Miss Pardoe

“ Indeed, setting aside the costume and the language, Broussa and its neighbourhood are a second edition of Lisbon; nearly the same dirt, the same bullock-cars, and luggage-mules, and rattle from morning to night within the city; the same blue sky, sparkling water, dense vegetation, bright flowers, and lofty trees without; the golden Tagus of the one being replaced by the magnificent plain of the other.
After having returned home and changed our dress, we mounted our horses, and started to see the Baths. Nothing can be more beautiful than the road which conducts to them. ”

“ I have alluded elsewhere to the facility with which the working classes of Turkey obtain access into the houses of the wealthy. On every occasion of rejoicing, the door is open to all; it is the sofa only which is sacred; but the poor share in all the enjoyments of the festival; the coffee and sherbet is served to them, if not with the same ceremony, at least with the same welcome, as to the prouder guests; they listen to the music—they mingle in the conversation—they join in the gaiety—and they are never made to feel that their lot is cast in a more lowly rank than that of their entertainer. ”

“ The grave-tree, nourished by the mouldering remnants of mortality, dank with the exhalations of the tombs, and rooted in a soil fed with corruption, drinks not the dews, and revels not in the day-beam, like the changeful child of the sunshine, which flings its leafy and light-loving branches over a painted kiosk, or a marble fountain—It is dark and silent, as the dead above whom it springs; and the wind moans more sadly among its boughs, than when it sweeps through the leaves of the summer woods. ”

“ The Osmanli is the creature of the present; he never falls back upon the past; he has no glorious memories to wile him from himself; every page of his history is shadowed over by some gloomy recollection—nor dare he dwell upon the future, for he is the subject of a despotic government: the proud Pasha of to-day may be headless, or at best houseless to-morrow; and hence, the premature decay of three-fourths of the Turkish dwellings.
When an individual becomes possessed of power, he buys or builds a residence suited to his brightened fortunes: he lavishes his revenue—why should he hoard it? ”

“ There are many who do not fear death; but they are habituated to associate it in their minds with an accustomed home, and watching friends, and anxious tenderness; all accessories tending to soften the pang of disease, and to smooth the path of dissolution—Few are they who could contemplate calmly the death-hour of the plague-smitten—the hunted from his home—haunting the hills in his polluted solitude; and contaminating the pure air of Heaven by the fetid breathings of pestilence—shrieking out his madness to the mocking moon,—and dying in his despair on the bare earth ”

“ A more graceful subject could scarcely be selected. From the gilded barges of the Sultan, to the common passage-boat that plies within the port, the caïques are all beauty; and, as they fly past you, their long and lofty prows dipping downward towards the current at every stroke of the oars, you are involuntarily reminded of some aquatic bird, moistening the plumage of its glistening breast in the clear ripple.
144That bright mass of gilding and glitter which is flying over the water, shaped like a marine monster, and gleaming in the sunshine, is one of the Imperial barges. ”

“ Oriental music requires distance to mellow it: and when it floats along the water, as though it rose from the ocean caves; and you suffer your imagination to dwell upon the white arms which are tossed in air as the silver wheels of the elastic tambourine ring out; and the delicate fingers that press the strings, and the rich red lips and large dark eyes that lend new grace to the wild and bounding melodies of the country—you are almost ready to fancy for the moment, that Apollo must have first swept his lyre in a Turkish harem. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As soon as the Buyuk Hanoum had left the bath, we were invited to her apartment; and as I looked from the withered and feeble woman who lay stretched on the sofa before me, propped with cushions, glittering with diamonds, and busied with her chibouk, to the stately and gorgeous Georgian in all the glow of her proud youth, I had difficulty in believing that they could indeed be the wives of one man! ”

“ Delicate flowing shrubs, herbs of delicious perfume, and blossoms of every dye, were about our path: the bright lilac-coloured gum-cistus, with a drop of gold in its centre—the snowy privet, with its scented cone—the wild hollyhock—the bindweed, as transparent and as variously coloured as in an European parterre—the mallow, with its pale petals of pink and white—the turquoise, as blue as a summer sky, and as large as a field-daisy—the foxglove, springing from amid the rocky masses by the wayside, like virtue struggling with adversity, and seeming doubly beautiful from the contrast ”

“ CHAPTER IX. Death in the Revel—Marriage of the Princess Mihirmàh—The Imperial Victim—The First Lover—Court Cabal—Policy of the Seraskier—The Second Suitor—The Miniature—The Last Gift—Interview between the Sultan and Mustapha Pasha.
It is strange how often events, which to the crowd appear redolent of joy and happiness, are to the principal actors replete with heartburning and misery—how what is a pageant to the many may be a penance to the few—and how the triumphant acclaim of the multitude may be hollowly echoed back in bitterness from the depths of a bereaved and stricken spirit. ”

“ The heart of the Princess beat high. He was in Stamboul! The wife of the meanest camal2 might look on him as his shadow fell upon her in the streets of the city; while she, his affianced bride, could only picture him to her fancy by gazing on the cold inanimate ivory. She turned from the diamonds that her slaves had officiously displayed upon the sofa on which she sat; they came from him, it was true, but they told no tale of love—they were the offering of ceremony—the tribute of the honoured Pasha to his honouring bride—they had pleased her fancy, but they had not touched her heart. ”

“ There is a revelation of intellect, an air of majesty, about the Georgian women, which seems so utterly at variance with their condition, that you involuntarily ask yourself if they can indeed ever be slaves; and you have some difficulty in admitting the fact, even to your own reason.
Nearly all the ladies of the Princess Azmè’s household are Georgians: and I have already had occasion to remark that her harem is celebrated for the beauty of its fair inhabitants.
But Devlehäi Hanoum left every individual of the Imperial Seraï of Ortakeuÿ immeasurably behind her. ”

“ At the marble gate we were met by the courteous individual who was to act as our guide through the saloons of the Sultan; and, having made our bow to the Kiara, who was also awaiting us, we stepped across the threshold, followed by the gaze of the astonished guard; and skirting the rainbow-like garden, we passed along the line of gilt lattices which veil the seaward boundary of the pleasure-grounds; and entered the hall.
The first glance of the interior is not imposing. ”

“ You cannot pass the Palace of Azmè Sultane, the elder sister of the Sultan, without being saluted by the sounds of music. The ladies of her harem are many of them consummate musicians, according to Turkish ideas of harmony; and the tinkle of the zebec, the long notes of the violin, the ringing rattle of the tambourine, and a chorus of female voices, are so constantly sweeping over the water through the closed lattices, that your boatmen universally slacken their pace as they reach the Seraïl. ”

“ Your boatmen, refreshed by the grateful coolness of the locality, speedily bring you to an open bridge; which, spanning the river at its narrowest point, unites the secluded valley, in which the holyday-keeping crowd are wont to assemble during the noon-tide sunshine, with the more open space on which they congregate towards the evening, to profit by the waters of a superb fountain of white marble, richly adorned with arabesques; and to inhale the fresh breeze that sweeps over the Bosphorus. ”

“ The throng which pressed into the chapel was immense, and the heat most oppressive; while the youths who guarded our windows were kept in constant action by the strenuous efforts made by the crowd to occupy the vacant space. I never saw a finer set of men—such bright black eyes, fine foreheads, and sparkling teeth.
At length a low chanting commenced in the court, and a train of Dervishes, headed by the High Priest, slowly ascended to the chapel. They had no peculiar costume, save the chief himself, who wore a magnificent green turban with a white crown, and a cloak of olive-coloured cloth. ”

“ The little village of Mirgheun, about a mile higher up the channel, is one of the prettiest things on the Bosphorus. A long street, terminating at the water’s edge, stretches far into the distance, its centre being occupied by a Moorish fountain of white marble, overshadowed by limes and acacias, beneath which are coffee terraces; constantly thronged with Turks, sitting gravely in groups upon low stools not more than half a foot from the ground, and occupied with their chibouks and mocha. ”

“ I mention the circumstance in order to prove to those who are inclined to treat the Turks as barbarians, and to speak of them as such, that there are many among them who may be both wronged and wounded by such an opinion, and who are capable of convincing them by their actions that it is unfounded. The Turks require only time, example, and a perfect confidence in their European allies, to become a polished as well as a civilized nation; they possess all the elements of civilization, but they are flung back by events—they are blinded by subtlety—they are hoodwinked by deception. ”

“ The nightingales sing throughout the whole of the day—the rush of water into the valley feeds a score of fountains, which keep up a perpetual murmur; open kiosks are raised along the hill side, some of them traversed by a running stream; storks build in the tall trees; tortoises and land turtles crawl among the high grass and the wild flowers; and altogether I know not a prettier spot than that which is occupied by the village of Tzèkerghè—the rural Cheltenham of Turkey. ”

“ Another striking object on the coast is the romantic and beautiful little cemetery of Isari, situated immediately beneath the Castle of Europe, by which it is dominated as by the eagle-eïrie of some feudal Baron. Rocks, rudely flung together, and in their perpendicular ascent impervious to vegetation, sustain the foundations of the fortress; while around and among them snatches of kindlier earth are covered with dense rich underwood, from amid which tall graceful trees spring up, and overshadow the gilded marble of many a columned gravestone. ”

“ The merchant’s house was situated near a mosque, from the gallery of whose minaret all the windows of the harem were overlooked. The sun was setting on a glorious summer evening, when the Imaum ascended to this gallery, to utter the shrill cry of the muezzin which summons the faithful to prayer. Ere he commenced the invocation, he chanced to glance downwards, and he started as he beheld a man, clinging to a shawl which had been flung from above, and making his way into the harem of the merchant through an open window. ”