I have just started to read Anthony Sattin’s ‘Winter on the Nile’ about a journey in 1849-50 undertaken by Florence Nightingale & Gustave Flaubert. There are all the signs that I am in for a tremendously good read – starting with a string of satisfying coincidences.
Here were two people aged about 30, each facing something of a crisis as they wondered if their life's ambitions might ever be fulfilled. Before the new decade was over Florence Nightingale had been to the Crimea & Madame Bovary was published.
There is no evidence that they ever met or socialised – their being on the same ferry was pure coincidence - but Anthony Sattin came across the evidence through first a glorious episode of library serendipity, a eureka moment, when he discovered letters written home from the trip & then by following up other leads.
The reason for this post is that I want to note Florence Nightingale’s description of how & why she came to dress one day in a burka.
Florence was escorted on the trip by family friends, the Bracebridges. At the end of a week in Alexandria while they waited for the ferry which would take them on to Cairo, Florence expressed a particular desire to be able to go to the mosque during prayers – something, it was thought, that no European woman had done before. Undeterred by the advice that the only way was to go disguised as a local woman, she, Mrs Bracebridge & her maid donned the required dress. Even so they were advised not to show their hands or to speak.
The women were only in the mosque for 15 minutes, observing from the minaret. The description of the less than reverent occupations of the large congregation – basket making, story telling, sleeping – reminded me of the description of the old St Paul’s, to which John Donne was expected to bring some kind of order & control when he was appointed dean.
Unlike Mrs Bracebridge, who was shocked, Florence rather approved of all this bustle, & anyway, when the faithful heard the call, they all bowed down together & for 5 minutes were totally absorbed in their prayer. She however was outraged at the way the women were treated – no better than animals. “If I could have said where any woman may go for an hours rest, to me the feeling would have been perfect.”
Here is her description of being harnessed into the trappings of a burka.
First an immense blue silk sheet (the head comes through a hole in the middle); then a white stripe of muslin which comes over your nose like a horse’s nose bag, & is fastened by a stiff passementerie* band, which passes between your eyes & over & behind your head like a halter; then a white veil; & lastly the black silk balloon** which is pinned on the top of your head, has two loops at the two ends through which you put your wrists in order to keep the whole together. You only breathe through your eyes.An extended version of Florence Nightingale's experience at the mosque is available online at Florence of Arabia
*Decorative trimming of gold or silver lace or (in later use) of
braid, beads, or other material.
**A balloon-cap
