Hospitality of the Armenians—An Impromptu Visit—The
Bride—Costly Costume—Turkish Taste—Kind Reception—Domestic
Etiquette of the Schismatic Armenians—Armenian Sarafs—The
National Characteristics.
I cannot, perhaps, give a better idea of the hospitable feeling of the
Armenians, than by relating a little adventure which happened to a
friend and myself, a few weeks previously to my departure from the East.
We left home with the intention of paying a visit to the amiable sisters
of Tingler-Oglou, at their residence on the Bosphorus; and, after a
short walk, rang at a great gate which we imagined to be that of their
grounds. The summons was immediately answered; and a lovely girl of
about sixteen having followed the servant to the gate to ascertain the
identity of the visitors, replied to our inquiry for the ladies we
sought, by an invitation to enter. Supposing, from the extreme splendour
of her dress, and the perfect ease of her manner, that she was some
relative of the family whom we had not hitherto met, we at once obeyed
her bidding, and found ourselves on a terrace overshadowed by lime
trees, on which a party of ladies, entirely unknown to us, were whiling
away the time, surrounded by a crowd of attendants.
Both the place and the persons being strange, we drew back, and
apologised for our unintentional intrusion on the privacy of the family;
when an elderly female, evidently the mistress of the house, motioned us
to seat ourselves on the cushions beside her, telling us that she had
been long desirous of making our acquaintance, and was rejoiced that her
daughter-in-law had possessed wit enough to profit by the opportunity
afforded by our mistake. Of course we availed ourselves of the courtesy;
and the more readily as we immediately discovered that we were in the
grounds of a wealthy Saraf, who was the neighbour of Tingler-Oglou; and
who had lately built the magnificent mansion which lay below the terrace
on the edge of the channel; and married the beautiful girl who stood
beside us, smiling at the success of her harmless deceit.
She was the bride of a week; and, as I had never before had an
opportunity of seeing the costume of a newly-married Armenian female, I
looked at her with considerable curiosity. Her hair, which was perfectly
black, and extremely luxuriant, hung in a number of glossy braids upon
her shoulders, being bound back from her brow by a handkerchief of gold
gauze, deeply fringed, and thickly covered with diamonds.
Between her eyebrows was affixed an ornament composed of small
brilliants, and forming the word “bride” in Armenian characters. Her
chemisette was of blue crape, fringed with silver; and her antery of
Broussa silk, worked and edged with gold, bound about her waist with a
costly cachemire. She wore trowsers of figured silk, of a pale blue;
thread stockings, and slippers of pink kid. Her rings and bracelets were
a little fortune in themselves; and, had she known how to adjust her
costume with the intuitive taste of a Turkish woman, she would have been
beautiful; but the Armenian lady is as inferior in elegance to the fair
Osmanli, as the Perote to the European. They wear the same description
of dress, and employ the same materials, but they may, nevertheless, be
distinguished at a glance, from the mere manner of its adjustment. The
one is almost a caricature of the other. I remained long enough in the
East to think the yashmac the most coquettish and becoming of all
head-dresses; but to be either the one or the other it must be arranged
by the fair fingers of a gentle Turk; for when put on as the Armenians
wear it, it is the greatest disfigurement in the world. The same may be
said of the whole of their costume. The inmate of the Turkish harem is
as willow-like and graceful as a swan—the Armenian lady, on the
contrary, overloads herself with shawls and finery; and is,
consequently, fettered in her movements.
Nothing could be more courteous than our reception by the family with
which we had become so unexpectedly acquainted. The most delicate
sweetmeats and the finest Mocha coffee were served to us by the fair
hands of the bride herself, which were deeply stained with henna; and,
as I have before remarked, blazing with jewels.
When the refreshments were removed, we made a tour of the grounds; and
were laden by our new friends with tuberoses, orange-blossom, and green
lemons. There was not a courtesy that they did not shew us; not a
flattering epithet which they did not lavish on us; and, as they led us
by the hand from terrace to terrace, they pointed out with intuitive
taste every fine point of view as it opened upon them—lingered beneath
each little garden pavilion wreathed with parasites, where the
passion-flower blossomed beside the creeping rose, and the violet
nestled at the root of the tiger lily—playfully sprinkled us with the
limpid waters of each sparkling fountain, whose marble basin looked like
a glistening lotus in the sunshine—seated us in the painted kiosks
which overhung the water—and selected for us the most tempting produce
of the orangeries.
When we at length reluctantly took our leave, the pretty bride kissed
our hands with a graceful humility, perfectly charming; and we were
followed to the gate by entreaties that we would renew our visit. To
these I replied by an invitation which was instantly accepted; and on
the morrow my room was a blaze of jewels and gold embroidery.
The etiquette of a Schismatic Armenian family is infinitely more rigid
than that observed by the Turks. With the latter, the daughter or
daughter-in-law, when in the harem, can seat herself unbidden; although
not, indeed, where she pleases, for her proper place is assigned to her,
and she is not permitted to intrude into those of her elders. But the
young Armenian wife, who may have brought to her husband the dowry of a
million of piastres, and the fair girl who is the heiress of her
father’s house, must remain meekly standing, with folded hands and
patient brow, until the lady-mother gives the gracious signal which
authorises her to occupy a corner of the sofa or the cushion.
The Armenian Catholics do not enforce so rigorously this domestic
slavery, although they also are fettered by a thousand inconvenient and
inconsequent observances. It is the Schismatics who cling jealously to
all the absurd ceremonials which render their existence as uncomfortable
as they can contrive to make it. The eldest son can smoke before his
father, it is true; but the chibouk is placed in such a position as to
be invisible to the chief of the family, the smoker being obliged to
turn his head backward to press the amber mouthpiece; and, moreover, to
select for this fleeting enjoyment the brief moments when the eyes of
his parent are averted.
The younger sons dare not produce a chibouk, nor even utter an opinion
before either of these august personages—The mother alone, among the
females of the family, has the privilege of occupying a place on the
sofa, and appropriating a share of the conversation: the younger ladies
only appear before their male relatives when they are summoned, or
compelled to intrude in the performance of some household duty. On all
other occasions they inhabit the harem, which is usually a noble
apartment most luxuriously fitted up, where they knit, embroider, or
idle, as best suits their inclination. Like the Turkish women, they are
passionately fond of flowers, and cultivate them with great assiduity;
their gardens being as remarkable for their neatness, as are the
interior of their dwellings for that extraordinary cleanliness to which
I have borne testimony elsewhere.
On the arrival of a male visiter, should any of the ladies be wandering
amid the bright blossoms in which they so much delight, the alarm is
instantly given; and they shuffle away to their pretty prison-room as
fast as their heelless slippers will enable them to move. Perhaps the
guest may be a suitor; but if so, the case is not altered one iota. The
lady still runs away, without any attempt to indulge her curiosity by a
peep at her destined lord; while the gentleman, on his side, takes his
seat in the great saloon, and, after smoking a score of pipes, and
making a thousand _teminas_ to the father or brother of his bride elect,
mounts his horse, or resumes his place in his caïque, and departs; in
full possession of all the particulars of the lady’s property; and in
contented ignorance of all that relates to her character or person.
“Will you take this woman, whether she be halt, or deaf, or humped, or
blind?” asks the priest on the bridal day, as the happy bridegroom
stands opposite to a mummy-like mass of gold threads and cachemire, with
his own monstrous calpac tricked out in the same glittering finery,
until he looks like a male Danaë; and with true stolid Armenian
philosophy he answers: “Even so I will take her.”
The European young lady associates the idea of marriage with tenderness,
and indulgence, and domestic enjoyment; emancipation from maternal
authority, and comparative personal liberty. She smiles in the stillness
of her own spirit at the fair visions of happiness that rise before her;
and there is no bitterness in the tears with which she quits the home
of her infancy. But the Armenian maiden only exchanges one tyranny for
another—she is transported to the home of a stranger, whom a priest has
told her that she is to love, and whom she has never seen—beneath the
roof-tree of a man whom, henceforward, she is bound to honour, though
her heart may loathe the mockery. To obey is her least difficult duty,
for she has been reared in obedience; but yet she cannot escape the pang
of feeling how much more easy was that blind submission to another’s
will, when it was enforced by the mother who had laid her to sleep upon
her bosom in her infancy, and on whose knee she had sported in her
girlhood; than when she is suddenly called upon to bow meekly beneath
the dictation of a new and strange task-mistress, knit to her by no tie,
save that new and unaccustomed link which has just been riveted by the
church; and by which she has become the slave not only of her husband,
but of his parents also.
Has she fortune, beauty, rank, they avail her nothing; for two long
years she must not speak before her step-mother, save to reply to some
question that may be put to her; and, should she herself become a
parent, she has yet a sterner and a more difficult task to learn; for
she cannot even fondle her infant before witnesses; but must fly and
hide herself in her own chamber when she would indulge the outpourings
of maternal love.
How melancholy a contrast does this Armenian barbarism afford to the
beautiful devotedness of every inmate of a Turkish harem to the comfort
and happiness of infancy! There it is difficult to decide which is
really the mother of the rosy, laughing, boisterous baby that is passed
from one to the other; and welcome to the heart and arms of all. The
little plump, spoilt, mischievous urchin, whose life is one long holyday
of fun and frolic; and whose few fleeting tears throw all around him
into commotion. An infant is common property in a Turkish harem—a toy
and a treasure alike to each; whether it be the child of the stately
Hanoum whose will is law, or of the slave whose duty is obedience; and,
it is certain that, if children could really be “killed with kindness,”
the Ottoman Empire, in as far as the Turks themselves are concerned,
would soon be a waste.
There can, I think, be no doubt that the life of cold, monotonous,
heart-shutting ceremony led by the Armenians among themselves, has been
in a great degree the cause of the stolidity of character with which I
have elsewhere reproached them. It would, perhaps, be difficult to find
a finer race of men in the world, as far as their personal appearance is
concerned: while it is certain that no where could they be exceeded in
mental, or I should rather say, moral inertness. In all affairs of
commerce, where the subject may be reduced by rule, and decided by
calculation, they are competent alike to undertake and to comprehend it:
but once endeavour to while them beyond the charmed circle of their
money-bags; to detach their thoughts for a moment from their piastres;
and they cannot utter three consecutive sentences to which it is not a
waste of time to listen.
That they are a most valuable portion of the population admits of no
dispute; their steady commercial habits, their unquestioning submission
to “the powers that be;” their plodding, unambitious natures, fit them
admirably for their position in Turkey. Had they more mental energy,
more self-appreciation, and more moral development, they could not
continue to be the tame listless imitators, and idolaters of their
masters that they now are.
The Armenian holds the same position among the bipeds of the East as the
buffalo among the quadrupeds. He bears his load, and performs his task
with docility, without appearing conscious that he can be capable of any
thing beyond this; and, even the Sarafs, or Bankers to the Pashas, a
class of men in whom I expected to encounter, at least occasionally, an
individual of general acquirements and information, as far as my own
experience went, scarcely formed an exception to the rule. I knew many
among them who were exceedingly amiable, and possessed of great
shrewdness, but it was all professional subtlety; it extended not beyond
the objects on which their personal interests were hinged. Not one in a
score can speak five words of any European language, or be induced to
exhibit the slightest wish to acquire one. In a word, I should say that
the Armenians, as a nation, were worthy, well-meaning, and useful, but
extremely uninteresting members of society; possessing neither the
energy of the Greek, nor the strength of character so conspicuous in the
Osmanli—A money-making, money-loving people, having a proper regard for
the “purple and fine linen” of the world; and quite satisfied to bear
the double yoke of the Sultan and the Priesthood.