Life at Shepheard's Hotel

Life at Shepheard's Hotel was by Elizabeth Butler after visiting Egypt in the mid 1880s. She referred to this subject matter in her From Sketch-Book And Diary about her travels in Egypt. She wrote: "To sit on the low shady terrace of the old Shepheard’s hotel under the acacias and watch the pageant of the street below was to me an endless delight. The very incongruity of the drama unrolling itself before one’s eyes had a charm of its own. Look at that Khedivial officer in sky-blue, jerkily riding his pretty circus Arab. There follows him a majestic and most genuine Bedouin in camel’s hair burnoos, deigning not the turn of an eyelash as he passes our frivolous throng on the terrace; two Greek priests, their long hair gathered up in knots under the tall black cap and flowing veil, equal him in quiet dignity, and a mendicant friar rattles his little money-box, like an echo of the water-seller’s cups over the way, as a hint to our charity. An Anglo-Indian officer of high degree is driven up to our steps in a ‘bus under a pile of baggage. He has just arrived from India and is impressively escorted by various Sikhs, whose immense puggarees are conceived in a totally different spirit from that of the native turbans. A British hussar, smart as only a British soldier can be, trots by on a wiry Syrian horse; a cab full of Highlanders out for a spree bumps along the unpaved roadway. I confess I was disappointed with the effect of our honoured British red. What did it look like where the red worn by the natives was always of the most harmonious tones! See that string of little donkeys cheerily toddling along, all but extinguished under their loads of sugar-canes that sweep the ground with their long leaves; humble peasant donkeys, meeting a flashing brougham with windows rigidly closed, through which the almond eyes of veiled ladies of some high Pasha’s harem glance up at us and take us all in in that devouring sweep of vision. Double syces run before such equipages. French bugles tell us an Egyptian regiment is coming, and, meeting it, will go by with a dull rumble a string of English baggage-waggons drawn by mules and driven by Nubians, escorted by British soldiers in dusty khaki uniforms; stout fellows going to the front, a good many of them to stay there—under the sand. About 5.30 P.M. weird music and flaring torches brings us out again on the terrace, and we see a tumultuous crowd of pilgrims just arrived from Mecca by the five o’clock Suez train. They gather the crowd by their unearthly din and sweep it along with them. Beggars, flower-sellers, snake-charmers, tourists, and touts are all rolling along in a continuous buzz of various noises. Perhaps the full escort of cavalry jingles past our point of observation and the native crowd salutes the Khedive. Not so the British officers on the terrace, who keep their seats."

Elizabeth Butler Artist of Empire Article | Lady Butler Biography