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

they faded out, there rose over those hopes the grander light of fortitude and submission to the will of God.

'Gradually--how gradually the limits of this notice forbid us to follow--hope departs, and she begins bravely to face the inevitable destiny. And then comes the end of all, the strong yet tender announcement of her own conviction that there would be no more meetings, but a grave opened to receive her in a foreign land.


'"DEAREST ALICK,

'"Do not think of coming here, as you dread the climate. Indeed, it
would be almost too painful to me to part from you again; and as it
is, I can wait patiently 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 Cadi, who made ready my tomb among his
own family, to the poorest fellaheen."


'Such are the tranquil and kindly words with which she prefaces her death. Those who remember her in her youth and beauty, before disease rather than time had altered the pale heroic face, and bowed the slight, stately figure, may well perceive some strange analogy between soul and body in the Spartan firmness which enabled her to pen that last farewell so quietly.

'But to the last her thought was for others, and for the services she could render. In this very letter, written, as it were, on the verge of the tomb, she speaks with gratitude and gladness of the advancement of her favourite attendant, Omar. This Omar had been recommended to her by the janissary of the American Consul-General, and so far back as 1862, when in Alexandria, she mentions having engaged him, and his hopeful prophecy of the good her Nile life is to do her. "My cough is bad; but Omar says I shall lose it and 'eat plenty' as soon as I see a crocodile."

'Omar "could not leave her," and he had his reward. One of the last events in the life of this gifted and liberal-minded Englishwoman was the visit to her dahabeeyeh, or Nile boat, of the Prince and Princess of Wales. Then poor Omar's simple and faithful service to his dying mistress was rewarded in a way he could scarcely have dreamt; and Lady Duff Gordon thus relates the incident: "Omar sends you his heartfelt thanks, and begs the boat may remain registered at the Consulate in your name, as a protection, for his use and benefit. The Prince has appointed him his dragoman, 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." Mahomed at Luxor wept bitterly, and said: "Poor I--poor my children--poor all the people!" and kissed my hand passionately; and the people at Esneh asked leave to touch me "for a blessing," and everyone sent delicate bread and their best butter and vegetables and lambs. 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 Esneh, where the air is softest and I cough less; I would rather die among my own people on the Saeed than here. Can you thank the Prince 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 were more considerate than any people I have seen, and the Prince, instead of being gracious, was, if I may say so, quite respectful in manner: he is very well bred and pleasant, and has, too, the honest eyes that make 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."

'Long will her presence be remembered and wept for among the half-civilized friends of her exile, the poor, the sick, the needy and the oppressed. She makes the gentle, half-playful boast in one of her letters from the Nile that she is "very popular," and has made many cures as a Hakeem, or doctor, and that a Circassian had sat up with a dying Englishman because she had nursed his wife.

'The picture of the Circassian sitting up with the dying Englishman because an English lady had nursed his wife is infinitely touching, and had its parallel in the speech of an old Scottish landlady known to the writer of this notice, whose son had died in the West Indies among strangers. "And they were so good to him," said she, "that I vowed if ever I had a lodger sick I would do my best for that stranger in remembrance." In remembrance! Who shall say what seeds of kindly intercommunion that dying Englishwoman of whom and of whose works we have been speaking may have planted in the arid Eastern soil? Or what "bread she may have cast" on those Nile waters, "which shall be found again after many days"? "Out of evil cometh good," and certainly out of her sickness and suffering good came to all within her influence.

'Lady Duff Gordon's printed works were many. She was an excellent German scholar, and had the advantage in her translations from that difficult language of her labours being shared by her husband. Ranke, Niebuhr, Feuerbach, Moltke, and others, owe their introduction to our English-reading public to the industry and talent of her pen. She was also a classic scholar of no mean pretensions. Perhaps no woman of our own time, except Mrs. Somerville and Mrs. Browning in their very different styles, combined so much erudition with so much natural ability. She was the daughter of Mr. Austin, the well-known professor of jurisprudence, and his gifted wife, Sarah Austin, whose name is familiar to thousands of readers, and whose social brilliancy is yet remembered with extreme admiration and regret by the generation immediately preceding our own.

'That Lucie, Lady Duff Gordon, inherited the best of the intellect and qualities of both these parents will, we think, hardly be disputed, and she had besides, of her own, a certain generosity of spirit, a widespread sympathy for humanity in general, without narrowness or sectarianism, which might well prove her faith modelled on the sentence which appeals too often in vain from the last page of the printed Bible to resenting and dissenting religionists, "Multae terricolis linguae, coelestibus una."'

* * * * *


The last two years of my mother's life were one long struggle against deadly disease. The last winter was cheered by the presence of my brother, but at her express desire he came home in early summer to continue his studies, and my father and I were going out to see her, when the news came of her death at Cairo on July 14, 1869. Her desire had been to be among her 'own people' at Thebes, but when she felt she would never see Luxor again, she gave orders to be buried as quietly as possible in the cemetery at Cairo. The memory of her talent, simplicity, stately beauty, and extraordinary eloquence, and her almost passionate pity for any oppressed creature, will not easily fade. She bore great pain, and what was almost a greater trial, absence from her husband, her little daughter Urania, and her many friends, uncomplainingly, gleaning what consolation she could by helping her poor Arab neighbours, who adored her, and have not, I am told, forgotten the 'Great Lady' who was so good to them.

* * * * *


The first volume of Lady Duff Gordon's 'Letters from Egypt' was published by Messrs. Macmillan and Co. in May, 1865, with a preface by her mother, Mrs. Austin, who edited them, and was obliged to omit much that might have given offence and made my mother's life uncomfortable--to say the least--in Egypt. Before the end of the year the book went through three editions.

In 1875 a volume containing the 'Last Letters from Egypt,' to which were added 'Letters from the Cape,' reprinted from 'Vacation Tourists' (1864), with a Memoir of my mother by myself, was published by Messrs. Macmillan and Co. A second edition appeared in 1876.

I have now copied my mother's letters as they were written, omitting only the purely family matter which is of no interest to the public. Edward Lear's drawing of Luxor was printed in 'Three Generations of Englishwomen,' edited by Mrs. Ross, but the other illustrations are now reproduced for the first time.

The names of villages alluded to in the 'Letters' have been spelt as in the Atlas published by the Egyptian Exploration Fund.

JANET ROSS.


LETTERS FROM EGYPT

November 11, 1862: Mrs. Austin

_To Mrs. Austin_.

GRAND CAIRO,
_Tuesday_, _November_ 11, 1862.

DEAREST MUTTER,

I write to you out of the real Arabian Nights. Well may the Prophet (whose name be exalted) smile when he looks on Cairo. It is a golden existence, all sunshine and poetry, and, _I_ must add, 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 _deterre_ an excellent boat for the Nile voyage, and I am to be mistress of a captain, a mate,