All was there: the gorgeous and the squalid, the refined and the loathsome, the splendid state rooms of the Vicar of God, beside the gloomy cages of those unhappy princes, who, cursed by their royal blood, were left to pine in solitude until death came to settle accounts between them and the tyrants who had doomed them to their chains. There were the charitable establishments whence the poor never turned away unrefreshed,—and there the dungeon where the powerful were left to starve and die. There was the gilded kiosk where the Padishah smoked his chibouk and issued his decrees,—whose terrible ordinances were carried out in the adjoining chamber-of-blood. Beyond were the mausoleums of his race, lifting up their rich adornment in the chill beauty of the city of the dead—severed by a little space from the scarcely more splendid dwellings of the living. There lay those doomed princes to whom a life without liberty and ofttimes a cruel death were ill balanced by the useless splendor of their tombs. “What is the use of thy getting children,” once with a mother’s bitterness said a Circassian slave who had borne a son to one of the sultans, “when they are only destined to people the tombs?”
In later times Eski Serai was abandoned to the use of the harems of deceased sultans, who were sometimes shut up there for life. Its last occupants, the multitudes of wives, slaves, and odalisks belonging once to Sultan Abdul-Medjid, unable any longer to endure its dismal solitude, are reported to have set it on fire in the hope of obtaining a dwelling more congenial to the habits of comparative liberty they had acquired. At all events the palace was destroyed, and a vast number of valuable and rare objects perished with it. The site is now occupied by gardens, and a railroad runs across it; the gem of the Golden Horn has vanished.
Dolma-Bagché, built by Sultan Mahmoud II., was a large wooden edifice. This and Begler-Bey became the usual winter and summer residences of the imperial family. Sultan Abdul-Medjid, on coming to power, rebuilt Dolma-Bagché and several other kiosks and seraglios. Gentle, sensitive, refined, and loth to shed blood, he is said to have evinced a superstitious aversion to the old imperial palaces whose splendor was tainted by the memory of the crimes of his ancestors. He, and still more his brother Adbul-Aziz, spent incalculable sums in the erection and decoration of seraglios. The latter’s yearly expenses on this alone were reckoned to have exceeded £580,000—one of the items which ran away with the money which trusting or speculative capitalists of Europe had been foolish enough to supply for the future benefit and improvement of Turkey (not, of course, forgetting a slice in the pie for themselves), but which has fallen somewhat short of the end for which it was designed: Turkish bondholders do not seem to consider themselves of all men the most fortunate, and Turkey itself has not gained by loading its exchequer with a mountain of debt for the sake of the reckless extravagance of imperial luxury.
Holding a middle place between the great palaces and the kiosks, the sultans of Turkey possess yahlis, or villas, not less beautiful than the mansions of greater pretensions. These villas often rise on the shores of the Bosphorus from a bed of verdure. Generally they are closed and silent, with a solitary guard standing sentinel at the gate; but every now and then one of them may be seen lighted up, as by magic, and teeming with life, with the rumbling of carriages to and fro, and the clashing of arms. At the sound of the trumpet a strain of sweet music strikes up, and the approach of a water-procession of caïques swiftly gliding towards the gates announces the arrival of the august master.
Sometimes the sultan goes alone to spend a few hours of dolce far niente; at others he makes an appointment with some special favorite to meet him there. Abdul-Medjid’s known partiality for Bessimé Sultana, the most worthless but most beloved of his wives, induced him on one occasion, while on a visit to his Yahli at the sweet waters of Asia, to send his own yacht for her in the dead of night, alarming the whole seraglio by its unexpected appearance at so unusual an hour.
One of the three palaces most renowned for beauty of architecture and magnificence of furniture is Begler-Bey. It is worthy of the use for which it has been selected, of being the palace offered for the occupation of illustrious foreign visitors. The arrangements made in it for one imperial guest were presided over by Sultan Abdul-Aziz in person, and the private apartments of the illustrious lady were perfect copies of those in her own palace. The fastidiousness of the host on this occasion was so great, that on discovering that the tints on the walls and furniture slightly differed from those he had seen when on his European tour, he ordered that everything should be removed and new ones brought from Paris. The fair visitor is said to have been equally surprised and flattered by the delicate attention that had not omitted even the smallest object of her toilette table. The Sultan, in truly Oriental fashion, caused a new pair of magnificent slippers, embroidered with pearls and precious stones, to be placed before her bed every morning.
Since the time of Sultan Abdul-Medjid, the furniture of the imperial palaces and kiosks has been made to order in Europe. It is of so costly a description as to be equal in value to the edifices themselves. On entering Tcheragan, and some of the other serails, the eye is dazzled by the gilt decorations, gold and silver brocades, splendid mirrors and chandeliers, and carved and inlaid furniture they contain. In Abdul-Medjid’s time, clocks and china vases were the only ornaments of the apartments. The absence of pictures, books, and the thousand different objects with which Europeans fill their houses gave the rooms, even when inhabited, a comfortless and unused appearance.
Some years ago, when visiting the private apartments of this Sultan, I noticed a splendid antique vase. Lately, on speaking of this priceless object to a seraglio lady, I was informed that it had been thrown into the Bosphorus by order of its owner. This act of imperial extravagance was caused by the supposition that the vase had been handled by some person afflicted with consumption.
Sultan Abdul-Aziz, a year or two before his dethronement, possessed with a nervous terror of fire, caused all inflammable articles to be taken out of the palaces, and replace them by articles manufactured of iron. The stores of fuel were cast into the Bosphorus, and the lights of the Sultan’s apartments were placed in basins of water. The houses in the neighborhood of the Seraglio were purchased by the Sultan, their occupants forced to quit at a very short notice, their furniture turned out, and the buildings pulled down at once. These tyrannical precautions served to heighten the general discontent of the capital against the Padishah especially among the poor, who justly complained that they might have benefited by what had been wasted; while some of the wealthy, though not more contented, profited by the freak, and carried off many of the rich objects taken out of the palace.
The vast pleasure-grounds attached to the seraglios are laid out with a tasteful care, which, added to the beauty of the position and the fertility of the soil, goes far to justify the renown of the gardens of the Bosphorus. The hills, valleys, and gorges that surround them are covered with woods; here orchards and vineyards, weighed down with their rich burdens, lend color to the scene; there the slopes are laid out in terraces, whose perpendicular sides are clothed with the contrasted shades of the sombre ivy-leaf and the bright foliage of the Virginian creeper. Banks of flowers carry the thoughts back to the hanging gardens of Babylon. Nature and art have ornamented these delightful spots with lakes, fountains, cascades, aviaries, menageries, and pavilions. “Here in cool grot” every opportunity is offered for love-making, and if this one is already engaged, there are highly romantic nooks, concealed by overhanging boughs, that will answer the purpose as well. Trees and plants seem to rejoice in the bright sunshine; the birds’ songs mingle strangely with the roar of the wild beasts from which the Sultan is perhaps trying to learn a lesson of humanity; and gorgeous butterflies hover round, kissing the sweet blossoms that fill the air with their fragrance. Here the ladies of the harem, when permitted to escape for a time from their cages, roam at liberty like a troop of school-girls during recreation hours, some making for the orchards, others dispersing in the vineyards, with screams of laughter and wild frolic that would astonish considerably any European garden party. The conservatories and flower beds suffer terribly during these incursions, and great is the despair of the head-gardener.[15]