Our major-domo, Ruffo the European, was with us on board. I must tell you of Ruffo; such an honest man in a country of much corruption! He did all my housekeeping, and that zealously; but, desiring sometimes to consult me about dinner, his figurative way of putting things before me was a little trying. “Miladi, would you like cutlets?” patting his ribs; “or a leg?” advancing that limb; “or, for a very nice entrée, brains?” tapping his perspiring forehead. “Oh no, Ruffo, never brains, please!” He would rejoice in strokes of good luck in the market, and fly through the sitting-rooms to me, perhaps bearing, like a gonfalon, a piece of beef, where good beef was so rare; “Look, miladi, you will not often meet such beef walking in the street.” He always smelled the melons on presenting them to me, to invite my attention to their ripeness.
After Cairo, Alexandria struck me very disagreeably at first; but when I got over its Western pseudo-Italian garishness, I was able to console myself with many a precious bit of orientalism, and even the bizarre mixture of flashy European tinsel with the true native metal amused me so much that I ended by enjoying the place and in being delighted to return there for yet another winter, and another. Nor can I ever forget that this appointment afforded us the most memorable journey of our lives—the ride through Palestine!
Not even the drive on the old Shoubra Road at Cairo surpassed the Alexandrian Rotten Row on the Mahmoudieh Canal on a Friday afternoon in its heterogeneous comicality. Every type was on the Mahmoudieh, in carriages, and on horseback—Levantine, Greek, Jew, Italian, Arab; up and down they rode on the bumpy promenade, under the shade of acacias and other flowering trees that skirted the picturesque canal. Across this narrow strip of water you saw the Arab villages of a totally different world; and I really felt a qualm every time I saw a fellah over the way turning his back to the western sun (and to us) to pray, in absolute oblivion of our silly goings-on. On our side was Worldiness running up and down, helter-skelter; on the other, the repose of Kismet.
Here comes a foreign consul—you know him by his armed, picturesque ruffian on the box—in a smart Victoria, driven by a coal-black Nubian in spotless white necktie and gloves; the Arab horse is ambling along with high measured action. Much admired is Monsieur le Consul—the observed of all observers; he looks as though he felt himself “quite, quite.” But “Awah, awah!” Here come at a smart leaping run two shouting syces turbaned in the Alexandrian fashion; and behind them a barouche and pair driven by an English coachman of irreproachable deportment. What thrilling rivalry is here!
Exquisite horses with showy saddle-cloths there are, with le sport on their backs in the person of “young Egypt” in the inevitable tarboosh. That tarboosh! It is the “bowler” hat of the East, and I don’t know which I hate most—it or the “bowler.”
The ladies are overwhelming; and I rest my eyes occasionally by watching the demure feminine figures of the “East end” who are filling their amphoræ under the oleanders over the way, or washing their clothes and their babies in the drinking water supply of the native town.
Towards sunset there is a sauve qui peut of equipages citywards, and I never heard such a din as is set up as soon as the soft roads are passed and the paved streets are reached. Over it all you may hear:—
The tow-row-row and the tow-row-row
Of the British Grenadiers.
The Suffolks or the Surreys are marching from Mandara Camp to the sound of that drum which we like to remind ourselves “beats round the world.”