"As a servant I think Dimitri will suit me very well. He is well informed, willing, and civil, knows all the countries I propose to visit, is not extravagant, and does not seem afraid of danger. I must confess he is very small, but so much the more is he subject to my fist. The wages he asks are enormous—60l. a year—but I think I shall get him for 45l. or 50l., and at that figure it will, I think, be worth while to engage him; at any rate, he will be better than such an English lubber as my mother proposed I should take, who would have cost me more and have been of no use. I find I am living now for rather over 7s. 6d. a day, servant included. Everything is at least as dear as in London.
The drawings I told you of are finished, and I am now doing a set of palaces, serais, &c., but the difficulty and really the danger I have had to incur to do them you would not believe. As for insult, a Christian has always to put up with that. Perhaps the Turks, pressed as they are by the Russians, were never in a more sensitive or inflammatory condition than at present, nor the country under less discipline and order. In consequence they are more insolent to, and more suspicious of foreigners than usual. The other day I was in the upper part of a shop making some memoranda of a curious fountain while my servant waited below in a coffee-house. He assured me that no less than forty Turks came in, one after another, to ask who was that infidel, and what he might be doing there. Again, I offered some bostangis from five to ten piastres to admit me into a kiosk of the Grand Signors, now never used. The poor men trembled at the risk, but they took us, and we were obliged to steal along as they did, more as if we were going to commit a burglary than visit a deserted palace.
As we were rowing to it we saw a soldier armed at all points, with his arms bare—a savage figure—rowing by the Greek and Armenian houses at the water's edge. My servant knew his occupation well. He was searching after some open door through which he could get into a house, and, if he found the master of it, he would demand a hundred or two piastres, saying he had occasion for the money as he was going to the wars. The poor man would have had to submit; to kill such a robber, even if he could, would be to incur the vengeance of all his regiment, with the risk of getting his house and half the neighbourhood burnt down. The Greek tavern-keepers dare not open their doors now, for these scoundrels swagger in and eat and drink and refuse to pay. The Turks themselves, however, are enthusiastic about the army. I saw the other day, as a colonel of one of the regiments was passing through Tophana, the people rushing forward to bless him, and kissing the hem of his garment. They like fighting and, I may add, blood, and cruelties to their fellow-men; although to animals they are remarkably humane. The number of people with slit or otherwise injured noses is a thing one cannot help remarking. The other day I saw one man who had patched his, which was still unhealed, with cotton, and he was fanning away the flies from it. When I walked up to the gate of the Seraglio to see the five tails[11] hanging up, there was the block of stone on which the heads of offenders are put, and the blood still there.
To architecture in the highest sense, viz. elegant construction in stone, the Turks have no pretension. The mosques are always copies of Santa Sophia with trifling variations, and have no claim to originality. The bazaars are large buildings, but hardly architectural. The imarets, or hospitals, are next in size (there are about fifty of them in Constantinople, in which D'Ohson says 30,000 people daily are fed), but neither have they anything artistic about them.
The aqueducts, finally, are either reparations or imitations of old Roman work.
These are all the buildings of a permanent character. The dwelling-houses have the air of temporary habitations. They are constructed mainly of wood, and are divided into very few chambers. Turks eat and drink, live and sleep in one room. The sofa is their seat and their bed, and when that is full they lay quilts, which are kept in every room in cupboards, on the floor, and sleep about in them half dressed. As ornaments to the walls they hang up their arms. They live in this way even in the highest ranks. The men have no desire for privacy, and the women's apartments are altogether separated off. The space covered by each house is what we should consider immense. It has usually only one storey—never more than two. The ground floor, used for stables, storage, and offices, stands open on columns. A staircase, often outside, leads up to an open balcony, out of which the effendi's apartments open. These seldom consist of more than three—one for audience and for living in; another for business, the secretary, &c.; and the third for upper servants, the preparation of coffee, pipes, &c. The harem, as I said, is parted off by a high wall with a separate court, garden, and, often, exit to the street; but all one sees of a house outside is generally a high wall and a capacious door into a court with a hoodwink shade over it, and the gentlemen's apartments hanging over one end of the premises. Sometimes there is a kiosk leading out of the gallery to a rather higher level when there is a view to be got by it, but externally there is nothing pretending to architectural effect in the private house of a Turk.
The really ornamental buildings in which anything that may be called Turkish architecture is displayed, are the fountains and the grand kiosks or summer residences.
The fountains are commonly square reservoirs, the four sides enriched with marble, carved, panelled, and gilt, with all the resources of genuine Turkish taste. The forms are generally flowers and fruits and texts from the Koran, with perhaps an inscription in memory of the founder, such as 'Drink of my limpid waters and pray for the soul of Achmet.' The tank is covered with a dome and gilt cullices with great eaves which cast a broad shade over anyone who comes for water or repose.
But the most charming things are the kiosks. You can imagine nothing slighter than their architecture is. They are entirely of wood, and even the most extensive are finished in about two months. They display the customs of the Sultans, and they are such as you might imagine from reading the 'Arabian Nights'—golden halls with cupolas, domes and cullices hanging over pools of water, with fountains and little falls of water, all in the genuine Turkish taste.