In the first chapter of Lotus and Pyramid (Cape, 5s.)
Mrs. Constance Sitwell describes her impressions of Eygpt, as seen from a train. " Why ? " she asks, " Why should fresh places have this strange pressure ? The sight of those coral flamingoes by the shores of the melancholy lagoons, the grace of them . . . and then as we passed by, the infinite suggestion that lay in the ivory sails and slender masts of those quiet high-prowed boats moored by the shimmering water's edge. Were there boats like that tied under the walls of Carthage ? They filled me with longing, the longing to possess just that sight, that clear loveliness again." Mrs. Sitwell's mind is as possessive as a sieve : it discards the inappropriate, the cluttering and the shoddy. All those trivialities that encumber the mind of the ordinary tourist escape it, so that only the valuable and inevitable impressions remain. And these impressions, or (to extend the metaphor) these jewels, are retained to be cut and shaped by the keen edge of thought, to be polished beautifully, and finally to be set in a delicate filigree of imagination. Mrs. Sitwell is forceful by virtue of her economy. In one short page she describes the tomb of Amenhotep, in two others the Temple
of Edfu, in two sentences the statues of Ra.meses They sit, those mighty figures, their hands upon their knees, staring with blind lidless eyes over the river and over the dun desert. A gigantic patience and passivity are on those faces battered by time, but they still keep their grandeur." Here and there some snatches of conversation reveal the spirit of a strange land in a way that no wordy historian could do. The book is a gem—a small one, but its every facet reflects very clearly and very beautifully some aspect of the land of Lotus and Pyramid. * * * *
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