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 what
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.
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