Letters from Egypt - Lucy Duff Gordon (best story books to read TXT) 📗

Sir Alexander and Lady Duff Gordon were at church, or even--for his diction was equal to this--that they were "attending Divine service." Your mother had valour enough to practise true Christian kindness under conditions from which the bulk of "good people" might too often shrink; when on hearing that a "Mary" once known to the household had brought herself into trouble by omitting the precaution of marriage, my lady determined to secure the girl a good refuge by taking her as a servant. Before taking this step, however, she assembled the household, declared her resolve to the servants, and ordered that, on pain of instant dismissal, no one of them should ever dare say a single unkind word to Mary. Poor Hassan, small, black as jet, but possessed with an idea of the dignity of his sex, conceived it his duty to become the spokesman of the household, and accordingly, advancing a little in front of the neat-aproned, tall, wholesome maid-servants, he promised in his and their name a full and careful obedience to the mistress's order, but then, wringing his hands and raising them over his head, he added these words: "What a lesson to us all, my lady."' On the birth of a little son Hassan triumphantly announced to all callers: 'We have got a boy.' Another of his delightful speeches was made one evening when Prince Louis Napoleon (the late Emperor of the French) dropt in unexpectedly to dinner. 'Please, my lady,' said he, on announcing that dinner was ready, 'I ran out and bought two pen'orth of sprats for the honour of the house.'

Though I was only six I distinctly remember the Chartist riots in 1848. William Bridges Adams, the engineer, an old friend of my great-uncle, Philip Taylor, had a workshop at Bow, and my mother helped to start a library for the men, and sometimes attended meetings and discussed politics with them. They adored her, and when people talked of possible danger she would smile and say: 'My men will look after me.' On the evening of April 9 a large party of stalwart men in fustian jackets arrived at our house and had supper; Tom Taylor made speeches and proposed toasts which were cheered to the echo, and at last my mother made a speech too, and wound up by calling the men her 'Gordon volunteers.' The 'Hip, hip, hurrah!' with which it was greeted startled the neighbours, who for a moment thought the Chartists had invaded the quiet precincts of the square.

To Mrs. Austin, who was then in Paris, her daughter wrote, on April 10:


DEAREST MUTTER,

'I had only time to write once yesterday, as all hands were full of
bustle in entertaining our guests. I never wish to see forty better
gentlemen than we had here last night. As all was quiet, we had
supper--cold beef, bread and beer--with songs, sentiments and toasts,
such as "Success to the roof we are under," "Liberty, brotherhood and
order." Then they bivouacked in the different houses till five this
morning, when they started home. Among the party was a stray
policeman, who looked rather wonder-struck. Tom Taylor was capital,
made short speeches, told stories, and kept all in high good-humour;
and Alick came home from patrolling as a special constable, and was
received with great glee and affection. All agreed that the fright,
to us at least, was well made up by the kindly and pleasant evening.
As no one would take a penny, we shall send books to the library, or
a contribution to the school, all our neighbours being quite anxious
to pay, though not willing to fraternise. I shall send cravats as a
badge to the "Gordon volunteers."

'I enclose a letter from Eothen [Kinglake] about Paris, which will
interest you. My friends of yesterday unanimously decided that Louis
Blanc would "just suit the 'lazy set.'"

'We had one row, which, however, ceased on the appearance of our
stalwart troop; indeed, I think one Birmingham smith, a handsome
fellow six feet high, whose vehement disinterestedness would neither
allow to eat, drink, or sleep in the house, would have scattered
them.'


Mr. and Mrs. Austin established themselves at Weybridge in a low, rambling cottage, and we spent some summers with them. The house was cold and damp, and our dear Hassan died in 1850 from congestion of the lungs. I always attributed my mother's bad health to the incessant colds she caught there. I can see before me now her beautiful pale face bending over poor Hassan as she applied leeches to his chest, which a new maid refused to do, saying, with a toss of her head, 'Lor! my lady, I couldn't touch either of 'em!' The flash of scorn with which she regarded the girl softened into deep affection and pity when she looked down on her faithful Nubian servant.

In 1851 my father took a house at Esher, which was known as 'The Gordon Arms,' and much frequented by our friends. In a letter, written about that time to C. J. Bayley, then secretary to the Governor of the Mauritius, Lady Duff Gordon gives the first note of alarm as to her health: 'I fear you would think me very much altered since my illness; I look thin, ill, and old, and my hair is growing gray. This I consider hard upon a woman just over her thirtieth birthday. I continue to like Esher very much; I don't think we could have placed ourselves better. Kinglake has given Alick a great handsome chestnut mare, so he is well mounted, and we ride merrily. I expressed such exultation at the idea of your return that my friends, all but Alick, refused to sympathize. Philips, Millais, and Dicky Doyle talked of jealousy, and Tom Taylor muttered something about a "hated rival." Meanwhile, all send friendly greetings to you.'

One summer Macaulay was often at Esher, his brother-in-law having taken a house near ours. He shared my mother's admiration for Miss Austen's novels, and they used to talk of her personages as though they were living friends. If, perchance, my grandfather Austin was there, the talk grew indeed fast and furious, as all three were vehement, eloquent, and enthusiastic talkers.

When my mother went to Paris in the summer of 1857 she saw Heine again. As she entered the room he exclaimed 'Oh! Lucie has still the great brown eyes!' He remembered every little incident and all the people who had been in the inn at Boulogne. 'I, for my part, could hardly speak to him,' my mother wrote to Lord Houghton, who asked her to give him some recollections of the poet for his 'Monographs,' 'so shocked was I by his appearance. He lay on a pile of mattresses, his body wasted so that it seemed no bigger than a child's under the sheet that covered him, the eyes closed and the face altogether like the most painful and wasted _Ecce Homo_ ever painted by some old German painter. His voice was very weak, and I was astonished at the animation with which he talked; evidently his mind had wholly survived his body.' He wished to give my mother the copyright of all his works, made out lists how to arrange them, and gave her _carte-blanche_ to cut out what she pleased, and was especially eager that she should do a prose translation of his songs against her opinion of its practicability. To please him she translated 'Almanzor' and several short poems into verse--the best translations I know.

After trying Ventnor for two winters, my mother went out to the Cape of Good Hope in a sailing vessel, but on her return was unfortunately persuaded to go to Eaux Bonnes in the autumn of 1862, which did her great harm. Thence she went to Egypt, where the dry hot climate seemed to arrest the malady for a short time. The following memoir written by Mrs. Norton in the _Times_ gives a better picture of her than could any words of mine, the two talented and beautiful women were intimate friends, and few mourned more deeply for Lucie Duff Gordon than Caroline Norton:

'"In Memoriam." The brief phrase whose solemnity prefaced millions of common place epitaphs before Tennyson taught grief to speak, lamenting his dead friend in every phase and variety of regret. With such gradation and difference of sorrow will the recent death of a very remarkable woman, Lucie, Lady Duff Gordon, be mourned for by all who knew her, and with such a sense of blank loss will they long continue to lament one whose public success as an author was only commensurate with the charm of her private companionship. Inheriting from both parents the intellectual faculties which she so nobly exercised, her work has been ended in the very noontide of life by premature failure of health; and the long exile she endured for the sake of a better climate has failed to arrest, though it delayed, the doom foretold by her physicians. To that exile we owe the most popular, perhaps, of her contributions to the literature of her country, "Letters from the Cape," and "Letters from Egypt," the latter more especially interesting from the vivid, life-like descriptions of the people among whom she dwelt, her aspirations for their better destiny, and the complete amalgamation of her own pursuits and interests with theirs. She was a settler, not a traveller among them. Unlike Lady Hester Stanhope, whose fantastic and half-insane notions of rulership and superiority have been so often recorded for our amazement, Lady Duff Gordon kept the simple frankness of heart and desire to be of service to her fellow-creatures without a thought of self or a taint of vanity in her intercourse with them. Not for lack of flattery or of real enthusiastic gratitude on their part. It is known that when at Thebes, on more than one of her journeys, the women raised the "cry of joy" as she passed along, and the people flung branches and raiment on her path, as in the old Biblical descriptions of Eastern life. The source of her popularity was in the liberal kindliness of spirit with which she acted on all occasions, more especially towards those she considered the victims of bad government and oppressive laws. She says of herself: "one's pity becomes a perfect passion when one sits among the people as I do, and sees all they endure. Least of all can I forgive those among Europeans and Christians who can help to break these bruised reeds." And again: "Would that I could excite the interest of my country in their suffering! Some conception of the value of public opinion in England has penetrated even here." Sympathizing, helping, doctoring their sick, teaching their children, learning the language, Lady Duff Gordon lived in Egypt, and in Egypt she has died, leaving a memory of her greatness and goodness such as no other European woman ever acquired in that country. It is touching to trace her lingering hopes of life and amended health in her letters to her husband and her mother, and to see how, as