AND IS THIS REALLY FREEDOM?
LONDON, _Nov.-Dec._ 1908.
About a week ago,[22] whilst you were writing your first letter to me
and speaking of the beautiful Eastern sun that was shining through your
latticed window, what a different experience was mine in London. I was
walking by myself in the West End, when suddenly, the whole city was
shrouded in one of those dense fogs to which you no doubt have become
accustomed. I could not see the name of the streets nor the path at the
opposite side, so I wandered on for a little while, only to discover
that I had arrived back at the same place.
There was no one to show me the way, and the English language that I
had spoken from infancy seemed of no use to me, since no one took any
notice of my questions.
I looked in vain for a policeman. Your London policemen are so amiable
and clever. Whatever difficulty I have, they seem to be able to help
me, and the most curious of all curious things is, they will not accept
tips! What wonderful men! and what a difference from our policemen in
Constantinople! In Constantinople, I trembled almost at the sight of a
policeman, but here I cannot imagine what I should do without them.
However, after losing myself and getting back always to the same point,
I finally struck out in a new direction, and walked on and on until,
when I was least expecting it, I found that just by chance I was safe
in front of my club. You can perhaps imagine my relief. It seemed to me
as if I had escaped from some terrible danger, and I wonder more and
more how you English people manage to find your way in one of these
dense fogs.
When I got into my club, I found your letter waiting me, and the
Turkish post-mark cheered me just a little, and made me forget for a
while the hideous black mantle in which London was wrapt.
On those evenings when I dine at “my club” (see how English I have
become!) I eat alone, studying all the time the people I see around me.
What a curious harem! and what a difference from the one in which you
are living at present.
The first time I dined there I ordered the vegetarian dinner, expecting
to have one of those delicious meals which you are enjoying (you lucky
woman!), which consists of everything that is good. But alas! the food
in this harem has been a disappointment to me. Surely I must not accept
this menu as a sample of what English food really is.
On a little table all to myself, I was served with, first of all, rice
which was cooked not as in Turkey, and as a second course I had carrots
cooked in water! After sprinkling on them quantities of salt and pepper
I could not even then swallow them, so I asked for pickles, but as
there were none, that dish was sent away almost untouched to join the
first. Next I was served with a compote of pears without sugar, but
that also did not come up to my expectations. I ate up, however, all
my bread and asked for more. Then the waiter kindly went from table
to table to see how much he could collect, brought just a handful, and
informed me he really could not give me any more. But I told him it was
not enough. “I want a very large piece,” I said, so finally he decided
to consult the butler, went to the kitchen, and brought me back a loaf
to myself.
All this while, the curious people around me had been staring at me
devouring my loaf, but after a while they wearied of that exciting
entertainment, their faces again resumed their usual calm expression,
and they went on once more talking to one another. Sometimes, but not
often, they almost got interested in their neighbour’s remark, but as
soon as the last words were uttered again they adopted a manner which
seemed to me one of absolute indifference.
As you know, I do not swear by everything Turkish, but you must now
admit from experience that when once the Danube is crossed the faces
to be seen do express some emotion, either love or hate, contentment
or disappointment, but not indifference. Since I left Belgrade, I have
tried, almost in vain, to find in the Western faces the reflection of
some personality, and so few examples have I found that their names
would not certainly fill this page. Here in London I met with the
same disappointment. Have these people really lost all interest in
life? They give me the impression that they all belong to the same
family, so much alike are they in appearance and in facial expression.
[Illustration: ZEYNEB WITH A BLACK FACE-VEIL THROWN BACK]
In the reading-room, where I spent my evening, I met those same people,
who spoke in whispers, wrote letters, and read the daily papers. The
silence of the room was restful, there was an atmosphere almost of
peace, but it is not the peace which follows strife, it is the peace
of apathy. Is this, then, what the Turkish women dream of becoming one
day? Is this their ideal of independence and liberty?
Were you to show my letter to one of my race she would think that I
had a distinct aversion for progress, or that I felt obliged to be
in opposition to everything in the countries where I was travelling.
You know enough of my life, however, to know that this is not the
case. What I do feel, though, is that a _Ladies’ Club_ is not a big
enough reward for having broken away from an Eastern harem and all the
suffering that has been the consequence of that action. A club, as I
said before, is after all another kind of harem, but it has none of
the mystery and charm of the Harem of the East.
How is one to learn and teach others what might perhaps be called “the
tact of evolution”—I mean the art of knowing when to stop even in the
realm of progress?
I cannot yet either analyse or classify in a satisfactory way your
methods of thinking, since in changing from country to country even the
words alter their meaning. In Servia, Liberal means Conservative, and
Freemason on the Continent has quite a different meaning from what it
has here; so that the interpretation I would give to an opinion might
fail to cover my real meaning.
Do not think that this evening’s pessimism is due to the fog nor to my
poor dinner. It is the outcome of disillusions which every day become
more complete. It seems to me that we Orientals are children to whom
fairy tales have been told for too long—fairy tales which have every
appearance of truth. You hear so much of the _mirage_ of the East,
but what is that compared to the _mirage_ of the West, to which all
Orientals are attracted?
They tell you fairy tales, too, you women of the West—fairy tales
which, like ours, have all the appearance of truth. I wonder, when the
Englishwomen have really won their vote and the right to exercise all
the tiring professions of men, what they will have gained? Their faces
will be a little sadder, a little more weary, and they will have become
wholly disillusioned.
Go to the root of things and you will find the more things change the
more they are the same; nothing really changes. Human nature is always
the same. We cannot stop the ebb or flow of Time, however much we try.
The great mass of mediocrity alone is happy, for it is content to swim
with the tide. Does it not seem to you, that each of us from the age
when we begin to reason feels more or less the futility and uselessness
of some of our efforts; the little good that struggling has brought
us, and the danger we necessarily run, in this awful desire to go full
speed ahead? And yet, this desire to go towards something, futile
though it be, is one of the most indestructible of Western sentiments.
When in Turkey we met together, and spoke of the Women of England, we
imagined that they had nothing more to wish for in this world. But
we had no idea of what the struggle for life meant to them, nor how
terrible was this eternal search after happiness. Which is the harder
struggle of the two? The latter is the only struggle we know in Turkey,
and the same futile struggle goes on all the world over.
Happiness—what a mirage! At best is it not a mere negation of pain, for
each one’s idea of happiness is so different? When I was fifteen years
old they made me a present of a little native from Central Africa. For
her there was no greater torture than to wear garments of any kind, and
her idea of happiness was to get back to the home on the borders of
Lake Chad and the possibility of eating another roasted European.
* * * * *
Last night I went to a banquet. It was the first time that I had ever
heard after-dinner speeches, and I admired the ease with which everyone
found something to say, and the women spoke quite as well as the men.
Afterwards I was told, however, that these speeches had all been
prepared beforehand.
The member of Parliament who sat on my right spoilt my evening’s
enjoyment by making me believe I had to speak, and all through the
dinner I tried to find something to say, and yet I knew that, were I
actually to rise, I could not utter a sound. What most astonished me
at that banquet, however, was that all those women, who made no secret
of wanting to direct the affairs of the nation, dared not take the
responsibility of smoking until they were told. What a contradiction!
Since I came here I have seen nothing but “Votes for Women” chalked all
over the pavements and walls of the town. These methods of propaganda
are all so new to me.
I went to a Suffrage street corner meeting the other night, and I can
assure you I never want to go again. The speaker carried her little
stool herself, another carried a flag, and yet a third woman a bundle
of leaflets and papers to distribute to the crowd. After walking
for a little while they placed the stool outside a dirty-looking
public-house, and the lady who carried the flag boldly got on to the
stool and began to shout, not waiting till the people came to hear her,
so anxious was she to begin. Although she did not look nervous in the
least she possibly was, for her speech came abruptly to an end, and my
heart began to beat in sympathy with her.
When the other lady began to speak quite a big crowd of men and women
assembled: degraded-looking ruffians they were, most of them, and a
class of man I had not yet seen. All the time they interrupted her, but
she went bravely on, returning their rudeness with sarcasm. What an
insult to womanhood it seemed to me, to have to bandy words with this
vulgar mob. One man told her that “she was ugly.” Another asked “if she
had done her washing,” but the most of their hateful remarks I could
not understand, so different was their English from the English I had
learned in Turkey.
Yet how I admired the courage of that woman! No physical pain could be
more awful to me than not to be taken for a lady, and this speaker of
such remarkable eloquence and culture was not taken for a lady by the
crowd, seeing she was supposed “to do her own washing” like any women
of the people.
The most pitiful part of it all to me is the blind faith these women
have in their cause, and the confidence they have that in explaining
their policy to the street ruffians, who cannot even understand that
they are ladies, they will further their cause by half an inch.
I was glad when the meeting was over, but sorry that such rhetoric
should have been wasted on the half-intoxicated loungers who deigned
to come out of the public-house and listen. If this is what the women
of your country have to bear in their fight for freedom, all honour to
them, but I would rather groan in bondage.
* * * * *
I have been to see your famous Houses of Parliament, both the Lords
and the Commons. Like all the architecture in London, these buildings
create such an atmosphere of kingly greatness in which I, the democrat
of my own country, am revelling. The Democracy of the East is so
different from that of the West, of which I had so pitiful an example
at the street corner.
I was invited to tea at the House of Commons, and to be invited to tea
there of all places seemed very strange to me. Is the drinking of tea
of such vital importance that the English can _never_ do without it?
I wonder if the Turks, now _their_ Parliament is opened, will drink
coffee with ladies instead of attending to the laws of the nation!
What a long, weary wait I had before they would let me into the Houses
of Parliament. Every time I asked the policeman where the member of
Parliament was who had invited me, he smilingly told me they had gone
to fetch him. I thought he was joking at first, and threatened to go,
but he only laughed, and said, “He will come in time.” Only when I
had made up my mind that the tea-party would never come off, and had
settled myself on an uncomfortable divan to study the curious people
passing in and out, did my host appear. I thought it was only in Turkey
that appointments were kept with such laxity, but I was reminded by the
M.P. who invited me that I was three-quarters of an hour late in the
first place.
[Illustration: A CORNER OF A TURKISH HAREM OF TO-DAY
This photograph was taken expressly for a London paper. It was returned
with this comment: “The British public would not accept this as a
picture of a Turkish Harem.” As a matter of fact, in the smartest
Turkish houses European furniture is much in evidence.]
[Illustration: TURKISH WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN THE COUNTRY
They are accompanied by the negress.]
I was conducted through a long, handsome corridor to a lobby where
all sorts of men and women were assembled, pushing one another,
gesticulating and speaking in loud, disagreeable voices like those
outside of the Paris Bourse. Just then, however, a bell rang, and I was
conducted back past the policeman to my original seat. What curious
behaviour! What did it all mean? I spoke to the friendly policeman,
but his explanation that they were “dividing” did not convey much to
my mind. As I stood there, a stray member of Parliament came and looked
at me. He must have been a great admirer of Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, for
he wore a monocle and an orchid in his buttonhole.
“Are these suffragettes?” he asked the policeman, staring at me and the
other women.
“No, sir,” answered the policeman, “ladies.”
It was too late for tea when my host returned to fetch me, but the
loss of a cup of tea is no calamity to me, as I only drink it to
appear polite. I was next taken up to the Ladies’ Gallery, and was
sworn in as one of the relations of a member who had given up his
ladies’ tickets to my host. The funny part of it was, that I could
not understand the language my relation spoke, so different was his
English from the English I had learnt in Turkey. But what a fuss to
get into that Ladies’ Gallery! I had no idea of making a noise before
it was suggested to my mind by making me sign a book, and I certainly
wanted to afterwards. What unnecessary trouble! What do you call it?
Red tapeism! One might almost be in Turkey under Hamid and not in Free
England.
But, my dear, why have you never told me that the Ladies’ Gallery is a
harem? A harem with its latticed windows! The harem of the Government!
No wonder the women cried through the windows of that harem that
they wanted to be free! I felt inclined to shout out too. “Is it in
Free England that you dare to have a harem? How inconsistent are you
English! You send your women out unprotected all over the world, and
here in the workshop where your laws are made, you cover them with a
symbol of protection.”
The performance which I saw through the harem windows was boring
enough. The humbler members of the House had little respect for their
superiors, seeing they sat in their presence with their hats on, and
this I am told was the habit of a very ill-bred man. Still perhaps this
attitude does not astonish me since on all sides I hear complaints
of the Government. It is a bad sign for a country, my dear. Are you
following in Turkey’s footsteps? Hatred of the Government and prison an
honour! Poor England!
I was very anxious to see the notorious Mr. Lloyd George. Since I
have been in London his name is on everyone’s lips. I have heard
very little good of him except from the ruffians at the street corner
meeting, and yet like our Hamid he seems to be all-powerful. For a
long time, I could not distinguish him in the crowd below, although my
companion spared no pains in pointing him out. I was looking for some
one with a commanding presence, some one with an eagle eye and a wicked
face like our Sultan, some one before whom a whole nation was justified
in trembling. But I still wonder whether I am thinking of the right man
when I think of Mr. Lloyd George.
There is not much excitement in your House of Commons, is there? I
prefer the Chamber of Deputies, even though some one fired at M. Briand
the day I went there. There at least they are men of action. Here some
members were so weary of law-making, that they crossed their legs,
folded their arms, and went to sleep whilst their colleagues opposite
were speaking. I thought it would have been more polite to have gone
out and taken tea, as the other members seemed to be doing all the
time. It would have given them strength to listen to the tiresome
debate.
To me, perhaps, the speaking would have been less unbearable if the
harem windows had not deadened the sound, which, please notice, is my
polite Turkish way of saying, they all spoke so indistinctly.
The bell began to ring again. The members of Parliament all walked
towards the harem to this curious direction, “Eyes to the right and
nose to the left.”[23] And at last my friend took me away.
* * * * *
We went to see a performance of _Trilby_ at His Majesty’s Theatre the
other night. I liked the acting of the terrible Svengali, but not the
piece. As a great treat to me, my friend and her husband had us invited
to supper in the roof of the theatre with the famous Sir Herbert Tree.
I could not help saying, “I preferred not to go, for Sir Herbert Tree
frightened me.”
However, we went all the same, and had a delightful supper-party. For
some reason or other the manager was our host, and I was thankful not
to eat with Sir Herbert Tree. As we came away my friend asked if I was
still frightened now we had eaten with him.
“But we have not eaten with him,” I said.
“Indeed we have,” she said.
“Is the person with whom we had supper the horrid Svengali?” I asked.
“Why, of course,” she answered, laughing.
As you know, this is not my first experience of a theatre, so there is
no excuse for me. But I can assure you no one would ever dream that
Svengali was made up. What a pity it would have been for me to have
gone through life thinking of your famous actor as Svengali. I think
that when actors have to play such disagreeable parts, they should show
themselves to the public afterwards as they really are, or _not_ put
their names on the programme.
* * * * *
I saw another play at His Majesty’s in which the principal rôles were
played by children. You cannot imagine how delightful I found it, and
what a change it was from the eternal _pièce à thèse_ which I had
become accustomed to see in Paris. The scenery indeed was a fairy
panorama, and the piece charmingly interpreted. What astonished me was
to see that both men and women took as much delight in it as the young
folks. Only mothers in Paris would have brought their children to see
such a moral play.
Ah, but I must tell you I have at last seen an Englishwoman who does
not look weary of life. She is Miss Ellen Terry. How good it was to see
her act. She was so natural and so full of fun, and enjoyed all she
had to say and do, that her performance was a real joy to me. I wish I
could have thanked her.
* * * * *
I just love your hansom cabs. If I had money enough I would buy one
for myself and drive about seeing London. You get the best view of
everything in this way. When I first stepped into one I could not
imagine where the coachman sat; he called out to me from somewhere,
but I could not find his voice, until he popped his fingers through a
little trap door and knocked off my hat, for I cannot bear to pin on my
hat.
“Here I am,” he answered to my query, and he thought he had a mad-woman
for a fare.
* * * * *
One night when I returned to my club after the theatre, there was one
lonely woman seated in the reading-room near the fire. She seemed to
me to be the youngest of all the ladies, although you may say that was
no guarantee against middle age. I don’t know how it was we began
to speak, since no one had introduced us, but she imagined I was a
Frenchwoman, hence probably the explanation of the liberty she had
taken in addressing me. Yet she looked so sad.
“You French,” she said, “are used to sitting up a good deal later than
we do here.”
“I thought,” I said, “the protocol did not bother about such trifles.”
“Ah, now you are in the country of protocols and etiquette,” she
answered.
She must have been asking me questions only as an excuse to speak
herself, because she took really no interest in my answers, and she
kept on chattering and chattering because she did not want me to go
away. She spoke of America and India and China and Japan, all of which
countries she seemed to know as well as her own. Never have I met in
my travels anyone so fond of talking, and yet at the same time with a
_spleen_ which made me almost tired.
I concluded that she was an independent woman, whose weariness must
have been the result of constant struggling. She was all alone in the
world; one of those poor creatures who might die in a top back-room
without a soul belonging to her. Her mind must have been saturated
with theories, she must have known all the uncomfortable shocks which
come from a changed position, and yet she was British enough to tremble
before Public Opinion.
“But do you know why I travel so much?” at last I had the opportunity
of asking her. “Like Diogenes who tried to find a _Man_, I have been
trying to find a FREE woman, but have not been successful.”
I do not think she understood in the least what I meant.—Your
affectionate friend,
ZEYNEB.