The Tar Pit

Caragea liked women. In this regard, his behaviour, and his son's, beyzade¹ Costachi, was a perpetual outrage. When he eyed a wife, he would send her man on a faraway business, and if needed in exile, and then he would take with him a few guards and introduce himself to the patient's woman, with or without permission.

Beyzade Costachi, a handsome young man, had no occupation other than looking to provoke the young and pleasant ladies. He ganged up with a few sons of boyars with whom he would roam the hood day and night. Once, while being chased by the husband of one of his conquests, whom he was carrying along with him in his carriage, and seeing how he was about to be caught, he pulls out the pistol and aims to shoot the betrayed man; the bullet however hits one of his own horses, the horse falls out of the harness and the beyzade gets his ass kicked. The next day, the unfaithful wife was banished from the conjugal eaves² and the fiddlers improvised the song:

A whore you were, a whore you'll remain,
I don't want to see you again!³

Back then gallantry wasn't easy and not just anyone would dare be courting. When a young man sought a girl, he risked stumbling across her father or her brother, and then no question about it, the priest would immediately sing the dance of Isaiah⁴ and marriage, although forcible, was valid. If the poor youngster⁵ had affairs with a married woman, things got more serious, as the retribution depended a lot on the guild to which the outraged man belonged. The butchers had the habit of swelling the offenders with a pipe like rams, and then they'd send them home in a carriage. The tailors made use of the large scissors on their workbenches⁶. A grocer who found the mister under the stairs, at his wife's place, stripped him naked, then greased him with tar from head to toes, placed a pair of horns on his head, tied him to a piece of iron, gagged him and then flogged him on the bridge, and so everyone avoided him like the devil, such that not even his servants would let him into the house. Next day the coachman found him hidden in the stable trough. Another mister was greased with honey on the naked skin and left the entire day as prey for flies and wasps.

There were no such things as sidewalks or boulevards back then!... Women were surrounded by all the prophylactic precautions; the windows had jail-like bars⁷; the gates were hard to open, since they were equipped with heavy bolts; and when a wife went to a relative, to a friend or to the baths, she was accompanied by two-three old and faithful mistresses. Girls were held even more drastically; they could barely get out in the garden, and the gardens were surrounded with tall walls or with stakes made out of oak planks. Not even the suitors could see them until marriage negotiations were through, such that the groom wasn't always sure that he took a good look at the face of his fiancée.

The daughter of a high boyar, returned from a cloister from Vienna, where she was raised and where she acquired an extraordinary musical talent on the clavier, brought with her the precious instrument to his man's house. One evening, the boyar, catching sight of a few folks who were hidden behind the planks to hear the beautiful songs played by the young dilettante, got so jealous that the second day when the young woman woke up, miserable girl!... she found the clavier axed into a thousand pieces. Her sorrow was so bad that in a few weeks they brought her to the grave. She wished on her deathbed for her coffin to be made out of boards from the clavier, but the priest was against it, saying that it was the Devil's vessel.

Art was largely unknown. In all Bucharest there were a single piano and a harp. Music belonged to fiddlers and church singers. The only person with artistic inclinations was miss Ralu, Caragea's small daughter, a distinguished kind, posessing the taste of aesthetics in its highest grade, admirer of Mozart and Beethoven's music, nourished with the writings of Schiller and Goethe. She had found in a few Greek folks, relatives and friends from the Greek school from Măgureanu⁸, student admirers of Euripides' and Sophocles' tragedies, an element towards staging a few plays. With a bit of tailored fabric and with encrusted paper, the lady organized in her apartments a small scene on which they would play in Greek Orestes, the Death of Brutus' sons⁹ and a few idylls such as Daphnis and Chloe.

Later she built a theatre at "The red fountain", at the intersection of Victoriei and Fântânei¹⁰, in the place where today one can see a lamp hidden behind an iron curtain; a theater in all its form, with a ground floor, with stalls, a stage and multiple rows of boxes. The ruins of that edifice, burned in 1825, could still be seen circa 1840, when they burned down in the walls of Ioan Carătașul¹¹.

Miss Ralu dreamed of raising the Greek theatre¹². For this purpose she sent Aristia to Paris¹³, to study the famous Talma. She also brought from Vienna a troupe of German artists who played operas and dramas. One member of that troupe was the famous Dilly, singer and tragedienne of great merit, who came to Bucharest for only a winter. And falling in love with one of our young boyars, she remained in our capital until her death, giving birth to one of our elder generals.

The momentum given by miss Ralu to the dramatic arts ceased along with Caragea's escape, but subsequently a weak imitator was found in Smaranda Ghica from Gorgan, in whose house, after the 1821 revolution, Aristia entered as a teacher for the kids. There Iancu Văcărescu looked to place the Romanian language on the stage; he tried to play Britanicus and Molière's L'Avare, but the exile, the war, the Moskals and many other calamities postponed the work until 1833, when Câmpineanu¹⁴ founded the Philarmonic Society.

The disorders around the country, as well as the revolt of Caragheorghe and Pasvantoglu, the incursions of bandits¹⁵, the Greek Eteria and the revolution from 1821 caused a twang in the string of bravery of Romanian youth. They started enjoying weapons, hunting and riding; the sons of boyars took an air of cabadai¹⁶, a term adopted by them signifying a stout man.

During the time of Grigorie-vodă Ghica, circa 1823-1824, the lads didn't miss any chance to dress with poturs¹⁷, with a mintan¹⁸ and cepchen¹⁹; to tie their hands with tarabolus²⁰ and to fill their sileah²¹ with pistols and a yatagan²², as well as hanging their pala from their necks²³. For the smallest thing they would pull out their weapons, so that, from how peaceful they used to be before, they became quarrelsome and troubling. Among them, the most infamous were Iancu, the son of beyzade Costachi Caragea and Ralița²⁴ Moruzi, the Bărcănești brothers, Bărbucică, a grandson of the ban Barbu Văcărescu²⁵ and a few others who went rogue and became the dread of the hood²⁶. They would party all day in Cișmigiu with fiddlers on the green fields and, as the moon rose, they would leave with guitars and flutes to serenades under the girls' windows and beautiful wives. All night long until sunrise, the hood was full of song, squabbling, fights and barking dogs²⁷.

One night the young Palama, while attempting to drive away the donjuan Bărbucică Catargiu from the windows of his betrothed, found himself with a knife in his belly. The poor man, bathed in blood, could barely utter the name of that who stabbed him; and his mother ran in desperation to the palace and woke up vodă with her yelling. Grigorie Ghica summons the baș-ciohodar²⁸ Măciucă²⁹, who brings Bărbucică to the court, slams him to the ground, and by the prince's bidding pulls out one of his fingers, then sends him to exile at the monastery. From there the poor suffering donjuan³⁰ went to Paris with the thought of studying painting, an art for which he thought he had a great vocation.

Anarchy was reigning everywhere, and the ease of shooting people was in such fashion that the victim being always presupposed to be shot during hunting, the killed was left unpunished.

During one of the parties attended by many youth, while they were returning to Bucharest, in a carriage with four horses there were three lads: Iancu Caragea, Dimitrachi Bărcănescu and Iancu Crețulescu, later nicknamed Ursu, after a she-bear fondled his cheek with her paws. The former two, starting to fight, shoot each other and the carriage goes into the court of the Moruzoaie³¹, sending her son and her nephew drowned in a bloodbath. After three days, two hearses were following one another, bringing on their last road two of Bucharest's most elegant and finest youth.

A strange time!... Only the coming of the Moskals in 1828 put an end to this flippant life of the young boyarlets³², who were taken as commissioners (mehmendars³³), to help supply the armies with provisions and carts. In 1831 most of them fastened their swords and enrolled in the national militia.³⁴

Filed under: olds.
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