45

SOUTH.

If the time between birth and seven formed the skeleton, from
the subsequent years until I was fifteen, came flesh and blood. It
was so great a change as to make the stories of re-birth entirely
credible. Nothing can equal a sense of foreign lands acquired while
young; perhaps if this were a common experience, it would do much to
prevent racial hatreds and wars. It must be early; it should come
at the instant when childhood replaces infancy, and both body and mind
are eager for exploration. Why do the schools advise it at adoles-
cence? At such a time youth needs to concentrate upon its own needs,
and unfamiliar surroundings or a second language is simply a strain
upon development. No, the right time for travel is between six and
thirteen, and I was fortunate to go abroad when I was most receptive
to impressions.

Our new life began with a short visit to London. It was
such a warm October that I was allowed to sit on the balcony with
a book that I had been given for my birthday, it was *Tales from*
*Shakespeare* retold for children by E. Nesbitt. There were many
illustrations and I already knew the stories by heart, though, like
an Elizabethan prentice, I did not always like the more famous ones.
Hamlet, with a magnificent excuse to fight, wasted pages trying to
get out of it. I preferred Pericles, finding his salt-stained armor
on the beach. *A Midsummer Night's Dream* was disappointing, the
important character was Oberon's boy and there was not even a line

46

at the end about what happened to him! I liked the *Tempest* although they missed out the best part, the voyage in the open boat, and why did they treat Caliban so badly? Prospero began well but ended badly, giving up his books in a Mrs. Molesworth surrender to the nursery principle of "reading is selfish". My favorite play was *Cymbeline*. It had everything, a cave, a battle, and the palace garden, I supposed this had box hedges and stone walls with wallflowers growing from the cracks, a reminder perhaps of our visits to Pevensey. The princes were like Robinson boys and I would have followed the Roman general wherever he had bidden me. Why there was so much fuss about Iachimo in the coffer I could not understand but grown ups were strange, and it was no odder than playing in the garden without a sunbonnet but having to wear one if we went into the fields.

I looked down into a melancholy Bayswater square full of old trees and heaps of russet and yellow leaves. It was desolate and quiet. Suddenly to my surprise the bleak railings turned into gently moving reeds, there was water flowing over the gravel path, and I saw Imogen herself standing among the rushes. It seemed perfectly natural but very exciting. She had her back towards me but I wondered if I should speak to her? My mother called me, I answered, turning my head, and when I glanced back at the garden Imogen had vanished.

Hallucination in childhood is so common as to be natural.
It is only interesting because of my later interests that I should

47

have seen Imogen with her possibly Celtic associations rather than
Illyrian Viola or Rosalind in Arden.

I am glad that I knew of Shakespeare so early although it was
a simple approach. The classics are for childhood and old age,
middle life belongs to contemporary experience.

"tis for off
and rather like a dream than an assurance
that my remembrance warrants"

as Miranda said. The stories sank to the sea-level of consciousness,
often I do not read a play for years but when I do the associations
of childhood stick to the names like burrs, I smell the buttons of
white asters that were then in all the autumn gardens or the bitter
scent of slowly burning leaves.

Shortly afterwards my first governess arrived, a stern and
elderly lady from Hanover who had just returned from India where
she had been teaching a detestable child called Willie. He was
everything that I was not, obedient, affectionate, and if he were
sometimes naughty it was only to be able to confess to her after-
wards how sorry he had been to distress her. There was the after-
noon that he had eaten a mango. It was not "wilful disobedience",
the poor boy had forgotten that he must not eat fruit. I could not
understand the temptation because I had never tasted mangoes, if I
had, I should stop talking to her about strawberries and cream. She
had heard him sobbing at night and they had spent two happy hours
weeping together. It would be much better - she looked at me grimly -

48

if I would try to follow Willie's example.

Fraulein (I never knew her name) did not like walking but a brisk trot in the afternoon was half of authority's idea of goodness. She compromised by taking me to the Indian section of the Victoria and Albert Museum, and telling me stories of ayahs, cobras and plagues. She did not appear, alas, to have had any real acquaintance with elephants. In a London where ladies wore black or dove-grey clothes, she appeared, aged sixty, in long white dresses touching the floor with either an amber necklace and a yellow sash or on Sundays, pink coral. It was too much for the cabmen who caught glimpses of the colors under her coat, my mother's friends were startled but politely silent. I liked her eccentricity but not her discipline because she insisted that only Prussians understood virtue, "if you were a German child you would have to get up at six every morning, wash in cold water and not waste time poring over silly picture books." She also had a habit of looking up at breakfast and murmuring for no apparent reason, "I am a lady by birth" until my mother was forced to remark in desperation that if this were true, she would not have to tell us about it so often. Lessons went fairly easily because I really wanted to know more French and double my reading possibilities but I felt no affection for her, she could not control me and on several occasions my mother had to be fetched.

49

We stayed for a few days at Hastings before setting off for a winter on the Continent. A strange object shaped like part of a carriage but without either shaft or horses, jolted up and down the front between boards that said "Five Shillings a Trip". I suspect that I inherit my sense of adventure from my mother. My father sternly forbade the excursion, but my mother put me into my thickest coat, and wound to my humiliation a large white shawl round my mouth. We slipped out after lunch while my father was reading his paper, my mother boarded the monster and as soon as she was settled, the driver lifted me up to sit beside her. There were several people in the other seats. At first all that happened were some sputtering noises. There was a jerk, we almost fell off the cushions, a horse reared, people stared. We drove for about a mile, not much faster than if we had been in a victoria, but it was gratifying to watch a number of old ladies scurry up the side streets with their dogs. It was 1901 and our first trip in a motor car. My father met us as we climbed off, very angry indeed, and with no premonition that within four years we should own such a dragon ourselves.

Every year between 1901 and 1907 we were in Italy. We went twice to Egypt and spent one winter in Spain, Algeria and Tunis.

52

salad or fruit except for oranges or tangerines that could be peeled.
Nor was there much heating. We sometimes had a stove or more often
a brazier filled with glowing charcoal in the sitting room. The
Customs was strict; (why had they such an interest in my picture
books?) and if we made an excursion there was an octroi at the
entrance to each town. We often arrived at a station in the middle
of the night or set off at four in the morning. It was a life de-
signed to shock the child care theorists to the core but oh, what an
advantage it has been to me! I can vary my hours instantly to suit
either side of the Atlantic, provided that the place is reasonably
clean, I do not mind where I sleep, the only thing that bothers
me is a draught. Every nursery rule was broken during those years,
I ate whatever my parents ate including gazelle and octopus, and
had
never/a day's illness except for a slight attack of German measles
caught from a maid on one of our rare visits to England.

The only thing that I resent is that from my present his-
torian's point of view I did not realise what was being offered to
me. It was the eighteenth century, at least at Naples. Scholars
read about it, I have lived in it but alas, though I remember the
flavor, I forget the details. Life was tougher and death always
near. There was more individuality and color, much more eccentric-
ity, perhaps because the weaklings usually died. People had opinions
and held them strongly but the theoretical hair-splitting of to-day

53

was unknown. (I should have caught some hint of it had it been in
the air.) If you believed in something it was your "cause" and you
fought or if necessary, died for it. I do not think human nature
has changed very much since prehistoric times but each age has its
atmosphere that cannot be transmitted through books, and it is an
object lesson for the artist because he is usually in advance of
his period, yet he must also recognise that though the essential
elements of his work may survive, the mood, the light and shade
will never have the meaning for a future audience that they had
when he created them.

Yes, if a century had lost itself and I had woken up in 1802,
adaptation would not have been difficult. I knew that there were
streets down which it was dangerous to walk after nightfall, people
talked as casually about brigands and blood feuds as we spoke of
Guy Fawkes' day in London. Improbable rather than probable things
happened and I was not guarded from them as children would be to-
day. Outbreaks of plague and the armed soldiers on the trains were
as natural as the small, sweet oranges or the enchanting emerald
lizards.

I accepted these hardships with pride. It was an honor, as
my parents said, to accompany them abroad instead of being shut up in
a nursery. I also knew that it mattered more if I were naughty on the
continent than at home because I discredited not only myself but all
other English children. And now what do I remember of the cities

54

with their enchanting names that were already so familiar from my
mother's stories?

A pole creaked, the rain beat steadily on the black hood,
we could hear the waves slapping against the side of the cradle or
what was the new word that they had used, a gondola? I was wedged
between the knees of my father and mother and we seemed to move,
saying nothing, for hours. I tried everywhere to find a peephole
but was told to sit still. It had been a long journey, and I
wanted my supper.

Suddenly there was a rush and a yell. I caught a glimpse
of the Mediterranean night with its soft, almost bodily darkness,
Then we shot into a harbor of brightly lit, colored marble. A
carved balustrade vanished into the sea but there was a roof over-
head, and a bare legged man who leaned down from the stairs, lifted
me up and set me down beside a pile of red carpets stacked on the
first floor landing. The reflexions from the lights, the tassels
on the hood, bobbed up and down as they handed up the luggage.
So this was Venice! The ground floor of the hotel was completely
under the sea. Being abroad was certainly adventurous.

About every twenty five years a particular combination of
wind and tide floods the entire city. The following morning we

55

went round the Piazza of San Marco and up to the Cathedral by boat.
"Remember this, Miggy," my father said, "it may never happen again
within your lifetime." (It did in the late twenties but I was then
in England and only saw the pictures, how familiar they were, in the
illustrated papers.) There were no pigeons, they were clinging
miserably to cornices. Only the names of the cafés were visible.
Yet even at that age I was aware of an extraordinary beauty, of
palaces rising from the Adriatic as if their architects had always
expected guests to step through windows and see the doors as arches
underneath the water. Only that December the brightest marble lost
its color and the wind blowing along the narrow canals was as sharp
as an arrow.

We went to High Mass at San Marco on Christmas Day, and
stood with everybody else, on planks. My father lifted me up to
see the Cardinal's red robes, (he became Pope shortly afterwards)
but the incense suffocated me, the candles and the chanting seemed
remote and cold, much as this may surprise some people, after the
friendly Noah's Ark warmth of the little Protestant church to which
I was taken at home. After the service people rowed away in boats.

Venice itself left me with a mixture of good and bad impres-
sions. I liked the Campanile, the old one that was to fall so soon
afterwards. Fraulein led the way, I panted after her because it
seemed a very long climb until we came out in sunlight to look at

56

islands and water. It was one of my original landscapes, houses,
bridges, and always somewhere, a ship. It was much, much duller
when as part of my lessons we had to go to picture galleries. They
did not touch my imagination, and I preferred feeding the pigeons.
There were fewer of them in those days than there are now, and it
was quite a feat to lure them to the far end of the square. I
learned some new words, however, like porphery and lapis lazuli,
and I liked listening to stories about the Doges.

I never liked Christmas, perhaps because I dreaded the cold.
A tree arrived in our sitting room but the more Fraulein chattered
about reindeer and the letters that Willie wrote, the more deter-
mined I became to put Authority in its place.

On Christmas Eve I pretended to be asleep. Several times
a head peeped round the door. I kept my eyes shut, my ears alert.
Finally somebody whispered "she isn't awake now". I did not move,
I tried not to breathe, finally the rustles ceased and a fat stocking
dangled at the foot of the bed. Enjoying the moment thoroughly I
sat upright and said firmly, "I knew you were Santa Claus".

I was not smacked, (I deserved to be!) but I was told sternly
that if I did not go to sleep at once, that very minute, the stocking
would be taken away. Of course I was infuriating but I wonder why
people want to force make-believe on a child when facts are so ex-
citing? I was perfectly willing for grown ups to revert to play
provided that they did not try to deceive me. Let them tell me

56a

stories on the free and open basis that these were merely tales
and I would listen to them happily but it was undignified to be
told to believe that gentlemen came bustling down chimneys.

Another exploit was getting lost. I upset an inkpot during
lessons, and Fraulein, muttering "the little devil, what can I do
with such a child," took her own sponge to mop it up. My mother
took her into a chemist's shop to buy another but left me with my
father outside. There were exciting bottles of colored liquid in
the windows, strange jars, and interesting boxes. I decided to
investigate, and said that I would join my mother. Neither of us
had noticed that there were two doors. I pushed open the wrong one,
and found myself facing a barber. A lot of men with soapy faces
looked up in surprise. The barber in his long white coat came over
and asked me in Italian what I wanted. I shook my head, and he
repeated the question in English.

I was looking for my mother who was buying a sponge. Of course,
that was next door, come, he would take me there. To add to the
confusion the shops were between two streets, and by the time that
we arrived, my mother had left by the opposite entrance. There was
no sign now of my parents anywhere. I was not to be frightened, the
barber said, he had children too, my mother would come for me very
soon, and in the meantime I could watch him at work. I assured him
indignantly that I was never, never frightened, I told him where we
were staying, and added that I could find the way there by myself.

57

What a glorious opportunity it offered to exploit Venice alone!
I could hang over the parapets and study the canals without Fraulein
tugging at me and saying "you'll get a sore throat lingering by that
stagnant rubbish." I might even get on to a ship without anybody
seeing me. The word lost has two meanings, one is to be alone but
the other is adventure and escape and it was the second that I
wanted. At that moment my parents arrived, stupidly frightened.
My father was being reproached for "not being able to mind the child
a minute." I was even more annoyed when the barber patted me on the
head and called me a "bambino". I knew that word, it meant "baby".

My governess took to her bed. "A lady by birth" could not
cope with such a little monster of wickedness. She remained there
to my huge delight until we left for England two days later.

It was another winter and we were in Rome, this time without
a governess. What an event it was for me, my family said, they
knew of people who had saved for a lifetime to visit the "eternal
city" and here I was, only eight, with the wealth of the world
around me. "And now, darling, you have been poring over Baedekar,
what would you like to see first?"

"The Colosseum," I squealed, "because of the gladiators."

58

There was a horrified silence. My father explained that everybody went first to St. Peters, so off we drove in a bitterly cold December wind while I reflected sulkily that the ways of parents were truly unpredictable. I usually had to wait for anything that I wanted but it wasn't fair to offer me a choice, and then take it away. The columns and the marble made no impression upon me that morning. It all seemed sad, with endless steps, I wasn't allowed to talk, and we walked for hours among towering figures in rigid stone robes.

How different it was the next morning! The wind had dropped, the sun was out, and I tore into the arena, Baedekar in hand. "The lions," I shouted, "look, the lions, they came up there!" Some silly tourist asked me if I wasn't sorry for the Christians? I dived into lovely underground passages, I tried out seats all round the amphitheatre, I even hid a chip of marble in my pocket when nobody was looking although I knew that this was a sin. Why wouldn't people answer my questions? How old did one have to be to become a gladiator? Was a shield very heavy? Were both prongs of the trident pointed and was the net the same as the one people used to catch butterflies? "She knows more about it than the guide," an old gentleman remarked. Yet at the time I had not even read Henty, I had only the page in the guide book, but it was outdoors, I could run about, it belonged to my age.

Many years later I had a vivid dream. I felt that I was being

60

instead of the mulberry colored velvet that I had seen in pictures
of banquets but the bare throats and arms of the women blazed with
jewels. Suddenly I looked up at their faces and froze with terror.
The flesh dissolved, I saw malice and greed not as these appear to
a child but with the full intensity of a developed mind. I knew
what would happen to me if I were in their power or one of the
barelegged urchins trying to earn a coin by opening a carriage
door. "Something has shocked the child," my mother said, was it
that the ladies had no sleeves, that was what was called evening
dress. It would not have mattered to me had they worn no clothes
at all. "They are not alive," I stammered because I had no vocabu-
lary to explain what I meant. I was used to eating in restaurants
and to being among crowds, perhaps I maligned our neighbours, but I
saw them as skeletons, I had an impression of evil, of something
outside ordinary life that I have never forgotten.

I had never heard then of Robert Browning but I recognised
my Florence in his poems a few years afterwards. The streets could
not have changed since the eighteen sixties, it was still a sleepy
town full of carts and vegetable stalls. There were plenty of old
ladies escaping an English winter, some had water colors, others
guide books. They marched in black buttoned boots from church to

61

church, admiring canvases that are now unfashionable, uneasily conscious that the painters (like Lippo Lippi) had not always led good lives but assuring each other "art, my dear, alters everything."

They shouted violently at peasants who struck their mules, (a concern for the welfare of animals was the only political outlet permitted to a lady), they founded tea rooms. For all their good will I doubt if they understood Italy yet perhaps we should not laugh at them, stumping along with their twin torches of Italian beauty and English stolidity. Sometimes the stranger in his "serviceable suit of black" perceives the essence of a past that is suffocating to the native.

We stared at Italy from the outside just as Mrs. Browning had watched it from her windows. "Look!" I tugged at the sleeve of my father's overcoat, there was a shepherd boy hardly older than myself, crossing the bridge with a kid over his shoulders. The squares were wide, the streets were narrow, it was almost as dangerous as it is to-day with coachmen yelling, flourishing their whips, and trying to pass a rival's carriage. We flattened ourselves against the wall to get away from the donkeys and their fleas, we jumped back when the wheels of two barrows touched, the lemons spilled over the cobbles, and people rushed out of all the neighbouring doorways to join in the fight.

I almost made the headlines of the newspapers, however, trying to burn down the Uffizi. There had been little chance since Elizabet-than times in the attitude towards children. I suppose that we must

62

have inherited the former status of slaves. We were sometimes petted and often smacked, absolute obedience was the ideal though it was seldom achieved in practice, and while we were forbidden to have opinions of our own, we were expected to share adult interests beyond an eight year old's understanding. Every morning we went to churches or picture galleries and it was a Spartan discipline. Nobody explained anything about painting and at that age I did not even know all the Biblical stories. To me, the pictures were full of fat cherubs, old men praying in dark and dingy robes, or masses of clouds. I was led firmly up to one masterpiece after the other, and told to look at each carefully. I particularly disliked Michelangelo. His name was repeated so often that I thought it might be another term for Italy. All these things might be for my "future good", (a term that wrecks so much of a child's life) but I wanted to watch the puppy chasing its long brown tail or to stare at the children playing along the Arno. It was cold, it was dull, one canvas seemed to me exactly like the other, I shut my eyes in desperation, screamed "I won't look, I WON'T look" and walked backwards into a pan of charcoal, the accepted method in those days of heating the museums.

Embers flew all over the wooden floor, the custodian, cursing and half asleep, grabbed the brazier just as it was toppling over, several artists who were copying the pictures, rushed from easels

63

and stamped out sparks. People scolded me in half a dozen lan-
guages, they glared at my mother, and insinuated that a "bambino"
should be left outside with a nurse. "We thought we could trust
you" my parents said reproachfully as they hurried me into another
room. For once the reproof had no sting. "I won't look," I said
again, "I won't look however much you scold me, I HATE museums."
Finally in the best tradition of British compromise, we made a
bargain. I would walk round with my eyes open, holding my father's
hand, and in return, they would buy me a book that I wanted.

I had seen a horror comic with the most wonderful cover in a
shop window of the Via Tornabuoni. A man was lying on the ground
with a spear through his body, and two warriors stood above him,
slashing at each other with short swords. An inscription called
it "the fight for the body of Patroclus". Who was Patroclus?
Why had he been killed? Authority objected of course; "it's
really not a book you would like," but a bargain was a bargain and
I insisted. Oh, what hours of toil over horrible Greek verbs I
might have spared myself had I allowed myself to be over-ruled!
The book was *The Boy's Iliad* by Walter Copeland Perry, and it led
me into museums and not away from them.

I began the book in the train and I can never see the Tuscan
hills now without thinking of the boyhood of Achilles. Chiron fed
him on hearts of lions; my mother, consulted, felt that they would

66

the eighteenth century, and I loved it most of all the Italian cities. It was a child's playground, everything happened in the streets. These were noisy and incredibly dirty but they blazed with color. I liked to watch the donkey drawn carts being driven down alleys so narrow that the wheels almost touched the walls. The vegetables were arranged in pyramids, onions, leeks like green ribbons on a white dress, gay rosettes of radishes between balls of artichokes, a patch of lemons. The owner would wail mournfully, windows would open, bargaining began, and baskets were let down on ropes from the top stories. Oh, what arguments there were!

Sometimes a basket hurtled down a second time with a rejected bunch of carrots. People left their pans of fish and macaroni to join the fray, almost all the cooking was done in the open air, the donkey snatched a carrot top, coins jingled. I stood on tip toes on the front seat of our carriage, the road was blocked by the crowd and we could not get through, look, the woman up there with her black hair falling untidily over her face and her big, open mouth, wasn't she just like the Gorgon we had seen the day before on the mosaics? She was going to throw something, yes, we all dodged, and a lemon missed the dealer's hat by centimetres. Everybody yelled, the coachman cracked his whip, my father looked at his watch. What did they care for the time consciousness of the north? The cart moved on to repeat the same drama a few doors further on. Our driver shrugged his shoulders, turned somehow,

67

and drove us to another road down a flight of steps. It is true
that they were broad, and that there were not many of them.

Little girls looked up and waved as we passed, and then went back
to their proper occupation, catching lice in each other's hair.

Children of my own age were at work, (I still think most of them
were happier than they would have been at school) they were bare-
foot and thin but always gay. I could have watched the scene for
hours. Little had changed since the time of Imperial Rome except
that under the emperors the gutters would have been cleaner, and
the cobbles kept under repair.

Once we were there for New Year's Eve when those Neapolitan
families able to afford them, bought eels. I shall never forget our
drive across the fish market. Urchins sprang on to the steps of our
victoria, they thrust a snarling head and a slimy wriggling body,
almost on to my mother's lap. It was useless trying to leave, we
were wedged into a solid mass of carriages, vendors and stalls.

We could not hear ourselves speak, the yells, the whip cracks and
the ringing hooves were louder than thunder. Men who looked more
Turkish than Italian bargained over pails of odd looking mussels
or oysters. The ground was slippery with oily skins, fish bones
and scrunched shells. It stank, it was a madman's picture of hell,
I was frightened that our horse might fall yet excited at the same
time and there, far out in the peaceful bay Greek sailing ships
from the beginning of time were anchored among the liners waiting

68

to ship emigrants for the States.

It was always a world of fish, as we can see from the surviving paintings and mosaics. I loved the Aquarium. Each window was a mosaic, only it was fluid and vertical, instead of being part of a pavement. Some of the fins had dots like grape pips, I recognised a mullet hiding in the corner, what was the name of that one there with lemon stripes along the back? My favorites were the sea horses, they looked as if they had just been broken off some pediment. There were flowers, orange and rose colored tassels that opened and shut, coral that was full of miniature caves and not at all like the beads people sometimes wore, a porous sticky lump that could not be my nursery sponge? To tease my mother and to test my own courage I forced myself to watch the dark tentacles of an octopus creeping across the sand to whip suddenly about a rock. What would happen if the glass should break? It was enthralling but it was puzzling as well. What did it feel like to breathe under water? Could a fish think?

Yet Death walked openly through those crowded Neapolitan streets. A bell tolled or rather it was rung by hand, people began to scatter, we, ourselves, were swept inside a shop. The sound came nearer, a man started to pray, my mother ordered me sternly to hold my breath. Four men walked along the deserted street, carrying a bier. Their dirty white overalls almost touched the ground, their faces were hidden by their hoods. I had looked at so many pictures

69

of such scenes that I nodded with the rest, and muttered "plague".
I was not particularly frightened, I assured my anxious family that
I had read all about pestilence in my book of Bible stories, it
happened. It was different some days later when a beggar grabbed
at my arm, as we were entering a church. Looking straight into
his deformed and nose-less face, I supposed him to be a leper, and
howled.

We went to Capri but that belongs properly to later days
when I was there with Norman Douglas but I remember the walk up to
the villa of Tiberius with the sun shining on the aromatic bushes
that I know now were rosemary and on the solid, lapis lazuli sea.
It was before I knew one Roman Emperor from another but it was ex-
citing to hear about their acts; if the solid advantages of the
English law courts were to be preferred as my father explained, it
was secretly fun to imagine having all one's wishes fulfilled. I
disliked the Blue Grotto immensely; a very heavy fisherman sat down
on me as we entered it.

We climbed Vesuvius, slipping two feet back in lava dust for every foot that we advanced, on a very hot day. (It is much wiser to study it from the window of an aeroplane.) I reached Pompei at last, the loaves of bread and the wine jars were exactly as my mother had described but when I ran beside the chariot ruts seeking for a talisman to take me "inside" the living city, I was disappointed. It was my first lesson that the imagination cannot be

70

asked to perform miracles, and I went home to my supper full of a
hitherto unknown desolation. Baia consoled me with its blue sea,
its short turf and sandy lizards already linked to Apollo in my mind,
and the subterranean caves where I was scolded for getting smears
of dirt on my coat and hat, but the real advantage was Paestum. In
1907 very little had been excavated, and a certain amount of risk was
involved. The swamps had not been drained so the place was full of
malaria, and there were delicious rumors about brigands. There was
no museum and no hotel, we went to Salerno by train and stayed the
night, driving out to the ruins the next morning. Great white oxen
grazed in the neighbouring fields and there were hundreds of brightly
colored lizards. They flashed in scimitar curves from rock to rock
or regarded us with passive indifference (there were hardly any visi-
tors) while we ate our lunch on the temple steps. It is more inter-
esting now that the site has been properly excavated but I shall
never forget that first impression of loneliness and melancholy.
It was like a corner of Troy, wrecked, lost, obliterated by the sand.

The South. Something new happened every day that I was there.
How could I go through such experiences unmarked?

Egypt.

Nobody ever gets over their first camel.

When we landed at Alexandria after a voyage from Naples in
December 1903, I had been extremely sea-sick for three days;
such humiliating behaviour for a would be cabin boy. I refused
lunch, I did not even want the large, Jaffa orange that somebody
had given me, everything swayed from the motion of the ship.
Then, suddenly, from the window of the train that was taking us
to Cairo, I saw a camel and its foal. They were strolling with
great dignity along the road, the baby's flanks were a mass of
curly wool, and I remembered having read that they could scratch
their ears with their hind legs. I recovered at once, I knew
that I was going to enjoy myself and that whatever happened, no-
body could take away the fact that I had seen a camel in its native
land.

There is nothing left now of that Cairo of almost sixty
years ago. Europeans were rare, there were some officials and
merchants, and a few tourists in winter. Otherwise it was a city
of the Khalifate, crowded, noisy, magnificent with color. From
waking until the moment when I was dragged protestingly to bed,
I stood on the terrace and watched the crowds, except for those
glorious moments when we were among them ourselves. The men wore
usually
robes, these were/white or else strange, soft colors, often in

stripes, clove, the red of the nectarine when the fruit is cut
in half, and not so much amber as the shade of the Persian tea
that I saw them carrying in glasses when we went to the bazaars.
Water carriers in the indigo cotton of the poorer people pushed
across the crowds. I was fascinated by their howl, (did it mean
water?) and by their bloated, goatskin bags. I almost fell over
the parapet whenever the <u>sais</u> raced by, the short, scarlet waist-
coats embroidered with gold gave an impression of butterflies.

that
People said these men died young; it was the dust, the exertion
of running in front of the swiftly moving dog carts, and the long
waits, particularly at sunset, at the edges of the Nile.

The city itself was a gigantic maze. Streets were here
to-day, to-morrow even Ali, our dragoman and my firm friend,
could not find them. The air was thick with scent, roses or
jasmine, or with a heavy mixture of castor oil, straw and camel
dung. One of these grave animals tried to snatch a floppy,
Leghorn hat from the head of a tourist as it squeezed past her
carriage. We often had to wait while strings of donkeys with
bright green fodder bursting out of inadequate sacks made some
turn through alleys hardly wide enough for a rat. The scribes
sat at corners with their brass ink pots, much as their predeces-
sors had waited under imperial Rome. We drove along the narrow
street of the opium smokers, I did not find the odour of hashish
unpleasant as most people do, but the curled up figures lying
on carpets inside dark booths did not seem to be very happy.

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28

(Europeans may have good intentions but they are not always wise. They stopped the drug but doctors have told me since that far more harm was done physically by the substitutes that people found than by the occasional pipe that had been all that the majority of smokers could afford.) I was more excited by a crowd that I saw when we were driving back at sunset. They were clustered round a man telling them a story (so Ali said) from the *Thousand Nights and a Night*, while little boys exactly my own height slipped between the cross legged rows with glasses of water and sherbet upon brightly polished trays.

It was still the world of the camel and the horse. I cannot remember seeing a motor car either then or during a second visit, the following winter. We spoke of caravans in no romantic way but as somebody now might book a ticket at an airport. How often we drove slowly down the Street of the Saddlers! It was a traveller's oasis, the place where he could buy anything from the soft, red, beautifully ornamental saddles used at ceremonies to the tough, leather bridles for the riding camels. That man in a black fur cap had come from Teheran, but his companion, the trader in silk robes, was from Damascus. If it were the goal of one journey, it was also the beginning of the return to a home that many of them would never see. We like to read of the black tents of the Bedawin but let a man's donkey go lame, let him not have enough to pay his share of the tribute money

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29

and his bones would whiten on the sands after the Bedawin and the jackals had finished their work. There were the additional perils of influenza, smallpox and plague in the crowded inns as well as the constant risk of robbery. An engine may not be so picturesque but people do not realise what they owe to the aeroplane and the car.

The shops that we visited were still Oriental palaces instead of the tourist stores that they became a few years later. Everything was leisurely and while they unrolled a single carpet in front of my parents, and told them its history, I ran off to watch an apprentice, older but no bigger than myself, arranging cubes of ivory and little ebony blocks within reach of a workman's hands.

How kind the merchants were to me! Perhaps it was because I asked them the Arabic names of every object that I could touch. They clapped their hands, a cushion was brought, it was much easier for me to sit cross legged in front of them than on a chair, and they taught me to bargain in the Eastern manner which was, as it should be, an art. We spoke an English patterned upon Arabic sentences, and full of foreign words. First I must not want the article for which I bid. To desire it was to lose it. This was rather too difficult for a nine year old, I compromised by choosing something for a friend! I picked up a little bowl and asked the price, the classic beginning. Hearing the sum, I laughed

incredulously, a guinea, why, it wasn't worth two shillings. A servant brought in a tray full of tiny cups of thick coffee that must be sipped but never drunk. I fingered the bowl again as if by chance and offered the equivalent of three shillings in piastres. They taught me to feel with my mind across to their own, neither moving my face nor showing any interest, until the touch of thought to thought was as actual as the turquoise hilt of the sword that I hoped my father would buy. It is a common trick in the East, and easy to learn with the unstiffened mind of the child.

After a time, the merchant would clap his hands again, and the servant would bring in dishes of Turkish delight in all the colors of a dragoman's robe. I knew that I must take one piece only, and make it last. Had I tried mint tea? I should have a glass some other afternoon. That matchlock there, it was from Afghanistan, how much did I think that it was worth? I touched the bowl idly, as a favor to me they would sell the toy for ten shillings. I smiled, and they gave me silk to hold, so thick and white that it stood up of itself or explained that carpets should always be hung on walls, only the ignorant spread them on the floor. I took another sip of coffee, stared at a prayer rug and waited. There was one special moment when without its seeming to matter, my lips must offer the piastre more.

Sometimes I won, sometimes I lost. They scolded me, shaking their head and not letting me have the bowl if I had been impatient

31

or had let the right instant pass. Occasionally they praised me and added a present, telling my father he should leave me with them to become learned. I thought that this was a splendid idea. England was a tiresome place where I was usually cold, added sums up wrongly on a sticky slate, or went for long, monotonous walks. Here I had words to taste that were as strange to the tongue as Turkish sweets, Aleppo, the Fayum, Isfahan. All the tongues of the Levant rang in my ears, and I was to be in love forever with Arabic calligraphy, the beautiful letters that were crescent moons, scimitars or flat bottomed boats. Even numbers might be interesting if I had an abacus with colored beads like one of my friends. How much they gave and taught me, treating me as a scribe like themselves, in that Cairo that was so near to Napoleon's Egypt, and so far from to-day.

Something happens to a western child partly brought up in the East. It is not a matter of languages, they are forgotten alas, within weeks of the return to Europe. It is rather that they understand instinctively with their emotions, and not with reason, the people round them. They are not worried about sanitation or by western ethics; the superstitions, stories, noises and colors belong to their own level of development, and are accepted with joy. They have their privileges; these come neither from wealth or caste but because they are able to read and write and are assimilated into the adult population and not into their age groups.

They know what the sheik has told the donkey boy or what has fil-
tered down to the ayah from the priest's speech by the well. They
may, or may not, pass the information on to their parents. Yes,
this is the chasm between the West and East. It is greater now
than it was in 1900 because strange as this may appear, democracy
widens the gap, it does not close it. The West has reached a high
degree of literacy and as a result, it cannot understand the mul-
titudes who not only do not want education but actually fear it.
Naturally there are minorities all over the East who are as highly
trained and as intellectual as Europeans but they are few; develop-
ment has to come out of the East itself, it cannot be a copy of a
western culture. This has been understood, I think, by many Europeans
but I have yet to meet an American who has grasped the fact. He
is so convinced of the religious value of his ethical system that
he is sure that if he can impose it upon the Orient, problems will
vanish. How wonderful this sounds upon a lecture platform! Alas,
his views are useless both in form and spirit in the shifting, cruel,
mighty but barbaric East.

We were few in number but we formed a special class within
the human race, (a sub class if you will) as messengers between
two continents that had few points of contact otherwise. We were
more than interpreters, there were two worlds mingled in our blood,
two personalities, the native and the secret agent, watching every-
thing but making our reports only to ourselves. Perhaps our secret

was movement. The adult traveller who goes to a foreign land may
identify himself with it for any number of psychological reasons.
We never chose, we slipped between our countries, believing in
both, with the unconscious agility of a child at play. We were
not always right in our judgments, but then our age limit was,
I suppose, eleven, yet we often grasped the truth intuitively
only to find that it was not what the grown ups (of either side)
wanted to hear. They had their own views, and they pulled events
about until these fitted them. We did have love. This is possibly
not so valuable as is sometimes supposed but it might last longer
than oil.

My first religious experiences came in Egypt. I had been
well grounded in Bible stories and taken to the Protestant church
at home, sometimes on special occasions we had gone to the cathe-
drals in Italy but I had classified both as remote and "grown up".
Islam was different; I understood the mosque at once. Perhaps
it is worth while analysing its impact upon a European child be-
cause its power is growing rapidly in Africa, and I was at the
same uncomplicated level of development then that the tribesmen
are now. First of all, every man prayed for himself under an open
sky. There were no pictures, no pulpits, no confusion. It was
natural to ask for water in the desert, to give alms and protect
the stranger. Even Ramadan was not like a European fast; people
were free to eat what they wanted as long as there was not light

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enough "to discern a white thread from a black", then in daytime
they showed their endurance. "Trust God and tie thy camel." This
was the phrase of a leader, it was both adventurous and practical.
Words have their original meanings for children, they are neither
soaked with associations nor with the cynicism of institutions. I
thought that "in the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful"
was the most beautiful prayer I had ever heard. (Yes, I know that
the pedantic prefer another translation but that was the one that I
knew.) There was no quality greater than compassion, even if I had
chosen it because it was related to a personal hope that if I were
particularly mischievous I should not be sent to bed without my
supper.

Above all, there was no preaching about mildness or obedience.
There were no sermons. Islam asked direct tasks from its simple
followers and was rewarded by a child's fanatical devotion.

Why were we allowed to attend a ceremony of the "dancing
dervishes"? We heard afterwards that it was the only year non-Moslems
had been permitted to attend. Perhaps we were half a dozen Europeans,
all placed behind a rope at the side of a dimly lit, circular chamber.
I did not need Ali's whisper to recognise a Descendant of the Pro-
phet, I had seen his green turban.

The hall was high, cool and large, like the first sphere of
night above the roof tops. The leader chanted the Koran, occasion-
ally his companions answered him. They had been praying and fasting
for twenty four hours. The dervishes stood in a circle in long,

78

fluted robes, not unlike an Albanian kilt. I thought of Ramadan and
wished that I could keep the fast; I wanted to prove that I was as
tenacious as an Arab. Quietly, as if the first white sail were
fluttering from a mast, a dervish began to turn, so slowly that he
hardly seemed to move. Another robe trembled, then a third, until they
were all moving in a grave, circular ring. There was something whirl-
ing also in my own mind, it was ahead of my experience but at any moment
this might change, I might reach a state beyond my ordinary senses, it
was the other side of the air but in no way incomprehensible.

Somebody took my hand, before the climax of the ceremony, we,
as believers, were led quietly away.

My mother lent me a life of Sir Richard Burton, she admired him
greatly, an aunt had met him, and I plunged more deeply into the Arab
world through books. Burton became the hero of my childhood, he
had been brought up abroad, he was a swordsman (and I had already
started to fence) he defied authority with joy, and had achieved
my ambition of sliding, like a native, from one nationality to
another. I was soon deep in Mecca and Medina, it was my handbook
of conduct and intensified my desire to settle in the desert.

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I also read the aloe bitter novels of that great Englishman, Marmaduke Pickthall, but these were above the head of a nine year old, and I did not enjoy them very much. I preferred *A Short History of the Saracens* by Ameer Ali. I soon knew my Khalifs and my cities, the difference between Sunni and Shia but of all things in the world, a chapter on taxation filled my day dreams for weeks. I tormented my parents continually, asking them how much things cost? They did not know that I dreamed of taking over an island or an oasis or that I was trying to work out the cost of soldiers and roads.

The East is childhood or age; it is never the middle years of planning and anxiety. It can be unspeakably cruel. I knew a man whose friends had had the head of a relative tossed inside their door. Study the Arab tales; the unattainable jewel is neither wisdom nor beauty but something beyond their experience, that is, justice. And justice is also the passionate wish of the always Kafka like child, adrift in an incomprehensible world. The Orient has had to lie, flatter and bribe during the thousand years that the north has been battering out its concepts of freedom and equality. Yet there has always been a close relationship between the English and the East. It was there during the Crusades, and from the end of the eighteenth century until 1939 it would have been difficult to find a town in Britain that had not sent out some inhabitant to India. The ones who returned brought back words, foods and certain

82

would be granted to me. Of course I was proud when the archaeolo-
gist (whose own name I never knew) told my father that if I stayed
out for a winter I should be able to read the inscriptions. It
deepened my respect for history, it widened my horizon. How dif-
ferent it was from the English archaeologists whom I met on a sub-
sequent visit. They ordered laymen to get out of their way and
sneered at me for wanting to find an ostrakon with scraps of poetry
on it.

When there are so many memories it is wise to concentrate upon
a few. We had ridden out to Sakhara before we had left Cairo and seen
the great wall where Ty had walked among his fields, the dark house
of the sacred bulls and the statues, all that was left of Memphis,
under the palms. Then at Luxor we made daily expeditions either to
Karnak or across the Nile to the Tombs of the Kings. We went inside
small places to see friezes of bird hunters and water plants, only
to be driven out by the smell of bats. There were fighting scenes,
high, narrow chariots but above all there was Punt, the land that had
been found, forgotten and eventually re-explored. I used to sit
outside the Rest House, a square white building where the tourists
were quietened and fed after a perilous descent from the sticky,
fire-hot hills on a non-existent path, trying hard not to scuff the
sand against the metal chairs. It made the old ladies angry, dozing
under their green-lined umbrella or wondering if they had sunstroke?
The dragomen slept in another courtyard, their hands folded above
cinnamon pleated robes and the minutes stretched like worn elastic

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many traces of the deadly vipers in the sand.

The peak of our trip was the voyage from Luxor to Assouan.
Tiny camels followed their basket laden mothers along the banks,
a drove of asses reproduced the old Egyptian texts. Men worked the
<u>shaduf</u>, a system of buckets and a pole, to draw water from the Nile
for their plots of onions and maze. There were lonely stretches
of white sand with an occasional kingfisher, and the gay black and
white hoopoes with their soft, feathery crests. We landed at Edfu
where some of the party shocked me by their lack of interest in the
temple of the hero, Horus, and where I stood for ages looking at the
great polished hawk, much bigger than I was myself. My family for-
tunately was interested in everything, and we wandered among the
great columns for hours. "It will give her more than two years at
school" an American lady told my mother; two years, this was an
understatement, the background was there for life.

Kom Ombos was a frontier post where the river civilisation
and the sand met in uneasy alliance. It had a temple dedicated to
two gods, Darkness and Light, the crocodile and the falcon-headed,
a wonderful frieze of ducks rising into the sky and a pool where they
had kept live crocodiles.

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I did not like what I had heard about these beasts. They were a symbol of some dark force able to alter destiny in a few seconds. They attacked the helpless, the bravest hunter was powerless against them if his boat upset, and though I knew that now they were never found so far north, I looked carefully along the bank when I came on deck.

It was early morning, there was nobody by the gangway. I ran ashore alone and started to explore the country, being careful, however, to keep our ship in sight. This was the frontier of "Bow Land", the ancient name for Nubia. It was the starting point for the caravans that had travelled across the desert to the Indian Ocean, possibly even as far as Punt.

Three small children came towards me, glistening with castor oil. The boy's head was a mass of fuzzy hair, as the little girls laughed, the tiny plaits that were as many as the leather strings of the aprons that were all they wore, dangled to and fro. They pointed at me. I smiled back, and asked politely if I might play with them in my most carefully phrased Arabic. They howled, and ran away.

How strange I must have looked to them! I was still dressed in woollen combinations, a bodice, knickers, a white petticoat, a cotton dress, coat, black ribbed stockings and high boots. As a special concession to the African climate I had been permitted to

86

leave off my flannel petticoat, and I had escaped that morning
without gloves. My Arabic was unintelligible because they would
certainly have spoken a dialect but I knew that it was my color
that had driven them away. To them, black and almost naked, rubbed
gloriously with oil like the Greeks at the funeral games, my white
face under an over large, green-lined sun helmet can only have
seemed a mask, created by some medicine man to ward off the plague.

I may even have had a Baedekar in my hand.

Color prejudice is inconceivable to me. (I doubt if my con-
viction springs from this incident because I am sure that I should
never have had it.) Has any black or white face a monopoly of the
eternal values? If somebody arrived from another planet with a
green hide and red spots, I should not notice it by a second meet-
ing provided that his intentions were just. To fear or dislike a
man or woman because they are dark instead of a sallow white is
such rank stupidity that I cannot understand it. We are all people
with the same hopes and fears. And what about marriages, people
ask? That is another matter, having to do with _all_ mixed marriages,
and not with color. I have observed that such unions are rarely suc-
cessful between Europeans. The woman either identifies herself so
completely with her second country that deep, unconscious tensions
are set up, leading to neurotic difficulties in middle life, or
else she tries to establish an island of her own in her husband's
land. There are exceptions, and if the marriages succeed, they

87

enrich both nationalities. If, however, the chances of happiness
are slight between two allied cultures, the stresses will be greater
at this present time between say, Africans and Europeans. Happiness
is possible but such matches should never be undertaken without
full recognition of the difficulties. It is not a color question
but the matter of fitting two different ways of life together.
It is a subject that badly needs an impartial psychological survey
done on a wide scale.

Naturally I did not think of these larger problems when I was
ten. I was only bitterly disappointed that they would not play
with me, and that I could not smear my head with castor oil.

"What do you expect me to do for you?" my analyst asked,
almost angrily, many years later. "As a child you have been in
Paradise."

It was true. Every day we rode across a desert that was not
the flat shore that the West associates with sand but was full of
ridges and hills. Sometimes they were almost grey, at sunset they
turned into a deep red or a fawn that flaked into cream. All the
Arab feeling for the "black tents" flowed into my blood. How could
it be otherwise? I had loved adventure before I had known its name
and here we were in a world that still belonged to the tribes.

88

I led, always. This was understood for the peace of the caravan. It was less the hunger to be first, I knew little then about competition but a headlong urge to throw myself into everything unknown. Ali came up to me one morning as we trotted past the alabaster quarries. There were still some half hewn stones and a column lying on the ground and I longed to pick up chips and have someone teach me how to carve hippos and dogs. He looked at my donkey to see if all the straps were in order, it bore the unfortunate name of "Ginger Brandy" and had a string of blue beads round its white neck to keep off the evil eye. "We are going a long way" he said, "but you will be happy. We are following the caravan track as far as its first halting place."

It was particularly clear. The sand beneath my donkey's hooves was almost apricot. Further away, in the hollow under the hill it reminded me of the topazes that a Cairo merchant had shaken into his palm from a tiny box. I was scolded suddenly for losing myself in a day-dream but who, on such a morning, wanted to talk? Oh, if we only had tents with us so that we need not go back to the hotel, but ride and ride till we came to the sea, weeks distant from the Nile! A donkey boy shouted, we stopped. Ali stood up in his stirrups, exactly like a trader from the friezes in his billowing robes. "Look!" he pointed and there, motionless and taut, I saw a long, tawny-haired dog. "Jackal!" There were whispers in Arabic and English. "What is it doing? They seldom come out except at

89

night." Had it smelt us trotting too near it in the lonely valley
or had some beast disturbed it in its lair? We watched, it turned
its head swiftly towards us, then with a bound, it disappeared among
the cliffs.

The jackal was the omen of an adventurous day. Over an hour
late we reached a heap of, was it sticks, glistening on the ground?
"A pity," Ali muttered, "they were so near their destination." Then
I saw that it was a pile of camel bones, a skull, and ribs, that
the sand had polished to an extraordinary whiteness. Ali shrugged
his shoulders, he was thinking about fate. Presently one of the
boys came up with a piece of camel plant, it seemed full of thorns
with rubber like leaves but they said that the animals nibbled it
during halts. Otherwise there was nothing but grit and dust, our
own shadows and the burning sky though we passed one other plant
with an evil looking sap that oozed from the stem when a boy slashed
a piece off with his knife. I must be careful never to touch it,
Ali continued, it was poisonous and blinded people who got the
juice of it into their eyes.

We had never been so far into the wilderness, and it was late
when we dismounted at the entrance to a deep valley to rest in the
shade of an overhanging cliff. Why was there always too much food
at the hotel and never enough on picnics? Ali told me about ex-
peditions that he had made to the Fayum, he pulled a tiny, uncut
turquoise out of his pocket that he had found in Sinai, he spoke

90

of some oasis of which I had not heard. It was still the time of
the khalifs, he had ridden to these places, he had been perhaps a
couple of times in a train between Cairo and Luxor, and had never
entered a car.

The shadows lengthened, the boys collected the donkeys, I
buried my egg shells happily in the sand. A cloud of dust came
towards us from the gorge. Ali gave a sharp command, we remounted,
the boys yelled. The whirlwind swept towards us, it turned into
a group of shrieking Bedawin, they flourished matchlocks, some had
swords. It was ridiculously familiar, like any one of a number of
pictures labelled African Fantasia that I had seen in Paris but
this time it was reality and unbelievably exciting.

We formed ourselves into a compact group. I was not frighten-
ed, I was very, very happy. I snatched a stick, I kicked my don-
key's sides. I was ready and willing to meet their charge. My
donkey boy pulled me back, swearing at me in Arabic. "They are
going to murder us," my mother gasped, couching her sun umbrella
like a lance. It seemed probable, they were pointing their guns
at our heads. "Keep quiet," my father commanded, producing a re-
volver to our intense surprise, "and remember, whatever happens,
the British army will avenge us."

This statement did not seem to cheer my mother up at all.
I was still struggling to fight but the donkey boy held my arms.
We were suffocated with dust. The men charged to within a foot of

91

us, then reined their beasts back. Ali, he had a dagger in his hand, pointed to our lack of baggage, protested tactfully that he could not give them alms, and suggested a meeting at Assouan that evening. Their white clothes were travelled stained, their camels were thin. For a few moments to quote the popular press, our fate hung in the balance, then with the promise of Ali that he would meet them outside the bazaar, they thundered away. One man, I noticed, had a shield.

Were we in danger? Yes, up to a point. We were further away than tourists usually rode but we had not the guards that accompanied longer expeditions. I do not think that they would have killed us but they might have held us to ransom, in which case we should have spent several uncomfortable days hidden in some cave also probably/tenanted by vipers and scorpions. We sent them something that evening, not much, because on account of other travellers threats were not to be appeased but enough, I expect, to have given them a meal.

We waited until they were out of sight before beginning our homeward journey. The hills glowed in the evening light. There was no sound except for the scratch of hooves against a pebble or the jingling of a rein. Many things may befall me but until the gods take memory away I have had one day in heaven, as much beyond imagination as paradise beyond ordinary life. Even reason has to acknowledge the supremacy of the desert. Some but not all of us are born to

92

the tents and though we may be broken, we are seldom tamed, it is something beyond mere will, for what is a wild gallop through an unearthly land but the physical symbol of the spirit of man?

There was plenty to learn about the present as well as the past. Every evening while my parents were at dinner, the chambermaid came in to see that I had not disobeyed orders and turned on the light in order to read. She was Swiss, we chattered in French together, and I learned a lot about her own surprising sphere.

It had taken her nine years to get to Egypt. Every new hotel was a stepping stone because the "higher" it was in the season, the more one earned. Assouan was good, yes, but it was below Cairo, Monte Carlo or St. Moritz. No, she had her fare but hardly any wages, she depended on tips. Could I believe it! That miserable Frenchwoman down the corridor, the one that had left that morning, had I noticed that she had already dyed her hair, she had rung sometimes four times in an evening and what had she given on leaving? Five piastres and a bundle of worn out stockings that were immediately thrown away. Five piastres! And the woman had been in the hotel three weeks. She knew by looking at us that we should treat her correctly. I must not think her avaricious, all she asked for was her due. Did I know that she and the floor

93

waiter played a game of glancing at the new visitors and estimating
what each would give or that they marked the trunks downstairs when
the tips were poor? I should remember these things, some day I
might marry and have to arrange the *pourboire* myself. Ah, but
that was a long way off, she wished she had a baby so plump and
active as I was. I writhed with indignation but curiosity kept me
silent.

The stumbling block was the "Direction". One had to accommo-
date one's self to the chef, the concierge, even the under manager
and thus, gradually one arrived at St. Moritz. No, she had never
been out to the temples. If she had a few hours to herself she
wrote to her mother or sewed, I must tell my mother that she was
always happy to oblige a client. The young couple next door would
give her a good present, I could make no idea to myself of how con-
siderate they were. Finally we would hear my mother's footsteps,
hurrying up from dinner, (she reasonably assumed that I would get
up to mischief if I could) the chambermaid would pull the covers
over me and silently disappear, and by the time that the family
peeped inside the door I was apparently innocently asleep.

The moment that the danger of parental interference was over
I crept out to the window. It was too dark to see the Nile but I
could hear the rowers singing a wild mournful chant as they brought
the last visitors home.

94

French, Arabic, English, I moved so easily between the worlds,
My donkey boy was perhaps eighteen, I, at ten, was roughly at the
same level of development. We discussed his problems solemnly,
mostly in his own language. Yes, the corvee was abolished but next
year his brother must be a soldier and how was the family to be fed?
There were so many of them, several younger than myself. The visi-
tors gave good bakshish, yes, but so much went to the sheikh and
so much to the dragoman; otherwise a strap would be slit secretly,
the saddle would slip, then he would be disgraced and get only the
second class tourists. The donkeys had to be fed in summer when no
visitors came. People were mistrustful of mended harness. Wouldn't
I ask my father to buy me "Ginger Brandy?" He gave me every gift
I desired (sadly I wished that this was true) and I should never
regret having a donkey of my own. Were we not always the first away,
when had it ever stumbled? Oh yes, he would sell the animal to us
for a good price, and the family would chew sugar cane when the
waters were low, and pick up a beast cheaply to train for the follow-
ing season.

We understood each other, though neither accepted at full value
the other's protestations. I never made the suggestion about the
donkey because I knew the animal could neither stand the long voyage
nor the English climate. Besides, I preferred a pony. I was cau-
tious about bakshish, fearing the wrath of the dragoman, but I used
my wits in the Eastern manner and when the boy saw us off at the

96

believed I understood now that the Arabs meant by fire.

We stayed at Luxor on the way back to Cairo in a bungalow ad-
joining the then small hotel that was already full of visitors. It
stood in a garden of palms, roses and bourgainvillia and was, my
mother said, swarming with snakes. We teased her for being afraid
but it turned out that she was right. At sunset everybody strolled
along the river. English traditions were relaxed but we spoke, I
believe, only to fellow guests. Occasionally a dahabiyeh would ar-
rive, then a discreet whisper passed along the road, "do you know
who's on board?" It was already considered an ostentatious way of
travelling, and our humbler multitude delighted in exaggerating its
difficulties. "I should be afraid, dear," a lady said from billows
of white muslin, "think of sleeping so near a native crew without a
policeman on board." A parasol would shift so that her companion
could reply "and they say that they were caught in a sandstorm,
miles from a hotel."

Small boys offered imitation scarabs in hollow black paws, a
merchant strolled up with carpets, or a bunch of ostrich feathers.
We met friends, discussed the badness of the food, took our films
to be developed and agreed that Egypt was wonderful.

I surprised a maddening conversation one day that I was

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supposed not to hear. "Shall we tell her about it or not?" The sheikh of the donkey boys had sent a scarab to me because, he said, I belonged to the country. Of course I did, it was natural, why was it so hard to make my often reasonable parents understand that it was not a gift but purely an emblem of recognition? I was not conceited, I knew and it was really not in pride, that the gate to the mysteries was open.

There were times, however, when I blotted my copybook badly. One afternoon having been more tiresome than usual I was sent early to bed without a book. It was asking for trouble. I looked round for something to do and found that the sheet was loose. I draped it round myself and turned off the light.

Presently there was a knock at the door. The Egyptian boy who came round every evening to pull the mosquito nets and empty the wash basins because there were naturally no taps, hearing no reply, entered the room. He did not turn on the electricity, enough moonlight came through the slats of the blinds. I crawled slowly upwards, uttering little whistling grunts. The man turned, saw me, dropped his pail. A yell, rather than a cry, startled the guests at the distant dining room. He trembled, staring at me, too frightened to move.

I heard(triumphantly) my mother scream, "the child's been murdered!" My father dashed in only to find that he had to rescue the Egyptian and not his daughter. He went out remarking disgustedly "she has turned a black man white."

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Next morning there was a solemn conference that I was forbidden to attend. No native servant would approach the bungalow. I had bewitched it and might bewitch them. My victim had wailed all night, he was very ill. It was known now that I was a small but powerful evil spirit. Would my family remove me immediately? The manager had to consider the rest of the hotel. Ali offered a loan of a well seasoned hippopotamus hide whip, excellent, he insisted, for girls. I remember that he scolded my mother, when she refused it, for mistaken kindness.

According to Greek tradition, Fate itself took my punishment in hand. The net had not been drawn and I had deemed it prudent to go immediately to sleep. The next day my eyes were closed up with mosquito bites and my arms were so badly stung that I had to have them bandaged for several days.

It was just as well that we already intended to leave for Cairo that same evening.

Egypt was an ideal beginning. A child thinks in nouns and sees in pictures. I had the excitement of learning to read a second time with fingers as well as eyes as I moved along the sunlit temple walls. Here, and I tapped it, was a jackal but it was also the sign

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for knowledge, as well as being a bird, the flamingo meant red
and because of these dual meanings I began to comprehend abstract
thought.

I owe much to my parents' courage. Imagine the fuss to-day!
"Take your child to the East! Think of the games and companion-
ship the poor little thing will miss, besides however will she make
up her lessons in time to sit for the school certificate?"

It was a question of love rather than of wealth. Not all of
us can go to the Orient but a simple day's holiday at the seaside
can mean so much if sympathetic parents explain the adventures to
the child. I was always fighting the barrier of "you are too young
to understand" but this was a convention, imposed from outside,
wherever my family was free from it, they were interested and helped.
I knew that they wanted me to be there. I ought to have caught ty-
phoid, under strict promise not to tell the other tourists my mother
was warned to keep me away from the Assouan bazaar where people were
dying from smallpox in the open booths. We might have been kid-
napped or bitten by snakes. Yet I had a world to play with, I was
reading history books written for adult readers, chattering Arabic
and memorising hieroglyphics.

I cannot remember Arabic now; this is the common experience
of children when they leave a foreign country, to possess a tongue
we must read it, and there is a gulf between "donkey boy Arabic"

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and unpointed texts. I did not study hieroglyphics when I grew
up but a great carpet of sounds, colors, and smells hangs at the
back of the mind ready to recur as sharply as ever once the right
electrical impulse touches the brain.

We sailed for Naples and England. I did not see Egypt again
for nineteen years and by that time (it was in 1923) the world had
changed. It was not disappointing, it was like an album of old
photographs, pleasant to look at but the emotional content was
no longer there. I had squeezed the Orient dry in childhood, there
was nothing to add, I have no wish ever to return. The background
will always be a part of me but we change as we develop, and my
present interests draw me to the West. Yet in spite of ourselves,
emotion is stronger than reason and if there is time at the finish
may I remember the voice of the muezzin and Jew and Arab being
equally dear to me, come to the judgment of "the Compassionate,
the Merciful." I am profoundly grateful that I lived for a few
months in that still medieval world before it passed.

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THE ALPS.

Now what of summer? We went out usually to the Alps because my father had been a climber. The Switzerland of my childhood has disappeared and this is a pity, it was such a gay world for a child. I saw it first either from a diligence or on my own legs, it was a mixture of scents and flowers. We rented a chalet at Zermatt, we stayed at an inn in Pontresina, in both cases before these places were fashionable or widely known. We got up at dawn and started up the hills in heavy nail-studded boots, (it was before the days of Vibran soles) and returned at milking time with the goats.

Many people thought of my father as a mathematician. He was, and this may be the reason why I cannot cope with figures but to me he was always the figure striding up the steep path ahead of me as easily as if it had been a level English lawn.

It is no wonder that I like adventures. What a life my father had had! His father had died when he was seven and my grandmother had taken him and his two older sisters to Caen in Normandy. There he had grown up, shooting and fishing with some French boys a little older than himself, and acquiring a continental point of view. He spoke the language fluently and it was his dream to retire and live in France. It was fitting that he died there. He was English by principle but French by love.

The family eventually returned to Birmingham where he went to King Edward's School. He left home at fourteen because he was

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not allowed to smoke in the drawing room but characteristically remained at school until the examinations were over when he articled himself to a chartered accountant. The Victorians had not the modern view that childhood must be artificially prolonged and when a relative left him a small sum of money he disposed of it as he pleased. He discovered that his master needed some additional funds to finance some project and he offered to lend him the sum required on condition that he came to the office an hour later every morning and had several months' holiday a year. The bargain was made and kept.

My father went out to Switzerland and climbed. He is said to have made a first ascent on the Italian side of Monte Rosa, he was carried away by an avalanche, he out-walked for a bet a well known guide. This did not prevent him from passing his examination as a chartered accountant with the highest possible marks. Then he went out to India, to try a peak in the Everest region. (I imagine that he hoped to get to Everest itself.) He reached the borders of Tibet. There he and his party got trapped on a ledge by a blizzard, his toes were frost bitten and though he did not lose them, it put a stop to active climbing. To the end of his life he walked several miles a day and when I think of him I see him on some zigzag path, urging me on, explaining how the peasants held their land and giving me advice. "Never kick a pebble over the edge, you might kill a goat. Try not to chatter while we are going up hill. No, you can't rest until we have turned the next bend."

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I never climbed with him, partly because of my age, these
were the summers between seven and twelve, and also because as
after India he was cut off from the difficult ascents, he preferred
walking to going up the secondary peaks. He was my first teacher
and I learned so much. I wonder what he would think of Zermatt
could he see it now? Already in 1902 he considered that it was
spoiled.

I must be one of the last people to have driven in a diligence,
I think it was between Andermatt and the Rhone glacier. It is irri-
tating to remember now so little about it except that I could not
touch the hot, leather seat with my bare hands, and there were oc-
casional moments of a wild delight when I was allowed to sit on the
coachman's box. The drive itself has faded but it might have been
yesterday when I watched the mules drinking from a fountain under
the balcony of a chalet that reminded me of an inverted Noah's Ark.
I used to eat small, very sweet greengages while they harnessed fresh
horses for the next stage of the journey, and the animals wore nets
over their ears to keep away the flies.

I shall never forget my first trip up the Rhone valley when I
was eight. This time we took the train. It was a golden afternoon,

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of the heroes were alike, the details were colorful and made me aware
of differences both with cultures and in time. Nor were the stories
always English, my favorite was *A Young Carthaginian* and another vivid-
ly written volume was *A Lion of St. Mark*. He also introduced me to
two of England's less known but extremely interesting personalities,
Cochrane and Peterborough, the friend of Wycherly and Pope.

Henty was still alive at the time I read *Beric* though he must
have died a year or two later. It never occurred to me that I could
meet him or even write him a letter; if I had encountered him I should
not have known what to say. A friend of my mother told me subsequent-
ly that she had seen him "he had a huge beard and was smoking a pipe."
Yet he was one of the great influences in my life and I collected
seventy seven of his books between the time that I was eight and
thirteen. No school could have taught me the story of England so
thoroughly and so well.

How did I acquire my library? I was given books on my birth-
day or at Christmas, I saved my pocket money, I did jobs and earned
them. I had sixpence a week until I was eleven, then a shilling until
I went to school. The value was greater in those days but I had to
buy biscuits for my dog, plants for my garden, and presents for the
family as well as books. It took me a long time to save enough for
a Henty, they cost four and sixpence as a rule. It was an excellent
training in the value of money. I ran messages, hopeful for a penny,

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I answered the telephone and rolled the lawn. And once, I earned a book by eating a horrible dish of beans in France although it almost made me sick.

A lot of my childhood I was actually hungry. To my father's disgust, he preferred French food because of his childhood at Caen, I was incurably British in my tastes. Tears literally came into my eyes if they brought me iced cakes, when all that I longed for was a nursery tea of farmhouse bread and jam. I hated omelettes and sauces and dreamed of suet pudding. Yet I was never allowed to leave anything on my plate. When I was a little older I reasoned with myself. If I wanted to go across the desert in disguise like Burton, I must adapt myself to the food of the country. Preferences are stronger than reason. I have lived almost all my life abroad, England has become almost a foreign land to me, but I can literally dream about English food. Ironically enough, when I had to return to London for almost six years, it was war time and we were rationed.

The Victorians, including the servants and the country people, ate far more than is usual to-day. Yet none of the people we knew suffered from ulcers, weak digestions or heart trouble. The killers were pneumonia or infectious fevers, though most of them lived to be ninety and faded away. It was partly, of course, that infant mortality was high and only healthy children survived. There are also psychological reasons. There is a deep urge towards self

107a.

destruction in most of us. In the nineteenth century sex was tabu,
and savage punishments were inflicted upon the slightest infringe-
ment of a very narrow code. To-day, sex is accepted as natural
but the more it comes into consciousness, the more the oral in-
stinct is repressed. Almost everybody has a diet; eating (and
smoking) are rapidly becoming regarded as crimes. I wonder when it
will be possible to enjoy our lives in balance, using all senses
in moderation, and being ashamed only of unnecessary masochism?
When shall we apply what the psychologists have discovered?

The mountains were harder and wilder than the soft, English
Downs and full of discoveries. It is the scents that I remember
most, the wooden smell of the wild rhododendron, an extreme fresh-
ness of the grass. And the water! It was grey and clear like the
moraines beside it or it burst into crystal points as it splashed
through a hollow tree trunk into a village fountain. Sometimes the
yellow balloons of the globe flowers came to my knees or I stooped
to pick the soft, white bog cotton growing near some tiny lake.
Once a goatherd led us to a cliff of edelweiss; it is quite a dif-
ferent flower when it falls in cushions over the ledges from the
solitary, stunted specimens walkers now find occasionally on the