Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell

by Elizabeth Gaskell

  There was nothing in the external life of the place which could compensate for his individual disappointment; at least, he perceived nothing. One day, in crossing the market-place, he saw eight men lying with their heads cut off; executed for being religious fanatics, who had assumed the character of prophets. At another time, there were six men put to death for highway robbery; and the mode of death was full of horror, whatever their crimes might be. They were hung head downwards, with the right arm and leg cut off; one of them dragged out life in this state for three days. Even the minor punishments are cruel and vindictive, as they always are where the power and execution of the laws is uncertain. One of the penalties inflicted for slight offences, is to have a string passed through the nostrils, and to be led for three successive days through the bazaars and market-places by a crier, proclaiming the nature of the misdemeanour committed. Blindness is very common: Mr. Burton has often seen six or eight blind men walking in a string, each with his right arm on the shoulder of his precursor. It is partly caused by ophthalmia, produced by the dust, and partly clue to the Shah having it in his power to inflict the punishment of pulling out both, or one of, the eyes. The great-grandfather of the present Shah, Aga Mohammed, the founder of the Kujur dynasty, had large baskets-full of the eyes of his enemies presented to him after his accession to the throne.

  Let us change the subject to attar of roses; though all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten the memory of that last sentence. Attar of roses is made and sold in the bazaars; the rose employed is the common single pink one, which must be gathered before the sudden rise of the hot sun causes the dew to evaporate. By the side of the attar-sellers may be seen the Jew, selling trinkets; the Armenians -- Christians in name, and, as such, bound by no laws of Mohammed -- selling a sweetish red wine and arrakee, a spirit made from the refuse of grapes and resembling gin; while through the bazaars men go, having leathern bags on their backs containing bad, dirty water, and a lump of ice in a basin, into which they pour out draughts for their customers. Ice is brought down from the mountains, and sold at the rate of a large lump for two or three pools -- a pool being a small copper coin, of which thirty make one koraun (silver), value eleven-pence; and ten korauns make one tomaun, a gold coin of the value of nine shillings. The drinking-water is procured from open drains, or from tanks, in which all the washing the Persians ever give their clothes is done. They use no soap even for shaving; but soapy water would be preferable to the beverage obtained from these sources, with vermin floating on its surface. No wonder that the cholera returns every three years, and is a fatal scourge; especially when we learn that the doctors and barbers in Teheran, as formerly in England, unite the two professions and that the great resource in all cases of illness is the lancet.

  Besides the shops in the bazaars, where provisions and beverages of various kinds are sold, there are others for silks, carpets, embroidered pieces, something like the Indian shawls, but smaller in size, and purchased by the Europeans for waistcoats; and Cashmere shawls, which even there, and though not always new, bear the high prices of from fifty pounds to one hundred pounds. Those which were presented to the ladies of the Embassy were worth, at Teheran, one hundred pounds apiece. There are also lamb’s-skin caps, or fezzes, about half a yard high, conical in shape, and open, or crownless, at the top; heavier than a hat, but much cooler, owing to the ventilation produced by this opening. No Europeans wear hats, except one or two at the Embassy. Cotton materials are used for dresses by the common people, manufactured at Teheran. There are very few articles of British manufacture sold in the bazaars; but French, German, and Russian things abound. A fondness for watches seems to be a Persian weakness; some of the higher classes will wear two at a time, like the English dandies sixty years ago; and sometimes both these watches will be in a state of stand-still. It is therefore no wonder that a little German watchmaker, who is settled at Teheran, is making his fortune. The mode of reckoning time is from sunrise to sunset -- prayers being said by the faithful before each of these. The day and night are each divided into “watches” of three hours long; subdividing the time between sunrise and mid-day, mid-day and sunset.

  Mr. Burton saw little of the religious ceremonies of the Persians. He had never been inside a mosque; but had seen people saying their prayers at the appointed times (at the expiration of every watch through the day, he believed), on raised platforms, erected for the purpose, up and down the town. The form of washing the hands before they say their prayers is gone through by country-people on the dusty plain, using soil instead of water -- the more purifying article of the two, one would suppose, after hearing Mr. Burton’s account of the state of the drains and tanks in Teheran. The priests are recognised by the white turbans which they wear as a class distinction; and our English gardener does not seem to have come in contact with any of them, excepting in occasional rencontres in the streets; where the women, veiled and shrouded, shuffle along -- their veils being transparent just at the eyes, so as to enable them to see without being seen; while their clumsy, shapeless mantles effectually prevent all recognition, even from husband or father. The higher class (the wives of Mirzas, or noblemen) are conveyed in a kind of covered hand-barrow from place to place. This species of rude carriage will hold two ladies sitting upright, and has a small door on either side; it is propelled by one before and one behind.

  As long as these national peculiarities were novel enough to excite curiosity, Mr. Burton had something to relieve the monotony of his life, which was very hopeless in the horticultural line. By-and-by it sank into great sameness. The domestic changes were of much the same kind as the Vicar of Wakefield’s migration from the blue bed to the brown: for three or four months in the hot season, Mr. Burton conveyed his mat up the mud-staircase, which led from his apartments through a trap-door on to the flat roof, and slept there. When the hot weather was over, Mr. Burton came down under cover. He felt himself becoming utterly weary and enervated; and probably wondered less than he had done on his first arrival at the lazy way in which the natives worked; sitting down, for instance, to build a wall. Indifference, which their religion may dignify in some things into fatalism, seemed to prevail everywhere and in every person. They ate their peas and beans unshelled, rather than take any unnecessary trouble; a piece of piggism which especially scandalised him.

  Twice in the year there were great religious festivals, which roused the whole people into animation and enthusiasm. One in the spring was the Noorooz, when a kind of miracle-play was acted simultaneously upon the various platforms in the city; the grandest representation of all being in the market-place, where thirty or forty thousand attended. The subject of this play is the death of the sons of Ali; the Persians being Sheeah, or followers of Ali, and, as such, regarded as schismatics by the more orthodox Turks, who do not believe in the three successors of Mohammed. This “mystery” is admirably performed, and excites the Persians to passionate weeping. A Frank ambassador is invariably introduced, who comes to intercede for the sons of Ali. This is the tradition of the Persians; and, although not corroborated by any European legend, it is so faithfully believed in by the Persians, that it has long procured for the Europeans a degree of kindly deference, very different from the feeling with which they are regarded by the Ali-hating Turks. The other religious festival occurs some time in August, and is of much the same description; some event (Mr. Burton believed it was the death of Mohammed) being dramatised, and acted in all the open public places. The weeping and wailing are as general at this representation as at the other. Mr. Burton himself said, “he was so cut up by it, he could not help crying;” and excused himself for what he evidently considered a weakness, by saying that everybody there was doing the same.

  Sometimes the Shah rode abroad; he and his immediate attendants were well mounted; but behind, around, came a rabble rout to the number of one, two, or even three thousand, on broken-down horses, on mules, on beggarly donkeys, or running on foot, their rags waving in the wind, everybody, anybody, anyhow.
The soldiers in attendance did not contribute to the regularity or uniformity of the scene, as there is no regulation height, and the dwarf of four feet ten jostles his brother in arms who towers above him at the stature of six feet six.

  In strange contrast with this wild tumult and disorderly crowd must be one of the Shah’s amusements, which consists in listening to Mr. Burgess (the appointed English interpreter), who translates the Times, Illustrated News, and, occasionally, English books, for the pleasure of the Shah. One wonders what ideas certain words convey, representative of the order and uniform regularity of England.

  In October, 1849, Colonel Shiel returned to Teheran, after his sojourn in England; and soon afterwards it was arranged that Mr. Burton should leave Persia, and shorten his time of engagement to the Shah by one-half. Accordingly, as soon as he had completed a year in Teheran, he began to make preparations for returning to Europe; and about March, 1850, he arrived at Constantinople, where he remained another twelvemonth. The remembrance of Mr. Burton’s Oriental life must be in strange contrast to the regular, well-ordered comfort of his present existence.

  SHAMS

  I will not attempt at once to define what is implied by the heading of this paper, because I really do not think we have any term of identical signification, and because, moreover, I am not able to locate - as the Americans would say - my ideas with such promptitude and exactness as to put the right one in the right place at a moment’s notice. My meaning must, therefore, unfold itself as I proceed.

  Dr. Johnson remarked once upon a time that ‘some persons would acquire more knowledge in the Hampstead stage than others by taking the grand tour,’ and he was a wise man in this as in all his other sayings. My discoveries in the way of ‘shams’ have merely arisen from making good use of my eyes; for as I only dwell in the country, though a would-be fashionable city, my opportunities are scanty enough. I see the same faces day after day in the streets, either belonging to idlers or to persons going about their several occupations, while the same old rumble-tumbles daily convey the same old dowagers to their accustomed airing in the public drive. The very beggars are quite familiar to me, from the poor widow who has always got her dear departed husband awaiting burial at the hands of charitable passers-by, to the barefooted rosy-cheeked urchin who tells me has not had a morsel to eat, oh! for ever so long, and winks at a companion round the corner as he thinks he takes me in. These mendicants are shams in their way; but we will let them pass this time. When I go to tea-parties I rarely perceive any novelties among the guests who form their nightly quartets at cards, or play and sing airs which have served as stock pieces during the whole of one season. Beaux being at a premium on these occasions, I have not even the agreeable excitement of noting new flirtations by the way of a change; and we all know that variety is charming.

  Thus you must allow that unless I make the most of what passes before my eyes day by day and every day, I may as well close them at once and go to sleep, for all the service they would otherwise be to me. But I flatter myself I am one of the passengers by the Hampstead coach, and never let opportunities slip through my fingers when I can help it. I am not so conceited as to fancy myself a second Spectator, nor should I like my fellow towns-people to shun my society for fear of my discoveries, as the men and women of those times must have dreaded the Argus vision of that very observant individual. But as I have a weakness for ‘shams,’ I look out for them diligently, and ‘when found,’ I ‘make a note’ of them.

  They are, however, so multifarious that it is not easy to form a choice of examples, and state which are genuine and which are - sham. Really I can find no more expressive word, though I fear nobody will have patience to read on unless I endeavour to chercher mes mots, as the French have it, better. Yet other people as well as I have doubtless before now experienced a difficulty in obtaining duplicates in our language; and hence perhaps the use of French which some elegant folk affect. Only lately I was reading an article on this subject - where, I am ashamed to own, I forget, for I have not the best of memories - in which it was stated that we ordinary English employ no more than one page in four of our native dictionaries, wherefore our common conversation contains an incessant reiteration of the same phrases. And indeed we all know how badly and ungrammatically most of us converse in our own tongue, whilst we are so dreadfully cautious and fearful of perpetrating blunders and solecisms in a foreign one. Thus the over-correct English of strangers, which is often the mark by which to distinguish them, may afford us some inkling of our mode of speech when we exhibit our native talent for languages, except that as a general rule, we may set ourselves down as the worse speakers of the two. We islanders, when not engrossed by commerce, are so devoted to our Anglo-Latin and Greek that we scorn to waste any precious time in the cultivation of French, not to mention Italian. These are generally expected to come in the hour of need by inspiration, like preaching, or even dancing; and yet with regard to the latter Mr. Motley carefully informs us in his United Netherlands, that St. Aldegonde, ‘a scholar ripe and rare,’ who had Latin and Greek at his fingers’ ends, and ‘possessed the modern tongues as a matter of course,’ ‘was even famous for his dancing, and had composed an intelligent and philosophical treatise upon the value of that amusement as an agent of civilization.’ I can hardly find a better example in order to persuade Englishmen to dance imprimis, and afterwards to exhibit their proficiency for the public benefit. I have constantly remarked that good dancers pretend to give themselves airs, and to regard the principal object for which they are invited to balls as quite beneath their notice. They present themselves at the latest possible hour, and then lounge in doorways to show off their figures to the best advantage, or range themselves in the background as mere lookers-on, turning up their refined noses at the follies of their neighbours. Surely such conduct must be tantalizing to those distressed damsels who have been sister-anning it the entire evening. Who has not admired the fortitude of these young ladies in standing beside their chaperones for whole hours, fearing to tumble their flounces or lose a chance by sitting, and hoping always to obtain some reward for their patience?

  In process of time their wishes may be gratified, but usually in so questionable a shape that one is inclined to doubt the desirableness of the change; for it is a singular fact that the votaries of Terpsichore are most frequently such as appear least designed by Nature to shine in the dance, but who are nevertheless willing and anxious to undertake anything, from a quadrille to a polka-mazurka. They are generally very young and slender or decidedly short and stumpy, and by way of contrast, invariably select the tallest and best-looking girls in the room. Woe to those who entrust themselves to their guidance on the plea that anything is better than nothing at all! These heroes are impudent shams, and know none of the duties expected of them. Either they rotate in a circle about a foot in diameter, while their unhappy partners are kept screwed up like birds ready trussed for table, from which martyrdom, all stiffness and palpitations, they will soon pray to be released; or else, after wandering wildly like erratic stars, running foul of every couple they encounter, and thereby coming ot grief, they suddenly find themselves stretched full length upon the floor, ‘the observed of all observers.’

  The young gentlemen of the present day are really remarkable in their way, and deserve some credit for the skill they evince in their getting up. Look at their morning costume! Pork-pies much smaller than the feminine type; coloured shirts that save washing-bills, worn very open at the neck, to exhibit the symmetry of their throats and the evidence of Adam’s weakness; small paletots with pegtop sleeves and unmentionables, or knickerbockers and gaiters! They may generally be seen indulging in a cigar or short pipe, even when in female society, and this may account for the undeveloped nature of their conversation, which, to be sure, is not too deep at the best of times. It is usually summed up by, ‘Awful cold to-day;’ ‘Do you know B-- ? Got a splendid animal!’ ‘Awfully dull, ain’t it?’ - and so on, their range of words and ideas only embraci
ng about one quarter of every fourth page of the dictionary. They sit, stand, and walk in free-and-easy attitudes that prove they have the full use of their limbs; and at times, when ‘awfully bored,’ they yawn and stretch themselves by way of relief. As to ever undergoing the exertion of saluting ladies according to the old-fashioned style of raising the hat, that would involve such a startling amount of bodily labour as not to be thought of for an instant; a nod, or a stick lifted to the brim, answers every purpose quite as well. Nevertheless, these nondescripts flatter themselves they are gentlemen, though I think they are only shams.

  ‘Oh, indeed!’ I can hear them exclaim; ‘and pray, then, what may you call the young ladies of the present day?’

  Some of them are shams likewise, but who made them so? Imagination pictures bright, tender, loving beings, all softness, gentle ways, and flowing drapery, and behold instead thereof fast girls; or bad imitations of the genus homo: shams every whit! They are strong about the subject of horse-flesh, laugh at everything, and forswear blushes as being vulgar and commonplace. I am told they can even talk slang, but I confess I have not heard them do so myself, so I conclude they know how to suit themselves to their company. But I know that they skate - well or ill, matters not; wear very short petticoats in the daytime and very low dresses at night; dance the reverse of quietly, and ogle their partners, who are too bored with life in general to return the compliment; and finally, they sum up their accomplishments by making love to the men, as they cannot talk to them into fulfilling their own duty in this respect.