The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1878-01-12 00:00:00

WAIFS FROM ORIENT.

The following extracts are from " Waifs from Orient," in
Vanity Fair, under date Constantinople, December 14 :

"I went last Thursday to Dolma-Bagtche palace to
see the ceremony of the opening of the Turkish Par-
liament. It was a fine spectacle, orderly, dignified,
and grand. The great audience-chamber of the
Palace, a vast and lofty-domed hall of fine propor-
tions and execrable ornamentation, was filled, yet
never crowded, with the dignitaries of the empire.
ecclesiastical, legal, and military, and the members of
Parliament all ranged in a vast hollow square facing
the gold and jewelled throne. The Sultan entered
through a side door to the intoned shouting of heralds,
and stood there in front of the throne, leaning on his
sword—the plainest dressed man in the glittering
assembly—while his secretary read the Imperial
speech. Behind him were his ministers, on his left
the Foreign Ambassadors all in glorious raiment, and
in front those faithful Commons who are to save
Turkey, as we know the English Commons have saved
England by talk. But the Sultan stood there
anxious and careworn, glancing now at the Skeik ul
Islam, now at the Ambassadors, changing his feet
nervously, and leaning on his sword. When .1 went
into an antechamber, and over diamond-studded
cups of coffee spoke of the fall of Plevna, just an-
nounced and in all men's minds, of the Powers, the
Parliament, and the future, it seemed to me as though
the history of Turkey had been written in little in that
audience. chamber."

"A lady has told me of her visit to the Sultana—
the first ever paid by any lady from the West. It
took place at Gilding Kiosoue, the small suburban
palace which the Sultan, who is plain and simple in
his ways, prefers to inhabit. He himself took her
into the separate house affected to his harem, or
family,' at the door of which were two black eunuchs,
the only two which have been retained under the
present regime. There the officers of the palace re-
mained while the Sultan and the lady entered the
harem above. She was surprised to find that, contrary
to the usual practice of Turkish harems of rank,
there were no female slaves to receive her,
but only one lady at the foot of the staircase, another
halfway up, and a third at the top. The first of these
the Sultan indicated as 'la dame d'honneur,' on reach-
ing the second he introducedher as ma inbre,' and
the third he ann,unced as `la princesse,' this being
the Sultana hen. If. The Sultana Valid 6 (not, by the
way, the Sultan's own mother) was a fine-looking,
elderly lady, dressed in a yellow, damasked silk robe,
girt round the waist with a narrow belt, and termi-
nating in a train bundled up into this belt. Her hair,
which was quite fair, was brushed flat off her
temples, after the English fashion of twenty years
ago, and bound round with a fillet of velvet; while on
her forehead, and coming down low upon it, she wore a
kind of aigrette of large emeralds and diamonds. The
Sultana was attired in a similar dress of blue damasked
silk, with an enormous diamond brooch at the neck;
while her splendid black hair was coiled on the top of
her head and bound round with a kerchief fastened at
the side with a small brooch. She is wonderfully
beautiful, with the most delicate white skin and the
most exquisitely formed hands possible to imagine;
but very silent, and apparently, very shy and re-
served. In Turkey it is the mother and not the wife
who is the head of the family, and while the mother
commands the son, the son commands the wife.
The Sultana Valide therefore conducted the lady to
the seat of honour in the corner and seated herself,
then the Sultan sat down, and upon his invitation
the Sultana in turn took a seat. There were still no
slaves, and the room, though handsomely decorated,
was after the old Turkish model, without any furni-
ture beyond the seats round the walls and one table
placed in its midst. It would be indiscreet to tell the
conversation which ensued, but the end of the visit is
noteworthy, for when the lady left the harem, the
Sultan, who himself speaks but little Frenzh, requested
one of his officers to make excuses to the lady in case
she had found the manners of the harem too
Turkish.' Surely there is something very touching is
the so-called ' truculent ' grand Turk making excuses
for being himself; certainly there is c. height of
modesty and courtesy in it which no Western court
could afford."

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