a most ludicrous and towering head-dress. It was diverting to
find him making fun of his compatriot."
The mode of dealing, which in Christian Europe is stigmatised as
Jewish--the system, namely, of asking thrice the value and twice what
the seller means to take--is received, and by no means discreditable,
in Turkish bazaars. The only way to purchase in such places, without
being imposed upon, is at once to offer half the price demanded. This
is met with a refusal; you walk away, the merchant calls you back,
and you then offer him twenty per cent less than before. This plan
Mr Smith, having picked up experience at Smyrna, put in practice at
Constantinople, and generally found to answer.
Fig-packing, camels, and the slave-market are the three things which
at Smyrna first attract the curiosity of the traveller from the
West. Of the first-named, Mr Smith gives us a picturesque account.
In the shade of a long alley of acacia and fig trees the packers
were seated--Greeks by nation, and the women very handsome. "They
first brought the figs from the warehouses, on the floor of which I
saw hundreds of bushels, brought in on camels from the country. They
were then pulled into shape, this task being confided to females;
and after that sent on to the men who packed them. They gathered
six or seven, one after the other, in their hand, and then wedged
them into the drum, putting a few superior ones on the top, as we
have seen done with strawberries." We have already mentioned that
our sharp-sighted and lively traveller is somewhat of a naturalist,
and here he favours us with the result of his observations upon the
camel. That uncouth, but useful hunchback has been belauded and
vaunted in prose and verse to such an exaggerated extent that we are
quite tired of hearing of his virtues, and feel much indebted to the
author of _A Month at Constantinople_ for exhibiting his failings
after the following fashion:--
"Your camel is a great obtainer of pity, under false pretence.
He can be as self-willed and vicious as you please; and his
bite is particularly severe: when once his powerful teeth have
fastened, it is with the greatest difficulty that he is made
to relinquish his hold. The pitiful noise too, which he makes,
as small natural historians remark, upon being overladen,
is all sham. It proceeds from sheer idleness, rather than a
sense of oppression. With many camels, if you make pretence
to put a small object on their back--a tile or a stone, for
instance--whilst they are kneeling down, they begin mechanically
to bellow, and blink their eyes, and assume such a dismal
appearance of suffering and anguish, that it is perfectly
painful for susceptible natures to regard them. And yet, when
their load is well distributed and packed, they can move along
under seven hundredweight."
But we must get on to Constantinople. Often as the magnificent
spectacle has been described that bursts upon the view as you round
Seraglio Point and glide into the Golden Horn, it yet would seem
affected or eccentric of a traveller who writes about Constantinople
were he to neglect recording the impression made upon him by that
singularly lovely panorama. Mr Albert Smith's description is to
the purpose, and we like it the better for the complete absence of
that magniloquence in which so many tourists have indulged when
discoursing upon the beauties of Stamboul. Probably no city in the
world presents so great a contrast as Constantinople, when seen from
a short distance and when examined in detail. Floating on the blue
waters of the Bosphorus, the wondering stranger gazes upon a fairy
spectacle of domes, and minarets, and cypress groves, of graceful
palaces and stately mosques, gilded wherries and gaily-attired
crowds. A few minutes elapse: the grave custom-house officials in
their handsome barge have received the sixpenny bribe which exempts
his luggage from examination; he lands at the Tophanné Stairs, and
enters the steep lane that leads up to Pera, and in an instant the
illusion is dissipated:--
"I felt," says Mr Smith, who readily avails himself, and in
this instance very happily, of a theatrical comparison, "that
I had been taken behind the scenes of a great 'effect.' The
Constantinople of Vauxhall Gardens, a few years ago, did not
differ more, when viewed in front from the gallery and behind
from the dirty little alleys bordering the river. The miserable,
narrow, ill-paved thoroughfare did not present one redeeming
feature--even of picturesque dreariness. The roadway was paved
with all sorts of ragged stones, jammed down together without
any regard to level surface; and encumbered with dead rats,
melon-rinds, dogs, rags, brickbats, and rubbish, that had fallen
through the mules' baskets, as they toiled along it. The houses
were of wood--old and rotten; and bearing traces of having been
once painted red. There was, evidently, never any attempt made
to clean them, or their windows or doorways. Here and there,
where a building had been burnt, or had tumbled down, all the
ruins remained as they had fallen. Even the better class of
houses had an uncared-for, mouldy, plague-imbued, decaying
look about them; with grimy lattices instead of windows, on
the upper stories, and dilapidated shutters and doors on the
ground-floors."
It will have occurred to many, acquainted with the scenes portrayed,
to exclaim, when gazing upon the bright pictures of a David Roberts,
a Leopold Robert, or a Villamil, "What a deal of dirt is hidden
under all that gay colouring!" It will not do for the artist to look
too closely into the details of southern cleanliness and domestic
economy; he must elevate his subject and wash off the dirt, or at
least paint over it. Constantinople must be viewed as a panorama, not
investigated as if for sale. If he would preserve the enchantment
unbroken, the spectator must keep his distance, as from a picture
painted for distant effect. If he will not do this, if curiosity
impels him onwards, let him make up his eyes and olfactories to a
cruel disappointment. A minute ago, fairyland was spread before
him; he lands, and stumbles over a dead dog. Touching dogs, by
the bye, we have a word to say. Mr Smith has numerous passages
relating to that quadruped, esteemed in Christendom, abominable in
Constantinople. Having once, he informs us, been severely bitten
by a hound, and having, moreover, seen several persons die of
hydrophobia, he entertains a very justifiable mistrust of the canine
race, or at least of such of its specimens as present themselves with
slavering mouths, inflamed eyes, guttural yells, and hides ragged and
bloody. Now, this being the habitual appearance and bearing of the
eighty-thousand pugnacious and starving curs that infest the streets
of the Turkish capital, Mr Smith, had he been a nervous person,
would have passed rather an agreeable "month in Constantinople."
With a paper lantern in one hand, however, and a jagged stone in the
other--the usual weapons of defence--he prosecuted his wanderings
most courageously, at almost any hour of the night, through the
filth-strewn and dog-haunted streets. His first introduction to these
pleasant animals was auricular; and truly, compared to their uproar,
a German frog-swamp or a strong party of Christmas waits, jangling
a negro melody in defiance of time and tune, must be considered a
delightful _réveil-matin_.
"To say that if all the sheep-dogs going to Smithfield on a
market-day had been kept on the constant bark, and pitted
against the yelping curs upon all the carts in London, they
could have given any idea of the canine uproar that now first
astonished me, would be to make the feeblest of images.
The whole city rung with one vast riot. Down below me at
Tophanné--over at Stamboul--far away at Scutari--the whole
eighty thousand dogs that are said to overrun Constantinople
appeared engaged in the most active extermination of each other,
without a moment's cessation. The yelping, howling, barking,
growling, and snarling, were all merged into one uniform and
continuous even sound, as the noise of frogs becomes when heard
at a distance. For hours there was no lull. I went to sleep, and
woke again; and still, with my windows open, I heard the same
tumult going on; nor was it until daybreak that anything like
tranquillity was restored."
The traces of these nocturnal combats are plainly discernible the
next morning. There is not a whole skin in the entire canine legion;
some have lost eyes, others ears, some a collop of the little flesh
that remains on their unfortunate bones, and all bear the scars of
desperate conflicts. They keep an active look-out for dead horses
and camels, and are even said to devour their defunct comrades;
but there is no authenticated account of their making a meal of a
human being, although a story is current in Galata of their having
one night torn down a tipsy English sailor, and left nothing but
his bones to tell the tale in the morning. Drunkards, however, must
expect to go to the dogs. Mr Smith kept sober, and carried a lantern.
Solely to these two precautions, perhaps, are we to-day indebted for
the pleasure of reading his book, instead of mourning his interment
in the ravenous stomachs of Mahomedan mongrels.
It can hardly have escaped the observation of any one who has
travelled at all, that the presence of even a very few English
settlers in a town or district, speedily entails the establishment
of "the English shop." The keeper of this is not necessarily an
Englishman; he may be of any nation--Pole, Jew, Frenchman, German;
the essential is, that he should have a smattering of English and a
trader's knowledge of the heterogeneous articles which, in foreign
estimation, are indispensable to the existence of Englishmen.
Foremost amongst these are beer and pickles, mustard and cayenne,
Warren's blacking and Windsor soap, the pills of Professor
Holloway, the kalydor of the world-renowned Rowland. Thanks to the
extraordinary power of puffing, we dare to say that the paletot of
Sheriff Nicoll by this time finds its nook in "the English shop."
The growth of these philanthropical depots for the consolation of
exiled Britons is often miraculously mushroom-like. Land an English
regiment to occupy a menaced point on some distant foreign shore, and
within the week "the shop" appears, though it be but a booth with a
hamper of porter and a dozen pickle pots for sole stock in trade. In
Constantinople, where English abound, either as residents or birds
of passage, Stampa is a celebrity. The admirable establishment of
Galignani is not more famed for books and newspapers--and especially
for that far-famed _Messenger_, which reaches to the uttermost
ends of the earth--than is the shop of Stampa as a rendezvous and
receptacle for men and things English. There you may buy everything,
from a Stilton to a cake of soap, from a solar lamp to a steel pen;
and there obtain all manner of information, from the address of a
Galata[4] merchant to the sailing hour of a steamer. Nay, should you
be weary of kebobs and craving for a beefsteak, Stampa will provide
it you. He did so at least for Mr Smith; but perhaps that gentleman
was a favoured customer, as he seems indeed to have found means of
rendering himself at more than one place during his ramble.
[4] The names of the various districts of Constantinople, sometimes
rather indiscriminately used in travellers' narratives, are apt
to puzzle those readers unfamiliar with the divisions of the
city. The following note puts its distribution clearly before
them:--"_Stamboul_ may be termed Constantinople proper, inhabited by
the Turks, and containing the Seraglio, chief mosques, great public
offices, bazaars, and places of Government and general business.
It is the most ancient and most important part, _par excellence_.
_Galata_ is the Wapping of the city: here we find dirty shops for
ships' stores; merchants' counting-houses, and tipsy sailors.
_Tophanné_ is so called from the large gun-factory close at hand.
Both these suburbs are situated at the base of a very steep hill; the
upper part of which is _Pera_, the district allotted to the Franks,
or foreigners, and containing the palaces of the ambassadors, the
hotels, the European shops, and the most motley population under the
sun. _Scutari_ is to Stamboul as Birkenhead to Liverpool, and is in
Asia. It is important in its way, as being the starting-place of all
the caravans going inland. There are some other districts of less
interest to the average tourist."--_A Month at Constantinople_, p. 46.
At Constantinople, as at Smyrna, Mr Smith visited the slave
market. There is a volume in the word, and we all know the sort of
phantasmagoria it summons up for the benefit of English ladies and
gentlemen, as they sit at home at ease, dandling their fancies by
the chimney corner. Exeter Hall and the picture shops have made
slave-markets of their own, compared to which the reality is a tame
and spiritless affair. We are all familiar, at a proper distance,
with that group of young ladies, more or less nude, and of every
tint--from the pale Georgian to the sable Ethiop--huddled together
in great alarm and the most graceful attitudes, whilst a shawled
and jewelled Turk scans their perfections with licentious eye, and
counts gold into the palm of a truculent dealer in human flesh.
None of us but have been painfully affected by representations,
both printed and pictorial, of whips and manacles, fettered hands
and striped shoulders, kneeling negroes and barbarous taskmasters,
whereby tender-hearted gentlemen are moved to unbutton their pockets,
and philanthropical ladies of excitable nerve, overlooking the
misery that is often close to their doors, are set sewing flannels
for remote blacks. We have all seen this sort of thing, and have
been interested and touched accordingly. But Mr Smith, in the most
unfeeling manner, robs us of our illusions, so far, at least, as
Smyrna or Constantinople are concerned. In the slave-market at
the latter place--where blacks only are exposed, the Circassian
and Georgian beauties being secluded in the dealers' houses--he
arrived at the conclusion that the creatures he saw wrapped in their
blankets and crouching in corners, and in whom sense and feeling were
evidently at the very lowest ebb, had much better chance of such
happiness as they were capable of enjoying, if sold as slaves than if
left to their own savage resources.
"I should be very sorry," he says, "to run against any proper
feelings on the subject, but I do honestly believe that if any
person of average propriety and right-mindedness were shown
these creatures, and told that their lot was to become the
property of others, and work in return for food and lodging, he
would come to the conclusion it was all they were fit for....
The truth is, that the 'virtuous indignation' side of the
question holds out grander opportunities to an author for fine
writing than the practical fact. But this style of composition
should not always be implicitly relied upon. I knew a man who
was said, by certain reviews and literary _cliques_, to be
'a creature of large sympathies for the poor and oppressed,'
because he wrote touching things about them; but who would
abuse his wife, and brutally treat his children, and harass
his family, and then go and drink until his large heart was
sufficiently full to take up the 'man-and-brother' line of
literary business, and suggest that a tipsy Chartist was as good
as quiet gentleman."
Mr Albert Smith is evidently a hard-hearted person, and we begin to
repent of noticing his book. In the same pitiless matter-of-fact
manner he continues to tilt at the several articles of our Eastern
creed, pressing into his service as a witness Demetri the Second,
(not him of Athens, but a Constantinople cicerone,) a terrible fellow
for rubbing the romantic lacquer off Turkish manners and customs.
After the slaves, the sack and scimitar are disposed of. "Not many
executions now," quoth Demetri,--"only English subjects. Here's where
they cut the heads off; just here, where these two streets meet, and
the body is left here a day or two, and sometimes the dogs get at
it." This was rather startling intelligence, until explained. The
"English subjects" proved to be emigrants from Malta and the Ionian
islands--the greatest scamps in Pera--which is saying no little, for
Pera abounds with scamps. At that time, however, there had not been
an execution for a whole year past.
"All English gentlemen," continued Demetri, "think they cut off
heads every day in Stamboul, and put them, all of a row, on
plates at the Seraglio gate. And they think people are always
being drowned in the Bosphorus. Not true. I know a fellow who
is a dragoman, and shows that wooden shoot which comes from the
wall of the Seraglio Point, as the place they slide them down.
It is only to get rid of the garden rubbish. Same with lots of
other things."
Nothing like travel to dispel prejudice and romance. People are too
apt to adopt Byron's notions of the East. To those who would have
their eyes opened we recommend the Mediterranean steamers, or, if
these would take them too far, they may stay at home and read Mr
Smith.
"Travel," such is his advice to the seeker after truth, "with
a determination to be only affected by things as they strike
you. Swiss girls, St Bernard dogs, Portici fishermen, the Rhine,
Nile travelling, and other objects of popular rhapsodies,
fearfully deteriorate upon practical acquaintance. Few tourists
have the courage to say that they have been 'bored,' or at
least disappointed by some conventional lion. They find that
Guide-books, Diaries, Notes, Journals, &c. &c., all copy one
from the other in their enthusiasm about the same things; and
they shrink from the charge of vulgarity, or lack of mind, did
they dare to differ. Artists and writers _will_ study effect
rather than graphic truth. The florid description of some
modern book of travel is as different to the actual impressions
of ninety-nine people out of a hundred--allowing all these to
possess average education, perception, and intellect--when
painting in their minds the same subject, as the artfully tinted
lithograph, or picturesque engraving of the portfolio or annual,
is to the faithful photograph."
Mr Smith's concluding chapter, including his lazaretto experiences
and departure for Egypt, is very amusing, and he shows up the
abuses of the quarantine system, his own annoyances when in sickly
durance, and the eccentricities of his Mahometan and Christian
fellow-travellers, with spirit and humour. We have good will, but no
space, to accompany him further in his peregrinations. An appendix,
including estimates of expenses, and various remarks suggested by
his recent travelling experience, will be found useful by persons
contemplating a similar trip. The general texture of his book is
certainly of the slightest; but, as already implied, it pretends not
to solidity or to the discussion of grave topics. It is just such
a volume as might be composed by the amalgamation of a series of
epistles from a lively and fluent letter-writer to friends at home,
during a few weeks' ramble and abode in Turkey. If it occasionally
reminds us of Cockaigne, its author, we are sure, is too patriotic
to be ashamed of his native village, and we have no mind to quarrel
with him for the almost exclusively metropolitan character of his
tropes and similes, for his frequent reminiscences of London streets
and Surrey hills, or for his preference of the sunset seen from "The
Cricketers" at Chertsey Bridge, to the same sight from "The little
Burial-ground" at Pera. A good result--probably the one he aimed
at--of the selection, as points of comparison, of localities more
particularly familiar to Londoners, is that he thereby conveys, to
those who will doubtless form a very large proportion of his readers,
a clear idea of the places he visited and would describe. And his
little volume affords evidence of good temper and feeling sufficient
to cover a multitude of Cockneyisms.
When reviewing, about two years ago, a volume of rambles[5] in
a very different region, we stated our opinion as to the style
of illustration appropriate to books of this kind, in which cuts
or engravings are most acceptable when they explain scenes and
objects that written description, even at great length, would less
accurately and clearly place before the reader. Mr Smith is evidently
of the same way of thinking. "I have given," he says, "only those
illustrations which appeared to be the most characteristic rather
than the most imposing." In so doing he has shown judgment, and used
to the best advantage the pencils and colour-box, which formed part
of the heterogeneous contents of his well-stuffed knapsack. The
reader will be more obliged to him for the appropriate and useful
little sketches that thickly stud his pages, than for any drawings
of greater pretensions, whose introduction the size and price of the
volume would have permitted.
[5] Ballantyne's _Hudson's Bay_.
MADAME SONTAG AND THE OPERA.