Somewhat off-handedly, Esmé asked Professor Quelch how long he had lived in Egypt.
‘Since the beginning of the War, dear mademoiselle. It was the War which brought me here, in fact. I was attached to British Intelligence. I dealt chiefly with the Turkish underground in Cairo.’ He dropped his voice to a throaty whisper, giving his remarks a mystery and significance which meant little to us.
‘Don’t you adore it?’ Dreamily, Esmé stared out at the bright leafy streets of the passing suburbs.
Professor Quelch’s smile was forgiving. ‘Egypt may be a country that one is predisposed to adore, mademoiselle, but adoration, in the face of the facts, changes very soon to reaction, even to detestation, for there is much in Egypt that evokes material, and not merely theoretical, detestation! You have arrived here in the winter when the climate is at its best. Spring, summer and autumn, however, are an endless trial! They are detestable. The insects are detestable the whole year through, and lethal in the hot weather. What’s more Cairo, in the spring, is infested by even more detestable dust-raising winds. A year, and you will detest all you now find attractive.’
‘You are a cynic, m’sieu!’ laughed my child.
‘Far from it, mademoiselle. When one is not plagued by the weather and the wild-life, one has the common Cairene to deal with. I refer not to the native of the countryside, nor to the better-class Egyptian - many of these, of either kind, are worthy and decent people, with many virtues; but what visitor ever makes their acquaintance? No, I mean the Cairo native of the lower class. Of him, mademoiselle, there is little good to be said. He is a noisy, rude, excitable pestilence. The cosmopolitan conditions of Cairo life, combined with the natural tolerance and justice of the regime he has enjoyed for so long, have not tended to improve him. It is safe to say that the average European (we must except the English, whose business it is to like the native) abhors him. And he returns the sentiment in most cases. I will grant you he is at his most trying in the more European parts of the city. To the east and to the south of Cairo (his own haunts) it must be granted he is usually more dignified, quieter, polite and helpful. But the foreign atmosphere seems to throw him off balance. Egypt is not in itself a white man’s country and so conditions for white men are abnormal and artificial.’
‘But ther sights!’ said Mrs Cornelius attempting to lighten the proceedings. ‘Yer gotta grant the sights, prof!’
He accepted this. ‘Perhaps. In my view the scenery and the elements, if one may so call them, of the country are also artificial. The Delta is a large market-garden, intersected by canals. Upper Egypt is a market-garden on either side of the Nile. The rest is the rock and sand of the desert. And the features of the country are not, I find, in themselves attractive. When you have seen a village, a village mosque, a grove of palms, the desert hills, processions of men on camels, and a few other such things, you have seen about all there is to see, and everything becomes very much the same. Summa: it would seem that Egypt is, save for her history and her art, a distinctly uninteresting and even detestable country.’
‘Then why do so many people visit Egypt?’ Esmé’s question was almost innocent.
Professor Quelch had a ready answer for her. ‘White men come to Egypt for their work. They are naturally disposed to make the best of where they work. They are not going to say there is nothing in Egypt for them, so they say the scenery is marvellous. And others believe them. But, believe me, mademoiselle, Egypt is an entirely artificial land. Europe can be exquisite. England is sacred to those who know her. Compared to Europe Egypt has nothing save the beauty that may be found in the disposition of hills and water and fields. What dreams can you find on an Egyptian hillside, or in an Egyptian cotton-field or in an Egyptian canal? You may find the fullest force of solitude, but it is objective, never subjective. You may admire it, but you cannot enter into it unless you choose to surrender yourself to it without condition.’
‘It looks orlright ter me,’ said Mrs Cornelius doubtfully. ‘That sunset larst night was a joy ter be’old.’
Professor Quelch nodded as if in agreement, then leaned forward to speak in an authoritative murmur. ‘The beauty of Egypt, Miss Cornish, depends upon illusion. The theatrical illusion of the fitting moment, the accident of disposition. You, of all people, surely understand the reasons how one can see beauty in anything that is wholly man-made. You must see what beauty you can in Egypt and be thankful for it. My father, the Reverend Quelch of Sevenoaks, although he never visited Egypt, wrote an excellent book on Islamic architecture in which he pointed out the flaws and fallacies of such buildings, showing how the infirmities of the Moorish arch, for instance, reflect the moral sand, as it were, on which Islam itself is built.’
Esmé and Mrs Cornelius were growing visibly bored with Quelch’s idiosyncratic judgements. We had as yet seen nothing to support his arguments, but one doubtless had to live in Egypt a number of years before one understood him. He was, he said, an author himself. He had written on the subject of Egypt and been published in England. I asked him for titles. He was modest. He said he used a pseudonym. He had also been published by several Cairo firms and felt he had contributed substantially to the subject of aesthetics. Mrs Cornelius, challenged by this one gesture of discretion, insisted that he tell her under which name he published. Eventually, his entire angular face growing a deep and alarming red, he admitted that his best-known nom-de-plume was ‘René France’. He admitted his feeling that such a name gave authority to pronouncements which ‘Quelch’ did not. We approved his choice and told him that we would look out for his books the moment we arrived in Cairo. At this, he said he would be glad to help us obtain copies. He was sure he could get any title we wanted at a substantial trade discount.
Esmé remarked in French that the professor was clearly no romantic. He answered with a shrug.
‘I assure you, mademoiselle, that you will find the beauty of Egypt brille par son absence. Primarily it is the invention of the last century’s more sensational painters, exploiting our European greed for the exotic.’
These were sentiments unacceptable to almost any woman and to the majority of men. We had come to Egypt to film the exotic and to make an art of it. We did not wish to hear Professor Quelch’s cynical assessment of a country he admittedly knew very well. I did my best to change the subject. Even at that age I understood the plurality of human nature and how so many apparently conflicting views can exist quite cheerfully in one individual. Thus it is unjust to make immediate judgements upon one’s fellows. I am uneasy with the way youngsters these days so readily condemn or praise people they have never met, as if they were their own family. I have learned to bide my time. I judge people not by their opinions or how they present themselves, but by their actions. Finally, the only truth is in action, when they understand how their actions have effect. I judge by how they work to understand and control their actions, how careful they are not to do major harm to others. If all they have learned in life is how to justify those actions, no matter how subtly, then I grow quickly irritated with their company. The world is a dull enough place, these days, without having to listen to an old fraud inventing the reasons he was morally obliged to steal some other old fraud’s chickens. Circulus in probando as one of the Quelches would say. Iz doz mikh? Ikh farshtey. Ikh red nit keyn ‘philosophiespielen’.
‘What well-ordered streets Alexandria has.’ I nodded towards the suburbs.