In the Levant / Twenty Fifth Impression

by Charles Dudley Warner

The first one, the salon, will give an idea of the others. It was a lofty, but not large room, with a highly painted ceiling, and consisted of two parts; the first, level with the court and paved with marble, had a marble basin in the centre supported on carved lions; the other two thirds of the apartment was raised about a foot, carpeted, and furnished with chairs of wood, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, stiffly set against the walls. The chairs were not comfortable to sit in, and they were the sole furniture. The wainscoting was of marble, in screen-work, and most elaborately carved. High up, near the ceiling, were windows, double windows in fact, with a space between like a gallery, so that the lacelike screen-work was exhibited to the utmost advantage. There was much gilding and color on the marble, and the whole was costly and gaudy. The sleeping-rooms, in the second story, were also handsome in this style, but they were literally all windows, on all sides; the space between the windows was never more than three or four inches. They are admirable for light and air, but to enter them is almost like stepping out of doors. They are all en suite, so that it would seem that the family must retire simultaneously, exchanging the comparative privacy of the isolated rooms below for the community of these glass apartments.

The salons that we saw in other houses were of the same general style of the first; some had marble niches in the walls, the arch of which was supported by slender marble columns, and these recesses, as well as the walls, were decorated with painting, usually landscapes and cities. The painting gives you a perfectly accurate idea of the condition of art in the Orient; it was not only pre-Raphaelite, it was pre-Adamite, worse than Byzantine, and not so good as Chinese. Money had been freely lavished in these dwellings, and whatever the Eastern chisel or brush could do to enrich and ornament them had been done. I was much pleased by the picture of a city,—it may have been Damascus—freely done upon the wall. The artist had dotted the plaster with such houses as children are accustomed to make on a slate, arranging some of them in rows, and inserting here and there a minaret and a dome. There was not the slightest attempt at shading or perspective. Yet the owners contemplated the result with visible satisfaction, and took a simple and undisguised pleasure in our admiration of the work of art.

“Alas,” I said to the delighted Jew connoisseur who had paid for this picture, “we have nothing like that in our houses in America, not even in the Capitol at Washington!”

“But your country is new,” he replied with amiable consideration; “you will have of it one day.”

In none of these veneered and stuccoed palaces did we find any comfort; everywhere a profuse expenditure of money in Italian marble, in carving, in gilding, and glaring color, but no taste, except in some of the wood-work, cut in Arabesque, and inlaid—a reminiscence of the almost extinct Saracenic grace and invention. And the construction of all the buildings and the ornamentation were shabby and cheap in appearance, in spite of the rich materials; the marbles in the pavement or the walls were badly joined and raggedly cemented, and by the side of the most costly work was sure to be something mean and frail.

We supposed at first that we ought to feel a little delicacy about intruding our bare-faced curiosity into private houses,—perhaps an unpardonable feeling in a traveller who has been long enough in the Orient to lose the bloom of Occidental modesty. But we need not have feared. Our hosts were only too glad that we should see their state and luxury. There was something almost comical in these Jewish women arraying themselves in their finest gowns, and loading themselves with diamonds, so early in the day (for they were ready to receive us at ten o'clock), and in their naïve enjoyment of our admiration. Surely we ought not to have thought that comical which was so kindly intended. I could not but wonder, however, what resource for the rest of the day could remain to a woman who had begun it by dressing in all her ornaments, by crowning herself with coronets and sprays of diamonds, by hanging her neck and arms with glittering gems, as if she had been a statue set up for idolatry. After this supreme effort of the sex, the remainder of the day must be intolerably flat. For I think one of the pleasures of life must be the gradual transformation, the blooming from the chrysalis of elegant morning déshabille into the perfect flower of the evening toilet.

These princesses of Turkish diamonds all wore dresses with the classic short waist, which is the most womanly and becoming, and perhaps their apparel imparted a graciousness to their manner. We were everywhere cordially received, and usually offered coffee, or sherbet and confections.

H. H. the Emir Abd-el-Kader lives in a house suitable to a wealthy Moslem who has a harem. The old chieftain had expressed his willingness to receive us, and N. Meshaka, the American consular agent, sent his kawass to accompany us to his residence at the appointed hour. The old gentleman met us at the door of his reception-room, which is at one end of the fountained court. He wore the plain Arab costume, with a white turban. I had heard so much of the striking, venerable, and even magnificent appearance of this formidable desert hero, that I experienced a little disappointment in the reality, and learned anew that the hero should be seen in action, or through the lenses of imaginative description which can clothe the body with all the attributes of the soul. The demigods so seldom come up to their reputation! Abd-el-Kader may have appeared a gigantic man when on horseback in the smoke and whirl of an Algerine combat; but he is a man of medium size and scarcely medium height; his head, if not large, is finely shaped and intellectual, and his face is open and pleasing. He wore a beard, trimmed, which I suspect ought to be white, but which was black, and I fear dyed. You would judge him to be, at least, seventy-five, and his age begins to show by a little pallor, by a visible want of bodily force, and by a lack of lustre in those once fiery and untamable eyes.

His manner was very gracious, and had a simple dignity, nor did our interview mainly consist in the usual strained compliments of such occasions. In reply to a question, he said that he had lived over twenty years in Damascus, but it was evident that his long exile had not dulled his interest in the progress of the world, and that he watched with intense feeling all movements of peoples in the direction of freedom. There is no such teacher of democracy as misfortune, but I fancy that Abd-el-Kader sincerely desires for others the liberty he covets for himself. He certainly has the courage of his opinions; while he is a very strict Moslem, he is neither bigoted nor intolerant, as he showed by his conduct during the massacre of the Christians here, in 1860. His face lighted up with pleasure when I told him that Americans remembered with much gratitude his interference in behalf of the Christians at that time.

The talk drifting to the state of France and Italy, he expressed his full sympathy with the liberal movement of the Italian government, but as to France he had no hope of a republic at present, he did not think the people capable of it.