CONSTANTINOPLE
When we arose at sunrise to see the famous entry to Constantinople, we
found, in the place of the city and the sun, a bright white fog, which
hid both from sight, and which only disappeared as the vessel advanced
towards the Golden Horn. There the fog cleared off as it were by
flakes, and as you see gauze curtains lifted away, one by one, before a
great fairy scene at the theatre. This will give idea enough of the
fog; the difficulty is to describe the scene afterwards, which was in
truth the great fairy scene, than which it is impossible to conceive
anything more brilliant and magnificent. I can’t go to any more
romantic place than Drury Lane to draw my similes from—Drury Lane, such
as we used to see it in our youth, when to our sight the grand last
pictures of the melodrama or pantomime were as magnificent as any
objects of nature we have seen with maturer eyes. Well, the view of
Constantinople is as fine as any of Stanfield’s best theatrical
pictures, seen at the best period of youth, when fancy had all the
bloom on her—when all the heroines who danced before the scene appeared
as ravishing beauties, when there shone an unearthly splendour about
Baker and Diddear—and the sound of the bugles and fiddles, and the
cheerful clang of the cymbals, as the scene unrolled, and the gorgeous
procession meandered triumphantly through it—caused a thrill of
pleasure, and awakened an innocent fulness of sensual enjoyment that is
only given to boys.
The above sentence contains the following propositions:- The enjoyments
of boyish fancy are the most intense and delicious in the world.
Stanfield’s panorama used to be the realisation of the most intense
youthful fancy. I puzzle my brains and find no better likeness for the
place. The view of Constantinople resembles the ne plus ultra of a
Stanfield diorama, with a glorious accompaniment of music, spangled
houris, warriors, and winding processions, feasting the eyes and the
soul with light, splendour, and harmony. If you were never in this way
during your youth ravished at the play-house, of course the whole
comparison is useless: and you have no idea, from this description, of
the effect which Constantinople produces on the mind. But if you were
never affected by a theatre, no words can work upon your fancy, and
typographical attempts to move it are of no use. For, suppose we
combine mosque, minaret, gold, cypress, water, blue, caiques,
seventy-four, Galata, Tophana, Ramazan, Backallum, and so forth,
together, in ever so many ways, your imagination will never be able to
depict a city out of them. Or, suppose I say the Mosque of St. Sophia
is four hundred and seventy-three feet in height, measuring from the
middle nail of the gilt crescent surmounting the dome to the ring in
the centre stone; the circle of the dome is one hundred and
twenty-three feet in diameter, the windows ninety-seven in number—and
all this may be true, for anything I know to the contrary: yet who is
to get an idea of St. Sophia from dates, proper names, and calculations
with a measuring-line? It can’t be done by giving the age and
measurement of all the buildings along the river, the names of all the
boatmen who ply on it. Has your fancy, which pooh-poohs a simile, faith
enough to build a city with a foot-rule? Enough said about descriptions
and similes (though whenever I am uncertain of one I am naturally most
anxious to fight for it): it is a scene not perhaps sublime, but
charming, magnificent, and cheerful beyond any I have ever seen—the
most superb combination of city and gardens, domes and shipping, hills
and water, with the healthiest breeze blowing over it, and above it the
brightest and most cheerful sky.
It is proper, they say, to be disappointed on entering the town, or any
of the various quarters of it, because the houses are not so
magnificent on inspection and seen singly as they are when beheld en
masse from the waters. But why form expectations so lofty? If you see a
group of peasants picturesquely disposed at a fair, you don’t suppose
that they are all faultless beauties, or that the men’s coats have no
rags, and the women’s gowns are made of silk and velvet: the wild
ugliness of the interior of Constantinople or Pera has a charm of its
own, greatly more amusing than rows of red bricks or drab stones,
however symmetrical. With brick or stone they could never form those
fantastic ornaments, railings, balconies, roofs, galleries, which jut
in and out of the rugged houses of the city. As we went from Galata to
Pera up a steep hill, which newcomers ascend with some difficulty, but
which a porter, with a couple of hundredweight on his back, paces up
without turning a hair, I thought the wooden houses far from being
disagreeable objects, sights quite as surprising and striking as the
grand one we had just left.
I do not know how the custom-house of His Highness is made to be a
profitable speculation. As I left the ship, a man pulled after my boat,
and asked for backsheesh, which was given him to the amount of about
twopence. He was a custom-house officer, but I doubt whether this sum
which he levied ever went to the revenue.
I can fancy the scene about the quays somewhat to resemble the river of
London in olden times, before coal-smoke had darkened the whole city
with soot, and when, according to the old writers, there really was
bright weather. The fleets of caiques bustling along the shore, or
scudding over the blue water, are beautiful to look at: in Hollar’s
print London river is so studded over with wherry- boats, which bridges
and steamers have since destroyed. Here the caique is still in full
perfection: there are thirty thousand boats of the kind plying between
the cities; every boat is neat, and trimly carved and painted; and I
scarcely saw a man pulling in one of them that was not a fine specimen
of his race, brawny and brown, with an open chest and a handsome face.
They wear a thin shirt of exceedingly light cotton, which leaves their
fine brown limbs full play; and with a purple sea for a background,
every one of these dashing boats forms a brilliant and glittering
picture. Passengers squat in the inside of the boat; so that as it
passes you see little more than the heads of the true believers, with
their red fez and blue tassel, and that placid gravity of expression
which the sucking of a tobacco-pipe is sure to give to a man.
The Bosphorus is enlivened by a multiplicity of other kinds of craft.
There are the dirty men-of-war’s boats of the Russians, with unwashed
mangy crews; the great ferry-boats carrying hundreds of passengers to
the villages; the melon-boats piled up with enormous golden fruit; His
Excellency the Pasha’s boat, with twelve men bending to their oars; and
His Highness’s own caique, with a head like a serpent, and
eight-and-twenty tugging oarsmen, that goes shooting by amidst the
thundering of the cannon. Ships and steamers, with black sides and
flaunting colours, are moored everywhere, showing their flags, Russian
and English, Austrian, American, and Greek; and along the quays country
ships from the Black Sea or the islands, with high carved poops and
bows, such as you see in the pictures of the shipping of the
seventeenth century. The vast groves and towers, domes and quays, tall
minarets and spired spreading mosques of the three cities, rise all
around in endless magnificence and variety, and render this
water-street a scene of such delightful liveliness and beauty, that one
never tires of looking at it. I lost a great number of the sights in
and round Constantinople through the beauty of this admirable scene:
but what are sights after all? and isn’t that the best sight which
makes you most happy?
We were lodged at Pera at Misseri’s Hotel, the host of which has been
made famous ere this time by the excellent book “Eothen,”—a work for
which all the passengers on board our ship had been battling, and which
had charmed all—from our great statesman, our polished lawyer, our
young Oxonian, who sighed over certain passages that he feared were
wicked, down to the writer of this, who, after perusing it with
delight, laid it down with wonder, exclaiming, “Aut Diabolus aut”—a
book which has since (greatest miracle of all) excited a feeling of
warmth and admiration in the bosom of the god-like, impartial, stony
Athenaeum. Misseri, the faithful and chivalrous Tartar, is transformed
into the most quiet and gentlemanlike of landlords, a great deal more
gentlemanlike in manner and appearance than most of us who sat at his
table, and smoked cool pipes on his house-top, as we looked over the
hill and the Russian palace to the water, and the Seraglio gardens
shining in the blue. We confronted Misseri, “Eothen” in hand, and
found, on examining him, that it WAS “aut Diabolus aut amicus”—but the
name is a secret; I will never breathe it, though I am dying to tell
it.
The last good description of a Turkish bath, I think, was Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu’s—which voluptuous picture must have been painted at
least a hundred and thirty years ago; so that another sketch may be
attempted by a humbler artist in a different manner. The Turkish bath
is certainly a novel sensation to an Englishman, and may be set down as
a most queer and surprising event of his life. I made the
valet-de-place or dragoman (it is rather a fine thing to have a
dragoman in one’s service) conduct me forthwith to the best appointed
hummums in the neighbourhood; and we walked to a house at Tophana, and
into a spacious hall lighted from above, which is the cooling-room of
the bath.
The spacious hall has a large fountain in the midst, a painted gallery
running round it; and many ropes stretched from one gallery to another,
ornamented with profuse draperies of towels and blue cloths, for the
use of the frequenters of the place. All round the room and the
galleries were matted inclosures, fitted with numerous neat beds and
cushions for reposing on, where lay a dozen of true believers smoking,
or sleeping, or in the happy half-dozing state. I was led up to one of
these beds, to rather a retired corner, in consideration of my modesty;
and to the next bed presently came a dancing dervish, who forthwith
began to prepare for the bath.
When the dancing dervish had taken off his yellow sugar-loaf cap, his
gown, shawl, &c., he was arrayed in two large blue cloths; a white one
being thrown over his shoulders, and another in the shape of a turban
plaited neatly round his head; the garments of which he divested
himself were folded up in another linen, and neatly put by. I beg leave
to state I was treated in precisely the same manner as the dancing
dervish.
The reverend gentleman then put on a pair of wooden pattens, which
elevated him about six inches from the ground; and walked down the
stairs, and paddled across the moist marble floor of the hall, and in
at a little door, by the which also Titmarsh entered. But I had none of
the professional agility of the dancing dervish; I staggered about very
ludicrously upon the high wooden pattens; and should have been down on
my nose several times, had not the dragoman and the master of the bath
supported me down the stairs and across the hall. Dressed in three
large cotton napkins, with a white turban round my head, I thought of
Pall Mall with a sort of despair. I passed the little door, it was
closed behind me—I was in the dark—I couldn’t speak the language—in a
white turban. Mon Dieu! what was going to happen?
The dark room was the tepidarium, a moist oozing arched den, with a
light faintly streaming from an orifice in the domed ceiling. Yells of
frantic laughter and song came booming and clanging through the echoing
arches, the doors clapped to with loud reverberations. It was the
laughter of the followers of Mahound, rollicking and taking their
pleasure in the public bath. I could not go into that place: I swore I
would not; they promised me a private room, and the dragoman left me.
My agony at parting from that Christian cannot be described.
When you get into the sudarium, or hot room, your first sensations only
occur about half a minute after entrance, when you feel that you are
choking. I found myself in that state, seated on a marble slab; the
bath man was gone; he had taken away the cotton turban and shoulder
shawl: I saw I was in a narrow room of marble, with a vaulted roof, and
a fountain of warm and cold water; the atmosphere was in a steam, the
choking sensation went off, and I felt a sort of pleasure presently in
a soft boiling simmer, which, no doubt, potatoes feel when they are
steaming. You are left in this state for about ten minutes: it is warm
certainly, but odd and pleasant, and disposes the mind to reverie.
But let any delicate mind in Baker Street fancy my horror when, on
looking up out of this reverie, I saw a great brown wretch extended
before me, only half dressed, standing on pattens, and exaggerated by
them and the steam until he looked like an ogre, grinning in the most
horrible way, and waving his arm, on which was a horsehair glove. He
spoke, in his unknown nasal jargon, words which echoed through the
arched room; his eyes seemed astonishingly large and bright, his ears
stuck out, and his head was all shaved, except a bristling top-knot,
which gave it a demoniac fierceness.
This description, I feel, is growing too frightful; ladies who read it
will be going into hysterics, or saying, “Well, upon my word, this is
the most singular, the most extraordinary kind of language. Jane, my
love, you will not read that odious book—” and so I will be brief. This
grinning man belabours the patient violently with the horse-brush. When
he has completed the horsehair part, and you lie expiring under a
squirting fountain of warm water, and fancying all is done, he
reappears with a large brass basin, containing a quantity of lather, in
the midst of which is something like old Miss MacWhirter’s flaxen wig
that she is so proud of, and that we have all laughed at. Just as you
are going to remonstrate, the thing like the wig is dashed into your
face and eyes, covered over with soap, and for five minutes you are
drowned in lather: you can’t see, the suds are frothing over your
eye-balls; you can’t hear, the soap is whizzing into your ears; can’t
gasp for breath, Miss MacWhirter’s wig is down your throat with half a
pailful of suds in an instant—you are all soap. Wicked children in
former days have jeered you, exclaiming, “How are you off for soap?”
You little knew what saponacity was till you entered a Turkish bath.
When the whole operation is concluded, you are led—with what heartfelt
joy I need not say—softly back to the cooling-room, having been robed
in shawls and turbans as before. You are laid gently on the reposing
bed; somebody brings a narghile, which tastes as tobacco must taste in
Mahomet’s Paradise; a cool sweet dreamy languor takes possession of the
purified frame; and half-an- hour of such delicious laziness is spent
over the pipe as is unknown in Europe, where vulgar prejudice has most
shamefully maligned indolence—calls it foul names, such as the father
of all evil, and the like; in fact, does not know how to educate
idleness as those honest Turks do, and the fruit which, when properly
cultivated, it bears.
The after-bath state is the most delightful condition of laziness I
ever knew, and I tried it wherever we went afterwards on our little
tour. At Smyrna the whole business was much inferior to the method
employed in the capital. At Cairo, after the soap, you are plunged into
a sort of stone coffin, full of water which is all but boiling. This
has its charms; but I could not relish the Egyptian shampooing. A
hideous old blind man (but very dexterous in his art) tried to break my
back and dislocate my shoulders, but I could not see the pleasure of
the practice; and another fellow began tickling the soles of my feet,
but I rewarded him with a kick that sent him off the bench. The pure
idleness is the best, and I shall never enjoy such in Europe again.
Victor Hugo, in his famous travels on the Rhine, visiting Cologne,
gives a learned account of what he DIDN’T see there. I have a
remarkable catalogue of similar objects at Constantinople. I didn’t see
the dancing dervishes, it was Ramazan; nor the howling dervishes at
Scutari, it was Ramazan; nor the interior of St. Sophia, nor the
women’s apartment of the Seraglio, nor the fashionable promenade at the
Sweet Waters, always because it was Ramazan; during which period the
dervishes dance and howl but rarely, their legs and lungs being unequal
to much exertion during a fast of fifteen hours. On account of the same
holy season, the Royal palaces and mosques are shut; and though the
Valley of the Sweet Waters is there, no one goes to walk; the people
remaining asleep all day, and passing the night in feasting and
carousing. The minarets are illuminated at this season; even the
humblest mosque at Jerusalem, or Jaffa, mounted a few circles of dingy
lamps; those of the capital were handsomely lighted with many festoons
of lamps, which had a fine effect from the water. I need not mention
other and constant illuminations of the city, which innumerable
travellers have described—I mean the fires. There were three in Pera
during our eight days’ stay there; but they did not last long enough to
bring the Sultan out of bed to come and lend his aid. Mr. Hobhouse
(quoted in the “Guide-book”) says, if a fire lasts an hour, the Sultan
is bound to attend it in person; and that people having petitions to
present, have often set houses on fire for the purpose of forcing out
this Royal trump. The Sultan can’t lead a very “jolly life,” if this
rule be universal. Fancy His Highness, in the midst of his moon-faced
beauties, handkerchief in hand, and obliged to tie it round his face,
and go out of his warm harem at midnight at the cursed cry of “Yang en
Var!”
We saw His Highness in the midst of his people and their petitions,
when he came to the mosque at Tophana; not the largest, but one of the
most picturesque of the public buildings of the city. The streets were
crowded with people watching for the august arrival, and lined with the
squat military in their bastard European costume; the sturdy police,
with bandeliers and brown surtouts, keeping order, driving off the
faithful from the railings of the Esplanade through which their Emperor
was to pass, and only admitting (with a very unjust partiality, I
thought) us Europeans into that reserved space. Before the august
arrival, numerous officers collected, colonels and pashas went by with
their attendant running footmen; the most active, insolent, and hideous
of these great men, as I thought, being His Highness’s black eunuchs,
who went prancing through the crowd, which separated before them with
every sign of respect.
The common women were assembled by many hundreds: the yakmac, a muslin
chin-cloth which they wear, makes almost every face look the same; but
the eyes and noses of these beauties are generally visible, and, for
the most part, both these features are good. The jolly negresses wear
the same white veil, but they are by no means so particular about
hiding the charms of their good-natured black faces, and they let the
cloth blow about as it lists, and grin unconfined. Wherever we went the
negroes seemed happy. They have the organ of child-loving: little
creatures were always prattling on their shoulders, queer little things
in night gowns of yellow dimity, with great flowers, and pink or red or
yellow shawls, with great eyes glistening underneath. Of such the black
women seemed always the happy guardians. I saw one at a fountain,
holding one child in her arms, and giving another a drink—a ragged
little beggar—a sweet and touching picture of a black charity.
I am almost forgetting His Highness the Sultan. About a hundred guns
were fired off at clumsy intervals from the Esplanade facing the
Bosphorus, warning us that the monarch had set off from his Summer
Palace, and was on the way to his grand canoe. At last that vessel made
its appearance; the band struck up his favourite air; his caparisoned
horse was led down to the shore to receive him; the eunuchs, fat
pashas, colonels and officers of state gathering round as the Commander
of the Faithful mounted. I had the indescribable happiness of seeing
him at a very short distance. The Padishah, or Father of all the
Sovereigns on earth, has not that majestic air which some sovereigns
possess, and which makes the beholder’s eyes wink, and his knees
tremble under him: he has a black beard, and a handsome well-bred face,
of a French cast; he looks like a young French roue worn out by
debauch; his eyes bright, with black rings round them; his cheeks pale
and hollow. He was lolling on his horse as if he could hardly hold
himself on the saddle: or as if his cloak, fastened with a blazing
diamond clasp on his breast, and falling over his horse’s tail, pulled
him back. But the handsome sallow face of the Refuge of the World
looked decidedly interesting and intellectual. I have seen many a young
Don Juan at Paris, behind a counter, with such a beard and countenance;
the flame of passion still burning in his hollow eyes, while on his
damp brow was stamped the fatal mark of premature decay. The man we saw
cannot live many summers. Women and wine are said to have brought the
Zilullah to this state; and it is whispered by the dragomans, or
laquais-de-place (from whom travellers at Constantinople generally get
their political information), that the Sultan’s mother and his
ministers conspire to keep him plunged in sensuality, that they may
govern the kingdom according to their own fancies. Mr. Urquhart, I am
sure, thinks that Lord Palmerston has something to do with the
business, and drugs the Sultan’s champagne for the benefit of Russia.
As the Pontiff of Mussulmans passed into the mosques a shower of
petitions was flung from the steps where the crowd was collected, and
over the heads of the gendarmes in brown. A general cry, as for
justice, rose up; and one old ragged woman came forward and burst
through the throng, howling, and flinging about her lean arms, and
baring her old shrunken breast. I never saw a finer action of tragic
woo, or heard sounds more pitiful than those old passionate groans of
hers. What was your prayer, poor old wretched soul? The gendarmes
hemmed her round, and hustled her away, but rather kindly. The Padishah
went on quite impassible—the picture of debauch and ennui.
I like pointing morals, and inventing for myself cheap consolations, to
reconcile me to that state of life into which it has pleased Heaven to
call me; and as the Light of the World disappeared round the corner, I
reasoned pleasantly with myself about His Highness, and enjoyed that
secret selfish satisfaction a man has, who sees he is better off than
his neighbour. “Michael Angelo,” I said, “you are still (by courtesy)
young: if you had five hundred thousand a year, and were a great
prince, I would lay a wager that men would discover in you a
magnificent courtesy of demeanour, and a majestic presence that only
belongs to the sovereigns of the world. If you had such an income, you
think you could spend it with splendour: distributing genial
hospitalities, kindly alms, soothing misery, bidding humility be of
good heart, rewarding desert. If you had such means of purchasing
pleasure, you think, you rogue, you could relish it with gusto. But
fancy being brought to the condition of the poor Light of the Universe
yonder; and reconcile yourself with the idea that you are only a
farthing rushlight. The cries of the poor widow fall as dead upon him
as the smiles of the brightest eyes out of Georgia. He can’t stir
abroad but those abominable cannon begin roaring and deafening his
ears. He can’t see the world but over the shoulders of a row of fat
pashas, and eunuchs, with their infernal ugliness. His ears can never
be regaled with a word of truth, or blessed with an honest laugh. The
only privilege of manhood left to him, he enjoys but for a month in the
year, at this time of Ramazan, when he is forced to fast for fifteen
hours; and, by consequence, has the blessing of feeling hungry.” Sunset
during Lent appears to be his single moment of pleasure; they say the
poor fellow is ravenous by that time, and as the gun fires the
dish-covers are taken off, so that for five minutes a day he lives and
is happy over pillau, like another mortal.
And yet, when floating by the Summer Palace, a barbaric edifice of wood
and marble, with gilded suns blazing over the porticoes, and all sorts
of strange ornaments and trophies figuring on the gates and
railings—when we passed a long row of barred and filigreed windows,
looking on the water—when we were told that those were the apartments
of His Highness’s ladies, and actually heard them whispering and
laughing behind the bars—a strange feeling of curiosity came over some
ill-regulated minds—just to have one peep, one look at all those
wondrous beauties, singing to the dulcimers, paddling in the fountains,
dancing in the marble halls, or lolling on the golden cushions, as the
gaudy black slaves brought pipes and coffee. This tumultuous movement
was calmed by thinking of that dreadful statement of travellers, that
in one of the most elegant halls there is a trap-door, on peeping below
which you may see the Bosphorus running underneath, into which some
luckless beauty is plunged occasionally, and the trap-door is shut, and
the dancing and the singing, and the smoking and the laughing go on as
before. They say it is death to pick up any of the sacks thereabouts,
if a stray one should float by you. There were none any day when I
passed, AT LEAST, ON THE SURFACE OF THE WATER.
It has been rather a fashion of our travellers to apologise for Turkish
life, of late, and paint glowing agreeable pictures of many of its
institutions. The celebrated author of “Palm-Leaves” (his name is
famous under the date-trees of the Nile, and uttered with respect
beneath the tents of the Bedaween) has touchingly described Ibrahim
Pasha’s paternal fondness, who cut off a black slave’s head for having
dropped and maimed one of his children; and has penned a melodious
panegyric of “The Harem,” and of the fond and beautiful duties of the
inmates of that place of love, obedience, and seclusion. I saw, at the
mausoleum of the late Sultan Mahmoud’s family, a good subject for a
Ghazul, in the true new Oriental manner.
These Royal burial-places are the resort of the pious Moslems. Lamps
are kept burning there; and in the antechambers, copies of the Koran
are provided for the use of believers; and you never pass these
cemeteries but you see Turks washing at the cisterns, previous to
entering for prayer, or squatted on the benches, chanting passages from
the sacred volume. Christians, I believe, are not admitted, but may
look through the bars, and see the coffins of the defunct monarchs and
children of the Royal race. Each lies in his narrow sarcophagus, which
is commonly flanked by huge candles, and covered with a rich
embroidered pall. At the head of each coffin rises a slab, with a
gilded inscription; for the princesses, the slab is simple, not unlike
our own monumental stones. The headstones of the tombs of the defunct
princes are decorated with a turban, or, since the introduction of the
latter article of dress, with the red fez. That of Mahmoud is decorated
with the imperial aigrette.
In this dismal but splendid museum, I remarked two little tombs with
little red fezzes, very small, and for very young heads evidently,
which were lying under the little embroidered palls of state. I forget
whether they had candles too; but their little flame of life was soon
extinguished, and there was no need of many pounds of wax to typify it.
These were the tombs of Mahmoud’s grandsons, nephews of the present
Light of the Universe, and children of his sister, the wife of Halil
Pasha. Little children die in all ways: these of the much-maligned
Mahometan Royal race perished by the bowstring. Sultan Mahmoud (may he
rest in glory!) strangled the one; but, having some spark of human
feeling, was so moved by the wretchedness and agony of the poor
bereaved mother, his daughter, that his Royal heart relented towards
her, and he promised that, should she ever have another child, it
should be allowed to live. He died; and Abdul Medjid (may his name be
blessed!), the debauched young man whom we just saw riding to the
mosque, succeeded. His sister, whom he is said to have loved, became
again a mother, and had a son. But she relied upon her father’s word
and her august brother’s love, and hoped that this little one should be
spared. The same accursed hand tore this infant out of its mother’s
bosom, and killed it. The poor woman’s heart broke outright at this
second calamity, and she died. But on her death-bed she sent for her
brother, rebuked him as a perjurer and an assassin, and expired calling
down the divine justice on his head. She lies now by the side of the
two little fezzes.
Now I say this would be a fine subject for an Oriental poem. The
details are dramatic and noble, and could be grandly touched by a fine
artist. If the mother had borne a daughter, the child would have been
safe; that perplexity might be pathetically depicted as agitating the
bosom of the young wife about to become a mother. A son is born: you
can see her despair and the pitiful look she casts on the child, and
the way in which she hugs it every time the curtains of her door are
removed. The Sultan hesitated probably; he allowed the infant to live
for six weeks. He could not bring his Royal soul to inflict pain. He
yields at last; he is a martyr- -to be pitied, not to be blamed. If he
melts at his daughter’s agony, he is a man and a father. There are men
and fathers too in the much-maligned Orient.
Then comes the second act of the tragedy. The new hopes, the fond
yearnings, the terrified misgivings, the timid belief, and weak
confidence; the child that is born—and dies smiling prettily—and the
mother’s heart is rent so, that it can love, or hope, or suffer no
more. Allah is God! She sleeps by the little fezzes. Hark! the guns are
booming over the water, and His Highness is coming from his prayers.
After the murder of that little child, it seems to me one can never
look with anything but horror upon the butcherly Herod who ordered it.
The death of the seventy thousand Janissaries ascends to historic
dignity, and takes rank as war. But a great Prince and Light of the
Universe, who procures abortions and throttles little babies, dwindles
away into such a frightful insignificance of crime, that those may
respect him who will. I pity their Excellencies the Ambassadors, who
are obliged to smirk and cringe to such a rascal. To do the Turks
justice—and two days’ walk in Constantinople will settle this fact as
well as a year’s residence in the city—the people do not seem in the
least animated by this Herodian spirit. I never saw more kindness to
children than among all classes, more fathers walking about with little
solemn Mahometans in red caps and big trousers, more business going on
than in the toy quarter, and in the Atmeidan. Although you may see
there the Thebaic stone set up by the Emperor Theodosius, and the
bronze column of serpents which Murray says was brought from Delphi,
but which my guide informed me was the very one exhibited by Moses in
the wilderness, yet I found the examination of these antiquities much
less pleasant than to look at the many troops of children assembled on
the plain to play; and to watch them as they were dragged about in
little queer arobas, or painted carriages, which are there kept for
hire. I have a picture of one of them now in my eyes: a little green
oval machine, with flowers rudely painted round the window, out of
which two smiling heads are peeping, the pictures of happiness. An old,
good-humoured, grey- bearded Turk is tugging the cart; and behind it
walks a lady in a yakmac and yellow slippers, and a black female slave,
grinning as usual, towards whom the little coach-riders are looking. A
small sturdy barefooted Mussulman is examining the cart with some
feelings of envy: he is too poor to purchase a ride for himself and the
round-faced puppy-dog, which he is hugging in his arms as young ladies
in our country do dolls.
All the neighbourhood of the Atmeidan is exceedingly picturesque— the
mosque court and cloister, where the Persians have their stalls of
sweetmeats and tobacco; a superb sycamore-tree grows in the middle of
this, overshadowing an aromatic fountain; great flocks of pigeons are
settling in corners of the cloister, and barley is sold at the gates,
with which the good-natured people feed them. From the Atmeidan you
have a fine view of St. Sophia: and here stands a mosque which struck
me as being much more picturesque and sumptuous—the Mosque of Sultan
Achmed, with its six gleaming white minarets and its beautiful courts
and trees. Any infidels may enter the court without molestation, and,
looking through the barred windows of the mosque, have a view of its
airy and spacious interior. A small audience of women was collected
there when I looked in, squatted on the mats, and listening to a
preacher, who was walking among them, and speaking with great energy.
My dragoman interpreted to me the sense of a few words of his sermon:
he was warning them of the danger of gadding about to public places,
and of the immorality of too much talking; and, I dare say, we might
have had more valuable information from him regarding the follies of
womankind, had not a tall Turk clapped my interpreter on the shoulder,
and pointed him to be off.
Although the ladies are veiled, and muffled with the ugliest dresses in
the world, yet it appears their modesty is alarmed in spite of all the
coverings which they wear. One day, in the bazaar, a fat old body, with
diamond rings on her fingers, that were tinged with henne of a logwood
colour, came to the shop where I was purchasing slippers, with her son,
a young Aga of six years of age, dressed in a braided frock-coat, with
a huge tassel to his fez, exceeding fat, and of a most solemn
demeanour. The young Aga came for a pair of shoes, and his contortions
were so delightful as he tried them, that I remained looking on with
great pleasure, wishing for Leech to be at hand to sketch his lordship
and his fat mamma, who sat on the counter. That lady fancied I was
looking at her, though, as far as I could see, she had the figure and
complexion of a roly-poly pudding; and so, with quite a premature
bashfulness, she sent me a message by the shoemaker, ordering me to
walk away if I had made my purchases, for that ladies of her rank did
not choose to be stared at by strangers; and I was obliged to take my
leave, though with sincere regret, for the little lord had just
squeezed himself into an attitude than which I never saw anything more
ludicrous in General Tom Thumb. When the ladies of the Seraglio come to
that bazaar with their cortege of infernal black eunuchs, strangers are
told to move on briskly. I saw a bevy of about eight of these, with
their aides-de-camp; but they were wrapped up, and looked just as
vulgar and ugly as the other women, and were not, I suppose, of the
most beautiful sort. The poor devils are allowed to come out,
half-a-dozen times in the year, to spend their little wretched
allowance of pocket-money in purchasing trinkets and tobacco; all the
rest of the time they pursue the beautiful duties of their existence in
the walls of the sacred harem.
Though strangers are not allowed to see the interior of the cage in
which these birds of Paradise are confined, yet many parts of the
Seraglio are free to the curiosity of visitors, who choose to drop a
backsheesh here and there. I landed one morning at the Seraglio point
from Galata, close by an ancient pleasure-house of the defunct Sultan;
a vast broad-brimmed pavilion, that looks agreeable enough to be a
dancing room for ghosts now: there is another summer-house, the
Guide-book cheerfully says, whither the Sultan goes to sport with his
women and mutes. A regiment of infantry, with their music at their
head, were marching to exercise in the outer grounds of the Seraglio;
and we followed them, and had an opportunity of seeing their
evolutions, and hearing their bands, upon a fine green plain under the
Seraglio walls, where stands one solitary column, erected in memory of
some triumph of some Byzantian emperor.
There were three battalions of the Turkish infantry, exercising here;
and they seemed to perform their evolutions in a very satisfactory
manner: that is, they fired all together, and charged and halted in
very straight lines, and bit off imaginary cartridge- tops with great
fierceness and regularity, and made all their ramrods ring to measure,
just like so many Christians. The men looked small, young, clumsy, and
ill-built; uncomfortable in their shabby European clothes; and about
the legs, especially, seemed exceedingly weak and ill-formed. Some
score of military invalids were lolling in the sunshine, about a
fountain and a marble summer- house that stand on the ground, watching
their comrades’ manoeuvres (as if they could never have enough of that
delightful pastime); and these sick were much better cared for than
their healthy companions. Each man had two dressing-gowns, one of white
cotton, and an outer wrapper of warm brown woollen. Their heads were
accommodated with wadded cotton nightcaps; and it seemed to me, from
their condition and from the excellent character of the military
hospitals, that it would be much more wholesome to be ill than to be
well in the Turkish service.
Facing this green esplanade, and the Bosphorus shining beyond it, rise
the great walls of the outer Seraglio Gardens: huge masses of ancient
masonry, over which peep the roofs of numerous kiosks and outhouses,
amongst thick evergreens, planted so as to hide the beautiful
frequenters of the place from the prying eyes and telescopes. We could
not catch a glance of a single figure moving in these great
pleasure-grounds. The road winds round the walls; and the outer park,
which is likewise planted with trees, and diversified by garden-plots
and cottages, had more the air of the outbuildings of a homely English
park, than of a palace which we must all have imagined to be the most
stately in the world. The most commonplace water-carts were passing
here and there; roads were being repaired in the Macadamite manner; and
carpenters were mending the park-palings, just as they do in Hampshire.
The next thing you might fancy would be the Sultan walking out with a
spud and a couple of dogs, on the way to meet the post-bag and the
Saint James’s Chronicle.
The palace is no palace at all. It is a great town of pavilions, built
without order, here and there, according to the fancy of succeeding
Lights of the Universe, or their favourites. The only row of domes
which looked particularly regular or stately, were the kitchens. As you
examined the buildings they had a ruinous dilapidated look: they are
not furnished, it is said, with particular splendour,—not a bit more
elegantly than Miss Jones’s seminary for young ladies, which we may be
sure is much more comfortable than the extensive establishment of His
Highness Abdul Medjid.
In the little stable I thought to see some marks of Royal magnificence,
and some horses worthy of the king of all kings. But the Sultan is said
to be a very timid horseman: the animal that is always kept saddled for
him did not look to be worth twenty pounds; and the rest of the horses
in the shabby dirty stalls were small, ill-kept, common-looking brutes.
You might see better, it seemed to me, at a country inn stable on any
market-day.
The kitchens are the most sublime part of the Seraglio. There are nine
of these great halls, for all ranks, from His Highness downwards, where
many hecatombs are roasted daily, according to the accounts, and where
cooking goes on with a savage Homeric grandeur. Chimneys are despised
in these primitive halls; so that the roofs are black with the smoke of
hundreds of furnaces, which escapes through apertures in the domes
above. These, too, give the chief light in the rooms, which streams
downwards, and thickens and mingles with the smoke, and so murkily
lights up hundreds of swarthy figures busy about the spits and the
cauldrons. Close to the door by which we entered they were making
pastry for the sultanas; and the chief pastrycook, who knew my guide,
invited us courteously to see the process, and partake of the
delicacies prepared for those charming lips. How those sweet lips must
shine after eating these puffs! First, huge sheets of dough are rolled
out till the paste is about as thin as silver paper: then an artist
forms the dough-muslin into a sort of drapery, curling it round and
round in many fanciful and pretty shapes, until it is all got into the
circumference of a round metal tray in which it is baked. Then the cake
is drenched in grease most profusely; and, finally, a quantity of syrup
is poured over it, when the delectable mixture is complete. The
moon-faced ones are said to devour immense quantities of this wholesome
food; and, in fact, are eating grease and sweetmeats from morning till
night. I don’t like to think what the consequences may be, or allude to
the agonies which the delicate creatures must inevitably suffer.
The good-natured chief pastrycook filled a copper basin with greasy
puffs; and, dipping a dubious ladle into a large cauldron, containing
several gallons of syrup, poured a liberal portion over the cakes, and
invited us to eat. One of the tarts was quite enough for me: and I
excused myself on the plea of ill-health from imbibing any more grease
and sugar. But my companion, the dragoman, finished some forty puffs in
a twinkling. They slipped down his opened jaws as the sausages do down
clowns’ throats in a pantomime. His moustaches shone with grease, and
it dripped down his beard and fingers. We thanked the smiling chief
pastrycook, and rewarded him handsomely for the tarts. It is something
to have eaten of the dainties prepared for the ladies of the harem; but
I think Mr. Cockle ought to get the names of the chief sultanas among
the exalted patrons of his antibilious pills.
From the kitchens we passed into the second court of the Seraglio,
beyond which is death. The Guide-book only hints at the dangers which
would befall a stranger caught prying in the mysterious FIRST court of
the palace. I have read “Bluebeard,” and don’t care for peeping into
forbidden doors; so that the second court was quite enough for me; the
pleasure of beholding it being heightened, as it were, by the notion of
the invisible danger sitting next door, with uplifted scimitar ready to
fall on you—present though not seen.
A cloister runs along one side of this court; opposite is the hall of
the divan, “large but low, covered with lead, and gilt, after the
Moorish manner, plain enough.” The Grand Vizier sits in this place, and
the ambassadors used to wait here, and be conducted hence on horseback,
attired with robes of honour. But the ceremony is now, I believe,
discontinued; the English envoy, at any rate, is not allowed to receive
any backsheesh, and goes away as he came, in the habit of his own
nation. On the right is a door leading into the interior of the
Seraglio; NONE PASS THROUGH IT BUT SUCH AS ARE SENT FOR, the Guide-book
says: it is impossible to top the terror of that description.
About this door lads and servants were lolling, ichoglans and pages,
with lazy looks and shabby dresses; and among them, sunning himself
sulkily on a bench, a poor old fat, wrinkled, dismal white eunuch, with
little fat white hands, and a great head sunk into his chest, and two
sprawling little legs that seemed incapable to hold up his bloated old
body. He squeaked out some surly reply to my friend the dragoman, who,
softened and sweetened by the tarts he had just been devouring, was, no
doubt, anxious to be polite: and the poor worthy fellow walked away
rather crestfallen at this return of his salutation, and hastened me
out of the place.
The palace of the Seraglio, the cloister with marble pillars, the hall
of the ambassadors, the impenetrable gate guarded by eunuchs and
ichoglans, have a romantic look in print; but not so in reality. Most
of the marble is wood, almost all the gilding is faded, the guards are
shabby, the foolish perspectives painted on the walls are half cracked
off. The place looks like Vauxhall in the daytime.
We passed out of the second court under THE SUBLIME PORTE—which is like
a fortified gate of a German town of the middle ages—into the outer
court, round which are public offices, hospitals, and dwellings of the
multifarious servants of the palace. This place is very wide and
picturesque: there is a pretty church of Byzantine architecture at the
further end; and in the midst of the court a magnificent plane-tree, of
prodigious dimensions and fabulous age according to the guides; St.
Sophia towers in the further distance: and from here, perhaps, is the
best view of its light swelling domes and beautiful proportions. The
Porte itself, too, forms an excellent subject for the sketcher, if the
officers of the court will permit him to design it. I made the attempt,
and a couple of Turkish beadles looked on very good-naturedly for some
time at the progress of the drawing; but a good number of other
spectators speedily joined them, and made a crowd, which is not
permitted, it would seem, in the Seraglio; so I was told to pack up my
portfolio, and remove the cause of the disturbance, and lost my drawing
of the Ottoman Porte.
I don’t think I have anything more to say about the city which has not
been much better told by graver travellers. I, with them, could see
(perhaps it was the preaching of the politicians that warned me of the
fact) that we are looking on at the last days of an empire; and heard
many stories of weakness, disorder, and oppression. I even saw a
Turkish lady drive up to Sultan Achmet’s mosque IN A BROUGHAM. Is not
that a subject to moralise upon? And might one not draw endless
conclusions from it, that the knell of the Turkish dominion is rung;
that the European spirit and institutions once admitted can never be
rooted out again; and that the scepticism prevalent amongst the higher
orders must descend ere very long to the lower; and the cry of the
muezzin from the mosque become a mere ceremony?
But as I only stayed eight days in this place, and knew not a syllable
of the language, perhaps it is as well to pretermit any disquisitions
about the spirit of the people. I can only say that they looked to be
very good-natured, handsome, and lazy; that the women’s yellow slippers
are very ugly; that the kabobs at the shop hard by the Rope Bazaar are
very hot and good; and that at the Armenian cookshops they serve you
delicious fish, and a stout raisin wine of no small merit. There came
in, as we sat and dined there at sunset, a good old Turk, who called
for a penny fish, and sat down under a tree very humbly, and ate it
with his own bread. We made that jolly old Mussulman happy with a quart
of the raisin wine; and his eyes twinkled with every fresh glass, and
he wiped his old beard delighted, and talked and chirped a good deal,
and, I dare say, told us the whole state of the empire. He was the only
Mussulman with whom I attained any degree of intimacy during my stay in
Constantinople; and you will see that, for obvious reasons, I cannot
divulge the particulars of our conversation.
“You have nothing to say, and you own it,” says somebody: “then why
write?” That question perhaps (between ourselves) I have put likewise;
and yet, my dear sir, there are SOME things worth remembering even in
this brief letter: that woman in the brougham is an idea of
significance: that comparison of the Seraglio to Vauxhall in the
daytime is a true and real one; from both of which your own great soul
and ingenious philosophic spirit may draw conclusions, that I myself
have modestly forborne to press. You are too clever to require a moral
to be tacked to all the fables you read, as is done for children in the
spelling-books; else I would tell you that the government of the
Ottoman Porte seems to be as rotten, as wrinkled, and as feeble as the
old eunuch I saw crawling about it in the sun; that when the lady drove
up in a brougham to Sultan Achmet, I felt that the schoolmaster was
really abroad; and that the crescent will go out before that luminary,
as meekly as the moon does before the sun.