proclaimed by the Emperor Francis Joseph, she sought in literary labour
a field for the activity of her restless intellect. Balzac points to
that great female artist and republican, the Duchess of San-Severins, in
Stendhal's "La Chartreuse de Parme," as a portrait of the princess.
Whether this be so or not, she was assuredly one of the most conspicuous
and original figures of the time.
Her chief title to literary reputation rests upon her "Etudes sur
l'Asie-Mineure et sur les Turcs." In reference to these luminous and
eloquent sketches, a critic says: "I have read many works descriptive of
Mussulman manners, but have never met with one which gave so exact and
full an idea of Oriental life." But in the princess's writings we must
not seek for those richly coloured pictures, those highly decorative
paintings in which style plays the principal part--pictures composed for
effect, and entirely indifferent to accuracy of detail or truth of
composition. She never seeks to dazzle or beguile the reader; her
language is direct and vigorous and full of vitality because it always
embodies the truth.
No one has shown a juster appreciation of that strange Eastern
institution, the harem, though it is no easy thing to form a clear and
impartial judgment upon a system so alien to Western ideas and revolting
to Christian morality. A vast amount of unprofitable rhetoric has been
expended upon this subject. Let us turn to the princess's discriminative
statement of facts.
After explaining the many points of contrast between the people of the
East and the people of the West, she continues:--
"Of all the virtues held in repute by Christian society, hospitality is
the only one which the Mussulmans think themselves bound to practise.
Where duties are few, it is natural they should be greatly respected.
The Orientals, therefore, have recognized in its highest form this sole
and unique virtue, this solitary constraint which they have agreed to
impose upon themselves.
"Unfortunately, every virtue which is content with appearances is
subject to sudden changes. This is what has happened--is happening
to-day--in respect of Oriental hospitality. A Mussulman will never be
consoled for having failed to observe the laws of hospitality. Take
possession of his house; turn him out of it; leave him to stand in the
rain or sun at his own door; plunder his store-rooms; use up his
supplies of coffee and brandy; upset and pile one upon another his
carpets, his mattresses, his cushions; break his crystal; ride his
horses, and even founder them if it seems good to you--he will not
utter a word of reproach, for you are a _monzapi_, a guest,--it is Allah
himself who has sent you, and whatever you do, you are and will ever be
welcome. All this is admirable; but if a Mussulman finds the means of
appearing as hospitable as laws and customs require, without sacrificing
an obolus, or even while gaining a large sum of money, fie upon virtue,
and long live hypocrisy! And such is the case ninety-nine times out of a
hundred. Your host overwhelms you while you sojourn beneath his roof;
but if at your departure you do not pay him twenty times the value of
what he has given you, he will wait until you have crossed his
threshold, and consequently doffed your sacred title of _monzapi_, to
throw stones at you.
"It goes without saying that I speak of the rude multitude, and not of
the simple honest hearts who love the good because they find it
pleasant, and practise it because in practising it they taste a secret
enjoyment. My old mufti of a Tcherkess is one of these. His house, like
all good houses in Eastern countries, consists of an inner division
reserved for women and children, and an outer pavilion, containing a
summer-saloon, and a winter-saloon, with one or two rooms for servants.
The winter-saloon is a pretty apartment heated by a good stove, covered
with thick carpets, and passably furnished with silken and woollen
divans arranged all round the apartment.
"As for the furniture of the summer-saloon, it consists of a leaping,
shining fountain in the centre, to which are added, when circumstances
require it, cushions and mattresses on which to sit or recline. There
are neither windows, nor doors, nor any kind of barrier, between the
exterior and the interior. My old mufti, who, at the age of ninety,
possesses numerous wives, the oldest of whom is only thirty, and
children of all ages, from the baby of six months, up to the
sexagenarian, professes the repugnance of good taste for the noise,
disorder, and uncleanness of the harem. He repairs there every day, as
he goes to his stable to see and admire his horses; but he dwells and he
sleeps, according to the season, in one or other of the saloons. The
good fellow understood that if long habit had not rendered the
inconveniences of the harem tolerable to himself, it would be still
worse for me, freshly disembarked from that land of enchantments and
refinements which men here call 'Franguistan.' So at the outset he
informed me that he would not relegate me to that region of obscurity
and confusion, smoke and infection, named the harem, but would give up
to me his own apartment. I accepted it with gratitude. As for himself,
he took up his abode in the summer-saloon. Though it was the end of
January, and snow was deep on the ground, both in town and country, he
preferred his frozen fountain, his damp pavement and draughts of air, to
the hot, but unwholesome, atmosphere of the harem.
"Perhaps I destroy a few illusions, in speaking of the harem with so
little respect. We have all read of it in 'The Thousand and One Nights,'
and other Oriental stories; we have been told that it is the
dwelling-place of Love and Beauty; we are authorized to believe that the
written descriptions, though exaggerated and embellished, are
nevertheless founded upon reality, and that in this mysterious retreat
are to be found all the marvels of luxury, art, magnificence and
pleasure. How far from the truth! Picture to yourself walls black and
full of chinks, wooden ceilings, split in many places and dark with dust
and spiders' webs, sofas torn and greasy, door-hangings in tatters,
traces of oil and candle-grease everywhere. When for the first time I
set foot in one of these supposed charming nooks, I was shocked; but the
mistresses of the house detected nothing. Their persons are in harmony
with the surroundings. Mirrors being very rare, the women bedizen
themselves with tinsel, the bizarre effect of which they have no means
of appreciating.
"They stick a number of diamond pins and other precious stones in the
handkerchiefs of printed cotton which they twist around their head. To
their hair they pay no attention, and none but the great ladies who have
resided in the capital have any combs. As for the many-coloured ointment
which they use so immoderately, they can regulate its application only
by consulting one another, and as the women occupying the same house are
all rivals, they willingly encourage one another in the most grotesque
daubs of colouring. They put vermilion on the lips, rouge on the cheeks,
nose, forehead and chin, white anywhere to fill up, blue round the eyes
and under the nose. But strangest of all is the manner in which they
tint the eyebrows. They have undoubtedly been told that, to be
beautiful, the eyebrow should form a well-defined arch, and hence they
have concluded that the greater the arch the greater will be the beauty,
without asking if the place of that arch were not irrevocably fixed by
nature. Such being the case, they give up to their eyebrows the whole
space between the temples, and paint the forehead with two wide arches,
which, starting from the origin of the nose, extend, one on each side,
as far as the temple. Some eccentric beauties prefer the straight line
to the curve, and describe a great streak of black all across the
forehead; but they are few in number.
"Most deplorable is the influence of this painting when combined with
the sloth and uncleanness natural to the women of the East. Each
feminine countenance is a work of high art that cannot be reconstructed
every morning. It is the same with the hands and feet, which, variegated
with orange, fear the action of water as injurious to their beauty. The
multitude of children and servants, especially of negresses, who people
the harems, and the footing of equality on which mistresses and
attendants live, are also aggravating causes of the general
uncleanliness. I shall not speak of the children--everybody knows their
manners and customs--but consider for a moment what would become of our
pretty European furniture if our cooks and maids-of-all-work rested from
their labours on our settees and fauteuils, with their feet on our
carpets, and their back against our hangings. Remember, too, that glass
windows in Asia are still but curiosities; that most of the windows are
filled up with oiled paper, and that where corn-paper is scarce the
windows are blocked up, and light enters only by the chimney--light more
than sufficient for the inmates to drink and smoke by and to apply the
whip to refractory children--the only occupations during the day of the
mortal houris of faithful Mussulmans. Let not the reader suppose,
however, that an Egyptian darkness prevails in these windowless
apartments. The houses being all of one story, the chimneys being very
wide and not rising above the level of the roof, it often happens that
by stooping a little in front of the chimney-place you see the sky
through the opening. What these apartments are really deficient in is
air; but the ladies are far from making any complaint. Naturally chilly,
and having no means of warming themselves by exercise, they remain for
hours at a time huddled on the ground before the fire, and cannot
understand that a visitor is almost choked by the atmosphere. If
anything recalls to my mind these artificial caverns, crowded with
tattered women and noisy children, I feel ready to faint."
* * * * *
The princess does not, on the whole, speak unfavourably of the Turkish
character. Perhaps the reader would judge it more severely; but still
the consensus of the best authorities supports the view taken by the
princess, and it is the governing-class, rather than the masses, that
seems to justify the general dislike. Of Turkish officials it would be
difficult, perhaps, to say anything too severe; the ordinary Turk,
however, has many good qualities, which need only the stimulus of good
government for their happy development. As to the governing-class, their
vices are the natural result of the corruption of the harems, and until
these are reformed, it is useless to expect any elevation of the low
moral standard which now unfortunately prevails among the pashas.
The Turkish people, if less enlightened than other European nations, are
not without qualities that demand recognition. They are temperate,
hospitable, and orderly. They are faithful husbands and good wives.
The Turkish peasant is at once father, husband, and lover to his wife,
whom he never contradicts willingly and knowingly, and there is little
to which he will not submit in the depth of his affection for her.
In these climates, and under the influence of coarse and unwholesome
food, the woman ages early; whereas the man, better constituted to
endure fatigue and privation, preserves his vigour almost to the last
unimpaired. Nothing is more common here than to see an old man of eighty
and odd surrounded by little children who are his flesh and bone. In
spite of this disproportion between man and woman, the union, contracted
almost in childhood, is only dissolved by death. The Princess de
Belgiojoso tells us that she has seen hideous, decrepit, and infirm
women tenderly cared for and adored by handsome old men, straight as the
mountain pine, with beard silvered but long and thick, and eyes bright,
clear, and serene.
One day, our traveller met an old woman, blind and paralytic, whom her
husband brought to her in the hope that the princess would restore her
sight and power of movement.
The woman was seated astride an ass, which her husband led by the
bridle. On arriving, he took her in his arms, deposited her on a bench
near the door, and installed her on a heap of cushions with all the
solicitude of a mother for her child.
"You ought to be very fond of your husband," said the princess to the
blind woman.
"I should like to be able to see clearly," answered she. The princess
looked at the husband, he smiled sadly, but without any shadow of
ill-will.
"Poor woman," he remarked, passing the back of his hand over his eyes,
"her blindness renders her very unhappy. She cannot accustom herself to
it But you will give her back her sight, will you not, Bessadee?"
As the Princess Christina shook her head, and began to protest her
powerlessness, he plucked the skirt of her robe and made her a sign to
be silent.
"Have you any children?"
"Alas! I had one, but he died a long time ago."
"And how is it you have not taken another wife, as your law allows--a
strong and healthy woman who might have brought you children?"
"Ah, that is easily said; but this poor creature would have been sadly
vexed, and then I could not have been happy with another, not even if
she had brought me children. You see, Bessadee, we cannot have
everything in this world. I have a wife whom I have loved for nearly
forty years, and I shall make no second choice."
The man who spoke thus was a Turk. His wife was as much his property as
a piece of furniture; none of his neighbours would have blamed, no law
would have punished him, if he had got rid by any violent means of his
useless burden. Happily, the character of the Turkish people neutralizes
much of what is pernicious and odious in their customs and creed. They
possess at bottom a wonderful quality of goodness, of gentleness, of
simplicity, a remarkable instinct of reverence for that which is good
and beautiful, of respect for that which is weak. This instinct has
resisted, and will, let us hope, continue to resist, the influence of
injurious institutions founded exclusively upon individual selfishness
and the right of the strong hand. If you would understand the mildness
and the serenity which are natural to the Turk, you must observe the
peasant among his fields, or at the market, or on the threshold of a
cafe. Seedtime and harvest, the price of grain, the condition of his
family--these are the invariable topics of his simple childlike
conversation. He never raises his voice in anger, never lets drop a
pleasantry which might wound or even fatigue his companions, never
indulges in those profanities and indecencies unhappily too common in
the speech of the lower orders in European countries. This admirable
reticence, this nobility and simplicity of manner, do they owe it to
education? Not at all; it is the gift of nature. In some respects nature
has been very liberal to the Turkish people; but all the gifts she has
bestowed upon them, their institutions tend to debase and invalidate.
And in proportion as we carry our observations above the classes which
so happily preserve their primitive characteristics, to the
_bourgeoisie_, or into regions higher still, so shall we find the growth
and development of vice; it extends, predominates, and finally reigns
alone.
* * * * *
The peculiar interest and permanent value of the writings of the
Princess de Belgiojoso are due to the fact that they owe nothing to
received ideas. Moreover, she indulges in no conjectures regarding the
subjects she takes up, she has investigated them carefully, and
understands them thoroughly. In each page of her work upon Turkey we
meet with calm statements of established facts which overthrow the
speculations and fancies too often found in works of great popularity
from the pen of distinguished writers. It is the truth she speaks; and
her influence is all the greater because she makes no effort to convince
or impose upon her readers; she writes gravely and deliberately, without
passion and without imagination.
A few facts from the princess's pages will not be without interest for
the reader, at a time when "the unspeakable Turk" is the object of so
much public discussion.
* * * * *
"Passing through one of the streets of Pera (the European suburb), I was
arrested by a score of persons grouped round a _gavas_ (a kind of civic
guard) who was endeavouring to persuade a negress to be conducted to the
palace where she was expected, and where, he told her, she would meet
with all the pleasures imaginable. The negress answered only with sobs,
and the cry, 'Kill me rather!' The _gavas_ resumed his enthusiastic and
fanciful descriptions of the good bed, the good cheer, the fine clothes,
the pipe always alight, the floods of coffee, all the delights which
would convert this prison into a complete paradise. For half-an-hour I
listened to the discussion, and when I went on my way no decision had
been arrived at. I asked a kind of _valet de place_ who accompanied me,
why the _gavas_ lost his time in attempting to convince the negress,
instead of forcibly conveying her to her destination. 'A woman!' was his
answer, completely scandalized by my question, and I began to suspect
that the Turks were not such brutes as they are popularly supposed to be
in Europe."
* * * * *
"The following anecdote also relates to my residence at Constantinople.
A woman, a Marseillaise by birth but married to a Mussulman, was
engaged in a law-suit on some matter which I have forgotten; but I know
that her adversaries grounded their hopes and pretensions on a document
which they had placed in the judge's hands. Informed of this
circumstance, the Marseillaise repaired to the Cadi, and begged him to
acquaint her with its contents. Nothing could be more reasonable. The
Cadi took the paper, and prepared to read it to her; but he had scarcely
perched his glasses on his nose when the lady leaped forward, sprang at
his throat, seized the paper, put it in her pocket, made her obeisance,
and calmly passed out through the vestibule, which was filled with
slaves and servants. The Marseillaise defied her opponents to produce
any written document in their favour, and she won her cause. When this
story was told to me, I remarked that the judge must have been bribed by
the Marseillaise, since nothing could have been easier for him than, if
he wished it, to have her arrested by his guards, and deprived of the
paper which she had carried off with so much audacity. Again I received
the answer: 'But she was a woman!'"
* * * * *
Among female travellers the Princess of Belgiojoso must hold an
honourable place, in virtue of the accuracy of her observation and the
clearness of her judgment. Moreover, she is always impartial: she has no
preconceived theories to support, and consequently she is at liberty
neither to extenuate nor set down aught in malice. In picturesqueness of
description she has been excelled by many, in soberness and correctness
of statement by none; and, after all, it is more important that our
travellers should tell us what they have really seen, than what they
would have wished to see; should trust to their intelligence as
observers rather than to their fancy as poets.
* * * * *
_Note on the Harem, or Harum._--It is curious to compare with the
princess's disillusionizing account of a harem, such a poetical and
romantic description as the following, in which it becomes a bower of
beauty, tenanted by an Oriental Venus:--
* * * * *
"The lady of the harum--couched gracefully on a rich Persian carpet
strewn with soft billowy cushions--is as rich a picture as admiration
ever gazed on. Her eyes, if not as dangerous to the heart as those of
our country, where the sunshine of intellect gleams through a heaven of
blue, are, nevertheless, perfect in their kind, and at least as
dangerous to the senses. Languid, yet full, brimful of life; dark, yet
very lustrous; liquid, yet clear as stars; they are compared by their
poets to the shape of the almond and the bright timidness of the
gazelle. The face is delicately oval, and its shape is set off by the
gold-fringed turban, the most becoming head-dress in the world; the
long, black, silken tresses are braided from the forehead, and hang
wavily on each side of the face, falling behind in a glossy cataract,
that sparkles with such golden drops as might have glittered upon
Danae, after the Olympian shower. A light tunic of pink or pale blue
crape is covered with a long silk robe, open at the bosom, and buttoned
thence downward to the delicately slippered little feet, that peep
daintily from beneath the full silken trousers. Round the loins, rather
than the waist, a cashmere shawl is loosely wrapt as a girdle, and an
embroidered jacket, or a large silk robe with loose open sleeves,
completes the costume. Nor is the fragrant water-pipe, with its long
variegated serpent, and its jewelled mouth-piece, any detraction from
the portrait.
"Picture to yourself one of Eve's brightest daughters, in Eve's own
loving land. The woman-dealer has found among the mountains that
perfection in a living form which Praxiteles scarcely realized, when
inspired fancy wrought out its ideal in marble. Silken scarfs, as richly
coloured and as airy as the rainbow, wreathe her round, from the snowy
breast to the finely rounded limbs half buried in billowy cushions; the
attitude is the very poetry of repose, languid it may be, but glowing
life thrills beneath that flower-soft exterior, from the varying cheek
and flashing eye, to the henna-dyed taper fingers, that capriciously
play with her rosary of beads. The blaze of sunshine is round her kiosk,
but _she_ sits in the softened shadow so dear to the painter's eye. And
so she dreams away the warm hours in such a calm of thought within, and
sight or sound without, that she starts when the gold-fish gleam in the
fountain, or the breeze-ruffled roses shed a leaf upon her
bosom."--Eliot Warburton, "The Crescent and the Cross," etc. etc.
As European gentlemen are never admitted to the harem, it is hardly
credible that Major Warburton could have had an opportunity of seeing
the beauty which he paints in such glowing colours.
MADAME HOMMAIRE DE HELL.
I.
Not only as a persevering and enlightened traveller, but as a poet,
Madame Hommaire de Hell has gained distinction. It is in the former
capacity that she claims a place in these pages.
She was born at Artois, in 1819. While she was still an infant, her
mother died; but it was her good fortune to find in the love of an only
sister no inadequate substitute for maternal affection. Her father seems
to have been one of those individuals whom Fortune tosses to and fro
with pertinacious ill-humour; moreover, he had something of the nomad in
his temperament, and without any real or sufficient motive, moved from
place to place, entailing upon his young family sudden and burdensome
journeys. Before Adela was seven years old, she had been carried from
Franche-Comte into the Bourbonnais, thence into Auvergne, and thence to
Paris. She was afterwards placed in a boarding-school at Saint-Maude,
but her father's death restored her to her sister's guardianship at
Saint-Etienne.
A short time after her arrival in this town, she attracted the attention
of Xavier Hommaire de Hell, since so justly celebrated as a traveller
and a scientist. He fell passionately in love with her, and though she
was but fifteen years of age, and had no fortune, he rested not until
his family gave their consent to his marriage.
To provide for his child-wife he obtained an office in the railway
administration, but only temporarily, for already he had made up his
mind to seek fortune and reputation in some foreign country. He pushed
his solicitations with so much energy that, in the first year of his
wedded life, he secured an appointment under the Turkish Government. His
wife, to whom a child had just been given, was unable to accompany him.
The pain of separation was very great, but both knew that in France
there was no present opening for his talents, and both were agreed that
their separation should not be for long. And, indeed, before the end of
the year, Madame de Hell clasped her babe to her bosom, and set out to
join her husband.