Eothen

Eothen by A.W. Kinglake

371 pgs written 1844, (c) 1970 University of Nebraska Press, Reprint of 1904 edition with new introduction by V.S. Pritchett.
Brow Library 915.6 K54E, read 11/11/06

A hugely entertaining and wildly eccentric memoir of an Englishman traveling in Arabia in the mid-1800s. Alexander William Kinglake takes the first-hand travel narrative to the extreme and includes nothing that he does not personally experience. The reader is warned this "volume is thoroughly free" of geographic discussion, antiquarian research, historical and antiquarian research, historical and scientific illustrations, all useful statistics and political disquisitions.

Kinglake promises (and delivers) to dwell "precisely upon those matters which happened to interest me and upon none other." A singular series of events transpires and results in an uncluttered and intimate travel story. Two examples are when his party is having trouble locating a ford across the river, they consider killing their guide and another time and another when crossing the desert Kinglake crosses paths with an unknown Englishman but does not stop because he can't think of anything to say.

Notes and excerpts:
Upon Kinglake's first encounters with the well-armed Arabs porters (pg 6) "they looked as if they would have thought themselves more usefully, more honorably, and more piously employed in cutting our throats than carrying our portmanteaus."

Pg 28 "a good specimen of oriental architecture: it is made up of 20,000 skulls contributed by the rebellious Servians in the early part (I believe) of this [the 18C]" A little later, "robbers impaled on high poles...their skeletons, clothed with some white, wax-like flesh, still sat lolling up in the sunshine, and listlessly stared without eyes."

Pg 31 "The rules of nature are uniform...all over the world (except Ireland)." Pg 45 Prices at the Bazaar start so high because the vendor "has no means of finding out what the best price is, except by actual experiment. He cannot know the intensity of demand, or the abundance of supply..."

Pg 50 No Watts's hymns. Pg 57 as a child, Kinglake read the Illiad (Aside: shades of the Bible and Shakespeare reading of the family in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn).

70 Saints' days observations in Smyrna. P71 "I, a layman, not forced to write at all." Pg 99 Lady Hester Stanhope, the odd neice of Pitt the Younger. Pg 107 divine sibyl. Pg 110: the achievements of Sir Sidney Smith. Pg 119 "Her generosity occasioned strife instead of gratitude, for every woman who fancied her present less splendid than another...became furious." Pg 120 "The prophetess announced to me that we were upon the even of a stupendous convulsion which would destroy the then recognized value of all property upon the earth." Pg 123 "a curious coxcomical lisp."

Pg 130: "In England we scarcely acknowledge to ourselves how much we owe to the wise and watchful press that presides over the formation of our opinions." Pg 131: "The mere practical man however skilful and shrewd in his own way, has not the kind of power that will enable him to resist the gradual impression made upon his mind by the common opinion of those whom he sees and hears from day to day."

Pg 139 "The monks of Damascus, not that they are more zealous Christians than the rest of their fellows in the Holy Land, but...they have better wine." Pg 143: Plague in Jerusalem (1843?) Pg 155 Strange orisons.

Pg 234 As Kinglake crosses the long, empty desert, he comes across a fellow Englishman coming from the opposite direction. Rather than stopping for a chat "I could not think of anything in particular I had to say to him," each nods and goes on his way. Their local staff members, however, would have no part of this and took the opportunity for news and distraction, forcing the two foreigners to at least acknowledge each other.

Pg 247 Osman with his small harem is described as "a Scotchman born, and when very young, being then a drummer-boy, he landed in Egypt with Fraser's force. He was taken prisoner [and offered the choice of death or conversion]." He was pressed into service "fierce campaigns against the Wahabees, the Unitarians of the Mussulman world." [I believe this to be contemporaneous, perhaps with White Gold?]

Pg 263 A visit to the Cairo slave market where it is illegal for infidels to buy white slaves. Pg 273 The plague in Cairo impacts on Kinglake's friends and acquaintances: "my banker, my doctor, my landlord, and my magician all died of the plague. A lad who acted as a helper in the house I occupied lost a brother and a sister within a few hours. Out of my two established donkey-boys, one died."

Pg 291 Separated from his party, Kinglake heads alone across the desert, unprovisioned. When he encounters two Bedouins, he dismounts, takes a couple of huge swigs from their flask, remounts and heads off without a word of acknowledgement or dissent.

1970 V.S. Pritchett introduction
V.S. Pritchett asks a compelling question,"Why has English literature so many masterpieces of travel?" [Kinglake too poses a similar question on page 231 when at a desolate oasis "They (Arabs) could not understand, and they wanted to know, by what strange privilege it is that an Englishman with a brace of pistols and a couple of servants, rides safely across the desert, whilst they, the natives of the neighboring cities are forced to travel in troops or rather in herds."]

Pritchett's answer is that "It owes its origin partly to the strong willfulness of the English gentleman...but partly too, to the magic of the banking system, by force of which the wealthy traveler will make all his journeys without carrying a handful of coin, then when he arrives at a city will rain down showers of gold."

Additional notes:
What a perfect combination are Kinglake and Pritchett. I'd read the front of the book where it said that it was a reprint of the 1904 volume with a new introduction. But as I read it, I kept thinking of the 1800s (perhaps on account of the jibes at Unitarians). Concurrently, I'm reading "My Grandfather's House" and right now am in the midst of the age of Hawthorne and Melville. So I was pleasantly surprised to see when I Googled this book to see that it's original publication was in fact 1844.

In this book I also came to understand the subtle difference between burden (encumbrance) and burthen (weight down with a load). I've come across burthen from time to time in hymn lyrics.