Part 5 (2/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”All round about the fragrant marge, From fluted vase and brazen urn, In order, Eastern flowers large.”]
I was surprised that he seemed to take great delight in my sketching, and several times, when I was making notes of some quaint latticed windows overhanging the narrow road, so that they nearly met, he became quite excited, chuckling and laughing to himself, as if in the enjoyment of some tremendous joke.
I discovered afterwards that Brown's native servant had been pulling the leg of our worthy slave, by telling him that these nightly expeditions were for the purpose of carrying off some ravis.h.i.+ngly beautiful lady from one of the harems. No doubt he thought my sketching merely a blind.
Measurements with a pencil were obviously part of some incantation.
While on the subject of sketching, especially quick note-taking under difficult conditions, I want a word with my fellow-craftsmen should they chance to take up this book. The difficulties of drawing by twilight, lamplight, and the still greater difficulty of drawing in colour under blazing sunlight, cannot easily be exaggerated. How many times has a sketch done in a failing light looked strong in tone, only to go to pieces when seen under normal conditions? How often the sunlight on your paper flatters your colours, so that you think you are improvising in a most joyous way, and when you get home you find nothing but dinginess and mud!
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”By Baghdad's shrines of fretted gold, High-walled gardens, green and old.”]
Probably you have thought it out and found some solution as I did, but in case these difficulties are still formidable I will tell you of _one_ way to reduce them to impotence. I take with me, on all occasions where there is to be great uncertainty of light, some coloured chalks. About six colours, picked to suit the kind of work attacked; either chalk pencils or hard pastilles will give you certain colour values in whatever light you find yourself, and even if you can hardly see what you are drawing these _must_, to some extent, standardize your values, so that your rough work can be washed over and brought up to any pitch of detail subsequently, without danger of the main tones of your sketch being wrong. The speed with which a sketch can be carried forward in this way, and the ”quality” obtained by the rapid fusion of the chalk with the colour wash, are both pleasant surprises when experimenting in this medium.
Night after night we sallied forth and roamed about the narrow ways and tortuous turnings of old Baghdad. The bazaars are mostly covered in with arched masonry, and the effect is that of a long side aisle in a very untidy and greatly secularized cathedral. From time to time glimpses of the dark-blue, star-filled sky showed through openings overhead, and sometimes a quaintly framed view of a dome or minaret.
On one occasion we embarked in a goufa, and floated down the rapidly flowing river, keeping close to the left bank and taking advantage of every eddy and corner of slack water made by projecting buildings, lest we should be swept down too far and lose control of our curious and difficult craft. The level of the water was far above the usual height and came up to the very thresholds of these riverside houses. We floated on, sometimes under the walls of dark gardens, sometimes getting glimpses of interiors--interiors which in this glamour of night romance suggested something of the splendour of Baghdad's old glory:--
”By garden porches on the brim, The costly doors flung open wide, Gold glittering through lamplight dim.”
We landed by the Maude bridge and explored further afield, finding ”high-walled gardens” where we beheld
”All round about the fragrant marge, From fluted vase and brazen urn, In order, Eastern flowers large.”
By day, Baghdad is not so impressive. Too much squalor is apparent. Yet there are quaint street scenes.
Ancient windows, overhanging the street in one quarter, reminded me strongly of pictures of old London. The feature that I could not help noticing, not only in Baghdad but in all Mesopotamia, was the absence of local colour. It is true that the sun gives a blazing and confused suggestion of colour to objects by contrast with bluish shadows, especially in the evening, but there is often very little colour in things themselves. The East is supposed to be full of blazing colour and the North gray and drab. Yet compare a barge in Rotterdam or Rochester with one in Baghdad. The former is picked out in green and gold and glows with rich, red sails, while the latter, for all its suns.h.i.+ne, is the colour of ashes--not a vestige often of paint or gilding. Some mahailas I found with traces of rich colouring, blue and yellow (see sketch facing page 34), but this was exceptional. Perhaps the scarcity of paint during years of war may have had something to do with this noticeable absence of colouring in regard to both houses and boats. In spite of this slovenliness in detail there is colour and light in all recollections of Baghdad's dusty streets.
Somehow the discomfort and squalor is soon forgotten and the romance and picturesqueness of these far-off streets remains as a very pleasant memory amidst the winter fogs and coldness of our northern lands.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Showing the simplicity of Mesopotamian domestic architecture. Tigris.]
VII
IN OLD BAGHDAD
[Ill.u.s.tration: BAGHDAD]
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”Puffing Billy in Bagdad.”]
IN OLD BAGHDAD
I suppose there is no city to be found anywhere in the world that would quite reach the standard of dazzling splendour of the Baghdad that we conjure up in our imagination when we think of the City of the Arabian Nights in the romantic days, so dear to our childhood, of Haroun-al-Raschid. We expect so much when we come to the real Baghdad, and we find so little--so little, that is, of the glamour of the East.
Few ”costly doors flung open wide,” but a great deal of dirt. Few dark eyes of ravis.h.i.+ngly beautiful women peering coyly through lattice windows, but a great deal of sordid squalor. Few marvellous entertainments where we can behold the wonderful witchery of Persian dancing girls, but a theatre, the princ.i.p.al house of amus.e.m.e.nt in Baghdad--and lo, a man selling onions to the habitues of the stalls!
Of all the deadly dull shows I have ever seen I think the one I saw at Baghdad furnished about the dullest. There were two princ.i.p.al dancing girls--stars of the theatrical world of Mesopotamia--and a few others forming a kind of chorus. The orchestra, on the stage, consisted of a guitar, a sort of dulcimer, and a drum. The musicians made a most appalling noise and rocked to and fro, as if in the greatest enjoyment of the thrilling harmonies they were creating. The stars came on one at a time, the odd one out meanwhile augmenting the chorus, and sang a few verses of a song to a tune that can only be described as a Gregorian chant with squiggly bits thrown in. Of course I was unable to understand the words, but can bear witness to the fact that the tune did not vary the whole evening, and every gesture and att.i.tude of the singer was exactly the same again and again as she went through the performance, and the dance which concluded each six or eight verses was also exactly the same every time. After this had been going on for about an hour the other girl came to the footlights. It was natural to expect a change; but no, she went through it all as if she had most carefully understudied the part. Neither of these girls was pretty or in the least attractive to look at. All I could a.s.sume, as the audience seemed quite satisfied, was that the words must have been extraordinarily brilliant or that the Baghdad public was very easily entertained.
<script>