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GEORGE WALKER AT SUEZ
GEORGE WALKER AT SUEZ ANTHONY TROLLOPE Of all the spots on the world's surface that I George Walker of
Friday Street London have ever visited Suez in Egypt at the head
of the Red Sea is by far the vilest the most unpleasant and the
least interesting. There are no women there no water and no
vegetation. It is surrounded and indeed often filled by a world
of sand. A scorching sun is always overhead; and one is domiciled
in a huge cavernous hotel which seems to have been made purposely
destitute of all the comforts of civilised life. Nevertheless in
looking back upon the week of my life which I spent there I always
enjoy a certain sort of triumph;--or rather upon one day of that
week which lends a sort of halo not only to my sojourn at Suez but
to the whole period of my residence in Egypt.
I am free to confess that I am not a great man and that at any
rate in the earlier part of my career I had a hankering after the
homage which is paid to greatness. I would fain have been a popular
orator feeding myself on the incense tendered to me by thousands;
or failing that a man born to power whom those around him were
compelled to respect and perhaps to fear. I am not ashamed to
acknowledge this and I believe that most of my neighbours in Friday
Street would own as much were they as candid and open-hearted as
myself.
It is now some time since I was recommended to pass the first four
months of the year in Cairo because I had a sore-throat. The doctor
may have been right but I shall never divest myself of the idea
that my partners wished to be rid of me while they made certain
changes in the management of the firm. They would not otherwise
have shown such interest every time I blew my nose or relieved my
huskiness by a slight cough;--they would not have been so intimate
with that surgeon from St. Bartholomew's who dined with them twice
at the Albion; nor would they have gone to work directly that my
back was turned and have done those very things which they could
not have done had I remained at home. Be that as it may I was
frightened and went to Cairo and while there I made a trip to Suez
for a week.
I was not happy at Cairo for I knew nobody there and the people at
the hotel were as I thought uncivil. It seemed to me as though I
were allowed to go in and out merely by sufferance; and yet I paid
my bill regularly every week. The house was full of company but
the company was made up of parties of twos and threes and they all
seemed to have their own friends. I did make attempts to overcome
that terrible British exclusiveness that noli me tangere with which
an Englishman arms himself; and in which he thinks it necessary to
envelop his wife; but it was in vain and I found myself sitting
down to breakfast and dinner day after day as much alone as I
should do if I called for a chop at a separate table in the
Cathedral Coffee-house. And yet at breakfast and dinner I made one
of an assemblage of thirty or forty people. That I thought dull.
But as I stood one morning on the steps before the hotel bethinking
myself that my throat was as well as ever I remembered it to be I
was suddenly slapped on the back. Never in my life did I feel a
more pleasant sensation or turn round with more unaffected delight
to return a friend's greeting. It was as though a cup of water had
been handed to me in the desert. I knew that a cargo of passengers
for Australia had reached Cairo that morning and were to be passed
on to Suez as soon as the railway would take them and did not
therefore expect that the greeting had come from any sojourner in
Egypt. I should perhaps have explained that the even tenor of our
life at the hotel was disturbed some four times a month by a flight
through Cairo of a flock of travellers who like locusts eat up all
that there was eatable at the Inn for the day. They sat down at the
same tables with us never mixing with us having their separate
interests and hopes and being often as I thought somewhat loud
and almost selfish in the expression of them. These flocks
consisted of passengers passing and repassing by the overland route
to and from India and Australia; and had I nothing else to tell I
should delight to describe all that I watched of their habits and
manners--the outward bound being so different in their traits from
their brethren on their return. But I have to tell of my own
triumph at Suez and must therefore hasten on to say that on turning
round quickly with my outstretched hand I found it clasped by John
Robinson.
"Well Robinson is this you?" "Holloa Walker what are you doing
here?" That of course was the style of greeting. Elsewhere I
should not have cared much to meet John Robinson for he was a man
who had never done well in the world. He had been in business and
connected with a fairly good house in Sise Lane but he had married
early and things had not exactly gone well with him. I don't think
the house broke but he did; and so he was driven to take himself
and five children off to Australia. Elsewhere I should not have
cared to come across him but I was positively glad to be slapped on
the back by anybody on that landing-place in front of Shepheard's
Hotel at Cairo.
I soon learned that Robinson with his wife and children and indeed
with all the rest of the Australian cargo were to be passed on to
Suez that afternoon and after a while I agreed to accompany their
party. I had made up my mind on coming out from England that I
would see all the wonders of Egypt and hitherto I had seen nothing.
I did ride on one day some fifteen miles on a donkey to see the
petrified forest; but the guide who called himself a dragoman took
me wrong or cheated me in some way. We rode half the day over a
stony sandy plain seeing nothing with a terrible wind that filled
my mouth with grit and at last the dragoman got off. "Dere" said
he picking up a small bit of stone "Dis is de forest made of
stone. Carry that home." Then we turned round and rode back to
Cairo. My chief observation as to the country was this--that
whichever way we went the wind blew into our teeth. The day's work
cost me five-and-twenty shillings and since that I had not as yet
made any other expedition. I was therefore glad of an opportunity
of going to Suez and of making the journey in company with an
acquaintance.
At that time the railway was open as far as I remember nearly half
the way from Cairo to Suez. It did not run four or five times a
day as railways do in other countries but four or five times a
month. In fact it only carried passengers on the arrival of these
flocks passing between England and her Eastern possessions. There
were trains passing backwards and forwards constantly as I
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