ALEXANDRIA: THE QUEST FOR THE LOST CITY
Edmund Richardson
Bloomsbury
REVIEWED BY JESSIE NEILSON
The title of this scholarly work is misleading, for the real subject is a British soldier turned explorer and archaeologist, who hunted for remnants of Alexander's legacy throughout India and Afghanistan in the 1800s. He was, at that time, the Westerner with the most knowledge of and interaction with that terrain. Surviving against all odds, he became intricately involved in both the region's ancient history and its contemporary politics.
Charles Masson, formerly Private James Lewis, deserted his station in Agra as part of the British East India Company. Disillusioned and overworked, he did however realise that punishment for desertion could be death, possibly by being fired from a cannon. Having been born in London's ‘‘rotten heart’’ in 1800, he could no longer endure this next state of degradation, and so slipped away in July 1827 and reinvented himself.
Durham academic Edmund Richardson approaches a retelling of historical events and individuals from an unusual angle. He is interested in the personalities and motivations of his players, detailing them closely. His storytelling more pointedly feels of his hand than standard objective historical works. As Richardson places his characters in their theatre, he eagerly speculates on their attitudes at various times, and tracks their wellbeing as if he is invested in them.
Richardson follows Charles Masson as he morphs from British soldier to lone traveller, to pretence as a Haji, a pilgrim on the Haj. Masson finds that as a pilgrim he gains respect, and better food, which only improved when he audaciously proclaims to be a Sayyid, a descendant of the Prophet. The author admires his figure's shapeshifting in a trickster's world. He is known as a ‘‘strange bird’’, the foreigner, the Feringhi. Masson ‘‘built himself anew, every day, out of stories’’.
Alexandria tracks Masson through India and Afghanistan, as he evades capture, dining on luscious offerings with local luminaries in their courts or sleeping in poverty and rags in the desert. Masson proves to be a man of many talents and interests, and in his pursuit of Alexander's legacy was the first European to find the ruins of one of his many cities, Harappa, as well as many other sites. He collected ancient coins obsessively, as well as untangling the script of Kharoshthi, which had been lost to interpretation for a thousand years.
The characters are storytellers, taking on personas and discarding them. They are, however, almost all men, causing chaos and warfare while the women folk focus on the domestic and peaceful. Richardson delights in offering us the most grotesque. There is the American Quaker, Josiah Harlan, obese in form and in self-regard, Joseph Wolff, the mad, naked preacher, and the Italian sadist General Paolo Avitabile, who runs Peshawar with bodies on gibbets as silent sentry. Masson, as a deserter, was always immensely vulnerable, and the author clearly explains how he was used for strategic purposes such as spying and information gathering.
Masson's quest involves pothos, the great longing for the unattainable, for he and other adventurers are obsessed by Alexander and his world. The author points out, the reality was inevitably quite different, and Alexander's failings many. So, while the book takes a quest form, it is the journey in which Richardson and the reader indulges, as we are confronted with a vast mass of history, politics, lead players, and events from this part of the world.
This is the first full-length work on Masson, and it is fascinating. His adventures were beyond intrepid, and it is frankly a feat of luck and cunning that he made it through to share his tale.
