A German commis-voyageur, with a guitar, who had
passed unnoticed until that time, produced his instrument about
mid-day, and began to whistle waltzes.
He whistled so divinely
that the ladies left their cabins, and men laid down their books.
He whistled a polka so bewitchingly that two young Oxford men began
whirling round the deck, and performed that popular dance with much
agility until they sank down tired. He still continued an unabated
whistling, and as nobody would dance, pulled off his coat, produced
a pair of castanets, and whistling a mazurka, performed it with
tremendous agility. His whistling made everybody gay and happy -
made those acquainted who had not spoken before, and inspired such
a feeling of hilarity in the ship, that that night, as we floated
over the Sea of Marmora, a general vote was expressed for broiled
bones and a regular supper-party. Punch was brewed, and speeches
were made, and, after a lapse of fifteen years, I heard the "Old
English Gentleman" and "Bright Chanticleer Proclaims the Morn,"
sung in such style that you would almost fancy the proctors must
hear, and send us all home.
CHAPTER VII: CONSTANTINOPLE
When we arose at sunrise to see the famous entry to Constantinople,
we found, in the place of the city and the sun, a bright white fog,
which hid both from sight, and which only disappeared as the vessel
advanced towards the Golden Horn. There the fog cleared off as it
were by flakes, and as you see gauze curtains lifted away, one by
one, before a great fairy scene at the theatre. This will give
idea enough of the fog; the difficulty is to describe the scene
afterwards, which was in truth the great fairy scene, than which it
is impossible to conceive anything more brilliant and magnificent.
I can't go to any more romantic place than Drury Lane to draw my
similes from - Drury Lane, such as we used to see it in our youth,
when to our sight the grand last pictures of the melodrama or
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.
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