The Bridal Day—Ceremony of Acceptance—The Crowd—The Kislar
Agha and the Court Astrologer—Order of the Procession—The
Russian Coach—The Pasha and the Attachés—The Seraskier—Wives
of the Pashas—The Sultan and the Georgian Slave.
The morrow was the bridal day, when the fortunate Saïd Pasha was to
receive his Imperial Bride beneath his own roof, and to look upon her
for the first time. As yet he had not had even a glimpse of her through
her yashmac, their only interview having taken place on his arrival from
the Dardanelles, when he had been summoned to the palace to throw
himself at her feet, and to return thanks for the honour she was about
to confer upon him. This interview, if such indeed a meeting may be
termed in which one of the parties only has a sight of the other, is one
of the ceremonies _à la rigeur_ in the Imperial marriages of the East.
The bridegroom elect is led into a room, at whose upper extremity a door
stands ajar; and behind this sits the lady splendidly habited, and
surrounded by a train of slaves. A small portion of her embroidered
antery is suffered to pass the opening of the door; and a side lattice,
veiled with thin gauze, enables her to take a view of her suitor as he
approaches; which he does slowly, and upon his knees, the whole length
of the apartment. On arriving near the “Door of Light” that conceals the
Princess, he thrice bows his forehead to the earth, ere he ventures to
implore a ratification of his hopes. The officious Kislar Agha replies
for the bride; and after a second prostration, the Pasha returns thanks
“in a neat speech;” and with the permission of the same personage, he
then raises to his lips the hem of the Imperial garment, and retires in
the same humble posture in which he entered.
The _on dit_ at the Palace whispered the disappointment of the bride on
the present occasion, that the choice of her Imperial father had not
fallen on Mustapha Pasha of Adrianople, whom she had once seen by
accident, and by whose personal beauty she had been much attracted. It
is, nevertheless, possible that this glimpse of her destined bridegroom
reconciled her to her destiny; for, as it is the appearance only to
which Turkish females generally attach any importance in their husbands,
the young Pasha of the Dardanelles could safely compete with all his
rivals, being really a very handsome and intelligent-looking person.
Had I not known that such a thing was altogether impossible, I should
have said, when I pulled up my panting horse on the height above the
palace, that the same groups occupied the same spots where I had seen
them on the previous day. The scene did not appear to have altered in a
single feature. I saw the same smiling faces, and received the same
kindly greetings; laughed at the same dirty, stupid-looking sentinels,
and bought a cool draught from the same water-vender for a twenty para
piece; and, altogether, I had some difficulty in persuading myself that
I had really talked politics with a hot-headed Englishman, theology with
a Greek Papas, and nonsense with a Sardinian Secretary, and moreover had
slept through a long night, since I last stood upon that sunny hill, and
looked far and wide upon the same wilderness of human beings.
The procession of the preceding day had been announced to start from
Dolma Batchè at eight o’clock, but the mid-day muezzin had been called
from the minarets, ere the first trumpeter issued from the portal.
Profiting, therefore, by our experience, we partook of a quiet breakfast
on the present occasion, ere we sped to the scene of action; and we had
judged rightly in so doing, for we were yet considerably in advance of
the bridal train. Nevertheless, it is certain that the baggage-mules and
the treasure-carriages required more time to prepare them for the
journey than the Imperial Bride, and her attendant train of ladies; for
the Kislar Agha was yet girding on his sword with all the quiet
precision of a man who has no cause for haste, when a negro of the Seraï
rushed into the apartment, and startled him with the intelligence that
her Highness was not only ready to start, but actually in the Great
Saloon of the Harem, waiting for him to precede her to her carriage. At
this announcement the portly personage suffered his weapon to fall from
his hands; and tossing his arms above his head, he filled the apartment
with his outcries.
“Who has done this? Who has insidiously counselled this haste? Where is
the traitor who would destroy the Imperial Daughter of our noble Sultan?
(May his beard be white!) It yet wants ten minutes of the time appointed
by the astrologer—the lucky moment is not come—and until it arrives,
she shall not set her foot without the palace, were it ten times her
bridal day.”
At length, however, the auspicious moment really did arrive, when the
Kislar Agha was himself the first to hasten the departure of the
Princess. The procession was the very triumph of mystery. All the
high-born beauties of Stamboul were to pass us by, and we were only to
imagine the loveliness on which we were to have no opportunity of
looking. The Sultan’s Band opened the march, and executed with great
precision a piece of martial music, composed for the occasion by their
talented leader Donizetti; a regiment of cavalry followed, and was
succeeded in its turn by a gorgeous train of Pashas, among whom rode the
bridegroom; and then came the European carriage of the Sultan, drawn by
four bay horses, each led by a page in a scarlet and gold uniform. This
was succeeded by the Imperial State Coach, of silver gilt, the raised
cornice above the roof inlaid with cornelians, agates, and jaspers, the
magnificent gift of the Emperor of Russia to his Turkish ally—the
gilded lattices, through which gleamed the jealous curtains of
rose-coloured silk, were closely shut; and the Imperial Bride was the
sole tenant of the costly vehicle. This carriage, which was drawn by six
stately horses from the personal stud of the Autocrat, was followed by
that in which the Princess had been accustomed to drive on state
occasions; the windows were thrown back, and the curtains undrawn—it
was empty. Next came the Sultana-Mother, the Princess Salihè, and the
younger sister of the bride, a sweet-looking girl of eleven or twelve
years of age, who sat beside her veiled relatives in a heavy head-dress
of black velvet, overcharged with diamonds; but whose fair young face
laughed out in loveliness beneath the hideous disfigurement. These were
succeeded by a second Russian carriage, drawn by four horses similar to
those in the State Coach, an offering of Russian policy to Achmet Pasha,
whose Buyuk Hanoum was within, attended by three female slaves.
The train amounted in all to forty-seven carriages and four; many of
them tenanted by five and even six individuals, whose coquettishly
arranged yashmacs afforded at times something more than a glimpse of
their fair faces; a fact of which the negro guard appeared so well
aware, that on some suggestion from one of them to a Pasha, who rode
immediately in front of the Imperial carriage, on the second apparition
of our party by the wayside, (which, _soit dit en passant_, must have
been sufficiently attractive to the veiled beauties, being principally
composed of _attachés_ to the different embassies), His Excellency
addressed himself to me in very tolerable French, and told me that,
although I was individually at liberty to accompany the procession to
the Palace-gates if I wished to do so, he must request that the
gentlemen would not attempt to advance further. But the prohibition was
more readily uttered than obeyed; and we only just waited for a first
glimpse of the fifty negroes who formed the rear-guard, ere we were off
again, as fast as our generous horses would carry us.
And well should we have been repaid when we pulled up mid-way of the
steep descent leading to the Palace, had it only been by the spectacle
of the wily old Seraskier, who rode beside the window of the State
Coach, in a state of admirably got-up agitation; first shouting to the
troop of attendants who hung on to the wheels, like a man in the last
agony; and then modulating his voice to the extremest gentleness of
which it was susceptible, to implore of the Imperial Bride not to
imagine that there existed the slightest danger; half the fuss that he
was making meanwhile, being more than sufficient to satisfy her that she
was on the eve of being hurled over the precipice.
On her arrival in the Court of the Palace, Saïd Pasha, on his knees
beside the carriage, received her in his arms, and carried her into the
Great Saloon of the Harem; the ladies of the Court, who had the
_entrée_, followed in succession; the golden gates were closed: and the
excluded had nothing more to do than to shake the dust from their
garments—and truly it was about an inch thick—to swallow a glass of
iced lemonade in the saddle, and to gallop back, under a burning sun, to
their respective homes.
Each Pasha, on the occasion of an Imperial marriage, sends on a stated
day his Buyuk Hanoum, or principal wife, to the Palace, attended by two
slaves, to congratulate the Princess on her approaching nuptials; and
these are the ladies who subsequently form the reception circle at her
new home. At the visit of felicitation, when the Sultan receives them on
the part of his august daughter, they are presented by the munificent
sovereign with an antery, jacket, and trowsers of rich stuff, a pair of
embroidered slippers, and a diamond ring; the same articles, but fitted
in value to their station, being bestowed also on their attendants. In
this magnificent costume they are expected to appear on the bridal day;
and on their departure from the Presence, they place their own gifts in
the hands of the Kislar Agha, which are always of the extremest richness
that the means of the Pasha will permit.
An amusing anecdote is connected with this ceremony, which, being
authentic, I may as well relate. The Imperial Presentation negatives the
necessity of yashmacs, and thus Sultan Mahmoud enjoys the exclusive
privilege of forming a judgment on the taste of his Pashas. On the
marriage of the Princess Salihè, the Reiss Effendi forwarded to the
Imperial Presence the mother of his sons, a lady to whom nature had not
originally been lavish of her gifts, and who had subsequently lost an
eye during an attack of plague. His Sublime Highness was observed to
fidget upon his sofa as the presentation took place, but the Buyuk
Hanoum was received with all the honours due to the exalted rank of her
husband, and departed laden with the rich gifts of Imperial generosity.
On the morrow, however, a caïque impelled by three rowers, and freighted
with a closely veiled female under the guard of a party of the negroes
of the Seraï, pushed off from the Palace of Dolma Batchè, and ran
alongside the terrace of that of the minister; when the lady was landed,
and, on being conducted into the presence of the Reiss Effendi, her veil
was withdrawn, and she proved to be a lovely Georgian slave of about
sixteen years of age, in all the first burst of her young beauty—a
present to the noble from his Imperial Master, accompanied by a command,
that should another occasion occur in which the wives of the Pashas were
required to appear before the Sultan, the Reiss Effendi would cause the
dark-eyed Georgian to act as the representative of a lady, whose age and
infirmities must render all court ceremonials extremely irksome to her
feelings.
Of course, the lovely slave was one of the bridal train of the Princess
Mihirmàh!