At the lower end of every Turkish room are large closets for the reception of the bedding; and the slaves no sooner ascertain that you have risen, than half a dozen of them enter the apartment, and in five minutes every vestige of your couch has disappeared—you hurry from the bed to the bath, whence you cannot possibly escape in less than two hours—and the business of the day is then generally terminated for a Turkish lady. All that remains to be done is to sit under the covering of the tandour, passing the beads of a perfumed chaplet rapidly through the fingers fingers—arranging and re-arranging the head-dress and ornaments—or to put on the yashmac and feridjhe, and sally forth, accompanied by two or three slaves, to pay visits to favourite friends; either on foot, in yellow boots reaching up to the swell of the leg, over which a slipper of the same colour is worn; or in an araba, or carriage of the country, all paint, gilding, and crimson cloth, nestled among cushions, and making more use of her eyes than any being on earth save a Turkish woman would, with the best inclination in the world, be able to accomplish; such finished coquetry I never before witnessed as that of the Turkish ladies in the street. As the araba moves slowly along, the feridjhe is flung back to display its white silk lining and bullion tassels; and, should a group of handsome men be clustered on the pathway, that instant is accidentally chosen for arranging the yashmac. The dark-eyed dames of Spain, accomplished as they are in the art, never made more use of the graceful veil than do the orientals of the jealous yashmac.
The taste for “shopping”—what an excellent essay might the “piquante and spirituelle” Lady Morgan write on this universal feminine mania!—is as great among the eastern ladies as with their fair European sisters; but it is indulged in a totally different manner. Constantinople boasts no commercial palace like those of Howell and James, or Storr and Mortimer; and still less a Maradan Carson: no carriage draws up at the door of an Ebers or a Sams for “the last new novel;” nor does a well-warmed and well-floored bazar tempt the satin-slippered dame to wander among avenues of glittering gewgaws and elaborated trifles: the carriage of the veiled Osmanli stops at the door of some merchant who has a handsome shopman; and the name of the latter, having been previously ascertained, Sadak or Mustapha, as the case may be, is ordered by the arabajhe, or coachman, to exhibit to his mistress some article of merchandize, which he brings accordingly, and, while the lady affects to examine its quality and to decide on its value, she enters into conversation with the youth, playing upon him meanwhile the whole artillery of her fine eyes. The questioning generally runs nearly thus:—“What is your name?”—“How old are you?”—“Are you married?”—“Were you ever in love?”—and similar misplaced and childish questions. Should the replies of the interrogated person amuse her, and his beauty appear as great on a nearer view as when seen from a distance, the merchandize is objected to, and the visit repeated frequently, ere the fastidious taste of the purchaser can be satisfied.
Nor are women of high rank exempt from this indelicate fancy, which can only be accounted for by the belief that, like caged birds occasionally set free, they do not know how to use their liberty: the Sultana Haybétoullah, sister to his Sublime Highness, the Light of the Ottoman Empire, is particularly attached to this extraordinary passe-temps.
The following morning we started on an exploring expedition, accompanied by the closely-veiled and heavily-draped “Juno,” and attended by her nurse and child, and her quaintly-habited footman; and, as the carriage could not approach the house by a considerable distance, owing to the narrowness and steepness of the streets in that quarter of the city, (which, built upon the crest and down the slope of one of the “seven hills,” overlooks the glittering and craft-clustered port), we were obliged to walk to it through the frozen snow, upon the same principle that, as the mountain would not go to Mahomet, Mahomet was compelled to go to the mountain.
Directly I cast my eyes on the carriage, I had an excellent idea of that which the fairy godmother of Cinderella created for her favourite out of a pumpkin. Its form was that of a small covered waggon; its exterior was all crimson cloth, blue silk fringe, and tassels; and its inside precisely resembled a cake of gilt gingerbread. Four round looking-glasses, just sufficiently large to reflect the features, were impannelled on either side of the doors; and in the place of windows we had gilt lattices, so closely made that our position was the very reverse of cheerful; and, as I found it, moreover, quite impossible to breathe freely, these lattices were flung back despite the cold, and this arrangement being made, I established myself very comfortably on the satin cushions, with my feet doubled under me à la Turque, amid the piled-up luxuries of duvet and embroidery.
Our first visit was to the charshees, or, as Europeans for some inexplicable reason have the habit of calling them, the “bazars”—the word bazar literally signifying market—and, as the carriage rattled under the heavy portal, my first feeling was that of extreme disappointment. The great attraction of these establishments is undeniably their vast extent, for in tenue and richness they are as inferior to our own miniature bazars in London as possible. Rudely paved—disagreeably dirty—plentifully furnished with égouts, of which both the sight and the scent are unpleasing—badly lighted—clumsily built—and so constructed as to afford no idea of the space they cover, until you have wandered through the whole of their mazes, your involuntary impression is one of wonder at the hyperboles which have been lavished on them by travellers, and the uncalled-for extacies of tour-writers.
The charshees are like a little commercial town, roofed in; each street being appropriated to one particular trade or calling; and presenting relative degrees of attraction and luxury, from the diamond-merchant’s counter to the cushions of the shawl and fur-menders.
The Beizensteen is wonderfully rich in jewels, but in order to witness the display of these you must be, or be likely to become, a purchaser, as only a few, and those of comparatively small value, are exposed in the glass cases which ornament the counters. Nearly the whole of the jewellers are Armenians; as well as the money-changers, who transact business in their immediate vicinity. Indeed, all the steady commerce on a great scale in the capital may be said to be, with very slight exceptions, in the hands of the Armenians, who have the true, patient, plodding, calculating spirit of trade; while the wilder speculations of hazardous and ambitious enterprise are grasped with avidity by the more daring and adventurous Greeks; and hence arises the fact, for which it is at first sight difficult to account, that the most wealthy and the most needy of the merchants of Stamboul are alike of that nation: while you rarely see an Armenian either limited in his means, or obtrusive in his style.
In the street of the embroiderers, whose stalls make a very gay appearance, being hung all over with tobacco-bags, purses, and coiffures, wrought in gold and silver, we purchased a couple of richly-worked handkerchiefs, used by the ladies of the country for binding up the hair after the bath, and which are embroidered with a taste and skill truly admirable.
Thence we drove to the shoe bazar, where slippers worked with seed-pearls, and silver and gold thread, upon velvets of every shade and colour, make a very handsome and tempting appearance; and among these are ranged circular looking-glasses, of which the frames, backs, and handles are similarly ornamented. The scent-dealers next claimed our attention, and their quarter is indeed a miniature embodiment of “Araby the Blest,” for the atmosphere is one cloud of perfume. Here we were fully enabled to understand l’embarras des richesses, for all the sweets of the East and West tempted us at once, from the long and slender flacon of Eau de Cologne, to the small, gilded, closely-enveloped bottle of attar-gul. Nor less luxurious was the atmosphere of the spice bazar, with its pyramids of cloves, its piles of cinnamon, and its bags of mace—and, while the porcelain dealers allured us into their neighbourhood by a dazzling display, comprising every variety of ancient and modern china; silks, velvets, Broussa satins, and gold gauze in their turn invited us in another direction—and, in short, I left the charshees with aching eyes, and a very confused impression of this great mart of luxury and expence.
It was a most fatiguing day; and I was scarcely sorry when,