It will have occurred to many, acquainted with the scenes portrayed, to exclaim, when gazing upon the bright pictures of a David Roberts, a Leopold Robert, or a Villamil, "What a deal of dirt is hidden under all that gay colouring!" It will not do for the artist to look too closely into the details of southern cleanliness and domestic economy; he must elevate his subject and wash off the dirt, or at least paint over it. Constantinople must be viewed as a panorama, not investigated as if for sale. If he would preserve the enchantment unbroken, the spectator must keep his distance, as from a picture painted for distant effect. If he will not do this, if curiosity impels him onwards, let him make up his eyes and olfactories to a cruel disappointment. A minute ago, fairyland was spread before him; he lands, and stumbles over a dead dog. Touching dogs, by the bye, we have a word to say. Mr Smith has numerous passages relating to that quadruped, esteemed in Christendom, abominable in Constantinople. Having once, he informs us, been severely bitten by a hound, and having, moreover, seen several persons die of hydrophobia, he entertains a very justifiable mistrust of the canine race, or at least of such of its specimens as present themselves with slavering mouths, inflamed eyes, guttural yells, and hides ragged and bloody. Now, this being the habitual appearance and bearing of the eighty-thousand pugnacious and starving curs that infest the streets of the Turkish capital, Mr Smith, had he been a nervous person, would have passed rather an agreeable "month in Constantinople." With a paper lantern in one hand, however, and a jagged stone in the other—the usual weapons of defence—he prosecuted his wanderings most courageously, at almost any hour of the night, through the filth-strewn and dog-haunted streets. His first introduction to these pleasant animals was auricular; and truly, compared to their uproar, a German frog-swamp or a strong party of Christmas waits, jangling a negro melody in defiance of time and tune, must be considered a delightful réveil-matin.
"To say that if all the sheep-dogs going to Smithfield on a market-day had been kept on the constant bark, and pitted against the yelping curs upon all the carts in London, they could have given any idea of the canine uproar that now first astonished me, would be to make the feeblest of images. The whole city rung with one vast riot. Down below me at Tophanné—over at Stamboul—far away at Scutari—the whole eighty thousand dogs that are said to overrun Constantinople appeared engaged in the most active extermination of each other, without a moment's cessation. The yelping, howling, barking, growling, and snarling, were all merged into one uniform and continuous even sound, as the noise of frogs becomes when heard at a distance. For hours there was no lull. I went to sleep, and woke again; and still, with my windows open, I heard the same tumult going on; nor was it until daybreak that anything like tranquillity was restored."
The traces of these nocturnal combats are plainly discernible the next morning. There is not a whole skin in the entire canine legion; some have lost eyes, others ears, some a collop of the little flesh that remains on their unfortunate bones, and all bear the scars of desperate conflicts. They keep an active look-out for dead horses and camels, and are even said to devour their defunct comrades; but there is no authenticated account of their making a meal of a human being, although a story is current in Galata of their having one night torn down a tipsy English sailor, and left nothing but his bones to tell the tale in the morning. Drunkards, however, must expect to go to the dogs. Mr Smith kept sober, and carried a lantern. Solely to these two precautions, perhaps, are we to-day indebted for the pleasure of reading his book, instead of mourning his interment in the ravenous stomachs of Mahomedan mongrels.
It can hardly have escaped the observation of any one who has travelled at all, that the presence of even a very few English settlers in a town or district, speedily entails the establishment of "the English shop." The keeper of this is not necessarily an Englishman; he may be of any nation—Pole, Jew, Frenchman, German; the essential is, that he should have a smattering of English and a trader's knowledge of the heterogeneous articles which, in foreign estimation, are indispensable to the existence of Englishmen. Foremost amongst these are beer and pickles, mustard and cayenne, Warren's blacking and Windsor soap, the pills of Professor Holloway, the kalydor of the world-renowned Rowland. Thanks to the extraordinary power of puffing, we dare to say that the paletot of Sheriff Nicoll by this time finds its nook in "the English shop." The growth of these philanthropical depots for the consolation of exiled Britons is often miraculously mushroom-like. Land an English regiment to occupy a menaced point on some distant foreign shore, and within the week "the shop" appears, though it be but a booth with a hamper of porter and a dozen pickle pots for sole stock in trade. In Constantinople, where English abound, either as residents or birds of passage, Stampa is a celebrity. The admirable establishment of Galignani is not more famed for books and newspapers—and especially for that far-famed Messenger, which reaches to the uttermost ends of the earth—than is the shop of Stampa as a rendezvous and receptacle for men and things English. There you may buy everything, from a Stilton to a cake of soap, from a solar lamp to a steel pen; and there obtain all manner of information, from the address of a Galata[4] merchant to the sailing hour of a steamer. Nay, should you be weary of kebobs and craving for a beefsteak, Stampa will provide it you. He did so at least for Mr Smith; but perhaps that gentleman was a favoured customer, as he seems indeed to have found means of rendering himself at more than one place during his ramble.
At Constantinople, as at Smyrna, Mr Smith visited the slave market. There is a volume in the word, and we all know the sort of phantasmagoria it summons up for the benefit of English ladies and gentlemen, as they sit at home at ease, dandling their fancies by the chimney corner. Exeter Hall and the picture shops have made slave-markets of their own, compared to which the reality is a tame and spiritless affair. We are all familiar, at a proper distance, with that group of young ladies, more or less nude, and of every tint—from the pale Georgian to the sable Ethiop—huddled together in great alarm and the most graceful attitudes, whilst a shawled and jewelled Turk scans their perfections with licentious eye, and counts gold into the palm of a truculent dealer in human flesh. None of us but have been painfully affected by representations, both printed and pictorial, of whips and manacles, fettered hands and striped shoulders, kneeling negroes and barbarous taskmasters, whereby tender-hearted gentlemen are moved to unbutton their pockets, and philanthropical ladies of excitable nerve, overlooking the misery that is often close to their doors, are set sewing flannels for remote blacks. We have all seen this sort of thing, and have been interested and touched accordingly. But Mr Smith, in the most unfeeling manner, robs us of our illusions, so far, at least, as Smyrna or Constantinople are concerned. In the slave-market at the latter place—where blacks only are exposed, the Circassian and Georgian beauties being secluded in the dealers' houses—he arrived at the conclusion that the creatures he saw wrapped in their blankets and crouching in corners, and in whom sense and feeling were evidently at the very lowest ebb, had much better chance of such happiness as they were capable of enjoying, if sold as slaves than if left to their own savage resources.
"I should be very sorry," he says, "to run against any proper feelings on the subject, but I do honestly believe that if any person of average propriety and right-mindedness were shown these creatures, and told that their lot was to become the property of others, and work in return for food and lodging, he would come to the conclusion it was all they were fit for.... The truth is, that the 'virtuous indignation' side of the question holds out grander opportunities to an author for fine writing than the practical fact. But this style of composition should not always be implicitly relied upon. I knew a man who was said, by certain reviews and literary cliques, to be 'a creature of large sympathies for the poor and oppressed,' because he wrote touching things about them; but who would abuse his wife, and brutally treat his children, and harass his family, and then go and drink until his large heart was sufficiently full to take up the 'man-and-brother' line of literary business, and suggest that a tipsy Chartist was as good as quiet gentleman."
Mr Albert Smith is evidently a hard-hearted person, and we begin to repent of noticing his book. In the same pitiless matter-of-fact manner he continues to tilt at the several articles of our Eastern creed, pressing into his service as a witness Demetri the Second, (not him of Athens, but a Constantinople cicerone,) a terrible fellow for rubbing the romantic lacquer off Turkish manners and customs. After the slaves, the sack and scimitar are disposed of. "Not many executions now," quoth Demetri,—"only English subjects. Here's where they cut the heads off; just here, where these two streets meet, and the body is left here a day or two, and sometimes the dogs get at it." This was rather startling intelligence, until explained. The "English subjects" proved to be emigrants from Malta and the Ionian islands—the greatest scamps in Pera—which is saying no little, for Pera abounds with scamps. At that time, however, there had not been an execution for a whole year past.
"All English gentlemen," continued Demetri, "think they cut off heads every day in Stamboul, and put them, all of a row, on plates at the Seraglio gate. And they think people are always being drowned in the Bosphorus. Not true. I know a fellow who is a dragoman, and shows that wooden shoot which comes from the wall of the Seraglio Point, as the place they slide them down. It is only to get rid of the garden rubbish. Same with lots of other things."
Nothing like travel to dispel prejudice and romance. People are too apt to adopt Byron's notions of the East. To those who would have their eyes opened we recommend the Mediterranean steamers, or, if these would take them too far, they may stay at home and read Mr Smith.
"Travel," such is his advice to the seeker after truth, "with a determination to be only affected by things as they strike you. Swiss girls, St Bernard dogs, Portici fishermen, the Rhine, Nile travelling, and other objects of popular rhapsodies, fearfully deteriorate upon practical acquaintance. Few tourists have the courage to say that they have been 'bored,' or at least disappointed by some conventional lion. They find that Guide-books, Diaries, Notes, Journals, &c. &c., all copy one from the other in their enthusiasm about the same things; and they shrink from the charge of vulgarity, or lack of mind, did they dare to differ. Artists and writers will study effect rather than graphic truth. The florid description of some modern book of travel is as different to the actual impressions of ninety-nine people out of a hundred—allowing all these to possess average education, perception, and intellect—when painting in their minds the same subject, as the artfully tinted lithograph, or picturesque engraving of the portfolio or annual, is to the faithful photograph."