I was conducted with great ceremony to the sofa, when I had saluted the Hanoum, and uttered my “Mashallah” as I leant over the infant; which, poor little thing! was almost smothered in finery; and, having taken my seat, I had time to contemplate the singular scene around me.
I have alluded elsewhere to the facility with which the working classes of Turkey obtain access into the houses of the wealthy. On every occasion of rejoicing, the door is open to all; it is the sofa only which is sacred; but the poor share in all the enjoyments of the festival; the coffee and sherbet is served to them, if not with the same ceremony, at least with the same welcome, as to the prouder guests; they listen to the music—they mingle in the conversation—they join in the gaiety—and they are never made to feel that their lot is cast in a more lowly rank than that of their entertainer.
On the present occasion the floor was thronged. Mothers were there with their infants at their breasts, for whose entire costume you would not have given fifty piastres; and whose sunburnt arms and naked feet bore testimony to a life of toil. A group of children were huddled together at the bed’s foot; a throng of singing women occupied the extreme end of the apartment; the mother of the young wife sat beside the pillow of her child, dressed in a vest and trowsers of white, with a large handkerchief of painted muslin flung loosely over her turban; the lovely little Odalique, totally unheeded, squatted on the ground at my feet; half a dozen stately Hanoums were seated on the crimson velvet sofa, leaning against its gorgeous cushions, and some of them engaged with the chibouk. But the most attractive object in the apartment was the dancing-girl, who occupied the centre of the floor.
I have rarely beheld any thing more beautiful; and, with the exception of the daughter of the Scodra Pasha, I had seen no woman in the country who could be compared with her. On my entrance she had been beating the tambourine; and as, out of respect for the Frank visitor, the music was momentarily suspended, she remained in the attitude she had assumed when she first caught sight of me. Her arms were raised above her head, and her open sleeves fell back almost to her shoulder; her delicate little feet were bare, and only partially revealed beneath the large loose trowsers of dark silk; a chemisette of gauze, richly fringed, relieved the sombre tint of her tightly-fitting antery, and a shawl of the most glowing colours bound her slender waist; her head-dress was nearly similar to that worn in the Imperial Seraïs—a painted handkerchief was folded round her forehead, whose deep fringe fell low upon her cheeks; part of her long hair was dishevelled, and spread wide upon the summit of her head, and the rest, formed into innumerable little plaits, was looped about her shoulders. A large bunch of white lilies drooped gracefully above her right ear, and her figure was bent slightly backward, in the easiest attitude in the world.
She was assuredly very lovely; but it was not genuine oriental beauty. Her large, full eyes were as blue and bright as a summer sky, when the heavens are full of sunshine; her nose was à la Roxalane; and she had a pretty pout about her little cherry-coloured lips, worth half a dozen smiles.
I could not help expressing my surprise at the style of her coïffure, as I had never before seen it so worn, except in the Imperial Palaces; when I was informed that the Sultan, having accidentally seen her mother, who far exceeded the daughter in beauty, became so enthralled by her extreme loveliness as to make her an inmate of his harem, where she still remains.
When I had seated myself, the dancer suddenly suffered her arms to fall by her side, and flinging the tambourine to one of the singing women, she clapped her hands, and a couple of slaves entered with coffee. One bore a large silver salver, from which depended a napkin of gold tissue, richly fringed, with the tiny cups of glittering porcelain, and the silver coffee-holders neatly arranged upon its surface; and the other carried a weighty sherbet-vase of wrought silver, shaped as classically as that of Hebe herself.
I never saw any woman so light or so graceful as that lovely dancing-girl. She had the spring of a sylph, and the foot of a fawn. As she presented the coffee, she laid her hand first upon her lips and then upon her head, with an elegance which I have seldom seen equalled; and then bounding back into her place, she twirled the tambourine in the air with the playfulness of a child; and, having denoted the measure, returned it to one of the women, who immediately commenced a wild chant, half song and half recitative, which was at times caught up in chorus by the others, and at times wailed out by the dancer only, as she regulated the movements of her willow-like figure to the modulations of the music. The Turkish women dance very little with the feet; it is the grace and art displayed in the carriage of the body and arms which form the perfection of their dancing; the rapid snapping of the fingers, meanwhile, producing the effect of castanets.
Even at the risk of making a portrait gallery of my chapter, I must mention the magnificent Saïryn Hanoum, who shortly afterwards entered the apartment. She was in the autumn of her beauty, for she must have been eight or nine and twenty, at which period the women of the East begin to decline. But what an autumn! Could you only have clipped the wings of Time for the future, you would not have wished her to be a day younger. She was dark, very dark: almost a Bohemian in complexion; but you saw the rich blood coursing along her veins, through the clear skin; her eyes were like the storm-cloud, from which the lightning flashes at intervals; her hair was as black as midnight; her teeth were dazzling: and her brow—it was a brow which should have been circled by a diadem, for it was already stamped with Nature’s own regality. She was tall, even stately; and the dignity of her step accorded well with the fire of her dark eye, and the proud expression that sat upon her lip, and dilated her thin delicate nostril. Her costume was as striking as her person; and, had she studied during a century how best to enhance her beauty, she could never have more perfectly succeeded. Her vest and trowsers were of the most snowy muslin; she wore neither diamond nor pearl; but the handkerchief was fastened about her head with a chain of large gold coins, which being threaded upon a silken cord, formed a fringe that rested upon her forehead; and a necklace of the same material fell low upon her bosom. The Turkish women of rank have universally very sweet voices—her’s was music.
On glancing back upon what I have written, I fear that much of it may be condemned as hyperbole, or at best as exaggeration. I only wish that they who are sceptical could look for an instant upon Saïryn Hanoum—they would confess that I have done her less than justice.