On the arrival of a male visiter, should any of the ladies be wandering amid the bright blossoms in which they so much delight, the alarm is instantly given; and they shuffle away to their pretty prison-room as fast as their heelless slippers will enable them to move. Perhaps the guest may be a suitor; but if so, the case is not altered one iota. The lady still runs away, without any attempt to indulge her curiosity by a peep at her destined lord; while the gentleman, on his side, takes his seat in the great saloon, and, after smoking a score of pipes, and making a thousand teminas to the father or brother of his bride elect, mounts his horse, or resumes his place in his caïque, and departs; in full possession of all the particulars of the lady’s property; and in contented ignorance of all that relates to her character or person.
“Will you take this woman, whether she be halt, or deaf, or humped, or blind?" asks the priest on the bridal day, as the happy bridegroom stands opposite to a mummy-like mass of gold threads and cachemire, with his own monstrous calpac tricked out in the same glittering finery, until he looks like a male Danaë; and with true stolid Armenian philosophy he answers: “Even so I will take her.”
The European young lady associates the idea of marriage with tenderness, and indulgence, and domestic enjoyment; emancipation from maternal authority, and comparative personal liberty. She smiles in the stillness of her own spirit at the fair visions of happiness that rise before her; and there is no bitterness in the tears with which she quits the home of her infancy. But the Armenian maiden only exchanges one tyranny for another—she is transported to the home of a stranger, whom a priest has told her that she is to love, and whom she has never seen—beneath the roof-tree of a man whom, henceforward, she is bound to honour, though her heart may loathe the mockery. To obey is her least difficult duty, for she has been reared in obedience; but yet she cannot escape the pang of feeling how much more easy was that blind submission to another’s will, when it was enforced by the mother who had laid her to sleep upon her bosom in her infancy, and on whose knee she had sported in her girlhood; than when she is suddenly called upon to bow meekly beneath the dictation of a new and strange task-mistress, knit to her by no tie, save that new and unaccustomed link which has just been riveted by the church; and by which she has become the slave not only of her husband, but of his parents also.
Has she fortune, beauty, rank, they avail her nothing; for two long years she must not speak before her step-mother, save to reply to some question that may be put to her; and, should she herself become a parent, she has yet a sterner and a more difficult task to learn; for she cannot even fondle her infant before witnesses; but must fly and hide herself in her own chamber when she would indulge the outpourings of maternal love.
How melancholy a contrast does this Armenian barbarism afford to the beautiful devotedness of every inmate of a Turkish harem to the comfort and happiness of infancy! There it is difficult to decide which is really the mother of the rosy, laughing, boisterous baby that is passed from one to the other; and welcome to the heart and arms of all. The little plump, spoilt, mischievous urchin, whose life is one long holyday of fun and frolic; and whose few fleeting tears throw all around him into commotion. An infant is common property in a Turkish harem—a toy and a treasure alike to each; whether it be the child of the stately Hanoum whose will is law, or of the slave whose duty is obedience; and, it is certain that, if children could really be “killed with kindness,” the Ottoman Empire, in as far as the Turks themselves are concerned, would soon be a waste.
There can, I think, be no doubt that the life of cold, monotonous, heart-shutting ceremony led by the Armenians among themselves, has been in a great degree the cause of the stolidity of character with which I have elsewhere reproached them. It would, perhaps, be difficult to find a finer race of men in the world, as far as their personal appearance is concerned: while it is certain that no where could they be exceeded in mental, or I should rather say, moral inertness. In all affairs of commerce, where the subject may be reduced by rule, and decided by calculation, they are competent alike to undertake and to comprehend it: but once endeavour to while them beyond the charmed circle of their money-bags; to detach their thoughts for a moment from their piastres; and they cannot utter three consecutive sentences to which it is not a waste of time to listen.
That they are a most valuable portion of the population admits of no dispute; their steady commercial habits, their unquestioning submission to “the powers that be;” their plodding, unambitious natures, fit them admirably for their position in Turkey. Had they more mental energy, more self-appreciation, and more moral development, they could not continue to be the tame listless imitators, and idolaters of their masters that they now are.
The Armenian holds the same position among the bipeds of the East as the buffalo among the quadrupeds. He bears his load, and performs his task with docility, without appearing conscious that he can be capable of any thing beyond this; and, even the Sarafs, or Bankers to the Pashas, a class of men in whom I expected to encounter, at least occasionally, an individual of general acquirements and information, as far as my own experience went, scarcely formed an exception to the rule. I knew many among them who were exceedingly amiable, and possessed of great shrewdness, but it was all professional subtlety; it extended not beyond the objects on which their personal interests were hinged. Not one in a score can speak five words of any European language, or be induced to exhibit the slightest wish to acquire one. In a word, I should say that the Armenians, as a nation, were worthy, well-meaning, and useful, but extremely uninteresting members of society; possessing neither the energy of the Greek, nor the strength of character so conspicuous in the Osmanli—A money-making, money-loving people, having a proper regard for the “purple and fine linen” of the world; and quite satisfied to bear the double yoke of the Sultan and the Priesthood.