With my cheaply-bought treasures in my pockets, we turned up the street of the diamond merchants, and making a single purchase more in the bazaar, of a tesbih or Turkish rosary of spice-wood, emerged to the open air in the neighbourhood of the mosque of Sultan Bajazet.
Whether slipping the pagan beads through my fingers affected me devoutly, or whether it was the mellow humour of the moment, I felt a disposition to forgive my enemies, and indulge in an act of Mohammedan piety—feeding the unowned dogs of the street. We stepped into a baker’s shop, and laid out a piastre in bread, and were immediately observed and surrounded, before we could break a loaf, by twenty or thirty as ill-looking curs, as ever howled to the moon. Having distributed about a dozen loaves, and finding that our largess had by no means satisfied the appetites of the expecting rabble, we found ourselves embarrassed to escape. Nothing but the baker’s threshold prevented them from jumping upon us, in their eagerness, and the array of so many formidable mouths ferocious with hunger, was rather staggering. The baker drew off the hungry pack at last, by walking round the corner with a loaf in his hand, while we made a speedy exit, patted on the back in passing by several of the assembled spectators.
It is surprising that the Turks can tolerate this filthy breed of curs, in such extraordinary numbers. They have a whimsical punishment for killing one of them. The dead dog is hung by his heels, so that his nose just touches the ground, and the canicide is compelled to heap wheat about him, till he is entirely covered; the wheat is then given to the poor, and the dog buried at the expense of the culprit. There are probably five dogs to every man in Constantinople, and besides their incessant barking, they often endanger the lives of children and strangers. MacFarlane, I think, tells the story of a drunken sea-captain, who was entirely devoured by the dogs at Tophana; nothing being found of him in the morning but his “indigestible pig-tail!”
We entered the court of Sultan Bajazet, and found the majestic plane-trees that shadow its arabesque fountains, bending beneath the weight of hundreds of pensionary pigeons. Here, as at several of the mosques, an old man sits by the gate, whose business it is to expend the alms given him in distributing grain to these sacred birds. Not to be outdone in piety, my friend gave the blind Turk a piastre; and, as he arose and unlocked the box beneath him, the pigeons descended about us in such a cloud, as literally to darken the air. Handful after handful was then thrown among them, and the beautiful creatures ran over our feet and fluttered round us with a fearlessness that sufficiently proved the safety in which they haunted the sacred precincts. In a few minutes they soared altogether again to the trees, and their Mussulman-feeder resumed his seat upon the box to wait for another charity.
A crowd of women at the harem gate, in the rear of the seraskier’s palace, attracted our attention. Upon inquiry, we found that he had married a daughter to one of the sultan’s military officers, and the bridal party was expected presently to come out in arubas, and make the tour of the Hippodrome, on the way to the house of the bridegroom. We wiled away an hour returning the gaze of curiosity bent upon us from the idle and bright eyes of a hundred women, and the first of the gilded vehicles made its appearance; though in the same style of ornament with the one I have already described, it differed in being drawn by horses, and having a frame top, with small round mirrors set in the corners. Within sat four very young women, one of whom was the bride; but which, we found no one who could tell us. It is no description of a face in the East to say, that the eyes were dark, and the nose regular—all that the jealous yashmack permitted us to ascertain of the beauty of the bride. Their eyes are all dark, and their noses are all regular; the Turkish nose differing from the Grecian, as that of the Antinous from the Apollo, only in its more voluptuous fulness, and a nostril less dilated. Four darker pairs of eyes, however, and four brows of whiter orb, never pined in a harem, or were reflected in those golden-rimmed mirrors; and as the twelve succeeding arubas rattled by, and in each suite four young women, with the same eternal dark eyes, “full of sleep,” and the same curved and pearly forehead, and noses like the Antinous, I thought of toujours perdrix, and felt that if there had been but one with a slight toss in that prominent member, it would not have been displeasing.
In a conversation with a Greek lady the other day, she remarked that the veils of the Turkish ladies conceal no charms. Their mouths, she says, are generally coarse, and their teeth, from the immoderate use of sweetmeats, or neglect, or some other cause, almost universally defective. How far the interest excited by these hidden features may have jaundiced the eyes of my fair informer, I cannot say; but, as a general fact, uneducated women, whatever other beauties they may possess, have rarely expressive or agreeable mouths. Nature forms and colours the nose, the eyes, the forehead, and the complexion; but the character, from the cradle up, moulds gradually to its own inward changes, the plastic and passion-breathing lines of the lips. Allowing this, it would be rather surprising if there was a mouth in all Turkey that had more than a pretty silliness at the most—the art of dyeing their finger nails, and painting their eyebrows, being the highest branches of female education. How they came by these “eyes that teach us what the sun is made of,” the vales of Georgia and Circassia best can tell.
And so having rambled away a sunny autumn day, and earned some little appetite, if not experience, we will get out of Stamboul, before the sunset guard makes us prisoners, and climb up to our dinner in Pera.