Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo
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William Makepeace Thackeray >> Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo
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It is proper, they say, to be disappointed on entering the town, or
any of the various quarters of it, because the houses are not so
magnificent on inspection and seen singly as they are when beheld
en masse from the waters. But why form expectations so lofty? If
you see a group of peasants picturesquely disposed at a fair, you
don't suppose that they are all faultless beauties, or that the
men's coats have no rags, and the women's gowns are made of silk
and velvet: the wild ugliness of the interior of Constantinople or
Pera has a charm of its own, greatly more amusing than rows of red
bricks or drab stones, however symmetrical. With brick or stone
they could never form those fantastic ornaments, railings,
balconies, roofs, galleries, which jut in and out of the rugged
houses of the city. As we went from Galata to Pera up a steep
hill, which newcomers ascend with some difficulty, but which a
porter, with a couple of hundredweight on his back, paces up
without turning a hair, I thought the wooden houses far from being
disagreeable objects, sights quite as surprising and striking as
the grand one we had just left.
I do not know how the custom-house of His Highness is made to be a
profitable speculation. As I left the ship, a man pulled after my
boat, and asked for backsheesh, which was given him to the amount
of about twopence. He was a custom-house officer, but I doubt
whether this sum which he levied ever went to the revenue.
I can fancy the scene about the quays somewhat to resemble the
river of London in olden times, before coal-smoke had darkened the
whole city with soot, and when, according to the old writers, there
really was bright weather. The fleets of caiques bustling along
the shore, or scudding over the blue water, are beautiful to look
at: in Hollar's print London river is so studded over with wherry-
boats, which bridges and steamers have since destroyed. Here the
caique is still in full perfection: there are thirty thousand
boats of the kind plying between the cities; every boat is neat,
and trimly carved and painted; and I scarcely saw a man pulling in
one of them that was not a fine specimen of his race, brawny and
brown, with an open chest and a handsome face. They wear a thin
shirt of exceedingly light cotton, which leaves their fine brown
limbs full play; and with a purple sea for a background, every one
of these dashing boats forms a brilliant and glittering picture.
Passengers squat in the inside of the boat; so that as it passes
you see little more than the heads of the true believers, with
their red fez and blue tassel, and that placid gravity of
expression which the sucking of a tobacco-pipe is sure to give to a
man.
The Bosphorus is enlivened by a multiplicity of other kinds of
craft. There are the dirty men-of-war's boats of the Russians,
with unwashed mangy crews; the great ferry-boats carrying hundreds
of passengers to the villages; the melon-boats piled up with
enormous golden fruit; His Excellency the Pasha's boat, with twelve
men bending to their oars; and His Highness's own caique, with a
head like a serpent, and eight-and-twenty tugging oarsmen, that
goes shooting by amidst the thundering of the cannon. Ships and
steamers, with black sides and flaunting colours, are moored
everywhere, showing their flags, Russian and English, Austrian,
American, and Greek; and along the quays country ships from the
Black Sea or the islands, with high carved poops and bows, such as
you see in the pictures of the shipping of the seventeenth century.
The vast groves and towers, domes and quays, tall minarets and
spired spreading mosques of the three cities, rise all around in
endless magnificence and variety, and render this water-street a
scene of such delightful liveliness and beauty, that one never
tires of looking at it. I lost a great number of the sights in and
round Constantinople through the beauty of this admirable scene:
but what are sights after all? and isn't that the best sight which
makes you most happy?
We were lodged at Pera at Misseri's Hotel, the host of which has
been made famous ere this time by the excellent book "Eothen,"--a
work for which all the passengers on board our ship had been
battling, and which had charmed all--from our great statesman, our
polished lawyer, our young Oxonian, who sighed over certain
passages that he feared were wicked, down to the writer of this,
who, after perusing it with delight, laid it down with wonder,
exclaiming, "Aut Diabolus aut"--a book which has since (greatest
miracle of all) excited a feeling of warmth and admiration in the
bosom of the god-like, impartial, stony Athenaeum. Misseri, the
faithful and chivalrous Tartar, is transformed into the most quiet
and gentlemanlike of landlords, a great deal more gentlemanlike in
manner and appearance than most of us who sat at his table, and
smoked cool pipes on his house-top, as we looked over the hill and
the Russian palace to the water, and the Seraglio gardens shining
in the blue. We confronted Misseri, "Eothen" in hand, and found,
on examining him, that it WAS "aut Diabolus aut amicus"--but the
name is a secret; I will never breathe it, though I am dying to
tell it.
The last good description of a Turkish bath, I think, was Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu's--which voluptuous picture must have been painted
at least a hundred and thirty years ago; so that another sketch may
be attempted by a humbler artist in a different manner. The
Turkish bath is certainly a novel sensation to an Englishman, and
may be set down as a most queer and surprising event of his life.
I made the valet-de-place or dragoman (it is rather a fine thing to
have a dragoman in one's service) conduct me forthwith to the best
appointed hummums in the neighbourhood; and we walked to a house at
Tophana, and into a spacious hall lighted from above, which is the
cooling-room of the bath.
The spacious hall has a large fountain in the midst, a painted
gallery running round it; and many ropes stretched from one gallery
to another, ornamented with profuse draperies of towels and blue
cloths, for the use of the frequenters of the place. All round the
room and the galleries were matted inclosures, fitted with numerous
neat beds and cushions for reposing on, where lay a dozen of true
believers smoking, or sleeping, or in the happy half-dozing state.
I was led up to one of these beds, to rather a retired corner, in
consideration of my modesty; and to the next bed presently came a
dancing dervish, who forthwith began to prepare for the bath.
When the dancing dervish had taken off his yellow sugar-loaf cap,
his gown, shawl, &c., he was arrayed in two large blue cloths; a
white one being thrown over his shoulders, and another in the shape
of a turban plaited neatly round his head; the garments of which he
divested himself were folded up in another linen, and neatly put
by. I beg leave to state I was treated in precisely the same
manner as the dancing dervish.
The reverend gentleman then put on a pair of wooden pattens, which
elevated him about six inches from the ground; and walked down the
stairs, and paddled across the moist marble floor of the hall, and
in at a little door, by the which also Titmarsh entered. But I had
none of the professional agility of the dancing dervish; I
staggered about very ludicrously upon the high wooden pattens; and
should have been down on my nose several times, had not the
dragoman and the master of the bath supported me down the stairs
and across the hall. Dressed in three large cotton napkins, with a
white turban round my head, I thought of Pall Mall with a sort of
despair. I passed the little door, it was closed behind me--I was
in the dark--I couldn't speak the language--in a white turban. Mon
Dieu! what was going to happen?
The dark room was the tepidarium, a moist oozing arched den, with a
light faintly streaming from an orifice in the domed ceiling.
Yells of frantic laughter and song came booming and clanging
through the echoing arches, the doors clapped to with loud
reverberations. It was the laughter of the followers of Mahound,
rollicking and taking their pleasure in the public bath. I could
not go into that place: I swore I would not; they promised me a
private room, and the dragoman left me. My agony at parting from
that Christian cannot be described.
When you get into the sudarium, or hot room, your first sensations
only occur about half a minute after entrance, when you feel that
you are choking. I found myself in that state, seated on a marble
slab; the bath man was gone; he had taken away the cotton turban
and shoulder shawl: I saw I was in a narrow room of marble, with a
vaulted roof, and a fountain of warm and cold water; the atmosphere
was in a steam, the choking sensation went off, and I felt a sort
of pleasure presently in a soft boiling simmer, which, no doubt,
potatoes feel when they are steaming. You are left in this state
for about ten minutes: it is warm certainly, but odd and pleasant,
and disposes the mind to reverie.
But let any delicate mind in Baker Street fancy my horror when, on
looking up out of this reverie, I saw a great brown wretch extended
before me, only half dressed, standing on pattens, and exaggerated
by them and the steam until he looked like an ogre, grinning in the
most horrible way, and waving his arm, on which was a horsehair
glove. He spoke, in his unknown nasal jargon, words which echoed
through the arched room; his eyes seemed astonishingly large and
bright, his ears stuck out, and his head was all shaved, except a
bristling top-knot, which gave it a demoniac fierceness.
This description, I feel, is growing too frightful; ladies who read
it will be going into hysterics, or saying, "Well, upon my word,
this is the most singular, the most extraordinary kind of language.
Jane, my love, you will not read that odious book--" and so I will
be brief. This grinning man belabours the patient violently with
the horse-brush. When he has completed the horsehair part, and you
lie expiring under a squirting fountain of warm water, and fancying
all is done, he reappears with a large brass basin, containing a
quantity of lather, in the midst of which is something like old
Miss MacWhirter's flaxen wig that she is so proud of, and that we
have all laughed at. Just as you are going to remonstrate, the
thing like the wig is dashed into your face and eyes, covered over
with soap, and for five minutes you are drowned in lather: you
can't see, the suds are frothing over your eye-balls; you can't
hear, the soap is whizzing into your ears; can't gasp for breath,
Miss MacWhirter's wig is down your throat with half a pailful of
suds in an instant--you are all soap. Wicked children in former
days have jeered you, exclaiming, "How are you off for soap?" You
little knew what saponacity was till you entered a Turkish bath.
When the whole operation is concluded, you are led--with what
heartfelt joy I need not say--softly back to the cooling-room,
having been robed in shawls and turbans as before. You are laid
gently on the reposing bed; somebody brings a narghile, which
tastes as tobacco must taste in Mahomet's Paradise; a cool sweet
dreamy languor takes possession of the purified frame; and half-an-
hour of such delicious laziness is spent over the pipe as is
unknown in Europe, where vulgar prejudice has most shamefully
maligned indolence--calls it foul names, such as the father of all
evil, and the like; in fact, does not know how to educate idleness
as those honest Turks do, and the fruit which, when properly
cultivated, it bears.
The after-bath state is the most delightful condition of laziness I
ever knew, and I tried it wherever we went afterwards on our little
tour. At Smyrna the whole business was much inferior to the method
employed in the capital. At Cairo, after the soap, you are plunged
into a sort of stone coffin, full of water which is all but
boiling. This has its charms; but I could not relish the Egyptian
shampooing. A hideous old blind man (but very dexterous in his
art) tried to break my back and dislocate my shoulders, but I could
not see the pleasure of the practice; and another fellow began
tickling the soles of my feet, but I rewarded him with a kick that
sent him off the bench. The pure idleness is the best, and I shall
never enjoy such in Europe again.
Victor Hugo, in his famous travels on the Rhine, visiting Cologne,
gives a learned account of what he DIDN'T see there. I have a
remarkable catalogue of similar objects at Constantinople. I
didn't see the dancing dervishes, it was Ramazan; nor the howling
dervishes at Scutari, it was Ramazan; nor the interior of St.
Sophia, nor the women's apartment of the Seraglio, nor the
fashionable promenade at the Sweet Waters, always because it was
Ramazan; during which period the dervishes dance and howl but
rarely, their legs and lungs being unequal to much exertion during
a fast of fifteen hours. On account of the same holy season, the
Royal palaces and mosques are shut; and though the Valley of the
Sweet Waters is there, no one goes to walk; the people remaining
asleep all day, and passing the night in feasting and carousing.
The minarets are illuminated at this season; even the humblest
mosque at Jerusalem, or Jaffa, mounted a few circles of dingy
lamps; those of the capital were handsomely lighted with many
festoons of lamps, which had a fine effect from the water. I need
not mention other and constant illuminations of the city, which
innumerable travellers have described--I mean the fires. There
were three in Pera during our eight days' stay there; but they did
not last long enough to bring the Sultan out of bed to come and
lend his aid. Mr. Hobhouse (quoted in the "Guide-book") says, if a
fire lasts an hour, the Sultan is bound to attend it in person; and
that people having petitions to present, have often set houses on
fire for the purpose of forcing out this Royal trump. The Sultan
can't lead a very "jolly life," if this rule be universal. Fancy
His Highness, in the midst of his moon-faced beauties, handkerchief
in hand, and obliged to tie it round his face, and go out of his
warm harem at midnight at the cursed cry of "Yang en Var!"
We saw His Highness in the midst of his people and their petitions,
when he came to the mosque at Tophana; not the largest, but one of
the most picturesque of the public buildings of the city. The
streets were crowded with people watching for the august arrival,
and lined with the squat military in their bastard European
costume; the sturdy police, with bandeliers and brown surtouts,
keeping order, driving off the faithful from the railings of the
Esplanade through which their Emperor was to pass, and only
admitting (with a very unjust partiality, I thought) us Europeans
into that reserved space. Before the august arrival, numerous
officers collected, colonels and pashas went by with their
attendant running footmen; the most active, insolent, and hideous
of these great men, as I thought, being His Highness's black
eunuchs, who went prancing through the crowd, which separated
before them with every sign of respect.
The common women were assembled by many hundreds: the yakmac, a
muslin chin-cloth which they wear, makes almost every face look the
same; but the eyes and noses of these beauties are generally
visible, and, for the most part, both these features are good. The
jolly negresses wear the same white veil, but they are by no means
so particular about hiding the charms of their good-natured black
faces, and they let the cloth blow about as it lists, and grin
unconfined. Wherever we went the negroes seemed happy. They have
the organ of child-loving: little creatures were always prattling
on their shoulders, queer little things in night gowns of yellow
dimity, with great flowers, and pink or red or yellow shawls, with
great eyes glistening underneath. Of such the black women seemed
always the happy guardians. I saw one at a fountain, holding one
child in her arms, and giving another a drink--a ragged little
beggar--a sweet and touching picture of a black charity.
I am almost forgetting His Highness the Sultan. About a hundred
guns were fired off at clumsy intervals from the Esplanade facing
the Bosphorus, warning us that the monarch had set off from his
Summer Palace, and was on the way to his grand canoe. At last that
vessel made its appearance; the band struck up his favourite air;
his caparisoned horse was led down to the shore to receive him; the
eunuchs, fat pashas, colonels and officers of state gathering round
as the Commander of the Faithful mounted. I had the indescribable
happiness of seeing him at a very short distance. The Padishah, or
Father of all the Sovereigns on earth, has not that majestic air
which some sovereigns possess, and which makes the beholder's eyes
wink, and his knees tremble under him: he has a black beard, and a
handsome well-bred face, of a French cast; he looks like a young
French roue worn out by debauch; his eyes bright, with black rings
round them; his cheeks pale and hollow. He was lolling on his
horse as if he could hardly hold himself on the saddle: or as if
his cloak, fastened with a blazing diamond clasp on his breast, and
falling over his horse's tail, pulled him back. But the handsome
sallow face of the Refuge of the World looked decidedly interesting
and intellectual. I have seen many a young Don Juan at Paris,
behind a counter, with such a beard and countenance; the flame of
passion still burning in his hollow eyes, while on his damp brow
was stamped the fatal mark of premature decay. The man we saw
cannot live many summers. Women and wine are said to have brought
the Zilullah to this state; and it is whispered by the dragomans,
or laquais-de-place (from whom travellers at Constantinople
generally get their political information), that the Sultan's
mother and his ministers conspire to keep him plunged in
sensuality, that they may govern the kingdom according to their own
fancies. Mr. Urquhart, I am sure, thinks that Lord Palmerston has
something to do with the business, and drugs the Sultan's champagne
for the benefit of Russia.
As the Pontiff of Mussulmans passed into the mosques a shower of
petitions was flung from the steps where the crowd was collected,
and over the heads of the gendarmes in brown. A general cry, as
for justice, rose up; and one old ragged woman came forward and
burst through the throng, howling, and flinging about her lean
arms, and baring her old shrunken breast. I never saw a finer
action of tragic woo, or heard sounds more pitiful than those old
passionate groans of hers. What was your prayer, poor old wretched
soul? The gendarmes hemmed her round, and hustled her away, but
rather kindly. The Padishah went on quite impassible--the picture
of debauch and ennui.
I like pointing morals, and inventing for myself cheap
consolations, to reconcile me to that state of life into which it
has pleased Heaven to call me; and as the Light of the World
disappeared round the corner, I reasoned pleasantly with myself
about His Highness, and enjoyed that secret selfish satisfaction a
man has, who sees he is better off than his neighbour. "Michael
Angelo," I said, "you are still (by courtesy) young: if you had
five hundred thousand a year, and were a great prince, I would lay
a wager that men would discover in you a magnificent courtesy of
demeanour, and a majestic presence that only belongs to the
sovereigns of the world. If you had such an income, you think you
could spend it with splendour: distributing genial hospitalities,
kindly alms, soothing misery, bidding humility be of good heart,
rewarding desert. If you had such means of purchasing pleasure,
you think, you rogue, you could relish it with gusto. But fancy
being brought to the condition of the poor Light of the Universe
yonder; and reconcile yourself with the idea that you are only a
farthing rushlight. The cries of the poor widow fall as dead upon
him as the smiles of the brightest eyes out of Georgia. He can't
stir abroad but those abominable cannon begin roaring and deafening
his ears. He can't see the world but over the shoulders of a row
of fat pashas, and eunuchs, with their infernal ugliness. His ears
can never be regaled with a word of truth, or blessed with an
honest laugh. The only privilege of manhood left to him, he enjoys
but for a month in the year, at this time of Ramazan, when he is
forced to fast for fifteen hours; and, by consequence, has the
blessing of feeling hungry." Sunset during Lent appears to be his
single moment of pleasure; they say the poor fellow is ravenous by
that time, and as the gun fires the dish-covers are taken off, so
that for five minutes a day he lives and is happy over pillau, like
another mortal.
And yet, when floating by the Summer Palace, a barbaric edifice of
wood and marble, with gilded suns blazing over the porticoes, and
all sorts of strange ornaments and trophies figuring on the gates
and railings--when we passed a long row of barred and filigreed
windows, looking on the water--when we were told that those were
the apartments of His Highness's ladies, and actually heard them
whispering and laughing behind the bars--a strange feeling of
curiosity came over some ill-regulated minds--just to have one
peep, one look at all those wondrous beauties, singing to the
dulcimers, paddling in the fountains, dancing in the marble halls,
or lolling on the golden cushions, as the gaudy black slaves
brought pipes and coffee. This tumultuous movement was calmed by
thinking of that dreadful statement of travellers, that in one of
the most elegant halls there is a trap-door, on peeping below which
you may see the Bosphorus running underneath, into which some
luckless beauty is plunged occasionally, and the trap-door is shut,
and the dancing and the singing, and the smoking and the laughing
go on as before. They say it is death to pick up any of the sacks
thereabouts, if a stray one should float by you. There were none
any day when I passed, AT LEAST, ON THE SURFACE OF THE WATER.
It has been rather a fashion of our travellers to apologise for
Turkish life, of late, and paint glowing agreeable pictures of many
of its institutions. The celebrated author of "Palm-Leaves" (his
name is famous under the date-trees of the Nile, and uttered with
respect beneath the tents of the Bedaween) has touchingly described
Ibrahim Pasha's paternal fondness, who cut off a black slave's head
for having dropped and maimed one of his children; and has penned a
melodious panegyric of "The Harem," and of the fond and beautiful
duties of the inmates of that place of love, obedience, and
seclusion. I saw, at the mausoleum of the late Sultan Mahmoud's
family, a good subject for a Ghazul, in the true new Oriental
manner.
These Royal burial-places are the resort of the pious Moslems.
Lamps are kept burning there; and in the antechambers, copies of
the Koran are provided for the use of believers; and you never pass
these cemeteries but you see Turks washing at the cisterns,
previous to entering for prayer, or squatted on the benches,
chanting passages from the sacred volume. Christians, I believe,
are not admitted, but may look through the bars, and see the
coffins of the defunct monarchs and children of the Royal race.
Each lies in his narrow sarcophagus, which is commonly flanked by
huge candles, and covered with a rich embroidered pall. At the
head of each coffin rises a slab, with a gilded inscription; for
the princesses, the slab is simple, not unlike our own monumental
stones. The headstones of the tombs of the defunct princes are
decorated with a turban, or, since the introduction of the latter
article of dress, with the red fez. That of Mahmoud is decorated
with the imperial aigrette.
In this dismal but splendid museum, I remarked two little tombs
with little red fezzes, very small, and for very young heads
evidently, which were lying under the little embroidered palls of
state. I forget whether they had candles too; but their little
flame of life was soon extinguished, and there was no need of many
pounds of wax to typify it. These were the tombs of Mahmoud's
grandsons, nephews of the present Light of the Universe, and
children of his sister, the wife of Halil Pasha. Little children
die in all ways: these of the much-maligned Mahometan Royal race
perished by the bowstring. Sultan Mahmoud (may he rest in glory!)
strangled the one; but, having some spark of human feeling, was so
moved by the wretchedness and agony of the poor bereaved mother,
his daughter, that his Royal heart relented towards her, and he
promised that, should she ever have another child, it should be
allowed to live. He died; and Abdul Medjid (may his name be
blessed!), the debauched young man whom we just saw riding to the
mosque, succeeded. His sister, whom he is said to have loved,
became again a mother, and had a son. But she relied upon her
father's word and her august brother's love, and hoped that this
little one should be spared. The same accursed hand tore this
infant out of its mother's bosom, and killed it. The poor woman's
heart broke outright at this second calamity, and she died. But on
her death-bed she sent for her brother, rebuked him as a perjurer
and an assassin, and expired calling down the divine justice on his
head. She lies now by the side of the two little fezzes.
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