LETTER XLII.
The Perfection of Bathing—Pipes—Downy Cushions—Coffee—Rubbing Down—“Circular Justice,” as displayed in the Retribution of Boiled Lobsters—A Deluge of Suds—The Shampoo—Luxurious helps to the Imagination—A Pedestrian Excursion—Story of an American Tar, burdened with Small Change—Beauty of the Turkish Children—A Civilised Monster—Glimpse of Sultan Mahmoud in an Ill-Humour.
“Time is (not) money” in the East. We were three hours to-day at the principal bath of Constantinople, going through the ordinary process of the establishment, and were outstayed, at last, by two Turkish officers who had entered with us. During this time, we had each the assiduous service of an attendant, and coffee, lemonade, and pipes ad libitum, for the consideration of half a Spanish dollar.
Although I have once described a Turkish bath, the metropolitan “pomp and circumstance” so far exceed the provincial in this luxury, that I think I shall be excused for dwelling a moment upon it again. The dressing-room opens at once from the street. We descended half a dozen steps to a stone floor, in the centre of which stood a large marble fountain. Its basin was kept full by several jets d’eau, which threw their silver curves into the air, and the edge was set round with narghilés (or Persian water-pipes with glass vases), ready for the smokers of the mild tobacco of Shiraz. The ceiling of this large hall was lofty, and the sides were encircled by three galleries, one above the other, with open balustrades, within which the bathers undressed. In a corner sat several attendants, with only a napkin around their waists, smoking till their services should be required; and one who had just come from the inner bath, streaming with perspiration, covered himself with cloths, and lay crouched, upon a carpet till he could bear, with safety, the temperature of the outer air.
A half-naked Turk, without his turban, looks more a Mephistopheles than a Ganymede, and I could scarce forbear shrinking as this shaven-headed troop of servitors seized upon us, and, without a word, pulled off our boots, thrust our feet into slippers, and led us up into the gallery to undress. An ottoman, piled with cushions, and overhung, on the wall, by a small mirror, was allotted to each, and with the assistance of my familiar (who was quite too familiar!) I found myself stripped, nolens volens, and a snowy napkin, with gold and embroidered edge, twisted into a becoming turban around my head.
We were led immediately into the first bath, a small room, in which the heat, for the first breath or two, seemed rather oppressive. Carpets were spread for us on the warm marble floor, and crossing our legs, with more ease than when cased in our unoriental pantaloons, we were served with pipes and coffee of a delicious flavour.
After a half hour, the atmosphere, so warm when we entered, began to feel chilly, and we were taken by the arm, and led by our speechless Mussulman, through an intermediate room, into the grand bath. The heat here seemed to me, for a moment almost intolerable. The floor was hot, and the air so moist with the suffocating vapour, as to rest like mist upon the skin. It was a spacious and vaulted room, with perhaps fifty small square windows in the dome, and four arched recesses in the sides, supplied with marble seats, and small reservoirs of hot and cold water. In the centre was a broad platform, on which the bather was rubbed and shampooed, occupied, just then, by two or three dark-skinned Turks, lying on their backs, with their eyes shut, dreaming, if one might judge by their countenances, of Paradise.
After being left to walk about for half an hour, by this time bathed in perspiration, our respective demons seized upon us again, and led us to the marble seats in the recesses. Putting a rough mitten on the right hand, my Turk then commenced upon my breast, scouring me without water or mercy, from head to foot, and turning me over on my face or my back, without the least “by your leave” expression in his countenance, and with an adroitness which, in spite of the novelty of my situation, I could not but admire. I hardly knew whether the sensation was pleasurable or painful. I was less in doubt presently, when he seated me upright, and, with the brazen cup of the fountain, dashed upon my peeled shoulders a quantity of half boiling water. If what Barnacle, in the play, calls “a circular justice,” existed in the world, I should have thought it a judgment for eating of lobsters. My familiar was somewhat startled at the suddenness with which I sprang upon my feet, and, turning some cold water into the reservoir, laid his hand on his breast, and looked an apology. The scalding was only momentary, and the qualified contents of the succeeding cups highly grateful.
We were left again, for a while, to our reflections, and then reappeared our attendants, with large bowls of the suds of scented soap, and small bunches of soft Angora wool. With this we were tenderly washed, and those of my companions who wished it were shaved. The last operation they described as peculiarly agreeable, both from the softened state of the skin and dexterity of the operators.
Rinsed once more with warm water, our snowy turbans were twisted around our heads again, cloths were tied about our waists, and we returned to the second room. The transition from the excessive heat within, made the air, that we had found oppressive when we entered, seem disagreeably chilly. We wrapped ourselves in our long cloths, and, resuming our carpets, took coffee and pipes as before. In a few minutes we began to feel a delightful glow in our veins, and then our cloths became unpleasantly warm, and by the time we were taken back to the dressing-room, its cold air was a relief. They led us to the ottomans, and piling the cushions so as to form a curve, laid us upon them, covered with clean white cloths, and bringing us sherbets, lemonade, and pipes, dropped upon their knees, and commenced pressing our limbs all over gently with their hands. My sensations during the half hour we lay here were indescribably agreeable, I felt an absolute repose of body, a calm, half-sleepy languor in my whole frame, and a tranquillity of mind, which, from the busy character of the scenes in which I was daily conversant, were equally unusual and pleasurable. Scarce stirring a muscle or a nerve, I lay the whole hour, gazing on the lofty ceiling, and listening to the murmur of the fountain, while my silent familiar pressed my limbs with a touch as gentle as a child’s, and it seemed to me as if pleasure was breathing from every pore of my cleansed and softened skin. I could willingly have passed the remainder of the day upon the luxurious couch. I wonder less than ever at the flowery and poetical character of the oriental literature, where the mind is subjected to influences so refining and exhilarating. One could hardly fail to grow a poet, I should think, even with this habit of eastern luxury alone. If I am to conceive a romance, or to indite an epithalamium, send me to the bath on a day of idleness, and, covering me up with their snowy and lavendered napkins, leave me till sunset!
With a dinner in prospect at a friend’s house, six or eight miles up the Bosphorus, we started in the morning on foot, with the intention of seeing Sultan Mahmoud go to mosque, by the way. We stopped a moment to look into the marble pavilion, containing the clocks of the mosque of Tophana, and drank at the opposite pavilion, from the brass cup chained in the window, and supplied constantly from the fountain within, and then kept on through the long street to the first village of Dolma-baktchi, or the Garden of Gourds.
Determined, with the day before us, to yield to every temptation on the road, we entered a small café, overlooking a segment of the Bosphorus, and while the acorn-sized cups were simmering on the manghal, my friend entered into conversation in Arabic with a tawny old Egyptian, who sat smoking in the corner. He was a fine specimen of the “responsible-looking” Oriental, and had lately arrived from Alexandria on business. Pleasant land of the East! where, to be the pink of courtesy, you must pass your snuff-box, or your tobacco-pouch to the stranger, and ask him those questions of his “whereabouts,” so impertinent in more civilised Europe!
After a brief dialogue, which was Hebrew to me, our Alexandrian, knocking the ashes from his pipe, commenced a narration with a great deal of expressive gesture, at which my friend seemed very provokingly amused. I sipped my coffee, and wondered what could have led one of these silent grey-beards into an amusing story, till a pause gave me an opportunity to ask a translation. Hearing that we were Americans, the Egyptian had begun by asking whether there was a superstition in our country against receiving back money in change. He explained his question by saying that he was in a café, at Tophana, when a boat’s crew, from the American frigate, waiting for some one at the landing, entered, and asked for coffee. They drank it very quietly, and one of them gave the caféjee a dollar, receiving in change a handful of the shabby and adulterated money of Constantinople. Jack was rather surprised at getting a dozen cups of coffee, and so much coin for his dollar, and requested the boy, by signs, to treat the company at his expense. This was done, the Turks all acknowledging the courtesy by laying their hands upon their foreheads and breast, and still Jack’s money lay heavy in his hands. He called for pipes, and they smoked awhile; but finding still that his riches were not perceptibly diminished, he hitched up his trowsers, and with a dexterous flirt, threw his piastres and paras all round upon the company, and rolled out of the café. From the gravity of the other sailors at this remarkable flourish, the old Egyptian and his fellow cross-legs had imagined it to be a national custom!
Idling along through the next village, we turned to admire a Turkish child, led by an Abyssinian slave. There is no country in the world where the children are so beautiful, and this was a cherub of a boy, like one of Domenichino’s angels. As we stopped to look at him, the little fellow commenced crying most lustily.
“Hush! my rose!” said the Abyssinian, “these are good Franks! these are not the Franks that eat children! hush!”
It certainly takes the nonsense out of one to travel. I should never have thought it possible, if I had not been in Turkey, that I could be made a bugbear to scare a child!
We passed the tomb of Frederick Barbarossa, getting, between the walls of the palaces on the water’s edge, continual and incomparable views of the Bosphorus, and arrived at Beshiktash (or the marble cradle), just as the troops were drawn up to the door of the mosque. We took our stand under a plane-tree, in the midst of a crowd of women, and presently the noisy band struck up the sultan’s march, and the led horses appeared in sight. They came on with their grooms and their rich housings, a dozen matchless Arabians, scarce touching the ground with their prancings! Oh, how beautiful they were! Their delicate limbs, their small, veined heads and fiery nostrils, their glowing, intelligent eyes, their quick, light, bounding action, their round bodies, trembling with restrained and impatient energy, their curved, haughty necks, and dark manes flowing wildly in the wind! El Borak, the mare of the prophet, with the wings of a bird, was not lighter or more beautiful.
The sultan followed, preceded by his principal officers, with a stirrup-holder running at each side, and mounted on a tame-looking Hungarian horse. He wore the red Fez cap, and a cream-coloured cloak, which covered his horse to the tail. His face was lowering, his firm, powerful jaw, set in an expression of fixed displeasure, and his far-famed eye had a fierceness within its dark socket, from which I involuntarily shrank. The women, as he came along, set up a kind of howl, according to their custom, but he looked neither to the right nor left, and seemed totally unconscious of any one’s existence but his own. He was quite another-looking man from the Mahmoud I had seen smiling in his handja-bash on the Bosphorus.
As he dismounted and entered the mosque, we went on our way, moralising sagely on the novel subject of human happiness—our text, the cloud on the brow of a sultan, and the quiet sunshine in the bosoms of two poor pedestrians by the way-side.