One of the Six Hundred: A Novel
Newton was her cousin, her kinsman, her early playmate and boy lover,
her idol, and her hero! What right, then, had this stranger, this
Englishwoman, this mere Acquaintance, to seek to rob her of him? But
she could not do so now. Newton was Cora's, and in her dreams he was her
lover and her husband, of whom she prayed only to be worthy and more
deserving still; and so the poor girl would dream on till morning
came--the chill, gusty morning of autumn, when the brown leaves were
swept by the cold eastern blast against the windows of the old
manor-house, and down the wooded glen; and with that chill morning would
come the bitter consciousness that it was all a dream--a dream only, and
that he whom she prayed for, and loved so hopelessly, was far, far away
in the land of the savage Tartars, exposed to all the perils of the
Crimean winter and of the Russian war, and that amid them he was
thinking, not of her but of another! But to resume my own story.
Berkeley, who had been on the sick list since our arrival at Gallipoli,
was reported fit for duty on the morning we embarked for Varna. Most of
the British troops were ordered there, or to Scutari, while the mass of
our allies were to remain about the coast of the Dardanelles. On this
morning, however, I saw the 2nd Zouaves march, as Studhome said, "with
all their ladies of light virtue and boxes of heavy baggage," for
embarkation; and they presented a stirring spectacle, those swarthy,
lithe, and black-bearded fellows, their breasts covered with medals won
in battles against Bou Maza, and other sheiks of the Arab tribes, and
their faces bronzed almost to negro darkness by the hot sun of Africa.
Their turbans and baggy breeches of scarlet gave them a very Oriental
aspect; but their swinging gait and rollicking air, together with the
remarkably free-and-easy manner in which they "marched at ease," and the
songs they sang, announced them all sons of _la belle France_; and,
singularly enough, every second or third file had a pet cat perched on
the top of his knapsack. The tricolor was decorated with laurel; their
long brass trumpets played a strange and monotonous, but not unwarlike
measure, to which they all stepped in rapid time; and in the intervals
of the music many of them joined in a song, which was led by
Mademoiselle Sophie, who was riding _a la cavalier_ at their head, in
rear of the staff, with her little brandy-keg slung over her left
shoulder.
I caught just a verse as she passed; but I frequently heard her sing the
same song at a future time--
Vivandiere du regiment,
C'est Catin qu'on me nomme,
Je vends, je donne, et bois gaiment,
Mon vin et mon rogomme.
J'ai le pied leste et l'oeil mutin.
Tin-tin, tin, tin, tin, tin, r'lin tin-tin.
J'ai le pied leste et l'oeil mutin.
Soldats, voila Catin!
Above all other voices, I could hear that of her friend, or lover, Jules
Jolicoeur, most lustily--
Soldats, voila Catin!
as he marched along with his hands in his pockets, and his musket slung
butt uppermost. Our transport was taken in tow by a war steamer. Thus
our progress through the Sea of Marmora was rapid. We passed
Constantinople in the night, to our great regret; and as no part of it,
save the palace of the Sultan, was then lighted with gas, it was
involved in darkness and silence. At least, we heard only the voices of
the patrols, and the barking and howling of the thousands of homeless
dogs which prowl through the streets. Being unclean, they are never
domesticated; yet their litters are never destroyed, and they feed on
the offal of the houses, or on the headless trunks that are at times
washed up from the Golden Horn. Next day, as we proceeded up the
Bosphorus, a swift (Clyde-built) Turkish steamer was running ahead of
us; and we remarked that, whenever she passed a fort or battery, the
standard with the star and crescent was immediately hoisted, and a
trumpet was heard to sound.
At the Castle of Roumelia, and such places, we saw the slovenly Turkish
guards getting under arms, and also that on each occasion the standards
were dipped or lowered to half-mast three times. This indicated that
the ship had on board a pasha of three tails, or one of equal rank,
whose standard was flying at the foremast-head; and soon after we
learned that he was the munadjim bashee, or chief astrologer, one of the
first officers of the seraglio, and always consulted by the Sultan
Abd-ul-Medjid. No public work was ever undertaken until he declared the
stars to be propitious; and now he was steaming ahead to see how they
looked at Varna! By the letter I had despatched from Gallipoli, I had,
to a certain extent, relieved my mind, as I concluded that at Varna I
should receive the answer, and that then all my suspense and anxieties
would end, in the course of a few weeks at latest.
Against the strong current which sets in from the Black Sea, and which
runs at the rate of four miles an hour down the Bosphorus, we steamed
steadily on; and as the wind was fair, our transport carried a tolerable
spread of canvas. Our sail was a delightful one! The weather was calm,
and the scenery and objects on the European and Asian shores were ever
changing and attractive. The abrupt angles and bends of the coast
seemed to convert the channel into a series of seven charming inland
lakes of the deepest blue--there being seven promontories on one side,
and seven bays on the other, each bay running into a fertile valley,
clothed with the richest foliage of the Oriental clime; and amid that
waving foliage rose the quaint and fantastic country dwellings of the
wealthy Frankish, Greek, or Armenian merchants of Stamboul, with their
painted kiosks, gilded domes, and towering minarets, tall, white, and
slender.
On the left or European shore, the whole panorama was a succession of
beautiful villages, terraced gardens, and groves of chestnut, plane, and
lime trees, with here and there long, sombre, and solemn rows of
gigantic cypresses and poplars. On the right or Asian shore, the objects
of Nature were of greater magnitude. The groves became forests, and the
hills swelled into mountains; and, towering over Brussa, rose Olympus,
"high and hoar," covered with laurels and other evergreens to its
summit.
Under a salute of cannon from the Castle of Europe, and still preceded
by our Turkish friend, the astrologer with three tails, we hauled up for
Varna, giving a wide berth to the dangerous Cyanean rocks, between which
Jason steered the Argonauts in equally troublesome, but more classic,
times.
From thence a run of about one hundred and fifty miles brought us to the
low flat shore of Varna, where, on the 28th of May, we were all landed
without accident or adventure, and placed under canvas among the rest of
the troops. The aspect of Varna from the bay was somewhat depressing.
Rising from a bank of yellow sand, a time-worn rampart of stone, ten
feet high, loop-holed and painted white, encloses the town on its four
sides, each of which measures somewhat more than a mile. This old wall
had witnessed the defeat and death of Uladislaus of Hungary, by the
troops of the Padishah Amurath II., and it yet bore traces of the
cannon-shot of the Scoto-Russian Admiral Greig, who bombarded Varna in
1828.
Before the walls lies a ditch, twelve feet deep, and over both frown a
number of heavy guns, which I found to be chiefly sixty-eight pounders;
and over all rose the countless red-tiled roofs of the houses, with the
slender white minarets and round leaden domes of the mosques, looking
like wax-candles by the side of inverted sugar basins. Beyond, in the
distance, stretched far away to the base of wooded hills the flat
Bulgarian shore.
Painted with various colours, the tumble-down and rickety houses were
all of wood, and exhibited a rapid state of dilapidation and decay.
Prior to our arrival, the silence must have been oppressive. Save when
a swallow twittered under the broad eaves, when a saka (or
water-carrier), with his buckets suspended from a leather belt, shambled
along, slipshod or barefoot, with water for sale, a hamal (or porter),
laden with his burden, or when the wild dog that lay panting on a heap
of festering offal uttered a hoarse growl, no sight or sound of life was
there, when the fierce sun of unclouded noon blazed down into the narrow
and tortuous streets. The place exhibited only Turkish filth,
inactivity, and stupidity, till the arrival of the Allies, when its
wooden jetties opposite the principal gate became piled up with
munitions of war--bales, tents, tumbrils, and cannon; its roadstead
crowded with war-ships, transports, and gunboats, under sail or steam;
its bazaar filled by regimental quartermasters, cooks, and caterers, or
soldiers' wives in search of food, &c.; its five gates held by military
guards--the merry Zouave, the grave and stern Scottish Highlander, the
showy Coldstream, or the sombre rifleman.
Then its streets became literally alive, and crowded with the British,
who came by sea, and the French, who came pouring over the Balkan.
Their silence was broken by the sharp beat of the brass drum, and the
sound of the ringing bugle every hour or more, and by the measured tramp
of feet, as detachments on every imaginable duty marched to and fro
between the camps, the town, and harbour, scaring the wild dogs from the
streets, and the kites from the roofs and mosque domes, who were alike
unused to such unwonted bustle and activity.
Crowds of Turks and Bulgarians, wearing caps of brown sheepskin, short
jackets of undyed wool, and wide white trousers, with vacant wonder
surveyed us, as brigade after brigade came on shore, our horse, foot,
and artillery; while the little dark Arabs of the Egyptian contingent
viewed with something akin to awe our brigade of Foot Guards, whose
personal bulk and stature, with their white epaulettes and black
bearskin caps, made them seem the veritable sons of Anak to those
shrivelled children of the desert.
Amid the crash of military music, the glitter of arms, and the waving of
silken colours, as regiment after regiment marched to its
camping-ground, were to be seen the woebegone, helpless, miserable, and,
in some instances, still seasick wives of our soldiers, hurrying wearily
after their husbands' battalions, carrying bundles or children,
sometimes both, while other scared little ones were trotting by their
side, and holding by their ragged and tattered skirts; but there was one
soldier's wife who appeared to European and Oriental eyes under very
different auspices.
"All these marvels reached a climax," says a writer,[*] "when a boat
from the _Henri IV._, rowed by six dashing French sailors, in snow-white
shirts and coquettish little glazed hats, stuck with a knowing air on
the side of their heads, shot up alongside the landing-place, and in the
stern appeared the Earl and Countess of Errol--the former an officer in
the rifles, and the latter intent upon sharing the campaign with her
husband. I think the old civil pasha (_mussellem_ of the city?), who
was seated on a chair at a little distance, scarcely knew whether he was
on his head or his heels when the lady was handed up out of the boat,
and made her appearance at the town gate, with a brace of pistols in a
holster at her waist, and followed by a Bulgarian porter, with a shoal
of reticules, carpet-bags, and books, and taking everything as coolly as
if she were an old soldier. The whole party followed the rifles to the
field, and the countess is at the present moment living under canvas."
[*] In the _Daily News_.
This lady, who excited so much attention was Eliza, Countess of Errol,
and her husband--as my uncle would have reminded me--was hereditary high