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A few days later I met Hamil Pasha, and I could not resist talking to him of his daughter Aziyade, and of her unhappiness at her approaching marriage. He told me that in that she resembled her elder sister Adahlet, whom, on the day following her wedding, he had gone to see in her new home. "I found her," he said, "sitting dejectedly at a table, her head resting in her hands and her eyes red with tears. Not very cheerful for her husband, was it?" and he laughed. But my heart bled for these poor little Turkish brides, thus suddenly transplanted from the homes of their childhood to the roof-trees of perfect strangers. Is this not the initial cause of much of the unhappiness amongst Mohammedan women? Surely the first reform to be advocated in Turkey would be the abolition of marriage with an unknown and, in many cases, even an unseen husband.

I dined once at the house of a palace official. The first thing that struck me on going up the stairs was the sight of a life-sized statue of a Vestal, standing in a niche in the wall, enveloped in the folds of a tcharchaff, the hood of which was discreetly drawn over the

hair. The yashmak' concealed the features all but the eyes, and mittens of lace covered the hands that held the sacred fire! The Pasha, the only man present of course, told me, as we went in to dinner, that the nudity of the statue, which had been presented to him by a foreigner, offended his Mohammedan instincts. Maybe so, but as I passed the open door of his study upon arrival, I had caught sight of some French studies of the human figure in very questionable taste, and I could not help inferring from them that the poor Vestal was disguised in tcharchaff and veil to save appearances for her owner in my eyes, and not merely on account of his own over-sensitive modesty.

The drawing-room, in fact the whole of this house, which I afterwards had occasion to realize was typical of the majority of homes of the Turkish upper classes in the capital, was decorated somewhat in the style of an old-fashioned London lodging-house, where the taste of the landlady has been formed by her propinquity to a cheap Turkish bazaar. Oleographs of scenes from nature, in tawdry gilt frames, covered the walls, the only portrait being that of the Pasha, as Turkish sense of decorum forbids the portrayal of any male features other than those of her husband in a woman's apartments. The rooms were all lighted by gas lamps suspended from the ceilings, and these being very low, the unshaded lights blazed straight into one's eyes, with very uncomfortable results. The dining-room was heated by a stove, the pipe of which meandered undisguised round the walls, distributing intense heat everywhere. In the corner of this room was a marble lavabo built into the wall, with two taps for hot and cold water, presumably used for the five daily washings of the hands before

4 Turkish woman's white veil, covering the lower part of the features.

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At dinner my talk with the Pasha turned upon the question of Turkish customs.

"Madame," he said, "the marrying of two wives is nowadays quite out of fashion. To begin with, a man finds it too expensive; secondly, no self-respecting girl will consent to occupy the position of Number Two in the household; and, thirdly, the spread of occidentalism has so imbued our wives with Western ideas that hardly one of them would consent to the introduction of a rival, and without her consent no dual alliance would be valid in the eyes of the law. It was different as lately as in my father's day. He married my mother first: she was a very beautiful Circassian, and died of cholera at the early age of thirty-two. After her death he was so lonely that he married three other wives right away. I, madame, was in the unenviable position of having, not one, but three stepmothers at the same time. Oh, how they quarrelled and fought, and how unhappy I. was! But they only quarrelled behind my father's back; to his face they were all amiability, and one would have said they adored each other. My father had yet other wives in the course of years, for he married and buried no less than seven!"

All the same, in spite of what he said, I know that polygamous mar

riages do still occur, and I have a particular case in mind.

An official living at Scutari had married two wives, the one a Circassian, the other a negress. Both lived amicably together, and in both he seemed to find his happiness. I happened to be there one day when he came home from his office, and I witnessed the characteristic greeting of the two wives, who had simultaneously rushed forth to meet him. The white one he kissed on the cheek, the black one he patted kindly on the shoulder. Both seemed quite satisfied, and not the least jealous of the attention shown to the other.

Both

But I subsequently heard of a sad little tragedy that broke the harmony of that seemingly united family. wives presented their husband with daughters. The child of the white mother was beautiful, and received all the petting and spoiling which her fairness attracted from the visitors to her father's harem. But the black one, poor child, inherited all the ugliness of her mother. The children grew up together, and shared the same education and pleasures. They were apparently devoted to each other, until, one day, a chance incident riveted the attention of the black child to the fact that, although every one loved and spoilt her sister, no one ever took any notice of her. Gradually the reason of it dawned upon her; and having once realized the curse that is upon her race, she deliberately set to work to starve herself to death. No prayer or argument of her distressed parents availed; to all their entreaties she merely replied. "No one will ever love me! Why should I live?"

The question of buying and selling of domestic slaves in Turkey has always interested me. It appears that, although as an institution slavery is forbidden by law, there is a great deal of it still carried on en cachette.

Girls are sold for a few medjediehs' on the sherkets, and boatloads of Circassians and negroes are brought to Constantinople by regular dealers, who secrete them in places quite well known to likely purchasers, who go there to buy them. A Turk said to me, laughing, one day, "Of course we have our slaves; we could never get on without them!" This same man had a very pretty child, aged about twelve, serving at his table one night that I was dining at his house. Pointing her out to me, he whispered, "That girl may one day be the wife of the highest in the land; she is a pure-bred Circassian, and promises, as you see, to be very beautiful. If she turns out as well as I expect, I shall send her as a present to his Majesty. If she succeeds in pleasing him, and bears him a son, she becomes a Sultanah, a royal princess! And I shall gain-well, promotion!" He did not seem to see anything revolting in thus bartering a human being.

He told me a story, which, needless to say, I did not believe, of how he once bought a Sudanese slave, a handsome creature with an inky black skin. The first three months she was in the house she resolutely declined to wear more clothes than were the fashion in her native country, and systematically tore to pieces all the garments provided for her. At last she was persuaded to wear them, and even to put on the customary tcharchaff to go out with the daughters of the house. One day they were driving along the quay at Therapia, when they happened to pass an English naval officer in uniform. At sight of him Zoe flew into the greatest excitement, her eyes glistened, and she smacked her lips. "C'est bon ça, c'est bon," she gurgled, pointing at the Englishman. "Dans mon pays on mange ca. La peau est très blanche. On fait

5 A medjedieh is worth about four shillings. 6 Steamers plying up and down the Bosphorus.

bien bouiller, puis on met la graisse sur du pain et on mange. Oh, que c'est bon!" Presumably, in the course of some African campaign, an unfortunate naval officer must have fallen into the hands of a cannibal tribe to which Zoe belonged, and the sight of his uniform reminded her of the episode and revived her cannibal instinct. Be this as it may, the two girls with her were frightened out of their lives, and imme diately on their return from their drive persuaded their father to get rid of her.

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It appears that in many houses the slaves are very well treated. One Turkish lady even told me that they were becoming quite a nuisance. They give themselves such airs that, in the course of a year, the whole lot of them won't do as much work as one Christian servant. They have to be waited upon themselves, wish to be considered as family retainers, "comme espèces de cousines," as the narrator said, and even expect to be given jewels. But sometimes they ask for their freedom, and then they become so tiresome that, in order to escape their importunity, one is obliged to accede to their request. "We had one," said this lady, "who, after being with us four years, set to work to beg for freedom. My father granted it, and even took the trouble to find her relations, to whom he restored her."

"C'est une charité," said another friend, rather facetiously I thought, "to adopt one of these slave girls as a baby. We clothe her and educate her in return for quite light services in the household, and when she is old enough we sell her to some young Pasha, on condition that he liberates and marries her. The bargain very often appeals to him, because he thus gets a nicely brought-up wife without the burden of

a mother-in-law."

In the old and brilliant days of Turkish harems, the chic thing used to be to have all the slaves standing motion

less and erect against the wall, decked in the most magnificent garments of richest material and laden with the costliest jewels of the family. The more slaves the family could thus afford to keep doing nothing but showing off their own beauty and that of their clothes and jewels, the greater its credit.

I know of a harem in Constantinople where the lady has a special fondness for child-slaves. She buys all the pretty little girls she sees on the sherkets, and treats them like lap-dogs, feeding them well and spoiling them outrageously. When she is at table, they sit in rows on the floor, on their heels, and she throws a tit-bit first to one, then to another, deriving the greatest amusement from them. When they reach the age of twelve she weeds them out: the prettiest she sends as presents to the Palace, the second best are sold to men who want slaves without encumbrances, and the ugly ones, poor things, destined to be the drudges and unhappy ones of their class, she keeps for the household work of her own establishment.

I inquired how it is that Turks are able, on apparently slender incomes, to feed SO many semi-useless mouths. "Madame," answered my friend, "the feeding of a Turkish household is not like that of an English one: we don't know how to live, and, at the end of the year, a Turkish gentleman's budget very often shows a deficit, like that of his Government!"

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you may go shopping, you may visit other harems, you may even exchange several day visits with your women friends." "Oh yes," answered Sadié, "but the slavery of Turkish women does not consist in bodily confinement, but in a thousand irksome forms of restraint, by which we are controlled, though to all appearance free. For instance, in the matter of dress, it is decreed, by direct order of the Sultan, the shape of the tcharchaff and the thickness of the veil to be worn in the street. We may not use fur or any trimming on our street garments. Should we do so, we render ourselves liable to being taken up by the police. We may not walk or drive except in pairs and attended by slaves, and we must be indoors by sunset unless a carriage awaits us and a kavass." Theatres, concerts, and all public places of entertainment, are absolutely prohibited. On the return home of the ladies of the house, the servant, whose duty it is to go out with them, gives a complete compte-rendu to the Pasha of every place they have been to. Of course, as the slaves move freely about their mistresses, listening to and watching all that goes on, they are admirably fitted for this sort of domestic espionage. All the letters that come to the ladies of a Turkish house are handed first to the master, who himself distributes them, after having taken stock of any particular one that whets his curiosity. It is this constant spying that gets on the nerves of highly sensitive and cultivated women. We are not even allowed locks to the doors of our sleeping apartments, and have no hole or corner where we may retire free from the prying eye of slaves. Many women will not submit to this domestic tyranny, and become as artful as any European in defeating its ends!"

And then Sadié told me one or two 7 Armed Turkish man-servant.

amusing stories that had come under her personal observation. One was of a girl cousin, whom they invited one day to have iftar with them; but, instead of turning up, she seized the opportunity, when her parents thought her safe with her relations, to spend an amusing téte-à-tête in a mosque with a young foreigner disguised as a Turk. Another was of a married woman, whose lover got himself up as a woman in tcharchaff and veil, and actually had the audacity to visit her in her own harem, on pretence of inspecting the house, which was for sale; whilst yet another, who had been married by her father to a rich but paralytic old fellow three times her age, solaced her leisure by receiving her neighbor on the top story of her house, to which he gained access by a hole in the roof, and where they were quite safe from a surprise visit on the part of the infirm old husband.

"Of course," laughed Sadié, answering the incredulous look in my face, "people will tell you that such things cannot happen, that too careful a watch is kept over the women, and that, even if her servants did not betray her, one of her friends would be sure to do so out of spite. Believe them, if you like; all I can tell you is that there are hundreds of cases of this kind happening every year. Turkish women are extraordinarily clever at carrying on a clandestine flirtation, and the risk of discovery makes them preternaturally sharp. Besides, slaves are no harder to bribe than any other servants!" A charming letter from Sadié gives us a picture of another side Turkish domestic life. She wrote thus:

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"How I wish you had been with us yesterday. We spent such a happy day at Yen Keny visiting some young cousins who live there in a picturesque 8 Luncheon.

old yali, the wooden balconies of which overhang the turquoise waters of the Bosphorus, not far from Rumel Hissar, with its grand old towers. It was a balmy day of June, the sky was as blue as the hills were green, and the amorous sun kissed the rippling water, leaving upon it the shimmering impress of its warm caress. We arrived in our calque, the red and white livery of the boatmen adding yet another note to the splendid feast of color in which you would have fairly revelled. Old and dilapidated as the yali appears when seen from the river, it is yet wonderfully imposing within, and you would be surprised at the stateliness of its hundred-year-old columned halls, and charmed with the play of fountains in the marble basins of the shady old court. You would be impressed, too, as I always am, with the serenity of the atmosphere pervading these old Islamic dwellings; the calm of the monastery is in them, the calm of life which knows no change, the calm born of centuries of routine.

"Upon our arrival, an old negress opened the heavy nail-studded door just enough to peer at us through the slit thus made. When she saw who we were, she gave us a toothless smile, and, after admitting us, hurried before us up the old stairway into a large white hall carpeted with matting, where the slaves, who, as usual, accompanied us, helped us to remove our tcharchaffs and veils.

"Then we proceeded into an inner room, and a moment later a door opened opposite to the one by which we had entered, and our two cousins flew in, looking like gay-colored butterflies in their gossamer gowns of muslin. Many were the kisses exchanged, for it was long since we had met, and these cousins are like sisters to us,we love them almost as dearly.

"Our first greetings over, we settled down round a low marble table close to

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