Marianne North: To Egypt

"A Medley of Flowers from Table Mountain, Cape of
Good Hope (detail)" by Marianne North

"On the 17th of January 1855 my mother died. Her end had come gradually; for many weeks we felt it was coming. She made me promise never to leave my father, and did not like anyone to move her but him. He was always gentle and ready to help her, and missed her much when she was gone, writing in his diary in his own quaint way: 'The leader is cut off from the main trunk of our home, no branches, no summer shoots can take its place, and I feel myself just an old pollard tree.'

We rode often to the Chiswick Gardens and got specimen flowers to paint; were also often at Kew, and once when there Sir William Hooker gave me a hanging bunch of 'Amhersita nobilis,' one of the grandest flowers in existence. It was the first that had bloomed in England, and made me long more and more to see the tropics. We often talked of going, if ever my father had a holiday long enough.

Our journey, long talked of, came off when my father lost his seat in the general election of July 1865, by the narrowest of margins. We started at once for Switzerland, then worked our way through Austria and Italy where we boarded an Austrian Lloyd boat which coasted the Adriatic. Upon arriving in Cairo we settled ourselves in the centre of the town. Our quarters in the German hotel were most comfortable and quiet. I had a room next to the landlady's with a window looking into the garden, and my father had one opposite, with a tangle of palms, lantana, hibiscus, poinsettias, jasmines, and roses between us. 

We started up the Nile on the day after Christmas at a reasonable rate. The sailors were a happy simple race, and two of the boys were absolutely beautiful, of a bright shiny copper tint, and liked sitting for their pictures. We stayed three days at Aboo Simbel, painting and studying the noble temples and figures, which alone well repaid the whole expense and trouble of a Nile voyage. The four great figures of Ramses II seemed to me the finest monuments in the world. The figures are sixty feet high and the hieroglyphics are as sharp as on the day they were cut. 

Our old pilot afterwards described me in the following words: 'This daughter was unlike most other English daughters, being, firstly, white and lively; secondly, she was gracious in her manner and of kind disposition. Thirdly,  she attended continually to her father, whose days went in rejoicing that he had such a daughter. Fourthly, she represented all things on paper. She drew all the temples of Nubia, all the sakkiahs, and all the men and women and nearly all the palm trees. She was a valuable and remarkable daughter!'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "A Vision of Eden: The Life and Work of Marianne North."