Sketches and Travels in London

by William Makepeace Thackeray

upon the fellahs who had maligned him; Skinflint Beg was promoted

  to the rank of Skinflint Bey; and his manner of extracting money

  from his people may be studied with admiration in a part of the

  United Kingdom. {3}

  At the time of the Syrian quarrel, and when, apprehending some

  general rupture with England, the Pasha wished to raise the spirit

  of the fellahs, and relever la morale nationale, he actually made

  one of the astonished Arabs a colonel. He degraded him three days

  after peace was concluded. The young Egyptian colonel, who told me

  this, laughed and enjoyed the joke with the utmost gusto. "Is it

  not a shame," he said, "to make me a colonel at three-and-twenty;

  I, who have no particular merit, and have never seen any service?"

  Death has since stopped the modest and good-natured young fellow's

  further promotion. The death of--Bey was announced in the French

  papers a few weeks back.

  My above kind-hearted and agreeable young informant used to

  discourse, in our evenings in the Lazaretto at Malta, very

  eloquently about the beauty of his wife, whom he had left behind

  him at Cairo--her brown hair, her brilliant complexion, and her

  blue eyes. It is this Circassian blood, I suppose, to which the

  Turkish aristocracy that governs Egypt must be indebted for the

  fairness of their skin. Ibrahim Pasha, riding by in his barouche,

  looked like a bluff jolly-faced English dragoon officer, with a

  grey moustache and red cheeks, such as you might see on a field-day

  at Maidstone. All the numerous officials riding through the town

  were quite as fair as Europeans. We made acquaintance with one

  dignitary, a very jovial and fat Pasha, the proprietor of the inn,

  I believe, who was continually lounging about the Ezbekieh garden,

  and who, but for a slight Jewish cast of countenance, might have

  passed any day for a Frenchman. The ladies whom we saw were

  equally fair; that is, the very slight particles of the persons of

  ladies which our lucky eyes were permitted to gaze on. These

  lovely creatures go through the town by parties of three or four,

  mounted on donkeys, and attended by slaves holding on at the

  crupper, to receive the lovely riders lest they should fall, and

  shouting out shrill cries of "Schmaalek," "Ameenek" (or however

  else these words may be pronounced), and flogging off the people

  right and left with the buffalo-thong. But the dear creatures are

  even more closely disguised than at Constantinople: their bodies

  are enveloped with a large black silk hood, like a cab-head; the

  fashion seemed to be to spread their arms out, and give this

  covering all the amplitude of which it was capable, as they leered

  and ogled you from under their black masks with their big rolling

  eyes.

  Everybody has big rolling eyes here (unless, to be sure, they lose

  one of ophthalmia). The Arab women are some of the noblest figures

  I have ever seen. The habit of carrying jars on the head always

  gives the figure grace and motion; and the dress the women wear

  certainly displays it to full advantage. I have brought a complete

  one home with me, at the service of any lady for a masqued ball.

  It consists of a coarse blue dress of calico, open in front, and

  fastened with a horn button. Three yards of blue stuff for a veil;

  on the top of the veil a jar to be balanced on the head; and a

  little black strip of silk to fall over the nose, and leave the

  beautiful eyes full liberty to roll and roam. But such a costume,

  not aided by any stays or any other article of dress whatever, can

  be worn only by a very good figure. I suspect it won't be borrowed

  for many balls next season.

  The men, a tall, handsome, noble race, are treated like dogs. I

  shall never forget riding through the crowded bazaars, my

  interpreter, or laquais-de-place, ahead of me to clear the way--

  when he took his whip, and struck it over the shoulders of a man

  who could not or would not make way!

  The man turned round--an old, venerable, handsome face, with

  awfully sad eyes, and a beard long and quite grey. He did not make

  the least complaint, but slunk out of the way, piteously shaking

  his shoulder. The sight of that indignity gave me a sickening

  feeling of disgust. I shouted out to the cursed lackey to hold his

  hand, and forbade him ever in my presence to strike old or young

  more; but everybody is doing it. The whip is in everybody's hands:

  the Pasha's running footman, as he goes bustling through the

  bazaar; the doctor's attendant, as he soberly threads the crowd on

  his mare; the negro slave, who is riding by himself, the most

  insolent of all, strikes and slashes about without mercy, and you

  never hear a single complaint.

  How to describe the beauty of the streets to you!--the fantastic

  splendour; the variety of the houses, and archways, and hanging

  roofs, and balconies, and porches; the delightful accidents of

  light and shade which chequer them: the noise, the bustle, the

  brilliancy of the crowd; the interminable vast bazaars with their

  barbaric splendour. There is a fortune to be made for painters in

  Cairo, and materials for a whole Academy of them. I never saw such

  a variety of architecture, of life, of picturesqueness, of

  brilliant colour, and light and shade. There is a picture in every

  street, and at every bazaar stall. Some of these our celebrated

  water-colour painter, Mr. Lewis, has produced with admirable truth

  and exceeding minuteness and beauty; but there is room for a

  hundred to follow him; and should any artist (by some rare

  occurrence) read this, who has leisure, and wants to break new

  ground, let him take heart, and try a winter in Cairo, where there

  is the finest climate and the best subjects for his pencil.

  A series of studies of negroes alone would form a picturebook,

  delightfully grotesque. Mounting my donkey to-day, I took a ride

  to the desolate noble old buildings outside the city, known as the

  Tombs of the Caliphs. Every one of these edifices, with their

  domes, and courts, and minarets, is strange and beautiful. In one

  of them there was an encampment of negro slaves newly arrived:

  some scores of them were huddled against the sunny wall; two or

  three of their masters lounged about the court, or lay smoking upon

  carpets. There was one of these fellows, a straight-nosed ebony-

  faced Abyssinian, with an expression of such sinister good-humour

  in his handsome face as would form a perfect type of villany. He

  sat leering at me, over his carpet, as I endeavoured to get a

  sketch of that incarnate rascality. "Give me some money," said the

  fellow. "I know what you are about. You will sell my picture for

  money when you get back to Europe; let me have some of it now!"

  But the very rude and humble designer was quite unable to depict

  such a consummation and perfection of roguery; so flung him a

  cigar, which he began to smoke, grinning at the giver. I requested

  the interpreter to inform him, by way of assurance of my

  disinterested
ness, that his face was a great deal too ugly to be

  popular in Europe, and that was the particular reason why I had

  selected it.

  Then one of his companions got up and showed us his black cattle.

  The male slaves were chiefly lads, and the women young, well

  formed, and abominably hideous. The dealer pulled her blanket off

  one of them, and bade her stand up, which she did with a great deal

  of shuddering modesty. She was coal black, her lips were the size

  of sausages, her eyes large and good-humoured; the hair or wool on

  this young person's head was curled and greased into a thousand

  filthy little ringlets. She was evidently the beauty of the flock.

  They are not unhappy: they look to being bought, as many a

  spinster looks to an establishment in England; once in a family

  they are kindly treated and well clothed, and fatten, and are the

  merriest people of the whole community. These were of a much more

  savage sort than the slaves I had seen in the horrible market at

  Constantinople, where I recollect the following young creature--{2}

  (indeed it is a very fair likeness of her) whilst I was looking at

  her and forming pathetic conjectures regarding her fate--smiling

  very good-humouredly, and bidding the interpreter ask me to buy her

  for twenty pounds.

  From these Tombs of the Caliphs the Desert is before you. It comes

  up to the walls of the city, and stops at some gardens which spring

  up all of a sudden at its edge. You can see the first Station-

  house on the Suez Road; and so from distance-point to point, could

  ride thither alone without a guide.

  Asinus trotted gallantly into this desert for the space of a

  quarter of an hour. There we were (taking care to keep our back to

  the city walls), in the real actual desert: mounds upon mounds of

  sand, stretching away as far as the eye can see, until the dreary

  prospect fades away in the yellow horizon! I had formed a finer

  idea of it out of "Eothen." Perhaps in a simoom it may look more

  awful. The only adventure that befell in this romantic place was

  that Asinus's legs went deep into a hole: whereupon his rider went

  over his head, and bit the sand, and measured his length there; and

  upon this hint rose up, and rode home again. No doubt one should

  have gone out for a couple of days' march--as it was, the desert

  did not seem to me sublime, only UNCOMFORTABLE.

  Very soon after this perilous adventure the sun likewise dipped

  into the sand (but not to rise therefrom so quickly as I had done);

  and I saw this daily phenomenon of sunset with pleasure, for I was

  engaged at that hour to dine with our old friend J-, who has

  established himself here in the most complete Oriental fashion.

  You remember J-, and what a dandy he was, the faultlessness of his

  boots and cravats, the brilliancy of his waistcoats and kid-gloves;

  we have seen his splendour in Regent Street, in the Tuileries, or

  on the Toledo. My first object on arriving here was to find out

  his house, which he has taken far away from the haunts of European

  civilisation, in the Arab quarter. It is situated in a cool,

  shady, narrow alley; so narrow, that it was with great difficulty--

  His Highness Ibrahim Pasha happening to pass at the same moment--

  that my little procession of two donkeys, mounted by self and

  valet-de-place, with the two donkey-boys our attendants, could

  range ourselves along the wall, and leave room for the august

  cavalcade. His Highness having rushed on (with an affable and

  good-humoured salute to our imposing party), we made J.'s quarters;

  and, in the first place, entered a broad covered court or porch,

  where a swarthy tawny attendant, dressed in blue, with white

  turban, keeps a perpetual watch. Servants in the East lie about

  all the doors, it appears; and you clap your hands, as they do in

  the dear old "Arabian Nights," to summon them.

  This servant disappeared through a narrow wicket, which he closed

  after him; and went into the inner chambers, to ask if his lord

  would receive us. He came back presently, and rising up from my

  donkey, I confided him to his attendant (lads more sharp, arch, and

  wicked than these donkey-boys don't walk the pave of Paris or

  London), and passed the mysterious outer door.

  First we came into a broad open court, with a covered gallery

  running along one side of it. A camel was reclining on the grass

  there; near him was a gazelle, to glad J- with his dark blue eye;

  and a numerous brood of hens and chickens, who furnish his liberal

  table. On the opposite side of the covered gallery rose up the

  walls of his long, queer, many-windowed, many-galleried house.

  There were wooden lattices to those arched windows, through the

  diamonds of one of which I saw two of the most beautiful, enormous,

  ogling black eyes in the world, looking down upon the interesting

  stranger. Pigeons were flapping, and hopping, and fluttering, and

  cooing about. Happy pigeons, you are, no doubt, fed with crumbs

  from the henne-tipped fingers of Zuleika! All this court, cheerful

  in the sunshine, cheerful with the astonishing brilliancy of the

  eyes peering out from the lattice-bars, was as mouldy, ancient, and

  ruinous--as any gentleman's house in Ireland, let us say. The

  paint was peeling off the rickety old carved galleries; the

  arabesques over the windows were chipped and worn;--the ancientness

  of the place rendered it doubly picturesque. I have detained you a

  long time in the outer court. Why the deuce was Zuleika there,

  with the beautiful black eyes?

  Hence we passed into a large apartment, where there was a fountain;

  and another domestic made his appearance, taking me in charge, and

  relieving the tawny porter of the gate. This fellow was clad in

  blue too, with a red sash and a grey beard. He conducted me into a

  great hall, where there was a great, large Saracenic oriel window.

  He seated me on a divan; and stalking off, for a moment, returned

  with a long pipe and a brass chafing-dish: he blew the coal for

  the pipe, which he motioned me to smoke, and left me there with a

  respectful bow. This delay, this mystery of servants, that outer

  court with the camels, gazelles, and other beautiful-eyed things,

  affected me prodigiously all the time he was staying away; and

  while I was examining the strange apartment and its contents, my

  respect and awe for the owner increased vastly.

  As you will be glad to know how an Oriental nobleman (such as J--

  undoubtedly is) is lodged and garnished, let me describe the

  contents of this hall of audience. It is about forty feet long,

  and eighteen or twenty high. All the ceiling is carved, gilt,

  painted and embroidered with arabesques, and choice sentences of

  Eastern writing. Some Mameluke Aga, or Bey, whom Mehemet Ali

  invited to breakfast and massacred, was the proprietor of this

  mansion once: it has grown dingier, but, perhaps, handsomer, since

  his time. Opposite the divan is a great bay-window, with a divan

  likewise round the niche. It looks out upon a
garden about the

  size of Fountain Court, Temple; surrounded by the tall houses of

  the quarter. The garden is full of green. A great palm-tree

  springs up in the midst, with plentiful shrubberies, and a talking

  fountain. The room beside the divan is furnished with one deal

  table, value five shillings; four wooden chairs, value six

  shillings; and a couple of mats and carpets. The table and chairs

  are luxuries imported from Europe. The regular Oriental dinner is

  put upon copper trays, which are laid upon low stools. Hence J-

  Effendi's house may be said to be much more sumptuously furnished

  than those of the Beys and Agas his neighbours.

  When these things had been examined at leisure, J- appeared. Could

  it be the exquisite of the "Europa" and the "Trois Freres"? A man-

  -in a long yellow gown, with a long beard somewhat tinged with

  grey, with his head shaved, and wearing on it, first, a white

  wadded cotton nightcap; second, a red tarboosh--made his appearance

  and welcomed me cordially. It was some time, as the Americans say,

  before I could "realise" the semillant J- of old times.

  He shuffled off his outer slippers before he curled up on the divan

  beside me. He clapped his hands, and languidly called "Mustapha."

  Mustapha came with more lights, pipes, and coffee; and then we fell

  to talking about London, and I gave him the last news of the

  comrades in that dear city. As we talked, his Oriental coolness

  and languor gave way to British cordiality; he was the most amusing

  companion of the club once more.

  He has adapted himself outwardly, however, to the Oriental life.

  When he goes abroad he rides a grey horse with red housings, and

  has two servants to walk beside him. He wears a very handsome

  grave costume of dark blue, consisting of an embroidered jacket and

  gaiters, and a pair of trousers, which would make a set of dresses

  for an English family. His beard curls nobly over his chest, his

  Damascus scimitar on his thigh. His red cap gives him a venerable

  and Bey-like appearance. There is no gewgaw or parade about him,

  as in some of your dandified young Agas. I should say that he is a

  Major-General of Engineers, or a grave officer of State. We and

  the Turkified European, who found us at dinner, sat smoking in

  solemn divan.

  His dinners were excellent; they were cooked by a regular Egyptian

  female cook. We had delicate cucumbers stuffed with forced-meats;

  yellow smoking pilaffs, the pride of the Oriental cuisine; kid and

  fowls a l'Aboukir and a la Pyramide: a number of little savoury

  plates of legumes of the vegetable-marrow sort: kibobs with an

  excellent sauce of plums and piquant herbs. We ended the repast

  with ruby pomegranates, pulled to pieces, deliciously cool and

  pleasant. For the meats, we certainly ate them with the Infidel

  knife and fork; but for the fruit, we put our hands into the dish

  and flicked them into our mouths in what cannot but be the true

  Oriental manner. I asked for lamb and pistachio-nuts, and cream-

  tarts au poivre; but J.'s cook did not furnish us with either of

  those historic dishes. And for drink, we had water freshened in

  the porous little pots of grey clay, at whose spout every traveller

  in the East has sucked delighted. Also, it must be confessed, we

  drank certain sherbets, prepared by the two great rivals, Hadji

  Hodson and Bass Bey--the bitterest and most delicious of draughts!

  O divine Hodson! a camel's load of thy beer came from Beyrout to

  Jerusalem while we were there. How shall I ever forget the joy

  inspired by one of those foaming cool flasks?

  We don't know the luxury of thirst in English climes. Sedentary

  men in cities at least have seldom ascertained it; but when they

  travel, our countrymen guard against it well. The road between

  Cairo and Suez is jonche with soda-water corks. Tom Thumb and his

  brothers might track their way across the desert by those

  landmarks.

  Cairo is magnificently picturesque: it is fine to have palm-trees