Life is easy and death is easier in these sub-tropical regions. Men do little during six days, and carefully rest on the seventh. For eight months they saunter through the tepid air of the Mediterranean seaboard; the other four are spent upon “the mountain” (i.e. Lebanon), whose pure, light air is a tonic. The little world of Beyrut rises rather late, and its business hours are but before the noontide breakfast, for here, as amongst the classics, the meals are two per diem. They would be called by our grandfathers dinner and supper; we say breakfast and dinner. Then a little more work precedes a drive or a ride: the stroll is not unknown, the constitutional is. The evenings are spent either in a café or in visits, where whist at times puts in an appearance, and a profound stillness, like that of Lime Street, City, begins to reign about 10 p.m. The theatre has not been imported, although an enterprising Syrian Christian—Moslems cannot originate such things—has, after a visit to Italy, written several comedies in the classical style, unfortunately adopting the French rhymed couplet. The tea party, the little
music, and the soirée dansante, flourish in what the Beyrutines are pleased to call the “Paris of Syria.” The jeunesse dorée, in patent leather boots, “boiled shirts,” fold collars, white ties, and lemon-coloured gloves, loves to don the sables which the English gentleman affects. When he goes forth to make merry, he enters gloves in hand; he prefers round dances to square, and he imitates Europe very literally. But as the Romans kept up the time-honoured and homely eggs as the end of their richest banquets, so the “golden youth” of Beyrut prefers the ugly and unpleasant fez or tarbush. For the rest, young Syria’s ambition is to marry a European wife, and he does not always get the best of that bargain.
In these lands Society still preserves the fragmentary nature which belonged to the ancient world. Beyrut, the port, at the time whereof I write, is distant a single day’s ride from Damascus, the capital of Syria, yet there is no trace of sympathy between the two, and the inland say of the seaboard city:
Its sun cracks [wood or teak],
And its water is salt,
And its falls are cloud de Paris [dirty of lead].
Again Damascus jeers:
Perish Beyrut, for the reason that her heat resembles Sakar [the eighth hell].
No flowing of milk is found in her, though her sons are [stupid as] cows.
Whereto Beyrut retorts: