Chapter 17

Our host conceived it to be a duty incumbent on him to develop, on this occasion, the full power of the resources of Adalia. We should have been far better satisfied if he had contented himself with doing things in a smaller way; but he was bent on magnificence. It was quite treat enough to lie on the soft turf, with the thick shade above, and to allow the hours to pass away as they led on evening. But he had been at the trouble to retain a band of musicians for our sakes. Such a set they were!--surpassing, in discordant prowess, the worst street musicians among our beggar melodists. It is quite surprising that invention has so long slumbered with these native artistes. With Musard concerts and Wilhelm music-meetings all around them, it is wonderful that they do not catch the note of something better than their villanous mandolins and single-noted pipes. Does any one need to be told what a mandolin is? It is something very different, let me assure him, from the ideal instrument of Moore's Melodies. Not even the lovely maidens that Moore paints could render tolerable a performance upon it; whereas it is made to resound by some especially ugly fellow, whose rascality of appearance, is relieved by no touch of the poetic. I did once hear a Turco-Greek lady perform, and on a more civilised instrument--a lady of high reputation as a performer on the guitar and a vocalist. And seldom has the spirit of romantic preparation received a more sudden chill than did mine on that occasion. Nothing could be more outrageously absurd than the whole thing was--accompaniment and song. I never afterwards was solicitous to hear an Oriental's musical performance; and am quite satisfied, that in them dwells no musical faculty, creative or perceptive: or that at least it is in a dormant state.

These musicians began with a symphony on the full band--mandolins leading, drums doing bass, and the whole lot of ugly fellows screeching forth what might have been esteemed air or accompaniment, as the case might be. That a sorry musical effect was produced will surprise no one who considers the build of the most musical of their instruments. The mandolin is by way of being a guitar, or banjo--only in a very small way indeed. Nothing has been added to the idea since first Mercury stumbled on the original _testudo_--indeed, I should guess that the dried sinews of a tortoise would give out a far purer sound than the jingling wires with which the mandolin is mounted. I have sometimes stood at the door of a _cafe_, or, to give it the real name [Greek: kapheneion], and listened in wonder to the strains of some minstrel holding forth within. The wonder was, not that the man should play egregiously ill, but that the effect of good music should be produced by his evil playing. The people were evidently excited to sorrow when the attempt was at a mournful strain, and to ardour when the lilt took a loftier flight. To me who stood by, the difference of intention on the part of the performer was hardly discernible; indeed to be recognised only by the occasional catching of some familiar word in the burden of the song. The same observation may apply to the current Greek poetry. There can be no mistake in the conclusion, that it produces the effect of real poetry on the people, urging them in the direction whither works the imagination of the poet. But men of taste have come to, and can come to, but one decision on the judgment of Romaic poetasters. The spirit of poetry has died out of, and is become extinct from the genius of their tongue. It is but the enthusiasm of by-gone days, the inkling of Attic glory, that lingers about the circumstances of their modern productions, and cheats men with the mere similarity of idiom. Poetry is of universal application, and were the pretensions of the modern Greek genuine, his productions would touch the hearts of the poetic of other lands.

These fellows who entertained us on this occasion, struck a good deal of enthusiasm out of their jingle,--enthusiasm to themselves, be it remarked, and not to us. I saw them grow sad in face, while the strain proceeded at a slow pace, and the _voce di canto_ degenerated into a more lugubrious howl than ever. By these tokens, I judged them to be singing some tale of sorrow, and so it seemed they were. The gentleman who performed for us the part of Chorus, gave us to wit, that they were lamenting the fall of Algiers, and imprecating maledictions on the head of the French. This they evidently considered a delicate and appropriate attention to us as Englishmen. I was only surprised to find they entered so far into the family distinctions of the Franks. There was some heart, too, in the manner in which they gesticulated and declaimed; and I have little doubt but that they were in earnest--especially if any of these happened to have friends or relations down that way, who had been roused out of house and home by the Gallic Avatar. When they were tired with singing, or perhaps presumed that they had therewith tired us, they took to playing the fool. Not merely in a general sense, in which they may be said to have been so engaged all along; but with heavy effort, and under the express direction of a professional master of the ceremonies. The Adalian jester was a tall ugly fellow, who had considerable power of comic expression in his face, but whose forte lay in a cap of fantastic device. It was made of the skin of some animal, whose genus I will not venture to guess; and had been contrived in such fashion that the tail hung over the top, and whisked about at the caprice of the wearer. This was a never-failing source of amusement to the performer himself, as well as to the native bystanders. As he bobbed his head up and down, and ran after this tail, the people burst into peals of laughter. They were quite taken up with the exhibition, except when they stole a moment now and then for a peep to see how the Frank visitors were amused with their wit. Besides this, the jester had a number of practical jokes, such as coming quietly along-side of some unsuspecting person, and catching hold of his leg, barking loudly the while, so as to make him think that some dog had bitten him. But this part of the performance was decidedly coarse, and did not improve our idea of the civilisation of the place. A good deal of sketching was going on in the course of this day; and the visages of some of these musicians, and especially of the jester, and of a blind old choragus, have been handed down to the posterity of our affectionate friends. We had a visit this day of a gentler kind. A Greek lady, the owner of considerable landed property in the place, came with her youthful daughter to interchange civilities with us. She was a plain, almost ugly old woman; but, like nine out of ten of all women extant, was of kind and _feminine_ disposition. Moreover, like the rest of the ladies, she was very fond of talking; but, on this particular occasion, unhappily could speak no single word that would convey meaning to us. Still it was not to be expected that she could hold her tongue; so she squatted down by us, and talked, perhaps all the faster because she had the conversation all to herself. Her daughter was a young lady, whom by appearance in England, you would call somewhere in her teens; but, hereaway they are so precocious that one is constantly deceived in guessing their age. She would have been pretty if she had been clean; and was abundantly and expensively ornamented. Sometimes we hear it figuratively said of a domestic coquette, that she carries all her property on her back. These Greeks must be well off, if it may not sometimes be so said with propriety of them. They have a plan of advertising a young lady's assets, in a manner that must be most satisfactory to fortune-hunters, and prevent the mistakes that with us constantly foil the best-laid plans. They turn a girl's fortune into money, and hang it--it, the fortune proper--the [Greek: poion] and the [Greek: poson]--about her neck. They do not buy jewels worth so many hundreds or tens--but transpierce the actual coin, and of them compose a necklace of whose value there can be no doubt, and whose fashion is not very variable. This may be called a fair and above-board way of doing things. The swain, as he sits by the beloved object, may amuse himself by counting the number of precious links in the chain that is drawing him into matrimony, and debate within himself, on sure data, the question whether or no he shall yield to the gentle influence. There would not have been much doubt about the monetary recommendations of this young lady, for she was abundantly gilt, as became the daughter of one reputed so rich as the old lady. Poor girls! It makes one sad to look upon them, brought up with so little idea of what is girlish and beautiful; to see them ignorant yet sophisticated, bejeweled and unwashed. This poor child was decked out in the most absurd manner, and sat for admiration most palpably. She also sat for something else, which was her picture. This was taken by several of the party, so much to the satisfaction of mother and daughter, that the old lady insisted on taking her turn as model. We invariably found them pleased with the productions of our art in these cases, and satisfied of the correctness of the likeness. The only objections they would occasionally make, would refer to the pretermission of some such thing as a tassel in the cap. The fidelity of the likeness they took implicitly on trust.

I have said we could not talk to this old lady, Greek though she was, furnished though some of us were with the language of her compatriots. The deficiency was on her part--not on ours. She could not speak one single word of her own language. And so it is, that of all the Greeks of Adalia, not one can converse in the language of their fathers. Separated from their countrymen, they have become almost a distinct race; and, losing that language of which they have no practice, have learnt to use as their own the vernacular of the land in which they are immigrants of such antique standing. They talk Turkish--live almost like Turks; and by their religion only are distinguished from their neighbours. For religious purposes they use their own language: and, by consequence, understand no single word of the ritual or lessons. This is certainly a singular national position--impossible, except from religious prevention. It is just the reverse of what may be seen elsewhere: for instance, in the mountains of Thessaly you find a colony of Germans, who, though completely shut in by the people of the land, and holding intercourse with none other, remain foreigners and Germans, resisting the tendency to amalgamation. So in Sicily you find the _Piana della Grecia_, where the original Greek colonists have kept their language and customs in their integrity. But where else, save in this one spot, will you find people who, after having imbibed the influences of the country to the extent of adoption of its language, have been able to resist amalgamation with its denizens in every respect?

By the bye, these people have opened a sort of royal road to the acquisition of the Turkish language. The orthography of this language is a most vexed and perplexed affair. Those who have made the attempt to master its difficulties may say something in its vituperation; but the practice of many of those who are well acquainted therewith, says a great deal more. These Greeks, for instance, though they have adopted this language as their own, and have been accustomed in no other to lisp to their nurses, have altogether discarded the orthography. They speak as do the natives, but write in their own character; accommodating the flexible capabilities of their alphabet to the purposes of Turkish orthoepy. Thus have you the means of reading Turkish in a familiar character, which also has the advantage of presenting your words in a definite form. The real Turkish alphabet is any thing but definite; at least to one within any decent term of years of his commencing the study. This is a mode of teaching which I have known to be insisted on by at least one good master: though of course the man of any ambition would regard this byway to knowledge as merely a step preliminary in the course.

This was not the only party at which we assisted during our visit. A rich Greek merchant invited us to enjoy the coolness of evening in his gardens. It was duly impressed on our minds by the gentleman of the place that this old fellow was worth his weight in gold. They did say that his name was good for L150,000--a long figure, certainly, to meet in such a place. He was a quiet-looking, unpretending person, with very much the air of a moneyed man. The hope that we had formed of seeing a display of the youth and fashion of Adalia was disappointed. It was by all express relaxation of the law of etiquette that we had the opportunity of seeing even the one or two ladies belonging to the family. Greeks, in their own country, though exceedingly jealous, and apt to build up alarms on the slightest foundation, are yet by no means chary in showing their women. In-doors and out, you will meet them, both old and young; and perfectly unconstrained and companionable you will find them. But here the case is far otherwise. They have acquired so much of Mussulman notions, that they do not allow their women to mix in society. This is the general rule: more pliant to occasion than the law of the Turks, which never yields. And not only here is there a strong feeling on this subject: the same prejudice prevails widely in the Turco-Greek islands. For instance, in Mytilene, on occasion of taking that long excursion which I have already mentioned, we observed that all the women we met were old and ugly. From this observed fact we drew conclusions unfavourable to the general appearance and presentability of the Mytilenian ladies. But subsequently we found the reason of the phenomenon to be, that the young and pretty girls were kept within doors, and the old ones alone allowed the privilege of walking forth--a difference of condition that might almost induce the girls of Mytilene to wish for age and wrinkles.

They did not, at Adalia, use us quite so ill as to withhold their ladies from the entertainment. The mother was there and a daughter--a young lady with the romantic name of Dudu. With such a name as this she ought to have been very pretty, and certainly she did not fall far short of such condition. It was clearly to be perceived that she was unaccustomed to mix in general society, and that the company of strange men disturbed her. But she was not ungraceful either in manner or dress, or in her evident desire to please. The place of our reception was in the central court, which the best kind of houses preserve--a contrivance which gives to each of the four sides on which the building is disposed, the advantages of a pure and thorough current of air. Here we sat drinking sherbet, and, of course, smoking the unfailing chibouque. The lady mother was painfully anxious to talk to us, and pretty Miss Dudu was seriously bent on listening; but we could not manage to execute a colloquy. All the civil things imaginable were expressed to us by gesture, and the young lady came out strong in the presentation of bouquets. One fortunate man received from her an orange, the only one remaining at that time in the garden; this we persuaded ourselves must, in their symbolical language, imply a declaration of some soft interest. Miss Dudu would not have been such a very bad _parti_, being, as she was, the sole heritress of her father's thousands. However, she was, we understood, engaged already to a youth, who was obeying the cruel law prevalent in this place, which compels the accepted swain to absent himself from his inamorata for a long probation. I think the time was said to be a year; during which no communication must pass between the parties. Should the first overtures of a suitor be rejected, it is a settled matter of etiquette, that he never again is to see or speak to the young lady. This must be likely, we would think, to render a man cautious in proposing: but certainly it must tend to lessen the number of eventual old maids, by rendering the young ladies also chary of saying No, when they mean Yes. On the whole, we can scarcely admire their matrimonial tactics. We found that we were among a family of Hadjis. Miss Dudu was a Hadji, and so were her father and mother. In their case the place of pilgrimage is Jerusalem, a visit to which confers on them the respectable title of Hadji for life. This old gentleman had made a pious use of some of his money, by promoting the cause of pilgrimage among his less opulent brethren. The desire to tread the holy soil is common to them all; not only to the religious. These have their motives; but so also have the disorderly and wicked, who think that a world of cheating and ill-living is covered over by the wholesome cloak of pilgrimage. There are also certain less considerable places of pilgrimage, invested with considerable sanctity, though inferior in character to the one great rendezvous of the religious. Health to body seems often the expected result of visits to these secondary places, to which recourse will frequently be had when medical aid has failed to be available. Dudu's father had made himself highly popular by chartering a vessel, and conveying, for charity's sake, as many devotees as chose to go on one of these minor expeditions. The island of Cyprus has a convent of peculiar sanctity, a visit to which is highly esteemed as an antidote to bodily ills. He gave a great number the opportunity of testing the truth of the tradition.

It was not bad fun, after all, tarrying a few days in Adalia: only, by choice, we would hardly choose that particular season for the excursion. What between the Consul's gardens, and the old Greek, and the little bit of business we had upon our hands, we managed to get through the time pleasantly enough. We saw that we had here a good specimen of the variety of life commonly described as deadly-lively. Were it not that they have such a lot of strangers constantly passing through the place, they might seem to be in danger of a moral_anchylosis_--of falling into a state of mind so rusty, as to be incapable of direction to any object, save such as lay before them, in the way of immediate physical requirement. The few days that we remained there did not afford time enough for the disease to make much head with us. Indeed, for us it was a variety of experience, sufficiently stirring for the time, to mark the ways of a people so deeply buried in imperturbability and incuriosity.

I think we were not sorry when at last the messenger returned from the Caimacan, and we found we were in condition to leave the place. The Consul was set on his legs again, and the English name in better odour than ever. The _attaches_ of the consulate had taken care that our visit should fail in no degree of its wholesome influence, for want of their good word; and I fancy that the town's people thought themselves rather well off that we left their town standing. We left, too, with the full reputation for merciful dealing; as we had spared the poor soap-rioters the infliction of the bastinado.

And so we sped on our way to Rhodes.

PACIFIC ROVINGS.[C]

We were much puzzled, a few weeks since, by a tantalising and unintelligible paragraph, pertinaciously reiterated in the London newspapers. Its brevity equalled its mystery; it consisted but of five words, the first and last in imposing majuscules. Thus it ran:--

"OMOO, by the author of TYPEE."

With Trinculo we exclaimed, "What have we here? a man or a fish? dead or alive?" Who or what were Typee and Omoo? Were things or creatures thus designated? Did they exist on the earth, or in the air, or in the waters under the earth; were they spiritual or material, vegetable or mineral, brute or human? Were they newly-discovered planets, nicknamed whilst awaiting baptism, or strange fossils, contemporaries of the Megatherium, or Magyar dissyllables from Dr Bowring's vocabulary? Perchance they were a pair of new singers for the Garden, or a fresh brace of beasts for the legitimate drama at Drury. Omoo might be the heavy elephant; Typee the light-comedy camel. Did danger lurk in the enigmatical words? Were they obscure intimations of treasonable designs, Swing advertisements, or masonic signs? Was the palace at Westminster in peril? had an agent of sure of Barbarossa Joinville undermined the Trafalgar column? Were they conspirators' watchwords, lovers' letters, signals concerted between the robbers of Rogers's bank? We tried them anagrammatically, but in vain: there was nought to be made of Omoo; shake it as we would, the O's came uppermost; and by reversing Typee we obtained but a pitiful result. At last a bright gleam broke through the mist of conjecture. Omoo was a book. The outlandish title that had perplexed us was intended to perplex; it was a bait thrown out to that wide-mouthed fish, the public; a specimen of what is theatrically styled _gag_. Having but an indifferent opinion of books ushered into existence by such charlatanical manoeuvres, we thought no more of Omoo, until, musing the other day over our matutinal hyson, the volume itself was laid before us, and we suddenly found ourselves in the entertaining society of Marquesan Melville, the phoenix of modern voyagers, sprung, it would seem, from the mingled ashes of Captain Cook and Robin Crusoe.