Thus We Might Expect To Find, Wherever The Fancy, The
Imagination, And The Ideality Are Strong, Some Traces Of A Sentiment
Innate In The Human Organisation.
It exists, says Mr. Catlin, amongst
the North American Indians, and even the Gallas and the Somal of Africa
are not wholly destitute of it.
But when the barbarian becomes a
semi-barbarian, as are the most polished Orientals, or as were the
classical authors of Greece and Rome, then women fall from their proper
place in society, become mere articles of luxury, and sink into the
lowest moral condition. In the next stage, “civilisation,” they rise again
to be “highly accomplished,” and not a little frivolous.
[p.91]Miss Martineau, when travelling through Egypt, once visited a
harim, and there found, among many things, especially in ignorance of
books and of book-making, materials for a heart-broken wail over the
degradation of her sex. The learned lady indulges, too, in sundry
strong and unsavoury comparisons between the harim and certain haunts
of vice in Europe. On the other hand, male travellers generally speak
lovingly of the harim. Sonnini, no admirer of Egypt, expatiates on “the
generous virtues, the examples of magnanimity and affectionate
attachment, the sentiments ardent, yet gentle, forming a delightful
unison with personal charms in the harims of the Mamluks.”
As usual, the truth lies somewhere between the two extremes. Human
nature, all the world over, differs but in degree. Everywhere women may
be “capricious, coy, and hard to please” in common conjunctures: in the
hour of need they will display devoted heroism. Any chronicler of the
Afghan war will bear witness that warm hearts, noble sentiments, and an
overflowing kindness to the poor, the weak, and the unhappy are found
even in a harim. Europe now knows that the Moslem husband provides
separate apartments and a distinct establishment for each of his wives,
unless, as sometimes happens, one be an old woman and the other a
child. And, confessing that envy, hatred, and malice often flourish in
polygamy, the Moslem asks, Is monogamy open to no objections? As far as
my limited observations go, polyandry is the only state of society in
which jealousy and quarrels about the sex are the exception and not the
rule of life.
In quality of doctor I have seen a little and heard much of the harim.
It often resembles a European home composed of a man, his wife, and his
mother. And I have seen in the West many a “happy fireside” fitter to make
Miss Martineau’s heart ache than any harim in Grand Cairo.
[p.92] Were it not evident that the spiritualising of sexuality by
sentiment, of propensity by imagination, is universal among the highest
orders of mankind,—c’est l’etoffe de la nature que l’imagination a brodee, says
Voltaire,—I should attribute the origin of “love” to the influence of the
Arabs’ poetry and chivalry upon European ideas rather than to mediaeval
Christianity. Certain “Fathers of the Church,” it must be remembered, did
not believe that women have souls. The Moslems never went so far.
In nomad life, tribes often meet for a time, live together whilst
pasturage lasts, and then separate perhaps for a generation. Under such
circumstances, youths who hold with the Italian that
“Perduto e tutto il tempo
Che in amor non si spende,”
will lose heart to maidens, whom possibly, by the laws of the clan,
they may not marry,[FN#23] and the light o’ love will fly her home. The
fugitives must brave every danger, for revenge, at all times the Badawi’s
idol, now becomes the lodestar of his existence. But the Arab lover
will dare all consequences. “Men have died and the worms have eaten them,
but not for love,” may be true in the West: it is false in the East. This
is attested in every tale where love, and not ambition, is the
groundwork of the narrative.[FN#24] And nothing can be more tender, more
[p.93] pathetic than the use made of these separations and long
absences by the old Arab poets. Whoever peruses the Suspended Poem of
Labid, will find thoughts at once so plaintive and so noble, that even
Dr. Carlyle’s learned verse cannot wholly deface their charm.
The warrior-bard returns from afar. He looks upon the traces of hearth
and home still furrowing the Desert ground. In bitterness of spirit he
checks himself from calling aloud upon his lovers and his friends. He
melts at the remembrance of their departure, and long indulges in the
absorbing theme. Then he strengthens himself by the thought of Nawara’s
inconstancy, how she left him and never thought of him again. He
impatiently dwells upon the charms of the places which detain her,
advocates flight from the changing lover and the false friend, and, in
the exultation with which he feels his swift dromedary start under him
upon her rapid course, he seems to seek and finds some consolation for
women’s perfidy and forgetfulness. Yet he cannot abandon Nawara’s name or
memory. Again he dwells with yearning upon scenes of past felicity, and
he boasts of his prowess—a fresh reproach to her,—of his gentle birth, and
of his hospitality. He ends with an encomium upon his clan, to which he
attributes, as a noble Arab should, all the virtues of man. This is
Goldsmith’s deserted village in Al-Hijaz. But the Arab, with equal
simplicity and pathos, has a fire, a force of language, and a depth of
feeling, which the Irishman, admirable as his verse is, could never
rival.
As the author of the Peninsular War well remarks, women in troubled
times, throwing off their accustomed feebleness and frivolity, become
helpmates meet for man. The same is true of pastoral life. [FN#25]
Here, between the
[p.94] extremes of fierceness and sensibility, the weaker sex,
remedying its great want, power, rises itself by courage, physical as
well as moral.
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