The thundering of guns from the whole Ottoman fleet in the Bosphorus announced, some days since, that the sultan had changed his summer for his winter serai, and the commodore received yesterday a firman to visit the deserted palace of Beylerbey.
We left the frigate at an early hour, our large party of officers increased by the captain of the “Acteon,” sloop-of-war, some gentlemen of the English ambassador’s household, and several strangers who took advantage of the commodore’s courtesy to enjoy a privilege granted so very rarely.
As we pulled up the Strait, some one pointed out the residence, on the European shore, of the once favourite wife, and now fat widow, of Sultan Selim. She is called by the Turks, the “boneless sultana,” and is the model of shape by the oriental standard. The poet’s lines,
“Who turned that little waist with so much care,
And shut perfection in so small a ring?”
though a very neat compliment in some countries, would be downright rudeness in the East. Near this jelly in weeds lives a venerable Turk, who was once ambassador to England. He came back too much enlightened, and the mufti immediately procured his exile, for infidelity. He passes his day, we are told, in looking at a large map hung on the wall before him, and wondering at his own travels.
We were received at the shining brazen gate of Beylerbey, by Hamik Pacha (a strikingly elegant man, just returned from a mission to England), deputed by the sultan to do the honours. A side-door introduced us immediately to the grand hall upon the lower floor, which was separated only by four marble pillars, and a heavy curtain rolled up at will, from the gravel walk of the garden in the rear. We ascended thence by an open staircase of wood, prettily inlaid, to the second floor, which was one long suite of spacious rooms, built entirely in the French style, and thence to the third floor, the same thing over again. It was quite like looking at lodgings in Paris. There was no furniture, except, an occasional ottoman turned with its face upon another, and a prodigious quantity of French musical clocks, three or four in every room, and all playing in our honour with an amusing confusion. One other article, by the way—a large, common, American rocking-chair! The poor thing stood in a great gilded room all alone, looking pitiably home-sick. I seated myself in it, malgré a thick coat of dust upon the bottom, as I would visit a sick countryman in exile.
The harem was locked, and the polite pacha regretted that he had no orders to open it. We descended to the gardens, which rise by terraces to a gimcrack temple and orangery, and having looked at the sultan’s poultry, we took our leave. If his pink palace in Europe is no finer than his yellow palace in Asia, there is many a merchant in America better lodged than the padishah of the Ottoman empire. We have not seen the old seraglio, however, and in its inaccessible recesses, probably, moulders that true oriental splendour which this upholsterer monarch abandons in his rage, for the novel luxuries of Europe.