The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Part 4

On meeting, we used to join our notes together.

The wedding was a very pretty one. The bridegroom was a boy of fifteen; and the bride, a Shaykh's daughter, was about the same age. There was a great deal of singing and dancing, and they were all dressed in their best costumes and jewellery. I was invited to the harim of the bride's house, where we had a merry time of it. Whilst we were enjoying our fun the girls blew out all our lights, and we were left in the darkness. The bride ran and threw her arms round me, for protection perhaps, and then commenced such a romping and screaming and pinching and pulling that I hardly knew where I was. It was evidently considered a great frolic.

After a few minutes they lit the candles again. At last the bride, robed in an izar and veiled, mounted a horse astraddle, and went round to pay her last visit to her neighbours as a maiden. Coming back, the bride and the bridegroom met in the street, and then we all adjourned to her father's house, where there were more ceremonies and festivities. At midnight we formed a procession to take the bride to her bridegroom's house, with singing, dancing, snapping of fingers, and loud cries of "Yallah! Yallah!" which lasted till 2 a.m. Then the harim proceeded to undress the bride. We were up all night, watching and joining in different branches of festivities.

The wedding over, we returned home to Salahiyyeh by slow stages. It was a terribly hot road through the desert. I suffered with burning eyeb.a.l.l.s and mouth parched with a feverish thirst. I know nothing to equal the delight with which one returns from the burning desert into cool shades with bubbling water. Our house seemed like a palace; and our welcome was warm. So we settled down again at Damascus.

We had a troublesome and unpleasant time during the next few months, owing to a continuation of official rows. There were people at Damascus always trying to damage us with the Government at home, and sending lying reports to the Foreign Office. They were most unscrupulous. One man, for instance, complained to the Foreign Office that I had been heard to say that I had "finished my dispatches," meaning that I had finished the work of copying Richard's. Imagine a man noting down this against a woman, and twisting it the wrong way.

I think that the first shadow on our happy life came in July of this year, 1870, when I was at Bludan. An amateur missionary came to Damascus and attempted to proselytize. Damascus was in a very bad temper just then, and it was necessary to put a stop to these proceedings, because they endangered the safety of the Christian population. Richard was obliged to give him a caution, with the result that he made the missionary an enemy, and gave him a grievance, which was reported home in due course.

Another way in which we made enemies was because Richard found it necessary to inform the Jews that he would not aid and abet them in their endeavours to extort unfair usury from the Syrians. Some of the village Shaykhs and peasantry, ignorant people as they were, were in the habit of making ruinous terms with the Jews, and the extortion was something dreadful. Moreover, certain Jewish usurers were suspected of exciting ma.s.sacres between the Christians and the Moslems, because, their lives being perfectly safe, they would profit by the horrors to buy property at a nominal price. It was brought to the notice of Richard about this time that two Jewish boys, servants to Jewish masters who were British- protected subjects, had given the well-understood signal by drawing crosses on the walls. It was the signal of the ma.s.sacre of 1860. He promptly investigated the matter, and took away the British protection of the masters temporarily. Certain Israelite money-lenders, who hated him because he would not wink at their sweating and extortions, saw in this an opportunity to overthrow him; so they reported to some leading Jews in England that he had tortured the boys, whom he had not, in point of fact, punished in any way beyond reproving them. The rich Jews at home, therefore, were anxious to procure our recall, and spread it about that we were influenced by hatred of the Jews. One of them had even the unfairness to write to the Foreign Office as follows:

"I hear that the lady to whom Captain Burton is married is believed to be a bigoted Roman Catholic, and to be likely to influence him against the Jews."

In spite of woman's rights I was not allowed to answer him publicly.

When I heard of it, I could not forbear sending a true statement of the facts of the case to Lord Granville, together with the following letter:

"H. B. M. CONSULATE, DAMASCUS, "November 29, 1870.

"MY LORD,

"I have always understood that it is a rule amongst gentlemen never to drag a lady's name into public affairs, but I accept with pleasure the compliment which Sir ---- ---- pays me in treating me like a man, and the more so as it enables me to a.s.sume the privilege of writing to you an official letter, a copy of which perhaps you will cause to be transmitted to him.

"Sir ---- ---- has accepted the tissue of untruths forwarded by three persons, the chief money-lenders of Damascus, because they are his co- religionists. He a.s.serts that I am a bigoted Roman Catholic, and must have influenced my husband against them. I am not so bigoted as Sir ---- ----; for if three Catholics were to do one-half of what these three Jews have done, I would never rest until I had brought them to justice.

I have not a prejudice in the world except against hypocrisy. Perhaps, as Damascus is divided into thirty-two religions, my husband and I are well suited to the place. We never ask anybody's religion, nor make religion our business. My husband would be quite unfitted for public life if he were to allow me to influence him in the manner described, and I should be unworthy to be any good man's wife if I were to attempt it. My religion is G.o.d's poor. There is no religious war between us and the Jews, but there is a refusal to use the name of England to aid three rich and influential Jews in acts of injustice to, and persecution of, the poor; to imprison and let them die in gaol in order to extort what they have not power to give; and to prevent foreign and fraudulent money transactions being carried on in the name of Her Majesty's Government. Also it has been necessary once or twice to prevent the Jews exciting the Moslems to slaughter, by which they have never suffered, but by which they gratify their hatred of the Christians, who are the victims. I think n.o.body has more respect for the Jewish religion than my husband and myself, or of the Jews, as the most ancient and once chosen people of G.o.d; but in all races some must be faulty, and these must be punished. There are three mouths from which issue all these complaints and untruths; and what one Jew will say or sign the whole body will follow without asking a question why or wherefore, nor in Damascus would their consent be asked. It is a common saying that 'everybody says yes to them because they have the money.' These three men count on the influence of men like Sir ---- ----, and one or two others, and impose upon their credulity and religious zeal to get their misdeeds backed up and hidden. But will such men as these protect a fraudulent usurer because he is a Jew?

"I enclose a true statement of the case, and also some private letters, one from our chief and best missionary, which will show you something of the feeling here in our favour.

"I have the honour to be, my Lord, "Your most obedient and humble servant, "ISABEL BURTON.

"To the Earl Granville, etc., etc., "Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs."

To this I can only add: if the Shylocks of Damascus hated me, so much then more to my credit.

There were many temptations to turn us from the path of right, if we had a mind to go. Politics at Damascus were most corrupt, and bribes were freely offered to us both from all sides. They did not seem to understand our refusal of anything of the kind. It had evidently been the custom. Richard had as much as 20,000 pounds sterling offered him at once, and personally I had no end of temptations to accept money when I first came to Damascus. If we had taken gold and ignored wrongs, we might have feathered our nests for ever, and doubtless have retired with much honour and glory. But we would not. In this way I refused several Arab horses which I would have given worlds to accept, for I was pa.s.sionately fond of Arab horses, and could not afford to buy them; but as we should have been expected to do unjust things in return, or rather to allow unjust things to be done, I refused them. I had more jewels offered me than I should have known what to do with, but refused them all; and I take some credit to myself in this matter, because I might have accepted them as gifts without any conditions, and I like diamonds as much as most women, or rather I like their value.

In November we had quite an event in Damascus--the wedding of the Wali's daughter. It was the most splendid wedding I ever beheld. It lasted five days and nights. The men celebrated it in one house, and the women in another. We mustered several hundred in all. I was among the _intimes_, and was treated _en famille_. By my side throughout was Lady Ellenborough, looking like an oriental queen, and the charming young wife of our Italian Consul, whose dress was fresh from Italy. The dresses were wonderful in richness, diamonds blazing everywhere. But one custom took my fancy: the best women wore simply a plain cashmere robe and no ornaments, but loaded all their jewels on one or two of their slaves, who followed them, as much as to say, "If you want to see all my fine things, look behind me; it is too great a bore to carry them myself."

On the eve of the wedding there was a long procession of female relatives, and we all sat round in the large hall. Every woman in the procession bore branches of lights; and the bride was in the middle, a beautiful girl of fifteen or sixteen. Her magnificent chestnut hair swept in great tresses below her waist, and was knotted and seeded with pearls. She was dressed in red velvet, and blazed all over with precious stones. Diamond stars were also glued to her cheeks, her chin, and her forehead. And they were rather in the way of our kissing her, for they scratched our faces. She was a determined-looking girl, but she had been crying bitterly, because she did not want to be married. She sat on the divan, and received our congratulations sullenly, looking as though she would rather scream and scratch.

On the marriage morn we were up betimes. The harim had begged of me to wear an English ball-dress, that they might see what it was like. I said, "I will do what you ask, but I know that you will be shocked."

"Oh no," they replied; "we are quite sure we shall be delighted." So I wore a white glace silk skirt, a turquoise blue tunic and corsage, the whole affair looped up and trimmed with blush roses, and the same flowers in my hair. Thus arrayed I appeared before the harim. They turned me round and round, and often asked me if I were not very cold about the shoulders; if it were really true that strange men danced with us and put their arms round our waists, and if we didn't feel dreadfully ashamed, and if we really sat and ate and drank with them. I could not answer all these questions over and over again, so I said I would describe a European ball by interpreter. They hailed the idea with delight. I stood up and delivered as graphic an account as I could of my first ball at Almack's, and they greeted me at intervals with much applause.

The marriage was a simple but most touching ceremony. We were all a.s.sembled in the great hall. The Wali entered, accompanied by the women of the family; the bride advanced, weeping bitterly, and knelt and kissed her father's feet. The poor man, with emotion, raised her and clasped a girdle of diamonds round her waist, which was before ungirdled; it was part of her dower. No one could unclasp it but her husband, and this concluded the ceremony. Shortly afterwards the bride was borne in procession to the congratulations of all the women present. After about half an hour she was conducted to a private room by a female relative, and the bridegroom to the same room by a male relative. The door was shut, and the band played a joyous strain. I asked what was going to happen, and they told me that the bridegroom was allowed to raise her veil, to unclasp her belt, and to speak a few words to her in the presence of their relatives. This was the first time they had really seen one another. What an anxious moment for a Moslem woman!

Shortly after this we went on an expedition to visit the Wuld Ali, a chief who was much dreaded by those of other tribes. Richard and I rode into the encampment alone. When first the tribe saw our two dusky figures galloping across the sand in the evening, they rode out to meet us with their lances couched; but as soon as they were close enough to recognize Richard they lowered their weapons, jumped off their horses and kissed our hands, galloped in with us, and held our stirrups to alight.

I need not say that we received all the hospitality of a Bedawin life.

Richard wanted to patch up a peace between the Wuld Ali and the Mezrab tribe, but in this he did not succeed.

We had a delightful ride when leaving one encampment for another, and several of the Bedawin accompanied us. As we mounted Richard whispered to me, "Let's show those fellows that the English can ride. They think that n.o.body can ride but themselves, and that nothing can beat their mares." I looked round, and saw their thorough-bred mares with their lean flanks. I did not know how it would be with our half-breds; but they were in first-rate condition, full of corn and mad with spirits.

So I gave Richard my usual answer to everything he said: "All right; where you lead I will follow." As soon as the "Yallah!" was uttered for starting, we simply laid our reins on our horses necks, and neither used spur nor whip nor spoke to them. They went as though we had long odds on our ride. We reached the camp for which we were bound an hour and a half before the Bedawin who were to have come with us. Neither we nor our horses had turned a hair. Their mares were broken down, and the men were not only blown and perspiring, but they complained bitterly that their legs were skinned. "Ya Sitti," said one, "El Shaitan himself could not follow you." "I am sorry," I replied, "but our _kaddishes_ would go; _we_ wanted to ride with _you_."

When we returned from this expedition we went to Beyrout, where we spent our Christmas. We ate our Christmas dinner with the Consul-General, and his dragoman told me an astounding story about myself which was news to me, as such stories generally are. He said that, a certain Jewish usurer at Damascus had told him that, when I met his wife at the wedding of the Wali's daughter, I tore her diamonds off her head, flung them on the ground, and stamped on them, saying that they were made out of the blood of the poor. I was amused at this monstrous fabrication, but I was also annoyed. In England there may be much smoke but little fire, but in the East the smoke always tells that the fire is fierce, and one must check a lie before it has time to travel far. Knowing what certain Jews in England had reported about me before, I lost no time in putting matters to rights with the authorities, and dispatched the following letter to the Foreign Office:

"January 27, 1871.

"MY LORD,

"I trust you will exempt me from any wish to thrust myself into public affairs, but it is difficult for Captain Burton to notice anything in an official letter concerning his wife, neither can we expect the Damascus Jews to know the habits of gentlemen. They respect their own harims, yet this is the second time I am mentioned discreditably in their public correspondence. In one sense it may be beneficial, as I can give you a better idea of the people Captain Burton has to deal with than official language allows of, and from which my s.e.x absolves me.

"My offences against the Jews are as follows:

"I once said 'Not at home' to ---- ---- because I heard that he had written unjust complaints to the Government about my husband. Later on the Wali gave a _fete_ to celebrate the marriage of his daughter. I was invited to the harim during the whole feast, which lasted five days and nights. The Wali's harim and the others invited made, I dare say, a party of three hundred and fifty ladies. I need not say that men were not admitted; their festivities were carried on in another house. The ---- harim was amongst the invited. As I supposed that they knew nothing of what was going on, I was not desirous of mortifying them by any coldness in public, and accordingly I was as cordial to them as I had always been. On the last day the wife of ---- separated herself from her party, and intruded herself into the Consulesses' divan. We were all together; but there was often a gathering of the Consulesses for the sake of talking more freely in European languages, Turkish being the language spoken generally, and Arabic being almost excluded. I received her very warmly, begging her to be seated, and conversed with her; but she would talk of nothing but her husband's business. I said to her, 'Pray do not let us discuss this now; it is not the time and place in public, where all can hear us.' She replied, 'I want to talk of this and nothing else.

I came for that only.' I said, 'You are a good woman, and I like you, and do not want to quarrel with you. Why speak of it? We are two women.

What do we know of business? Leave it for our husbands.' She replied, 'I know business very well, and so do you. I will speak of it.' I then said, 'If you do, I fear I shall say something unpleasant.' She replied, 'I do not mind that, and I will come and see you.' I said, 'Pray do; I shall be delighted.' And so we shook hands and parted.

"Six weeks after I came to Beyrout, and found that it was popularly reported by the Jews that I had torn Madame ----'s diamonds from her hair on this occasion, thrown them on the ground, and stamped upon them. ---- ---- arrived soon after me; and hearing from some mutual friends that this report had reached me, he came to see me, and told me that it had been invented by his enemies. I replied that I thought it very likely, and that he need not mind. He then told me that his family, and his wife in particular, were very fond of me, and that she had recounted our interview at the wedding to him just as above, and as a proof of their friendly feelings they were coming to see me to invite me to a _soiree_.

"With many regrets for trespa.s.sing so long on your valuable time, "I am, my Lord, "Your faithful and obedient servant, "ISABEL BURTON.

"The Earl Granville, "Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs."

A gentleman, Mr. Kennedy, from the Foreign Offices at home, was staying at the Consul-General's at Beyrout, so we thought it right to invite him to Damascus, and he accepted our invitation a few weeks later.

As this was an official visit we made every preparation. I met him at Shtora, the half-way house between Beyrout and Damascus, and travelled with him in the diligence. At the last station we found the Wali's carriage and a troop of soldiers as a guard of honour, and we then journeyed in it to our house. The next morning Mr. Kennedy visited the Consulate, and apparently found everything straightforward and satisfactory, and he paid official calls with Richard. During the next few days I showed him most of the sights of Damascus, and one evening I gave a large _soiree_ in his honour. Mr. Kennedy was fain to own that in its way it was unique. He had never seen a party like the one I was able to a.s.semble. We had thirty-six different races and creeds and tongues: grey-bearded Moslems, fierce-looking Druzes, a rough Kurdish chief, a Bedawin shaykh, a few sleek Jewish usurers, every one of the fourteen castes of Christians, the Protestant missionaries, and all the Consuls and their staffs; in fact, everything appertaining to public life and local authority, culminating in the various Church dignitaries, bishops, and patriarchs. The triple-roomed hall, with fountains in the middle, lighted with coloured lamps; the bubbling of the water in the garden; the sad weird music in the distance; the striking costumes; the hum of the narghilehs; the guttural sound of the conversation; the kawwa.s.ses in green, red, blue, and gold, gliding about with trays of sherbet, sweets, and coffee,--all combined to make the quaintest scene.

I should like to mention an anecdote here. In the garden next to ours there was a large wooden door, which swung always on its hinges. It made such a noise that it kept Mr. Kennedy awake at night. The garden belonged to an old woman, and I asked her to have her gate fastened. She sent back an answer that she could not, as it had been broken for years, and she had not the money to spare to mend it. So I took the law into my own hands. The next night Mr. Kennedy slept well. At breakfast he remarked the circ.u.mstance, and asked how I had managed about the door.

"If you look out of the window," I answered, "you will see it in the courtyard. I sent two kawwa.s.ses yesterday to pull it down at sunset."

He put on that long official face, with which all who are in the service of Her Majesty's Government are familiar, and said, "Oh, but you must really not treat people like that. Supposing they knew of these things at home?" "Suppose they did!" I said, laughing. I had ordered that, after Mr. Kennedy's departure that day, the gate was to be replaced and mended at my expense. The next time the old woman saw me she ran out exclaiming, "O thou light of my eyes, thou sunbeam, come and sit a little by the brook in my garden, and honour me by drinking coffee; and Allah grant that thou mayest break something else of mine, and live for ever; and may Allah send back the great English Pasha to thy house to bring me more good luck!" However, the "great English Pasha" did not return, for that evening a mounted escort with torches and the Wali's carriage came to convey him and myself to the _gare_ of the diligence, and we reached Beyrout that evening.

Nothing of importance happened at Damascus during the next few months.

It was a terribly cold winter. We were pleasantly surprised by the arrival of Lord Stafford and Mr. Mitford, to whom we showed the sights.

We had a few other visitors; but on the whole it was a sad winter, for there was famine in the land. The Jewish usurers had bought up wheat and corn cheap, and they sold grain very dear; it was practically locked up in the face of the starving, dying mult.i.tude. It was terrible to see the crowds hanging round the bakers' shops and yearning for bread. I used to save all the money I could--alas that I could not save more!--and telling a kawwa.s.s and man to accompany me with trays, I used to order a couple of sovereigns' worth of bread and distribute it in the most dest.i.tute part of our suburb. I never saw anything like the ravenous, hungry people. They would tear the trays down, and drag the bread from one another's mouths. I have sat by crying because I felt it mockery to bring so little; yet had I sold everything we possessed, I could not have appeased the hunger of our village for a single day. I wondered how those men who literally murdered the poor, who kept the granaries full, and saw unmoved the vitals of the mult.i.tude quivering for want, could have borne the sight! Surely it will be more tolerable for the cities of the Plain in the day of judgment than for them.

CHAPTER XVI. JERUSALEM AND THE HOLY LAND. (1871).

Thy servant take pleasure in her stones, and favour the dust thereof.

Psalm cii. 14.

It had long been our desire to visit Palestine and the Holy Land thoroughly, and so in March, 1871, we determined to set out. Richard wished me to go by sea and meet him at Jerusalem, as he was going by land with Mr. Drake, who had now returned from England; so I travelled across to Beyrout, with the intention of going from there by sea to Jaffa at once. But when I reached the harbour of Beyrout there was such a rough sea that I judged it better to wait for another steamer. So I put up at the hotel at Beyrout, where I made my first acquaintance with Cook's tourists. They swarmed like locusts over the town, in number about one hundred and eighty; and the natives said of them, "These are not travellers; these are Cookii." Certainly they were a menagerie of curious human bipeds. I lunched and dined with them every day at the _table d'hote_, and mingled with them as freely as possible, for they interested me greatly, and I used try and cla.s.sify them much as an entomologist would cla.s.sify his beetles and insects. One lady of forbidding appearance was known as "the Sphinx." When on an expedition, it was the custom to call the "Cookii" at 5 a.m., and strike the tents at six. It appears that her bower falling at the stroke of six disclosed the poor thing in a light toilet, whence issued a serious quarrel. She wore an enormous, brown, mushroom hat, like a little table, decorated all over with bunches of brown ribbon. Then there was a rich vulgarian, who had inveigled a poor gentleman into being his travelling companion, in return for his expenses. And didn't he let us know it! This was his line of conversation at the dinner table: "You want wine, indeed! I dare say. Who brought you out, I should like to know? No end of expense. Who pays for the dinner? Who paid for the ticket? What do I get in return? No end of expense." And so on, and so on. I longed to drop a little caustic into Dives, but I was afraid that poor Lazarus would have to pay for it afterwards.