CHAPTER XXIX.
The Bridal Day—Ceremony of Acceptance—The Crowd—The Kislar Agha and the Court Astrologer—Order of the Procession—The Russian Coach—The Pasha and the Attachés—The Seraskier—Wives of the Pashas—The Sultan and the Georgian Slave.
The morrow was the bridal day, when the fortunate Saïd Pasha was to receive his Imperial Bride beneath his own roof, and to look upon her for the first time. As yet he had not had even a glimpse of her through her yashmac, their only interview having taken place on his arrival from the Dardanelles, when he had been summoned to the palace to throw himself at her feet, and to return thanks for the honour she was about to confer upon him. This interview, if such indeed a meeting may be termed in which one of the parties only has a sight of the other, is one of the ceremonies à la rigeur in the Imperial marriages of the East.
The bridegroom elect is led into a room, at whose upper extremity a door stands ajar; and behind this sits the lady splendidly habited, and surrounded by a train of slaves. A small portion of her embroidered antery is suffered to pass the opening of the door; and a side lattice, veiled with thin gauze, enables her to take a view of her suitor as he approaches; which he does slowly, and upon his knees, the whole length of the apartment. On arriving near the “Door of Light” that conceals the Princess, he thrice bows his forehead to the earth, ere he ventures to implore a ratification of his hopes. The officious Kislar Agha replies for the bride; and after a second prostration, the Pasha returns thanks “in a neat speech;” and with the permission of the same personage, he then raises to his lips the hem of the Imperial garment, and retires in the same humble posture in which he entered.
The on dit at the Palace whispered the disappointment of the bride on the present occasion, that the choice of her Imperial father had not fallen on Mustapha Pasha of Adrianople, whom she had once seen by accident, and by whose personal beauty she had been much attracted. It is, nevertheless, possible that this glimpse of her destined bridegroom reconciled her to her destiny; for, as it is the appearance only to which Turkish females generally attach any importance in their husbands, the young Pasha of the Dardanelles could safely compete with all his rivals, being really a very handsome and intelligent-looking person.
Had I not known that such a thing was altogether impossible, I should have said, when I pulled up my panting horse on the height above the palace, that the same groups occupied the same spots where I had seen them on the previous day. The scene did not appear to have altered in a single feature. I saw the same smiling faces, and received the same kindly greetings; laughed at the same dirty, stupid-looking sentinels, and bought a cool draught from the same water-vender for a twenty para piece; and, altogether, I had some difficulty in persuading myself that I had really talked politics with a hot-headed Englishman, theology with a Greek Papas, and nonsense with a Sardinian Secretary, and moreover had slept through a long night, since I last stood upon that sunny hill, and looked far and wide upon the same wilderness of human beings.
The procession of the preceding day had been announced to start from Dolma Batchè at eight o’clock, but the mid-day muezzin had been called from the minarets, ere the first trumpeter issued from the portal. Profiting, therefore, by our experience, we partook of a quiet breakfast on the present occasion, ere we sped to the scene of action; and we had judged rightly in so doing, for we were yet considerably in advance of the bridal train. Nevertheless, it is certain that the baggage-mules and the treasure-carriages required more time to prepare them for the journey than the Imperial Bride, and her attendant train of ladies; for the Kislar Agha was yet girding on his sword with all the quiet precision of a man who has no cause for haste, when a negro of the Seraï rushed into the apartment, and startled him with the intelligence that her Highness was not only ready to start, but actually in the Great Saloon of the Harem, waiting for him to precede her to her carriage. At this announcement the portly personage suffered his weapon to fall from his hands; and tossing his arms above his head, he filled the apartment with his outcries.
“Who has done this? Who has insidiously counselled this haste? Where is the traitor who would destroy the Imperial Daughter of our noble Sultan? (May his beard be white!) It yet wants ten minutes of the time appointed by the astrologer—the lucky moment is not come—and until it arrives, she shall not set her foot without the palace, were it ten times her bridal day.”
At length, however, the auspicious moment really did arrive, when the Kislar Agha was himself the first to hasten the departure of the Princess. The procession was the very triumph of mystery. All the high-born beauties of Stamboul were to pass us by, and we were only to imagine the loveliness on which we were to have no opportunity of looking. The Sultan’s Band opened the march, and executed with great precision a piece of martial music, composed for the occasion by their talented leader Donizetti; a regiment of cavalry followed, and was succeeded in its turn by a gorgeous train of Pashas, among whom rode the bridegroom; and then came the European carriage of the Sultan, drawn by four bay horses, each led by a page in a scarlet and gold uniform. This was succeeded by the Imperial State Coach, of silver gilt, the raised cornice above the roof inlaid with cornelians, agates, and jaspers, the magnificent gift of the Emperor of Russia to his Turkish ally—the gilded lattices, through which gleamed the jealous curtains of rose-coloured silk, were closely shut; and the Imperial Bride was the sole tenant of the costly vehicle. This carriage, which was drawn by six stately horses from the personal stud of the Autocrat, was followed by that in which the Princess had been accustomed to drive on state occasions; the windows were thrown back, and the curtains undrawn—it was empty. Next came the Sultana-Mother, the Princess Salihè, and the younger sister of the bride, a sweet-looking girl of eleven or twelve years of age, who sat beside her veiled relatives in a heavy head-dress of black velvet, overcharged with diamonds; but whose fair young face laughed out in loveliness beneath the hideous disfigurement. These were succeeded by a second Russian carriage, drawn by four horses similar to those in the State Coach, an offering of Russian policy to Achmet Pasha, whose Buyuk Hanoum was within, attended by three female slaves.
The train amounted in all to forty-seven carriages and four; many of them tenanted by five and even six individuals, whose coquettishly arranged yashmacs afforded at times something more than a glimpse of their fair faces; a fact of which the negro guard appeared so well aware, that on some suggestion from one of them to a Pasha, who rode immediately in front of the Imperial carriage, on the second apparition of our party by the wayside, (which, soit dit en passant, must have been sufficiently attractive to the veiled beauties, being principally composed of attachés to the different embassies), His Excellency addressed himself to me in very tolerable French, and told me that, although I was individually at liberty to accompany the procession to the Palace-gates if I wished to do so, he must request that the gentlemen would not attempt to advance further. But the prohibition was more readily uttered than obeyed; and we only just waited for a first glimpse of the fifty negroes who formed the rear-guard, ere we were off again, as fast as our generous horses would carry us.
And well should we have been repaid when we pulled up mid-way of the steep descent leading to the Palace, had it only been by the spectacle of the wily old Seraskier, who rode beside the window of the State Coach, in a state of admirably got-up agitation; first shouting to the troop of attendants who hung on to the wheels, like a man in the last agony; and then modulating his voice to the extremest gentleness of which it was susceptible, to implore of the Imperial Bride not to imagine that there existed the slightest danger; half the fuss that he was making meanwhile, being more than sufficient to satisfy her that she was on the eve of being hurled over the precipice.
On her arrival in the Court of the Palace, Saïd Pasha, on his knees beside the carriage, received her in his arms, and carried her into the Great Saloon of the Harem; the ladies of the Court, who had the entrée, followed in succession; the golden gates were closed: and the excluded had nothing more to do than to shake the dust from their garments—and truly it was about an inch thick—to swallow a glass of iced lemonade in the saddle, and to gallop back, under a burning sun, to their respective homes.
Each Pasha, on the occasion of an Imperial marriage, sends on a stated day his Buyuk Hanoum, or principal wife, to the Palace, attended by two slaves, to congratulate the Princess on her approaching nuptials; and these are the ladies who subsequently form the reception circle at her new home. At the visit of felicitation, when the Sultan receives them on the part of his august daughter, they are presented by the munificent sovereign with an antery, jacket, and trowsers of rich stuff, a pair of embroidered slippers, and a diamond ring; the same articles, but fitted in value to their station, being bestowed also on their attendants. In this magnificent costume they are expected to appear on the bridal day; and on their departure from the Presence, they place their own gifts in the hands of the Kislar Agha, which are always of the extremest richness that the means of the Pasha will permit.
An amusing anecdote is connected with this ceremony, which, being authentic, I may as well relate. The Imperial Presentation negatives the necessity of yashmacs, and thus Sultan Mahmoud enjoys the exclusive privilege of forming a judgment on the taste of his Pashas. On the marriage of the Princess Salihè, the Reiss Effendi forwarded to the Imperial Presence the mother of his sons, a lady to whom nature had not originally been lavish of her gifts, and who had subsequently lost an eye during an attack of plague. His Sublime Highness was observed to fidget upon his sofa as the presentation took place, but the Buyuk Hanoum was received with all the honours due to the exalted rank of her husband, and departed laden with the rich gifts of Imperial generosity.
On the morrow, however, a caïque impelled by three rowers, and freighted with a closely veiled female under the guard of a party of the negroes of the Seraï, pushed off from the Palace of Dolma Batchè, and ran alongside the terrace of that of the minister; when the lady was landed, and, on being conducted into the presence of the Reiss Effendi, her veil was withdrawn, and she proved to be a lovely Georgian slave of about sixteen years of age, in all the first burst of her young beauty—a present to the noble from his Imperial Master, accompanied by a command, that should another occasion occur in which the wives of the Pashas were required to appear before the Sultan, the Reiss Effendi would cause the dark-eyed Georgian to act as the representative of a lady, whose age and infirmities must render all court ceremonials extremely irksome to her feelings.
Of course, the lovely slave was one of the bridal train of the Princess Mihirmàh!