There is no consistency, no keeping, in Oriental splendour. The Pasha, with the diamond on his breast, is generally attended by a running footman who is slip-shod; and the Sultana, whose araba is veiled by a covering of crimson and gold, not infrequently figures in pantaloons of furniture chintz, and an antery of printed cotton. The same startling contrasts meet you at every step: and tourists and historians pass them over, because they destroy the continuity of their narrations, and the rounding of their periods; and yet they are as characteristic of the people as the chibouk or the turban, and therefore equally worthy of record.
The Fêtes were to continue for eight days—the diamond was to be shivered into fragments, and thus divided into many portions without sacrificing its lustre. All the population of Constantinople was in a ferment—the charshees had yielded up their glittering store of gold and silver stuffs—the diamond-merchants had exhausted themselves in elegant conceits—the confectioners had realized the fabled garden of enchantment visited by Aladdin in his search for the magic lamp, and the candied fruits peeped from amid their sugary cases, like masses of precious ore, and clusters of jewels—the silk-bazar of Broussa was a waste—the environs of Pera resembled a scattered camp—the heights around the valley of Dolma Batchè were guarded by mounted troops—provisions of every description trebled their price: and one vessel, laden with a hundred and fifty thousand fowls for the market of Constantinople, which arrived from the Archipelago, was secured for the exclusive use of the Sultan’s kitchen.
Pashas were daily pouring in from the provinces—tribute was flung into the yawning coffers of the state—audiences of congratulation kept the Imperial Palace in a constant whirl—and the streets of the city were thronged with a motley crowd, either invited thither by the authorities, or attracted by the hope of profit. Bulgarians, in parties of three or four, impeded the progress of every respectable passenger who would fain have threaded his way among them unmolested; and by dint of stunning him with their discordant instruments, and intruding themselves upon his path to exhibit their coarse and ungainly dances, wrung from him by their sturdy perseverance a donation whose impulse was certainly not one of charity. Bohemian gipsies, some of them so lovely that they seemed formed to command the prosperity which they subtly promised to others, were bestowing palaces and power on every side at the slender price of a few paras. Arabian tumblers, turned loose for the first time in the streets of a great capital, and appearing scarcely able to keep their feet upon the solid earth, jostled you at every corner. Persian rope-dancers stalked gravely and solemnly along, with large white turbans, and flowing robes. Bedouin jugglers were grouped in coffee-shops and smoking-booths, awaiting the moment when their services would be required; and bewildering the sober brains of the surrounding Turks with loud vauntings of the feats with which they proposed to delight his Sublime Highness, and to astonish his people. Altogether, Constantinople resembled a human kaleidoscope, whose forms and features varied at every turn; and even those who, like myself, had no immediate interest in the festival, caught a portion of the popular excitement, and became anxious for the period of its celebration.
At length, the auspicious morning dawned which the Court Astrologer had declared to herald happiness to the Princess; and all Stamboul had crossed the Bosphorus with the rising sun to share in the Imperial festivities.
Long before mid-day Pera also was a desert: the stream of life had flowed in one sole direction, and every avenue leading to Dolma Batchè was thronged with human beings, anxious and excited, and yet scarcely knowing what they anticipated. The marriage festival had been the one engrossing subject of discourse and speculation for so many months—such extravagant suggestions had been hazarded, and such wild assertions had been made, that the imagination of the crowd had run riot; and, had the fountains poured forth liquid ore, and the heavens themselves rained diamond-dust, I am not sure that such events would have caused any extraordinary manifestation of astonishment, from the mass of spectators who had clustered themselves like bees in the neighbourhood of the palace.
The Great Cemetery looked as though every grave had given up its dead; there was scarcely space to pass among the crowd which thronged it. Dancing, smoking, and gambling for sugarplums, (the only stake that a Turk ever hazards on a game of chance) divided the attention of the loiterers, with swings, round-abouts, and mohalibè merchants. Pillauf and kibaubs were preparing in every direction for the refreshment of the hungry; and tinted and perfumed sherbets, carefully guarded from the sun, were whiling in their turn the weary and the warm to pause on their onward path, and indulge in their tempting freshness.
The tents were flaunting their bright colours in the sunshine; the smoking booths were filled with guests; the little wooden kiosk on the edge of the height was unapproachable; the long line of wall surrounding the Artillery Barrack was, as usual on all festive occasions, covered with Turkish women; and the whole space beneath was instinct with life and motion.
From the point of the hill above the sea the land shoots sharply down into the valley of Dolma Batchè, clothed with fruit trees, whose perfumed blossoms, then in the height of their beauty, were emptying their tinted chalices, on the air. The road leading to the Palace is cut along the side of the declivity, forming on its upper edge a lofty ridge which was fringed throughout its whole length with tents; in the distance rose the Military College, spanning the crest of the hill like a diadem; with the gilded and glittering crescent that crowns the dome of its mosque flashing in the sunshine. On the right hand the view was bounded by the dense forest of cypresses rising above the tombs of the Turkish cemetery, which swept darkly downwards to the Bosphorus that was laughing in its loveliness, and reflecting on its waveless bosom the lovely height of Scutari which hemmed in the landscape. And as the eye wandered onward along the channel, it took in the dusky shore of Asia, with its kiosk-crowned and forest-clad mountains; until the line was lost in the gradually failing purple, that blent itself at last with the horizon.
Immediately beneath the hill, and close upon the shore, stands the Palace of Dolma Batchè, with its walls of many tints, and its fantastic irregularity of outline; while behind its spacious gardens, sloping gently upward, and clothed with turf, rises a stretch of land which was now crowded with Turkish women. Nothing could be more picturesque than their appearance: the nature of the ground having enabled them to arrange themselves amphitheatrically, and from thence to command an uninterrupted view of the esplanade in front of the Grand Armoury, which is enclosed on its opposite side by a raised terrace, along whose edge were pitched the tents of the Pashas. There must have been at least five hundred women clustered together on that one small stretch of land; and in the distance it presented precisely the appearance of a meadow covered with daisies, with here and there a corn-poppy flaunting in the midst; the white yashmacs and red umbrellas lending themselves readily to the illusion.
The tents of the Pashas were many of them very magnificent: the Grand Vèzir’s was hung with crimson velvet, richly embroidered; while that of Achmet Pasha was lined with green satin, and fringed with gold; and the whole were richly carpeted, and surrounded by handsome sofas. The reception-marquee, in which the Sultan was to entertain a party of guests daily, was situated in the rear of those that I have just described: and the kitchen, ingeniously fitted up with stoves, dressers, and tables, hewn in the hill-side, was tenanted by five hundred cooks.