Herman Melville in Cairo
Cairo : Shepheard's Hotel. (1860s-1920s)
In 1857 Herman Melville spent New Year’s Day moving from Cairo to Alexandria. He was disappointed in his all too brief encounter with Cairo. December 31st proved to be his only full day in Cairo, and he jotted quickly into his notebook:
To the Pyramids; through the town to the Citadel & back to Shepherd’s at night fall. —Never shall forget this day. It racks me, that I can only spend one day in Cairo, owing to steamer. [Journals, 73]
On that basis I think I can count Melville as fellow lover of Cairo. Although the poor guy! Even today it would be a task to see the pyramids and the Citadel in a single day, but to accomplish that in the 19th century would have been challenging.. and at the very least we can expect he had an early start. Once Melville arrived back in Alexandria he took some time to set down his fleeting impressions of Cairo. These have the quality of memory-jogging remarks, such as this: “Appearance of the women. Thing for the face. Black crape hanging like trunk of elephant. Profusion of jewelry.” (74). He’s not writing so much as making notes for himself to fill in at a later time. As we might guess, many of his notes betray his view of the city while on the go: “Rapid passing of crowds upon the road; following of the donkey-boys, &c” (75).
Melville also made some notes about the Shepherd’s Hotel (which became the Shepheard’s Hotel in 1860). This is a hotel I run into a lot in travel accounts, but it was surprisingly difficult to find photos of it. The hotel was located at Ezbekiyya Square, which for a long time was a center of Western business and the home to the Opera House. The hotel was destroyed in the civil unrest of 1952. That was quite a loss, as this was one of those classic hotels in which everyone stayed. Melville writes, again in his memory-jogging way:
Magnitude of Shepherds, lofty ceilings, stone floors, iron beds, no carpets, thin mattress, no feathers, blinds, moscho curtain—All showing the tropics. And that you are in the East is shown by fresh dates on table for desert, water in stone jars—(cool) waited on by Arabs—dragomen—clap your hands for servants. [76]
That’s a pretty impressive string of descriptors.. you can sense the novelist in him through his grasping to catch hold of details.
The Hand-book for Travellers in Egypt (1880) published by John Murray has this to say about the hotel:
That matches up well with Melville’s description, and we learn that this would have been a pretty standard choice for an American abroad. I’ll end this post with a final image of the Shepherd’s Hotel, this time of the interior. Feel the oriental splendor:
Shepheards Hotel, Cairo : Moorish dining room. (1860s-1920s)
