Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 61, No. 376, February, 1847

He passed through the gardens. They lead, at the further extremity, into an open space, where much rabble assemble, where a sort of market is held, and where, on the neighbouring beach, the fishermen draw up their boats: fishermen bare-legged, bare-thighed, but legs and thighs not of flesh but mahogany. At other times he had been amused with the sudden contrast this scene affords with the well-dressed crowd within the gardens. It now disgusted him. There was nothing but noise and dirt, nothing but dust and heat, and glare. The various beggars who had often vexed him by their clamours, but had generally ended by extorting from him some pence and some good-humour, were quite intolerable. The little children, with their naked feet, tanned and dusted to the colour of the road, girt with their scanty complement of rags, with nothing on earth but their little shrill voices—their Signor! Signor!—to get their daily morsel with, and who had so often, when Mildred was at his side, received a whole handful of copper coins amongst them, now excited not the least commiseration, called forth nothing but some passing execration upon the slovenly government that could permit human life to sink down into all the wildness, and more than the destitution of the brute animal.

After the lapse of some hours, spent in this horrible restlessness, he again called on the Bloomfields. They had returned from their drive. He ran up the stairs: but, when he reached the landing-place, he paused. Perhaps that stranger might have returned with them. The door of the drawing-room was half-open: he looked, and saw that formidable intruder seated there. He was not formidable, evidently, to Mildred. She stood gracefully before him, and, putting back his dark hair from his fine manly brow, she stooped, and laid a kiss upon his forehead. Winston drew back instantly, and hurried from the house.

He had not retreated, however, so quickly, but that he had been seen by Mildred—thanks to the tall mirror before which she stood, and which had faithfully reflected his image. Had he been less distracted, he would have heard a soft voice call him by his name, from the head of the stairs; but he heard nothing, and he seemed to see nothing, as he strode along the street, and, rushing into his hotel, shut himself up in his room. "This intolerable anguish!" he cried; "it must have an end. To a passion which itself is the merest despair, must I add the maddest of jealousies?"

That day, after the dinner was concluded, Winston accepted an invitation which Mrs. Jackson had often pressed upon him in vain, to adjourn to her sitting-room, and partake of a dessert there. He accepted the invitation. It sealed his fate; and he intended that it should. He left that room—he, the lover of Mildred—the affianced of Louisa Jackson!

The next morning—it was a sleepless night that intervened—he paid his respects, with the due appearance of felicity upon his countenance, to Mrs. Jackson and her daughter. It was into their carriage he was now to enter, to take one of those drives in the environs which he had so often enjoyed with Mildred. It was to their admiration he was now to listen and respond.

The party was preparing to start, when a message was brought to them that two ladies were below who wished to speak to Mr. Winston. Mrs. Jackson, all anxiety to be polite, told the servant to show the ladies into her room. Immediately after Miss Bloomfield and Mildred Willoughby were ushered up stairs.

Never was Mildred looking more beautiful, for never was she so happy in her life. The name even of Mrs. Jackson she had never heard pronounced; and, not aware of being in the apartment of that lady, but considering she was in some room destined for the reception of visiters, she merely made to the ladies that slight curtsey by which the presence of a stranger is recognised, and immediately turned and addressed herself to Winston.

"Congratulate me!" she said. "Congratulate me!—But first I must repeat my message from Mr. Bloomfield, who insists upon it that you break through your unsocial rule, and dine with him to-day. And now again congratulate me! My father has returned from India. It was he whom we called the mysterious stranger. As to the conflicting reports which had been spread of him in England, you shall hear all at leisure. But he has returned!—and he has returned wealthy and amiable."

There was a slight tremor in her voice as she uttered these last words. That slight tremor, it was the response now given to certain passionate but desponding declarations, which he had so often half uttered in her ear.

The answer came one day too late. Winston stood as if struck dumb. His rage, his shame, his agony of vexation, he knew not how to express. And indeed there was that convulsion in his throat which, if he had attempted to speak, would have choked his utterance. But there was one amongst the party who found words fit for the occasion, and quite explanatory. In what she conceived the prettiest manner in the world, Louisa Jackson laid her hand upon Winston's shoulder. She had heard something of an invitation—"But, Alfred dear," she said, "you will not surely dine out to-day!"

Mildred started at the tone of that address, telling as it did so strange a history, so utterly unexpected. Then collecting herself, and taking the arm of Miss Bloomfield, she expressed her regret, in some words of course, that they could not have the pleasure of Mr. Winston's company to dinner, and, curtseying slightly to the rest of the society, withdrew.

What a drama had passed between them, and in silence! What feelings had been hidden under those few words of formal and ceremonious speech!

No sooner had she left than Winston rushed into his own apartment. Amongst the curiosities which he had collected in Italy was a genuine stiletto. This had sometimes accompanied him in his solitary rambles; and of late he had sometimes, in his moods of despondency, contemplated that instrument, thinking the while of some other purpose than that of striking a foe to which it might be applicable. They are dangerous moments which we spend in reflecting on the mere possibility of some fatal act. The imagination becomes familiarised with the deed. When the fiery and ungovernable passion falls upon us, it finds the train ready laid. Winston locked his door—ran to the stiletto—buried it in his heart!

The horror and distraction of Louisa and her mother may be easily imagined. It might be a subject of more deep and curious interest to trace the influence of such a catastrophe on the mind of Mildred; but this also we must leave to the reflection and perspicacity of the reader. Mr. Bloomfield and his sister soon after left Italy, embarking in the steam-boat direct for Marseilles: they had grown weary of travel. Colonel Willoughby and his daughter Mildred took the route by land, and quitted Naples for the north of Italy and the Alps.

THE EARLY TAKEN

The idea embodied in the following verses is the subject of an old German legend, intended, perhaps somewhat painfully, to represent a repining and diseased spirit awed by a fearful vision of eventual futurity into a becoming resignation for the early loss of those who might have proved unequal to the temptations of a longer life.

 
A mother mourned her children dead,
        Two blooming boys, whose opening prime
Along her path a light had shed,
        Now quenched, alas! before its time.
 
 
She mourned as one who dreamed that here
        Our home and dwelling place should be;
She mourned as if she felt no fear
        Of earthly sin and misery.
 
 
Once, in the watches of the night,
        Before her dim and tearful eye,
Beyond the clouds an opening bright
        Revealed a vision of the sky.
 
 
There, amid amaranthine bowers,
        Where God's own glory seemed to shine,
She saw, on beds of golden flowers,
        Her dear departed ones recline.
 
 
Thence bending down, a pitying smile
        Their fair illumined features wore:
"For us now freed from guilt and guile,
        O, dearest mother, weep no more!"
 
 
But still her tears rebellious flow,
        And still she raves of angry fate,
As if, with blind and selfish wo,
        She grudged her children's blissful state.
 
 
Again in visions of the night,
        Sent to impart a sad relief,
The matron saw another sight
        That stayed the torrent of her grief.
 
 
A youth, by wine to madness stirred,
        Stood brawling on the midnight street,
And as a clash of swords was heard,
        Sunk lifeless at a rival's feet.
 
 
New horrors o'er her senses steal;
        She sees, appearing through the gloom,
A hardened outlaw on the wheel,
        While crowds around applaud his doom.
 
 
She gazed upon the hapless youth,
        She gazed upon the hardened man,
And dawnings of the dreadful truth
To rise upon her soul began.
 
 
Then thus a voice was heard to say,
        "What now they are thine eye hath seen:
Here, had they not been snatch'd away,
        See also what they would have been."
 

A RIDE TO MAGNESIA

STAGE FIRST

Smyrna is a capital starting point for eastern expeditions, though it is too full of gaóors, of every description, to be, in itself, a fair specimen of orientalism. The man would carry home a queer account of Turkey who should begin his notes at Smyrna, and, passing up the Dardanelles, make up his book as he travelled overland from Constantinople to Jannina, en route to Tower Stairs. This is the approved track, or, perhaps, it may be up the Danube in the Austrian steamer. Such an expedition is capital fun, no doubt, and to be recommended to any of our friends with a little loose cash, and some six weeks' holiday. It introduces to many notabilities, first-rate in their way, but not to that singular notability, the genuine old Osmanli. He is a branch of the ethnographical tree that will not flourish in European atmosphere: though the same exuberance of vigour that first sent forth the mighty shoot from central Asia, has prevailed to pass through the feeble defences of the West. It is as an overgrown weakling that he exists in our quarter of the world. His eyes are without fire, his manners without the stamp of originality. He succumbs beneath the presence of the Frank,—the hated and despised, and yet the feared and the envied. The better feelings of his nature suffer from the constant presence of those whose superiority he is forced to admire, but whose personal character he naturally detests. Such conflict of feeling cannot but be with detriment to the spirit, which, so fettered, refuses the generous offices of brotherhood, and yields the debt of civility only from policy or by constraint. How different is this man in his proper country! where the usages and language, and ideas are unmixedly those which have been his father's before him; where the leading idea of gaóors is, that they are infidel dogs, who eat pork and are unenlightened of Islam; and where every one firmly believes that the whole set of Franks are allowed to occupy and rule only by the clemency of their high and mighty lord the Padishah! Here the Turk may condescend, and here he can be truly generous and hospitable. The Frank comes as a wanderer from his own remote, settlement (somewhere or other at the world's end,) to see the lords of the earth, the true believers. He is a poor ignorant stranger who cannot speak a word of intelligible language. It is kind, and gratifying to self-esteem, to receive such an one, and show him those good things that shall make him sigh to return to his own forlorn fatherland. Besides all this, the outward modifications affecting the European Turk spoil his nationality. The reforms of Mahmoud, and of the present sultan, have wofully cut up the appearance of their subjects; and, of course, sumptuary changes such as these affect especially those who mix with the world, and are near court. Who can believe in the ill-looking fellow with smooth face, regular built boots, and tight frock coat, buttoned up to the chin,—to say nothing of the wretched red cap he wears instead of a turban! That a Turk! pshaw!

When I landed at that nest of pirates, Valona,—what time we bore a message to the respectable inhabitants, that unless they took a little more pains to grow honest, we should be under certain painful necessities with respect to them,—was I to look upon that wretched rabble as Turks? Men dressed in every variety of shabby frock coat and trousers; and, above all, men who were undisguised in the exhibition of vulgar curiosity. What amount of excitement would it take to make a genuine Turk open the eyes of astonishment? or, should he even be betrayed into an unguarded Mashhallah! has the power of morbid attraction been discovered which may draw him from his seat and lead him to any effort of inquiry? When, then, I saw these people flocking together on their jetty to meet us, I at once recognised them as mongrel and degenerated. They were queer fellows in their way, too, quite worthy of observation. The whole community are piratical: the youth practically, the seniors by counsel. They manage their evil deeds with a singleness of purpose that neglects no feasible opportunity; and with a caution that restrains from doubtful attempts, and almost secures them from capture. They are not like the pirates of the nautical novels, who embark in a sea-going ship, and stand by to fight it out with any cruisers they may meet. Like cautious sportsmen, they mark down their prey first, and do not waste powder and shot. In a breeze there is no danger on their coast. But wo betideth the trabaccalo or short-handed merchantman that may happen to be becalmed in their sight. Incontinent they launch their boats,—terrible vessels that hold twenty or thirty armed men besides the rowers, and cleave their irresistible course towards the motionless and defenceless victim. On such occasions it is only by rare hap that any individual survives to tell the tale and cry for vengeance. And how shall this cry be satisfied? The bloody work is no sooner over than its traces are obliterated and the community restored to the appearance of inoffensiveness: the boats are pulled up on shore, the crews dispersed. Should an avenger arrive on the spot, he finds the miserable huts either deserted or tenanted by women and old men. How can these be made to suffer for other men's offences, or forced to give information which they declare themselves not to possess?

The same dissatisfaction must be confessed with Previsa Salonica, that place of steady disrespectability, which has maintained its bad character since the apostolic days, and even with Constantinople. This last is a gem of the earth, but, its beauties are to a great extent those of civilised elaboration. Courtiers form but one species, and breathe pretty much the same atmosphere throughout the world. He who has studied them throughout the world has marked only the circumstantial differences of locality producing their effect on a spring of action, itself one and constant. To search out and know this principle it may be useful to visit foreign courts; but Man, beyond the exhibition of this one phase of character, does not flourish in such places. If the best place of observation be not actually the wilderness, because that too is as extensive, calling forth necessarily particular energies, and exhibiting to a great extent one effect, we may take favourable ground somewhere midway between the extremes. It is to the heart and centre of a country that we should go for the vigorous current of its life. Here the colour is vivid, the speciality preserved, the family features of our brethren distinguishable.

I suppose it was some such profound rumination as this that suggested to my two friends and myself the idea of the cruise hereinafter to be recorded. All three were right travel-smitten, a state of mind which marvellously thrives on slight nourishment. We had had substantial food in this way, and were proportionately vigorous in enterprise. We had seen at odd times a good deal of our friends the Turks, but it had been chiefly of the vagabonds near the coast. Into all sorts of queer creeks and corners had we found our way in boat expeditions, that most capital mode of adventure; though rather ticklish for those who are not pretty strong in numbers. So had we dug into the sinuosities of Greece, of which both eastern and western borders were familiar to us; and it is not a little that I would take for my Horace, which I bore with me up the Ambracian Gulf, and which bears over the "nunc est bibendum" the note of my personal presence off Actium. Pleasant, too, are the recollections of our visit to Nicopolis, the mighty monument of this victory, now serving, as all things earthly must one day serve, to display the victory of time. We were forced to walk on this occasion, as to have touched a saddle or animal would have exposed us to the penalties of quarantine. Our good friend Achmet walked before with a long stick, booming the people off, who shrank from our contact right and left, as if we had been the lords of the soil, or as if it had been they, instead of us, who had to fear the plague-compromising touch. And then when we returned hungry as hunters from our march, full of ready forgiveness for any faults of cookery, what a banquet was that which consular hospitality had prepared! Oh, the jocosity of that breakfast, which was in the open air, because we could not go into the house, where we could take nothing from, and could give nothing to, the ladies, but had to keep them at most respectful distance, and be civil under the control of a vigilant guardiano.

There is no mode of travelling which can possibly be compared to this boat-work. The scope of such proceeding is certainly, by comparison, confined; but, so far as it goes, nothing is to be mentioned in the same day with it—that is, so far as comfort is concerned. Places even inland may be visited in this way, for almost any where a horse or two can be mustered, and the craft left in charge of her crew. What a difference between turning into your own berth at night, and affording the amusement one does on shore to the Hellenic vermin. One good joke in this way happened to me once upon a time, showing what quarters travellers may stumble upon even with the best recommendations. A large party of us had started, particularly recommended by letter from the consular agent of a place that shall be nameless, to no less a person than the Demarch of a high-sounding Greek town, who was to do every thing for us in the way of billeting. By great exertion, and with aching bones, we managed to reach this place after night-fall, prolonging, for its hope's sake, our course through a most break-neck road, and through unseen but clamorous numbers of their wolf-like dogs. At last we came up with a miserable shed, which proved to be the mansion of the great man. Of course we should have looked for no other floor but the mudden one we found, had it not been for our magnificent recommendation, which warranted the expectation of a suite of apartments. But the floor was so packed with goods and chattels, affording the most comfortable roosting for the fleas, and with children who brought in ever-fresh collections to the stock, that among the many undelectable nights we passed, none equalled in horrors that one of official introduction and high classical association. And such is pretty generally the hap of him who ventures to pass the night in one of those habitations where sweeping and washing remain exotics, and where the αὐτόχθονες acquire impenetrable skins. Now, all this sort of thing you avoid in a boat, besides converting the mere locomotion from a frequent punishment into a delight: always supposing, be it remembered, that you have not to beat your way home up the Sinus Saronicus against a tempest. But the old story of the rose and the thorn comes in here too. By land you are exposed to the miseries of your nightly quarterings: by sea you may rejoice your heart with the beauties with which Nature rejoices to adorn, many of which she reserves for, the coast, and plunge each morning into the brine with an unsmarting skin; and if you be a genuine lover of the picturesque, you will be no less eager to seek it among the fantasies of human society than among the rocks and crags of a landscape.

So thought I and my two friends as we sat smoking the chibouque of reflection, at that best of Smyrna's cafés, on the French quay. We were unanimous on the conclusion that Smyrna had no earthly right to the title of a Turkish city, except the accident of its happening to be in Turkey. You may go half over the place and meet not a single Turk, except those wonderful fellows, the porters, whose Herculean powers have been so often noticed; or perhaps friend Hassan, the chief of the police, making a progress, with some couple of grim attendants. In fact, in the motley of its society, if any one colour prevail, it is that of France: for among all decent people her language is spoken, and in all reunions of pretension, her colonists are the more numerous body. The Greeks, to be sure, are in great plenty, but they occupy chiefly the lower grades. And as it so happens that the Sisters of Charity have here an establishment, and maintain, with much ability and diligence, a female school, the only one in the place—and that the Lazarists are equally sedulous in their province, it seems not unlikely that Smyrna will become entirely French in spirit, so far as the upper classes are concerned. At present the mixture only savours strongly of the Gallic ingredient. And a most agreeable mixture it makes, affording the blended essences of many nations. Few who have seen much of that society can entertain its reflection without pleasure; and all are wise to make the most of its image, as the wide world affords no twin establishment. Coming from many parts of Europe, the colonists have, by the influences of climate and association, been blended into a general assimilation of character, yet retaining the one or two salient points of nationality. Their physiognomies express the wild influences of Ionia; and it would be vain to seek in their native countries such beautiful specimens of French or Italian women (I except Englishwomen) as are to be found in this birth-place of poetry. It is a city of wonderful linguists, for the necessities of intercourse demand at least three, and in many cases four, languages: Greek with the servants, Italian with the shop-keepers, and French among the polished. Many of them possess more than this number, and truly wonderful it is to see them turn from one guest to another in their pleasant assemblies, and to each address the tongue of his proper country. The same causes that loosened the vowels and softened the utterance of the old Greek in Ionia, have dipped in honey the tongues of the modern Levantines; and whatever they be speaking it is always mellifluously. It is no less true that the old grace of these shores revives in the persons of the ladies, and gives a Lydian softness to all that they do. Whether you mark the Armenian matron, languid from her siesta, seeking the breeze at her lattice; or the more active Frank maiden at the hour of her evening promenade, you are ever struck with the idea of grace and poetry. But chiefly is it pleasant to mark them when the unruffled sea, and cloudless moon, invite them to wander on the marina, and embark on the waters—when the hot sun has persecuted the day, and evening first allowed to breathe freely. There is the bay alive with boats, and resonant of music and laughter, and the shore alive with gay promenaders. There are certain seasons when it might be presumed that the Smyrnists divorce night from sleep; for often have I listened to the cheerful sound till long past midnight, and still has some passing boat brought music to contribute to my dreams. Or, take your hat, and wander forth at evening to the banks of Meles, where Homer sang—whose waters have washed the feet of the epic father, and say whether Homer's self would not acknowledge these groups as worthy of the soil.

Now this is all pleasant exceedingly, but to enjoy this sort of thing sustainedly one should not have an English constitution. We are a phlegmatic set, to whom such zests should be dealt out homœopathically: else do we soon begin to criticise and take exceptions. Now it so happens that we had entered upon the experience of this delectability with every good disposition towards it, but a still better disposition towards the getting beyond it if we could, that we might see something of the real state of the people. We soon voted Smyrna a bore, as was likely with those who in coming thither had been bent on using it only as a stepping-stone to get farther. But this was more easily said than done with us, who were travellers not for our own fancy's sake, but in the service of her most gracious Majesty. Had we been simply unfettered, our will was good to have started directly coastward, and to have explored those vast tracts of Asia Minor, of so much of which nothing is known. The country between the coast and the western border of Persia, explored in a direct line, not going towards Eszeroun, and a divergence southward towards and about Caramania, would be a fine field for travel. We could well afford to receive some addition to our knowledge of the central parts of Asia Minor, and I should like right well to be one of two bound to the borders of lake Van, to pay a visit to the Armenian patriarch. But such an expedition would take a deal of time and of money. Now we had but the short interval of time at our disposal, during which it was judged that Britannic interests might suffer our absence without detriment. Happily for us, we knew that foreign infection was but skin deep in this country; so that, although the curious recesses were beyond our reach, we might, by a comparatively short expedition, arrive at the texture and substance of the mass. Two cities invited us, Aidin, and Magnesia, both of which are, as nearly as possible, free from foreigners: for the rajahs, though they be Christians, are not, of course, to be considered foreign to that soil, in which they have been implanted since before its occupation by the Turks. In Magnesia, so far as we could discover, there dwelt but a single Frank, who was consular agent for England, as he was, probably, for half-a-dozen other European powers, an office little likely to be useful or needful in the case of personal protection to distressed wanderers, but no doubt not without value as a commercial relationship. Magnesia also is interesting, because it is the seat of the great Carasman, Oglû Pascha, a name to which are attached little less than royal honours. He is one of the great hereditary dignitaries of the kingdom, who, from olden time, and till but a few years ago, used to be almost kings within their territory. At the command of the Sultan, these men used to bring into the field enormous bodies of cavalry, raised by themselves, forming the staple of the Ottoman armies; and Mr. Slade, in his book on Turkey, places the alterations of Mahmoud with respect to these Beys among the prominent causes of the decay of the Ottoman empire.

The vote passed in favour of Magnesia; partly because we expected in that place to find, through the good offices of the consular agent, decent quarters in some Greek house. The question of ways and means remained. The ordinary mode of conducting these proceedings is through the ministry of a Kawash or guide; a person whose assistance is generally considered indispensable, in a country where one neither knows the roads, nor can exchange a word of inquiry with the people. But this plan was little suited to our taste, as we knew by experience that these men are apt to assume the absolute control of their parties. In this respect they are no worse than the other whole tribe of ciceroni, who assuredly are among the greatest bores that necessity imposes. If they would confine themselves to leading the way, and interpreting, and rest contented with solicitude for the horses, they would be useful and endurable. S—— forewent for a moment his amber mouthpiece to give us his experience and opinion.

"These kawashes are greater plagues on a journey than a pebble in the shoe. When I was a youngster on board the Blanche, we started, a party of us, for Aidin, under convoy of one of them with a first-rate character. We had hardly got clear of the town when he began to take command of us, coolly wanting to regulate our pace. We stood no nonsense, but set off full cry, with him at our heels shouting like mad. He was presently up with me, and caught my horse's bridle, uttering all sorts of unintelligible exclamations. The fellow drew his yataghan, and I really thought was going to cut my head off. However, he vented his rage on the brute, striking him with the flat of his weapon; and it was with difficulty I pacified him at last, by saying, 'Pasha!' several times, and pointing forward; giving him to understand that if he did not behave himself, I should complain to the Pasha as soon as we arrived."