Every Traveller Needs a Compass

Travel and Collecting in Egypt and the Near East

Neil Cooke, Vanessa Daubney, Vanessa Daubney

• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781785701009
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia del antiguo Egipto

A varied and charming collection of 17 papers that bring something new about the people from many countries and backgrounds who traveled to, from and within Egypt and the Near East, either singly or as a group, and explored, observed and recorded, or stayed for a short period of time to improve their health or simply to enjoy the experience.
While some travelers kept a diary or journal that has survived until today, others did not. Their travels have to be extracted from the wide range of manuscript sources that are thankfully retained in libraries and archives, or which still remain with their descendants. Sometimes, the name of a traveler is only contained in a few words within a single piece of correspondence or journal entry, yet from such small beginnings and through detective work to link the chance meetings between travelers with a location, or news of a shared event, it is often possible to chart part of a traveler's journey and bring to life a person who has long been forgotten. These minor characters and their travails often bring a new perspective to well-known places and events.

1

Sir John Young, High Commissioner for the Ionian Islands, and His Private Letter Book, 1856–57¹

Sonia P. Anderson

Sir John Young, later Lord Lisgar (1807–76) (Fig. 1.1), a Liberal politician who ended his career as Governor-General of Canada, was first posted overseas in 1855 as High Commissioner for the Ionian Islands (Fig. 1.2). His tenure of this office has been overshadowed by its final months in 1858–59, which overlapped with Gladstone’s mission to the Ionian Islands as High Commissioner Extraordinary. This episode is well documented, not only by official sources but also by the large amount of manuscript and printed material about the Islands which is available for research at the residential library that Gladstone founded in North Wales.²

For most of Young’s time in the islands, however, historians have been largely dependent on public sources because his own private papers have not survived, apart from a transcript of the letter book that is the subject of this study. Even that has survived only by chance. Young had no children and the Lisgar title became extinct on his death. The baronetcy that he had inherited from his father went to a nephew serving in India, who did not inherit the property and whose descendants have no knowledge of any surviving family papers.³ After a decent interval, his widow, Lady Lisgar, married his private secretary, Sir Francis Turville, who had been with them since Corfu and was indeed responsible for many of the entries in the letter book. Turville was a Roman Catholic, 12 years her junior with a seat in Leicestershire – Bosworth Hall – where Lady Lisgar spent the rest of her life, outliving him and dying in 1895 (Fig. 1.3). Lord Lisgar’s Irish estates at Bailieborough in County Cavan (approximately 9,000 acres) were then sold off to the tenants, while Bailieborough Castle passed through several hands before being damaged by fire and eventually demolished.

Figure 1.1: Portrait of Sir John Young attr. to Richard Buckner, now in Government House, Sydney. This was painted in London and exhibited at the Sydney Inter-Colonial Exhibition 1870, so must be close in date to his time in Corfu. He is probably wearing the uniform mentioned in the article (refer to Note 23) as his GCMG, awarded in 1855 on his appointment to the Ionian Islands, seems to be an integral part of the gold braid, but the Bath, either the KCB awarded in 1859, or the GCB awarded in 1868, seems to have been added later. Photograph by and courtesy of Michael Young.

Figure 1.2: The Palace of St Michael and St George, Corfu, residence of the High Commissioners. Photograph by Sonia Anderson 2010.

On 11 May 1938, however, an auction was held at Bailieborough of the effects of Philip Dunne, who probably had kept a public house there,⁴ and a large quantity of Lord Lisgar’s papers came to light, perhaps having been stored on the pub’s premises since the 19th century. They were not put into the auction, but ‘great bundles of loose letters’ were sold off cheaply afterwards ‘to local shops for the purpose of wrapping their wares’.⁵ The only item saved was the Ionian Islands letter book, which was presented to the auctioneer, John T. Finegan. His family no longer have the original letter book, which has not been sighted for more than 60 years and must be presumed lost.⁶

Fortunately, a typed transcript was made of it soon after the Second World War and sold to the London-based, Greek shipowner K. Drakoulis, from whom it passed to the poet George Seferis, who served as Greek Ambassador in London from 1957 to 1962. After his death, his widow placed a copy in the Historical Archives Section of the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where it was seen and used by the Corfiote historian K. Cheimarios for an article published in the Journal of the Reading Society of Corfu.⁷ This, in turn, was seen by an English historian of the Ionian Islands, Anthony Seymour, who approached the Seferis estate and was given a photocopy of the typescript from which he made several further copies.⁸ He presented one to the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland in Belfast, where it may be consulted freely,⁹ gave another to Professor Bruce Knox of Monash University, Australia, who drew on it for a major article in the English Historical Review,¹⁰ and very kindly gave a third copy to me.

The transcript fills 114 closely typed, foolscap pages.¹¹ Where I have checked it against surviving letters as sent,¹² it appears to be substantially accurate. However, there are many small slips in the transcription, but the context usually makes the intended meaning clear, and since the original manuscript has now disappeared and nothing else has survived of Young’s personal archive, even copies of a typescript have considerable historical value, by no means exhausted by the articles I have cited.

The letter book covers only the middle 14 months of Young’s three and a half years in the islands, from 26 March 1856 to 12 May 1857. About half the letters are taken up with the affairs of the Ionian Islands: correspondence in English or occasionally Italian (Young was fluent in Italian and modern Greek)¹³ with British and Ionian officials, especially the residents of Cephalonia and Zante; with his own Chief Secretary Sir George Bowen, especially during Bowen’s absence on leave; with the Colonial Secretary Henry Labouchère; with British diplomatic representatives, especially Sir Thomas Wyse in Athens and Lord Stratford de Redcliffe in Constantinople; and with former and future High Commissioners Sir Howard Douglas, Sir Henry Ward and William Gladstone, the last already showing an interest in the islands. The remaining letters concern English and Irish politics; Young’s family and friends; the management of his estate; and other business affairs. But these are by no means irrelevant to his Ionian mission, for they shed fresh light on his situation and character.

Figure 1.3: Memorial Plaque to Lord and Lady Lisgar, Bailieborough Church of Ireland. Photograph by and courtesy of Michael Young.

For instance, it is generally assumed that Young was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, as the eldest son of a baronet with a castle in Ireland and a directorship of the East India Company, who sent his heir to Eton, Oxford and Lincoln’s Inn. In fact, John Young was the first member of his family to attend any of these establishments, and like Gladstone, who became his ‘special friend’ at Eton in spite of the two-year difference in their ages, he came of devout Evangelical stock of Scottish extraction – in Young’s case, a long line of clergymen that had been settled in Ulster since the 17th century. It was his father who had broken the mould. William Young was the second son of a rector and had entered the army of the Honourable East India Company and risen to the rank of lieutenant colonel. In 1806, he married the penniless, youngest daughter of another colonel, who had died in his early forties leaving eight children. The Youngs then had eight children of their own, of whom John was the eldest, born at Bombay in 1807. Only the death of his childless elder brother enabled William Young to retire on his lieutenant-colonel’s pension and look around for a run-down property that he could afford. He found it in Bailieborough, which he bought in 1814, and devoted himself to repairing the crumbling castle, improving the ‘very mean village’ as it then was,¹⁴ making a figure in County Cavan politics and cultivating the friendship of Robert Peel, who became Chief Secretary in Ireland in 1812.¹⁵

In 1821, William was rewarded with a baronetcy, and in 1829, he was elected a director of the East India Company, which helped him to find places in the Indian service for all four of his younger sons. In 1831, he secured the election as one of the Conservative Members of Parliament for County Cavan of his 22-year-old heir, John, who held the seat undisturbed until his Ionian appointment 24 years later. John married Adelaide Tuite Dalton, stepdaughter of the Whig Lord Lieutenant of County Cavan, the Marquess of Headfort in 1835. John was made a Deputy Lieutenant, and was eventually to succeed Headfort as Lord Lieutenant. By then, he had transformed himself from a Peelite – holding office under Peel as a Commissioner of the Treasury and Joint Secretary of the Treasury, and under Lord Aberdeen as Chief Secretary in Ireland – into a full-blooded Liberal; he had no time for ‘that odious charlatan Disraeli, who has dished his own party and would dish the country if every honest person does not make head to prevent him’, as he told Headfort.¹⁶

Yet all this apparent success came at a high price. When he succeeded to the baronetcy in 1848, Sir John Young, as he now was, discovered that his father had died leaving vast debts, compounded by a complicated family trust (Fig. 1.4). ‘Getting not...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Sir John Young, High Commissioner for the Ionian Islands, and His Private Letter Book, 1856–57
• Chapter 2: Edward Lear in Gozo, March 1866
• Chapter 3: The Travels of G. A. Wallin and His Views on Western Influence in the Middle East
• Chapter 4: The Relative Contributions of William John Bankes and Charles Barry to the Early Plans of Gerasa/Jerash (Jordan): Evidence from the Bankes and Barry Archives
• Chapter 5: Jean-Jacques Rifaud’s Lithographs – His Drawings of Egyptian Archaeology, Natural History, Manners and Customs
• Chapter 6: Travelling Companions: Mohammed Ashgar, also known as John Bedair (1815–74)
• Chapter 7: An Innovative Antiquarian: Alexander Henry Rhind’s Excavations in Egypt and His Collection in the National Museums Scotland
• Chapter 8: From the Kremlin’s Walls to the Foot of the Pyramids: Early Muscovite Travellers in Egypt
• Chapter 9: Hieroglyphs from the North: Newcastle’s Early Travellers in Egypt and Their Correspondence with Jean-François Champollion
• Chapter 10: Amalia Sola Nizzoli (1805–45/49), Archaeologist ante litteram in Egypt and the Origins of the Third Nizzoli Collection
• Chapter 11: Artists and Painters in the ‘German House’ at Thebes, 1905–15
• Chapter 12: Raymond O’Shea and The Sand Kings of Oman as a Source for Trucial Coast History
• Chapter 13: Did the Elephants Ever Forget?
• Chapter 14: The Admiral’s Daughter
• Chapter 15: A Swiss Egyptologist on Her Majesty’s Service: Edouard Naville (1844–1926) in the Delta
• Chapter 16: Ulrich Jasper Seetzen
• Chapter 17: Every Traveller Needs a Compass