OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
Statesmen, Historians, and such, may think that, between the years 1871 and 1876, "the Egyptian Question" turned upon the extravagance of Ismail Pasha, and the financial complications that followed thereupon. Readers of the Recollections of an Egyptian Princess (Blackwood) will know better. The real Egyptian Question of that epoch was, whether the English Governess of the Khedive's daughter should get her mistress's carriage at the very hour she wanted it; whether she should have the best rooms in any palace or hotel she might chance to be located in; and whether she should have her meals served at the time and in the fashion she had been accustomed to in the family mansion at Clapton or Camberwell. Many stirring passages in the book deal with these and cognate matters. None delights my Baronite more than one in which a driver named Hassan figures. Hassan, ordered for eight o'clock, sometimes came at nine. Occasionally at six. "He asked for 'backseesh,' which" Miss Chennells writes, "I did not consider myself bound to give, as he never did anything for me." On two occasions, her heart warming, she coyly pressed a florin into his hand, with dire results. "He was," she records, "much worse after it" (the florin, which he seems to have taken neat), "and would, when driving, stoop down, and look through the front window of the brougham, shouting 'Backseesh!'" However, Miss Chennells got even with Hassan. She followed her usual course when things went ill. She complained to her pupil, the Princess. Next morning, when the unsuspecting Hassan drove into the court-yard, "he was told by the Eunuchs to descend from the box, was conducted to an inner receptacle, and," Miss Chennells grimly adds, "then and there bastinadoed." Incidentally, in connection with the English Governess's struggle for supremacy in the City of the Pharaohs, we get pictures of life in the Harem, and glimpses of the lavish magnificence of the Khedieval Court, with its French embroidery on Eastern robes. It was with the object of describing these scenes, viewed from a rare vantage point, that the story was written. But not the least interesting character is that, unconsciously drawn, of the prim, practical, precise English Governess, pushing her way through the crowd of courtiers and Ethiopian slaves, peering through gold-rimmed eyeglasses into the recesses of the Harem, and glaring angrily at the hapless Eunuchs, who, going their morning rounds, visit her bedroom, regardless of the twine with which, before entering on her virgin slumbers, she had sedulously fastened the lockless door. Altogether a delightful book, says Passim Pasha, the accredited representative of the Baron De Book-worms.
Those who like "Just a tale by twilight, When the lights are low, And the glittering shadows Softly come and go," will do well to expend the comparatively small sum of one shilling, which, in certain ready-money quarters, is reduced to tenpence, or even ninepence, on Grim Tales, written by E. Nesbit, of which "The Ebony Frame" (which should have been called "The Speaking Likeness,") "The Mystery of the Semi-Detached," "Life-size, in Marble," and "A Mass for the Dead," are the best, the last-mentioned being the only one that ends, as all otherwise purposeless tales should end, happily. The Stories are grim enough, in all conscience, but they are told in a hearty sort of fashion, which, while relieving them of some of their weirdness, is calculated to impress the reader with an idea of the honesty and bona fides of the narrator. Thus far,
The Baron de Book-worms.
