Town life.--The public offices.--Manners half-Oriental
half-European.--Merchants and Tradesmen.--Turkish
population.--Porters.--Barbers.--Cafes.--Public Writer.
On passing from the country to the town the politician views with
interest the transitional state of society: but the student of manners
finds nothing salient, picturesque, or remarkable; everything is
verging to German routine. If you meet a young man in any department,
and ask what he does; he tells you that he is a Concepist or
Protocollist.
In the public offices, the paper is, as in Germany, atrociously
coarse, being something like that with which parcels are wrapped up in
England; and sand is used instead of blotting paper. They commence
business early in the morning, at eight o'clock, and go on till
twelve, at which hour everybody goes to the mid-day meal. They
commence again at four o'clock, and terminate at seven, which is the
hour of supper. The reason of this is, that almost everybody takes a
siesta.
The public offices throughout the interior of Servia are plain houses,
with white-washed walls, deal desks, shelves, and presses, but having
been recently built, have generally a respectable appearance. The
Chancery of State and Senate house are also quite new constructions,
close to the palace; but in the country, a Natchalnik transacts a
great deal of business in his own house.
Servia contains within itself the forms of the East and the West, as
separately and distinctly as possible. See a Natchalnik in the back
woods squatted on his divan, with his enormous trowsers, smoking his
pipe, and listening to the contents of a paper, which his secretary,
crouching and kneeling on the carpet, reads to him, and you have the
Bey, the Kaimacam, or the Mutsellim before you. See M. Petronievitch
scribbling in his cabinet, and you have the _Furstlicher
Haus-Hof-Staats-und Conferenz-Minister_ of the meridian of Saxe or
Hesse.
Servia being an agricultural country, and not possessing a sea-port,
there does not exist an influential, mercantile, or capitalist class
_per se_. Greeks, Jews, and Tsinsars, form a considerable proportion
of those engaged in the foreign trade: it is to be remarked that most
of this class are secret adherents of the Obrenovitch party, while the
wealthy native Servians support Kara Georgevitch.
In Belgrade, the best tradesmen are Germans, or Servians, who have
learned their business at Pesth; or Temeswar; but nearly all the
retailers are Servians.
Having treated so fully the aspects and machinery of Oriental life, in
my work on native society in Damascus and Aleppo, it is not necessary
that I should say here any thing of Moslem manners and customs. The
Turks in Belgrade are nearly all of a very poor class, and follow the
humblest occupations. The river navigation causes many hands to be
employed in boating; and it always seemed to me that the proportion
of the turbans on the river exceeded that of the Christian short fez.
Most of the porters on the quay of Belgrade are Turks in their
turbans, which gives the landing-place, on arrival from Semlin, a more
Oriental look than the Moslem population of the town warrants. From
the circumstance of trucks being nearly unknown in this country, these
Turkish porters carry weights that would astonish an Englishman, and
show great address in balancing and dividing heavy weights among them.
Most of the barbers in Belgrade are Turks, and have that superior
dexterity which distinguishes their craft in the east. There are also
Christian barbers; but the Moslems are in greater force. I never saw
any Servian shave himself; nearly all resort to the barber. Even the
Christian barbers, in imitation of the Oriental fashion, shave the
straggling edges of the eyebrows, and with pincers tug out the small
hairs of the nostrils.
The native _cafes_ are nearly all kept by Moslems; one, as I have
stated elsewhere, by an Arab, born in Oude in India; another by a
Jew, which is frequented by the children of Israel, and is very dirty.
I once went in to smoke a narghile, and see the place, but made my
escape forthwith. Several Jews, who spoke Spanish to each other, were
playing backgammon on a raised bench, and seemed to have in their furs
and dresses that "_malproprete profonde et huileuse_" which M. de
Custine tells us characterizes the dirt of the north as contrasted
with that of the southern nations. The _cafe_ of the Indian, on the
contrary, was perfectly clean and new.
Moslem boatmen, porters, barbers, &c. serve Christians and all and
sundry. But in addition to these, there is a sort of bazaar in the
Turkish quarter, occupied by tradespeople, who subsist almost
exclusively by the wants of their co-religionists living in the
quarter, as well as of the Turkish garrison in the fortress. The only
one of this class who frequented me, was the public writer, who had
several assistants; he was not a native of Belgrade, but a Bulgarian
Turk from Ternovo. He drew up petitions to the Pasha in due form, and,
moreover, engraved seals very neatly. His assistants, when not
engaged in either of these occupations, copied Korans for sale. His
own handwriting was excellent, and he knew all the styles, Arab,
Deewanee, Persian, Reka, &c. What keeps him mostly in my mind, was the
delight with which he entered into, and illustrated, the proverbs at
the end of M. Joubert's grammar, which the secretary of the Russian
Consul-general had lent him. Some of the proverbs are so applicable to
Oriental manners, that I hope the reader will excuse the digression.
"Kiss the hand thou hast not been able to cut."
"Hide thy friend's name from thine enemy."
"Eat and drink with thy friend; never buy and sell with him."
"This is a fast day, said the cat, seeing the liver she could not get
at."
"Of three things one--Power, gold, or quit the town."
"The candle does not light its base."
"The orphan cuts his own navel-string," &c.
The rural population of Servia must necessarily advance slowly, but
each five years, for a generation to come, will,--I have little
doubt,--alter the aspect of the town population, as much relatively
as the five that are by-gone. Let the lines of railway now in progress
from Belgium to Hungary be completed, and Belgrade may again become a
stage in the high road to the East. A line by the valleys of the
Morava and the Maritsa, with its large towns, Philippopoli and
Adrianople, is certainly not more chimerical and absurd than many that
are now projected. Who can doubt of its _ultimate_ accomplishment, in
spite of the alternate precipitancy and prostration of enterprise?
Meanwhile imagination loses itself in attempting to picture the
altered face of affairs in these secluded regions, when subjected to
the operation of a revolution, which posterity will pronounce to be
greater than those which made the fifteenth century the morning of the
just terminated period of civilization.