HAREM WIVES ARE BIG AND UNTIDY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17890, 5 July 1926, Page 4

HAREM WIVES ARE BIG AND UNTIDY.

ENGLISH WOMAN TELLS OF EXPERIENCES. Romantic young people who imagine that the inhabitants of a Turkish Prince’s harem resemble the bathing beauties of New Brighton are going to be disappointed if the experiences of Miss Maude Waddell, who spent six months in Constantinople, can be taken as an accurate guide. Miss Waddell was engaged in London to act as companion to the wife of Prince Abdul Medjid, who was banished from Turkey by Kemal Pasha (under ordinary conditions he would have been Sultan now).' and also to act as governess to his daughter. She held the position for six months and then returned to London. At present she is spending a holiday in Melbourne. “ The six months,” Miss Waddell said to-day. “added ten years to my age, so my friends told Vne, and I could talk for hotirs of my experiences and adventures. When I was engaged I was told that the Prince had only one wife, and even when I arrived the attempt to keep up the singular was still made. But T saw at least three other wives. BIG, UNGAINLY WOMEN. “Every effort was made to keep them from the glances of other men, and I do not wonder. They were huge women, with absolutely no figures. Their hair was always well brushed, but for the rest they were untidy. All they did all day was to sit down and watch gold fish in a pond. I saw no bubbling fountains and glorious cushions and pillows. The harem wos dirty. The inmates used to wear absurdly high heels—far higher than any I saw in Europe. As far as I could judge they favoured German dresses of white muslin, wearing them very tight over their fat figures. The dresses were usuallv plentifully decorated with pink ribbon. The harem was strongly guarded and inaccessible.” GERMANY IN FAVOUR, Miss Waddell said that the shops in Turkey were filled with cheap German goods, and to her it seemer that Germany was becoming well entrenched in the country, both politically and commercially. Since the evacuation of Constantinople by the Allied troops British people had been subjected to many small annoyances, in the cities the only people who did anv work were the Greeks and Armenians and the Turks were driving them out. ’Their places would be taken by opinion,” Miss Waddell said, “Britain lost sight of the importance of political situation in Turkey, in the trouble over the Mosul oil wells Turkev is more or less an unexploited country. The Turks themselves are so lazy.- There are indications of oil and minerals. Developed, Turkey would become very importa'Kemal banished Prince Abdul Mediid from Turkey, and the Prince with his train, went to Switzerland. Later France offered him the use of a house on the outskirts of Nice, provided he lived the life of a private individual and took no part in politics. The Prince accepted the offei.