Life of john kitto

It may be mentioned in passing, that, as the follow­ing letter indicates, Kitto identified himself with Mr Groves’ mission, though he was not formally engaged in evangelical work.

‘. . . We are now settled in a house of our own, in the Christian quarter of the city, in which we have room for an Armenian school, which is this day opened, and which we hope it may please God to bless to His own glory, and the benefit of that highly interesting people, who have hitherto been so much neglected in missionary operations. We have thought it most expedient to begin with an Armenian school, as the Mohammedans here are very jealous, and this jealousy will be less provoked in the first instance by an Armenian school than an Arabic one; but we hope before long to have that also. We anticipate less opposition from the natives than from the Catholic Bishop of Babylon. But he has thus far contented himself with forbidding his people to send us their children. From his flock, however, we meet with attention and kind­ness, and some of them have offered to send their children, provided we would teach them English.

‘ . . . You will be glad to hear that, though we are here, in the head-quarters of Islamism, we are subject to no personal molestation. A rude boy may call us “dogs,” as we pass the streets, but this rarely occurs, and this is all at present. There are many circumstances, however, which lead us to feel that we hold our lives on a very uncertain tenure, in a place where a man’s head can hardly be con­sidered as safe as his hat in England.

‘ . . . I have an undertaking in hand of a laborious character, which was suggested to me by Mr Groves himself. It is to combine, in one view, our own observations with those of various travellers and authors, to form a view of the sects and denominations of Asia and of Asiatic countries, for missionary purposes, rejecting all information but such as may be thought useful to a missionary.’

Kitto’s residence in Baghdad was monotonous—the daily teaching of the boys, the solitary walk on the housetop, and the writing of letters and journals. But his observant eye noted much, and he has recorded many of his observa­tions. Of the houses he says:—

‘I will just mention, en passant, that the roofs of our houses, though not gardens, clearly illustrate the gardened roofs of Babylon. The internal aspect of the upper rooms is that of an arch, supported on pilasters; these rest on an abutment, which runs round the middle of the room, and form very convenient recesses for books, etc. Sometimes, however, the ceiling is flat, and then the beams are occasionally seen, unless otherwise covered with ornamental wood-work. In both cases, the actual roof is supported by great beams, over which mats are laid, on which earth or clay, three or four feet deep, is heaped. This lies tolerably firm, and I have not known an instance in which rain water penetrated. There seems no reason at all, why, if the people wished it, or understood it, or it were to their taste, proper earths being used, gardens might not be formed on these terraces. They, however, prefer, perhaps wisely, to reserve them as bedrooms for summer. Rains would not much interfere with such an arrangement. It never, or very rarely, falls, but in winter, and then not in large quantities; and I do not see that, in this respect, there is any difference between this place and Babylon. Such roofs would not do at Malta, where, from its insular situation, there is a good deal of rain. In that island, therefore, they spread the terraces with a composition, which hardens almost to the solidity of stone, and in which, I believe, lava from Sicily is a principal ingredient. In more rainy places hereabouts, where they use the same roofs, they seem obliged to roll their roofs after every rain, to give them consistence. At Suleimaniyah, which, being among the mountains, is rainy, I saw, after a shower, many persons drawing stone rollers over the roofs—this I never saw here.’ Again,—‘The houses here swarm with vermin; mosquitoes all the year round, but most in summer. They are, however, not so abundant as in Malta, and in the country between the Volga and the mountains. Fleas swarm, even in the most cleanly houses, for a month or six weeks about the commencement of summer; but we are not made aware of their existence for the rest of the year. During that season, even English ladies are not ashamed to complain of them. Scorpions are not numerous in the houses. On removing some clothes from an open recess in the wall one day, I found one—the first I had ever seen—and not being sufficiently acquainted with verminology to recognise it, I felt no alarm; but, not liking its appear­ance, I brushed it out with my hand, and crushed it under my foot. Of rats and mice there are plenty.’

He describes the streets in no flattering terms:—

‘The state of the streets after rain is such as would disgrace the worst village in England. The causeways, where there are any, are about a foot wide, and in as bad a state as the road—a level of three feet it is impossible to find, and the mud is ankle deep. The pedestrians either wear great buskins of red leather over their usual slip­pers, or else go barefoot on such occasions—the last most generally—men, women, and all, holding up their clothes higher than is quite decent—that is, the poor women, for others either do not go out at all, or wear the great boots aforesaid. I have often thought that the state of govern­ment is indicated by the state of the streets. In all the countries I have been in, subsequent experience has confirmed the impression thus first obtained. Pavements are bad, or none at all, where the government is bad. In Russia, I have not seen a regularly paved street out of Petersburg and Moscow. In Georgia, still worse; and in Persia and Turkey, worst of all. Pavements bad in Spain and Portugal—in England, very good. Verily, the prin­ciples of a government may be read in the dust of the ground. I saw one woman, having a sort of clogs on her naked feet, raised high, and fastened over the instep by a band of leather, like a print in Calmet. I never saw it before. There is nothing here like the system of mutual accommodation and civility in street-walking which we find in England. None give the wall, not even the poorest, nor turn aside at your approach, but expect you to step off the causeway, such as it is, into the muddiest mud.’

Nor has he forgotten to tell us of the social habits and common occupations:—

‘The people may be considered to have but one regular meal, which is supper, at or a little after sunset. This is generally a pillau, that is, mutton or fowls, with rice. The poor seldom get animal food; bread, dates, and fruit, are their chief provisions. Mutton is the principal animal food used. Beef is little esteemed, and wild buffaloes’ and camels’ flesh is mostly eaten by the poor. The Christians can procure pork without much difficulty—we do; wild hogs are common among the reeds down the river. A Mohammedan considers it a defilement to touch a pig; yet a Moslem water-carrier, who serves the house with water, brought a small live hog the other day as a present, for which, however, he expected in return its full value. The venison is very good; we get it sometimes, though not so often as pork. The wild gazelle is found about the river, and I think the flesh superior to any I have tasted. Coffee is drunk continually by those who can afford it, but only regularly in the morning. The poor seldom get it. Coffee, as made in England, is brown water; here it is coffee; as they make it and take it without milk or sugar, all its deli­cious aroma is preserved. It is handed round in small cups of delicate china, in cases of silver or even gold, to prevent scalding the fingers. Each cup contains about a table-spoonful, the contents as black as ink, but as they are the very essence of a considerable quantity of coffee, I have felt more refreshed after such a small cup, than after a pint of the washy stuff dispensed in the London coffeehouses.

‘February 12.—I have been, at times this week, consider­ing, with some amusement, the operations of the native carpenters. They uniformly work squatted on the ground, which a European carpenter would consider no very con­venient posture. Work benches are things quite unknown in this country. Thus, in planing a plank, as a table-board, they sit down cross-legged upon it, and having planed the space before them, change their position, and perform the same operation on the space themselves had before occupied. Of course they ride upon the board, from the impulse of the plane, to some distance from the place where the board lay when they commenced; but when they change their position to plane the other portion, they ride back again! They make much use of their toe in holding their work. I am not aware that they have chisels, hatchets, or gimblets; the adze performs by far the greatest portion of their work. Holes they drill with a bow. They have saws, of course, but the teeth are indented in quite the reverse position to ours; they, therefore, are obliged to use the strongest exertion, not in pushing the saw from them, as with us, but in pulling it to them. Of this instru­ment they make, comparatively, but little use. They have much more idea of reducing the wood on which they labour to the required dimensions, by hewing with the adze, than by sawing. I believe a carpenter, working from sunrise to sunset, earns about sixpence sterling, which, considering the price of provisions, is about nine shillings a week; and considering the little work they do, this is no inadequate recompense. A good deal of their time is spent in smoking, which, as their pipes are long (a long stick inserted into an earthen bowl), prevents them from working and smoking too; sometimes, however, when they are pressed, they will take out the earthen bowl, which has a short stem, and smoke while they work.

‘Most of the Mohammedans of this city, being of Arabian descent, wear beards. The Osmanlees wear simply moustaches. These are the only general rules. The rest of the people wear beards or moustaches indifferently, according to their fancy, but I think moustaches are most general among the Christians, though they often wear beards. Jews have more generally beards, though often moustaches. As you seldom see a head in these countries uncovered, it is not easy to know whether they are shaved or not; but from those I have happened to see uncovered, I conclude they are not completely shaven—about half so, that is to say, about half the space between the ear and the crown is shaven quite round, leaving a semi-circle of hair on the top, where the hair is suffered to grow thick. This is commonly enough dyed red; but beards are not dyed of this colour so frequently as in Persia. Occasionally, however, it is done, and a most disgusting and sometimes ludi­crous effect it has. A northern eye, which is accustomed to see the natural red, is not for a moment deceived by the imposture, even so far as the colour is abstractly considered, as it has none of the glossy hue of the natural red hair; and, accustomed as we are to associate this colour with a fair complexion, a red beard on a dark face seems to be a monstrous anomaly. Moreover it frequently happens, from the neglect of the proprietor of the red beard, that the part which has grown out since the operation, is of the original colour—black, grizzled, or venerable white, whilst all the rest is red, presenting, from the contrast of colours, a most curious and truly laughable appearance.

‘My barber, a tall Osmanlee, with a white turban, is the gravest barber, certainly, under whose hands I ever sat. He bends his tall figure over me with infinite solemnity, and proceeds slowly and deliberately at his work, taking, I think, half an hour to cut my hair, inflicting martyrdom upon me, and causing me to feel most acutely the excision of every particular hair.’

He thus describes the opinions of the people:—

‘Here (speaking more particularly of Baghdad and its neighbourhood) the English are much better known than any other Franks, partly from the frequent intercourse with India, and the presence of many who have resided there many years, and partly from the highly respectable and respected Residents the East India Company has had here. Of the power, the wealth, the integrity, and justice of the English, they have very exalted ideas. Defective as the system of our Indian administration is, according to our English notions, the Asiatic, who can compare it only with Asiatic systems, has a better idea of it; and I am sure you will be gratified to learn that those who come here, after having resided there, generally eulogize so highly the comparative impartiality, justice, and liberality of the English administration in India, and the security of person and property they enjoyed under its protection, that there seems a general wish among the mercantile and other more intelligent classes, that the English would take Baghdad into their hands, and they calculate with satisfaction the pos­sibilities that such an event may occur one day or other. Like most other foreigners, perhaps brother Jonathan only excepted, they seem to think Englishmen are made of gold. It puzzles me sometimes, when men, not ill-informed for Asiatics, occasionally inquire if England is as large as Baghdad, how they can suppose the land able to contain all the gold they think Englishmen derive from it. The Russians, though nearer neighbours, are here less distinctly known; they seem to be regarded with much the same sort of feeling, as I regarded, and, I suppose, we have all regarded, when children—the Ogres, the fee-faw-fum men of nursery tales.’

That Kitto, the deaf pauper boy, should find himself so far from home as Baghdad, must have sometimes surprised him. When he thought of himself as a little ragged urchin running wild about the streets, or pictured his seat of lowly and solitary toil in the Hospital—

And by himself given over’

‘ MY DEAR MR BURNARD, . . . Here I am, in this city of enchantment and wonder, the renowned seat of an empire which stretched its gigantic arms from the Indus to the Mediterranean, and the great scene of Arabian tale and romance. I am quite amazed to think, when I think of it all, how different the actual scenes and circumstances of my life have been from any I could previously have an­ticipated for myself, or others for me. At one time I had no idea but that I should spend my days in the obscurities of my humble vocation, and then, when this view was altered, it seemed so much the tendency of my deafness to make me a fixture in some chimney-corner, that I should quite as soon, perhaps sooner, have thought of crossing the rivers of the moon as the Neva, the Volga, the Terek, the Araxes, or the Tigris. But here, in spite of a thousand anti-locomotive habits and dispositions, and ten thousand fireside attachments, I have been wandering about the world by a way I have not known, and in which I had not intended to walk; and, as I am now situated, I see no end to my wanderings on this side of that bright city to which, I trust, notwithstanding my weakness, my sin, my evil, I belong, and to which I hasten, forgetting many things which are behind, and pressing forward to them that are before. So true it is, that “a man’s heart deviseth his way; but the Lord directeth his steps.” None have had cause to feel this more strongly than myself; and, with my past experience, I am almost tired of devising anything at all, but am inclined to sit down quietly and take whatever it pleases God to send me, whether it appear to me good or evil, pleasant or painful. I know you are not a predestinarian; it has been the tendency of many cir­cumstances in my life to make me one; but I do not tell you whether I am one or not. . .

‘I have at present tolerable health and spirits. I find myself upon the whole very congenially situated, and I am not aware that I have at any time regretted the determi­nations which have a second time brought me abroad. I thank God for that faithful and tried friend, with whom I am now again connected more closely and naturally than before, and whose unexampled, and persevering, and untired kindness to me, I am happy to be able in some poor measure to repay, by undertaking, among my other em­ployments, the education of his sons. May I thus be enabled, in my humble way, to acknowledge, though I can never adequately return, the many obligations he has at different times laid me under.’

Kitto’s language at this period betokens, not only that he had felt the purification of sorrow, but that, apart from the growth of religious principle, his own observation and experience, stimulated by travel and enlarged by intercourse, had taught him the great truth unfolded by Spenser, his beloved bard,—

That maketh wretch or happie, rich or poore;

For some that hath abundance at his will,

Hath not enough, but wants in greater store;

And other that hath little, asks no more,

But in that little is both rich and wise,

For wisdome is most riches; fooles, therefore,

They are which fortunes do by vowes devize,

Since each unto himself his life may fortunize.’
Presence of mind, trust in God, calmness of heart, self denial, and unrepining adaptation as well to sudden evils as to expected trials, had been gradually acquiring strength within him. Very soon were they all put into requisition, so that, while their genuineness was tested, their power was at the same time developed, in the midst of pestilence, flood, famine, and siege.

FOOTNOTES