Life of Frances Power Cobbe, as told by herself / with additions by the author, and introduction by Blanche Atkinson

by Frances Power Cobbe

There were some French Nuns on board going to a convent in Cairo, where they were to be charitably engaged taking care of girls. The monastic mind is always an interesting study. It brings us back to the days of Bede, and times when miracles (if it be not a bull to say so) were the rule and the ordinary course of nature the exception. People are then constantly seen where they are not, and not seen where they are; and the dead are as “prominent citizens” of this world (as an American would say) as the living. Meanwhile the actual geography and history of the modern world and all that is going on in politics, society, art and literature, is as dark to the good Sister or Brother as if she or he had really (as in Hans Andersen’s story) “walked back into the eleventh century.” My nice French nuns were very kind and instructive to me. They told me of the Virgin’s Tree which we should see at Heliopolis (though they knew nothing of the obelisk there), and they informed me that if anyone looked out on Trinity Sunday exactly at sunrise, he would see “toutes les trois personnes de la sainte Trinité.”

I could not help asking: “Madame les aura vues?”

“Pas précisément, Madame. Madame sait qu’à cette saison le soleil se lêve bien tôt.”

“Mais, Madame, pour voir loutes les trois personnes?”

It was no use. The good soul persisted in believing what she liked to believe and took care never to get up and look out on Trinity Sunday morning,—just as ten thousand Englishmen and women, who think themselves much wiser than the poor Nun, carefully avoid looking straight at facts concerning which they do not wish to be set right. St. Thomas’ kind of faith which dares to look and see, and, if it may be to touch, is a much more real faith after all than that which will not venture to open its eyes.

Landing at Alexandria (after being blown off the Egyptian coast nearly as far as Crete) was an epoch in my life. No book, no gallery of pictures, can ever be more interesting or instructive than the first drive through an Eastern city; even such a hybrid one as Alexandria. But all the world knows this now, and I need not dwell on so familiar a topic. The only matter I care to record here is a visit I paid to a subterranean church which had just been opened, and of which I was fortunate enough to hear at the moment. I have never been able to learn anything further concerning it than appears in the following extract from one of my note-books, and I fear the church must long ago have been destroyed, and the frescoes, of course, effaced:

“In certain excavations now making in one of the hills of the Old City—within a few hundred yards of the Mahmoudié Canal—the workmen have come upon a small subterranean church; for whose very high antiquity many arguments may be adduced. The frescoes with which it is adorned are still in tolerable preservation, and appear to belong to the same period of art as those rescued from Pompeii. Though altogether inferior to the better specimens in the Museo Borbonico, there is yet the same simplicity of attitude and drapery; the same breadth of outline and effect produced by few touches. It is impossible to confound them for a moment with the stiff and meretricious style of Byzantine painting.

“The form of the church is very peculiar, and I conceive antique. If we suppose a shaft to have been cut into the hill, its base may be considered to form the centre of a cross. To the west, in lieu of nave, are two staircases; one ascending, the other descending to various parts of the hillside. To the east is a small chancel, with depressed elliptical arch and recesses at the back and sides, of the same form. The north transept is a mere apse, supported by rather elegant Ionic pilasters, and having a fan-shaped roof. Opposite this, and in the place of a south transept, is the largest apartment of the whole grotto: a chamber, presenting a singular transition between a modern funeral-vault and an ancient columbarium. The walls are pierced on all sides by deep holes, of the size and shape of coffins placed endwise. There are in all thirty-two of these holes; in which, however, I could find no evidence that they had ever been applied to the purpose of interment. In the corner, between this chamber and the chancel-arch, there is a deep stone cistern sunk in the ground; I presume a font. The frescoes at the end of the chancel are small, and much effaced. In the eastern apse there is a group representing the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes. In the front walls of the chancel-arch are two life-size figures; one representing an angel, the other having the name of Christ inscribed over it in Greek letters. This last struck me as peculiarly interesting; from the circumstance that the face bears no resemblance whatever to the one conventionally received among us, in modern times. The eyes, in the Alexandrian fresco, are dark and widely opened; the eyebrows straight and strongly marked; the hair nearly black and gathered in short, thick masses over the ears. I was the more attracted by these peculiarities, as my attention had shortly before been arrested very forcibly by the splendid bronze bust from Herculaneum, in the Museo Borbonico. This grand and beautiful head, which Murray calls ‘Speucippus’ and the custodi, ‘Plato in the character of the Indian Bacchus,’ resembles so perfectly the common representations of Christ, that I should be at a loss to define any difference, unless it be that it has, perhaps, more intellectual power than our paintings and sculptures usually convey, and a more massive neck. If this Alexandrian fresco really represent the tradition of the 3rd or 4th century, it becomes a question of some curiosity: whence do we derive our modern idea of Christ’s face?”

Cairo was a great delight to me. I could not afford to stop at Shepheard’s Hotel but took up my abode with some kind Americans I had met in the steamer, in a sort of Pension kept by an Italian named Ronch; in old Cairo, actually on the bank of the Nile; so literally so, that I might have dropped a stone from our balcony into the river, just opposite the Isle of Rhoda. From this place I made two excursions to the Pyramids and had a somewhat appalling experience in the “King’s Chamber” in the vault of Cheops. I had gone rather recklessly to Ghiza without either friend or Dragoman; and allowed the wretched Scheik at the door to send five Arabs into the pyramid with me as guides. They had only two miserable dip candles altogether, and the darkness, dust, heat and noise of the Arabs chanting “Vera goot lady! Backsheeh! Backsheeh! Vera goot lady,” and so on da capo, all in the narrow, steeply-slanting passages, together with the intolerable sense of weight as of a mountain of stone over me, proved trying to my nerves. Then, when we had reached the central vault and I had glanced at the empty sarcophagus, which is all it contains, the five men suddenly stopped their chanting, placed themselves with their backs to the wall in rows, with crossed arms in the attitude of the Osiride pilasters; and one of them in a businesslike tone, demanded: “Backsheesh”! I instantly perceived into what a trap I had fallen, and what a fool I had been to come there alone. The idea that they might march out and leave me alone in that awful place, in the darkness, very nearly made me quail. But I knew it was no time to betray alarm, so I replied that I “Intended to pay them outside, but if they wished it I would do so at once.” I took out my purse and gave them three shillings to be divided between the five. They took the money and then returned to their posture against the wall.

“We want Backsheesh!”