Search This Blog

Friday, February 16, 2018

Bored to death on the Nile | Daily Mail Online


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/books/article-5397179/Bored-death-nile.html

Bored to death on the nile: How the trip of a lifetime was ruined by dusty relics of the aristocracy

  • Toby Wilkinson and Julian Platt shared letters from Ferdy Platt written in 1907-8
  • Ferdy wrote about his time as personal physician to the Duke of Devonshire
  • An Egyptologist, he traveled with the Duke and his entourage for 3 months
  • He confessed in writing to his wife the time was dull and he longed to go home

HISTORY  

ARISTOCRATS AND ARCHAEOLOGISTS 

by Toby Wilkinson and Julian Platt (American University in Cairo Press £24.95)

How idyllic it sounded: escaping from the rainy English winter of 1907-8 to go on a leisurely, three-month, sun-warmed paddle steamer trip along the Nile, as personal physician to the Duke of Devonshire.

You would be waited on hand and foot and stop off at all the most famous tombs and temples in the heyday of Edwardian excavations.

No wonder the young London doctor and keen amateur Egyptologist Ferdy Platt said 'Yes, please' to this offer of paid work combined with travel.

But, as this enthralling collection of letters from Ferdy to his wife May during the journey reveals, spending three months on board that paddle steamer in the company of the aged Duke and Duchess and their snooty entourage could make a young, middle-class doctor feel as lonely as a mummy in a tomb.

Brits abroad: Edwardian tourists (pictured) by the              Great Pyramid in Egypt.  Toby Wilkinson and Julian Platt              reveal letters from Ferdy Platt written on his journey along              the Nile in 1907-8

Brits abroad: Edwardian tourists (pictured) by the Great Pyramid in Egypt.  Toby Wilkinson and Julian Platt reveal letters from Ferdy Platt written on his journey along the Nile in 1907-8

The letters were kept for nearly a century in a beautiful wooden box, which was lovingly decorated by Ferdy with Egyptian figures and hieroglyphics as a present for his daughter Violet.

On Violet's death in 1992, she bequeathed the box to her younger cousin, Julian Platt, who, with the Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson, has now brought the letters to the public.

To read them feels like lifting the lid on the stifling world of the Edwardian aristocracy.

Ferdy's travelling companions were the 74-year-old Duke of Devonshire who, as a wild young man, had been known as 'Harty Tarty' by the Prince of Wales, but was now arthritic and consumptive, and his wife the Duchess, who liked to be carried up sandy hills in a chair by four sweating servants.

They were joined by the unfriendly Earl and Countess of Gosford and their chillingly aloof daughter Lady Theodosia Acheson, and Sir Charles Cradock-Hartopp, a divorced friend of the Duke whose only interests were huntin', shootin', fishin' and card-playing and who took no interest whatsoever in the sights of Egypt. Towards the end of the trip, Sir Charles admitted to Ferdy that he 'had never been so bored in his life'.

For three months, these people were coldly civil to Ferdy. They were never actively rude, but subtly made him aware that he was socially beneath them.

It's not as if he was so very low down in the social hierarchy. He was 'landed gentry' and had been educated at Eton. But, in his position as physician to the Duke, he was deemed not worthy of their attention.

Not long into the trip, Ferdy wrote to his wife: 'I am longing to get home . . . It is deadly-dull at meals . . . I feel I am kept in my place. Even when it is general talk, I am never spoken to.'

Actually, I grew rather fond of the dim-but-affable Sir Charles, who did at least speak to Ferdy occasionally. Sir Charles became lazier and lazier and fatter and fatter as the journey went on, though he did, rather sweetly, stir himself one day to climb a hot hill, sweating profusely — not to look at an ancient Egyptian temple, but to see some puppies he'd heard about. He bought one and took it back to the boat and thence to England, using an empty champagne box for its basket.

Ferdy was to spend his spare time in later life              translating the Book of Genesis as part of his interest              in Egyptology

Ferdy was to spend his spare time in later life translating the Book of Genesis as part of his interest in Egyptology

The aristocrats played bridge almost constantly, deafened by the paddles' vibrations during the day and the electricity-producing dynamo at night. Ferdy had no say in how long they stopped off at the ancient sites he longed to see.

Thank goodness for his wife, to whom he felt free to enthuse in his letters about the wonders of Akhenaten's palace and the excavations of the famous Egyptologist Flinders Petrie.

The two most famous figures the party encountered on the journey were Winston Churchill and the archaeologist Howard Carter.

Churchill happened to be passing by on his way back along the Nile from a trip to Uganda. He came on board the Duke's boat for lunch and regaled the party with descriptions of the copious crocodiles beneath the Victoria Falls.

When Ferdy and his companions met Howard Carter, he was at the lowest ebb of his career: forced to resign as Chief Inspector of Antiquities for being rude to some French visitors, he was eking out a living as a watercolourist, producing paintings to sell to tourists.

He would rise to international fame 14 years later, on discovering Tutankhamun's tomb with his patron Lord Carnarvon.

ARISTOCRATS AND ARCHAEOLOGISTS by Toby Wilkinson and              Julian Platt (American University in Cairo Press £24.95)

ARISTOCRATS AND ARCHAEOLOGISTS by Toby Wilkinson and Julian Platt (American University in Cairo Press £24.95)

The niceties of Edwardian sartorial conventions are revealed when Ferdy describes a much-needed solitary walk through the baking-hot desert — so hot that 'I walked about with my coat and waistcoat off'.

I breathed a sigh of relief for Ferdy when the boat, at last, turned round and started the long journey home. Ferdy was desperately missing his wife and 'the chicks', as he called his children. I liked the stiff-but-loving way he signed off his letters: 'Much love darling from your affectionate husband, Ferdy (A. F. R. Platt)'.

Just six weeks later, the Duke lay on his deathbed in the Hotel Metropol in Cannes. His last words were: 'Well, the game is over and I am not sorry.' The Duchess lived on for another three years before dying of heatstroke at the Sandown races.

The Earl and Countess of Gosford fell on hard times as a result of over-spending and had to sell the whole contents of their house. The snooty Lady Theodosia went on to have a surprisingly happy marriage to Alexander Cadogan, permanent under-secretary for foreign affairs during World War II. Sir Charles Cradock-Hartopp died childless in 1929.

As for Ferdy, he led a peaceful and happy married life as a doctor in Kent. As proof that those taxing months on the paddle steamer did nothing to dampen his fervour for Egyptology, he was to spend his spare time in later life translating the Book of Genesis into hieroglyphics.

--   Sent from my Linux system.

No comments:

Post a Comment