The uses of Egyptomania
Sir, – It is difficult to reconcile Lucy Hughes-Hallett’s remark that
“Napoleon’s expedition marked . . . the end of Europe’s esteem for Egypt”
(March 14) with the immense Egyptological excitement generated by Napoleon’s
savants and Champollion’s decipherment of hieroglyphs. Freshly energized
excavation spurred speculators, antiquarians, scholars and would-be donors
to national and other museums to study and/or profit from the treasures
newly revealed, while at the same time mass tourism was generated and
Europeans in their thousands took to cruising on the Nile in their
dahabeeyahs and, later, their steamboats. Much of this interest was
superficial and many Nile passengers thought crocodile-hunting more worth
their time than a visit to yet another temple; nevertheless Egypt and
scholarship related to Egypt made an impact which has not yet been exhausted.
One less obvious aspect of Egyptomania was, and is, in its way profound.
Harriet Martineau, Florence Nightingale and Amelia Edwards all went to Egypt
between 1849 and 1873, and all wrote about what the experience meant to
them. In each case it was life-changing. For Martineau it led her to an
awareness of wider intellectual and spiritual horizons which informed the
books she went on to write. Nightingale undertook the journey reluctantly
and, once there, determinedly refused to be impressed by what she saw until,
after a while, Egypt, Egyptian art and Egyptian religion made an indelible
impact and materially altered her conception of life and human destiny.
Edwards went to Egypt only to escape bad weather in France, but she came
back to give up her previous career as a novelist and journalist and founded
the Egypt Exploration Fund, which, under its present name as the Egypt
Exploration Society, continues its work of preservation, excavation and
study of the monuments of Ancient Egypt. No one who had once seen Egypt
would ever feel equally interested in any other country, Harriet Martineau
declared, and this was no merely sentimental enthusiasm. “One wonders that
people come back from Egypt and live lives as they did before”, Florence
Nightingale remarked, believing that Egypt had taught her profound truths
about God and human life. Amelia Edwards, a brilliant and multi-talented
woman, devoted all her life and her health to the causes of the EES.
The responsiveness of these women to the experience of Egypt was stimulated by
their discovery of an ancient world whose codes were different from those of
the repressive society of their own time. Men had long revelled in
exploration of the classical world and reserved it and its riches to
themselves. Egypt offered a new field where women were free to explore and
respond according to their own natures and interests. Harriet Martineau,
Florence Nightingale and Amelia Edwards responded with all the force of
their personalities and their powerful minds. To them, far from being an
“exhausted” society (Lucy Hughes-Hallett’s word), Egypt was one capable of
revitalizing the mid-Victorian society of their own day with the challenge
of new ideas and wider horizons. They fed their own experience of Egypt into
the activity of their subsequent lives and, directly or indirectly, Egypt
makes a part of their legacy which itself continues to feed into the life of
our own time.
JOAN REES
The Red House, Court Gardens, St David’s Street, Presteigne.
Imperial rubble
Sir, – Like almost all writers on “the vast, as yet unexcavated tomb” of
China’s First Emperor, your reviewer Jonathan Mirsky (March 14) forgets to
mention that it was comprehensively looted (once en masse for a month and
again four to eight centuries later) and burned out (the fire supposedly
lasting ninety days) in antiquity. So while evocative chambers and
passageways may survive – or be reconstructible – don’t expect the treasures
and wonders detailed in Records of the Historian.
Furthermore, since prolonged fire would seem capable of rendering underground
structures fragile, Mirsky’s archaeologists doubtless have been restrained
“partly” by fear of triggering the tumulus’s collapse. Overall, though, one
suspects simple cost-benefit calculations, from both a scientific and a
touristic point of view – the site has all the traffic it needs or can
handle, with the famous Terracotta Army, a kilometre and a half away – of
having stayed the spades until now.
MARTIN LEVINE
7401 Eastmoreland Road, Apartment 916, Annandale, Virginia 22003.
Pro-Soviets
Sir, – As a colleague of his at London University I well remember the
Communist Andrew Rothstein lecturing in 1947 (see Letters, March 21), but I
also remember the row kicked up by his left-wing colleagues when his tenure
was not renewed a few years later. The authorities at the School of East
European Studies obviously felt that taking a risk with an untenured
assistant lecturer was not on all fours with appointing E. H. Carr to a
tenured Chair.
MICHAEL HOWARD
The Old Farm, Eastbury, Hungerford.
By Anon?
Sir, – Bart Van Es is entitled to disagree with my thesis but not to
misrepresent the evidence supporting it. He says, in his review of The
Tragedy of Richard II, Part One: A Newly Authenticated Play by William
Shakespeare (In Brief, February 15), that “Egan’s argument is based in large
part on verbal and character analogues . . . ”, but this is simply not so.
While I do point to strong similarities between, for instance, the Spruce
Courtier and Osric, Simon Ignorance and Dogberry and of course the entire
cast of historical figures transferred almost unchanged to Richard II, and
do adduce literally thousands of phrasal parallels, my case rests
principally, as it should, on the quality of the writing.
An outstanding example is Queen Anne’s speech to the courtiers who have
welcomed her in I.iii.36–50:
My sovereign lord, and you true
English peers,
Your all-accomplish’d honours have
so tied
My senses by a magical restraint
In the sweet spells of these your fair
demeanours,
That I am bound and charm’d from
what I was.
My native country I no more
remember
But as a tale told in my infancy,
The greatest part forgot; and that
which is,
Appears to England’s fair Elysium
Like brambles to the cedars, coarse
to fine,
Or like the wild grape to the fruitful
vine.
And, having left the earth where I
was bred,
And English made, let me be
Englished.
They best shall please me shall me
English call.
My heart, great King, to you; my
love to all!
Who else but Shakespeare writes like this?
Van Es also suggests that the phrasal analogues I cite are superficial, giving
as his lone example the claim (which in fact I do not make) that 1 Richard
II and 2 Henry IV “compare dead men to doornails”. Here’s the actual
collocation:
Lapoole: What, is he dead?
Murderer: As a door-nail, my lord.
– 1 Richard II, V.i.242–3
Falstaff: What, is the old king dead?
Pistol: As nail in door.
– 2 Henry IV, V.iii.120–1
My study cites scores of comparable parallels. Clearly, there are deep
connections between Anon and Shakespeare. Either one copied from the other
or they are the same playwright.
MICHAEL EGAN
Brigham Young University, Hawaii Campus, Laie, Oahu, Hawaii 96762.
Camus’s prize
Sir, – Paul Theroux, in his Commentary on the work of Georges Simenon (March
14), suggests that “we can easily see why Simenon was so angry that Camus
won the Swedish lottery – because in novel after novel, Simenon dramatized
the same sort of dilemma . . .” that Camus’s anti-hero Meursault faced in
L’Étranger, the famous novel of the absurd that launched his literary
career. But surely we should also be able to see why members of the Nobel
jury might have been influenced to award the prize for literature to Camus
because of novels such as the masterful allegory La Peste and La Chute;
plays such as Caligula and Les Justes; and philosophical essays and
treatises such as Le Mythe de Sisyphe and L’Homme révolté.
Of these literary achievements, Theroux has not a word to say.
PAUL BRODEUR
268 Camelot Drive, Tavernier, Florida 33070.
Dust jackets
Sir, – I feel that Eric Korn was over-dismissive of the humble dust jacket in
his article on Kevin Johnson’s The Dark Page (March 21).
Although obviously not an integral part of any book, the jacket nevertheless
gives us important information about the way in which a work was originally
presented to the public. How publishers chose to market their wares in the
past is an important part of publishing history. In the days before
celebrity endorsement of books on national television it was the allure of
the jacket which probably drew many potential buyers towards a particular
volume in the first place. Whether toward the sombre, more scholarly
presentations of publishers such as Faber or Gollancz or to the more gaudy
jackets used by Collins, Hutchinson and the like.
Until the 1950s, jackets were routinely discarded once the book had been read
– the sombre dark cloth thus exposed making one’s own humble collection
appear more like the country house library of one’s dreams. Consequently,
examples before this time have become quite scarce and have in some cases
attracted the attention of the more wealthy book collector. However, book
jackets should not be seen merely as a rich man’s foible but as an important
indicator of the book-buying habits of an earlier generation.
ALAN HEWER
2 Sycamore Close, Seaford.
Sir, – I should be sorry to see my improbable find lost through the
intervention of an overzealous normalizing proofreader; the bibliography of
film noir sources, which I reviewed, attributed the praise of Raymond
Chandler not to our own dear mag, but to “The Time [sic]
Literary Supplement”, which has an awesome plausibility in an alternate
universe. Samuel Butler had a similar disappointment: his sardonic gag “tis
better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all” (I wonder if I
have this right) was corrected by a helpful hand.
ERIC KORN
M. E. Korn Books, 32 North Grove, London N15.
Trafalgar
Sir, – Even at this late stage it is worth correcting what must surely have
been purely a typographical error in Andrew Lambert’s review of Stephen
Taylor’s Storm and Conquest (February 1): “The age of naval fleet battles
ended” not “on October 12, 1805” but on the 21st of that month. Lissa,
Tsushima and Jutland excepted.
MICHAEL CHARLES
1 Town Quay Apartments, Shoreham-by-Sea.
