We Could Not Catch A Glance Of A Single Figure Moving
In These Great Pleasure-Grounds.
The road winds round the walls;
and the outer park, which is likewise planted with trees, and
diversified by
Garden-plots and cottages, had more the air of the
outbuildings of a homely English park, than of a palace which we
must all have imagined to be the most stately in the world. The
most commonplace water-carts were passing here and there; roads
were being repaired in the Macadamite manner; and carpenters were
mending the park-palings, just as they do in Hampshire. The next
thing you might fancy would be the Sultan walking out with a spud
and a couple of dogs, on the way to meet the post-bag and the Saint
James's Chronicle.
The palace is no palace at all. It is a great town of pavilions,
built without order, here and there, according to the fancy of
succeeding Lights of the Universe, or their favourites. The only
row of domes which looked particularly regular or stately, were the
kitchens. As you examined the buildings they had a ruinous
dilapidated look: they are not furnished, it is said, with
particular splendour, - not a bit more elegantly than Miss Jones's
seminary for young ladies, which we may be sure is much more
comfortable than the extensive establishment of His Highness Abdul
Medjid.
In the little stable I thought to see some marks of Royal
magnificence, and some horses worthy of the king of all kings. But
the Sultan is said to be a very timid horseman: the animal that is
always kept saddled for him did not look to be worth twenty pounds;
and the rest of the horses in the shabby dirty stalls were small,
ill-kept, common-looking brutes. You might see better, it seemed
to me, at a country inn stable on any market-day.
The kitchens are the most sublime part of the Seraglio. There are
nine of these great halls, for all ranks, from His Highness
downwards, where many hecatombs are roasted daily, according to the
accounts, and where cooking goes on with a savage Homeric grandeur.
Chimneys are despised in these primitive halls; so that the roofs
are black with the smoke of hundreds of furnaces, which escapes
through apertures in the domes above. These, too, give the chief
light in the rooms, which streams downwards, and thickens and
mingles with the smoke, and so murkily lights up hundreds of
swarthy figures busy about the spits and the cauldrons. Close to
the door by which we entered they were making pastry for the
sultanas; and the chief pastrycook, who knew my guide, invited us
courteously to see the process, and partake of the delicacies
prepared for those charming lips. How those sweet lips must shine
after eating these puffs! First, huge sheets of dough are rolled
out till the paste is about as thin as silver paper: then an
artist forms the dough-muslin into a sort of drapery, curling it
round and round in many fanciful and pretty shapes, until it is all
got into the circumference of a round metal tray in which it is
baked.
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