OUTDOOR DRESS OF PERSIAN WOMEN.
(From a Native Drawing.)
Leg-coverings are now being introduced, and the last princess of the blood royal I saw added to her comfort, though she destroyed the poetry of her appearance, by a tightly-fitting pair of black cloth “pants” with a gold stripe! This garment will doubtless soon become general.
In ancient days the Persian ladies always wore them, as may be seen by the pictures in the South Kensington Museum. In those times the two embroidered legs, now so fashionable as Persian embroideries (“naksh”), occupied a girl from childhood to marriage in their making; they are all sewing in elaborate patterns of great beauty, worked on muslin, in silk.
The outdoor costume of the Persian women is quite another thing; enveloped in a huge blue sheet, with a yard of linen as a veil, perforated for two inches square with minute holes, the feet thrust into two huge bags of coloured stuff, a wife is perfectly unrecognisable, even by her husband, when out of doors. The dress of all is the same; save in quality or costliness, the effect is similar. And yet with such a hideous disguise, a Persian coquette will manage to let the curious know if she have a good face and eye, by lifting her veil in a sly and half-timid way. The only thing I know exceeding in folly the chimney-pot hat, is the outdoor dress of the Persian woman. Expensive, ugly, uncomfortable, hot in summer, cold in winter, words fail to express its numerous disadvantages; it has one positive quality—as a disguise it is perfect, and its use favours the intrigues rife in the country.
As for the children, they are always when infants swaddled: when they can walk they are dressed as little men and women, and with the dress they often, nay generally, ape the manners; a Persian child of the upper class being a master of etiquette, an adept at flattery, and a mirror of politeness. It is a strange custom with the Persian ladies to dress little girls as boys, and little boys as girls, till they reach seven or eight years; this is often done for fun, or on account of some vow, oftener to avert the evil eye.
Persian women are very fond of their children, and pet them greatly. The love of the Persian for his mother is very great; he never leaves her to starve, and her wishes are laws to him, even when he is an old man, and she an aged crone. The mother is always the most important member of the household, and the grandmother is treated with veneration. Mothers-in-law are not laughed at or looked down on in Persia; their presence is coveted by their sons-in-law, who look on them as the guardians of the virtue of their wives. The uncle, too, is a much nearer tie than with us, that is to say, the paternal uncle: while men look on their first cousins on the father’s side as their most natural wives. Possibly this is because their female cousins are the only women they have any opportunity of knowing anything of personally. Black slaves and men-nurses, or “lallahs,” are much respected and generally retained in a household, while the “dyah,” or wet nurse, is looked on as a second mother, and usually provided for for life.
Persians are very kind to their servants, and try to make their people look on them as second fathers; a master will be often addressed by a servant as his father, and the servant will protect his master’s property as he would his own, or even more jealously.
A servant is invariably spoken to as “butcha” (child). The servants expect that their master will always take their part, and never allow them to be wronged; if he does not do so, he cannot obtain a good class domestic, while if he sticks to the man, he never leaves him.