Out East

Out East:

A man's got to go somewhere.

...in the 1820s young Benjamin Disraeli found The Arabian Nights an enchanting alternative to his life as a London law clerk — and he wanted out. Escaping from Swain, Stevens, Maples, Pearce and Hunt, and inspired by tales of Scheherazade, this dandified young man headed east where he dressed up as a pirate in “blood-red shirt, with silver studs as big as shillings,” and a sash stuffed with pistols and daggers. That was on a boat sailing from Malta to Corfu.

Then in 1839 Austen Henry Layard followed Disraeli’s example...