by Cecil Beaton
Generally the sky forms only a small part of the world one sees from day to day, but here the earth was as flat as a gramophone record, and one felt oneself to be part of the burning heavens.
As the sun was meeting the horizon we arrived at Kairouan.
The dying light flushed with rose the marshmallow cupolas and minarets. Then all turned to a glittering night-scene. An indigo sky was spangled with stars, while, beneath in the market, torches and flares sparkled on arrays of painted sweetmeats, miniature mountains of corn and cereals, and the fruit stalls, garlanded with swags of oranges, cut with the fresh leaves growing on the stalks.
We marvelled at the great mosque: we wandered down mysterious streets overhung with pepper trees, or past alleyways, dimly lit doorways or dark hovels. We sat in an arcaded café decorated with odd tinsel pictures and glass scenes from Othello. Birdcages hung from the red and blue striped ceiling; and a mother o’ pearl gramophone, with brass horn, played raucous Eastern music, with screeching voices agonisingly shrill.
The crescent moon still shone bright when next morning we were called before dawn. We hoped, with good fortune on our side, to arrive at Tozeur before nightfall. The sky gradually lightened through the delicate filigree of the olive trees and faux poivriers, homes for waking birds.
Groups of Arabs, squatting forlornly near their camels, were waiting for the sun to rise before burying their dead. The corpse, shrouded in a sheet, lay on the ground or was stiffly jerked along tied to the camel’s back.
Once again, in a desert landscape, we passed muffled women in dark blue with tattooed make-up and the stumbling grace of Tanagra figurines. Arabs jogged along on bird-delicate footed long-eared donkeys, their wide-eyed Bedouin children looking out from black curls. It seemed odd to see a solitary woman, surrounded by infinite miles of aridity, thrashing with full force and factory-vigour at the coarse tufts of grass. It would come as a shock to see a human being walking in the empty vastness with the jostling fervour of a woman shopping for bargains. Yet these solitary pedestrians will spur themselves on for two days in order to sell a chicken; sometimes hiking for three months without stopping, except to rest at night under a flimsy blanket, with only a tuft of coarse alfalfa grass for protection.
My companion, the venerable Count, by now, had proved an entertaining conversationalist. Crafty and humorous, age had given him a balance which his little car lacked. Over pits, boulders, cracks and holes, the Count drove his ‘little Jade’; the harder we bounded the more the old Count cackled with amusement. Occasionally he had to drive over ground that looked impassable.
Our first stop was at Sbeitla to see the Roman ruins which comprise the greater part of three temples in almost perfect condition, made of a stone that is saffron coloured. Cacti sprouted wildly from the cornice of a triumphal arch. Very dramatic.
On — on — on. We must cross a certain river before nightfall or we would not find the way. We passed a stray herd of camels. They were pregnant and could not be used for carrying. In our headlights they looked flat as made of cardboard; desert birds were big and bright, and scurrying mice and rats flew across our path. At last the twinkling lights of our goal. Groups in dirty white huddled round a lamp, which dramatises the crude but beautiful honeycomb brickwork of the city.
The cries of the Arabs being called to prayer woke us before daylight. Soon the square of my window became violet blue, and we prepared for a five hour expedition through the desert to El Oued. A special vehicle, which is necessary to navigate the high sand dunes, arrived, looking like an enormous caterpillar, or a prehistoric car once owned by Lord Lonsdale. Indeed, the Comte Max resembled the sporting earl as he sat aloft, wearing a large white panama hat and scarlet burnous. The caterpillar had eight wheels, and, after we had navigated some precipitous mountains of sand we realised they were all of them necessary.
One marvelled that the sand was combed with so many varying textures, as if an army of immaculate gardeners had been at work with rakes of every size. Gradually the undulations became more gentle and we then saw the non-existing lakes, rivers, minarets and towers of a mirage. It gave one a somewhat uncanny sensation. One realised how easily parched travellers had gone on to their doom in an effort to arrive at this illusory haven.
Eventually the mirage evaporated, and once more we travelled through a flatness like a pretrified sea. At last the mirage became reality: a Saharan Nights dream cluster of minarets, delicately plumaged palmettoes like spurting land-fireworks, proved that we had reached the oasis of El Oued.
When our caterpillar came to a halt, we found ourselves in a pale biscuit-coloured world: the carefully sifted sand beneath our feet, the towers and domes, even the dogs and the sand-fox with big ears, were all monochrome. The entire population seemed to greet us: little children ran out with infants on their backs.
We immediately picked as our guide, from a sea of turbanned faces, a boy who could not have been more than ten years old. Yet his manner was mature and calm, as he spoke with a delightful French accent. At once, with immense dignity and charm, he embarked upon a tour of the town. He showed us the synagogue, with unbelievably old men trembling at prayer; the big mosque, with cross-legged groups singing in euphoric rhythms: the silent groups reclining in the market square. In a dimly lit vault, with a low wall running round the room, sat soldiers in red fezzes. With her pet goat beside her sat an old, half-blind Madam. Bundled together were the whores, like a flock of tropical birds with their heavily painted faces, barbaric jewellery and elaborate costumes.
One Jezebel, the most striking, sat motionless with calm dignity holding in her hennaed hands a heavy silver key. This key would open the room, large enough only for a bed and brass tray of tea, to which she would take one of the soldiers when he had a mind to invite her to do so. With high Chinese cheekbones, a long oval yellow face and receding chin she was attired in the most sophisticated taste of dark blues and white with silver ornaments.
There was something haunting and sinister about the quietness of this waiting-room; no one talked, or appeared to pay any attention to anyone else, until suddenly one of the soldiers would amble off towards one of the silently smoking women, to disappear with her in her cell. Madam and her goat paid no attention.
Early next morning, George Huene and I wandered to the oasis. It is one of nature’s most extraordinary phenomena that in the centre of a desert-barrenness, there should suddenly be crystal pools, a fertile garden of emerald grasses and silver olive trees. The huge bursting dates looked appetising hanging on their orange coloured sticks. Monkey-like Arab boys ran almost vertically up the palm trunks to cut heavy bunches of fruit from among the motionless plumes of grey and blue spikes. Older Arabs squatted below, as they washed the fruit, taking from them the stones which they then fed to the camels. Here, in this bowl of palm trees, the ears were filled with the liquid chirruping of birds: the grey skylarks with tufted crests, the hoopoes, tor-torelles (turtle doves) and the petulant twitter of frisking sparrows.
Later our small guide conducted us on a return visit to the Chinese Ouled Naïl. At our approach, dogs barked, the houris screamed with surprise at daytime visitors, and when we produced our cameras they ran behind curtains. Our ten-year-old guide then explained to the Madam in man-of-the-world fashion that we did not want to go to bed with the residents, but would pay to take their photographs. In answer the women demanded twenty francs for each snap — this seemed excessive, for they allow people to sleep with them for two francs! The boy squatted on the floor and haggled in our interests. At last he prevailed upon our favourite to pose for a drawing. She sat motionless, lids lowered as though in a trance, on her small bed with out-splayed legs like an odalisque by Matisse. The other whores crowded round excitedly to watch the pencil strokes. When the sketch was finished, the others squawked that they too should have a portrait. The Chinese favourite was about to relent and allow herself to be photographed when all the other inmates screamed in protest.
When the time came for
the four travellers to make the return journey to Hammarmet, there were last minute delays. The caterpillar-car must be overhauled. So I wandered off by myself down some stone-coloured alleyways and labyrinths, looking for the last time at my favourite sights.
MOROCCO
Tangier, undated
The first sight of Tangier was of a sugary mass of white cubes sloping up from the sea to a turquoise sky. As David Herbert and I walked through the walled streets to the Sultan’s palace in the Arab quarter, we agreed that it matters little that modern buildings have been erected among the old moorish shops and walls. The whole town has a bleached uniformity.
In the main market place, many white-blanketed figures shuffled about, while others bent over to inspect incongruous bits of rubbish, old nails, dried snakes and bicycle clips laid out on the ground. An Arab boy walked down a steep path against a curdled wall, carrying on his head an enormous basket of flowers. He looked, from the distance, as though he were wearing an Edwardian lady’s elaborate hat. Under the gnarled, clean silver trees, old women sat beneath vast straw hats, patiently waiting to get rid of blue irises and feathery mimosa.
The Moroccan year passes in seasons of flowers. All the English spring blossoms are here as well as the summer ones; roses of unfamiliar species tumble over balconies in pillowy profusion.
We furnished our house in the Casbah with junk from the market (gaudily effective materials made curtains and covers), and bought potted azaleas with which to decorate our white-walled garden. While I remained on the roof of our house in the shade of a fig tree working on the illustrations for a book, David stood on the parapet and described scenes taking place in the square below. A shipload of English tourists has arrived. They scream with hysterical horror at the snake charmer, who does his stunt much too long. The French boat is in. Then it is Friday. The Governor goes to his mosque to pray, amid the strains of the National Anthem tootled by red uniformed, white turbanned guards. Again it is Friday; again the Governor arrives. Fridays come around too quickly. On Thursday, the place is filled with sorrowful women in white, carrying baskets of food as presents for their children in the small boys’ prison opposite. One old lady finds the pull up the hill too much for her. She has not allowed enough time for the ascent. The clock strikes three; the guards locks the door against her as she sits down and cries.
On the postcards that I sent home I wrote that we were situated between the prison and the madhouse. One night, we heard that two murderers had escaped. It was then we began to realise that some of the cries that we imagined came from bread- or fruit-sellers were those of the lunatics next door. Only after three weeks did David tell me about the four madmen shut in a cell so small that one with a wooden leg has had a hole bored to allow him to stretch it out. Throughout the night, I listened now to the tormented wails. Often they awoke me with a start. Towards dawn, one madman sang with great force, a prelude of infinite sadness to the sunrise.
A small tour has been planned. On our way to Fez the motor car runs through a long tunnel of pepper trees, filled with birds so small that only songs and squeaks reveal their presence. The landscape is cosily tranquil, with distant herds grazing on lush, velvety slopes. Greece in spring must be like this, with cascades of ilex trees and groves of olives. Wild flowers, growing at the roadside like carefully planned borders, pungently scent the air.
The ancient town of Fez makes up for the ugliness of its modern quarter. Our initial tour took us through honeycombed passages that offered surprising sights. Through an archway we caught a sudden tableau vivant of ten Negroes, black as the black world of charcoal and charcoal dust that surrounded them. All that was white was in their eyes. In a small courtyard, a gushing torrent, pumped from a well, splashed on to a group busily washing the hides of sheep. A child of three looked like a miniature woman in a bustle improvized from an apron. She carried a long platter of bread cakes on her coconut-small head.
The entire town of Fez has tall, sand-coloured walls and green-tiled roofs. Often overhanging houses meet one another in midair. They are propped up with struts of huge beams, making a dark tunnel for the current of people below. Some of the passages are fantastically narrow, and so dark that strangers have to grope their way. Yet donkeys and mules pass through the tightly wedged crowds with never an accident.
We were lucky enough to find the venerable Scottish missionary, Miss Denison, at home. One of the great characters of Fez, she lives in a doll’s house decorated like the lodgekeeper’s quarters of any country mansion in England. Outwardly, her existence might seem to be that of any retired old nannie. Yet Miss D., who must be pushing eighty, is up at five a.m., and by six begins dispensing medicines to the natives. This very morning she had tended over a hundred and twenty people. She reads a few prayers, sings a hymn, and then doles out prescriptions from her dispensary of closely packed bottles lining the wall.
Miss Denison is a small, bent, grey-haired woman. This evening she wore a knitted jersey and skirt, but generally she dons native costume. She knows the language perfectly, having lived here for forty-five years. When she arrived in Fez, there were no ‘conveniences’, and it was a lengthy business of many weeks to get from one nearby town to another. ‘There were seven of us to begin with,’ she explains. ‘But the others have all passed on now.’ The dead included a dear friend with whom she had shared this house for thirty years.
I thought Miss D. quite obviously a contented, even happy person. She herself is convinced that her life is an enviable one, though to a stranger from Europe it seems spartan. Still, this is home to her; England now is a place to visit only every ten years.
After a dinner of unexpected exotic dishes, we watched the whores dance in the quartier réserve, and fell under the spell of the beauty of some of the young girls. Their faces were like gazelles; their eyes, glistening with excitement and belladonna, seemed like the eyes of strange birds. Their pastel-coloured dresses were encrusted with sparkling butterflies. And the schlur dancers, cracking their naked feet on the tiled floors with gunlike reports, added a weird aura to the scene. Outside, in the dark of the night, we caught hurried glimpses of beautiful and mysterious faces.
Part XII: Ashcombe, 1931
Ashcombe was always prey to the elements. Sequestered during the lazy idylls of summer, the small buildings and garden would bear the full force of the gales that lashed across the bleak downland in winter, and become like a small ship tossed in an angry ocean. Even a heavy rainfall could make an ascent in a motor up the steep slippery hill of chalk into an adventure. Often terrified dinner guests would return, an hour after they had made their adieux, having left their motor broadside across the hill or overhanging a precipice, to beg a bed for the night until, with daylight, help could come, and they could be towed up the hill. A fallen tree or snow drift made the place impregnable sometimes for a week on end.
Perhaps for the very reason that Ashcombe was such a difficult place to reach I enjoyed the challenge, for an occasion, of peopling it with multitudes of surprised guests.
Occasionally Ashcombe would be the scene of a mammoth fancy dress gala with special buses, with chained wheels, to do a funicular service. The most elaborate was a fête champêtre, given with Michael Duff as co-host, when a perversely sophisticated piece of rusticity was staged. The decorations came from Milan and Paris, the guests from all over the world. The fact that six weeks were spent organising the event was proof that, in comparison with my later life, professional work did not tax me too much.
But although, on occasion, the house would be overcrowded with guests, yet much of the time was spent there alone. For the first time in my life I would feel free to do whatever I wanted at any given time without being an inconvenience to others. During these green years at Ashcombe I enjoyed experimenting with time. I would often wake myself up so as to be about when dawn was breaking over the interlocking hills. Sometimes I would go alone for midnight walks, or remain up all night reading, playing the gramophone, or turning out cupboards
. In the small sitting-room I would listen to the owls outside the windows, and to the vicious jungle sounds of animals killing or fighting in the dark. I would jump with fright when, after the long day, the furniture popped or creaked in the warmth, the coals re-arranged themselves in the hearth, or a flower changed its position in a vase. But remote and wild as the place was, I never had a feeling of loneliness, or of danger.
ASHCOMBE, TOLLARD ROYAL, WILTSHIRE
May 1931
There is always excitement on returning to Ashcombe. Today the grass had been cut and tidied. There were good imitations of sweeping lawns. The horse and cart were carrying away soft green mounds of mowings. Staves and rakes lay about, adding to a Gainsborough scene.
I lay, in a haze of peace on the lawn, watching the new doves unloosed from their temporary house, enjoying to the fullest the first real day of summer. Every imaginable kind of bird seemed to be singing. I dozed in the boiling sun, dimly aware of great busyness around me with the gardener and his boy trimming and tidying.
I listened vaguely to the clop and brittle scraping of earthenware pots being moved about on the cobblestones.
I wandered to the greenhouse to enjoy the humid scent of warmth and nurtured growth. Carefully tended shoots grew in potted rows; flaking rubble lay underfoot. There were strands of bass, and an empty, chalky water bucket.
Down by the lily pond, elder flower petals, looking like vermicelli, had been wafted on to the surface of the water. Self-sown plants sprouted in the clunks of the stone walls of the terrace. One plant looked like an artichoke; old ladies use it to make an ointment for healing purposes.
