A small European sofa, a few chairs placed stiffly against the wall, a console supporting a mirror and decorated with two lamps or candlesticks, together with a few goblets and a small table standing in the centre with cigarettes and tiny ash-trays, complete the furniture of the grandest provincial Buyukoda. Though some Turks possess many rare and curious objects, such as ancient armor and china, which, if displayed, would greatly add to the elegance and cheerfulness of their apartments, these are always kept packed away in boxes.
Windows are the great inconvenience in Turkish houses; they pierce the walls on every side, with hardly the space of a foot between them. The curtains are usually of coarse printed calico, short and scanty, with the edges pinked out, so that when washed they present a miserably ragged appearance. The innumerable windows render the houses ill-adapted either for hot or cold weather; the burning rays of the sun pour in all day in summer, and the frames are so badly constructed that the cold wind enters in all directions in winter.
Bedsteads are not used by the Turks; mattresses are nightly spread on the floor, and removed in the morning into large cupboards, built into the walls of every room. These walls, being whitewashed and roughly furnished, increase the uncomfortable appearance of the rooms, which at night are dimly lighted by one or two sperm candles or a petroleum lamp, the successors of the ancient tallow candle. The halls and passages are left in obscurity, and the servants find their way about as well as they can.
The mangals, or braziers, are the warming apparatus generally used by the Turks in their houses. These are made of different metal; some fixed in wooden frames, others in frames of wrought brass of very elegant and costly workmanship. The fuel consists of a quantity of wood ashes in which burning charcoal is half buried.
The tandour, now nearly fallen into disuse, is also worthy of notice. It consists of a square deal table with a foot-board covered with tin, on which a brazier stands; the whole is covered with a thick quilted counterpane which falls in heavy folds on a sofa running round it, covering the loungers up to the chin, and giving one the idea of a company of people huddled together in bed. The tandour is still very much used in Smyrna, and round it the Levantine ladies love to sit during the winter months. More than one English traveller, newly arrived in the country, when ushered into a drawing-room, is said to have rushed frantically out again under the impression that he had surprised the family in bed.
The furniture of the selamlik is similar to that of the Haremlik. A family often removes from one set of apartments to another; this propensity is doubtless stimulated by the desire to escape from the assaults of the fleas and other vermin that swarm in the rooms. When once these insects obtain a footing in a house, it is difficult to get rid of them, partly on account of the unwillingness of the Turks to destroy animal life of any description, and partly because these insects take up their abode between the badly joined planks under the mats and rugs.
I was once visiting at the house of a Pasha lately arrived at Adrianople. The Hanoum, a charming woman, was complaining bitterly to me of her rest having been much disturbed the previous night by the abundance of these creatures in her apartment. One of the slaves modestly remarked that she had occupied herself all the morning in scalding the floor of the room her mistress had slept in, and expressed a hope that she would not be longer troubled in that respect. A general outcry against this slave’s want of humanity was raised by all the women present, and a chorus of “Yuzuk! Gunah!” (Pity! Sin!) was heard. It is curious that they raised no such outcry when they heard of the frightful destruction of human life that took place a few years later among their Christian neighbors in Bulgaria, but a few miles from their own secure homes!
When in the interior I had the opportunity of visiting some Konaks worthy of note; one of these called Bordofska, situated in the heart of Albania, some leagues from Uskup, had been built as a country residence by the famous Hevni Pasha. It was an immense building, solidly constructed of stone at the expense and with the forced labor of the people, who were pressed into the work. It occupied the middle of a large garden that must have been beautiful in its time, and being surrounded by high walls bore a strong resemblance to a feudal castle. This fine old building had become the property of Osman Pasha, a venerable Turk of the old school; all the furniture was European, and of a very rich and elegant description, but looked worn and neglected. The aged Pasha received me with the politeness and hospitality his nation knows so well how to show when it pleases.
After an interchange of civilities, and having partaken of coffee, I was invited to visit the harem. A hideous black monster, the chief of the eunuchs, led the way through a long dark passage lined with forty of his brethren, not more pleasant-looking than himself, who salaamed to me as I passed.
My then limited experiences of the customs of harems made me regard this gloomy passage and its black occupants with feelings of curiosity, not unmingled with dread. The chief wife of Osman Pasha (for I believe he had six others, besides slaves) was a very fat, elderly person, who showed little disposition to give me the hearty and civil reception I had just received from her husband, and I soon discovered that she belonged to that peculiar class of Turkish women called Soffous—the bas-bleus of Mohammedanism, bigoted zealots of the straitest sect of the Moslem Pharisees.