The Times

FANCIFUL FICHUS.
HAREM COSTUMES.

A Writer Tells About the Sultan's Many Wives.

When I was in Constantinople a few months ago, I found an odd state of affairs existing in regard to the dress of Turkish women, notably in regard to the covering of their faces. I am referring now to Turkish women of the better class, those who belong to the more important harems, and are able to clothe themselves in the richest stuffs. From time immemorial, it has been the custom of the land, than which no law is stronger, for such women to appear upon the streets or in their caiques on the Bosphorus, or in the queer bullock wagons that take them for Friday afternoon picnics on the hills of Scutari, wearing the feradji and the yasmak, the former a sort of cape with sleeves under it, the latter an arrangement of gauze veiling that covers everything of the face except the eyes.

Thus clad, the ladies went about freely in the streets of Stamboul, driving sharp bargains at the bazaars with men of their own race, or, crossing the Galata bridge, made their way to Pera, the European quarter, and went shopping on the European plan at the Bon Marche. Sometimes they went on foot, sometimes in carriages, and were nearly always accompanied by a discreet female slave, for already the old days of jealous guardianship by ferocious eunuchs with scimitars were in the past.

It is to be presumed that this greater freedom accorded to Turkish ladies came to them as a sweet privilege and stirred in their breasts that desire for admiration which is strong in all daughters of Eve. Now that European influences had permitted them to step from behind the heavy walls and latticed windows that used to guard them, why should they not get that thrill of pleasure which comes from the homage of men, even strangers? Why should they not, those of them who are fair, let the world see, as they passed by, not only the languorous glow of their dark eyes, but the red of their lips and the smoothness of their brows, and their perfect teeth? Plainly, there was only the yasmak with its white folds to prevent such a revelation and this obstacle might be done away with by making the gauze thin enough, so thin as to be almost transparent. And the new fashion spread from one harem to another until it came to pass, a few years ago, that the real beauties of Constantinople were offering their faces to the practically unobstructed gaze of whoever cared to look, the only women who clung to the thicker yasmak of old being those who had no beauty to reveal.

And all went merrily in the Turkish capital, with many smiles through the flimsy folds and many looks that seemed to say, to some dashing Turkish officer or elegant European: "I am glad you think me beautiful;" but one day the Sultan, strolling about in his rose garden, passed near some Turkish women who had come to visit the ladies of his Palace. And one of the visitors who was exceedingly fair and knew it, instead of withdrawing modestly and casting down her eyes as usage commanded, stood before Abdul Hamid unblushingly uncovered, or at least veiled with so fine a gauze that it might as well have been nothing. And the Sultan, on investigating the matter and learning how the new fashion was threatening Turkish notions of modesty, issued a proclamation that the ladies of Constantinople, when they went abroad, should wear the yasmak no longer, but another garment, called a charchaff, a great shawl enveloping the body from head to foot with a piece at the front falling down over the face like a mask.

As the charchaff is made of satin or silk, there was no longer any possibility of the ladies gratifying their vanity; indeed, when you see a Turkish woman thus attired you see nothing at all, no more than if a black bag was moving by with a rather ungraceful swaying or waddling. Sometimes the black bag carries in its arms a baby or a parasol.

On several occasions I amused myself by snapping pictures of these women wearing the charchaff, and one of them is herewith reproduced; it shows a number of Turkish ladies of the better class disembarking from a Bosphorus ferry boat; each one looks exactly like the other, and each one is as well disguised as if she were at a masquerade ball.

And it was exactly here that the Sultan overreached himself. True, he made the ladies put away the alluring yasmak and hide their faces, but he could not make them (indeed, what sovereign could?) abandon the ways of coquetry. The lessons from the West had been taken all too well to heart, and the fascination of conjugating the verb "to flirt" had become too generally understood. So, with Oriental finesse, the Constantinople ladies proceeded to make a virtue of necessity, and put to use the very weapon that had been used against them—that is, made the charchaff further their little affairs of the heart far better than the yasmak had ever done. For now nothing was easier than to elude the vigilance of any prying eye, thanks to an outer garment which made Fatima different in no respect from Negdar or Zahra or Sophia, or any other charming lady who might be going about the city for purposes of her own.

If a black-shrouded figure passed through some little door and into a particular house, who could know or say whether it belonged there or in some other house? And at the holiday gatherings on the Sweet Waters of Asia, when the whole winding stream, with its shading cypress trees swarmed with caiques in which sat laughing women, who were to decide whether the amiable Turk in the stern beside this woman or that woman came, the pasha and men of influence decided that things were going badly in their harems, that the women were no longer content to sit there all day putting henna on their finger nails and stuffing themselves with sweetmeats, and waiting resignedly for their lord and master to favor one of them with word or look. Rebellion was brewing among them and the heresy of European notions was working sad havoc. They did not even believe any longer that they were born to be men's slaves and created to serve men's pleasure. And the charchaff was offering them practical immunity for very different purposes.

So, from one side and another, appeal was made to the sultan that the women might be allowed or compelled to put aside the dissimulating charchaff and go back to the yasmak, which at least made it possible to tell who was who, and was now regarded as by far the lesser of two evils. What consultations and discussions went on in the big white Yildiz Kiosque no one knows, but at last, less than a year ago, a new proclamation was issued, which was so queerly worded that it practically gave women the choice of dressing as they pleased, so long as they made some pretense of covering their face. Which meant, of course, that even in Turkey, women were beginning to get their own way.

About this time I made the acquaintance in Constantinople of an American dentist who has the honor of looking after the sultan's teeth and in consequence has many patients, both men and women, among the highest classes. He has spent hours in various harems and has thus been able to make the acquaintance of many Turkish women and study their characters and peculiarities. At his earlier visits the chief eunuch would remain in the room while he did his work, but afterwards he would be left free from surveillance and could chat with the women as he pleased.

He assured me that they are like a lot of school girls, except that they have far less instruction than the average European school girl, and that they would worry his life out with questions about the women of America. Endless in their curiosity to know how our women dress, down to the smallest detail, how they spend their time, and especially what use they make of the wonderful freedom given them by American men.

Already many of them in the house wear American dress, the veils and charchaffs being put on only when they go out of doors. Many of them, too, are studying French and English, with native governesses to teach them, and are reading with a great thirst for knowledge, such books in those languages as come into their hands.

"Are there many pretty ones," I asked of the dentist, "among these Turkish women?"

"Of course there are a few," he said, "but most of them are fat and coarse looking and altogether uninteresting. You know a Turk doesn't think a woman is beautiful unless she has a figure like a beer barrel."

"Are they intelligent?"

"Some of them are very, and no doubt many would develop into fine women if they had half a chance—that is, if they had better instruction and a decent religion. It is my opinion, they are getting pretty sick of being treated as animals without souls."

I have no doubt the American dentist is correct in this opinion, and these recent revolutionary happenings with the yasmak and the charchaff are significant of other things to come—they show the way the wind is blowing.

was there by right of proprietorship, or by no right at all save that which lovers take to themselves? For it must be borne in mind that no one in Turkey, neither soldier nor officer of the law, would think of laying hands upon a woman or bidding her show her face, since a woman's person is sacred throughout the Sultan's realm, except to her husband.

No doubt the harem beauty who flirted thus ran a certain risk. She might wake up some morning and find herself neatly sewn in a bag at the bottom of the Bosphorus, for the Turkish husbands do not trifle with these matters. But when, pray, did woman let the thought of danger quell the promptings of her heart?

After about a year of the charchaff re