Artists and Arabs; Or, Sketching in Sunshine

The Kabyles came round our tents in the morning before leaving, and the last we saw of our model patriarch, was flying before an enraged vivandière, who pursued him down the hill with a dish-cloth. He had been prowling about since dawn, and had forgotten the distinction between 'meum' and 'tuum.'

It has been said that there is 'no such thing as Arab embarrassment, and no such dignity as Arab dignity;' but the Arab or the Kabyle, as we hinted in a former chapter, appears to great disadvantage in contact with the French, and seems to lose at once in morale.

Another day, there is a flutter in our little camp, for 'the mail' has come in, in the person of an active young orderly of Zouaves, who, leaving the bulk of his charge to come round by the road, has anticipated the regular delivery by some hours, scaling the heights with the agility of a cat, and appearing suddenly in our midst. If he had sprung out of the earth he could not have startled us much more, and if he had brought a message that all the troops were to leave Africa to-morrow, he could scarcely have been more welcome.

And what has he brought to satisfy the crowd of anxious faces that assemble round the hut, dignified by the decoration of a pasteboard eagle and the inscription 'Bureau de Poste.' It was scarcely as trying a position for an official, as that at our own Post-office at Sebastopol in Crimean days, although there was eagerness and crowding enough to perplex any distributor; but it was very soon over, in five minutes letters and papers were cast aside, and boredom had recommenced with the majority. It was the old story – the old curse of Algeria doing its work; the French officers are too near home to care much for 'news,' and hear too frequently from Paris (twice a week) to attach much importance to letters. Newspapers were the 'pièces de résistance,' but there was not much news in 'La Presse' and its feuilleton consisted of two or three chapters of a translation of Dickens' 'Martin Chuzzlewit'; there was the 'Moniteur,' with lists of promotions in the army, and the usual announcement, that Napoleon, 'by the grace of God and the national will,' would levy new taxes upon the people; there was a provincial paper, containing an account of the discovery of some ruins near Carcassonne; there was 'Le Follet' for 'my lady commandant,' and a few other papers with illustrated caricatures and conundrums.

Some of the letters were amusing, as we heard them read aloud; one was too quaint not to mention, it was from a bootmaker in Paris to his dear, long-lost customer on the Kabyle Hills. He 'felt that he was going to die,' and prayed 'M'sieu le Lieutenant' to order a good supply of boots for fear of any sudden accident, 'no one else could make such boots for Monsieur.' And so on, including subjects of about equal importance, with the latest Parisian gossip, and intelligence of a new piece at the 'Variétés.' One other letter we may mention, that came up by the same post, to one other member of that little band, perched like eagles on the heights; it was also unimportant and from home, and the burden of it was this – 'Broadtouch' had stretched ten feet of canvas for a painting of one rolling wave, and 'Interstice' had studied the texture of a nut-shell until his eyes were dim.

We finish the evening as usual with dominoes and coffee; enjoying many a long and delightful chit-chat with our military friends. These pleasant, genial, but rather unhappy gentlemen do not 'talk shop,' it is tabooed in conversation, as strictly as at the 'Rag': but the stamp of banishment is upon their faces unmistakeably, and if they do speak of this foreign service (now that the war is nearly over), it is in language that seems to say, – 'all ye who enter here, leave Hope behind.'

CHAPTER IX. 'WINTER SWALLOWS.'

'Oh que l'hirondelle est bien la type de la vraie sagesse, elle qui a su effacer de son existence, ces longs hivers qui glacent et engourdissent! Dès que le soleil commence à décroître, sitôt que les plantes jaunissent et qu'aux chaudes haleines du Zéphyr succèdent les froides rafales de l'aquilon, elle s'envole prudemment à tire d'ailes, vers les douces régions embaumées du Midi.'

E come down the hills and back to Algiers, to find the winter in full bloom, and the 'winter swallows' in great force, In fact, so full of bustle is the town, and so frequent is the sight of English faces, and the sound of English voices, that it hardly seems like the place we had left a few weeks since.

It has been said that English people love sunshine and blue sky more than any other nation, and that the dwellers under the 'ciel nebuleuse du nord,' will go anywhere to seek a brighter clime; and it is a fact, the importance of which is hardly realised in England, that the African sun is producing a crop of English residents that is growing rapidly, and taking firm root in the soil, in spite of siroccos, in spite of earthquakes – without a thought of colonization in the strict sense of the word, and without, it must be added, any particular love for the French people.

The visitors, or tourists, are increasing also, and they are naturally, rather vulgarising our favourite places. Thus we hear of picnics at the Bouzareah, of balls at Mustapha, of 'trips' to Blidah by railway, and of 'excursions to the gorge of La Chiffa and back' in one day.

An amusing chapter might be written upon Algiers from the traveller's point of view, but one or two touches will suffice, to show the easy and familiar terms, on which our countrymen and country-women invade this stronghold of the French; once the 'city of pirates' and the terror of Mediterranean waters.

There is the cosmopolitan traveller, who, having 'done Europe,' finds Algiers, of course, rather 'slow,' by contrast; and there is the very matter-of-fact traveller, who finds it all vanity, and says, – 'Take ever so copious a stock of illusions with you to the bright Orient, and within half-an-hour after landing, you are as bankrupt as a bank of deposit… and the end of it all is, that this city of the "Arabian Nights" turns out to be as unromantic as Seven Dials.' There are lady travellers, who (enjoying special advantages by reason of their sex, and seeing much more than Englishmen of Moorish interiors) are perhaps best fitted to write books about this country; there are proselytizing ladies, who come with a mission, and end by getting themselves and their friends into trouble, by distributing tracts amongst the Moors; and there are ladies who (when their baggage is detained at one of the ports), endeavour to break down the barriers of official routine in an unexpected way. 'The douane did not choose to wake up and give us our luggage,' writes one, 'it was such a lazy douane; and though I went again and again and said pretty things to the gendarmes, it was of no use.'

Another form of invasion is less polite, but it has been submitted to with tolerable grace on more than one occasion. Here is the latest instance.30

'Being anxious to obtain a sketch of one of the quaint streets of the upper town, I wandered one morning up its dark alleys and intricate byeways; and wishing to establish myself at a window, I knocked at a promising door, and was answered by a mysterious voice from behind a lattice; the door opened of itself, and I marched upstairs unmindful of evil. In the upper court I was instantly surrounded by a troup of women, in the picturesque private dress of the Moorish ladies, unencumbered with veil or yashmak.

'These ladies dragged at my watch-chain, and pulled my hair, until finding myself in such very questionable society, I beat a hasty retreat, flying down stairs six steps at a time, slamming the doors in the faces of the houris, and eventually reaching the street in safety, while sundry slow Mussulmans wagged their beards and said that Christian dogs did not often enter such places with impunity.'

It is pleasant to see with what good tempered grace, both the Moors and the French take this modern English invasion. We settle down for the winter here and build and plant vineyards, and make merry, in the same romping fashion that we do in Switzerland. We write to England about it, as if the country belonged to us, and of the climate, as if we had been the discoverers of its charms. But it is all so cozy and genial, and so much a matter of course, that we are apt to forget its oddity; we have friends in England who speak of Algiers with positive delight, whose faces brighten at the very mention of its name, and who always speak of going there, as of 'going home.'

We have principally confined our remarks to places near Algiers, omitting all mention of Oran and Constantine, because it is impossible to work to much purpose if we travel about, and these places are worthy of distinct and separate visits. The longest journey that we would suggest to artists to make in one winter, would be to the cedar forests of Teniet-el-Had, because the scenery is so magnificent, and the forms of the cedars themselves, are perhaps the wildest and most wonderful to be met with in any part of the world. Hitherto, almost the only sketches that we have seen of this mountain forest have been by our own countrymen and countrywomen, for French artists do not as a rule go far from Algiers.

With a few notable exceptions,31 our experience of the works of Frenchmen in Algiers, has been anything but inspiring; we have known these artists closetted for weeks – copying and re-copying fanciful desert scenes, such as camels dying on sandy plains, under a sky of the heaviest opaque blue, and with cold grey shadows upon the ground – drawing imaginary Mauresques on impossible housetops, and in short working more from fancy than from facts; producing, it may be, most saleable pictures, but doing themselves and their clientelles, no other good thereby. It seems ungracious to speak thus of people from whom we invariably received civility and kindness; but the truth remains, we found them hard at work on 'pot-boilers' for exportation, and doing, like the photographers, a flourishing trade.

We should endeavour to spend most of our time in the country, if we wish to make progress. If we stay in Algiers we shall of course be liable to some interruptions; we shall be too comfortable and perhaps become too luxurious. We must not dream away our time on a Turkey carpet, or on our terrasse, charming though the view may be. There is too much scent of henna, too strong a flavour of coffee and tobacco, there are, in short, too many of the comforts of life; we had better be off to the hills, where the air is cooler, and where we can live a free life under canvass for a while.32

The tropical vegetation in Algeria gives continual shade and shelter, and the style of architecture, with cool open arcades to the houses, is admirably adapted for work; but failing the ordinary means of shelter, much may be done under a large umbrella, or from an ordinary military tent. In the Paris Exhibition of 1867, there were some portable, wooden Swiss houses, that seemed constructed for sketching purposes, as they could be taken down almost as easily as a tent, and removed from one place to another.

A few months, spent amongst the mountains, will have a wonderfully bracing effect on Europeans, because both the eye and the mind will be satisfied and refreshed; although, it is a curious fact that on the uneducated, such scenes have little, or no, influence.

We shall not easily forget 'the splendid comet of Arab civilization that has left such a trail of light behind it,' but cannot help remarking that neither the Arab in a state of nature, nor the Moor surrounded by every refinement and luxury, seem to be much influenced by the grace and beauty around them; and in this they do not stand alone, for it is, as we said, a notable fact? that contact with what is beautiful in scenery or in art, is of itself of little worth.33

What shall we say of the Sicilian peasant girl, born and bred on the heights of Taormina?

What of the Swiss girl who spends her life, knee-deep in newly-mown hay? Does beautiful scenery seem to inspire them with noble thoughts? Does being 'face to face with Nature,' as the phrase goes, appear to give them refined tastes, or to elevate their ideas? Does it seem to lead to cleanliness, to godliness, or any other virtue? The answer is almost invariably, 'No;' they must be educated to it, and neither the present race of Arabs nor Moors are so educated. They do not seem to appreciate the works of their fathers, and will, probably before long, fall into the way of dressing themselves and building dwellings, after the style of their conquerors.

With Europeans it is just the reverse, and the most educated and refined amongst us, are learning more and more to value, what an Eastern nation is casting off. We submit to the fashions of our time not without murmurs, which are sounds of hope. We put up with a hideous costume and more hideous streets – from habit or necessity as the case may be – but even custom will not altogether deaden the senses to a love for the beautiful. In costume this is especially noticeable.

What is it that attracts the largest audiences to 'burlesque' representations at our theatres? Not the buffoonery, but the spectacle. The eye robbed of its natural food, seeks it in a number of roundabout ways – but it seeks it. What made the American people crowd to Ristori's performances in New York, over and over again? Not the novelty, not alone for the sake of being able to say that they had been there; but for the delight to the eye in contemplating forms of classic beauty, and the delight to the ear in hearing the poetry of the most musical language in the world, nobly spoken, although but few of the audience could understand a word. It was a libel upon the people to suggest that their attending these performances was affectation; it was an almost unconscious drawing out of that natural love for the beautiful, which is implanted somewhere, in every human breast, and which, in this case perhaps, gave the American audience a temporary relief from smartness, and angularity of body and mind.

CHAPTER X. CONCLUSION

F the foregoing sketches have seemed to some of our readers, a thought too slight and discursive, and to be wanting in detail; it is because, perhaps, they have reflected a little too naturally, the habit of a painter's mind, and have followed out the principle of outdoor sketching, which is to 'hit off' as accurately as possible, the various points of interest that come under observation, and, in doing so, to give colour rather than detail, and to aim principally at the rendering of atmosphere and effect.

But for this, perhaps, most readers will be thankful, and for two reasons. First, because it is a fact, that English people as a rule, care little or nothing for Algeria as a colony – that they never have cared, and probably never will. Second, because, in spite of the assertion of a late writer, that 'Algeria is a country virtually unknown to Englishmen,' we believe that the English public has been literally inundated with books of travel and statistics, on this subject.

It is only in its picturesque aspect, and as a winter residence for invalids, that Algiers will ever claim much interest for English people; and even in picturesqueness, it falls far short of other cities well known to Englishmen. There is nothing in costume to compare with the bazaars of Constantinople, or in architecture, to the bystreets of Trebizond; but Algeria is much more accessible from England, and that is our reason for selecting it. It has one special attraction, in which it stands almost alone, viz, that here we may see the two great tides of civilization – primitive and modern – the East and the West – meet and mingle without limit and without confusion. There is no violent collision and no decided fusion; but the general result is peaceful, and we are enabled to contemplate it at leisure; and have such intimate and quiet intercourse with the Oriental, as is nowhere else to be met with, we believe, in the world.

In speaking thus enthusiastically of the advantages of Algeria, let us not be supposed to undervalue the beauties of England, or its unapproachable landscape and mountain scenery. The 'painter's camp' in the Highlands, is no doubt, the right place for a camp, but it is not the only right place; the spot where it was pitched is covered with snow as we write these lines. Moreover, it is not given to everyone to be able to draw trees, and it is a change and relief to many, to have landscape work that does not depend upon their successful delineation.

In fine, for artists, Algiers seems perfect; a cheap place of residence with few 'distractions,' without many taxes or cares; with extraordinary opportunities for the study of Nature in her grandest aspects, and of character, costume, and architecture of a good old type.

But what they really gain by working here is not easily written down, nor to be explained to others; nor is it all at once discovered by themselves. It has not been dinned into their ears by rote, or by rule, but rather inhaled, and (if we may so express it) taken in with the atmosphere they breathe. If they have not produced anything great or noble, they have at least infused more light and nature into their work, and have done something to counteract the tendency to that sickly sentimentality and artificialism, that is the curse of modern schools.

We have been led to insist, perhaps a little too earnestly, on the good effects of sound work on a painter's mind, by the thought of what some of our foremost artists are doing at the present time. When painters of the highest aim and most refined intelligence, seem tending towards a system of mere decorative art; when Millais paints children, apparently, to display their dress, and devotes his great powers as a colourist almost exclusively to imitative work; when Leighton cultivates a style of refined Platonism which is not Attic and is sometimes scarcely human; when other painters of celebrity, that we need scarcely name spend their lives upon the working out of effective details; when the modern development of what is called Præ-Raphaelitism, seems to remove us farther than ever from what should be the aim of a great painter, we may be pardoned for insisting upon the benefits of change of air and change of scene.

But not only to artists and amateurs – to those fortunate people whose time and means are as as much at their own disposal as the genii of Aladdin's lamp; to those who can get 'ordered abroad' at the season when it is most pleasant to go; to those who live at high pressure for half the year, and need a change – not so much perhaps, from winter's gloom – as from the 'clouds that linger on the mind's horizon;' to all who seek a 'new sensation,' we would say, once more – pay a visit to the 'city of pirates,' to the 'diamond set in emeralds,' on the African shore.

POSTSCRIPT TO SECOND EDITION

We have been requested by several readers to state, in a New Edition, the readiest and cheapest method of reaching Algeria from England.

There is no quicker or cheaper way than to go through France to Marseilles, and thence by steamer direct to Algiers. The cost of the journey from London to Algiers varies from to £10, according to 'class.' The steamers from Marseilles leave on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, at mid-day: the cheapest boats leave on Thursdays, their first-class fare, including living, being about £3 3s. All other information respecting this journey, can be obtained by reference to Bradshaw's Continental Railway Guide.

The best months for a visit to Algeria are from November to April.

Travellers should obtain the French 'Guide de l'Algerie,' published by Hachette, Paris; also 'Last Winter in Algeria,' by Mrs. Evans, a most useful book for visitors.

Hotels in Algiers: – 'L Orient,' 'La Regence' 'L Europe,' &c.

1

Necessary enough, to be protected from the cold blasts that sweep down the valleys, as many invalids know to their cost, who have taken houses or lodgings hastily at Nice.

2

It is generally admitted, we believe, that a vegetable diet will not produce heroes,' and there is certainly a prejudice in England about the value of beef for navvies and others who put muscular power into their work. It is an interesting fact to note, and one which we think speaks volumes for the climate of Algeria, that this gentleman lives almost entirely on fruit, rice, and Indian corn.

3

This beautiful architectural feature of the town has not escaped the civilizing hand of the Frank; the last time we visited Algiers we found the oval window in the tower gone, and in its place an illuminated French clock!

4

It may be interesting to artists to learn that in this present year 1868, most of the quaint old Moorish streets and buildings are intact – neither disturbed by earthquakes nor 'improved' out of sight.

5

Since writing the above, we observe that these Arabs (or a band of mountebanks in their name), have been permitted to perform their horrible orgies in Paris and London, and that young ladies go in evening dress to the 'stalls' to witness them.

6

How often have we seen in the Tuileries gardens, the bronzed heroes of Algerian wars, and perhaps have pitied them for their worn appearance; but we shall begin to think that something more than the African sun and long marches have given them a prematurely aged appearance, and that absinthe and late hours in a temperature of 90° Fahrenheit may have something to do with it.

7

How different from what we read of in Æothen. The cry is not, 'Get out of the way, O old man! O virgin! – the Englishman, he comes, he comes!' If we were to push an old man out of the way, or, ever so little, to forget our duty to a fair pedestrian, we should be brought up before the Cadi, and fined and scorned, by a jury of unbelievers!

8

The little pattern at the head of this chapter was traced from a piece of embroidered silk, worked by the Moors.

9

It would be obviously in bad taste for Europeans to walk in the streets of Algiers, en costume Maure; but we may make considerable modifications in our attire in an oriental city, to our great comfort and peace of mind.

10

In the Exhibition of the Royal Academy of 1867, there was a picture by Alfred Elmore, R.A., taken almost from this spot.

11

We hear much of the perils of living too fast, and of the preternaturally aged, worn appearance, of English girls after two or three London seasons. What would a British matron say to a daughter – a woman at twelve, married at thirteen, blasée directly, and old at twenty?

12

For fear of the 'evil eye.' There is a strong belief amongst Mahommedans that portraits are part of their identity; and that the original will suffer if the portrait receive any indignity.

13

Many of the poorest Jewesses possess gold ornaments as heirlooms, burying them in the ground for security, when not in use.

14

The 'jewels turned out to be paste on close inspection, but the gold filagree work, and the other ornaments, were old, and some very valuable and rare.

15

It detracts a little from the romance of these things to learn from Mrs. Evans (who witnessed, what only ladies, of course, could witness, the robing and decorating of the bride before marriage) the manner in which the face of a Moorish lady is prepared on the day of marriage:

'An old woman having carefully washed the bride's face with water, proceeded to whiten it all over with a milky-looking preparation, and after touching up the cheeks with rouge (and, her eyes with antimony black), bound an amulet round the head; then with a fine camel-hair pencil, she passed a line of liquid glue over the eyebrows, and taking from a folded paper a strip of gold-leaf fixed it across them both, forming one long gilt bar, and then proceeded to give a few finishing touches to the poor lay figure before her, by fastening two or three tiny gold spangles on the forehead!'