Part 31
I did not pay an official call at the Residency at first, though my brother urged it as etiquette; I decided not to until I had seen how things were at the University. I had not realized before to what extent the British were in power in Egypt. I had been told that Egypt was an independent kingdom, but it seemed that my principal allegiance was not to the King who had given me my appointment and paid me my salary, but to the British High Commissioner. Infantry, cavalry, and air squadrons were a reminder of his power. The British officials could not understand the Egyptians’ desire to be rid of them. They considered Egypt most ungrateful for all the painful and difficult administrative work that they had put into it since the ’eighties, raising it from a bankrupt country to one of the richest in the world. None of them took Egyptian nationalism seriously; there was no Egyptian nation they said. The Greeks, Turks, Syrians, and Armenians who called themselves Egyptians had no more right in the country than the British. Before the British occupation they had bled the fellaheen white. The fellaheen were the only true Egyptians, and it was not they who called for freedom. Freedom was mere politics, a symptom of the growing riches of the country and the smatterings of Western education that they had brought with them. The reduction of the British official class in the last few years was viewed with disgust. ‘We did all the hard work and when we go everything will run down; it’s running down already. And they’ll have to call us back, or if not us, the dagoes, and we don’t see why they should benefit.’ They did not realize how much the vanity of the Egyptians—probably the vainest people in the world—was hurt by the constant sight of British uniform.
Egypt now considered itself a European nation. At the same time it attempted to take the place of Turkey as the leading power of Islam. This led to many anomalies. On the same day that the University students made the protest against the professor of Arabic’s irreligious views, the students of El Azhar, the great Cairo theological college, struck against having to wear the Arab dress of kaftan and silk headdress and appeared in European dress and tarbouche. The tarbouche was the national hat; even British officials wore it. I myself had a tarbouche. Being red it attracted the heat of the sun; and it was stuffy inside and did not protect the back of the head. It would have been difficult to find a hat more unsuitable for the climate.
XXXII
I did two useful pieces of educational work in Egypt. I ordered a library of standard textbooks of English literature for the Faculty Library at the University (from which I hope Mr. Bonamy Dobrée, my successor, profited). And I acted as examiner to the diploma class of the Higher Training College which provided English teachers for the primary and secondary schools. The following is the substance of a letter handed to me for information as a member of the Board of Examiners concerned:
To The Principal, Higher Training College, Cairo.
Sir,
In accordance with your instructions, I beg to submit the following statement of the works read by the Diploma Class for the forthcoming examination in English Literature (1580 to 1788) and in Science:
ENGLISH LITERATURE
1. Shakespeare’s _Macbeth_.
2. Lobban’s _The Spectator Club_, p. 39, and _Sir Roger and the Widow_, p. 51; (111) 5 Essays of Addison, _Fans_, p. 64; _The Vision of Mirza_, p. 72; _Sir Roger at the Assizes_, p. 68; _Sir Roger at the Abbey_, p. 81; _Sir Roger at the Play_, p. 86.
3. Galsworthy’s _Justice_.
4. Dryden:
(_a_) With Class 4A, the following poems in Hales’ _Longer English Poems_:
(_i_) _Mac Flecknoe_ (omitting lines 76–77; 83–86; 142–145; 154–155; 160–165; 170–181; 192–197).
(_ii_) _The Song for St. Cecilia’s Day_ (Hales’, p. 32).
(_iii_) _Alexander’s Feast_ (Hales’, p. 34).
(_b_) With Class 4b, the extracts from _Absolam and Achitophel_, in Gwynn’s _Masters of English Literature_, p. 144–145 (characters of Shaftesbury and Buckingham).
5. Pope:
(_a_) With 4a, in Hales’ Longer English Poems: The Rape of the Lock (omitting lines 27–104; 221–282; 449–466; 483 to the end).
(_b_) With 4b, the character of ‘Atticus,’ in Gwynn’s Masters of Eng. Lit., p. 181.
6. Johnson’s _Vanity of Human Wishes_, in Hales’, p. 65 (omitting lines 241–343).
7. Goldsmith’s _Vicar of Wakefield_. (All done by 4a; but only to the end of chap. 19 in 4b.)
8. Goldsmith’s _The Traveller_, in Hales’, p. 91.
9. Gray’s _Elegy_, in Hales’, p. 79.
I regret that lack of time has prevented us from studying the works of Milton and Spenser or the prose works of Dr. Johnson.
SCIENCE
1. Episodes 1, 2, 3 and 6 of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s _Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes_.
2. The first seven chapters of Sir Ray Lankester’s Science from an Easy Chair.
I have the honour to be, Sir, Your obedient servant, etc.
These are my contemporary comments, pinned to the letter:
‘When some forty years ago England superseded France as the controlling European Power in Egypt, English was at first taught in the schools as an alternative to French, but gradually became dominant as the European administrative language, though French remained the chief language of commerce and culture. As a result, the young Egyptian, who now definitely claims himself a European and denies his African inheritance, has come to have two distinct minds (switched off and on casually)—the irresponsible hedonistic café and cinema mind, which leans towards French, and the grave moralizing bureaucratic mind, which leans towards English. Early English educationalists in Egypt shrewdly decided to give their students a moralistic character-forming view of English literature; and this tradition continues as a counterpoise to the boulevard view of life absorbed from translations of French yellow-back novels. But the student of 1926 is not so well-instructed in English as his predecessor of ten years ago, because the English educational staff has gradually been liquidated, and the teaching of English is now principally in the hands of Egyptians, former students, who are not born teachers or disciplinarians. The Western spirit of freedom as naively interpreted by the Egyptian student greatly hinders Egyptian education. The primary and secondary schools, not to mention the University, are always either on strike, threatening a strike, or prevented from striking by being given a holiday. So work gets more and more behindhand. Even the Higher Training College is not free from such disturbances, which possibly account for the regretted neglect of Milton, Spenser, and the prose works of Dr. Johnson. This Diploma Class consists of students who, after some twelve years’ study of English, the last four or five years under English instructors, are now qualifying to teach the language and literature to their compatriots.
‘The Egyptian student is embarrassingly friendly, very quick at learning by heart, disorderly, lazy, rhetorical, slow to reason, and absolutely without any curiosity for general knowledge. The most satisfactory way to treat him is with a good-humoured sarcasm, which he respects; but if he once gets politically excited nothing is any use but an affected violent loss of temper. When introduced to the simpler regions of English literature he finds himself most in sympathy with the eighteenth century; and the English instructor, if he wishes to get any results at all, must be ready to regard Shakespeare, Galsworthy and Conan Doyle as either immature or decadent figures in relation to the classical period. The _Science_ referred to in the attached letter is supposed to educate the student in twentieth-century rationalism, to which he gives an eighteenth-century cast. The following essay is the work of one Mahmoud Mohammed Mahmoud of the Diploma Class, and refers principally to two chapters of Sir Ray Lankester’s _Science from an Easy Chair_:
Environment as a Factor in Evolution
This is the theory of evolutions. Once it was thought that the earth’s crust was caused by catastrophes, but when Darwin came into the world and had a good deal of philosophy, he said: ‘All different kinds of species differ gradually as we go backwards and there is no catastrophes, and if we apply the fact upon previous predecessors we reach simpler and simpler predecessors, until we reach the Nature.’ Man, also, is under the evolutions. None can deny this if he could deny the sun in daylight. A child from the beginning of his birthday possesses instincts like to suckle his food from the mamel of his mother and many others. But he is free of habits and he is weak as anything. Then he is introduced into a house and usually finds himself among parents, and his body is either cleansed or left to the dirts. This shows his environment. Superficial thinkers are apt to look on environment as (at best) a trifle motive in bringing up, but learned men believe that a child born in the presence of some women who say a bad word, this word, as believed by them, remains in the brain of the child until it ejects.
Environment quickly supplies modification. The life of mountainous goats leads them to train themselves on jumping. The camel is flat-footed with hoofs for the sand. Some kind of cattle were wild in the past but lived in plain lands and changed into gentle sheep. The frog when young has her tail and nostrils like the fish, suitable for life at sea, but changing her environment, the tail decreased. The sea is broad and changeable, so those who live at sea are changeable and mysterious. Put a cow in a dirty damp place and she will become more and more slender until she die. Also horses; horse had five fingers on his legs but now one only from running for water in the draught. Climate also affects bodily habits of the dear Europeans who live in Egypt. They who were smart and patient and strong with a skin worth the name of weatherproof become also fatigable and fond of leisure.... From the theory we learn that human beings should be improved like the beasts by creating healthy youngs and by good Freubel education.
‘The next short specimen essay by Mohammed Mahmoud Mohammed is in answer to the question: “What impression do you get from Shakespeare of the character of Lady Macbeth?”:
The Character of Lady Macbeth
Sir, to write shortly, Lady Macbeth was brave and venturesome; but she had no tact. She says to Macbeth: ‘Now the opportunity creates itself, lose it not. Where is your manlihood in these suitable circumstances? I have children and I know the love of a mother’s heart. But you must know I would dash the child’s head and drive away the boneless teeth which are milking me rather than to give a promise and then leave it.’
Macbeth says: ‘But we may fail.’
‘Fail?’ says L. M. ‘But stick to the point and we will not fail. Leave the rest to me. I shall put drugs in the grooms’ drink and we shall ascuse them.’
Macbeth says: ‘You are fit to lay men-children only.’
The impression on the reader becomes very great and feels with anger.
‘And this from the hand of Mahmoud Mahmoud Mohammed, offered as a formal exercise in English composition:
The Best Use of Leisure Time
Leisure time is a variety to tireful affairs. God Almighty created the Universe in six days and took a rest in the seventh. He wished to teach us the necessity of leisure time. Man soon discovered by experience that ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.’ But this leisure time may be dangerous and ill-used if the mind will not take its handle and move it wisely to different directions. Many people love idleness. It is a great prodigality which leads to ruin. Many Egyptians spend their times in cafés longing for women and tracking them with their eyes, which corrupts and pollutes manners. They are perplexed and annoyed by the length of daytime. Others try to have rest through gumbling, which is the scourge of society and individual. But let _us_ rather enjoy external nature, the beautiful leavy trees, the flourishing fields, and the vast lawns of green grass starred with myriads of flowers of greater or small size. There the birds sing and build their nests, the meandering canals flow with fresh water, and the happy peasants, toiling afar from the multitude of town life, purify the human wishes from personal stain. Also museums are instructive. It is quite wrong to keep to usual work and fatigable studies, but quite right to free our minds from the web of wordly affairs in which they are entangled.
Yes, let us with the lark leave our beds to enjoy the cool breeze before sunrise. Let us when the lasy or luxurious are snoring or sunk in their debaucheries sit under the shady trees and meditate. We can think of God, the river and the moon, and enjoy the reading of Gray’s _Elegy_ to perfection. We shall brush the dues on the lawn at sunrise, for,
A country life is sweat In moderate cold and heat.
Or we may read the Best Companions, books full of honourable passions, wise moral and good pathos: reading maketh a full man, nobody will deny Bacon. Or we may easily get a musical instrument at little price. ‘Every schoolboy knows’ that music is a moral law which gives a soul to the universe. Criminals can be cured by the sweet power of music. The whale came up from the dark depths of the sea to carry the Greek musician because it was affected by the sweet harmonies which hold a mirror up to nature. Are we not better than the whale? Also gymnastic clubs are spread everywhere. Why do a youth not pass his leisure time in widdening his chest? Because a sound mind is in a sound body. Yet it is a physiological fact that the blacksmith cannot spend his leisure time in striking iron or the soldier in military exercises. The blacksmith may go to see the Egyptian Exhibition, and the soldier may go to the sea to practice swimming or to the mountains to know its caves in order that he may take shelter in time of war.
Milton knew the best uses of leisure time. He used to sit to his books reading, and to his music playing, and so put his name among the immortals. That was the case of Byron, Napoleon, Addison, and Palmerstone. And if a man is unhappy, says an ancient philosopher, it is his own fault. He _can_ be happy if his leisure time brings profit and not disgrace.
‘The Diploma Class students are supposed to be four years in advance of my own, and, not being of the moneyed class, are more interested in passing their examinations with distinction. Also, since their careers as teachers of English depend on the continuance of the British military occupation, they take the morality of this regime more seriously than the University students, who are mostly the sons of pashas. These, with few exceptions, suffer from the bankruptcy of modern Egyptian life; they are able to take neither European culture nor their own Islamic traditions seriously. So far as I can make out from talking with the more intelligent of them, what Egypt asks for is a European government and education free of European political domination, but with a European technical personnel in the key positions, which it cannot do without and will pay highly for. Egypt can never be a great independent spiritual or political force in the Near East, but because of its wealth it can become at least the commercial centre of Islamic orthodoxy. Turkey is already a modern European country; Egypt will remain for some time yet eighteenth-century in spirit—a compromise between political romanticism and religious classicism. For a generation or two yet the descendants of the landowners enriched by European administration will continue to “spend their times in cafés longing for women,” and to be “perplexed and annoyed by the length of daytime,” while “the happy peasants” go on “toiling afar from the multitude of town life.” And my professional successors will continue to become “fatigable and fond of leisure.”’
* * * * *
For I had already decided to resign. So had the professor of Latin, my only English colleague. And the one-legged professor of French Literature, who was an honest man. The others stayed on.
The Egyptians were most hospitable. I attended one heavy banquet, at the Semiramis Hotel, given by the Minister of Education. Tall Sudanese waiters dressed in red robes served a succession of the most magnificent dishes that I have seen anywhere, even on the films. I remember particularly a great model of the Cairo Citadel in ice, with the doors and windows filled with caviare which one scooped out with a golden Moorish spoon. I heard recently that this banquet, which must have cost thousands, has not yet been paid for. I found little to do in Egypt (since I had no intention of mixing with the British official class, joining the golf club, or paying official calls) but eat coffee-ices at Groppi’s, visit the open-air cinemas and sit at home in our flat at Heliopolis and get on with writing. My sister, who lived near, continued sisterly. During the season of the Khamsin, a hot wind which sent the temperature up on one occasion to 113 degrees in the shade, I put the finishing touches to a book called _Lars Porsena, or The Future of Swearing and Improper Language_. I also worked on a study of the English ballad.
The best thing that I saw in Egypt was the noble face of old King Seti the Good unwrapped of its mummy-cloths in the Cairo Museum. Nearly all the best things in Egypt were dead. The funniest thing was a French bedroom farce played in Arabic by Syrian actors in a native theatre. The men and women of the cast had, for religious reasons, to keep on opposite sides of the stage. They sang French songs (in translation), varying the tunes with the quarter-tones and shrieks and trills of their own music. The audience talked all the time and ate peanuts, oranges, sunflower-seeds and heads of lettuces.
I went to call on Lord Lloyd just before the close of the academic year, which was at the end of May. Soon after I was invited to dine at the Residency. I won twenty piastres off him at bridge and was told to collect it from his A.D.C. He asked me how I found Egypt and I said: ‘All right,’ with an intonation that made him catch me up quickly. ‘Only all right?’ That was all that passed between us. He believed in his job more than I did in mine. He used to drive through Cairo in a powerful car, with a Union Jack flying from it, at about sixty miles an hour. He had motor-cyclist outriders to clear the way—Sir Lee Stack, the Sirdar, had been killed the year before while driving through Cairo and a traffic jam had materially helped his assassins. One day I was shown the spot near the Ministry of Education where it happened; there was a crowd at the spot which I at first took for a party of sightseers, but the attraction proved to be a naked woman lying on the pavement, laughing wildly and waving her arms. She was one of the _hashish_ dope-cases that were very common in Egypt. The crowd was jeering at her; the policeman a few yards off paid no attention.
I attended a levee at the Abdin Palace, King Fuad’s Cairo residence. It began early, at nine o’clock in the morning. The King gave honourable precedence to the staff of the University; it came in soon after the diplomatic corps and the Ministers of the Crown and some time before the army. While still in England I had been warned to buy suitable clothes—a morning coat and trousers—for this occasion. To be really correct my coat should have had green facings, green being the national colour of Egypt, but I was told that this would not be insisted upon. Opinions differed greatly as to what was suitable Court-dress; most of the French professors arrived in full evening dress with swallowtail coats and white waistcoats, others wore ordinary dinner jackets. Most of them had opera-hats; they all had decorations round their necks. They looked like stragglers from an all-night fancy-dress ball. After signing my name in the two large hotel registers, one belonging to the King and the other to the Queen, I was given a refreshing rice-drink, a courtesy of the Queen’s. I then went up the noble marble staircase. On every other step stood an enormous black soldier, royally uniformed, with a lance in his hand. My soldier’s eye commented on their somewhat listless attitudes; but, no doubt, they pulled themselves smartly to attention when the Egyptian army general staff went past. I had been warned that when I met King Fuad I must not be surprised at anything extraordinary I heard; a curious wheezing cry was apt to burst from his throat occasionally when he was nervous. When he was a child his family had been shot up by an assassin employed by interested relatives; and Fuad had taken cover under a table and, though wounded, had survived. We were moved from room to room. At last a quiet Turkish-looking gentleman of middle age, wearing regulation Court-dress, greeted us deferentially in French; I took him for the Grand Chamberlain. I bowed and said the same thing in French as the professor in front of me had said, and expected to be led next to the Throne Room. But the next stage was the cloak-room once more. I had already met King Fuad. And no Eastern magnificence or wheezing cry.
I attended a royal soiree a few days later. The chief event was a theatrical variety show. The performance was predominantly Italian. King Fuad had been educated in Italy, where he attained the rank of captain in the Italian cavalry, and had a great regard for Italian culture. (He was ignorant of English, but was a good French scholar.) The performance belonged to the 1870’s. There was a discreet blonde shepherdess who did a hopping dance in ankle-length skirts, and a discreet tenor who confined his passion to his top notes; and there was a well-behaved comedian who made nice little jokes for the Queen. I clapped him, because I liked him better than the others, and everybody looked round at me; I realized that I had done the wrong thing. An official whispered to me that it was a command performance and that the actors were, therefore, entitled to no applause. Unless His Majesty was himself amused the turns must be greeted in silence. I was wearing Court-dress again but, not to be outdone by the Frenchmen, I had put on my three campaigning medals—and wished that I had that St. Anne of the Third Class with the Crossed Swords. And the refreshments! I will not attempt to describe that Arabian Night buffet; it was so splendid indeed that it has remained a mere blur in my memory. I pocketed some particularly fantastic confections to bring home to the children.
What caused me most surprise in Egypt was the great number of camels there. I had thought of them only as picture-postcard animals. I had not expected to see thousands of them in the streets of Cairo, holding up the motor traffic—in long trains, tied head to rump, with great sacks of green fodder on their backs.