Sketches and Travels in London

by William Makepeace Thackeray

pantomime were as magnificent as any objects of nature we have seen

  with maturer eyes. Well, the view of Constantinople is as fine as

  any of Stanfield's best theatrical pictures, seen at the best

  period of youth, when fancy had all the bloom on her--when all the

  heroines who danced before the scene appeared as ravishing

  beauties, when there shone an unearthly splendour about Baker and

  Diddear--and the sound of the bugles and fiddles, and the cheerful

  clang of the cymbals, as the scene unrolled, and the gorgeous

  procession meandered triumphantly through it--caused a thrill of

  pleasure, and awakened an innocent fulness of sensual enjoyment

  that is only given to boys.

  The above sentence contains the following propositions:- The

  enjoyments of boyish fancy are the most intense and delicious in

  the world. Stanfield's panorama used to be the realisation of the

  most intense youthful fancy. I puzzle my brains and find no better

  likeness for the place. The view of Constantinople resembles the

  ne plus ultra of a Stanfield diorama, with a glorious accompaniment

  of music, spangled houris, warriors, and winding processions,

  feasting the eyes and the soul with light, splendour, and harmony.

  If you were never in this way during your youth ravished at the

  play-house, of course the whole comparison is useless: and you

  have no idea, from this description, of the effect which

  Constantinople produces on the mind. But if you were never

  affected by a theatre, no words can work upon your fancy, and

  typographical attempts to move it are of no use. For, suppose we

  combine mosque, minaret, gold, cypress, water, blue, caiques,

  seventy-four, Galata, Tophana, Ramazan, Backallum, and so forth,

  together, in ever so many ways, your imagination will never be able

  to depict a city out of them. Or, suppose I say the Mosque of St.

  Sophia is four hundred and seventy-three feet in height, measuring

  from the middle nail of the gilt crescent surmounting the dome to

  the ring in the centre stone; the circle of the dome is one hundred

  and twenty-three feet in diameter, the windows ninety-seven in

  number--and all this may be true, for anything I know to the

  contrary: yet who is to get an idea of St. Sophia from dates,

  proper names, and calculations with a measuring-line? It can't be

  done by giving the age and measurement of all the buildings along

  the river, the names of all the boatmen who ply on it. Has your

  fancy, which pooh-poohs a simile, faith enough to build a city with

  a foot-rule? Enough said about descriptions and similes (though

  whenever I am uncertain of one I am naturally most anxious to fight

  for it): it is a scene not perhaps sublime, but charming,

  magnificent, and cheerful beyond any I have ever seen--the most

  superb combination of city and gardens, domes and shipping, hills

  and water, with the healthiest breeze blowing over it, and above it

  the brightest and most cheerful sky.

  It is proper, they say, to be disappointed on entering the town, or

  any of the various quarters of it, because the houses are not so

  magnificent on inspection and seen singly as they are when beheld

  en masse from the waters. But why form expectations so lofty? If

  you see a group of peasants picturesquely disposed at a fair, you

  don't suppose that they are all faultless beauties, or that the

  men's coats have no rags, and the women's gowns are made of silk

  and velvet: the wild ugliness of the interior of Constantinople or

  Pera has a charm of its own, greatly more amusing than rows of red

  bricks or drab stones, however symmetrical. With brick or stone

  they could never form those fantastic ornaments, railings,

  balconies, roofs, galleries, which jut in and out of the rugged

  houses of the city. As we went from Galata to Pera up a steep

  hill, which newcomers ascend with some difficulty, but which a

  porter, with a couple of hundredweight on his back, paces up

  without turning a hair, I thought the wooden houses far from being

  disagreeable objects, sights quite as surprising and striking as

  the grand one we had just left.

  I do not know how the custom-house of His Highness is made to be a

  profitable speculation. As I left the ship, a man pulled after my

  boat, and asked for backsheesh, which was given him to the amount

  of about twopence. He was a custom-house officer, but I doubt

  whether this sum which he levied ever went to the revenue.

  I can fancy the scene about the quays somewhat to resemble the

  river of London in olden times, before coal-smoke had darkened the

  whole city with soot, and when, according to the old writers, there

  really was bright weather. The fleets of caiques bustling along

  the shore, or scudding over the blue water, are beautiful to look

  at: in Hollar's print London river is so studded over with wherry-

  boats, which bridges and steamers have since destroyed. Here the

  caique is still in full perfection: there are thirty thousand

  boats of the kind plying between the cities; every boat is neat,

  and trimly carved and painted; and I scarcely saw a man pulling in

  one of them that was not a fine specimen of his race, brawny and

  brown, with an open chest and a handsome face. They wear a thin

  shirt of exceedingly light cotton, which leaves their fine brown

  limbs full play; and with a purple sea for a background, every one

  of these dashing boats forms a brilliant and glittering picture.

  Passengers squat in the inside of the boat; so that as it passes

  you see little more than the heads of the true believers, with

  their red fez and blue tassel, and that placid gravity of

  expression which the sucking of a tobacco-pipe is sure to give to a

  man.

  The Bosphorus is enlivened by a multiplicity of other kinds of

  craft. There are the dirty men-of-war's boats of the Russians,

  with unwashed mangy crews; the great ferry-boats carrying hundreds

  of passengers to the villages; the melon-boats piled up with

  enormous golden fruit; His Excellency the Pasha's boat, with twelve

  men bending to their oars; and His Highness's own caique, with a

  head like a serpent, and eight-and-twenty tugging oarsmen, that

  goes shooting by amidst the thundering of the cannon. Ships and

  steamers, with black sides and flaunting colours, are moored

  everywhere, showing their flags, Russian and English, Austrian,

  American, and Greek; and along the quays country ships from the

  Black Sea or the islands, with high carved poops and bows, such as

  you see in the pictures of the shipping of the seventeenth century.

  The vast groves and towers, domes and quays, tall minarets and

  spired spreading mosques of the three cities, rise all around in

  endless magnificence and variety, and render this water-street a

  scene of such delightful liveliness and beauty, that one never

  tires of looking at it. I lost a great number of the sights in and

  round Constantinople through the beauty of this admirable scene:

  but what are sights after all? and isn't that the best sight which

  makes you most h
appy?

  We were lodged at Pera at Misseri's Hotel, the host of which has

  been made famous ere this time by the excellent book "Eothen,"--a

  work for which all the passengers on board our ship had been

  battling, and which had charmed all--from our great statesman, our

  polished lawyer, our young Oxonian, who sighed over certain

  passages that he feared were wicked, down to the writer of this,

  who, after perusing it with delight, laid it down with wonder,

  exclaiming, "Aut Diabolus aut"--a book which has since (greatest

  miracle of all) excited a feeling of warmth and admiration in the

  bosom of the god-like, impartial, stony Athenaeum. Misseri, the

  faithful and chivalrous Tartar, is transformed into the most quiet

  and gentlemanlike of landlords, a great deal more gentlemanlike in

  manner and appearance than most of us who sat at his table, and

  smoked cool pipes on his house-top, as we looked over the hill and

  the Russian palace to the water, and the Seraglio gardens shining

  in the blue. We confronted Misseri, "Eothen" in hand, and found,

  on examining him, that it WAS "aut Diabolus aut amicus"--but the

  name is a secret; I will never breathe it, though I am dying to

  tell it.

  The last good description of a Turkish bath, I think, was Lady Mary

  Wortley Montagu's--which voluptuous picture must have been painted

  at least a hundred and thirty years ago; so that another sketch may

  be attempted by a humbler artist in a different manner. The

  Turkish bath is certainly a novel sensation to an Englishman, and

  may be set down as a most queer and surprising event of his life.

  I made the valet-de-place or dragoman (it is rather a fine thing to

  have a dragoman in one's service) conduct me forthwith to the best

  appointed hummums in the neighbourhood; and we walked to a house at

  Tophana, and into a spacious hall lighted from above, which is the

  cooling-room of the bath.

  The spacious hall has a large fountain in the midst, a painted

  gallery running round it; and many ropes stretched from one gallery

  to another, ornamented with profuse draperies of towels and blue

  cloths, for the use of the frequenters of the place. All round the

  room and the galleries were matted inclosures, fitted with numerous

  neat beds and cushions for reposing on, where lay a dozen of true

  believers smoking, or sleeping, or in the happy half-dozing state.

  I was led up to one of these beds, to rather a retired corner, in

  consideration of my modesty; and to the next bed presently came a

  dancing dervish, who forthwith began to prepare for the bath.

  When the dancing dervish had taken off his yellow sugar-loaf cap,

  his gown, shawl, &c., he was arrayed in two large blue cloths; a

  white one being thrown over his shoulders, and another in the shape

  of a turban plaited neatly round his head; the garments of which he

  divested himself were folded up in another linen, and neatly put

  by. I beg leave to state I was treated in precisely the same

  manner as the dancing dervish.

  The reverend gentleman then put on a pair of wooden pattens, which

  elevated him about six inches from the ground; and walked down the

  stairs, and paddled across the moist marble floor of the hall, and

  in at a little door, by the which also Titmarsh entered. But I had

  none of the professional agility of the dancing dervish; I

  staggered about very ludicrously upon the high wooden pattens; and

  should have been down on my nose several times, had not the

  dragoman and the master of the bath supported me down the stairs

  and across the hall. Dressed in three large cotton napkins, with a

  white turban round my head, I thought of Pall Mall with a sort of

  despair. I passed the little door, it was closed behind me--I was

  in the dark--I couldn't speak the language--in a white turban. Mon

  Dieu! what was going to happen?

  The dark room was the tepidarium, a moist oozing arched den, with a

  light faintly streaming from an orifice in the domed ceiling.

  Yells of frantic laughter and song came booming and clanging

  through the echoing arches, the doors clapped to with loud

  reverberations. It was the laughter of the followers of Mahound,

  rollicking and taking their pleasure in the public bath. I could

  not go into that place: I swore I would not; they promised me a

  private room, and the dragoman left me. My agony at parting from

  that Christian cannot be described.

  When you get into the sudarium, or hot room, your first sensations

  only occur about half a minute after entrance, when you feel that

  you are choking. I found myself in that state, seated on a marble

  slab; the bath man was gone; he had taken away the cotton turban

  and shoulder shawl: I saw I was in a narrow room of marble, with a

  vaulted roof, and a fountain of warm and cold water; the atmosphere

  was in a steam, the choking sensation went off, and I felt a sort

  of pleasure presently in a soft boiling simmer, which, no doubt,

  potatoes feel when they are steaming. You are left in this state

  for about ten minutes: it is warm certainly, but odd and pleasant,

  and disposes the mind to reverie.

  But let any delicate mind in Baker Street fancy my horror when, on

  looking up out of this reverie, I saw a great brown wretch extended

  before me, only half dressed, standing on pattens, and exaggerated

  by them and the steam until he looked like an ogre, grinning in the

  most horrible way, and waving his arm, on which was a horsehair

  glove. He spoke, in his unknown nasal jargon, words which echoed

  through the arched room; his eyes seemed astonishingly large and

  bright, his ears stuck out, and his head was all shaved, except a

  bristling top-knot, which gave it a demoniac fierceness.

  This description, I feel, is growing too frightful; ladies who read

  it will be going into hysterics, or saying, "Well, upon my word,

  this is the most singular, the most extraordinary kind of language.

  Jane, my love, you will not read that odious book--" and so I will

  be brief. This grinning man belabours the patient violently with

  the horse-brush. When he has completed the horsehair part, and you

  lie expiring under a squirting fountain of warm water, and fancying

  all is done, he reappears with a large brass basin, containing a

  quantity of lather, in the midst of which is something like old

  Miss MacWhirter's flaxen wig that she is so proud of, and that we

  have all laughed at. Just as you are going to remonstrate, the

  thing like the wig is dashed into your face and eyes, covered over

  with soap, and for five minutes you are drowned in lather: you

  can't see, the suds are frothing over your eye-balls; you can't

  hear, the soap is whizzing into your ears; can't gasp for breath,

  Miss MacWhirter's wig is down your throat with half a pailful of

  suds in an instant--you are all soap. Wicked children in former

  days have jeered you, exclaiming, "How are you off for soap?" You

  little knew what saponacity was till you entered a Turkish bath.

  When the whole operation is concluded, you are led--with wh
at

  heartfelt joy I need not say--softly back to the cooling-room,

  having been robed in shawls and turbans as before. You are laid

  gently on the reposing bed; somebody brings a narghile, which

  tastes as tobacco must taste in Mahomet's Paradise; a cool sweet

  dreamy languor takes possession of the purified frame; and half-an-

  hour of such delicious laziness is spent over the pipe as is

  unknown in Europe, where vulgar prejudice has most shamefully

  maligned indolence--calls it foul names, such as the father of all

  evil, and the like; in fact, does not know how to educate idleness

  as those honest Turks do, and the fruit which, when properly

  cultivated, it bears.

  The after-bath state is the most delightful condition of laziness I

  ever knew, and I tried it wherever we went afterwards on our little

  tour. At Smyrna the whole business was much inferior to the method

  employed in the capital. At Cairo, after the soap, you are plunged

  into a sort of stone coffin, full of water which is all but

  boiling. This has its charms; but I could not relish the Egyptian

  shampooing. A hideous old blind man (but very dexterous in his

  art) tried to break my back and dislocate my shoulders, but I could

  not see the pleasure of the practice; and another fellow began

  tickling the soles of my feet, but I rewarded him with a kick that

  sent him off the bench. The pure idleness is the best, and I shall

  never enjoy such in Europe again.

  Victor Hugo, in his famous travels on the Rhine, visiting Cologne,

  gives a learned account of what he DIDN'T see there. I have a

  remarkable catalogue of similar objects at Constantinople. I

  didn't see the dancing dervishes, it was Ramazan; nor the howling

  dervishes at Scutari, it was Ramazan; nor the interior of St.

  Sophia, nor the women's apartment of the Seraglio, nor the

  fashionable promenade at the Sweet Waters, always because it was

  Ramazan; during which period the dervishes dance and howl but

  rarely, their legs and lungs being unequal to much exertion during

  a fast of fifteen hours. On account of the same holy season, the

  Royal palaces and mosques are shut; and though the Valley of the

  Sweet Waters is there, no one goes to walk; the people remaining

  asleep all day, and passing the night in feasting and carousing.

  The minarets are illuminated at this season; even the humblest

  mosque at Jerusalem, or Jaffa, mounted a few circles of dingy

  lamps; those of the capital were handsomely lighted with many

  festoons of lamps, which had a fine effect from the water. I need

  not mention other and constant illuminations of the city, which

  innumerable travellers have described--I mean the fires. There

  were three in Pera during our eight days' stay there; but they did

  not last long enough to bring the Sultan out of bed to come and

  lend his aid. Mr. Hobhouse (quoted in the "Guide-book") says, if a

  fire lasts an hour, the Sultan is bound to attend it in person; and

  that people having petitions to present, have often set houses on

  fire for the purpose of forcing out this Royal trump. The Sultan

  can't lead a very "jolly life," if this rule be universal. Fancy

  His Highness, in the midst of his moon-faced beauties, handkerchief

  in hand, and obliged to tie it round his face, and go out of his

  warm harem at midnight at the cursed cry of "Yang en Var!"

  We saw His Highness in the midst of his people and their petitions,

  when he came to the mosque at Tophana; not the largest, but one of

  the most picturesque of the public buildings of the city. The

  streets were crowded with people watching for the august arrival,

  and lined with the squat military in their bastard European

  costume; the sturdy police, with bandeliers and brown surtouts,

  keeping order, driving off the faithful from the railings of the

  Esplanade through which their Emperor was to pass, and only

  admitting (with a very unjust partiality, I thought) us Europeans

  into that reserved space. Before the august arrival, numerous

  officers collected, colonels and pashas went by with their