digress.
Our party was made up of Harry Boyle, the Oriental Secretary at the Agency; James Barrington, the Third Secretary; your friend Mr Rodd, the First Secretary, who is soon to leave Egypt; Mrs Butcher (acting also as my chaperone); Mr Douglas Sladen and Mr George Young, both of whom are writing books on Egypt; and Mr William Willcocks, who is responsible for the building of the great dam and reservoir at Assouan — and myself In the shadow of forty centuries, the talk turned naturally enough to Egypt, to the uninterrupted way of life of the Egyptian fellah and labourer, to Egypt’s successive rulers and to our presence there now. Mr Boyle took the line you would expect: that the country had never been run so efficiently and that the Egyptians had never been happier or more prosperous than under Lord Cromer. Opposition came, though, from a most unexpected source: Mr Willcocks (who, I later learned from Mr Barrington, is known to have subscribed Five Pounds to a Nationalist paper
, al-Mu’ayyad,
and lives under Lord Cromer’s consequent displeasure) asked why then were the papers agitating against us? Mr Boyle replied that he was not aware of any such agitation and both
al-Muqattam
and the
Gazette
were friendly enough. At this, I fancy a smile passed around the company, and Mr Willcocks said, ‘Oh, I do not mean those two. I meant one of the
two hundred other papers that come out here: the Native newspapers.’ Mr Boyle (with some contempt): ‘My dear fellow, those are the “talking classes”, the effendis. Professional malcontents. ‘ Oh, how strong the temptation was to whip out my journal and take notes as they spoke! But that would not have done, and so I resorted to subterfuge and took out my sketching-pad and pencils — for the scene was delightful and each person had such a different aspect — and I was able also to jot down the odd note and I have written it all out for you as a little ‘scene’, which I hope, together with the drawings, will give you some pleasure.
Here is the scene by the Great Pyramid with the gentlemen lolling at their ease, Mrs Butcher sitting very upright on her cushion in a neat dress of grey with navy trimming and a well-restrained bonnet; Emily is in one corner looking away from the party, and I in another with my sketching-pad poised on my knee; the native hurly-burly waits — at a distance of some yards — to erupt. These Egyptians sit (or crouch or squat) quietly for some stretch of time, and you begin to imagine that nothing can move them from their seeming placidity — until suddenly there is a murmur and there are movements and men standing up and arms waving and raised voices and then it all subsides again into quiet, the peace and the restiveness alike being incomprehensible to me. Mr S (whom I confess I do not much like for he has a superior manner which extends to everything except certain old buildings) holds forth on the subject of the ‘effendis’ whom he terms ‘verbose jackanapes’ and dislikes intensely for — as far as I can tell — their attempts to emulate us. He derides their golf collars and two-tone boots, their ‘undigested’ championing of European ideas of liberty and democracy. He is suspicious of their French education.
Mr S, small and thin and sallow, and HB, large and ruddy, seem to agree on all things; each picks up where the other leaves off. HB holds that the people who matter in Egypt are the fellaheen and for them the British have brought nothing but good. You can see him in the drawing with his drooping moustache, his untidy jacket, and his dog Toti, who goes with him everywhere but is so old that he has to be carried. You see the white and blue
striped bonnet on Toti’s head to protect him from the sun? HB put it on him most solicitously and fed him morsels from the picnic. Meanwhile he describes how the Lord abolished the corvé, the courbash and the bastinado and how the fellah can now stand up to the Pasha and say, ‘You
Our party was made up of Harry Boyle, the Oriental Secretary at the Agency; James Barrington, the Third Secretary; your friend Mr Rodd, the First Secretary, who is soon to leave Egypt; Mrs Butcher (acting also as my chaperone); Mr Douglas Sladen and Mr George Young, both of whom are writing books on Egypt; and Mr William Willcocks, who is responsible for the building of the great dam and reservoir at Assouan — and myself In the shadow of forty centuries, the talk turned naturally enough to Egypt, to the uninterrupted way of life of the Egyptian fellah and labourer, to Egypt’s successive rulers and to our presence there now. Mr Boyle took the line you would expect: that the country had never been run so efficiently and that the Egyptians had never been happier or more prosperous than under Lord Cromer. Opposition came, though, from a most unexpected source: Mr Willcocks (who, I later learned from Mr Barrington, is known to have subscribed Five Pounds to a Nationalist paper
, al-Mu’ayyad,
and lives under Lord Cromer’s consequent displeasure) asked why then were the papers agitating against us? Mr Boyle replied that he was not aware of any such agitation and both
al-Muqattam
and the
Gazette
were friendly enough. At this, I fancy a smile passed around the company, and Mr Willcocks said, ‘Oh, I do not mean those two. I meant one of the
two hundred other papers that come out here: the Native newspapers.’ Mr Boyle (with some contempt): ‘My dear fellow, those are the “talking classes”, the effendis. Professional malcontents. ‘ Oh, how strong the temptation was to whip out my journal and take notes as they spoke! But that would not have done, and so I resorted to subterfuge and took out my sketching-pad and pencils — for the scene was delightful and each person had such a different aspect — and I was able also to jot down the odd note and I have written it all out for you as a little ‘scene’, which I hope, together with the drawings, will give you some pleasure.
Here is the scene by the Great Pyramid with the gentlemen lolling at their ease, Mrs Butcher sitting very upright on her cushion in a neat dress of grey with navy trimming and a well-restrained bonnet; Emily is in one corner looking away from the party, and I in another with my sketching-pad poised on my knee; the native hurly-burly waits — at a distance of some yards — to erupt. These Egyptians sit (or crouch or squat) quietly for some stretch of time, and you begin to imagine that nothing can move them from their seeming placidity — until suddenly there is a murmur and there are movements and men standing up and arms waving and raised voices and then it all subsides again into quiet, the peace and the restiveness alike being incomprehensible to me. Mr S (whom I confess I do not much like for he has a superior manner which extends to everything except certain old buildings) holds forth on the subject of the ‘effendis’ whom he terms ‘verbose jackanapes’ and dislikes intensely for — as far as I can tell — their attempts to emulate us. He derides their golf collars and two-tone boots, their ‘undigested’ championing of European ideas of liberty and democracy. He is suspicious of their French education.
Mr S, small and thin and sallow, and HB, large and ruddy, seem to agree on all things; each picks up where the other leaves off. HB holds that the people who matter in Egypt are the fellaheen and for them the British have brought nothing but good. You can see him in the drawing with his drooping moustache, his untidy jacket, and his dog Toti, who goes with him everywhere but is so old that he has to be carried. You see the white and blue
striped bonnet on Toti’s head to protect him from the sun? HB put it on him most solicitously and fed him morsels from the picnic. Meanwhile he describes how the Lord abolished the corvé, the courbash and the bastinado and how the fellah can now stand up to the Pasha and say, ‘You
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