In 1906 I was busy writing two books into which a good deal of history came, Carthage and Tunis, the Old and New Gates of the Orient, and The Secrets of the Vatican, the former of which I published at the end of that year, and the latter at the beginning of the following year.
We were hovering between Italy in the winter, and Tenby in the summer, and taking uncommonly little out of our rent at 32 Addison Mansions.
I had always been mightily interested in Carthage. I hated Carthage being beaten by Rome, partly, perhaps, because history has invested the career of Hannibal and the fall of Carthage with such undying romance. When we were in Sicily in 1906 we suddenly made up our minds to go to Tunis, of which Carthage is practically a suburb, just as when we were at Vancouver we suddenly made up our minds to take a trip to Japan.
Carthage is disappointing to those who wish to see Punic remains. Of the mighty walls described by Polybius, there remains hardly one stone upon another. Its impregnable naval harbour and arsenal have dried up into mere ponds—in fact, there is nothing Punic about it, except subterranean tombs, which you can only reach by being lowered in a basket, and the gorgeous coffins and ornaments which came out of them, and are preserved in the museum of the White Fathers.
But of Roman Carthage there are plenty of remains—an amphitheatre, and a theatre, and mighty underground cisterns, and the foundations of immense churches. In that amphitheatre a most interesting lot of saints were martyred, St. Perpetua herself among them.
No ruins have been discovered connected with the career of St. Augustine, the Carthaginian to whom the White Fathers attach so much more importance than to Hannibal or Hamilcar; and all memories of Dido have hopelessly disappeared. Any remains that there might have been of the citadel so desperately defended against Scipio, have been obliterated by the erection of a cathedral on the site, the consummation of the life-work of Cardinal Lavigerie. That there is not one human being for a congregation, except the White Fathers in the monastery, does not appear to signify at all. The cathedral is there, just on the spot where you want to forget it most, and think of the tremendous human tragedy to which that hill is sacred.
I loved wandering about the site of Carthage, ruminating upon history; I found the study of the saints of Carthage fascinating, and gave a good deal of my book to them when I came to write about Carthage, in which I also gave translations of the very extensive passages which Virgil devotes to it, without apparently having possessed any antiquarian knowledge at all upon the subject.
History is very ironical here. You sometimes meet wandering, or encamped about the site of Carthage, Berbers, lineal descendants of the aborigines dispossessed by Dido and her Phœnicians when they founded Carthage, who lasted as a race to see Phœnician Carthage perish, and the Christian and Roman Carthage, which rose upon its ashes, perish likewise before the invading Arabs, and the Arabs, after temporary subjugation by this or the other invader, finally conquered by the French. Their language, too, has survived, though it was in danger of extinction till French scholars made its preservation and study a hobby.
It must not be forgotten that when Carthage came to life again she had her revenge on Rome, for the Vandal King of Carthage captured Rome, and carries its empress in chains to Carthage, with the Table of the Shewbread, the Ark of the Covenant, and the Seven-branched Candlestick captured by Titus—trophies to which the Romans had ever since attached superstitious importance.
In the last half of 1906 and the spring of 1907 I was unusually busy. We spent the summer for the fourth year in succession at Tenby. Eustache de Lorey was there with me collaborating in Queer Things about Persia. I planned the outline of the book; I suggested subjects for the chapters; I extracted some of them by cross-examination; I wrote down others when he was in an anecdotal vein. And some he wrote in French, and we translated them together. Had he been able to accumulate a book in English unaided, there was no reason why he should not have written it all himself. His careful, slightly foreign English was very effective. But I may take this credit to myself, that the book would never have been conceived without me, and even had it been conceived, it would neither have been begun, nor, having been begun, would it have been finished, without my professional industry. I enjoyed writing it very much indeed. De Lorey was such a delightful companion, and I learnt so much about Persia by writing a book on it. This sounds like a paradox, but it is a universal truth.