, though, I attended a conversation (I say attended because my part in it was chiefly confined to that of listener) which would have been of interest to you, and in which, unlike me, you would have had a great deal to say. It took place at the foot of the Great Pyramid (which I have eulogised enough already in previous letters), where luncheon was laid out after the expedition by boat and donkey (I have not yet dared to ride a camel!). You can, I am sure, imagine the scene: the rugs spread out, the baskets opened, the food served, the servants employed in shooing away the various turcomans and children offering services, donkeys, camels, escorts to the top of the Pyramid or
simply asking for money, and Emily seated on the comer of a rug. I had prevailed upon her to accompany me, saying she could not go back to England without at least seeing the Pyramid. I believe she took this as a sign that we were soon to leave and, wishing to remove any possible obstacle to our departure, came along and sat staring obstinately away from the Pyramid and towards the lush vegetation that precedes Cairo — the closest thing to civilisation that she can hope for at this moment.

I own I cannot as yet believe the evidence of my own eyes in that sudden transition from the sand of the desert to the green of cultivated fields and palm groves. What must it be like for the traveller, after days and nights of crossing the vast and empty expanse of desert, to come suddenly within sight of such green and fruitful abundance? It must seem like a miracle — but I digress.

Our party was made up of Harry Boyle, the Oriental Secretary at the Agency; James Barrington, the Third Secretary; your friend Mr Rodd, the First Secretary, who is soon to leave Egypt; Mrs Butcher (acting also as my chaperone); Mr Douglas Sladen and Mr George Young, both of whom are writing books on Egypt; and Mr William Willcocks, who is responsible for the building of the great dam and reservoir at Assouan — and myself In the shadow of forty centuries, the talk turned naturally enough to Egypt, to the uninterrupted way of life of the Egyptian fellah and labourer, to Egypt’s successive rulers and to our presence there now. Mr Boyle took the line you would expect: that the country had never been run so efficiently and that the Egyptians had never been happier or more prosperous than under Lord Cromer. Opposition came, though, from a most unexpected source: Mr Willcocks (who, I later learned from Mr Barrington, is known to have subscribed Five Pounds to a Nationalist paper
, al-Mu’ayyad,
and lives under Lord Cromer’s consequent displeasure) asked why then were the papers agitating against us? Mr Boyle replied that he was not aware of any such agitation and both
al-Muqattam
and the
Gazette
were friendly enough. At this, I fancy a smile passed around the company, and Mr Willcocks said, ‘Oh, I do not mean those two. I meant one of the
two hundred other papers that come out here: the Native newspapers.’ Mr Boyle (with some contempt): ‘My dear fellow, those are the “talking classes”, the effendis. Professional malcontents. ‘ Oh, how strong the temptation was to whip out my journal and take notes as they spoke! But that would not have done, and so I resorted to subterfuge and took out my sketching-pad and pencils — for the scene was delightful and each person had such a different aspect — and I was able also to jot down the odd note and I have written it all out for you as a little ‘scene’, which I hope, together with the drawings, will give you some pleasure.

Here is the scene by the Great Pyramid with the gentlemen lolling at their ease, Mrs Butcher sitting very upright on her cushion in a neat dress of grey with navy trimming and a well-restrained bonnet; Emily is in one corner looking away from the party, and I in another with my sketching-pad poised on my knee; the native hurly-burly waits — at a distance of some yards — to erupt. These Egyptians sit (or crouch or squat) quietly for some stretch of time, and you begin to imagine that nothing can move them from their seeming placidity — until suddenly there is a murmur and there are movements and men standing up and arms waving and raised voices and then it all subsides again into quiet, the peace and the restiveness alike being incomprehensible to me. Mr S (whom I confess I do not much like for he has a superior manner which extends to everything except certain old buildings) holds forth on the subject of the ‘effendis’ whom he terms ‘verbose jackanapes’ and dislikes intensely for — as far as I can tell — their attempts to emulate us. He derides their golf collars and two-tone boots, their ‘undigested’ championing of European ideas of liberty and democracy. He is suspicious of their French education.

Mr S, small and thin and sallow, and HB, large and ruddy, seem to agree on all things; each picks up where the other leaves off. HB holds that the people who matter in Egypt are the fellaheen and for them the British have brought nothing but good. You can see him in the drawing with his drooping moustache, his untidy jacket, and his dog Toti, who goes with him everywhere but is so old that he has to be carried. You see the white and blue
striped bonnet on Toti’s head to protect him from the sun? HB put it on him most solicitously and fed him morsels from the picnic. Meanwhile he describes how the Lord abolished the corvé, the courbash and the bastinado and how the fellah can now stand up to the Pasha and say, ‘You cannot whip me for I shall tell the English.’ Mr Barrington looks doubtful at this, but he is very gentle and not given to contradicting people — particularly people with strong opinions. You can see, I hope, the gentleness (I would not call it exactly weakness) of his face — and indeed his stance — in my drawing. He wears a suit of fine linen and an elegant cravat in pale lavender. It is he who insists on extracting a portion of food from the picnic and hands it to his manservant Sabir, who he has assured me is utterly devoted and loyal (and indeed they seem to have a regard for each other that I have not seen in other members of the Agency and their servants), to share among the waiting natives. HB concludes that the effendis are not real Egyptians and their opinions can therefore be safely neglected. Mr S, however, will go further: there is no such thing as an Egyptian, he avows: it is only the Copts who can lay claim to being descendants of the Ancients, and they are few and without influence. For all the Mohammedans, they are Arabs and are to be found in Egypt through relatively recent historical circumstance. Mrs Butcher remonstrates: the Ancient Egyptians, she believes, were of so definite, so vivid a character that traces of that character cannot be completely lost to the Egyptians of today. Mrs Butcher’s gentleness of manner rather hoodwinks those who do not know her well and Mr S cuts across her with ‘Not lost, ma’am, degraded. Completely degraded.’ That is a term which I have often heard used to describe the Egyptian character. It is supported by a disquisition (which Mr S now proceeds to set forth) on their subscribing to a system of Baksheesh, their propensity to falsehood, their ability to bend with the wind. Even the Khedive exhibits these traits — and that is why Lord Cromer will not deal with him. Mr Rodd comes to the defence of His Highness, who, he pleads, being educated in Austria and ascending the Throne at eighteen, had princely notions beyond his station and found the heavy hand of the Lord hard to bear.
And yet I wonder whether it is possible for a conquering ruler to truly see into the character of the people whom he rules. How well, in fact, I found myself wondering, do I know Emily? We are both English, we have shared a life for some twenty years, and she is free to give me one month’s notice and find another job. Yet I look at her keeping her distance and pinching herself to a little space on the rug, and I imagine her transported into a small cottage somewhere — a cottage that is hers, with an independent livelihood, however small, and perhaps her own children around her, and I fancy I see her bloom and open into more vivid life — but I digress again.

Mr Y, who is an Historian, expressed the view that the Egyptians do indeed have a National Character, but that they are not yet aware of it. He called on the movement of Urabi Pasha (which I have so often heard you discuss) as proof of that incipient character — but that was somewhat too metaphysical for HB, who held forth quite fervently about the economic reforms Lord Cromer’s administration has effected: the cotton yield, the sanitation, the trains running on time. But I was distracted by the thought that his clothes seemed to get more and more crumpled — by their own agency, as it were, though he was engaged in nothing more strenuous than eating his lunch. Mrs Butcher — neat as a new pin — suggested that while material progress was, naturally, to be commended, our administration could be reproached for having ignored the spiritual life of the nation we govern. This was a signal for Mr Willcocks, who deplored how little was being done for education and said he did not believe we intended to leave Egypt when we had finished reforming her — or we would be doing more to educate the people that they might be able to govern themselves. He spoke with a clear conscience since as an engineer he is engaged in a task that is of benefit to the country and intends to leave when it is done, but both HB and Mr S held that it would take generations before the Natives were fit to rule themselves as they had neither integrity nor moral fibre, being too long accustomed to foreign rule — and if foreign rule was their lot, then British rule was surely to be preferred to that of the French or the Germans, who would surely
have been here if we were not. On this last, I fancy you would agree. Mr Y, holding a strip of smoked ham to the nose of Toti, who showed not the slightest interest in it, said mildly that we would have to go one day and that if we did not do so of our own accord, Egypt would do it for us. And Mr Barrington, lying back and placing his hat over his face and his arms under his head, said, ‘George would have us think that we are a dream only: a figment of Egypt’s imagination.’