[The house at Thebes of which my mother speaks in the following letter was built about 1815, over the ancient temple of Khem, by Mr. Salt, English Consul-General in Egypt. He was an archæologist and a student of hieroglyphics, and when Belzoni landed at Alexandria was struck by his ability, and sent him up to Thebes to superintend the removal of the great bust of Memnon, now in the British Museum. Belzoni, I believe, lived for some time in Mr. Salt’s house, which afterwards became the property of the French Government, and was known as the Maison de France; it was pulled down in 1884 when the great temple of Luxor was excavated by M. Maspero. My late friend Miss A. B. Edwards wrote a description of his work in the Illustrated London News, from which I give a few extracts:
‘Squatters settled upon the temple like a swarm of mason bees; and the extent of the mischief they perpetrated in the course of centuries may be gathered from the fact that they raised the level of the surrounding soil to such a height that the obelisks, the colossi, and the entrance pylon were buried to a depth of 40 feet, while inside the building the level of the native village was 50 feet above the original pavement. Seven months ago the first court contained not only the local mosque, but a labyrinthine maze of mud structures, numbering some thirty dwellings, and eighty strawsheds, besides yards, stables, and pigeon-towers, the whole being intersected by innumerable lanes and passages. Two large mansions—real mansions, spacious and, in Arab fashion, luxurious,—blocked the great Colonnade of Horembebi; while the second court, and all the open spaces and ruined parts of the upper end of the Temple, were encumbered by sheepfolds, goat-yards, poultry-yards, donkey-sheds, clusters of mud huts, refuse-heaps, and piles of broken pottery. Upon the roof of the portico there stood a large, rambling, ruinous old house, the property of the French Government, and known as the “Maison de France” . . . Within its walls the illustrious Champollion and his ally Rosellini lived and worked together in 1829, during part of their long sojourn at Thebes. Here the naval officers sent out by the French in 1831 to remove the obelisk which now stands in the Place de la Concorde took up their temporary quarters. And here, most interesting to English readers, Lady Duff Gordon lingered through some of her last winters, and wrote most of her delightful “Letters from Egypt.” A little balcony with a broken veranda and a bit of lattice-work parapet, juts out above some mud walls at the end of the building. Upon that balcony she was wont to sit in the cool of the evening, watching the boats upon the river and the magical effect of the after-glow upon the Libyan mountains opposite. All these buildings—“Maison de France,” stores, yards, etc. . . . are all swept away.’]
December 17, 1863: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon
To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.
Cairo,
December 17, 1863.
Dearest Alick,
At last I hope I shall get off in a few days. I have had one delay and bother after another, chiefly caused by relying on the fine speeches of Mr. D. On applying straight to the French Consulate at Alexandria, Janet got me the loan of the Maison de France at Thebes at once. M. Mounier, the agent to Halim Pasha, is going up to Esneh, and will let me travel in the steamer which is to tow his dahabieh. It will be dirty, but will cost little and take me out of this dreadful cold weather in five or six days.
December 22.—I wrote the above five days ago, since when I have had to turn out of Thayer’s house, as his new Vice-Consul wanted it, and am back at Briggs’. M. Mounier is waiting in frantic impatience to set off, and I ditto; but Ismail Pasha keeps him from day to day. The worry of depending on anyone in the East is beyond belief. Tell your mother that Lady Herbert is gone up the river; her son was much the better for Cairo. I saw Pietro, her courier, who is stupendously grand, he offered Omar £8 a month to go with them; you may imagine how Pietro despised his heathenish ignorance in preferring to stay with me for £3. It quite confirmed him in his contempt for the Arabs.
You would have laughed to hear me buying a carpet. I saw an old broker with one on his shoulder in the bazaar, and asked the price, ‘eight napoleons’—then it was unfolded and spread in the street, to the great inconvenience of passers-by, just in front of a coffee-shop. I look at it superciliously, and say, ‘Three hundred piastres, O uncle,’ the poor old broker cries out in despair to the men sitting outside the coffee-shop: ‘O Muslims, hear that and look at this excellent carpet. Three hundred piastres! By the faith, it is worth two thousand!’ But the men take my part and one mildly says: ‘I wonder that an old man as thou art should tell us that this lady, who is a traveller and a person of experience, values it at three hundred—thinkest thou we will give thee more?’ Then another suggests that if the lady will consent to give four napoleons, he had better take them, and that settles it. Everybody gives an opinion here, and the price is fixed by a sort of improvised jury.
Christmas Day.—At last my departure is fixed. I embark to-morrow afternoon at Boulak, and we sail—or steam, rather—on Sunday morning early, and expect to reach Thebes in eight days. I heard a curious illustration of Arab manners to-day. I met Hassan, the janissary of the American Consulate, a very respectable, good man. He told me he had married another wife since last year—I asked what for. It was the widow of his brother who had always lived with him in the same house, and who died leaving two boys. She is neither young nor handsome, but he considered it his duty to provide for her and the children, and not to let her marry a stranger. So you see that polygamy is not always sensual indulgence, and a man may practise greater self-sacrifice so than by talking sentiment about deceased wives’ sisters. Hassan has £3 a month, and two wives come expensive. I said, laughing, to Omar as we left him, that I did not think the two wives sounded very comfortable. ‘Oh no! not comfortable at all for the man, but he take care of the women, that’s what is proper—that is the good Mussulman.’