The Life, Letters and Work of Frederic Leighton Volume II Part 18

_Friday, 13th._--My last day in Thebes. When I arrived here and found neither friends nor letters, I thought, caring little for the place apart from the ruins, that I should stay four or five days; to-morrow when I leave I shall have been here _nine_, and shall go with regret. Work has exercised its usual attaching influence.

I have drawn in pencil a few heads that will be of use and interest to me. The subject of one of my studies (Mustafa's gardener) on receiving from Hosseyn two s.h.i.+llings for one hour's sitting, accused him, to his infinite disgust and anger, of having suppressed the _remaining_ eighteen s.h.i.+llings out of a putative pound which he conceived to be destined for him.

_Excusez!_

_Sat.u.r.day, 14th._--Got up early to finish a couple of sketches, and started at half-past eleven amidst salutes and salaams. To my great relief, the letters which I very rashly sent for from Cairo three weeks ago have just turned up at the last moment--fewer than I had expected, but a great delight: the first and only news I have received since leaving home--such are Egyptian posts!

Weather divine: the Nile like an opal mirror, reflecting without a break the faint, sleeping, sultry hills on the horizon: a lovely, drowsy scene. Arrived shortly after three at the village at which one lands for Keneh; a very cheery town about a mile inland. It is generally separated from the landing place on the river during the floods by a vast sheet of water; this year, however, owing to the calamitous lowness of the Nile, a narrow, shallow strip of water, only, intercepts the road, and a large tract of country remains untilled and unfruitful from the want of the quickening flood. Keneh is a very pretty sample of an Egyptian town; it is animated and full of colour, has some pretty minarets, some charming gardens, and more than the usual allowance of ornamental doorways: the effect of the mosaic of black and white bricks is most satisfactory, and has the charm which always accompanies a considerable result produced by very sober and simple means. Great relief is frequently obtained by a band or frieze of carved wood, running across the decorated surface at the springing of the arch; this band is generally carved in circles enclosing patterns and picked out with green and red. In the jambs of the door of one of the mosques, a very beautiful effect was produced by alternate bands of brickwork and minutely carved wood, _not_ coloured (three courses of brick to one band of wood).

Visited a pottery, and for the first time in my life saw a pattern-wheel and the artist at work--a most fascinating sight: the bottles and jugs flow into the most graceful forms as if by magic, and look incomparably prettier than when they are baked.

I could hardly get away. A little boy scratches a pattern on them as they leave the wheel.

The Consul's white donkey, on which I ride about here, is as fleet as the wind and as oily in his movements as a two-oared gondola.

_a propos_ of consuls, Mustafa at Thebes showed me his travellers' book--in it I saw an entry of the names of Speke and Grant, with the numbers of their regiments, and the dates of their departure from Zanzibar and their arrival at Khartoum and Thebes. A simple conventional travellers' entry, as if they had returned from an ordinary journey--nothing to hint at the great achievement which brought them such honour and lasting fame.

_Sunday, 15th._--Made a sketch, a little after sunrise, of the chain of hills on the west bank of the Nile, then crossed the river to see the ruins of Denderah. Horses were waiting on the other side, and would have been most enjoyable if the weather had been cool; but, under a fierce sun, absolutely incessant prancing and waltzing ("he make 'fantasia,'" quoth Hosseyn) was fatiguing after a bit. Was so much struck with the beauties of the mountains, as seen from the left bank, that I resolved to stay a couple of days to paint them. The temple is extremely fine, and in parts unusually well preserved--_the sculpture_, that is, for the colour is almost entirely lost. These sculptures, being of a late period (Roman), are clumsy enough; on the other hand the general scheme of decoration is more artistic, more varied in distribution and rhythm than in most of the temples. On the external wall I remarked here, as at Edfou and at Medinet Haboo, ma.s.sive and very handsome gargoyles--half a lion, couchant, on a large bracket, the water flowing from a spout between the paws--a more important feature in the architectural aspect of the wall than in northern countries, and calculated for five months' rain rather than for five minutes', which is the average annual fall here, I believe. This temple boasts a portrait of Cleopatra on a large scale, but, like those of Armout and Karnak, it is absolutely conventional, and any pretence of detecting an individuality is mere humbug. One fancies at first one has discovered some peculiarity in the features, but on a candid examination one must own that the same peculiarities occur in other faces on the same wall, or that they are owing to the mutilation to which two-thirds of the figures in all Egyptian temples has been a.s.siduously subjected.

In a lateral chamber of the temple, on the ceiling, is a most striking mystical design, representing the firmament and the sun fecundating the land of Egypt. It is fantastic and poetic in the extreme; it would delight Rossetti. In the evening made another sketch, and then rode to Keneh to dine with the Consul--a most interesting glimpse into a real old-fas.h.i.+oned Muslim interior.

Si Syed Achmet (forty-five years British Agent in this town and at Khossayr) is a very wealthy old gentleman with large property in this part of the world. He is of the blood of the Prophet, a good and pious Muslim, tolerant and full of kindliness. A son, three nephews and a daughter form his immediate family circle, living with him in the house to which I was bidden--a bald, uninteresting place enough. It is entered from a narrow, irregular triangular court, ornamented on one side with some good brick and wood work, but ugly and plain on the others, and disfigured by something between a ladder and a staircase which leads to the clean but singularly naked room in which we were to spend the evening. This room was whitewashed, but so roughly bedaubed that the plain deal cupboards, the doors of which formed the only embellishment (?) of the walls, were all besmeared with ragged edges of white. Three windows, innocent of gla.s.s, and protected by a close, plain trellis-work of ordinary white wood, lighted the room, which boasted in the way of furniture the usual ugly divans, three red muslin curtains, a small deal table, two lanterns and two candles in candlesticks.

Shortly after my arrival and most kindly reception by the old gentleman, who had come up from the country expressly _ad hoc_, dinner was served. The son, as the eldest, sat at table; the nephews waited on us; we squatted, I on a cus.h.i.+on, they on the floor, round a very low table on which was a large, round, bra.s.s tray, containing four plates, some wooden spoons, and a great many small loaves of bread arranged round it in a circle; a soup tureen, into which, after was.h.i.+ng of hands, everybody plunged his spoon, was the central feature. After the soup, came in rapid succession several dishes containing savoury messes which were really very good, though perhaps too rich, but which I was entirely unable to enjoy in the sight of a number of hands, s.h.i.+ning with gravy, mopping in succession at the dishes with crusts of bread, or fetching out a coveted morsel with fingers too recently licked. It is a delicate and hospitable attention to put a bit with your own hand on to your guest's plate--an attention of which I was the frequent but unworthy recipient.

After the made dishes had been done justice to, half a sheep--head and all--was put on the table and _clawed_ asunder by Hosseyn. The roast being disposed of, the sweets appeared, and were eaten out of the common dish with spoons, like the soup: I was not sorry when it was over, for I had gone through all the sensations of a sea voyage. I observe that Arabs make a point of eating with as much noise and smacking of lips as possible; it is as if they were endeavouring to convey a sort of oblique expression of thanks to Providence by manifesting their relish of the blessings vouchsafed. When dinner was over, and a by no means superfluous was.h.i.+ng of hands had been gone through, we had pipes and coffee. Hosseyn having gone to dine, I was now thrown on my own extremely limited stock of Arabic for conversation; and as I had about exhausted that during my ride to Keneh with one of the nephews, I was hard put to it. However, I just managed to get through a few broken sentences, to the great satisfaction of Achmet, who informed me that he had been for forty years the servant of the English, of whom he thought very highly, chiefly because, as he expressed it, they have "one word"--a satisfactory character to leave behind. In the evening the governor (Mudir) came to see me with a tail of employes and, if you please, a pocket-handkerchief, of which he was not a little conscious, holding it in his hand rolled into a neat tube, which he occasionally drew with dignity across the basis of the official nose. The Consul for France and Prussia also came and made his salaam. My borrowed and temporary plumes have been of real use to somebody here, for the Mudir, hearing that an Englishman (whom he erroneously supposed to be somebody) was on board a viceroy's steamer, immediately gave the crew two months' pay--an alacrity not sufficiently often displayed in this country, if I am not much misinformed. The dancing-girls who came to entertain us in the evening were no doubt better than those of Lougsor, though, with one exception, at least as ugly; but some of them were gorgeously attired (from the dancing-dog point of view), and all were a ma.s.s of gold necklaces and coins and glittering headgear, which produced at a certain distance and in the doubtful light a prodigiously fine effect of colour. The dancing was a little more varied than that of the Lougsor women, chiefly, no doubt, because they got more to drink; but, _en somme_, I am confirmed in my first impression that it is an eminently ugly performance, though a very remarkable gymnastic feat. Of course a graceful and good-looking girl may do a good deal to redeem it by personal charm, and this was in some degree the case with Zehneb, who is a noted dancer and the _fine fleur_ of the profession. She is pretty though coa.r.s.e in feature, and not without grace; but has a semi-European smack about her dress and ways that spoils her in my eyes--hers, by-the-bye, are splendid. Just as the "fantasia"

was at its height, a ragged, dust-soiled, old beggar came, chattering and grinning, into the room, and at once installed himself, uninvited but unhindered, on the divan, from which comfortable post he proceeded to witness the performance and apparently thoroughly to enjoy his evening. The contrast between his beggar's garb and the scrupulously cleanly attire of his neighbours was very curious. He is a fakeer, as I am told; everybody feeds him, no doors are closed to him; he is not, I believe, exactly an idiot, but is certainly in his second childhood--"rimbambito," as the Italians say. On one side of him squatted a sweet little brown girl, Achmet's daughter, of about five or six, in a pink cotton s.h.i.+ft and with anklets hanging about her little naked feet. On the other side, a little further off, was an umber-coloured dancing-girl, with bright bold eyes painted round with black, covered with a ma.s.s of gold coins on her head, in her hair, on her ears, and round her neck, and wearing a blue silk dress all bespangled with gold. He looked like a dust-heap between them. It was a queer picture, taken out of the "Thousand and One Nights"; from which work also, I presume, the numerous one-eyed people that I see everywhere in Egypt, are copied. (I prefer this view to that of unimaginative pedants who, attaching undue importance to facts, inform me that this blindness is self-inflicted, to avoid conscription.) My ride home was a fitting close to such an evening; a fantastic procession we made, headed by a handful of torch and lantern bearers, brandis.h.i.+ng enormous staves; after which "Meine Wenigkeit" on a sumptuously caparisoned steed, the consul's nephew, the captain, Hosseyn, a cawa.s.s, all of them on horses, others on donkeys, and odd men bustling about amongst us and dispersing the few stragglers that were to be found at that late hour in the streets. The fitful flare of the torches, dressing in fugitive, fantastic lights the gateways and dim walls of the slumbering town, had a very fine effect. More curious still was our ride _through_ a quarter of a mile of _dourah_ that stood at least ten or twelve feet high all round us; the train of light and shower of sparks in the tall graceful corn was of a surprising aspect. Except that nothing took fire, it was as if Samson's foxes had been let loose in front of us.

_Monday, 16th._--Sketched. In the evening, yielding, I own, with some reluctance, to a pressing invitation, returned to Keneh to dine with Si Achmet. Had, except the roast, exactly the same dinner as on the previous day, which leads me to conjecture that the _repertoire_ of Arab cookery is limited. After dinner we rode out to see the moolid, which is just beginning here. It is _the_ great moolid of Central Egypt, and to it, but only towards the end, flock people from all parts of the country till the concourse is enormous. It must be an interesting sight when in full swing, but as yet there is little or nothing worth seeing except the tomb of the sheykh in whose honour the moolid is held (Sheykh Abd-er-Rahim, the "Genani") to which I was taken by my host. The building was like most others of the same cla.s.s in Egypt: a square chamber with a dome, and windows through which the coffin, placed conspicuously in the centre, can be seen by the pious crowds outside. On entering, I was conducted, after taking off my boots, to a post of honour, on the ground of course, in the midst of a grave circle of worthies who were squatting in the _ruelle_ between one side of the coffin and the wall. On my right was one of the civic functionaries, on my left the priest attached to the tomb. The spectacle before me was wonderful both in colour and form, though composed in great part of the simplest elements. It was like the finest Delacroix in aspect and tone, but with a gravity and stateliness of form very foreign to that brilliant but epileptic genius. To the left of me, covered with a showy embroidered cloth, stood behind a railing the sarcophagus of the saint, illuminated from above by various lanterns hung from the ceiling (the central one, and the handsomest, the gift of Lady Duff Gordon) and from the corners by gigantic candles, standing in candlesticks of proportionate dimensions; at the same corners stood great banners of sober but rich tone, which added much to the general colour. On each side of the carpet at the head of which I squatted, squatted, in far more picturesque attire, some of the notables of Keneh, half hidden in the shadow, their large turbans cast on the rich carpet they sat on. At the further end stood and stared, with the solemnity of a chorus in an opera, a motley, dazzling group of lesser folk; magnificent, too, in the flow of their draperies, the grace of the half untwisted turbans wreathed round their necks or hanging from their shoulders, the stateliness of their forms, and the fiery glow of colour in which they burnt under the cl.u.s.tered lanterns. Unfortunately, I could not gaze with attention as undivided as I could have wished, because the gentleman on my right insisted on making conversation, the very meagrest form of which exercise absorbed for the time my powers of attention. Hosseyn, who is very pious, bled me of an enormous baksheesh for the shrine of the saint.

_Tuesday, 17th._--Completed my sketches in the morning. In the evening, Si Achmet, his son, and three nephews, one of whom I neither knew nor had invited (this is entirely Arabic--I might, also, have taken any one with me to dine with them) came to dine on board. It was a very droll ceremony--the Arabs had, with one exception, probably never sat at a table on a chair before, but they were so entirely simple as not to be (also, by-the-bye, with one exception) at all ridiculous. Ottilio had, perhaps with a little malice, arranged the napkins in a most artistic and intricate fas.h.i.+on; these edifices so impressed my friends that they did not sit down opposite to their plates but on one side of them. I set them at once comparatively at their ease by requesting them, through Hosseyn, to consider themselves at home and eat with their fingers, forgiving me if I followed the custom of my country; the proposal was received with great satisfaction by the old gentleman and his son, who fell to in their own way, the father muttering his appreciation of the dishes in low, sonorous e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns: "Allah!"--"Mash Allah!"--"Ou Allah!"--"Ameer! Ameer!" &c. &c. &c. The son, a man of about forty, with a broken nose and a very strong squint, and whose movements carried a general impression of contemplative dreaminess, always verging on surprise, ate with his usual deliberation and spent his odd moments in contemplating a s.h.i.+ning bunch of fingers, which he periodically and slowly licked with the utmost impartiality; he did not mix in the conversation. Of the three cousins on my left, two made a very fair attempt at using the knife and fork, though it must have been a virgin effort; the third, who had been a great deal with English people when he was consul at Khossayr, ate his dinner and put down his wine like the best European; I suspect, in fact, that he was brought as a show man. Achmet, in a climax of gratification, exclaimed towards the end of dinner, "By Allah!

if the Ameer comes to my house another year, he shall be served after the Frankish custom." Arabs appear to be much devoted to _limonade gazeuse_--without being the forbidden fruit of wine itself, it dwells in bottles, and has a sort of air of crime about it which no doubt pleases them; my left-hand neighbour took off at least two bottles during dinner.

Hosseyn, whose father was a great friend of Si Achmet, proved invaluable; he hopped about like a delighted child, filling the gla.s.ses, cutting the meat of the two digitarians, and generally making conversation--a great relief to me. In the evening one of the nephews asked for some tea to take home, which I gave him; another pocketed all the tobacco that was brought them to make cigarettes. Arabs are hospitable and generous, and I like them much, but they are indiscreet in the extreme. "Arabs," says Hosseyn, "have no face; they never take shame." I have seen instances of this which I won't put down; one only, for it is very droll: my squinting friend with the pensive look asked Lady Ely last year if she would just procure for him from the Queen a t.i.tle, or an order, as a mark of her regard. I am the bearer of a letter to her from him now, which I have no doubt is a reminder. Slew a sheep again.

_Wednesday, 18th._--Left Keneh early, and with regret; the place, the people and the scenery have left many pleasing pictures in my memory. I little expected at starting the annoyance that awaited me! As we approached the spot where Sheykh Selim receives his devout visitors, I sent word to the captain that I did not wish to lose any time in landing, but that the bag of money which had been collected for the saint was to be delivered, and we were to go on. I had scarcely uttered this almost sacrilegious order, when the steamer, which had been judiciously steered within ten yards of a flat, shelving bank, ran hard and fast into the mud, with the apparent intention of sticking there permanently, the engine being utterly powerless to get her out. n.o.body on board doubted for an instant but that Sheykh Selim had stopped us in his resentment; the captain instantly dispatched sailors with money to propitiate him, and after a few futile attempts on the part of five or six of the crew (to loud cries of "Help us, O Prophet! help us, O Sheykh Selim!") to heave out a vessel that was four or five feet in the mud, jumped himself into a boat, and hurried, of course accompanied by Hosseyn, and leaving his vessel to take care of herself, to beseech the sheykh to get us off. Their conversation was afterwards reported to me by one who was present. "What is this, O Sheykh, that thou hast done to us? in what have we been wanting towards thee? did I not give thee a s.h.i.+rt when we last came by? and the tobacco, was it not good? was the roast meat not sufficient? why are we thus punished?"--to whom the sheykh: "Don't be a fool! why do you come to me about your boat? am I a sailor? how do you expect me to get her off--or on? Allah got her on the sand, not I, who am a man like yourselves." The captain: "Allah is indeed great, but if he ran us aground it was on thy instigation--thou knowest it, O Sheykh!" &c. &c. In this strain the conversation lasted at least twenty minutes, during which time and for the rest of the day I was literally sick with disgust and anger at the lot of them. Everything that ought not to be done under the circ.u.mstances, including losing the anchor (which is still at the bottom of the river), was done before evening; everything that should have been done was left undone.

Next morning (Thursday, 19th) we obtained (by force, after the fas.h.i.+on of this country) through the governor of the neighbouring town a gang of two hundred Arabs, magnificent fellows some of them, who, at last, by heaving and tugging, contrived to get her off--not without the most unearthly _charivari_ I ever heard. In the morning I made a sketch; reached Bellianeh in the evening, appeased, at last, and rather amused at the abject condition of the captain, to whom I had conveyed my mind (he had never seen me angry before), and who swore that in future one hundred sheykhs should not take him out of his course. My misadventure will benefit my successors in the good s.h.i.+p _Sheberkheyt_--_a quelque chose malheur est bon._

_Friday, 20th._--Started at seven on horseback to see Abydos, and had a delightful morning. The weather was fresh and clear, and the canter of six or seven miles across a fine open plain to the foot of the mountains where the ruins lie was most enjoyable. The temples, very strikingly situated on a slope which sweeps down from a grand amphitheatre of bastion-like rocks, have a great advantage over all those that I have yet seen, viz. that their sculptures have almost entirely escaped mutilation, and are in admirable preservation. This is the more fortunate, that they are of a very fine period, and most delicate in workmans.h.i.+p; the type of the faces has considerable beauty and refinement. The colours, notably in the more recently excavated temple of Osiris, are often extremely well preserved, and I am confirmed in my conjecture, that they must have been much less beautiful in their freshness than now that time has toned and tuned them. In the larger temple are some very beautiful wagon-head vaults _cut in the thickness of two layers of stone_, the upper ones laid on end to get more thickness of material. They are charmingly decorated with cartouches and stars on a blue ground, and divided by a band of hieroglyphs running like a ridge-rib along the head of the vault. The stars on Egyptian ceilings are always pentagonal, and placed very near together. At the temple I was joined by the obligato governor, a puffy Turk with a tight, s.h.i.+ny face that had a look of having been stung all over by a wasp; he was heavy and stupid, and I left him in the hands of Hosseyn, galloping ahead myself with the mounted cawa.s.s, a very picturesque Arnout on a very good horse. _N.B._--Never come to the East again without an English saddle; the back-board of a Turkish saddle is in the long run an intolerable nuisance, as are also, though in a less degree, the shovel-stirrups in which one's feet are imprisoned. In the afternoon reached Sohag, a sail, or rather a steam, of three or four hours, in time for a most pleasant evening's walk.

_Sat.u.r.day, 21st._--Got to Syoot in the afternoon, and was very glad to catch Lady Duff Gordon on her way up the river. Was received with great hospitality by the American and Spanish consuls, wealthy Copts of this town who kindly put their carriages at my disposal and, better still, their donkeys--splendid Arabian donkeys, looking, in their trappings, like cardinals' mules. Nothing is more pleasant than the swift amble of a good donkey from the Hejaz. Dined in the evening with Mr. Wonista, the consul for Spain, quite "a la Franca" with knives and forks and the whole thing. A curious house, and the rooms small but of enormous height, so that they looked as if they had been set _on end_ by mistake. The walls were bare whitewash, but the furniture was of the most gorgeous brocade, as were also the curtains; there was a European carpet all over the floor and as many candles on the walls (in gla.s.s bells) as in a _cafe chantant_. I met there a Scotch clergyman belonging to the American Mission (Episcopalian) which is very active in Egypt. After dinner the singer from Lady Duff Gordon's boat was sent for, and in a short time arrived with some of the crew who acted as chorus; it is this chorus, I find, that gives the approving murmur after each strophe. He sang well, but his performance of course lost three-fourths of its charm by not being heard in its proper place and surroundings. I remember once in the Sabine hills hearing unexpectedly at a distance, in the silent dimness of night, the droning song of a _piffera_; nothing could be more strangely pathetic than this voice rising in the utter silence from out of the heart of the valley below--yet those same sounds heard close in the broad daylight would have seemed uncouth and strident. Arab singing has a similar quality, and is equally dependent on time and place for its full effect. Whilst the performance was at its height, and the minstrel was tuning his note to the most ambitious _fioriture_, I heard in the room overhead some European part-singing of a melancholy order, and was informed that the Scotch minister had been invited by a few proselytes to retire upstairs "to wors.h.i.+p and explain an obscure pa.s.sage in the Gospel." On the invitation of the master of the house, I went up and joined the congregation, who thought it right to favour me with another psalm. The clergyman then read in Arabic, and expounded in the same language a chapter from the Bible, and I must say did it (I speak of his manner only, for Koran and Bible Arabic is so different from the current idiom, here at all events, that I did not understand four words in the whole sermon) in a very simple and impressive way. He had, too, an admirable accent. He tells me that in spite of vehement opposition from the Coptic prelates he finds a good deal of sympathy amongst the people.

_Sunday, 22nd._--Lovely day. Strolled about with a gun. This place is full of "sparrows of paradise," a little bird of an exquisite golden green. Since I was here last, the aspect of the country has changed very much and for the better. Where I saw, a few weeks back, nothing but pools and mud, is now a vast expanse of clover and gra.s.s of an intense green, sunny and brilliant to a wonderful degree. The plain looks like one immense jewel, and contrasts deliciously with the tawny sand-rock which walls it in on the west, behind the gleaming white domes of the cemetery.

Dined with the other consul in the evening. Same sort of house, but much larger. No Scotch clergyman this time, but an Anglo-Arab who teaches in the Coptic school, and, embracing Coptic views, inveighs bitterly against the converts to Protestantism. At sunset, to my agreeable surprise, the Sterlings turned up, _musique en tete_, the singer in the bows quavering a jubilant strain, and the vessel magnificent with fresh paint.

_Monday, 23rd._--Killed a sheep. Sketched. Had the consuls and the Scotch missionary to dine with me. The latter brought me some newspapers, which I read greedily.

_Tuesday, 24th._--Sketched. At last an evening to myself!--these festive gatherings are an ineffable bore, if the truth were told.

_Wednesday, 25th._--Completed my sketches with one exception--a study of my beautiful grey (_hechtgrau_) donkey. Unless I make a study at Sakkara, which is just possible, this will be the end of my work on the Nile. In twenty-two skies which I have painted there is not a vestige of a cloud, such has been the divinely serene weather I have had all along. This evening, indeed, faint, s.h.i.+ning flakes of vapour were drawn across the sky, breaking and tempering the last rays of the sun; but by a curious piece of luck they did not appear till I was just giving the last touches to my day's work. Saw a beautiful and original effect at sunset. Just as the sun was about to sink behind the hills, a dahabieh drifted past with its sails spread, and reaching up into the region where the light was still golden, whilst the face of the water was darkened, and the long, low banks were already shadowy and grey, the burning sail was reflected in the night of the river, and looked astonis.h.i.+ngly beautiful. It was like the mellow splendour of the rising moon.

I delight in seeing the sailors climbing the tall, oblique yards of the Nile boats. Sometimes five or six of them perch on one yard at the same time, looking at a distance like great birds.

_Thursday, 26th._--Finished my donkey and started; as I get further north, the weather is much cooler--the mornings and evenings are quite fresh, though not so cold but that I can sketch in the shade an hour after sunrise in summer clothes. The natives, however, seem to take a severe view of the temperature, and leave nothing unm.u.f.fled but their mouths, with which they occasionally blow their fingers in the most approved winter fas.h.i.+on. Was more struck than before with Gebel Aboofada--the infinite and strongly marked strata of which it is made up writhe and heave in a very grand and fantastic manner. Some of the Egyptian mountains are ruled like a copy book from head to foot, and are very monotonous.

At the foot of Aboofada, I saw, for an instant, my first and last crocodile; a small one. They are very seldom seen from a steamer below the cataracts, as the noise frightens away the few there are. I had looked forward to getting a shot at one, and was a good deal disappointed at finding none up the river. It is curious how rapidly time lends its perspective to the past.

Every now and then a boat from the cataracts laden with dates comes floating down the river, and the melancholy chant of the Nubian sailors, as they strain at the oars, already falls on my ear as a sudden memory of an almost distant past--not a month old.

Arrived at Roda this evening. I have been reading, amongst other things, a book everybody else read thirty years ago, "Les Natchez," and am greatly disappointed with it. I am especially struck with the extraordinary contrast between the masterful sobriety and simplicity of the style, and the far-fetched affectation of the ideas which are, more often than not, distorted, tawdry and inflated, sometimes disgusting and not seldom maudlin in the extreme. This singular discrepancy between form and matter is especially French, and may frequently be traced in the works of their painters and sculptors. No living people has so sensitive a perception of form or so artistic an epiderm, but an ineradicable self-consciousness develops in them a theatrical att.i.tude of mind which too often betrays itself in their artistic and literary conceptions. It is the absolute consent between conception and execution which const.i.tutes one of the chief sources of delight in the art of the Greeks, to whom they are fond, too rashly, of comparing themselves.[41]

I notice in the Natchez a peculiar use of comparisons. That mode of adding light and colour to an idea which consists in suggesting a.n.a.logies, has always been the delight of poets; but Chateaubriand (whose a.n.a.logies, by the way, are often singularly far fetched and unfortunate) occasionally, in a morbid endeavour to be original, seeks his effects in a suggestion of dissimilarities; I remember an instance: he has been describing with minute and gratuitously sickening detail a mangled heap of dead and dying warriors after a ferocious encounter. "How different," he exclaims, but in more flowery terms, "is a hayc.o.c.k in a field with girls rolling down it!" Few will be disposed to contradict him. His exorbitant personal vanity which continues to peep through everywhere, and makes even his unbounded praise of his country seem an oblique tribute to himself, is droll and nauseating at the same time.

Took a stroll in the evening, and met an English baby! pink and delicate like a flower; with cape and c.o.c.kade complete--a pretty sight.

Thick folds of rose and violet-coloured cloud hung along the horizon at sunset, and looked autumnal. I have left eternal summer behind me.

_Friday, 27th._--Such a morning as the evening of yesterday foreboded; rather chilly and misty, and as near an approach to winter as Upper Egypt may be expected to afford. The sky was veiled on all sides with soft grey clouds, wrinkled and fretted like the grey sands when the sea has left them. It was a fitting background to the desolate tombs of Beni Ha.s.san, which I visited an hour or two after sunrise. The range of hills on the face of which these tombs are excavated is not unlike Gebel Aboofada in its configuration, except that the strata with which it is scored are more level and regular. This monotony is, however, relieved by the sky-line, which is extremely fine. Along the foot of these hills runs a level strip of barren land, broken abruptly in its whole length by a steep bank which rises like a ruined wall from the plain below, and which is, when the Nile is exceptionally high, the bank of the river itself. Standing, as it now does, nearly a mile inland, and crested with two deserted villages, it has a grand but uncanny aspect. I had long been eager to see the tombs, which show what is considered by many to be the first rudiment of the Doric order. The similarity, more striking even than I expected, is so great that, taken with our knowledge of the early and frequent intercourse of the Greeks with Egypt and of the a.s.similating power of their genius, it certainly offers a strong _prima facie_ presumption in favour of this view. It may be objected that the echinus, the conical form of the shaft and its entasis, all three inseparable features and especial beauties of the Greek order, are wanting here, though they are present in the earliest specimen of the style preserved in Greece, the temple of Corinth. This argument would deserve more consideration if it could be conceived that the order as seen at Corinth was a spontaneous conception, and not a development of some more elementary form which, whether native or imported at a remote period, has not been handed down to us.

In point of fact, the chamfering of a simple stone pier into an octagon and then further to a polygon of sixteen, or more, sides (specimens of the two forms are seen side by side in two of the tombs of Beni Ha.s.san) is so elementary an effort of architecture and one so obvious, that its independent and spontaneous adoption by two different nations would be matter for no surprise. On the other hand, it is to be remarked that these tombs and the early temple at Karnak already mentioned are the only instances of this style known in Africa--that not only are they isolated in themselves, but they form a step to no further developments--a link in no chain; that in character and conception they have nothing in common with any of the great monuments of Egypt, to which indeed they are antagonistic in feeling; that they stand side by side with other monuments of the _same_ date (about 2000 B.C.?) of a developed and absolutely different type--a type certainly indigenous and based on the imitation of natural forms which is especially characteristic of Egyptian architecture; and lastly, that the tombs of Beni Ha.s.san show certain dissonances, such as one might expect to find in the case of an unintelligent and unperceptive manipulation of a foreign style. In the face of these considerations, I find it difficult to resist a suspicion that the view generally received exactly reverses the truth of the case, and that these tombs are not indeed the prototypes of the Doric temple, but rather the results, themselves, of contact at some remote period between the Egyptians and that branch of the great Aryan family which, at long intervals, and in successive waves, covered the sh.o.r.es of the Egean Sea, and one of the latest offshoots of which poured down into Greece from the heights of Thessaly under the name of Dorians. I believe the earliest Egyptian _record_ of the pressure of Greeks in this country goes no further back than 1500 B.C.; but a peaceful intercourse between the two races may have existed over a long period, without necessarily finding a place in public records.

The (quasi) Doric tombs are divided into a nave and aisles by two rows of piers, carrying an architrave and disposed at right angles to the portico, agreeably carrying out the likeness of a Greek temple. The circles which intersect the extremity of the other group of tombs are _parallel_ to the portico, and have a deplorable effect, much heightened by the shape of the ceiling, which is that of a very flat pediment. The architrave follows the line of the roof, but at a still more open angle. It would be difficult to conceive anything more hideous. Nearly all the tombs are decorated with frescoes of a rude kind, but displaying frequently an amount of freedom unusual in Egyptian art.

Our guide was a splendid fellow, looking, in his flowing robes, like a figure from the "School of Athens" on the "Disputa." The longer I live, the more I am struck by the ident.i.ty of Raphael's frescoes with the n.o.blest aspects of Nature.

To Benisoef in the evening. Pa.s.sed some travellers; nothing looks so gay and pretty as a dahabieh with its colours flying and its sails spread.

_Sat.u.r.day, 28th._--Lovely morning once again. Reached Sakkara early, but found that the road to the Pyramids was obstructed by water, so moved on at once to Ghizeh, opposite to Old Cairo, where I shall remain till to-morrow morning; meanwhile I have sent on Hosseyn to secure a room at the inn, and to fetch the means of leaving a pleasant memory of me on board the _Sheberkheyt_.

I have stripped the walls of my cabin of the paintings I had hung round them, and they look desolate and like the coffin of my now past journey. A most enjoyable journey it has been, full of pleasant things to remember; full, too, I hope, of artistic profit and teaching. I have been indeed fortunate, for, as I now see more clearly than ever, in a dahabieh I could not have achieved a third of the journey, and in a pa.s.senger steamer I could not have done a stroke of work. Every study I take home I owe entirely to the viceroy's munificent kindness.

_Sunday, 29th._--Left for Boulay, my destination--gave a parting sheep to the crew, distributed _largesse_, shook hands all round, and drove off to the hotel.

FOOTNOTES:

[41] See Chap. IV. p. 239.

CHAPTER IV

ROYAL ACADEMICIAN--MUSIC--ARAB HALL

1869-1878

In 1869, the year after his journeyings in Egypt, Leighton was elected a Royal Academician. The picture which he chose as his Diploma work to be deposited in the Academy on his election was the "S. Jerome," one of those few works which reflected the side of his nature about which he was profoundly reserved. Another work of which the same might be said is "Elijah in the Wilderness," painted in 1879. Leighton told a friend he had put more of himself into that picture than into any other he had ever invented. Three paintings which are among Leighton's very best appeared on the walls of the Academy in 1869--"Daedalus and Icarus," "Electra at the Tomb of Agamemnon," and "Helios and Rhodos."

In no work did Leighton indulge his pa.s.sion for colour so successfully as in the last-named picture. He wrote to his master, Steinle, in 1860: "You will perhaps be surprised, but, in spite of my fanatic preference for colour, I promised myself to be a draughtsman before I became a colourist." Again, in a letter to a friend in 1879 he wrote: "Colour was supposed to be my _forte_ (_par parenthese_, though I am not a colourist, albeit pa.s.sionately fond of colour, I have always been, and am, a great _cuisinier_; I have tried quite innumerable methods and vehicles)." Some of Leighton's appreciators cannot help feeling jealous of this obstinate determination to struggle with those gifts for which nature had not given him the preference, many considering his artistic error to have been that of putting the screw too tightly on his preconceived determinations. Had he _sometimes_, at all events, allowed his "fanatic preference" to have free play, more of his works might have glowed with the revelry in rich colour we find on the canvas of "Helios and Rhodos."

[Ill.u.s.tration: ST. JEROME. 1869. DIPLOMA WORK Deposited in the Academy on Lord Leighton's election as an Academician]

[Ill.u.s.tration: "ELECTRA AT THE TOMB OF AGAMEMNON"]

No complete work evinces more conclusively the force of Leighton's dramatic gift than "Electra"; and--further--masterly and beautiful as are all Leighton's arrangements of drapery, those in this design strike me as specially expressive. They are truly superb. The balance of the ma.s.ses, and the sweeping lines from the feet up to the shoulder and over the chest, are grandly conceived--the arrangement of the folds notably adding to the suggestion of tragic feeling in the att.i.tude of the figure.