The slave market was of course not unvisited, but the description in Don Juan is more indebted to the author’s fancy, than any of those other bright reflections of realities to which I have hitherto directed the attention of the reader. The market now-a-days is in truth very uninteresting; few slaves are ever to be seen in it, and the place itself has an odious resemblance to Smithfield. I imagine, therefore, that the trade in slaves is chiefly managed by private bargaining. When there, I saw only two men for sale, whites, who appeared very little concerned about their destination, certainly not more than English rustics offering themselves for hire to the farmers at a fair or market. Doubtless, there was a time when the slave market of Constantinople presented a different spectacle, but the trade itself has undergone a change—the Christians are now interdicted from purchasing slaves. The luxury of the guilt is reserved for the exclusive enjoyment of the Turks. Still, as a description of things which may have been, Byron’s market is probable and curious.
A crowd of shivering slaves of every nation
And age and sex were in the market ranged,
Each busy with the merchant in his station.
Poor creatures, their good looks were sadly changed.
All save the blacks seem’d jaded with vexation,
From friends, and home, and freedom far estranged.
The negroes more philosophy displayed,
Used to it no doubt, as eels are to be flayed.
Like a backgammon board, the place was dotted
With whites and blacks in groups, on show for sale,
Though rather more irregularly spotted;
Some bought the jet, while others chose the pale.
No lady e’er is ogled by a lover,
Horse by a black-leg, broadcloth by a tailor,
Fee by a counsel, felon by a jailer,
As is a slave by his intended bidder.
’Tis pleasant purchasing our fellow-creatures,
And all are to be sold, if you consider
Their passions, and are dext’rous, some by features
Are bought up, others by a warlike leader;
Some by a place, as tend their years or natures;
The most by ready cash, but all have prices,
From crowns to kicks, according to their vices.
The account of the interior of the seraglio in Don Juan is also only probably correct, and may have been drawn in several particulars from an inspection of some of the palaces, but the descriptions of the imperial harem are entirely fanciful. I am persuaded, by different circumstances, that Byron could not have been in those sacred chambers of any of the seraglios. At the time I was in Constantinople, only one of the imperial residences was accessible to strangers, and it was unfurnished. The great seraglio was not accessible beyond the courts, except in those apartments where the Sultan receives his officers and visitors of state. Indeed, the whole account of the customs and usages of the interior of the seraglio, as described in Don Juan, can only be regarded as inventions; and though the descriptions abound in picturesque beauty, they have not that air of truth and fact about them which render the pictures of Byron so generally valuable, independent of their poetical excellence. In those he has given of the apartments of the men, the liveliness and fidelity of his pencil cannot be denied; but the Arabian tales and Vathek seem to have had more influence on his fancy in describing the imperial harem, than a knowledge of actual things and appearances. Not that the latter are inferior to the former in beauty, or are without images and lineaments of graphic distinctness, but they want that air of reality which constitutes the singular excellence of his scenes drawn from nature; and there is a vagueness in them which has the effect of making them obscure, and even fantastical. Indeed, except when he paints from actual models, from living persons and existing things, his superiority, at least his originality, is not so obvious; and thus it happens, that his gorgeous description of the sultan’s seraglio is like a versified passage of an Arabian tale, while the imagery of Childe Harold’s visit to Ali Pasha has all the freshness and life of an actual scene. The following is, indeed, more like an imitation of Vathek, than anything that has been seen, or is in existence. I quote it for the contrast it affords to the visit referred to, and in illustration of the distinction which should be made between beauties derived from actual scenes and adventures, and compilations from memory and imagination, which are supposed to display so much more of creative invention.
And thus they parted, each by separate doors,
Raba led Juan onward, room by room,
Through glittering galleries and o’er marble floors,
Till a gigantic portal through the gloom
Haughty and huge along the distance towers,
And wafted far arose a rich perfume,
It seem’d as though they came upon a shrine,
For all was vast, still, fragrant, and divine.
The giant door was broad and bright and high,
Of gilded bronze, and carved in curious guise;
Warriors thereon were battling furiously;
Here stalks the victor, there the vanquish’d lies;
There captives led in triumph droop the eye,
And in perspective many a squadron flies.
It seems the work of times before the line
Of Rome transplanted fell with Constantine.
This massy portal stood at the wide close
Of a huge hall, and on its either side
Two little dwarfs, the least you could suppose,
Were sate, like ugly imps, as if allied
In mockery to the enormous gate which rose
O’er them in almost pyramidic pride.