The caravan was welcomed by the local sheiks. It had been seven years since the last Europeans had visited. Catherwood and his companions spent the next weeks drawing and measuring the ancient temples scattered among the date palms. They recorded hieroglyphic and Greek inscriptions, a necropolis and a Roman fortress, as well as a number of ruins running through a long string of oases connecting the villages of El-Khargeh, Boulak, Bryese, and Doosh. The expedition then mounted up for the long journey back. Catherwood never found the need to use his big gun, its reputation apparently successful in forestalling any difficulties. They arrived on the ridge overlooking the Nile more than a month after their departure. “On arriving at the summit of the hill forming the western boundary of the valley of the Nile,” Hoskins wrote, “our servants fired their guns, to testify their joy at again seeing the river.”34
During his months in Egypt, Catherwood picked up enough Arabic as well as local costumes to wander the bazaars, towns, and ancient sites without drawing undue attention. He also formed the kind of deep bonds that often occur among compatriots in remote lands, becoming especially close with fellow English artists Joseph Bonomi and Francis Arundale. Bonomi, a small man with a refined, almost delicate countenance, was the son of a well-known architect. He studied architecture at the Royal Academy, and like Catherwood and Scoles, continued his studies in Rome in 1822, where he and Catherwood likely first met. Arundale joined Hay’s project in 1831. He was an architectural draftsman who had worked throughout Europe.
Catherwood eventually left Hay to work in Cairo as an engineer in the pasha’s court. By the middle of 1833 he was ready to leave Egypt altogether. He decided to travel with Bonomi and Arundale through the Sinai desert, then north through Gaza to Jerusalem, a path Stephens rejected three years later when he detoured through Petra. Arundale published a journal of their journey.35 They spent weeks preparing in Cairo, buying food, tents, carpets, and Arab and Turkish costumes; they hired a sheik as a guide and several camel drivers. Riding through the bazaars of Cairo in a caravan of nine camels, they finally left the city through the Baab el-Naar gate as the sun set behind them on August 29, 1833.
Their passage from Cairo to Jerusalem over desolate rock and desert—with a long side trip to Mount Sinai—took nearly six weeks. Catherwood fell ill along the way, and the caravan slowed to a stop for several days. Once in Jerusalem, the three men went to work immediately, measuring, surveying, and drawing the churches, mosques, and other points of interest. Catherwood decided to produce a plan of the city. Eighteen months later in London, he published a highly accurate map that would become the standard tourist plan of Jerusalem for the next two decades. Stephens acquired a copy during his 1836 visit.
Out from Hay’s shadow, Catherwood now worked in full possession of his talents, deciding for himself what to capture on paper. He carried with him also a “strong firman” or passport, which named him “an engineer in the service of his highness,” Pasha Ali. This opened doors in Jerusalem, which was under the pasha’s rule. He took advantage of it to become acquainted with the governor of the city, who gave him free access to the roof of his palace. From there he was able to make sketches of the surrounding skyline and buildings, drawings that later would prove invaluable. He was attracted by one nearby structure of particular importance—the so-called Dome of the Rock. This golden-domed shrine, one of the holiest in Islam, is believed by many Jews to occupy the ancient site of King Solomon’s temple.
In an account he wrote a decade later, Catherwood said he felt “irresistibly urged” to investigate the structure.36 Non-Muslims, however, were forbidden to enter even the precinct of the shrine. “I had heard,” he wrote, “that for merely entering the outer court, without venturing within the mosque, several unfortunate Franks have been put to death” (“Franks” being a common name for Europeans).
For Catherwood, however, it seemed the greater the danger, the greater the attraction. He also may have convinced himself that his cool, unflappable nature, the special “firman” he carried, plus his “usual” dress as an Egyptian official, would provide him all the protection he needed.
He described what happened next: “Notwithstanding the remonstrances of my friends, I entered the area one morning, with an indifferent air, and proceeded to survey, but not too curiously, the many objects of interest it presents.” He was about to enter the shrine itself but lost his nerve when a religious official approached from across the courtyard. Catherwood turned and as nonchalantly as possible walked away.
Undeterred, he returned the next day, this time determined to make some drawings. He brought with him his camera lucida, knowing, he wrote, the awkward contraption would probably draw a crowd. At first with his “quiet indifference” in setting it up, he drew little attention. As he began sketching the shrine, however, more devotees gathered at some distance, talking among themselves and becoming more and more agitated. “A storm was evidently gathering.” Soon they descended on him cursing and gesturing menacingly. “Escape was hopeless. I was completely surrounded by a mob of two hundred people, who seemed screwing up their courage for a sudden rush upon me—I need not tell you what would have been my fate.”
Miraculously, in that moment, the governor, accompanied by his usual entourage, appeared on the steps of the platform. When the crowd ran to him to demand punishment of the “infidel,” the governor turned and recognized Catherwood.
As we had often smoked together, and were well-acquainted, he saluted me politely, and supposing it to be beyond the reach of possibility that I could venture to do what I was about without warrant from the pasha, he at once applied himself to cool the rage of the mob. “You see, my friends,” he said, "that our holy mosque is in a dilapidated state, and no doubt our lord and master Mehemet Ali has sent this Effendi to survey it, in order to complete its repair. If we are unable to do these things for ourselves, it is right to employ those who can; and such being the will of our lord, the Pasha, I require you to disperse, and not incur my displeasure by any further interruption.” And turning to me, he said, in the hearing of all of them, that if anyone had the hardihood to disturb me in future, he would deal in a summary way with him.
Catherwood spent the next six weeks exploring, measuring, and drawing every aspect of the shrine’s exterior and interior, “introducing my astonished companions [Bonomi and Arundale] as necessary assistants in the work.” The mosque’s name, “Dome of the Rock,” describes its prime function of sheltering one of Islam’s holiest objects—a limestone rock from which the prophet Muhammad is believed by many Muslims to have stepped in his ascent to heaven with the angel Gabriel. “The St. Peter’s of Mohammedanism,” Arundale called it.37
At the time of Catherwood’s visit the octagonal building was more than eleven hundred years old, erected in wood, brick, and stone between A.D. 689 and 691 and later covered in exquisite porcelain mosaics and marble inlaid with Koranic scriptures.38 Catherwood was struck by its magnificence inside and out. Because of the forbidden character of the shrine, he knew his survey and drawings would be the first ever to be produced by a European. Arundale described how they systematically moved through all the surrounding structures, drawing everything, and used a sextant to determine the golden dome’s height.
Interior of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. (Catherwood)
Then several Englishmen arrived for a visit, and Catherwood and his companions made an excursion with them to Jericho and the Dead Sea. The travelers included a wealthy British aristocrat, the Marquis of Waterford, who was touring the Mediterranean in his private yacht with two friends. Later, the marquis would gain an infamous reputation and come to play a small but painful role in Catherwood’s life. At the time of their encounter in Jerusalem, however, the marquis and his friends were much welcomed. By November 23 Catherwood was back at work again at the shrine.
Catherwood felt certain their efforts would be celebrated in England when they published their unprecedented survey. At the age of thirty-four, he had come into hi
s own, displaying leadership and an enormous capacity for work. Over nearly two months, he had created a detailed map of Jerusalem, drawn most of the city’s key monuments and its skyline, and spent more than a month dissecting the architecture of one of its most famous landmarks.
But when he and his companions learned that Muhammad Ali’s son, Ibrahim Pasha, was arriving shortly in Jerusalem, they decided, wisely it turned out, to get out of town. They later heard that several English travelers arrived about the same time as Ibrahim and asked him for permission to see the Dome of the Rock. He said they were welcome to visit but he would not provide them any protection. When told of Catherwood’s recent survey, Ibrahim exclaimed it was not possible. The governor and the officials of the mosque were summoned, wrote Catherwood, “which must have been a scene of no small amusement.”
After a month of winding their way through northern Palestine, the three men arrived in Beirut at the end of December—and Catherwood’s life took an unexpected and momentous turn.39 Over the next three months he fell under the spell of Gertrude Pasquala Abbott y Suarez, the bright, captivating daughter of the resident British consul, Peter Abbott.40
Abbott had been born in the Middle East into a prominent English merchant family and later served as agent to the Levant and East India Company. While a young man, he had led a life of daring and adventure. At one point, while sailing to the United States to encourage trade with the Ottoman Empire, he was captured by the French and imprisoned during the Napoleonic Wars. Later, in 1820, after his appointment as consul in Beirut, he somehow incurred the wrath of the Turkish governor in Acre. Under the threat of death he barely escaped during the night with his wife and two young daughters, to Cyprus aboard a small sailboat.41 Now, nearing sixty—he was to die not long after Catherwood’s visit—he had become a fixture in Beirut, serving as a protectorate for Western travelers and a nexus for foreigners’ social gatherings.42
Gertrude’s birth mother was Spanish. What happened to her is not known, but Abbott remarried and his second wife, from Florence, Italy, became Gertrude’s stepmother while the young girl grew up in Beirut. When she and Catherwood met, Gertrude was twenty, nearly fifteen years his junior, and was described as “a most beautiful, fascinating and accomplished lady.” Bonomi called her “spirited.”43
No accounts of the courtship have survived, but on March 11, 1834, in the Abbotts’ house, Catherwood and Gertrude were married in a ceremony performed by an American Baptist missionary. Shortly after their wedding, they set off for Damascus and stopped at the Roman ruins of Baalbek, overlooking the Beqaa Valley. There Catherwood must have dazzled his young bride with his drawings of the spectacular Temple of Jupiter and other noteworthy remains. As a honeymoon, however, it must have been somewhat awkward. Bonomi accompanied them, sometimes sleeping in the same tent, an arrangement that would later draw unwanted scrutiny and be used to discredit Catherwood’s marriage.
When the couple eventually returned to Beirut, Gertrude was pregnant, and they decided to sail for England. In London, they moved in with Catherwood’s mother at Charles Square, and in December, Frederick Jr. was born.44 Marriage, his return to England, and the birth of their son in rapid order must have been a jarring adjustment for Catherwood. No longer the wandering artist, he now had a family to feed. Living in the family home in Hoxton relieved some financial pressure, but he quickly found that the prospects for publishing his huge portfolio were not good. His study of the Dome of the Rock, illustrations of the ruins of Baalbek and Dugga, and his scenes of Jerusalem drew academic but little commercial interest. The few illustrated antiquarian books that made any profit were accompanied by travelogues. Arundale published his journal, but Catherwood apparently had no interest in writing, especially about himself.
Dome of the Rock on Temple Mount in Jerusalem. (Catherwood)
Money was a serious concern, and Catherwood’s extensive travels had put him well behind his contemporaries in building an architectural practice. At thirty-six, his greatest capital remained his portfolio and his accumulated knowledge of the Middle East. He quickly went to work creating his detailed plan of Jerusalem and evidently earned some cash with its publication. But funds remained scarce, as became clear in his correspondence with Robert Hay, his old benefactor from Egypt.
Hay had returned to Scotland not long after Catherwood’s arrival in London. Almost immediately the two men began to plot a way to publish some of the enormous amount of material collected during the years of Hay’s Egyptian project. Catherwood spent months lining up engravers and preparing views of the tombs and monuments of Thebes, including a pullout panorama of the site. Hay’s responses to his letters became less frequent, however, and he realized Hay was losing interest.
Catherwood’s tone became urgent when he wrote Hay in April 1835: “I had been expecting an answer for some time and am sorry to hear that your Egyptian energy is giving way. This I imagine arises from your living altogether in the country and being far removed from the excitement of London. . . .” Hay finally sent Catherwood twenty pounds for his work. Catherwood objected and asked for more. Then Hay, seemingly preoccupied with matters on his Scottish estate, closed down the project altogether.45
Whether this proved an object lesson for Catherwood in his later contract dealings with Stephens, it is hard to say. He certainly was not alone in lamenting Hay’s behavior. Bonomi and others complained that Hay was squandering years of work. After so much effort, often at risk to their lives, there was almost nothing to show for it.
But Catherwood had already moved on. He had decided to use his personal portfolio and some of his work from the Hay expedition in a different way, one with significant financial potential. Even before the project with Hay collapsed, he had agreed to allow his drawings of Jerusalem and Thebes to be converted into two enormous canvas panoramas similar to others that were then mesmerizing audiences in London and beyond. And he was already plotting his next move. Within a year he would gather up his growing family—Gertrude was pregnant again—and they would make a new start, this time in America. Catherwood had a plan, and he had an ingenious entrepreneur named Robert Burford to thank for it.
Panoramas had been around, starting in England, since the late 1700s. In the time before photography, people had as great a craving to visually experience events and places as they have today, and the “panorama” had been created to fill that hunger. They transported people to far off places, dropping them in the middle of Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Cairo, and Versailles. They also played off current events. Spectators could stand on the raised platform in the middle of the 360-degree rotunda, turn around slowly, and take in the full sweep of the battlefield at Waterloo, or the guns blazing from the British and French ships at Trafalgar, or the latest coronation on the Continent, all for the price of a quarter.
Robert Burford was not the only panorama owner in England, but his main rotunda at Leicester Square in London was the most successful. He instantly bought up the rights to drawings from returning artist/travelers like Catherwood, who were the equivalent of later National Geographic Society photographers, and he cultivated admirals and generals to work out the details in the giant battle canvases he commissioned to hang in his exhibit halls.
The first notice announcing the “Jerusalem Panorama” at Burford’s Leicester rotunda appeared in the March 31, 1835, London Times. It explained that the canvases had been painted from drawings made the year before by Mr. Catherwood “on the spot”—a phrase routinely used to give authenticity to the panoramas. The perspective from the spectators’ platform was from the roof of the governor’s palace, the vantage point where Catherwood had sketched so many of his drawings and where he had sometimes shared a water pipe with the governor. Catherwood was even reported to have drawn himself and Bonomi into the foreground as two figures in Arab clothing. The Times’ reviewer, however, appeared most captivated by the Dome of the Rock. “It is a magnificent building, and though at variance with all ideas of taste derived from specimens of Gothic
or Grecian excellence, has an imposing grandeur of appearance, which arrests the eye and excites the admiration of the beholder.” Catherwood’s study had not gone entirely to waste after all.
Jerusalem was so successful that within three months Burford mounted a second Catherwood-inspired panorama in an adjoining room in the rotunda, this one straight from his work at Thebes. “The talents of the artist are eminently displayed in this painting,” wrote the Literary Gazette in June. “And it affords the most perfect idea of the magnitude and character of this extraordinary place. . . .”46 Catherwood had found his new métier.
There is no record of how much Burford paid Catherwood for his drawings. It was enough, it appears, to get his family across the Atlantic and settled in New York, where they arrived in the spring of 1836. From later accounts it seems probable that Catherwood took with him the huge canvases of the Jerusalem panorama, as well as plans to set up his own rotunda in New York. But first he needed work. In October Gertrude gave birth to Ann, their second child. So he threw himself again into the practice of architecture, opening an office at 94 Greenwich Street in partnership with another English architect, Frederic Diaper.
The two men had little trouble finding projects in the aftermath of the fire that destroyed a large part of the city the year before. New York was undergoing a major building boom. Diaper’s name soon became associated with the design of many Wall Street banks and he would go on later to design country manors for the rich and famous, as well as some of the city’s finest hotels.47
Catherwood would leave much less of an architectural footprint. By 1839, however, he had gained enough of a reputation to win a commission from the heirs of Edward Livingston, the late New York mayor who also served as a Louisiana senator and secretary of state under President Andrew Jackson. Livingston’s widow and daughter had decided to redesign Montgomery Place, their huge estate along the Hudson River in Dutchess County. Catherwood was commissioned to design the estate’s conservatory. He created a seventy-foot-long structure of delicate framework and glazed glass fashioned in an arching neo-Gothic style.48
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