“Would you believe it,” said she, as I entered, “those beasts would leave me to die here before they came to my assistance! and, if I happen to fall asleep, there is not one would cover my shoulders to prevent my taking cold.”
Poor Lady Hester! thought I, the contrast between your early days and your present sufferings is almost enough to break your heart. So I abused the maids handsomely; and then, being satisfied with the warmth of my expressions, and having vented her own anger, she began to talk composedly.
I remained until near dinner-time, and, after dinner, went to her again. She observed that the nights were dreadfully long, and that she should be obliged to me if I would read to her. Her stock of books, and mine too, was very small, and, after naming a few, which did not please her, I recollected she had asked me once if I had by me a heathen mythology, and she immediately fixed on that. So, writing on a slip of paper to my daughter to send me hers, Lady Hester said, “First let me order a pipe for you:” for this was usually the preliminary to all business or conversation. Every sitting was opened with a pipe, and generally terminated with one; as her ladyship would say, “But, before you go, doctor, you must smoke one pipe more.” When the book came, she desired me to turn to the part about Jupiter Ammon, and it will be seen farther on why she did so. After a page or two, she began to talk of the coming of the Mahadi, and the conversation was prolonged far into the night. She afterwards ordered tea—for I now drank tea with her almost every evening—and I then returned to my house, covered with my thick capote, which, in the short distance of a few hundred yards, could hardly save me from being wet through.
November 25.—The annual fast of the Mahometans, called Ramazàn, had begun on the preceding day. It is customary for persons of rank to make presents of clothes and other things to their dependants, during the lunar month that the Ramazàn lasts, in order that they may appear dressed up in finery on the first day of the succeeding new moon, at the holyday of the Byràm, which succeeds it, as Easter-day does Lent among Christians. Lady Hester, who never was behindhand in beneficence, made it a rule to clothe all her Mahometan servants anew at this season, as she did all her Christian ones on New Year’s Day or at Easter. New capotes, pelisses, sherwáls, shirts, shifts, turbans, gowns, &c., were always bought previous to the time; and, the best being given to the most deserving, the worst to the least so, with none at all to the lazy and worthless, some sort of activity was observable in their service previous to the expected time. But the objects they coveted once in their possession, they soon relapsed into their customary sloth.
Some of these articles of dress were lying on the floor, Lady Hester having had them brought for her to look at. She said to me, “You must take home one of these abahs[14] to show to your family. You must tell them,” continued she, “that once I had all my servants clothed in such abahs as that: but they played me such tricks, I have given it up. Some sold them; and, on one occasion, four of them marched off within twenty-four hours after I had dressed them from head to foot, and I never saw them again: isn’t it abominable? At the time that I dressed them so well, and rode out myself with my bornôos, crimson and gold, the gold lace being everywhere where silk tape is generally put, I did not owe a shilling in the world.”
“Once,” she continued, “when riding my beautiful Arabian mare Asfoor, near a place called Gezýn, in that crimson bornôos, with a richly-embroidered dress under it, and on my crimson velvet saddle, I happened to approach an encampment of the Pasha’s troops. Several benát el hawa” (street ladies), “who were living with the soldiers, ran across a field to come up with me, thinking I was some young bey or binbashi. Every time, just as they got near, I quickened my horse’s pace, that they might not see I was a woman: at last, two fairly came and seized my knees, to make me turn and look at them. But what was their confusion (for such women are not so hardened as in Europe) when they saw I had no beard or mustachios, and was one of their own sex!”
Lady Hester related this droll adventure to me more than once, to show, I believe, what a distinguished and real Turkish appearance she made on horseback, which was perfectly true: but to return to the servants.
A Turk for work is little better than a brute animal: he moves about nimbly, when roused by vociferation and threats, and squats down like a dog the moment he is left to himself. England produces no type of the Syrian serving-man. He sets about his work as a task that is given to him, and, when it is over, sits down immediately to smoke his pipe and to gossip, or seeks a snug place near at hand, and goes to sleep. You call him, and set him to do something else, and the same practice follows. The next day you expect he will, of his own accord, recommence what was shown to him on the preceding one; but no such thing: you have to tell him over again, and so every day. He is a thief from habit, and a liar of the most brazen stamp, as no shame is ever attached to detection. In plausible language, protestations of honesty and fidelity, he has no superior; and, if beaten or reviled, he will smother his choler, nay, kiss the hand that has chastised him, but waits a fit opportunity for vengeance, and carefully weighs kicks against coppers. He is generally so servile as to make you bear with his worthlessness, even though you despise him; and, when your anger appears to threaten him with the loss of his place and is at the highest, he smooths it down with an extraordinary day’s activity, making you hope that a reformation has taken place in him: but it is all delusion. And think not that you, a Christian, can raise your hand against the meanest servant, if a Mahometan: when you would have him beaten, you must employ another Mahometan to do it, who will, however, lay on to your heart’s content.
What has been said above applies to the menials of towns and cities. Of another class of servants taken from the villages, Lady Hester used to say, “I have tried the Syrian fellahs” (peasants) “for twenty years as servants, and I ought to know pretty well what they are fit for. It is my opinion that, for hard work, lifting heavy things, going with mules and asses, for foot messengers across the country, and for such business, you may make something of them, but for nothing else. The women are idle, and prone to thieving; and it is impossible to teach them any European usages.”
One day, in walking through the back yard, I observed two stakes, about six feet high and sharply pointed, stuck deep and firmly into the ground, which had before escaped my notice. I inquired what they were for, but got no satisfactory answer, the dairyman, to whom I addressed myself, using the reply so common throughout the East, Ma aref (I don’t know); for no people in the world have so quick a scent of the danger of being brought into trouble by professing to know what is inquired about as the Orientals. A Jew, in a street in Turkey, and a Christian likewise, is sure to answer the most simple question by an “I don’t know”—“I have not heard”—“I have not seen;” for he fears what that question may lead to, and that, if he knows a little, a bastinadoing may be resorted to to make him know more: so I afterwards asked Lady Hester. “Oh!” replied she, “I’ll tell you how those stakes came there: I had forgotten all about them. One day, at the time they were robbing me right and left, I ordered the carpenter to make two stakes, such as people are impaled upon, and to erect them in the back yard. I spoke not to any one why or wherefore I had given the order; but if you had seen the fright that pervaded the house, and for weeks how well the maids behaved, you would then have known, as I do, that it is only by such terrible means that these abominable jades can be kept under. From that time to this it appears the stakes have remained; for, as I never go into that yard, I had forgotten them: but since they are there still, there let them be.”