The Sultan’s rank is so elevated—his position is so far above that of every other mortal—that there is no woman on earth sufficiently his equal to enable him to marry her. He has, therefore, no legal wife, but his ladies are called “Kaduns,” or companions, and the mother of his eldest son is always chief kadun, a position that gives her many advantages. These ladies are not called sultanas, for only the princesses of the blood-royal enjoy that title, but the mother of the reigning sovereign is named Sultan-Validé.
Occasionally, when there is a subject whom the Sultan wishes especially to honour, the favoured pasha has one of the monarch’s daughters or sisters given to him in marriage; but this great distinction is sometimes the cause of much sorrow, and uproots much domestic happiness, as all other wives must be sent away, and the children of such marriages equally banished, before the royal bride will condescend to enter the pasha’s harem. Even after marriage, the royal lady will sometimes insist upon retaining all the privileges of her rank, and in that case the husband becomes the veriest slave imaginable, never daring to enter the harem unless summoned by the princess, and when there often obliged to remain standing while receiving the orders of his imperial and imperious wife. F—— Pasha, though his ambition was gratified by becoming the brother-in-law of the Sultan, paid somewhat dearly, if reports be true, for the honour of this royal alliance, as the princess was said to be a lady of uncertain temper, or rather of a very certain temper, as Charles Dickens described it. At any rate F—— Pasha’s heart clung to the forsaken wife and children of his humbler and perhaps happier days; and sometimes in the dusk of the evening a small, undecorated caïque, containing a man closely muffled up, might be seen darting swiftly across the Bosphorus from the palace of the lordly pasha to the remote quarter of Scutari, where, in a humble house in a back street, were hid away the poor deserted wife and her little children.
All, therefore, is not gold that glitters in the lives of the members of the imperial family, and the State policy that ordains there shall not be too many heirs near the throne often wrings the heart and embitters the existence of many of the tender-hearted princesses.
Although the men probably accept the necessities of this policy with comparative indifference, the mothers do not so easily resign themselves to the loss of their infants, and many a sad story gets whispered about of the grievous struggles some of the poor creatures have made to preserve their little ones from the impending doom.
The death of one royal lady that took place while we were at Constantinople, was hastened by the grief she had gone through by thus losing her only boy.
When her marriage took place, she had obtained the promise that all her children were to be spared. In due time a boy was born, and the father received an intimation that the child had better “cease to be.” The Sultana, however, claimed the fulfilment of the promise that had been made her, and watched and guarded the little fellow most rigorously.
The Sultan’s word being inviolable, it was not possible to break it openly, but the mother was aware of the jealousy that was created by the privilege accorded to her, and knew that the child’s life was in constant peril. It is said that attempts were made both to poison and to drown him, but these cruel designs were frustrated by the vigilance of his mother, who never suffered the child to be absent from her.
When the boy was between two and three years old, two more of the Sultan’s daughters married, and many magnificent fêtes were given on the occasion. The elder sister was of course present, accompanied as usual by her little son; but one day in the crowd the child disappeared, and has never since been heard of.
Although the poor mother had another child, a girl, she never held up her head again after the disappearance of her boy, and actually pined away and died from grief at his loss.
This is not a solitary instance of the sorrows of royal Turkish ladies.