Memphis

“ Thus Charles Mackay describes Memphis; but it impressed me as the pleasantest city of the South. Though its population was only thirty thousand, it had the air and promise of a great metropolis. The long steamboat landing was so completely covered with cotton that drays and carriages could hardly thread the few tortuous passages leading down to the water's edge. Bales of the same great staple were piled up to the ceiling in the roomy stores of the cotton factors; the hotels were crowded, and spacious and elegant blocks were being erected. ”

“ Memphis is on a bluff of the Mississippi. How strange does this juxtaposition of the names of hoar antiquity and of yesterday sound in the ears of a European! And it will also seem strange to many that this city, whose name they had never heard mentioned, except as being that of a great city of the Pharaohs, has already a population of 84,000 inhabitants, and is so well situated that it is destined to become, under the reign of freedom, one of the largest of the second-class cities of the Union. A bluff is a river-cliff. ”

“ Having already spoken of a number of Memphis' interesting citizens, I find myself left with an ill-assorted trio of names yet to be mentioned, because, different as they are, each of the three supplies a definite part of the character of the city. First, then, Memphis has the honor of possessing what not many of our cities possess: a man who stands high among the world's artist-bookbinders. ”

“ Memphis was then a great city; in its crowded streets, its palaces and temples, it was second only to Alexandria. A little to the west stood the pyramids, which were thought one of the seven wonders of the world. Their broad bases, sloping sides, and solid masonry had withstood the weather for ages; and their huge unwieldy stones were a less easy quarry for after builders than the live rock when nearer to the river’s side. The priests of Memphis knew the names of the kings who, one after the other, had built a new portico to their great temple of Phtah ”

“ The annual festival in honour of Isis was observed all over Egypt in the same way.
As the Greek traveller approached Memphis the pyramids of Gizeh were shown to him towering over the water on his right. His visit to them was reserved to another day, and he continued to sail on to the ancient capital of the country. Memphis was still in all its glory. Its lofty walls of crude brick, painted white, shone in the sun, and its great temple of Ptah still preserved the monuments and records of the early dynasties of Egypt. ”

“ What must have been its beauty before time and man placed their spoiling hands upon it, and before the encroaching desert heaped the sand around it, burying the platform, the steps, and the temples, and converting the whole scene into one of desolation! Could any pageant of modern times surpass the spectacle of the processions of Memphis, arranged after the manner of the most brilliant period of Egyptian history, and coming to offer adoration at the temple guarded between the paws of that figure hewn from the living rock and overshadowed by that mysterious and immobile face? ”

“ So, except for a short excursion at New Orleans, I did not go a-sailing on the waters of the Mississippi.
Memphis is a much brighter, cleaner, more alert and prosperous-looking place than Louisville. |Charity and Colour.| There are shops on Main Street that would make a good figure in Paris; and at night it is as gay with electricity as the “Great White Way” of New York. When I arrived, Memphis was evidently in the thick of some excitement. ”

“ Memphis, upon the other hand, will always be to me a lively modern débutante. I vision her as dancing—dancing to Handy's ragtime music—all shoulders, neck, and arms, and tulle, and twenty-dollar satin slippers. Atlanta, too, is young, vivid, affluent, altogether modern; while as for Birmingham, she is pretty, but a little strident, a little overdressed; touched a little with the amiability, and the other qualities, of the nouveau riche.
The beauty of New Orleans is of a different kind. She is a full-blown, black-eyed, dreamy, drawly creature, opulent of figure, white of skin, and red of lip. ”

“ But if Memphis and the South generally are content to forget the past, it does not follow that the past has forgotten them. The spirit of the older civilization abides. It haunts the new life like some pathetic ghost, doomed to wander helplessly among people who no longer want to see it. There is a certain suavity about Memphis which the stranger feels directly he touches the life of the place. ”

“ From the Ohio River to Vicksburg, a distance of six hundred miles, it is asserted that there is no other site for a commercial city: so Memphis, though isolated, enjoys this advantage, which has, in fact, made her the busy cotton-shipping port she is to- day. Her population is about forty thousand. As Memphis is connected by railroads with the towns and villages of all the back country, in addition to her water advantages, she may be called the business centre of an immense area of cultivated land. ”

“ And to think that you—the most prudent of the prudent—who can hear the dew fall and the grass grow, and smell here in Memphis the smoke of every fire that is lighted in Alexandria or in Syria or even in Rome—that you, my mother's daughter, should be caught over head and ears by a broad-shouldered lout, for all the world like a clumsy town-girl or a wench at a loom. ”

“ We shall appreciate it the better for having first seen that other city on the edge of the desert to which, for nearly six thousand years, all Memphis was quietly migrating, generation after generation. We know now how poor folk labored, and how great gentlemen amused themselves, in those early days when there were hundreds of country gentlemen like Ti, with town-houses at Memphis and villas by the Nile. ”

“ It is almost impossible to think that the people who named that place were homesick for Egypt. What would Copts be doing on the shores of the Mississippi? How could they have got there? Nor is it easy to think of any emotion which the name Memphis would be likely to stir in the mind of a settler. Memphis means nothing to most men. It is easy to see why there should be an American Rome. A man might never have been in Rome, might have no more than the barest smattering of its history, yet the name would suggest to him thoughts of imperial greatness. ”

“ Memphis contains nearly 30,000 inhabitants, but many of them are foreigners, and there is a nomad draft into and out of the place, which abounds in haunts for Bohemians, drinking and dancing-saloons, and gaming-rooms. And this strange kaleidoscope of negroes and whites of the extremes of civilisation in its American development, and of the semi-savage degraded by his contact with the white ”

“ Hundreds of people were gathered together at Memphis for the seven-days festival in honor of Apis. The city was full, and the sun shone on splendid dresses, rich uniforms, gold and silver and jewels, glancing arms, and gilded chariots. ”

“ Memphis is filled with the bravest men of war in all the Northland, and its granaries are filled with wheat, barley, and grain of all kinds. The arsenal is full of weapons. A wall goeth round the city, and the great fort is as strong as the mason could make it. The river floweth along the east side, and no attack can be made there. The byres are full of cattle, and the treasury is well filled with gold, silver, copper, apparel, incense, honey, and unguents.... ”

“ We were told by everyone we spoke to at Memphis, that it was in all respects the finest situation west of the Alleghanies. We found many lovely walks among the broken forest glades around Memphis, which, together with a morning and evening enjoyment of the effects of a glowing horizon on the river, enabled us to wait patiently for the boat that was to bear us away. ”

“ At nine o’clock, having been joined by three more white men, we finally rolled into Memphis.
CHAPTER XXVII
Memphis—A City’s Fault and a Nation’s Wrong “Society must necessarily look at these things because they are created by it.”—Hugo.
On my arrival in Memphis I was greeted by a severe storm. Although chilled and almost starving my first desire was to secure my baggage, which I had sent on from Cleveland, and go to a hotel. But there were the conditions of the homeless and needy of Memphis to be studied. ”

“ The village being left behind, we ride on through one long palm-grove after another; now skirting the borders of a large sheet of tranquil back-water; now catching a glimpse of the far-off pyramids of Ghîzeh, now passing between the huge irregular mounds of crumbled clay which mark the site of Memphis. Next beyond these we come out upon a high embanked road some twenty feet above the plain, which here spreads out like a wide lake and spends its last dark-brown alluvial wave against the yellow rocks which define the edge of the desert. ”

“ The boat was to tarry at Memphis till ten the next morning. It is a beautiful city, nobly situated on a commanding bluff overlooking the river. The streets are straight and spacious, though not paved in a way to incite distempered admiration. ”

“ Memphis—Out from the Reconstructed. Of the trip between Jackson, Mississippi, and Grand Junction, Tennessee, I only remember a dismal night of thumpings over broken rails, and lurches and contortions of the cars, as if we were really trying in our motion to imitate the course of the rails the Yankee raiders had twisted. At one point all were waked up, hurried out into the mud of a forlorn little village, and informed that, some way or another, they must get over the burnt bridge to the train half a mile on the other side. ”

“ Memphis is a handsome city, attractively laid out, the residential section having spacious lawn-bordered avenues, and there being an attractive park in the centre, the Court Square inhabited by numerous squirrels and adorned by Andrew Jackson's 400 bust. Memphis has seventy thousand people, and a large trade both by river and railroad, being a leading cotton-shipping port, whence steamboats take vast amounts down to New Orleans for foreign export. Among its attractions are the cotton compresses and cotton-seed oil mills. ”

“ Others betray their presence by the damp, cold earthy air they bring with them from the tombs in which their bodies were laid. This Memphis ghost, which no one in Memphis sees, but which yet has its influence on Memphis life, is of quite a different kind. ”

“ February 16.—At 9 A.M. we were abreast of the city of Memphis, on the Tennessee side of the river. Higher up there is Cairo. These slave-holders, who retain their fellow-men in worse than Egyptian bondage, seem to have a great partiality for Egyptian names. Memphis is pleasantly situated on high "bluffs," and is a great point for the shipping of cotton. It does not, however, thrive by honest industry. ”

“ To prove that the latter opinion of Pliny should outweigh the former one, Dr Shaw cites 86Diodorus Siculus, who says Memphis was most commodiously situated in the very key, or inlet of the country, where the river begins to divide itself into several branches, and forms the Delta.
I cannot conceive a greater proof of a man being blinded by attachment to his own opinion, than this quotation. For Memphis was in lat. 29° 50 ́, and the point of the Delta was in 30°, and this being the latitude of Geeza, it cannot be that of Memphis. That city must be sought for ten or eleven miles farther south. ”

“ By-and-by the green plain begins to grow narrower; we are coming to the end of the Delta, and entering upon the real valley of Egypt. Soon we pass a great city, its temples standing out clear against the deep blue sky, with their towering gateways, gay flags floating from tall flagstaves in front of them, and great obelisks pointing to the sky; and our pilot says that this is Memphis, one of the oldest towns in the country, and for long its capital. Not far from Memphis, three great pyramid-shaped masses of stone rise up on the river-bank, looking almost like mountains ”

“ Mummies suggest Egypt. So, though less directly, does corn. If a caché of mummies had been discovered on the banks of the Mississippi it would be easy to account for Memphis. If Tennessee were a great wheat state one could imagine settlers saying "There is corn in Egypt, according to the Scriptures. Let us call our new city by an Egyptian name." But I doubt whether cotton suggested Memphis. It certainly did not suggest Cairo, for Cairo is not a cotton place. I was told,—though without any strong conviction—that the sight of the Mississippi reminded somebody once of the Nile. ”

“ But the builder of Memphis after he had finished the rampart and trench, built palaces not inferior to others built elsewhere; yet much below the state and grandeur of the former kings. For the inhabitants of this country little value the short time of this present life; but put an high esteem upon the name and reputation of a virtuous life after death; and they call the houses of the living, inns, because they stay in them but a little while; but the sepulchres of the dead they call everlasting habitations, because they abide in the graves to infinite generations. ”

“ Few capitals have been more favourably placed. It was inevitable that when the old town went to ruins, a new one should spring up in its stead. Memphis still exists, in a certain sense, in the glories of the modern Cairo, which occupies an adjacent site, and is composed largely of the same materials.
The Egyptians knew no more of their first king than that he turned the course of the Nile, founded Memphis, built the nucleus of the great temple of Phthah, and "was devoured by a hippopotamus." ”