CHAPTER 4 - Avshalom’s Trip to Villa Morel in Lebanon

‘My dear master, when you asked me to give up my poetry for botany, I must admit I was a little insulted. Did you think so little of my verses? It’s time you had a proper job, you said, my dear master, where I would learn something new every day of the bountiful earth on which we walk.

Avshalom's Herbarium

And so it was that I entered your employ tasked with among other things, collating a herbarium - the definition of which might include the notion of a scientific collection of dried, pressed, and preserved plant specimens to be stored and catalogued for research, education, and conservation. A plant library, preserving plant diversity and providing a physical reference for identification, study, and comparison. Each specimen to include a label with crucial information on where and when it was collected.

And if you will permit me some indulgence, it is of my trip to Lebanon and my part in that harvest that I will now talk. Albeit, the missives of a young man of not quite twenty four years - a young man who is both eager and impulsive and who perhaps rambles a little more than is strictly necessary. A young man just three years from his death.

In 1914, Furn el Chebbak was an outlying area of Beirut located on the left bank of the Beirut River. A largely undeveloped area known for its Neolithic archaeological sites and Quaternary river terraces, not the urbanised neighbourhood it is today and it was here that I set up lodgings and my equipment and here that in my evenings I wrote the following missives to you my dear master:

Avshalom's Letter of January 8, 1914

Sunday, January 18, 1914 Hotel M. Furn el Chebbak, Beirut

To Mr A. Aronson - Director of the Jewish Agricultural Station, Haifa, Palestine

Our Dear Master, Eureka!

I was biting my fingernails - no metaphor intended - to discover by this reliable and easy method the shape or form which I had to give to these notes. My nails were disappearing and I didn't know which classic form I would follow. I invoked Moliere God of these forms and figures, when in his indecision the light shone less brightly. The oracle said: ‘Do not pile up learned things and memories. Write from day to day, every day and send - before reviewing and repenting your work - these notes by post to yourself. Then there will always be your letters to guide you.’

I disembarked early yesterday morning, fresh early and bright and refreshed and seeing a good omen in the sun which laughed broadly above the tranquil gulf and the rump - if it is permissible to express it that way - white and sparkling of the great mountain of Sannin. We must believe that the omens are of their century, which is to say they are liars began with a visit to customs to illicit my precious luggage which had been briefly impounded; as I handed over my already damaged belongings to the boatman to put them in the car, the sound of a shootout erupted.

Brouhaha, Hubbub, disorder, excitement, we rushed to see what was going on. In the stormy street full of people, bullets are raining down heavily. The gendarmerie is there. It's a little discussion between boatmen three dead, five injured, I hurry to the hotel I realise that my precious sphagnum is not there!

For the uninitiated my sphagnum moss is more precious to me even than my typewriter. For the initiated, as you my master know only too well, Sphagnum is a genus of approximately three hundred species of mosses, commonly peat or bog moss and quacker moss. The uninitiated  may ask what is sphagnum used for? And I answer, as you have so aptly taught me in my recent intensive, learning programme in plant collecting for the proposed herbarium, for seed starting or as a growing medium for succulents and orchids and for that matter any plants where a light, airy texture with good moisture retention is key. Without it I can do nothing!

Volte-face, stymied, I pace about in despair. Nothing helps. I telephone Sam. Four tries! No response. In the afternoon I try one more chance, I go to the American College. I am cordially received by Professor of Botany, Doctor Muller, a young man, extremely amiable but very young. I tell him of my sorrows and use all my considerable coquetry to persuade his indulgence. And leave a hundred francs as my ‘donation’ - I will record them as ‘production costs’.

The conversation continues. I inform him about Villa Morel and inquire as to ways to get permission to visit - he doesn’t know much about it; ‘We don't have many connections, it's at the far end of town, a village really, and you understand that this gentleman is - er - Catholic’.

Whether Catholics or Protestants, it mattered little to me but despite his opinion of the Pope and his followers, Mr. Muller admits to exchanging plants from time to time, very rarely he confides, with this mysterious - Catholic - Monsieur Morel; he recommends me to two gentlemen at the German Post Office who he claims may know more. The lane on the right at the German Post Office.

Avshalom at the German Post Office, Beirut

So I go on foot to the German Post Office - the lane on the right the office on the left - where the two gentlemen indicated, barely contain their indignation? Why ask them? How would they know? Mr. Morel is French, and these officials are proud Germans!

They glare at me these brave Germans locked into their fixed beliefs from the past. As far I as I was concerned they could go to hell! Pardon my french.

So I go to the French Post Office and enjoying this children's game, rush straight to the director, and blurt out:‘Do you know a Monsieur Morel? How can I get to see him?’

‘Yes, I know him well. To whom do I have the honour of speaking?‘

He looks at my card with the German name ‘Feinberg’, listens to me speaking French and is clearly perplexed: ‘Are you French?’ he asks.

‘No’, I answer.

‘German?’ he asks suspiciously, as if I might be a spy.

‘Oh, no, no!’ I answer: ‘I'm a Jew’.

‘Ah.’ He freezes. Polite, cold.‘Monsieur Morel is a very original, old Frenchman but nonetheless a good and kind man, present yourself to him, he will certainly receive you.’

Thank you sir. French is good, original is better. Originality never harmed anyone, it is often married to amiability.

I went to bed with a fixed plan where I had to go straight to Villa Morel and not be deterred.

****

Wednesday, 21 January, 1914

Today, Sunday, around ten o'clock, I will lift the knocker of the blue door of the villa, and I will knock, murmuring: Open Sesame. Open up!

Three friendly little pugs greet me and grunt their appreciation at my dusty boots, wagging their tiny tails, one concierge who is less friendly, opens the little door, asks for a card, closes it, disappears. Fifty minutes later I am fed up with the pugs and I am let in.

So after the preliminaries, dear Aron, we are at Villa Morel or Villa Eucalyptus as it is called. 

Monsieur Hercule Morel at Villa Eucalyptus

Monsieur Morel is a septuagenarian who bears his age cheerfully, with a straight, fresh demeanour. Size below averages, some pronunciation defects, speech quite rapid. Monsieur Morel is a scholar, a ‘savant’ of the old school of France, someone driven by an idea, and driven as a believer and a Frenchman, someone who knew how to put his time, his work and his money at the service of the idea to give it the most poetic, the most rational and the most convincing expression. 

A member of the the Société Zoologique d'Acclimatation of Paris - with its specialisation on evolutionary adaptation to climate, illustrated in its garden in the Bois de Boulogne, and its magnificent library. He never interrupts his relations with France where he still spends all his summers. He believes that to understand one must see many examples. He must have travelled extensively and from our first interview he mentions Japan, Algeria, Indochine. He immediately declared to me his special predilection for Eucalyptus. And as the subject of those trees is, at your request, my particular task, we shall get on famously, I am certain. He is convinced that these rangy trees with their shedding bark  and rustling leaves, are the best means, almost unique, in the fight against high temperatures, in swamp draining, and limiting forest fires - due to the poor undergrowth beneath these kings of the forest.

He is convinced too that Eucalyptus’ rapid growth makes it a subject of reforestation of the first order and in his middle years, he decided to become its propagator, the ‘Apostle of the Eucalyptus’, as he says with a self-effacing smile.

A Meandering Walk through the Gardens

And so we enjoy the meandering walk on the magnificent walkways, and the herbaceous borders of violets, of roses, of lavender, of all kinds, on the dark beauty of the conifers and the Lebanon cedars and standing everywhere like leitmotifs, the eucalyptus of our quest.

Monsieur Morel tells me the name of each of these baptised visitors to the Levant, each named in the honour of a propagator of these eucalyptus trees. As for the trees themselves, there is no shortage of trees, I find examples here that are entirely worthy of universal respect and admiration. The villa has one hundred and twenty varieties, and we pass without too much fatigue, chatting about their genesis from Australia to the Savannah and from Mexico to Siberia. In our savant’s opinion, growing plantations of these ugly Antipodean monsters will save the natural forests of our planet from decimation.

Entrance to the Villa is prohibited to all plants not deemed valuable enough to the Monsieur’s plan. Neither cabbages nor apricots are permitted, in order to ward off thieves who might be tempted by these edible comestibles, deems the master of the garden! We perambulate between the rustling Antipodeans which he greets as friends and we couldn’t be happier.

We visit the greenhouses in front of which I stand in awe, and inspiration. Monsieur Morel tells me that he has better than that to show me; we are heading towards the villa, an architectural masterpiece of true perfection of Levantine Neo Classical style, without a single detail swearing or shouting, everything is perfectly balanced.

An Architectural Masterpiece of Levantine Neo Classical style

The guide books tell us that the Villa Morel also known as 'Villa Eucalypta', is a historic mansion built in 1900 in the Furn el Chebbak area, known for its distinctive architectural blend of Lebanese, Ottoman and Italian styles featuring sweeping marble staircases, triple-arcade window design, ornate stucco ceilings, and a gilded oval glass cupola over the stairwell the mansion entirely crowned with red roof tiles.

Avshalom in the Entrance Hall of Villa Morel

We enter through a door on both sides of which a double staircase leads to the first floor where we see beautiful radiating arcades; the small room where we enter, a kind of peristyle of whitest marble populated with plants of a beauty which blends with the shadow making them almost invisible, on the marble columns a few small marble busts and to the right a small chapel, a true jewel. The master of this scene is also a poet concerned about all his floral beauties, attentive and paternal towards them. On this we completely agree, and this time I smile honestly and then, more broadly when he offers me the use of a small upstairs library for my work.Sesame opened, I have permission to herborise.

****

Sunday Evening 18 January, 1914

It is a beautiful moment since that golden ball of the sun descended from the pure sky into the still, blue sea. There are already stars that I see as I stand mesmerised by the window open to the sea, thinking about what I have seen and heard. I am under a violent spell, the charm of a flora grouped by a precise, original and tasteful will, and when a garden is beautiful it reinforces and emphasises the beautiful architecture, but for me it skillfully evokes the harmony of what I may call the symphony of the trees.

The Symphony of the Trees

Rational analysis gives way to joy and admiration; the synthesis of man and nature is clear and precise.

Mr. Morel's words came back to me: "Some people, when they see my plants, find that there is really a lot of shade here, but you can get rid of the shadow in so many ways." It's true. There are fagots and torches, some smoky, others luminous. And certain shadows are luminous and fragrant with beauty. Morel also told me about his faith in eucalyptus as a remedy for fever or malaria in the summer months and to which I too have fallen prey on a number of occasions.

I think of the hundreds of Eucalyptus trees we have planted at Hedera, planted at random without trying to create proper order, without systematising. I am not one of those who say that it would have been preferable to wait, no, Never postpone, and we must not think of wasting the ardour of a young movement, like ours, which like everything that is young, is prodigal and wasteful. But next to the big forests we need small, careful collections that speak eloquently like the collection I visited today.

At the exit however, the beautiful green lawn seems to interest him and I inquire about the way in which we treat grass like a beautiful carpet. It would perhaps be better, I say to let it grow free like a meadow. Nothing could be simpler, responds the French horticulturalist, the lord of this unlikely manor, but then it would not be a garden but a meadow.

****

Monday 19 January, 1914

Monday 19 January, 1914

It must be very late since I just finished today's herbarium. Very inconvenient to put eucalyptus in the press. They have all the characteristics required for determination and resist any attempt to make them obedient. But what flower wants to be domesticated after a million years of freedom, and what grain wants to be taken from its wildness and coerced into conservation for the benefit of mankind?

Mr. Morel most kindly brought along his Arab gardener with a long pruning shear. I said I would happily do the job of cutting my samples, but I was assured that it is a principle not to leave guests alone for fear of damage either to them or to the saplings, but I insisted, much to the gardener’s surprise. He demonstrated how to create a deep cut without damaging the young trees. And I discovered that the job provided a calming discipline to which it is pleasant to submit, the work becomes very easy for me and I must mention a completely original invention: the Morel wheelbarrow - a pretty barrow on a small wheel and support. But instead of the ordinary box at the bottom, a parallel shelf makes a very convenient seat for the botanist.

We work together, the Arab gardener and I, push the barrow in front of us, stop to choose our specimen which the descendant of Mahommed cuts and place it on the back board, where I write on the tablet where the pencils, notebooks, secateurs are placed. Of course, at home it would not be practical neither at Hermon, nor at the Station, nor at Hedera, but for a not very adventurous scholar, creating a herbarium of knowledge, it's perfect.

Thus after having herborised near Damascus, on horseback at Djebal-Cheikh, on the slopes of Mount Meron, I now count Monsieur Morel’s wheelbarrow as my most valuable tool.

I know that I have blushed a considerable number of times at my incompetence in enumerating the list of classified eucalyptus trees that have been invented in our day. A list which seem as indispensable as it is long, and which must be kept up to date if we don't want to get confused with the one hundred and twenty varieties that there are here.

Avshalom's List of Classified Eucalyptus Trees

I shall list just a few: E.Piridis, Lehmani, Hackera, Globulus, Cinerea, Mac Arthuri, Leocoxylon, Corymbosa, Amgdalina, Platypus, Jugalis Blue Gum, Amenoides and Fluded Gum.

From time to time Monsieur Morel comes over to watch me and also to check the list. He nods sagely, exudes sincerity, energy, and integrity, I definitely like him, and I feel quite proud of my small part in the work.

He tells me a story and also asks me to read a very long article on ferns by Carl Andersen; one thousand five hundred and forty four ferns to be exact, and this is of great interest to the Monsieur. The tome is very heavy and I lug it under my arm as he also insists I have to visit a camellia in a nearby corner of the Villa, and in the greenhouse a coffee plant and a vanilla bush. The former once yielded thirty eight good pods but a wind having broken it, it is sadly now sterile.

At the time of taking leave when everyone and the heavy tome is in the car and the driver is waiting he wants me to read something about the eucalyptus, I want to give the order to wait, but Mr. Morel cries out and declares that we can postpone our studies until the morning. Nothing to do, he will wait until tomorrow. He waves us off quite cheerfully.

I think I have got the botanising bug, caught from the old Frenchman and you, of course, my dear master.

****

The Fountain at Villa Morel

Tuesday 20 January, 1914

Today the Frenchman showed me another greenhouse which is simply magnificent. On a high marble pedestal a statuette of Joan of Arc is placed on top in the style of Aristeas. And in the middle of the marble in a circle a phrase reads: ‘let’s go around in circles, consumed by the fire of knowledge’. Opposite on a base is a bust of the emperor. In the middle of the greenhouse a pool in the style of a Hellenistic villa in all points. At each corner a Greek letter, which Monsieur Morel declares is a cryptic reference to various Greek and Arab botanists. Monsieur Morel has a predilection for this type of esoteric phrase.

I admire the incredible ferns and other plant magic that is there. Before leaving I read a letter that our Frenchman sent in 1909 to a priest going on a mission to some distant country, the oration prevented me from copying anything, but I cannot resist quoting a few passages from memory. The priest first describes being brought on board a journey of two hours to a remote quay in Canada the woods of which were hundreds of years old! He was greeted by the discordant sound of many chain saws. Here engineers and timber cutters explained to him that their machines could cut a swathe through these verdant groves in less than a day. 

Their pride in their actions, not understanding that they could arouse no enthusiasm and admiration in this man who could declare with sadness of the beautiful sylvan father whose Providence has adorned the earth with such treasures and the men who plunder and destroy such treasures without mercy.

****

Herbarium Press with Dried Specimens

Wednesday 21 January, 1914 Evening

I went to the Jesuit Faculty to look for some presses and to try to get, if possible, some herborisation materials. The chief botanist of the Faculty has only one very small press - diminutive and lop-sided. I am so grateful that I have the temerity to lurch into some kind of panegyric of praise about our own herbarium, and telling him of our struggle for the Hebrew language in Palestine, of the future of a Jewish university, and I declare to him that we have had enough of begging for science, and begging Europe for aide and that we in the Levant must do things for ourselves. That we want to become the scientific avant-garde of Europe here at home.

I think I have softened him up and I suddenly remember the names of two presses the detail comes back to me as I recall you told me; only two names the ‘Punctata’ and the ‘Libanotica’. Names I retained because they reminded me of a beautiful ballad of my youth in the good old days.

The chief botanist rewards me with a pained smile and tells me in passing that his herbarium has more than two thousand eight hundred specimens and after admiring a good number of them, he gives me that single, out of kilter press, with a slight smile.

I return and quickly telegraph Sam who is usually reliable in these matters: ‘URGENT STOP SPHAGNUM HAS NOT ARRIVED STOP REQUIRE FOUR PRESSES STOP’

****

 Shmuel 'Sam' Aronson Telegram & Spagnum Moss Samples

Thursday 22 January 1914

Sam is annoyed - absolutely reprehensible and incomprehensible, here is the telegram that I received back from him - repeated verbatim, minus the capital letters and stops:‘Improvise presses with blotting cardboard, replace sphagnum with sawdust cotton. Beg at an apothecary. Request only what is strictly necessary and what you cannot improvise. We only ship from here in dire necessity’.

Voila! It is clear. We must improvise; How insolent, how ironic. Improvise. Be charming, ask nicely. Which I do, but am only met with blank faces and odd looks. In all the drugstores and pharmacies where I enter to ask for filter paper they ask me if I needed two or three sheets and they offer good prices. When I said I needed at least fifty they looked suspicious. As to the presses they were now convinced I was a mad man hiding a corpse under the bed.

I telegraph Sam again, more politely: ‘Let's ship tomorrow as soon as possible. No presses here.’

When Sam deigns to reply, he says again ‘IMPROVISE’.

I stand at the window of my dingy pension and watch the dirty rain that keeps falling, which makes me think I’m going to dissolve into the gutter. It always falls, this ugly rain of rage and hope which brings on my old condition...

Tomorrow I will have to build some presses.

****

Friday 23 January 1914

Due to the rain and my mood, I am slightly indisposed and I am staying in bed today. I have decided to grow a beard.

****

Saturday 24 January 1914

Voila! This is how good colleagues treat you. I’ve had enough of this man! Sam! Although somewhat weak from my little malady, I drag myself from my bed when a parcel arrives: a glimmer of hope that is quickly extinguished by the sight of an 800 gr. package of sphagnum moss. Not enough to bury a dandelion!

There you have it, the clear, quick, complete decision: improvise! let's send necessary sphagnum yes! presses no!

I’ll go out! Good! Bad! It’s too late. I can do nothing today and tomorrow Friday, everything is closed for the Muslim holy day, then the Sabbath which I won’t break, followed by Sunday - the Christian holy day!

I decide I'm going to Bahr Ilkalb tomorrow come hell or high water. I want to be calmed by the sight of the al-Kalb river in flood, the ancient Lycus River with its classic inscriptions in ancient languages to commemorate those who passed this way: Assyrian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Babylonian pictograms, Alexander the Great, Persians, Romans, Crusaders, Arabs, Mamluks, Ottomans. Not to mention the more recent military campaigns of Napoleon and the colonial ones of the French. Yes, all Lebanon’s history is here.

****

Avshalom at Baabda Train Station

Bahr Ilkalb, Sunday 25 January 1914

I catch the train from Baabda Station, a short journey winding into the hills. I spend a very pleasant Sunday bathing my feet in the river and admiring the ruins. There is water everywhere, and it brings together a very dense population of plants, and when there is water and human hands the rest comes by itself. 

Bahr Ilkalb, Sunday 25 January 1914

The question of the quality of the land is only secondary and this one looks good. I will now describe some of the crops:

Between the mulberry trees, beautiful wheat measuring 25 to 30 cm in height, very well grown, and beautiful fields of flowery fava bean trees, the mulberry of course dominates. Its tight regiments extend and spread out over the terraces. But nothing is more upsetting than these distressing plantations, the trees whose average distance is approximately 1 m. 25 are deformed, a trunk of one, at most, and on top of it the crowns if one can call it that, the few rare branches of the shorn and re-shorn heads. Moreover, in this country of easy watering and plentiful rain, it seems that we are starting to abandon the mulberry tree and that new plantations are becoming more and more rare. Of the oranges the dominant variety is that of Saida, yet there are already very beautiful Chamoutis, therefore fruits suitable for transport, I do not say that Beirut will appear on the market tomorrow, but we must take this into account concerning our oranges at Jaffa.

From Cheikh Bou'aness - Odjal for example to Jazour there is only a short distance. Beirut with its excellent communications with Damascus on the Hedjas line provides good transportation. It is true that in two years with the Caiffa - Lydda line we will be on equal terms! However, our concern must be the export of the Jaffa orange. A crop quite worthy of mention is sugar cane, very important to Beirut, it forms a veritable forest in places. I observed the short distance from the sea at which it begins. Did the crops grow 50 to 60 years ago? Is this to be attributed to the relative calm of the gulf where the winds are weaker than here, and to the rainfall on the mountains which have come to enrich the narrow valley?

****

Hotel Moutran, Furn el Chebbak

My residence, Hotel Moutran in the neighbourhood of Furn el Chebbak, on the periphery of Beirut, is vast, filthy, dirty and pretentious. Diplomatic action is initiated to obtain sheets and sheets which have not yet been used. As for having a sheet for the cover which has an vague and indescribable colour, here is the critical point, this exaggerated requirement seems inadmissible to the opposing parties, my companion in misfortune, a young Tantura Arab who acts as servant, covers himself with his overcoat; I will make a plan with some sheets and blankets, disreputable as they are.

Bon Soir, mon maitre! I hope you sleep better than I will.

****

Monday, 26 January 1914

During the day I devote myself to the pressing problem of the  presses. I have to resign myself. I had all the trouble in the world just to get myself some filter paper. It costs 25 piastres - 4 f.60 - per ceni and since to make a fairly respectable sheet you need at least 4 - 6 sheets, it is quite expensive.

Avshalom's Drawing  for his Proposed Presses

As for the press, here is what I imagine; we should not think of making them on site from iron. The cardboard while travelling is only theoretical. Plane with strap would be too rigid as my carpenter Mr. Abdullah Farah Thomé, informs me that the press had to be flexible: and fit the tension curve of the chains. Two united lids - boards for example - would offer, in addition to closing at right angles, the other disadvantage of allowing the plants to evaporate poorly.

I therefore ordered, for the presses: I30 boards or flat boards,5 boards for each press, 30 belts with holes to be fixed on 3 half presses, 40 belts with tubes at both ends to be fixed on the 3 corresponding half presses. What with drugstores, carpenters, and transport it took me, without noticing the time that it's already late afternoon. The temperature is murderous and the chief Carpenter is making difficulties because tomorrow is some Saint’s festival of the Prussian country - Oh, joy. However, I got the promise that it will be ready at noon so I decide to be in Saida tomorrow - the former Sidon.

****

Tuesday, 27 January 1914

That’s it, there is an automobile from here to Saida but it lacks a driver. I have my presses, when an unexpected car arrives and Mr Farah accompanies me on the road. So is business done in the land of the Syrians of Beirut.

Although it's quite late, I can't resist the urge to write a few lines. 

Despite the rain which fell heavily and the gray which never beautifies a landscape, I saw the most beautiful olive trees this afternoon, the most artistic earthworks, the most careful corner of earth that I have ever contemplated in my life.

Since it is said that these notes are for you, my dear master, I really want to let go this evening. This road is a truly comforting spectacle. Clearly the pact of man and earth is perfectly in balance here. Each wall, each earthwork are indications of many paragraphs of the centuries of devotion and toil; like a testament bequeathed to future generations, the work and care of man are aligned.

Oh, my dear master Epictetus, the original Stoic whose famed phrase ‘wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants’ tells us much. Of our own homeland nothing is done the first time neither a fig, nor a grape, nor an olive, nor a people nor a homeland. Slow, patient, difficult, indispensable, hard work, soil, blood and sweat in reserve, are what we need most. When we have beautiful olive plantations that will support the life of generations, we will have men in the woods who will have given their lives to defend it. Let's start with the olive trees.

The Olive Trees of Saida

Of all the most superlative heritage given by nature the best is a glorious olive grove. All along the road we have them to teach us the practice of cultivating one's land. 

Old Druze Man on the Side of the Road

An old Druze on the road digs with an antique spade in a mysterious way and opens the earth to the air. He has a face calm, chiselled, wise and smiling and a beard which makes him appear as a character from the Bible. And in this narrow fertile and nourishing valley, between the sea which rustles and chatters and the mountain which hoots under the will which bites its leprous nudities, to the rolling of the rain which rocks and to the whistling of the gusts which makes one dream, I hear in the evening the wind that comes from the conference of man and the earth. Only a few puddles remain, clinging to the structures that protect them.

****

Monday, 2 February 1914

Definitely Mr. Abdullah Farah Thomé is an unemployed man. I visited him today in Antelias and he was very friendly and helpful as possible. He will take me to see some new plantings and we follow the road to Saida and Nahr-il-Kalb. Mr Thomé knows his country well, and we are going to safe havens. All is good.

List of Plant Specimens for Monday, 2 February 1914

Here is the list for the day:

Roses: Red large, Red small, Climbing yellow and white

Mulberries: Chyprian - 2 trees, Jabali - grafts

Apricots: Grafting of a flowering tree and bearing fruits

Grapes: Zeini, Antelias noir, mirouech - with verjuice flowers and fruits, Karn-el-Ghazal noir, Kalb-il-Teir - white, delicate variety,  Jouzani Antelias - a good Arabic name

Pomegranates: Lifani - little and sweet, Chetawi Antelias - acid and red, Nochi Shirabi - rare, ornamental with double red flowers

There are other materials that I could not have today and Mr. Farah promises to bring me tomorrow - or later tomorrow - from Beirut. I sense a ray of recognition for this type of work and we have a certain sympatico. Sometimes you can’t help but get attached, and this happens to me. We part as great friends. To meet again and again kind and helpful people would it be a lesson of the best kind, would the world be changed? I'm only going on theory? Would everywhere really be so different from us at home?

****

Wednesday, 3 February 1914 10 o’clock

Mr. Abdallah Farah Thomé has just left me, so I am going to end the notes for this part of the trip by describing the rest of the material. When I asked him for information on the trees I begin to think Mr. Thomé might be the best guide in the country. He shows me several examples of the fig  - there was on the table a branch with some fruits which were attached. Very tasty and no worms. This intrigued me and I asked for a few cuttings and took them with us.

About silk, Mr Thomé tells me the worms, wintering in the mountains, are only released for hatching in the spring. We found some of the common country breeds, a Chinese one and an indigenous variety and a cross fertilised one.

The conversation then fell to the question of rodent control, he affirmed that one of their methods, a sort of empiric, creates rabies in the rats who then communicate it to each other and he found this to be a good deterrent.

At the village of Yahchouch we find a grove of green onions. Mr Thomé recommends pounding them together with the bulb of scilla maritime - which, if I remember correctly, is considered a fairly violent poison - roll them in flour and fry them in butter and offer them to rodents who love them. So there is at least an element of death there. As for the onions with which it is seasoned, why wouldn't an empiricist who has discovered that scilla is a poison, which is beautiful and that green onions are beloved by rats be surprised? And to the mycologists if it's true what a benefit. Suddenly here is a professional who would become famous and a noxious bulb which would be beneficial.

But enough fantasy. I chose the Beirut - Nahr-il-Kalb road and, there is of course always something to study and see there.

A F.

****

Tuesday, 3 February 1914

I returned today to the Morel villa where I was greeted like an old friend. The rain prevented me from working as long as I wanted in the garden, but I really don't know if I should blame it very much, because it's not wasting time to listen to Monsieur Morel's conversation which is always the same. Charming and lengthy, and who was very communicative today, talking to me about his work, his collections which he showed me around, showing me his catalogues which I hastened to copy, an article by him in the ‘Journal d'Acclimation’, and many other things that are definitely worth it. He shows me a file which bears the inscription: ‘Eucalyptography’, there are various catalogues; a file where his personal remarks were to be written is almost empty he admits he will complete it ‘soon’.

I add to my huge list of different kinds of Eucalypus - Phew! After this little enumeration of the hundred and twenty species I am obliged to concede that the villa of Monsieur Hercule Morel has not been usurped anywhere in the world and that the villa’s name ‘Eucalypta’ which he baptized it, is a most apt one!

In the eucalyptus files there are a certain number of sheets dedicated to botanists, who worked or were interested in eucalyptus, a name has since been added since my last visit: ‘Aronson’ now comes at the head of the list!

What is interesting is the collection of cut and exposed eucalyptus wood. This could become of first-rate interest from the point of view of the practical study of eucalyptus.

There is also the seed collection. At the moment it is incomplete and in great disarray. But Mr. Morel expressed his decision to me  to get started and make it completely serious. He even did the honour of consulting me on the shape and location of the cabinets for display. I gave my opinion in the best interests of the visitors to come, convinced that this collection will become a first-class vitrine.

Before we part, I read an article by ‘Mr. H. Morel: Acclimitisation of Exotic Trees at the Villa Eucalypta’. Quite curious, he promises me another one for tomorrow which deals again with eucalyptus. It is unfortunately impossible to copy these things and is advisable to try to obtain these copies from Lille, but where the address marked on the bulletin is 41, Rue de Lille. Morel tells me to note that the headquarters were transferred to Rue de Buffon.

I have decided that tomorrow I will make my last visit to this enchanting villa, whose charm and the more than charming reception of its owner will make me eternally fond.

À demain! Until tomorrow!

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Last Visit to Villa Morel

Wednesday, February 4, 1914

Last visit to Villa Morel. I made notes until noon of the antelias  of the region of Nahr-il-Kalb or Bahr Ilkalb as some prefer to spell it.

Coming down stairs on that marvelous stair case a wonderful surprise awaited me - the apple trees known as grenadiers of Saida of which I had begun to despair had arrived: Hassan Efendi Abi-Chakru and his accompanying colleague are decidedly gentlemen of the first rate and the collection will be all the richer than one could imagine when we can eventually propagate these delightful apples at home with us on the Judean littoral!

Herbarium work today was not as prompt as usual. Mr. Morel invited me to go with him this afternoon ‘to Australia’. We walk through shaded glooms but unfortunately this Australia is in the most isolated part of the Villa and its metal fences do not sufficiently guarantee it against the indiscretion and malice of the locals, which means that labels are missing, which greatly pains Mr. Morel. The rain also got involved too. Furthermore, I have encountered seeds on almost every tree and I am ready to neglect one press for one single grain.

The herbarium is done for today; I have listed another twenty varieties. For almost all these species for which we have mature seeds, I only make remarks for the citriodora - the lemon scented blue gum. I saw it, needless to say, but having seen the seeds I remained like the fox in the fairy tale in front of the lush trellis and those grains of reproduction remained out of reach. The first branch is in fact at least at 8 - IO m. from the ground and the stem is smooth, impeccable, ironic. With a ladder a gardener - admirable climber - ventured barefoot, and when he was at the top the second gardener and I removed the ladder at arm's length, hoisted him up on the first fork, our man while laughing hung from his neck as he used the rope pruner so that I have a small sack of seeds and to mark the victory I gave him 50 piastres for his heroism.

My final lesson before departure from my diligent teacher, Mr. Morel made me read his article; ‘Eucalyptus’ in the ‘Bulletin of Acclimatisation’ of the summer of October 1901 with details coming either from personal observations or from his vast knowledge of the literature on the subject.

I also saw the herbarium attempt that Monsieur Hercule has made is not the greatest, and already seems to be quite old, and clearly the activity of this charming man is not celebrated for his interior work. Yet it is a fine observation and a surprising activity for his advanced age. But not to be compared with your own one, dear master!

Our anecdotal conversation is quite amusing, I have to report this one which is very good: To avoid the customs of this sweet country, customs which are very zealous and which do not want to see an increase in the flora of the country by ‘alien’ plants, Mr. Morel designed a cage with chickens and a double bottom in which he managed to introduce up to 200 small plants, and in Port Said some grouse, quail and other land fowl were introduced to the country and these innocent birds gave the treacherous recipient the least suspicious air and the most natural that one can imagine. But the smuggler after having introduced thousands of plants could not master the desire, legitimate in short, to complete his written notes being fonder by far of the green notes that graced his garden under the hands of his many gardeners.

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The Great Famine in Lebanon, 1914

‘We are not to know that literally months after my visit to this Eden, the Great War will commence, followed by the Great Famine that would lay waste to Mount Lebanon and Beirut. The grain crisis of November 1914, leaves this beautiful country starving and when freight cars transporting grain from Aleppo fail to arrive, there are empty bakeries and hungry mobs loot what little flour is left. One of the many fabulously wealthy, Sursocks will even profit from this terrible famine by pitilessly elevating the price of grain. 

All this at a time when Aron has discovered his famous wild wheat prototype designed to save the world from such disasters.

Wartime conditions will devastate the Villa and its garden. Water will seep though its broken roof, gilded stucco will drop to the floor like bird droppings, enamelled tiles will tumble like autumn leaves, birds and spiders will inhabit the space where once that brave Monsieur kept his library and his treasured herbarium. Villa Morel will be demolished and on its site, according to the Monsieur's will, the Parochial Church of Our Lady of Lourdes will be built.

The Sursock Palace owned by the eponymous family, will be used as a grain storage in the Second Great War, a palatial residence for the vastly rich Mokbel family, then suffer damage during the 2006 Civil War and the devastating 2020 Beirut port explosion of the vast storage granaries - almost certainly Hezbollah storing ammonium nitrates in the port facilities. Its final incarnation, an arts venue where a young Beirut artist will create an installation called ‘Wraith’, a ghostly floating apparition made of metres of billowing, coloured silk; a fitting tribute to this and the other lost villas of the city.’

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‘Wraith’