Letters From Egypt, Lucie Duff Gordon (edited by Gordon Waterfield)

Henry Wyndham Phillips, Lucie, Lady Duff Gordon, 1851

(October 23, 2012) This was just delightful -- to experience Egypt through Duff Gordon’s eyes -- to learn to share her love of Arabs... I loved the charming, charming Arabs and now want them to rule the world.

Lucie Duff Gordon herself seems to have been wonderful -- everyone about her clearly loved her (except for her stupid-seeming husband. Very odd.).

Strange disorientation arises because this was written in Victorian times and is exotically located: sometimes LDG will tell a story and make a comment and you don’t get it at all. You can’t tell whether she’s being humorous, insightful, reproving or what. It’s cultural disorientation, I guess, and the very Victorian style.

Took me a long time to read this, possibly because unconsciously I wanted to defer the conclusion... obviously, the further you went in the book, the closer to LDG’s death you were.

This made me want to read more about and by Caroline Norton, and LDG’s Amber Witch.