Revieu of Recievt, IjlllOG. 



Notable Books of the Month, 



515 



taken of them; in fact, their character as Turkish 

 women would be gone for ever were the half known. 

 "Are you not exceptions?" he asks them one day 

 when they are more than usually in revolt against 

 their oppressors. 



'We are the rule. Take twent.v Turkish women at 

 random— fashionable women, of cou:se — and you will not 

 find one who does not talk like that. . . . No. we can 

 bear it no longer." 



But leave Turkey, no ! Rather endure the worst 

 humiliations, the cruellest slavery. 



And the end ? For it must end — this time of 

 clandestine meetings arranged with infinite pains 

 and precautions. One September they commit an 

 unheard-of piece of daring ; thev all go together on 

 the hills and in the woods : — 



Zeyneb and Melek draped in silks of palest hue. almost 

 white, walking beside Djenane. always in elegiac black. 

 Their dresses trailed over the exquisite turf, over the fine, 

 short grass, brushing the violet blossoms of the autumn 

 crocuses, disturbing up the golden yellow leaves that had 

 already fallen from the plane trees. They might have 

 been three Elysian Shades crossins the valley of the 

 Great Rest, the one in the middle in mourning being 

 doubtless a Shade still lamenting her earthly love. 



One more meeting — the last. Then they must 

 separate for ever. And the weeks moved on, and 

 still they met. One day he sees them in their own 

 home ; then they hire a carriage, and with him, as 

 Bey, drive into the country. Now he may some- 

 times see their young, charming faces. The last 

 autumn that they can spend together is over ; the 

 .spring, even the summer, of 1905 has come, and the 

 time of Andre Lhery's return to France draws very 

 near. Meetings are much more difficult this year. 

 The violet crocuses are out again in the grass ; the 

 cold autumn rains fall one day, the next is warm 

 and strangely limpid. At all costs they are to meet 

 once more in the first days of October, and once 

 more they do meet. All three little phantoms are 

 to be married again ; moreover, they are too inde- 

 pendent, it seems : they must have husbands who 

 will master them. Djenane will submit ; then it can- 

 not be true that . . . He wonders. Melek is in 

 a high fever merelv at the thought of re-marriage. 

 If onlv thev might be treated more as thinking, re- 

 sponsible beings, not forced to marry men tbey have 

 never seen — it is all they would ask at first. 



THE END OF ALL. 



One morning a blue ribbon is seen outside 

 Djenane's barred windows ; Melek's twenty years of 

 life are ended. Zeyneb, they know, must soon fol- 

 low her ; but she lives to send to Andre Lhery, now 

 in France, Djenane's last letter, written on the eve 

 of her intended marriage to her former husband, 

 written in the very last moments of her life, which 

 she cuts short bv poison : — 



And your hook — our book? . Did you really feel 



the sadness of our life? Did you really understand the 

 crime of awakening sleeping souls and then breaking 

 them if th€,v escape, the infamy of reducing women to 

 the passive condition of things? I wonder 



■ Ne saviez-vous done pas que je vouB ch^rissais de tout 

 mon etre? Quand on est mort. on pent {out avouer. Lea 

 regies du mnnde. il ny en a plus . . 



' Je t'aime, entends-tu du m'^'iis ce!a. je t'aiitte." 



Then it was true. 



THE TUEKISH WOMAN'S IDEAL. 



\Vhat does the modem Turkish woman ask of 

 life? Does she know what she wants? Very well, 

 it would seem. Their supreme suffering is to be 

 able to love only a dream : — 



" For all of us are condemned to love nothing else. We 

 are married, you know how? And yet this semblance of a 

 European household . - . already represents a progress 

 which is flattering to us, though such a household is very 

 easily upset, hourly threatened as it is by the caprice of 

 a changeable husband. . . . Often, it is true, the man 

 thus given us by chance is good and kind, but tee have net 

 chosen him. We become attached to him in time, but this 

 affection is not love. . . . W^e do love, but we love with 

 our soul another soul. . . . And this love remains a 

 dream, because we are faithful wives, and, above all. 

 because it is too dear to us, this dream, for us to risk 

 losing it by attempting to realise it. . . . That is the 

 secret of the Mussulman woman's soul, in Turkey, in the 

 .year of the Hegira 1322. Our modern education has caused 

 this double nature." 



"With your existence," Djenane asks Andre, "your 

 existence so full of life and colour, can you conceive of 

 ours, so pale, nothing but years dragging along without 

 leaving any trace? We always know beforehand what 

 to-morrow will bring us— nothing and that all to-morrows, 

 till we die, will slip by with the same gentle insipidity, 

 the some uniform colourlessness. We live pearl-grey days, 

 padded always with soft down which makes us long for 

 stones and thorns. 



' In the novels which reach us from Europe there are 

 alwa.vs people who. in the evening of life, lament their lost 

 illusions. Ah, well, at least they had illusions 

 while we, Andre, have never had the chance of having 

 any, and "when our autumn comes we shall not even have 

 the melancholy resource of lamenting their loss. 



" We are the ladder, we, and doubtless our immediate 

 successors— the ladder by which Turkish women must 

 ascend to freedom. . . . Oh! our misinterpreted, mis- 

 understood Islam. . . . Oh! our Prophet, it is not he 

 who condemned us to the martyrdom inflicted on ns. 

 The veil he once gave us was a protection, not a sign of 

 slavery. Never, never did he intend that we should be 

 mere dolls to play with." 



Andre Lhery is to write a book telling of the 

 Turkish woman's soul and her sufferings. In that 

 book he must insist on — 



the empty feeling in our lives caused througii being 

 obliged only to talk to women, to have none hut women 

 friends, to be always among ourselves, with our fellows. 

 Our friends? they are feeble and weary as otirselves. . , . 

 We so sorely need a man friend, a strong man's hand, 

 something to lean upon, strong enough to bear us up if 

 we are near to falling. . . . Lives with nothing in them! 

 Do you feel the full horror of that? Poor souls, winged 

 now, but heid captive; hearts with the hot blood of youth 

 rising in them yet with all action forbidden them, unable 

 to do anything, even good, preying on themselves or con- 

 suming themselves in vain dreams. 



What can they do with their lamentable, aimless 

 little lives? They would relieve sickness and 

 sorrow, begin and carry out some great scheme for 

 good. . . . No ; they must remain unoccupied, 

 hidden for ever behind their iron bars — iron bars 

 which do a prison make, the most terrible of all 

 prisons. 



III.— THE SAIXT.* 



I have alreadv briefly noticed " The Saint," but 

 it is evident that the novel demands more lengthy 

 treatment. Mrs. Crawford's notice in the Fori- 

 iiightly Review has been quoted, but I must supple- 

 ment these brief notices by quoting at some length 

 from the admirable article by Mr. W. Roscoe 

 Thayer, on Antonio Fogazzaro and his master- 

 piece, which appears in the current number of the 



• ■ The Saint": an English translation of "11 Santo," by 

 Antonio Fogaizaro. Hodder. 68. 



