London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 4

by Henry Mayhew

On the appointed day the union, which is a mere civil contract, though blessed by religious rites, is concluded. The bridegroom is conducted by an Imaum, or priest, to the entrance of the bride’s chamber, and there a prayer is uttered, to which all his friends make response. He is then left alone, standing outside the door. He knocks three times. A slave-maid admits him, going out herself to fetch a table with a tray of viands. While she is gone the husband endeavours to uncover his wife’s face, in which, after the usual coy resistance prescribed by custom, he, of course, succeeds. Meanwhile the damsel returns, and they eat together. The meal is very quickly dispatched, and a bridal couch is spread on the floor. Then the bride is taken into a neighbouring room, where she is undressed by her mother and her friends, after which the newly-married pair are left alone. Among the most popular stories connected with Ottoman manners, is that of the sultan throwing his handkerchief to the woman he chooses as the companion of his pillow, and the imitation of this practice by great men in their harems. This, however, is a fanciful invention, repeated by some travellers who desired the world to suppose they were intimate with the secrets of the seraglio. When the sultan chooses any one of his women to pass the night with, he sends an eunuch with a present to inform her of the intended honour. She is taken to a bath, perfumed, attired in beautiful garments, and then placed in bed. The story of her creeping in at the foot of the couch is also a fable. The first chosen is the chief in rank.

The first of these fanciful accounts was probably suggested by a custom still practised among some of the Bosnian communities in western Turkey, where manners are more simple than in the eastern provinces. The young Muslim girls are there permitted to walk about in the daytime with uncovered faces. A man inclined to matrimony who happens to be pleased with the appearance of one of these maidens throws an embroidered handkerchief, or some part of his dress, over her head or neck. She then returns to her home, considers herself betrothed, and never again exposes her features in public. This is the usual preliminary to marriage; but it is probable that the lover has more than one look at his mistress before he makes the sign.

Even the sultan’s concubines are purchased slaves, since no free Turkish woman can occupy that position. Occasionally he gives one away to a favourite pasha, who looks with pride upon the acquisition, and glories in the refuse of a palace. Little girls, about seven years of age, are much prized as slaves, and are often sold for upwards of a hundred guineas.

Life in the harems of Constantinople is similar to that in those of Cairo. It is a round of sensual enjoyment, in which vanity is almost the only relief to the grosser appetites of humanity. The bath is the favourite place of resort. Lady Wortley Montague has left a celebrated description of one of these palaces of indolence. The ladies, perfectly naked, walked up and down, or reclined in various attitudes on heaps of cushions, attended by pretty slaves, who handed them coffee or sherbet. They delighted in the voluptuous movements of the female dancers, of which the public class in Turkey, as in Egypt, is composed of prostitutes. It struck them with surprise and disappointment that Lady Mary did not take off her clothes as they did; but she showed them how she was cased up in her stays, so that she could not strip, which they imagined was an ingenious device of her jealous husband.

The morals of the Turkish women in general are described by most writers as very loose. The veils which were invented to preserve their virtue, favour their intrigues to dispose of it. The most watchful husband may pass his wife in the street without knowing her. Thus they live in perpetual masquerade. The places of assignment are usually at Jews’ shops, where they meet their paramours, though very seldom letting them know who they are. “You may easily imagine,” said Lady Montague, “the number of faithful wives to be very small in a country where they have nothing to fear from a lover’s indiscretion.” This may be taken, however, as an exaggerated view, for her ladyship was accustomed to breathe the impure moral atmosphere of courts, and cared little for the character of her sex in any part of the world.

The wife in Turkey holds this check upon the caprice of her husband—her property belongs to herself, and if she be divorced she may take it away. The widow, also, is inviolable in her harem, not only against private intrusion, but against the officers of the law. If a woman’s husband neglect her, that is, if he fail to visit her once a week, she may sue for a separation, which may be easily effected before a Kadi. If she commit adultery, he may also sue; but if the divorce takes place by mutual consent no formality whatever is required. As in Egypt, a man may marry a woman twice after divorcing her; but the third time he must not take her again, until she has been had and put away by another person.

Women, in Turkey, regard as an object more pitiable than any other the childless wife. With them to be barren after marriage is viewed as more disgraceful than with us to be fruitful before. All sorts of quackeries are resorted to by them to prolong and increase their powers of child-bearing, so that many kill themselves by the dangerous devices they employ. It is common to see a woman who has borne thirteen or fourteen children; some in the middle ranks bear from 25 to 30. They pray for the birth of twins, and are usually good mothers, though some have expressed themselves indifferent whether all their children lived or half of them were swept off by the plague. The single instance of superior refinement observable in Egypt is also remarkable here. Midwives only attend the bed of child-birth. There are no accoucheurs. Female practitioners also cure diseases; though an European physician is sometimes admitted to feel a pulse or even to see a patient’s face.

Among the humbler classes the condition of the women resembles very nearly that of our own country. Their morality is generally superior to that of those wealthier inmates of the harems whose indolence seduces them into vice.

The dancing girls of the public class of Turkey resemble, in all respects, those of Egypt. They are prostitutes by profession; but they do not appear to be so numerous in that country as formerly. Their performances, however, are prized by all classes, and they dance as lasciviously in the harem before women, as in the Kiosk before a party of convivial men. Those who perform in public indulge in every obscenity, and vie with each other in their indecent exhibitions. Their costume is exceedingly rich both in colour and in material. Frequenting the coffee-houses by day, they pick up companions, whom they entertain with songs, or tales, or caresses until nightfall, when preliminary orgies take place, and they disperse, with their patrons, to houses in various parts of the city, generally in the more narrow, tortuous, and remote streets. The outsides of these habitations are usually of a forbidding, cheerless, dirty aspect, but the interior of those belonging to the wealthier chiefs of the dancing girls are fitted up with every appurtenance of luxury.

One of the most extraordinary features in the social institutions of Turkey is the temporary union, or marriage of convenience, which is adopted by many. It is, indeed, strictly speaking, simple prostitution. A man going on a journey, and leaving his wife behind, arrives in a strange city, where he desires to make some stay. He immediately bargains for a girl to live with him while he remains in the neighbourhood; a regular agreement is drawn up, and he supports her, and pays her friends, while he has her in his possession. The Moolahs declare this to be one valuable privilege of the male sex in Turkey; but the engagement does not appear to be valid before the law, if contracted expressly as a temporary union. But this is not necessary. The facility of divorce renders all such precaution useless. The man, therefore, takes the girl, nominally as his wife, but virtually as his mistress, until he is tired of her, or wishes to depart, when she returns to her friends and waits the occasion of a new engagement.