E. M. Forster

“ She is so perfectly depraved in disposition that her supreme delight consists in making everybody about her miserable. It would be doing her too much honour to stain my paper with a detail of the various artifices she daily practises to that end. Her pretended husband, having been in India before and giving himself many airs, is looked upon as a person of mighty consequence whom no one chooses to offend. Therefore madam has full scope to exercise her mischievous talents, wherein he never controls her, not but that he perfectly understands to make himself feared. ”

“ Let it suffice to say that though in chains she remained Eliza, and that Mrs. Tulloch was enchained too; and let those who would know more procure "The Original Letters from India of Mrs. Eliza Fay," published by the Calcutta Historical Society. The book contains a portrait of our heroine, which quite fills the cup of joy. She stands before us in the Oriental robes she detested so much, but she has thrown back their superfluities and gazes at the world as though seeing through its little tricks. One trousered foot is advanced, one bangled arm is bent into an attitude of dignified defiance. ”

“ It is only justice to name Mr. Taylor as an amiable though melancholy companion, and Mr. Manesty, an agreeable young man under twenty. Mr. Fuller is a middle-aged man. He has, it seems, fallen into the hands of sharpers and been completely pillaged. He has the finest dark eyes I ever met with. ”

“ Hare, Eliza's chief gentleman enemy, was not dangerous at meals. It was rather the activity of his mind that threatened her. Whenever she writes of him, her pen is at its sharpest, it is indeed not so much a pen as a fang. It lacerates his social pretentiousness, his snobbery, the scorbutic blotches on his face, and his little white eyes. Poor young Mr. Taylor once showed him a handsome silver-hilted sword. He admired it, till he saw on the scabbard the damning inscription, "Royal Exchange." "Take your sword," said he; "it's surprising a man of your sense should commit an error ”

“ Being unexpectedly raised to that post from second mate by the death of poor Captain Vanderfield and his chief officer on the fatal Desert, he has become from this circumstance so insolent and overbearing that everyone detests him. Instead of being ready to accommodate every person with the few necessaries left by the plundering Arabs, he constantly appropriates them to himself. ”

“ They were nearly drowned crossing its bar, and scarcely were they through when a boat of thieves shot out from the bank and caused Mr. Fay to fire off two pistols at once. They outsailed their pursuers, and sped up the lower reach to Rosetta, then a more important place than Alexandria and apparently a tidier place. Eliza was delighted. Thoughts of England and of the English Bible at once welled up in her mind.
There is an appearance of cleanliness in Rosetta, the more gratifying because seldom met with in any degree so as to remind us of what we are accustomed to at home. ”

“ Content to have escaped, she turns her gaze within—not of course to her own interior (she is no morbid analyst) but to the interior of the boat, and surveys with merciless eyes her fellow-passengers. The letter that describes them exhibits her talent, her vitality, and her trust in Providence, and incidentally explains why she never became popular, and why "two parties," as she terms them, were at once formed on board, the one party consisting of her husband and herself, the other of everyone else. ”

“ Taylor from the caravan, to promise inoffensive companionship down the Red Sea. Calm was the prospect. But Eliza is Eliza. And we have not yet seen Eliza in close contact with another lady. Nor have we yet seen Mrs. Tulloch.
IV
The beauty of the Gulf of Suez—and surely it is most beautiful—has never received full appreciation from the traveller. He is in too much of a hurry to arrive or to depart, his eyes are too ardently bent on England or on India for him to enjoy that exquisite corridor of tinted mountains and radiant water. ”

“ A dish once seized, it is my care to make use of my good fortune; and now provisions running very short, we are grown quite savages: two or three of us perhaps fighting for a bone, for there is no respect of persons. The wretch of a captain, wanting our passage money for nothing, refused to lay in a sufficient quantity of stock ”

“ Not a decent person could I distinguish among the whole group. So much for this grand exhibition, which we have abundant cause to wish had not taken place, for the vapours arising from such a mass of impurity have rendered the heat more intolerable than ever. ”

“ And although the wretch half starves us, he frequently makes comparisons between his table and that of an Indiaman which we dare not contradict while in his power.
Food is a solemn subject. Eliza was not a fastidious or an insular eater and she would gladly sample the dishes of foreign climes. ”

“ There broke out a severe epidemical disease with violent symptoms. People are attacked at a moment's warning with dreadful pains in stiff limbs, a burning fever with delirium and a total stoppage of perspiration. ”

“ She rode into the European enclave where terror and confusion greeted her. The rumour about the caravan proved only too true. Complete details had just It had been plundered between Cairo arrived. and Suez, its passengers had been killed or left to die in the sun, and, worse still, the Turkish authorities were so upset by the scandal that they proposed murdering the whole of the European community in case the news leaked out. It was thought that Mrs. Fay might be safe with an Italian doctor. ”