Another favourite pleasure resort much frequented by Turkish ladies in summer.
A Turkish gentleman of high rank wishing his daughters to enjoy the advantage of a European education, but anxious to spare them as much as possible the chagrin and ennui of being educated above the station of a Turkish lady, hoped to attain his object by having his girls learn to speak French without being able to read in that language. Such experiences are disheartening. But, as the pale flowers which come ere winter has wholly gone herald the spring and foretell the glory of summer, so the recent improvements in the lot of Turkish women, however slight they may appear meantime, warrant the hope of further progress and final emancipation.
CHAPTER XIII
epilogue
To live in Constantinople is to live in a very wide world. The city, it is true, is not a seat of lofty intellectual thought. Upon none of its hills have the Muses come to dwell. It is not a centre of literary activity; it is not a home of Art. Here is no civic life to share, no far-reaching public works of philanthropy to enlarge the heart, no comprehensive national life to inspire patriotism, no common religious institutions to awaken the sense of a vast brotherhood enfolded within the same great and gracious heavens. If one is so inclined, it is easy for life here to be exceedingly petty. And yet, it is certain that to live in Constantinople is to live in a wide world. It is not for any lack of incentive that a resident here fails “to think imperially” or to feel on an imperial scale. When a man possessed by the genius of the place quits the city to reside elsewhere, the horizon of his life contracts and dwindles, as when a man descends from the wide views of a mountain peak to the life pent within the walls of a valley. For nowhere else is the mind not only confronted, but, if one may thus express it, assailed by so many varied subjects demanding consideration, or the heart appealed to by so many interests for its sympathy.
The very geography of the place offers a wide outlook. As a part of his everyday experience, a resident of Constantinople lives within sight of Europe and Asia. Every day of his life, he sees the waterway that runs between the two great continents thronged with vessels of every nation, hurrying to and fro to bring the ends of the earth together. Then, how much human power has been enthroned here—the dominion of Byzantium for one thousand years; the rule of Constantine and his successors for eleven centuries; the sway of the Ottoman Sultans through four hundred and fifty years. If what we see has aught to do with what we are, here is a mould in which to fashion a large life. But Europe and Asia are present in more than their physical aspects, or in long periods of their history. Their civilisations also meet here. On every side there is the pressure of a dominant Oriental society and polity, with its theocratic government, autocracy, the creed of Islam, polygamy, slavery, eunuchs, secluded and veiled womanhood, men in long robes and turbans, sluggishness, repose, the speech of Central Asia softened by the accents of Persia and Arabia, minarets, domes surmounted by the Crescent, graceful but strange salutations, festivals which celebrate events in a course of history not your own, and express joys which have never gladdened your soul. And mingling, but not blended, with this world of Asiatic thought and sentiment and manner, is a European world, partly native, partly foreign, with ideas of freedom, science, education, bustle, various languages, railroads, tramways, ladies in the latest Parisian fashions, church bells, the banner of the Cross, newspapers and periodicals from every European and American capital, knitting scattered children to the life of their fatherland. The members of the foreign communities in the City of the Sultan do not forget the lands of their birth, or of their race and allegiance. Though circumstances have carried them far from their native shores and skies, physical separation does not sever them from the spirit of their peoples. Nay, as if to make patriotic sentiment more easy, foreigners are placed under the peculiar arrangements embodied in what are termed the Capitulations, whereby, in virtue of old treaties, they enjoy the privilege of living to a great extent under the laws of their respective countries, with little interference on the part of the Ottoman Government. When your house is your castle, in the sense that no Turkish policeman dares enter it without the authorisation of your Consulate or Embassy, when legal differences between yourself and your fellow-countrymen are submitted to judges, and argued by barristers, bred in the law which rules in your own land, when your church and school can be what they are at home, and when you can forward your letters, not only to foreign countries but even to some parts of the Turkish Empire, with a stamp bearing the badge of your own Government, it is natural that European residents in Constantinople should be able to preserve their special character, both after living here for many years, and also from generation to generation. A Mohammedan polity is opposed to the assimilation of strangers, unless the aliens become converts to Islam. Whatever process of assimilation goes on in Constantinople appears in the slow changes of the East towards some likeness to the West. Otherwise, the European world is as present to the view as the Asiatic, and together they spread a wide vista before the mind.
Furthermore, what a broad outlook does the heterogeneous population afford! Whether you walk the streets or stay at home, on the mart of business, at all large social gatherings, in all public enterprises, you deal with diverse nationalities and races. Everywhere and always a cosmopolitan atmosphere pervades your life. One servant in your household will be a Greek, another an Armenian, a third a German or an Englishman. Your gardener is a Croat, as tender to flowers as he is fierce against his foes. The boatmen of your caïque are Turks. In building a house, the foundations are excavated by Lazes; the quarrymen must be Croats; the masons and carpenters are Greeks and Armenians; the hodmen, Kurds; the hamals, Turks; the plumbers, Italians; the architect is an Englishman, American, or a foreigner of some other kind; the glaziers must be Jews. Fourteen nationalities are represented by the students and professors of an international college.
When the season of pilgrimages comes round, the streets are thronged by Tartars, Circassians, Persians, Turcomans, on their way to Mecca and Medina, wild-looking fellows in rough but picturesque garb, staring with the wonder and simplicity of children at the novelties they see, purchasing trifles as though treasures, yet stopping to give alms to a beggar, and groping for the higher life.