Unerring Detection of Foreigners—A Cargo of Odalisques—The
Fanar, or Quarter of the Greeks—Street of the
Booksellers—Aspect of Antiquity—Purchases—Charity for Dogs
and Pigeons—Punishment of Canicide—A Bridal
Procession—Turkish Female Physiognomy.
Pulling up the Golden Horn to-day in a caique without any definite
errand (a sort of excursion particularly after my own heart), I was
amused at the caikjee’s asking my companion, who shaves clean like a
Christian, and has his clothes from Regent-street, and looks for aught I
can see, as much like a foreigner in Constantinople as myself, “in what
vessel I had arrived.” We asked him if he had ever seen either of us
before. “No!” How then did he know that my friend, who had not hitherto
spoken a word of Turkish, was not as lately arrived as myself? What is
it that so infallibly, in every part of the world, distinguishes the
stranger?
We passed under the stern of an outlandish-looking vessel just dropping
her anchor. Her deck was crowded with men and women in singular
costumes, and near the helm, apparently under the protection of a
dark-visaged fellow in a voluminous turban, stood three young, and, as
well as we could see, uncommonly pretty girls. The captain answered to
our hail that he was from Trebizond, and his passengers were slaves for
the bazaar. How redolent of the East! Were one but a Turk, now, to
forestall the market and barter for a pair of those dark eyes while they
are still full of surprise and innocence!
We landed at the _Fanar_. Bow-windows crowded with fair faces, in
enormous pink turbans, naked shoulders (which I am already so
orientalised as to think very indecent), puffed curls and pinched
waists, reminded us at every step that we were in a Christian quarter of
Constantinople. From this paltry and miserable suburb, spring the modern
princes of Greece, the Mavrocordatos, and Ghikas, the Hospodars of
Wallachia and Moldavia, the subtle, insinuating, intriguing, but
talented and ever-successful Fanariotes. One hears so much of them in
Europe, and so much is made of a stray scion from the very far-traced
root of Palæologus or some equally boasted blood of the Fanar (I met a
Fanariote princess G—— at the baths of Lucca last year, whom I except
from every disparaging remark), that he is a little disappointed with
the dirty alleys and the stuffed windows shown him as hereditary homes
of these very sounding names. There are a hundred families at least in
the Fanar, that trace their origin back to no less than an imperial
stock, and there is not a house in the whole quarter that would pass in
our country for a respectable barn. In personal appearance they are
certainly very inferior to any other race of their own nation. The
Albanians and the Greeks I saw at Napoli and in the Morea, were (except
the North American Indians) the finest people, physically, I have ever
been among; while it would be difficult to find a more diminutive and
degenerate-looking body of men and women, than swarm in this nest of
Grecian princes.
We re-entered our little bark, and gliding along leisurely through the
crowd of piades, kachambas, and caïques, landed at Stamboul, and walked
on toward the bazaar. Always discovering new passages in that labyrinth
of shops, we found ourselves, after an hour’s rambling, in a long street
of booksellers. This is rather the oldest and narrowest part of the
bazaar, and the light of heaven meets with the additional interruption
of two rows of pillars with arched friezes standing in the middle of the
street. On entering the literary twilight of the passage in the rear of
these columns, the classic nostril detects instantly the genuine odour
of manuscript, black-letter, and ancient binding; and the trained eye,
accustomed to the dim niches of libraries, wanders over the well-piled
shelves with their quaint rows of volumes in vellum, and appreciates at
once their varied riches. Here is nothing of the complexion of a shelf
at the Harpers’, or the Hendees’, or the Careys’—no fresh and uncut
novel, no new-born poem, no political pamphlet or gay souvenir! And the
priceless treasures of learning are not here doled out by a talkative
publisher or dapper clerk, skilled only in the lettered backs of the
volumes he barters. But in sombre and uneven rows, or laid in heaps,
whose order is not in their similarity of binding, but in the
correspondence of their contents, lie venerable and much-thumbed tomes
of Arabic or Persian; while the venerable bibliopole, seated motionless
on his hams, with his grey beard reaching to his crossed slippers,
peruses an illuminated volume of Hafiz, lifting his eyes from the page
only to revolve some sweet image in his mind, and murmur a low “pekke!”
of approbation.
We had stepped back into the last century. Here was the calamus still in
use. The small, brown reed, not yet superseded by the more useful but
less classic quill, stood in every clotted inkstand, and nothing less
than the purchase of a whole scrivener’s furniture, from a bearded
bookworm, whose benevolent face took my fancy, would suffice my
enthusiasm. Not to waste all our oriental experience at a single stall,
we strolled farther on to buy an illuminated Hafiz. We stopped
simultaneously before an old Armenian who seemed, by his rusty calpack
and shabby robe, to be something poorer than even his plainly-clad
neighbours: for in Turkey, as elsewhere, he who lives in a world of his
own, has but a slender portion in that of the vulgar. A choice-looking
volume lay open upon one of the old man’s knees, while from a wooden
bowl he was eating hastily a pottage of rice. His meal was evidently an
interruption. He had not even laid aside his book.
There was something in his handling the volume, as he took down a
pocket-sized Hafiz, that showed an affection for the author. He turned
it over with a slight dilation of countenance, and opening it with a
careful thumb, read a line in mellifluous Persian. I took it from him
open at the place, and marked the passage with my nail, to look for it
in the translation.
With my cheaply-bought treasures in my pockets, we turned up the street
of the diamond merchants, and making a single purchase more in the
bazaar, of a tesbih or Turkish rosary of spice-wood, emerged to the open
air in the neighbourhood of the mosque of Sultan Bajazet.
Whether slipping the pagan beads through my fingers affected me
devoutly, or whether it was the mellow humour of the moment, I felt a
disposition to forgive my enemies, and indulge in an act of Mohammedan
piety—feeding the unowned dogs of the street. We stepped into a baker’s
shop, and laid out a piastre in bread, and were immediately observed and
surrounded, before we could break a loaf, by twenty or thirty as
ill-looking curs, as ever howled to the moon. Having distributed about a
dozen loaves, and finding that our largess had by no means satisfied the
appetites of the expecting rabble, we found ourselves embarrassed to
escape. Nothing but the baker’s threshold prevented them from jumping
upon us, in their eagerness, and the array of so many formidable mouths
ferocious with hunger, was rather staggering. The baker drew off the
hungry pack at last, by walking round the corner with a loaf in his
hand, while we made a speedy exit, patted on the back in passing by
several of the assembled spectators.
It is surprising that the Turks can tolerate this filthy breed of curs,
in such extraordinary numbers. They have a whimsical punishment for
killing one of them. The dead dog is hung by his heels, so that his nose
just touches the ground, and the _canicide_ is compelled to heap wheat
about him, till he is entirely covered; the wheat is then given to the
poor, and the dog buried at the expense of the culprit. There are
probably five dogs to every man in Constantinople, and besides their
incessant barking, they often endanger the lives of children and
strangers. MacFarlane, I think, tells the story of a drunken
sea-captain, who was entirely devoured by the dogs at Tophana; nothing
being found of him in the morning but his “indigestible pig-tail!”
We entered the court of Sultan Bajazet, and found the majestic
plane-trees that shadow its arabesque fountains, bending beneath the
weight of hundreds of pensionary pigeons. Here, as at several of the
mosques, an old man sits by the gate, whose business it is to expend the
alms given him in distributing grain to these sacred birds. Not to be
outdone in piety, my friend gave the blind Turk a piastre; and, as he
arose and unlocked the box beneath him, the pigeons descended about us
in such a cloud, as literally to darken the air. Handful after handful
was then thrown among them, and the beautiful creatures ran over our
feet and fluttered round us with a fearlessness that sufficiently proved
the safety in which they haunted the sacred precincts. In a few minutes
they soared altogether again to the trees, and their Mussulman-feeder
resumed his seat upon the box to wait for another charity.
A crowd of women at the harem gate, in the rear of the seraskier’s
palace, attracted our attention. Upon inquiry, we found that he had
married a daughter to one of the sultan’s military officers, and the
bridal party was expected presently to come out in arubas, and make the
tour of the Hippodrome, on the way to the house of the bridegroom. We
wiled away an hour returning the gaze of curiosity bent upon us from the
idle and bright eyes of a hundred women, and the first of the gilded
vehicles made its appearance; though in the same style of ornament with
the one I have already described, it differed in being drawn by horses,
and having a frame top, with small round mirrors set in the corners.
Within sat four very young women, one of whom was the bride; but which,
we found no one who could tell us. It is no description of a face in the
East to say, that the eyes were dark, and the nose regular—all that the
jealous yashmack permitted us to ascertain of the beauty of the bride.
Their eyes are _all_ dark, and their noses are _all_ regular; the
Turkish nose differing from the Grecian, as that of the Antinous from
the Apollo, only in its more voluptuous fulness, and a nostril less
dilated. Four darker pairs of eyes, however, and four brows of whiter
orb, never pined in a harem, or were reflected in those golden-rimmed
mirrors; and as the twelve succeeding arubas rattled by, and in each
suite four young women, with the same eternal dark eyes, “full of
sleep,” and the same curved and pearly forehead, and noses like the
Antinous, I thought of _toujours perdrix_, and felt that if there had
been but _one_ with a slight toss in that prominent member, it would not
have been displeasing.
In a conversation with a Greek lady the other day, she remarked that the
veils of the Turkish ladies conceal no charms. Their mouths, she says,
are generally coarse, and their teeth, from the immoderate use of
sweetmeats, or neglect, or some other cause, almost universally
defective. How far the interest excited by these hidden features may
have jaundiced the eyes of my fair informer, I cannot say; but, as a
general fact, uneducated women, whatever other beauties they may
possess, have rarely expressive or agreeable mouths. Nature forms and
colours the nose, the eyes, the forehead, and the complexion; but the
character, from the cradle up, moulds gradually to its own inward
changes, the plastic and passion-breathing lines of the lips. Allowing
this, it would be rather surprising if there was a mouth in all Turkey
that had more than a pretty silliness at the most—the art of dyeing
their finger nails, and painting their eyebrows, being the highest
branches of female education. How they came by these “eyes that teach us
what the sun is made of,” the vales of Georgia and Circassia best can
tell.
And so having rambled away a sunny autumn day, and earned some little
appetite, if not experience, we will get out of Stamboul, before the
sunset guard makes us prisoners, and climb up to our dinner in Pera.
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