Back to the Classics #2

I read this book for the Back to the Classics Challenge 2018.

Notes of a Journey from Cornhill to Cairo – William Makepeace Thackeray

This travel narrative, from 1846, recounts Thackeray’s trip to places in the east such as Lisbon, Athens, Constantinople, and Jerusalem. Generally speaking, the descriptions capture reader interest because T. was a draughtsman and painter himself. This, on Cadiz:

I have seen no more cheerful and animated sight than the long street leading from the quay where we were landed, and the market blazing in sunshine, piled with fruit, fish, and poultry, under many-coloured awnings; the tall white houses with their balconies and galleries shining round about, and the sky above so blue that the best cobalt in all the paint-box looks muddy and dim in comparison to it. There were pictures for a year in that market-place - from the copper-coloured old hags and beggars [...] to the swaggering dandies of the market, with red sashes and tight clothes, looking on superbly with a hand on the hip and a cigar in the mouth.

And this about a quay in Beirut:

How magnificently blue the water was! - how bright the flags and buildings as they shone above it, and the lines of the rigging tossing in the bay! The white crests of the blue waves jumped and sparkled like quicksilver; the shadows were as broad and cool as the lights were brilliant and rosy; [...] and the mountains beyond were of an amethyst colour.

Unfortunately, his lack of knowledge and curiosity about the cultures he visits did not charm me. It reminded me of the age-old criticism of Thackeray: he just isn’t real smart. He poses as the old hand with assertions like, “Walk into the bazaar, and the East is unveiled to you.” How do you know, I, a long-term expatriate of old, would wonder at the cocky knowledge of tourists. Other statements make it sound as if he just dashing off narrative; for instance of Constantinople he says, “I don't think I have anything more to say about the city which has not been much better told by graver travellers.” Okay, the reader thinks, then what am I reading this lightweight for?

Who should read this? Readers, I suppose, who can’t get enough of Thackeray even after Vanity Fair and Barry Lyndon, I guess. Maybe grad students in cultural studies looking for examples of narrow mid-Victorian attitudes.