I

When the lively and somewhat spiteful Mrs. Eliza Fay landed at Alexandria in the summer of 1779 that city was at her lowest ebb. The glories of the antique had gone, the comforts of the modern had not arrived. Gone were the temples and statues, gone the palace of Cleopatra and the library of Callimachus, the Pharos had fallen and been succeeded by the feeble Pharillon, the Heptastadion had silted up; while the successors to these—the hotels, the clubs, the drainage system, the exquisite Municipal buildings—still slept in the unastonished womb of time.

Attached to Mrs. Fay was her husband, an incompetent advocate, who was to make their fortunes in the East. Since the boat that had brought them was owned by a Christian, they were forbidden to enter the Western Harbour, and had to disembark not far from the place where, in more enlightened days, the Ramleh Tramway was to terminate. All was barbarism then, save for two great obelisks, one prone, one erect—“Cleopatra’s Needles,” not yet transferred to New York and London respectively. They were met in this lonely spot by the Prussian Consul, a certain Mr. Brandy, who found them rooms, but had bad news for them: “a melancholy story,” as Mrs. Fay calls it when writing to her sister. Between Cairo and Suez, on the very route they proposed to take, a caravan had been held up and some of its passengers murdered. She was pitiably agitated. But she did not give up her sight-seeing; she had got to Alexandria and meant to enjoy it. Cleopatra’s Needles in the first place. What did the hieroglyphics on them signify? She applied to Mr. Brandy; but the Consul, following the best traditions of the residential Levant, “seemed to know no more than ourselves.” His kindness was unfailing. Next day he produced donkeys—being Christians they were not allowed to ride horses—and the party trotted over three miles of desert to Pompey’s Pillar, preceded by a janissary with a drawn sword. Pompey’s Pillar arouses few emotions in the modern breast. The environs are squalid, the turnstile depressing, and one knows that it dates not from Pompey but from Diocletian. Mrs. Fay approached it in a nobler mood.

Although quite unadorned, the proportions are so exquisite that it must strike every beholder with a kind of awe, which softens into melancholy when one reflects that the renowned hero, whose name it bears, was treacherously murdered on this very coast by the boatmen who were conveying him to Alexandria. His wretched wife stood on the vessel he had just left, watching his departure, as we may very naturally suppose, with inexpressible anxiety. What must have been her agonies at the dreadful event!

The time was to come when Mrs. Fay herself would have watched with very little anxiety the murder of Mr. Fay. Her Anthony—for such was his name—led her from mess to mess, and in the end she had to divorce him. Let us turn from these serious themes to a “ludicrous accident” that befell Mr. Brandy on the way to “Cleopatra’s Palace.” He was very large and stout, and his donkey, seizing its opportunity, stole away from under the consular seat and left him astride on the sand! As for “Cleopatra’s Palace,” it was not the genuine palace, but it was as genuine as the emotion it inspired.

Never do I remember being so affected by a like object. I stood in the midst of the ruins, meditating on the awful scene, till I could have almost fancied I beheld its former mistress, revelling in luxury with her infatuated lover, Mark Anthony, who for her sake lost all.

An account of a party at the Brandies’ concludes the letter—a clear-cut malicious account. Eliza is the child of her century, which affected lofty emotions but whose real interest lay in little things, and in satire.

We were most graciously received by Mrs. Brandy, who is a native of this place; but as she could speak a little Italian we managed to carry on something like a conversation. She was most curiously bedizened on the occasion, and being short, dark-complexioned, and of a complete dumpling shape, appeared altogether the strangest lump of finery I ever beheld. She had a handkerchief bound round her head, covered with strings composed of spangles, but very large, intermixed with pearls and emeralds; her neck and bosom were ornamented in the same way. Add to all this an embroidered girdle with a pair of gold clasps, I think very nearly four inches square, enormous ear-rings, and a large diamond sprig at the top of her forehead, and you must allow that she was a most brilliant figure. They have a sweet little girl about seven years of age, who was decked out in much the same style; but she really looked pretty in spite of her incongruous finery. On the whole, though, I was pleased with both mother and child; their looks and behaviour were kind, and to a stranger in a strange land (and this is literally so to us) a little attention is soothing and consolatory; especially when one feels surrounded by hostilities, which every European must do here. Compared with the uncouth beings who govern this country, I felt at home among the natives of France, and I will even say of Italy.

On taking leave, our host presented a book containing certificates of his great politeness and attentions towards travellers, which were signed by many persons of consideration, and at the same time requesting that Mr. Fay and myself would add our names to the list. We complied, though not without surprise that a gentleman in his situation should have recourse to such an expedient, which cannot but degrade him in the eyes of his guests.

Rather cattish, that last remark, considering how much the Consul had done for her. But a cat she is—spirited and observant, but a cat.

II

Heedless of the weather, heedless of the rumour of plundered caravans, Eliza removed her husband as soon as possible for the interior, and some account must now be given of their adventures. Her pen is our guide. Through flood and blood it keeps its way, curbed only by her fear of the Turkish Censor, and by her desire to conceal her forebodings from friends at home. As soon as misfortunes have occurred she will describe them. But about the future she is always confident and bright, and this gallant determination to make the best of trouble gives charm to a character that is otherwise unsympathetic.

The Fays selected the river route. Since the Mahmoudieh Canal had not been cut, they had to reach the Rosetta mouth of the Nile by sea. They were nearly drowned crossing its bar, and scarcely were they through when a boat of thieves shot out from the bank and caused Mr. Fay to fire off two pistols at once. They outsailed their pursuers, and sped up the lower reach to Rosetta, then a more important place than Alexandria and apparently a tidier place. Eliza was delighted. Thoughts of England and of the English Bible at once welled up in her mind.

There is an appearance of cleanliness in Rosetta, the more gratifying because seldom met with in any degree so as to remind us of what we are accustomed to at home. The landscape around was interesting from its novelty, and became peculiarly so on considering it as the country where the children of Israel sojourned. The beautiful, I may say the unparalleled story of Joseph and his brethren rose to my mind as I surveyed these banks on which the Patriarch sought shelter for his old age, where his self-convicted sons bowed down before their younger brother, and I almost felt as if in a dream, so wonderful appeared the circumstance of my being here.

It is news that Jacob ever resided in the province of Behera. Passing by this, and by the Pyramids which they only saw from a distance, we accompany the Fays to Boulac, “the port of Grand Cairo,” where their troubles increased. Restrictions against Christians being even severer here than at Alexandria, Mrs. Fay had to dress as a native before she might enter the city. “I had in the first place a pair of trousers with yellow leather half-boots and slippers over them”; then a long satin gown, another gown with short sleeves, a robe of silk like a surplice, muslin from her forehead to her feet, and over everything a piece of black silk. “Thus equipped, stumbling at every step, I sallied forth, and with great difficulty got across my noble beast; but as the veil prevented me breathing freely I must have died by the way.” She rode into the European enclave where terror and confusion greeted her. The rumour about the caravan proved only too true. Complete details had just arrived. It had been plundered between Cairo and Suez, its passengers had been killed or left to die in the sun, and, worse still, the Turkish authorities were so upset by the scandal that they proposed murdering the whole of the European community in case the news leaked out. It was thought that Mrs. Fay might be safe with an Italian doctor. As she waddled across to his house her veil slipped down so that a passer reprimanded her severely for indecency. Also she fell ill.

There broke out a severe epidemical disease with violent symptoms. People are attacked at a moment’s warning with dreadful pains in stiff limbs, a burning fever with delirium and a total stoppage of perspiration. During two days it increases, on the third there comes on uniformly a profuse sweat (pardon the expression) with vomiting which carries all off.

But as soon as her disease culminated, out she sallied to see the ceremonies connected with the rise of the Nile. They disappointed and disgusted her.

Not a decent person could I distinguish among the whole group. So much for this grand exhibition, which we have abundant cause to wish had not taken place, for the vapours arising from such a mass of impurity have rendered the heat more intolerable than ever. My bedchamber overlooks the canal, so that I enjoy the full benefit to be derived from its proximity.

Events by now were taking a calmer turn. Mr. Fay, who had also had the epidemic, was restored to such vitality as he possessed, and the Turkish authorities had been persuaded by a bribe of £3000 to overcome their sensitiveness and to leave the European colony alive. The terrible journey remained, but beyond it lay India and perhaps a fortune.

The Suez caravan—an immense affair—was formed up in the outskirts of Cairo. In view of the recent murders it included a large guard, and the journey, which took three days, passed off without disaster. Mr. Fay had a horse; Eliza, still panting in her Oriental robes, travelled in a litter insecurely hung between two restive camels. Peeping out through its blinds she could see the sun and the rocks by day, and the stars by night. She notes their beauty, her senses seem sharpened by danger, and she was to look back on the desert with a hint of romance. Above her head, attached to the roof of the litter, were water-bottles, melons, and hard-boiled eggs, her provision for the road, rumbling and crashing together to the grave disturbance of her sleep. “Once I was saluted by a parcel of hard eggs breaking loose from their net and pelting me completely. It was fortunate that they were boiled, or I should have been in a pretty trim.” By her side rode her husband, and near him was a melancholy figure, followed by a sick greyhound, young Mr. Taylor, who became so depressed by the heat that he slid off his horse and asked to be allowed to die. His request was refused, as was his request that she should receive the greyhound into her litter. Eliza was ever sensible. She was not going to be immured with a boiling hot dog which might bite her. “I hope no person will accuse me of inhumanity for refusing to receive an animal in that condition: self-preservation forbade my compliance; I felt that it would be weakness instead of compassion to subject myself to such a risk.” Consequently the greyhound died. An Arab despatched him with his scimitar, Mr. Taylor protested, the Arab ran at Mr. Taylor. “You may judge from this incident what wretches we were cast among.”

They found a boat at Suez and went on board at once. Mr. Fay writes a line to his father-in-law to tell him that they are safe thus far: a grandiose little line:

Some are now very ill, but I stood it as well as any Arabian in the caravan, which consisted of at least five thousand people. My wife insists on taking the pen out of my hands.

She takes it, to the following effect:

My dear Friends—I have not a moment’s time, for the boat is waiting, therefore can only beg that you will unite with me in praising our Heavenly Protector for our escape from the various dangers of our journey. I never could have thought my constitution was so strong. I bore the fatigues of the desert like a lion. We have been pillaged of almost everything by the Arabs. This is the Paradise of thieves, I think the whole population may be divided into two classes of them: those who adopt force and those who effect their purpose by fraud.... I have not another moment. God bless you! Pray for me, my beloved friends.

It is not clear when the Fays had been pillaged, or of what; perhaps they had merely suffered the losses incidental to an Oriental embarkation. The ship herself had been pillaged, and badly. She had been connected with the earlier caravan—the ill-fated one—and the Government had gutted her in its vague embarrassment. Not a chair, not a table was left. Still they were thankful to be on board. Their cabin was good, the captain appeared good-natured and polite, and their fellow-passengers, a Mr. and Mrs. Tulloch, a Mr. Hare, a Mr. Fuller, and a Mr. Manesty, seemed, together with poor Mr. Taylor from the caravan, to promise inoffensive companionship down the Red Sea. Calm was the prospect. But Eliza is Eliza. And we have not yet seen Eliza in close contact with another lady. Nor have we yet seen Mrs. Tulloch.

IV

The beauty of the Gulf of Suez—and surely it is most beautiful—has never received full appreciation from the traveller. He is in too much of a hurry to arrive or to depart, his eyes are too ardently bent on England or on India for him to enjoy that exquisite corridor of tinted mountains and radiant water. He is too much occupied with his own thoughts to realize that here, here and nowhere else, is the vestibule between the Levant and the Tropics. Nor was it otherwise in the case of Mrs. Fay. As she sailed southward with her husband in the pleasant autumn weather, her thoughts dwelt on the past with irritation, on the future with hope, but on the scenery scarcely at all. What with the boredom of Alexandria, what with her fright at Cairo, what with the native dress that fanaticism had compelled her to wear (“a terrible fashion for one like me to whom fresh air seems the greatest requisite for existence”), and finally what with Suez, which she found “a miserable place little better than the desert which it bounds,” she quitted Egypt without one tender word. Even her Biblical reminiscences take an embittered turn. She forgets how glad Jacob had been to come there and only remembers how anxious Moses and Aaron had been to get away.

Content to have escaped, she turns her gaze within—not of course to her own interior (she is no morbid analyst) but to the interior of the boat, and surveys with merciless eyes her fellow-passengers. The letter that describes them exhibits her talent, her vitality, and her trust in Providence, and incidentally explains why she never became popular, and why “two parties,” as she terms them, were at once formed on board, the one party consisting of her husband and herself, the other of everyone else. The feud, trivial at the time, was not to be without serious consequences. “You will now expect me, my dear friends,” she begins, “to say something of those with whom we are cooped up, but my account will not be very satisfactory, though sufficiently interesting to us—to being there.”

The grammar is hazy. But the style makes all clear.

The woman Mrs. Tulloch, of whom I entertained some suspicion from the first, is, now I am credibly informed, one of the very lowest creatures taken off the streets in London. She is so perfectly depraved in disposition that her supreme delight consists in making everybody about her miserable. It would be doing her too much honour to stain my paper with a detail of the various artifices she daily practises to that end. Her pretended husband, having been in India before and giving himself many airs, is looked upon as a person of mighty consequence whom no one chooses to offend. Therefore madam has full scope to exercise her mischievous talents, wherein he never controls her, not but that he perfectly understands to make himself feared. Coercive measures are sometimes resorted to. It is a common expression of the lady, “Lord bless you, if I did such or such a thing, Tulloch would make no more ado, but knock me down like an ox.” I frequently amuse myself with examining their countenances, where ill-nature has fixed her empire so firmly that I scarcely believe either of them smiled except maliciously.

As for the captain he is a mere Jack in office. Being unexpectedly raised to that post from second mate by the death of poor Captain Vanderfield and his chief officer on the fatal Desert, he has become from this circumstance so insolent and overbearing that everyone detests him. Instead of being ready to accommodate every person with the few necessaries left by the plundering Arabs, he constantly appropriates them to himself. “Where is the captain’s silver spoon? God bless my soul, Sir, you have got my chair; must you be seated before the captain’s glass?” and a great deal more of this same kind; but this may serve as a specimen. And although the wretch half starves us, he frequently makes comparisons between his table and that of an Indiaman which we dare not contradict while in his power.

Food is a solemn subject. Eliza was not a fastidious or an insular eater and she would gladly sample the dishes of foreign climes. But she did demand that those dishes should be plentiful, and that they should nourish her, and loud are her complaints when they do not, and vigorous the measures she takes.

During the first fortnight of our voyage my foolish complaisance stood in my way at table, but I soon learned our gentle maxim, catch as catch can. The longest arm fared best, and you cannot imagine what a good scrambler I have become. A dish once seized, it is my care to make use of my good fortune; and now provisions running very short, we are grown quite savages: two or three of us perhaps fighting for a bone, for there is no respect of persons. The wretch of a captain, wanting our passage money for nothing, refused to lay in a sufficient quantity of stock; and if we do not soon reach our port, what must be the consequence, Heaven knows.

Mr. Hare, Eliza’s chief gentleman enemy, was not dangerous at meals. It was rather the activity of his mind that threatened her. Whenever she writes of him, her pen is at its sharpest, it is indeed not so much a pen as a fang. It lacerates his social pretentiousness, his snobbery, the scorbutic blotches on his face, and his little white eyes. Poor young Mr. Taylor once showed him a handsome silver-hilted sword. He admired it, till he saw on the scabbard the damning inscription, “Royal Exchange.” “Take your sword,” said he; “it’s surprising a man of your sense should commit an error; for fifty guineas I would not have a city name on any article of my dress.” She comments: “Now would anyone suppose this fine gentleman’s father was in trade and he himself brought up in that very city he affects to despise? Very true, nevertheless.”

How, by the way, did she know that? Who told her? And, by the way, how did she know about Mrs. Tulloch? But one must not ask such dreadful questions. They shatter the foundations of faith.

And so his studied attention to me in the minutest article effectually shielded him from suspicion till his end was answered, of raising up a party against us, by the means of that vile woman, who was anxious to triumph over me, especially as I have been repeatedly compelled (for the honour of the sex) to censure her swearing and indecent behaviour. I have, therefore, little comfort to look forward to for the remainder of the voyage.

Then she reckons up her allies, or rather the neutrals. They are a feeble set.

It is only justice to name Mr. Taylor as an amiable though melancholy companion, and Mr. Manesty, an agreeable young man under twenty. Mr. Fuller is a middle-aged man. He has, it seems, fallen into the hands of sharpers and been completely pillaged. He has the finest dark eyes I ever met with. Mr. Moreau, a musician, is very civil and attentive.

Small fry like these could be no help. They can scarcely have got enough to eat at dinner. Her truer supports lay within.

Having early discovered the confederacy, prudence determined us to go mildly on, seemingly blind to what it was beyond our power to remedy. Never intermeddling with their disputes, all endeavours to draw us into quarrels are vainly exerted. I despise them too much to be angry.

And the letter concludes with a moving picture of home life in the Red Sea:

After meals I generally retire to my cabin, where I find plenty of employment, having made up a dozen shirts for Mr. Fay out of some cloth I purchased to replace part of those stolen by the Arabs. Sometimes I read French or Italian and study Portuguese. I likewise prevailed on Mr. Fay to teach me shorthand, in consequence of the airs Mr. Hare gave himself because he was master of this art and had taught his sisters to correspond with him in it. The matter was very easily accomplished. In short, I have discovered abundant methods of making my time pass usefully and not disagreeably. How often, since in this situation, have I blessed God that He has been pleased to endow me with a mind capable of furnishing its own amusement, despite of all means used to discompose it.

Admirable too is the tone of the postscript:

I am in tolerable health and looking with a longing eye towards Bengal, from whence I trust my next will be dated. The climate seems likely to agree very well with me. I do not at all mind the heat, nor does it at all affect either my spirits or my appetite.—Your ever affectionate E. F.

She was to date her next not from Bengal but from prison. Here, however, her Alexandrian audience must really have the decency to retire. Eliza in chains is too terrible a theme. Let it suffice to say that though in chains she remained Eliza, and that Mrs. Tulloch was enchained too; and let those who would know more procure “The Original Letters from India of Mrs. Eliza Fay,” published by the Calcutta Historical Society. The book contains a portrait of our heroine, which quite fills the cup of joy. She stands before us in the Oriental robes she detested so much, but she has thrown back their superfluities and gazes at the world as though seeing through its little tricks. One trousered foot is advanced, one bangled arm is bent into an attitude of dignified defiance. Her expression, though triumphant, is alert. She is attended in the background by a maid-servant and a mosque.