The shirts haven't arrived but I expect they'll turn up and I've enough to go on with for the moment. And oh I'm so sorry to bother you, but would you send me 8 pairs of white thread stockings — they will go by letter post at the worst, and they'll arrive just about the time the warm weather begins again. Those I have are worn out beyond mending.
To H.B.
BAGDAD, November 2, 1917.
You sent me a lot of interesting pieces which I read with much satisfaction and agreement. I always feel when I read your works such an admiration for your style as well as your matter. Its so lucid and so pointed, so entirely unstrained. I hand on some of your works to Sir Percy who reads them with grave attention, not unmixed with surprise. It is all new to him.
For my part I'm quite well. I've even taken to riding again of an early morning, with great profit to my health and spirits. It's ideal now at that hour. The sting has gone out of the sun which has become a cheerful and companionable luminary. Samarra is off for the present...
We have now got a judicial Officer, Mr. [now Sir Edgar] Bonham Carter from the Sudan. A highly trained man with a very level head is just what we want and I do welcome him sincerely.
To H.B.
BAGDAD, November 9th, 1917.
No mail as yet this week. Happy to tell you I'm much better and have felt to-day quite a zest in life — for the first time. Partly, I think, because yesterday I spent the whole day, nearly, out-of-doors, for Sir Percy and I motored to Baquba. It was 6 years since I went along that road — I say 6 years because it was in 19 11, but really it's a lifetime — when I was on my way to plan Rasawan palaces at Qasr-i-Shirin, over the Persian frontier. I remember it as a long and tedious day's ride; we did it yesterday in 2 hours. It's 32 miles of bumpy desert road. Baquba is a nice little place set in palm gardens and olive groves on the Diala. I looked at my camping ground near by the river bank and tried to remember the sort of person who pitched tents there, but I couldn't. I hadn't been out of Bagdad since April, nor Sir Percy since March, So you think what a pleasant sense of irresponsible holiday it gave both of us. I only wished we could have gone on further. I am beginning some nice new jobs. One is the taking over of the editorship of Al Arab, the vernacular paper we publish. I'm full of schemes for making it more alive by provincial correspondents and a local news-writer. I feel certain my public will take more interest in hearing that Ibu so and so was fined for being out without a lantern after dark than in the news that an obscure village in Flanders has been bombed. Père Anastase, the sub-editor comes weekly to read our leading articles, which I censor. He's an Arab from the Lebanon, straight out of Chaucer — all the same; very learned in his own tongue, he speaks and writes French like a Frenchman...
In my garden there's the most gorgeous mud pie I've ever been privileged to see. It's not, however, for frivolous persons; we're busy mending my roofs against the rainy season, and mud is what you do it with. I'm credibly informed that when there's a high flood my garden is under water and that objects from the house I inhabit have been observed to float down the neighbouring street. It's a gloomy thought. I don't know whether to wish for a dry season for my comfort, or to hope for the rain which is essential for our next harvest. If I'm obliged to move out I shall no doubt manage to get a lodging for the necessary two months. Sir Percy would put me up, In any case, but I do very much prefer living alone. It's a comfort to get away from the Office and think of other things which it is morally impossible to do if you remain in the Place you've worked in all day.
To F.B.
BAGDAD, November 15th, 1917.
You all sound over-strained. I don't know how you can be anything else. You know we are out of that atmosphere here; I Often feel ashamed of escaping it, but it is so. There are not the Perplexities and the worries that assail you in England, and then the work is all of one kind and runs naturally along its Own groove.
I have quite recovered and have polished off a lot of things that had got into arrears. We have all moved into winter quarters in the Office, out of dark, cold rooms into sunny ones. It is strange to welcome the sun again. My room is charming, warm and comfortable, with some delightful rugs which I've bought here on the floor, and all the new maps of Mesopotamia pinned up on the walls. Maps are my passion; I like to see the world with which I'm dealing, and everyone comes round to my room for geography.
To F.B.
SAMARRA, November 22nd, 1917.
I wrote to you last week the day before I was to come up here with the I.G.C. We all dined that evening with Col. Dixon, the Director of Local Resources; the C. in C. was to have been there also but sent a message at the last moment to say he wasn't well. At the beginning of dinner Colonel Willcox was called away — an urgent case of illness, it didn't occur to anyone to ask who it was. Next morning before breakfast the I.G.C. came to my house and said that our departure must be postponed, the C. in C. was dangerously ill of cholera and was not expected to live. I flew round to Sir Percy — it was still very early — and found that he had not yet been informed. It was almost incredible to us all. There had been a little cholera in the town for some weeks past, nothing very serious but very widely distributed. There were a few cases among the troops and one officer had died last week. We had all been inoculated and thought no more about it. Certainly the last person likely to fall a victim was the C. in C. who saw no Arabs and scarcely ever went into the town. He had been at the entertainment at the Jewish school the night before, but we all went there, drank coffee and ate cakes and no one else was any the worse. So there it was — where he got the infection it is impossible to say. He rallied in the afternoon and was distinctly better next morning, well enough to receive a telegram from his wife and dictate an answer. Then his heart failed, he became unconscious and died in the evening. The I.G.C. came in after dinner and told me. It has had for him a tragic ending, the conquest of Bagdad, and yet how fortunate it is when the man dies before the name. There is a splendid sentence in Ammianus's Marcellinus history of that other conqueror who was mortally wounded, N.E. of Ctesiphon, — the Emperor Julian, and "praised the Almighty God that he should die in the midst of glory fairly earned." General Maude was, I should think, a greater Commander, but the epitaph might be his ...
...It's a wonderfully picturesque little walled town with the golden dome of the shrine closing the vista, incongruously enough, in the narrow tumble-down streets...
Oh, there is such a good smell of rain — the first rain, this dry year, since February. If only we have a good splash of it, it will mean a good harvest next spring. An early rain is the most important thing in this country; it sets all the desert growing and starts cultivation — the people can't begin to plough till it comes.
To her Family.
SAMARRA, November 30th, 1917.
I'm still here though I wanted to go back a day or two ago. The Corps Commander (my kind host) insisted however on my staying till the end of the week to "complete the cure." I'm really most briskly well and longing to get back to work. I'm going back to Bagdad the day after to- morrow. Col. Willcox came up this morning for a change (it's looked upon as a health resort, Samarra) and brought me a bag of letters. I was rather pining for news of you. It's a great comfort to think of Maurice back at home but what with household and industrial difficulties, present or ahead, you don't any of you seem to be having an easy time. We score over you now in weather — day after day of bright sun and exhilarating N. wind. It's perfect and in this empty desert one gets the best of its advantages. I've been out all day, usually riding the whole morning and motoring somewhere in the afternoon — if you can call it somewhere when it's just desert with the scoring of old canals and mounds of dead villages far out in what is now uninhabited wilderness. It's almost impossible to picture what the country must have been like when it was irrigated by loop canals from the Tigris and (to judge by the village mounds) thickly peopled ten miles out on either bank of the river. It is now cultivated only in the low ground by the river edge, a mile, perha
ps, deep on one bank or another, but after last week's rain (we had 18 hours of it) the people are all busily ploughing and the turned up earth looks a live brown instead of a sandy yellow.
To F.B.
BAGDAD, OFFICE OF THE C.C., December 7th, 1917.
I wish to announce the arrival of 6 pairs of white and ditto of brown stockings which I found here when I got back a week ago...
I was very glad to get back. I plunged at once into a mass of accumulated work and have scarcely lifted my eyes from maps and files. But the pleasure of being well and able to work the whole day long! The truth is that one can't do without that narcotic. To be idle means having time to think and no thoughts are bearable...
The new régime promises well. I haven't seen General Marshall since I came back but he gives signs of being sympathetic towards our side of the game. It's as well, for we were running fast on to rocks, in my opinion. We are now in the middle of operations on our R. flank which seem to have been very successful so far, and that's very encouraging too, though I don't believe we can accomplish anything very dramatic while the Turk holds off as far as he can. The presence of an enemy is an essential element in battle. And we can't walk after him indefinitely because an army walks on its stomach. Vigorous steps have been taken to ensure a good harvest next spring — but that is not till the middle of April and meantime we are going to be hard put to it to get the civil population fed. This morning I was riding in the desert, out on the Diala road, when I met Arabs from the Diala bringing in donkey loads of brushwood to sell. As soon as I had opened the conversation with a God- save-you they began to tell me how hungry they were out there, and I to explain what we were doing to bring the hunger to an end. I expect they don't usually live in the lap of luxury, those mean tribes on the Diala river, but with prices what they are they must be well pinched this year. We had a very bad harvest this year, what with lack of rain and neglect of canals. They are all being dug out now, seed corn distributed and advances given in money. But it is a big job. To-night it's warm and windy, we might have rain.
My dear pony which I bought up from Basrah is lame. But kind Captain Lupton, who is at the Remounts, has let me send it up to be blistered and meantime he has let me have a charming little mare, a little pocket mare which I feel sure would be up to nobody's weight but my diminished stones, so I'm harming no one. But what she lacks in height she makes up in spirit and we had a delightful gallop this morning out on the Diala road — road, I call it but it's just desert — with the sun rising and a Warm wind in our face. It's everything to see a little of the world outside of a morning I see plenty of the world inside — a succession of callers all with some axe or another to grind and one's task generally being to remove the grindstone gently out of their reach!
To -
BAGDAD, December 13th, 1917.
...My only news of the outer world is derived from the egregious Reuter and that not good, and one begins to consider what the end will be. Till the Americans can bring in great reinforcements — and can they across all the seas? — it's clear that we shall be put to it to hold our own. It's like the first year of the war over again. Well, it's no good guessing, and we know too little even to guess. Here War is at an end, but administration goes on apace. We are taking hold of the Euphrates valley to the S.W. and getting into lands unmapped and tribes little known. I want to go down there at the end of the month. Meantime I'm puzzling over Euphrates geography and writing a sketch of it as best I can. It's the sort of job which is almost impossible to do in the Office, where one is constantly interrupted, and I generally bring home books and maps and work at it after dinner. The days fly and the weeks hurry after them; it's terrible to think that we're nearly at midwinter. The desired rain hasn't come but we have had a week of delicious cold. The water basin in the middle of my garden has been iced over the last two mornings. It's amazingly invigorating. Yesterday I was out in the desert at dawn in a frosty air which was quite delicious, even though I came in after nearly an hour's brisk riding, with numb hands and feet. I went one afternoon to see the Remount establishment outside the town. Capt. Lupton presides over it. A clearing place with the horses playing about in great paddocks under the palm trees, and a model farm attached where they grow their own maize and barley and vegetables. Capt. Lupton offered me a very handsome Arab mare if the General (Holdsworth) consented. I met the latter next day in the Street and he approved the suggestion. So, in the official phrase, I'm issued with her — Heaven prosper me for writing such horrible English.
To -
BAGDAD, December 21st, 1917.
Bagdad, and, indeed, most of Mesopotamia is immobilized by mud. My daily walk to and from the office is a real feat of gymnastics, but, as I stumble and reel through the swamp which was once a road, I return thanks for the rain which has gone far to assure next year's harvest. We had about 24 hours of it. I woke after the first night to find my garden a lake, from which emerged a few islands, but I had been provident enough to construct a brick causeway between my bedroom and sitting room — they are at opposite ends of the garden — and along it I was able to get to breakfast high and dry. The water has vanished to-day and a smoothly hard bed of mud remains. I'm rather disgusted to see in Army Reuter Orders that on the days when we thought the weather so shockingly cold the max. temp. was never below 52. One loses all sense of proportion about climate.
The new régime has ordered the Force to take a holiday on Sunday afternoon, and in obedience to their decree I dragged Sir Percy out riding last Sunday. The immortal baked clay preserves the trace of human habitation when all else has returned to the dust it was; as soon as the canal dries up, the village is deserted, the roaming Arab pulls out the roof beams and breaks up the doors for firewood, the mud walls disintegrate and nothing remains but the imperishable pot. You may break him up as much as you choose, but unless you take a hammer to him and reduce him systematically to powder, he will continue to bear witness to the household which he served. Usually this rough peasant pottery is undatable; you know it isn't of yesterday, however, when you find masses of it in places which have not been irrigated for the last 400 years.
To H.B.
BAGDAD, December 29, 1917.
I am very glad to hear that Maurice is better and congratulate Mother on her pleasant nights with Zeppelins...On Xmas Day I dined with General Stuart Wortley, a Ladies' Dinner, the other guests being matrons and nurses, a quite agreeable evening, but I've crept, on the whole, into a very long shell and seldom care to be pricked out of it by anybody's pin. Also I've got a temporary (let's hope) anaemia of the brain which makes me work SO Slowly that I never get through my jobs and bring work home every night to finish after dinner. Incessant interruption at the office adds immensely to the fatigue of Putting together reports or compiling information. I've no sooner got hold of the thread than it's broken by someone with a petition or a complaint or what not, and my slow mind must laboriously gather it up again. Perhaps a fortnight's absence in the Euphrates Will make me a little less imbecile. There are times when I can scarcely find words to talk or write in French, much less in Arabic. And memory is a lost art. Though half-witted I'm physically well. I've liked this cold weather and not felt cold as I did last Year, though it's much colder here than in Basrah. But it's the general sense of being too much driven through not working quickly enough — because I can't — which is tiresome. I would like to take a month off, learn Arabic and see people — but the awful amount one would have to catch up at the end of it deters me. I'm almost reluctant to go away because I know what a task it will be to write the next fortnightly report when I have to look everything up instead of jotting it down as it happens. But I very much like doing the fortnightly reports, which are the record of our work here, and though I haven't leisure to do them as well as they should be done, they will still be valuable.
Did I tell you of a visit I paid to the home for Armenian girls? Over 100 of them have been collected here, from all places and of all ages. There's an American
fund to provide for them. Some had lived for months with the Arabs and were tattooed like Beduin women, some had just borne children and some were such children themselves that they could not remember whence they came. The Beduin coming down to our frontiers from the north bring hundreds of these girls with them. One woman when she first saw the Tigris burst into tears. "Ah," she cried, "the mass of water here! and my sister died in the desert of thirst." And ah! the rivers of tears, the floods of human misery that these waifs represent. What is life worth in this age of violence?
I write every week and if you don't get letters it is not because I don't send them.
CHAPTER XVII
1918-1919 - BAGDAD
To F.B.
KARBALA, January 3rd, 1918.
I'm having a little holiday which is very pleasant and beneficial. I was beginning to feel terribly caged and stale and, though I haven't stepped out of the cage very far, or for very long, it's agreeable to be knocking about a tiny corner of the world again. It's a corner so full of associations. So many times I've come over the Bagdad-Karbala road after long desert expeditions, with a sense of accomplishment, and, at the same time, with that curious sense of disappointment which one nearly always feels with the accomplished thing. The best time, I think, was when I came back with the plan of Ukhaidir in my pocket — the worst when I came up from Arabia. I find myself forever stepping back into a former atmosphere — knowing with my real self that it has all melted away and yet half drugged with the lingering savour of it, and chiefly what I miss is the friendly presence of my good Fattuh, who smoothed all the way of travel and is now where? dead, I fear. I hear there are no men left in Aleppo; all have been taken for the War and Turkish soldiers have a poor chance. However — I'll tell you of my adventures, very modest ones, not like the old days. I left Bagdad on the 31st, a beautiful sunny morning, and motored out to Musaiyib on the Euphrates. We spun over the first three-quarters of the road, but the last eight miles, over low ground, unspeakably muddy, were not so advantageous to motors. We stuck once badly and I called in some 10 or 15 Arabs who were removing the mud from one part of the road to another — that seemed to be the extent of their activities — and made them haul us out...
Letters From Baghdad Page 45