Then the doctor told us that if Nancy wished to regain her health she must spend the winter in Egypt. Thus, the only appointment that could possibly meet the case would be an independent teaching job in Egypt, at a very high salary, and with little work to do. A week or two later (this is how things have always happened in emergencies) I was invited to offer myself as a candidate for the post of Professor of English Literature at the newly-founded Royal Egyptian University, Cairo. I had been recommended, I found out afterwards, by two or three influential men, among them Arnold Bennett, always a good friend to me, and the first critic who spoke out strongly for my poems in the daily Press; and Lawrence, who had known Lord Lloyd, then High Commissioner of Egypt, during the Arab Revolt. The salary, including the passage money, amounted to fourteen hundred pounds a year. I fortified these recommendations with others: from my neighbour, Colonel John Buchan, and from Mr Asquith, now the Earl of Oxford, who had taken a fatherly interest in me and often visited our cottage at Islip.
I got the appointment. The indirect proceeds from poem-writing can be enormously higher than the direct ones.
31
So, second-class, by P. & O. to Egypt, with a nurse for the children, new clothes in the new cabin-trunks, and a Morris-Oxford in the hold. Lawrence had written to me:
Egypt, being so near Europe, is not a savage country. The Egyptians… you need not dwell among. Indeed, it will be a miracle if an Englishman can get to know them. The bureaucrat society is exclusive, and lives smilingly unaware of the people. Partly because so many foreigners come there for pleasure, in the winter; and the other women, who live there, must be butterflies too, if they would consort with the visitors.
I thought the salary attractive. It has just been raised. The work may be interesting, or may be terrible, according to whether you get keen on it, like [Lafcadio] Hearn, or hate it, like [Robert] Nichols. Even if you hate it, there will be no harm done. The climate is good, the country beautiful, the things admirable, the beings curious and disgusting; and you are stable enough not to be caught broadside by a mere dislike for your job. Execute it decently, as long as you draw the pay, and enjoy your free hours (plentiful in Egypt) more freely. Lloyd will be a good friend.
Roam about – Palestine. The Sahara oases. The Red Sea province. Sinai (a jolly desert). The Delta Swamps. Wilfred Jennings Bramly’s buildings in the Western Desert. The divine mosque architecture of Cairo town.
Yet, possibly, you will not dislike the job. I think the coin spins evenly. The harm to you is little, for the family will benefit by a stay in the warm (Cairo isn’t warm, in winter) and the job won’t drive you into frantic excesses of rage. And the money will be useful. You should save a good bit of your pay after the expense of the first six months. I recommend the iced coffee at Groppi’s.
And so, my blessing.
My elder brother Dick, and my elder sister Mollie, had both been living in Egypt since I was a little boy. Dick, a leading Government official (at a salary less than my own), and his wife viewed my arrival with justifiable alarm. They knew of my political opinions. But Mollie, to whom I was devoted, had no suspicions and wrote a letter of most affectionate welcome.
Siegfried came to see me off. ‘Do you know who’s on board?’ he asked. ‘“The Twisted Image”! He’s still in the regiment, going out to join the First Battalion in India. Last time I saw him, he was sitting in the bottom of a dug-out, gnawing a chunk of bully-beef like a rat.’ The Twisted Image – his nickname referred to the Biblical proposition that we are all created in the image of our Maker – went to Copthorne school with me and won a scholarship at the same time as I did; we served at Wrexham and Liverpool together; he also was wounded with the Second Battalion at High Wood; and now we were travelling East together. We had absolutely nothing in common, even mutual dislike; so I saw no natural reason why we should have been thrown so often in each other’s company.
The ship touched at Gibraltar, where we disembarked, bought figs, and rode round the town; I remembered the cancelled War Office telegram and thought what a fool I had been to prefer Rhyl. Luckily, a P. & O. director, who happened to be aboard, persuaded the captain to take the ship within half a mile of Stromboli, then in eruption; by dusk in a hailstorm, with the lava hissing into the sea. At Port Said, a friend of my sister’s helped us through the Customs; I still felt sea-sick, but knew that I was in the East because he began talking about Kipling and Kipling’s ‘wattles of Lichtenburg’, and whether they were really wattles or some allied plant. Then on to Cairo, looking out of the windows all the way, delighted at summer fields in January.
My sister-in-law advised us against the more exclusive residential suburb of Gizereh, where she lived, so with her assistance we rented a flat at Heliopolis, a few miles east of Cairo. We found the cost of living very high, this being the tourist season, but reduced the grocery bill by taking advantage of the more reasonable prices at the British Army Canteen, where I presented myself as an officer on the Pension List. Our two Sudanese servants, contrary to all warnings about the natives, were temperate, punctual, respectful, and never, to my knowledge, stole a thing beyond the remains of a single joint of mutton. It seemed queer, no longer looking after the children, or doing housework; and wonderful to have as much time as I needed for my work.
The University was founded by King Fuad, who wished to be known as a patron of the arts and sciences. The Cairo University before this one had been nationalistic in its policy and, because not staffed with European experts, or supported by the Government, soon came to an end. King Fuad’s University began ambitiously: Faculties of Science, Medicine, and Letters, and a full complement of highly-paid professors, few of them Egyptians. The Medicine and Science faculties were predominantly English, but the appointments to the Faculty of Letters had been made in the previous summer, when the British High Commissioner went on holiday; else he would no doubt have discountenanced them, as being predominantly French and Belgian. Only one of my colleagues could speak English, and none had any knowledge of Arabic; yet of the two hundred Egyptian students, mostly sons of rich merchants and landowners, fewer than twenty knew more than a smattering of French – just enough for shopping purposes in the elegant stores – though every one of them had learned English in the secondary schools. All official University correspondence was conducted in classical Arabic, which admits no word of later date than Mohammed’s time – not that I should have noticed any neologisms myself. The ‘very learned Sheikh’ Graves, as I was there described, used to take his hand-outs to the post office for interpretation. My twelve or thirteen French colleagues were men of the highest academic distinction, but two or three English village-schoolmasters would have gladly undertaken their work at one-third of their salaries, and done it far better. The University building, a former harem-palace of the Khedive, was built in luscious French style with mirrors and gilding.
British officials at the Ministry of Education begged me to keep the British flag flying in the Faculty of Letters. I assented. Though I had not come to Egypt as an ambassador of Empire, it irked me to let the French indulge in semi-political activities at my expense. The Dean, M. Grégoire, was an authority on Slav poetry: tough, witty, and capable. He had acquired a certain slyness and adaptability during the war when, as a Belgian civilian in the German occupation, he edited an underground publication. The one-legged Professor of French Literature, a war hero, patronized me at first. I was his young friend, rather than his dear colleague. But when he learned that I also had bled in the cause of civilization and France, I became his most esteemed chum.
The Frenchmen lectured with the help of Arabic interpreters, which made neither for speed nor for accuracy. I should have delivered two lectures a week. The Dean, however, soon decided that if the students were ever to dispense with the interpreters, they must be given special instruction in French – and this reduced the time for lectures, so that he could allow me only one a week. That one was pandemonium. The students were not hostile, merely excitable and
anxious to show their regard for me and liberty and Zaghlul Pasha and the well-being of Egypt – all at the same time. They obliged me to shout at the top of my loudest barrack-square voice, which I had learned to pitch high for greater carrying-power, in order to restore silence.
No text-books of any sort were available, the University Library having no English department; and it took months to get books through the French librarian. This was January, and the students faced an examination in May. They professed themselves anxious to master Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and Byron in that time. I had no desire to teach Wordsworth and Byron to anyone, and wished to protect Shakespeare from them. Deciding to lecture on the most rudimentary forms of literature possible, I chose the primitive ballad and its development into epic and the drama. I might at least, perhaps, teach them the meaning of the simpler literary terms. But though they had taken English for eight years or so in the schools, I could not count on their understanding half what I told them. Nobody, for instance, when I spoke of a ballad-maker singing to his harp, knew what a harp looked like. I told them that it was what King David played upon, and drew a picture on the blackboard; at which they shouted: ‘Oh, anur!’ I had myself seen a communal ballad-group in action at the hind legs of the Sphinx, while a gang of fellaheen cleared away the sand; one of the gang acted as chanteyman to keep the others moving. But my students thought it beneath their dignity to admit the existence of ballads in Egypt. The fellaheen did not exist, in their eyes, except as lazy and rather disgusting animals. Printed notes of my lectures, with which to prepare for the examinations, were much in demand. I asked the clerical staff of the faculty to duplicate some of them, but they were kept too busy by the French professors and in spite of promises never got the job done. My lectures soon degenerated into lecture-notes for lectures that could not be given – but, at any fate, I kept the students busy scribbling in their note-books.
My wide trousers, the first ‘Oxford bags’ to reach Egypt, interested them profoundly; their own being still the peg-top sort, narrow at the ankles. Soon everyone who was anyone wore Oxford bags. One evening the Rector of the University asked me to dinner; two of my students, sons of Ministers, happened also to be invited. For fun, I was wearing white silk socks with my evening dress. Afterwards I heard from the Vice Rector, Ali Bey Omar, whom I liked best of the University officials, that a day or two later he had seen the same students wearing white silk socks at a Government banquet. When they looked round on the distinguished assembly, they found they they were so far in advance of fashion as to be the only white socks present. Ali Bey Omar gave a pantomime account of how, in embarrassment, they tried to loosen their braces surreptitously and stroke down their trousers.
For some weeks I missed even my single weekly lecture, because the students went on strike. This was Ramadan, when they had to fast for a month between sunrise and sunset. Between sunset and sunrise they ate rather more than usual, to make up: a tax on the digestive processes which affected their nerves. The pretext for striking was the intensive French instruction; but really they wanted leisure to cram for the examination at home. Then the blind Professor of Arabic, one of the few Egyptians with fame as an orientalist, published a book calling attention to pre-Islamic sources of the Koran. His lectures demanded greater mental effort than any of the rest, so when the examinations were held, most students absented themselves from the Arabic paper on religious grounds. To an orthodox Moslem the Koran, since dictated by God to Mohammed, could have no pre-Islamic sources.
I came to know only two of my students fairly well: a Greek and a Turk. The Turk was rich, intelligent, good-natured, perhaps twenty years old, and twice took me for a drive to the pyramids in his motor-car. He spoke both French and English fluently, being almost the only student (except for twelve who had attended a French Jesuit college) with this facility. He apologized one day for having to miss my lecture: he was about to be married. I asked whether this would be the first or second part of the ceremony. He said: ‘The first. I will not be allowed to see my wife’s face, because her family is orthodox; that must wait until the second ceremony.’ But his sister, he explained, had been at school with the girl and told him that she was pretty and a good sort; also, his father respected her father. When the second ceremony took place, he confessed to perfect satisfaction. I learned that the bridegroom seldom refused the bride when she lifted her veil, though he had the right to do so; and she had a similar right. Usually, the couple contrived to meet before even the first ceremony. The girl would slip the man a note saying: ‘I shall be at Maison Cicurel by the hat-counter about three-thirty tomorrow afternoon, if you want to know what I look like. It will be quite in order for me to lift my veil as I try on a hat. You can recognize me by my purple parasol.’
I inquired about the rights of Moslem women in Egypt. Apparently divorce was simple. The man had only to declare in the presence of a witness: ‘I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you,’ and that did it. On the other hand, she could recover her original dowry, plus the interest accrued on it during her married life. Dowries were always heavy and divorces comparatively rare. The gentry considered it very low-class to keep more than one wife, unless she behaved so badly that the husband decided to shame her by taking another. I heard of an Egyptian who got angry with his wife one morning because the breakfast-coffee came in cold. He shouted: ‘I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you!’
‘Oh, my dear,’ she exclaimed, ‘now you’ve done it! The servants heard what you said. I must go back to my father with my ten thousand pounds and my sixty camels.’
He apologized for his hasty temper. ‘Light of my eyes, we must get re-married as soon as possible.’
She reminded him that the Law prevented them from marrying again unless another marriage had intervened.
So he called in the aged man who watered the lawn and ordered him to marry her; but it must be a marriage of form only. The obedient gardener did as he was told and, immediately after the ceremony, returned to his watering-pot.
Two days later the woman got run over by a taxi, so the gardener inherited the money and the camels.
The Greek invited me to tea once. He had three beautiful sisters named Pallas, Aphrodite, and Artemis, who gave me tea in their garden, with European cakes that they had learned to make at the American College. Next door, a pale-faced man stood on a third-floor balcony addressing the world. I asked Pallas what his speech was about. ‘Oh,’ she laughed, ‘don’t mind him. He’s a mad millionaire, so the police leave him alone. He lived ten years in England. He’s saying now that they’re burning him up with electricity, and telling the birds all his troubles. Also that his secretary accuses him of stealing five piastres, but it isn’t true… And that there can’t be a God because God wouldn’t allow the English to steal the fellaheen’s camels for the war and not return them… Now he’s saying that all religions are very much the same, and that Buddha is as good as Mohammed. Really, he’s quite mad. He keeps a little dog in his house, actually in his very room, plays with it and talks to it as though it were a human being!’
Pallas told me that in another twenty years the women of Egypt would control everything. The feminist movement had just started, and since the woman were by far the most active and intelligent part of the population, great changes might be expected. Neither she nor her sisters would stand her father’s attempt to keep them in their places. Her brother, who was doing the literature course as a preliminary to law, showed me his library. Besides his legal textbooks he had Voltaire, Rousseau, a number of saucy French novels in paper covers, Shakespeare’s works, and Samuel Smiles’ Self Help. When he asked my advice about his career, I suggested a European university – a literary degree at Cairo would be worth little, unless he wanted to take up politics.
I had not realized before just how much the British controlled Egypt. Egypt ranked as an independent kingdom, but it seemed that I owed my principal allegiance not to King Fuad, who had given me my appointment and paid my salary, but to the High
Commissioner, whose infantry, cavalry, and air squadrons were a constant reminder of his power. British officials could not understand the Egyptians’ desire for independence, considering them most ungrateful for all the beneficent labour and skill applied to their country since the eighties – raising it from bankruptcy to riches. There was no Egyptian nation, I was assured. The Greeks, Turks, Syrians, and Armenians who called themselves Egyptians had no more right there than the British. Before the British occupation the Pashas used to bleed the fellaheen white; and it was not the fellaheen, the only true Egyptians, who now called for freedom. Nationalism, a creed derived from the new smatterings of Western education we were giving the upper classes, should be disregarded as merely a symptom of the country’s growing wealth. The reduction of the British official class in the last few year 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, the dagoes; and we don’t see why they should benefit.’ None of them realized how much the vanity of the Egyptians – probably the vainest people in world – was hurt by the constant sight of British uniform. On the other hand, I could not suppose that the morale of the Egyptian soldier would be very high in time of war; having seen one of their officers, incensed by the negligence of a sentry, pull open the man’s mouth and spit into it.