Turkey ... By the roving Englishman ... A new edition

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TURKEY TURKEY BEING SKETCHES FROM LIFE F.Y THE ROVING ENGLISHMAN REPRINTED IN PART FROM "HOUSEHOLD WORDS." WITH NUMEROUS ADDITIONS A NE IV EDITION LONDON GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS The Broadway, Luhgate NEW YORK : 416, BROOME STREET 1S77 LONDON : PRINTED BY WOODFALL AND KINDER, MILFORD LANE, STRAND, W.C. TO MY PUBLIC. My Amiable and Discerning Friend, I have ventured to intrude upon your leisure to acquaint you with a few loose facts, which I have learned in various ways, respecting our mutual connections, the Turks. The dominant fraction of a people without a head, torn by discontented and stubborn or frantic nationalities, with a most abominable internal organization ; acting upon principles of government utterly false and absurd, yet rooted in their minds ; harassed and waylaid at every turn by foreign influence, often in the hands of interested and improper people ; bowing a stiff and unwilling neck to that influence, but resenting it in their deep stern hearts ; undoing, therefore, with the right hand that which they have been just forced to accomplish with the left ; seemingly pliable and easy, but really obstinate and austere beyond belief, — such (and something more) are our estimable allies.

I am sorry for it ; so, I dare say, are you ; but this, unfortunately, does not alter the fact, or the results which are likely to arise from it, be those results what they may. I have a high respect for the individual Turk ; I have often felt a warm personal friendship for him ; I have found him brave, simple, charitable, sincere. But, do you know, I am afraid this merely means that there are a great many good people everywhere. I am even very apprehensive that any VI person who might fairly discuss the general character of the Turkish nation would be likely to come under the charge of using rather strong language in the statement of his views. I will therefore, if you please, decline the opportunity which you have so obligingly afforded me on the present occasion, of enlarging any further on this topic.

I will merely be so bold as to observe that it appears to my limited understanding as if our wards were likely to become, at no distant period, the subject of a good deal of conversation ; I have been also led to believe that an honoured Public will find itself under the necessity of asking several questions about their progress and good behaviour, which the Tutors appointed to superintend their studies and deportment will not be able to answer so clearly and cheerfully as we could all wish, considering the pains we have been taking for their welfare, and the cost of their establishment. I most sincerely apologize for ex pressing this opinion, should you consider it premature or in correct, but I really do not think you have altogether full and trustworthy information about their goings-on.

Chapter I. The Sultan

THERE is a large crowd assembled on the shores of the Bosphorus to see an Ambassador, who is going to pay his visit of ceremony to the Sultan. Let us suppose him to be the Austrian Internuncio, for the sake of example. He will do as well as any other chief of an important Foreign Mission. The new Envoy and his suite embark in their gilded caique to have their first official audience of his Imperial Majesty. The Am bassador is not only accompanied by his secretaries, attache's, interpreters, and a whole host of minor functionaries, but his following is considerably increased in number, while its splendour is vastly augmented by a number of Austrian Naval officers who have come up from the Dardanelles ; and by the mag nificent uniforms of several strangers of distinction who have arrived here to see one of the last acts of a most splendid and wonderful historical drama.

Preceded by some half-dozen cavasses, a kind of body guard allowed to Foreign Missions in Turkey, the glittering crowd marches on, with not a little clanking of spurs and trailing of sabres, all of which, of course, adds considerably to the imposing character of a grand ceremony of State. Mean time, fancy grows busy with anticipations of their reception. The Internuncio and his suite, however gorgeous, will surely B not proceed at once into the presence of so mighty a potentate as the Sultan. Most of the Turks in place have been told quite often enough of their weakness and decay to understand the Western world's opinion of them perfectly ; and although the mild Prince* who now sits upon the tottering throne of Constantinople is far, very far, from vainglorious, yet the magnificent traditions of the East can hardly be quite forgotten.

The bitter humiliation and consciousness of his own impotence, which must have weighed so heavily on the kind heart of Abdul Medjid of late years, do not perhaps prevent him from being surrounded with a certain faded state which will have something impressive in it ; I had almost said touching. The incense of his own courtiers, indeed, think some of us, must sound like a most sorrowful and unreal mockery to him, when he is torn away from it so often to hear the stern lecture of first this hard mouthed Ambassador, and then the other ; but his own rare efforts to keep up his dignity may be respected as one should respect the fallen fortunes of any man or thing that has been great, and is sorely humbled. Let us follow the Ambassador and his suite, however, and we shall judge for ourselves. When they arrive at the palace, they are conducted by some stragglers, who happen to be lounging about the premises, through a little garden, formally laid out in the old French style.

It is one of those gardens which have nothing but the name — a garden with little patches of flower beds cut into triangles and crescents, and having hard, dry, pebbly useless paths between ; paths upon which nobody ever does or could walk. The garden may possibly cover a quarter of an acre of ground, not more, and is soon passed. The Am bassador and his train are then led into a low stone passage, which has many mysterious doors on each side of it. This passage is very dark, rather damp, and particularly bare and sordid in appearances It has nothing of Oriental pomp about * Abd-ul-Medjid ; now means 1853. t The late Sultan has been often reproached with his extravagant mania for building ; but had his predecessors built more, perhaps he would not have built so much. Twenty-five years ago there was hardly a royal resi dence in Turkey.

The Sultan. 3 it. Yet here we are in the precincts of the Imperial Palace, and the Sultan is, I dare say, within hearing of us somewhere nigh. Meantime, half a dozen servants and officers of the household seem as busy as Orientals ever are, in showing us upstairs to the State apartments. There is nothing brilliant about the aspect of these Turkish gentlemen-in-waiting. Except for their red caps with gilt badges of office in the crowns of them, they might be taken for German artisans of the lower order in their Sunday clothes. They are quite as heavy, as awkward, and as consequential, and their things bulge out in the wrong places, precisely as though they had been made by a Teutonic tailor, more intent on philosophy than on thread or scissors. A few guards clad in brown, with sashes of gold lace, and having no arms but sabres, are also posted here and there without order or regularity.

The day is bleak and drizzly ; nothing can be more commonplace, dreary, and uncomfortable than our position and surroundings. Things change a little for the better as we ascend the stairs, in spite of the gloom which still seems to hang over everything. Upon the first landing is stationed one of the Sultan's body-guards, and he is dressed in clothes which are at least meant for a uniform. The intention of their maker is not very successfully carried out, but it is obvious that it has existed, and we are satisfied, for that is at least a commencement of scenic effects befitting the time and place. We go up some dingy stairs with the Ambassador's splendid escort, and from the dingy stairs into a dingy room, a room dingier, I vow, than a lawyer's office in Gray's Inn. It is ill-furnished, and there are not chairs enough in it for the Ambassador's suite ; more are brought from another apartment, but still there are not enough, so that a fresh supply is imported.

Then the carpet, which is dingier than anything around except the sofas, does not half cover the floor ; but this apparent parsimony is merely Oriental fashion, so we must not be sur prised at it. At last the Grand Vizier turns up with a dazed look, as though he had just been disturbed in a nap, and would rather be in another place where there was not too much light. He is followed after a brief interval by the Grand Interpreter, who is a high officer in Turkey ; then comes the Minister for B Foreign Affairs. They are all dressed in ill-made European clothes ; and their advent is immediately succeeded by pipes and coffee. The pipes are very handsome, though not so beautiful as those often served in private houses. They have richly jewelled mouthpieces of amber, sometimes black, sometimes of a pale lemon colour, and the cost of them is often as preposterous as that of Dutch tulips, bearing no relation whatever to their value.

The coffee is served in little cups of jewelled filagree, of which the best are made at Trebizond. Neither the coffee, nor the tobacco brought with the pipes is very good, and the coffee is drunk unstrained, without sugar, according to the fashion of the East. There is not much conversation : everybody feels very cold and strange ; everybody also is ignorant of the etiquette of the place, and no one likes to commit himself for fear of be coming the butt and laughing-stock of his acquaintance for evermore. There might be, perhaps, plenty to say, for men must be dull indeed who cannot talk to a Minister for Foreign Affairs ; but the making of a remark is rather too serious a business to be repeated often. Thus, for instance, the Am bassador observes, for want of anything else to say, that " it is a cold day."

No sooner are the words out of his Excellency's mouth than the Chief Dragoman of the Embassy, a plethoric Levan tine, whose breath comes uncommonly short, leaves off snort ing over his scalding coffee ; and dropping what remains of it on his knees, rises with an expression of haste and confusion. A tear of intense anguish is in one of his eyes, and the tightness of his uniform has forbidden him the solace of a pocket-handkerchief, so that the tear gradually descends and tickles his nose, till he is driven to the verge of madness. " It is a cold day," repeats the Internuncio, nodding, for he is a pleasant, cheery man, who has been oppressed by the stony silence about him, and wants to break it up. The Dragoman does not hear or does not catch the words, for he has a pipe in one hand, a coffee-cup in the other, and an Die Sultan. 5 incipient cough in his throat, while his mind is wholly absorbed in the dreadful tickling of that tear.

" It is a cold day," tell him, says the First Secretary of the Embassy, in a sharp tone. " Whisper to Nooderl to tell Birbantaki it is a cold day," says one of the Attache's who likes the Interpreter, to another who does not. " I won't speak to the fellow ; tell him yourself," is the answer, in the same undertone. Grand Vizier (who thinks the Internuncio is impatient to see the Sultan) : " All in good time ! " Minister for Foreign Affairs (mortally afraid of a threatened complaint from the Austrian Government about the unsatisfied claims of an inventor for extracting sunbeams from cucumbers) : " Let us go." Grand Interpreter of the Sublime Porte (a phlegmatic old man who thinks slowly) : " That's not it." Internuncio. " What does he say ? " Dragoman (keeping down his cough by a great effort) : " His Excellency, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, is anxious to know what your Excellency said."

Internuncio (who supposes that the whole affair of the cold day has been settled long ago) : " I ? I said nothing ! What was said to me?" The Dragoman is puzzled, and struggles desperately with his cough. While he is doing so the friendly Attache' pulls him by the skirts of his coat, and communicates to him the first observation of the Internuncio. Dragoman (gasping) : " His Excellency the Internuncio takes advantage of this opportunity to remark that it is a cold day." Minister for Foreign Affairs (who has been whispering piteously to his colleagues) is much relieved, and murmurs, " God is great," amidst general silence. Intertiuncio (smiling good-humouredly to thaw the ice around): "Eh? What?" Dragoman (just remembering that the Stock Exchange at Galata closes in an hour, and that all his family will be waiting in vain for him) : " His Excellency the Minister for Foreign Affairs observes to your Excellency that 'God is great.' It is a Turkish " " Eh ?

Yes ! of course, I dare say ! But when are we going to see the Sultan ? My feet are quite chilled." The Ambassador looks bored, and the pipes having been changed for others still more expensive, the whole party rise. They take their way along a passage and pass through a faded curtain, which is drawn aside for them, till presently they reach a suite of moderately large rooms, dotted sparsely over with dejected-looking chairs, none of which stand quite straightly on their legs. A freshly lit fire of coal bums sulkily in one or two of the grates, and gives forth a dispiriting smoke in splenetic and fractious puffs. The rain rattles spitefully against the palace windows, as though it had a quarrel with them ; the noses of the guards ranged in a line along a corridor are quite red with cold, their hands are blue.

Let us hurry on. The last room of these state apartments is smaller than the rest. It would be used as a refreshment-room if Strauss were to give a concert there. A dim and surly fire smoulders sluggishly in the grate, and there is a plain sofa without a back, placed next to the wall at the extreme end of the room. This is the presence-chamber ; and as the Ambassador enters with his suite, an individual is seen to rise slowly from the sofa, and he stands mutely up to receive his visitors as though he were an automaton wound up for that purpose. He shows no sign of life or thought. In person he is a dark, wearied-looking man, apparently about forty years old, though he is in reality ten years younger. He is dressed in a dark blue frock-coat, with a Prussian collar. The sleeves and the collar of it are embroidered with gold and diamonds ; both his coat and his trousers are much too large for him ; they hang about his frail limbs and puny body in dis consolate folds.

Thus he appears bandy-legged and top-heavy, like a child's toy, and there is something uncanny about him, as though he were stuffed and not alive. He wears no ornament but the Nisham, a large gold plate encrusted with diamonds, which is hung round his neck ; and a heavy Turkish scymitar, set with jewels also, but dirty and lustreless. On his head is a The Sultan. 7 red cap, and on his feet are a pair of French boots with varnished tips, but so large that it is marvellous how he walks in them without tumbling down. This is Abdul Medjid, the Sultan of Turkey. As the Ambassador and his following approach it is painful to see the monarch's embarrassment. It amounts evidently to con stitutional nervousness, and is manifested in all his movements. His eyes wander here and there like those of a schoolboy called upon to repeat a lesson he does not know.

He changes his feet continually, and makes spasmodic movements with his hands. I am sure his beard, a very fine one, is uncomfortable to him, and that he feels as if he had a hair shirt on. I am still more sure that he feels literally Ambassadored to death. One was at him yesterday, just after breakfast ; here is another to day, before he has finished his pilaff — as may be noted by the curious ; and to-morrow is not the Ambassador of Ambassadors announced, that terrible Sir Harry Needybore, who is half crazed by contradictory instructions from Lord Partyman and Mr. Jonas Worrit, C.B., the permanent under-secretary of the department which rules over him ? Oh for a little rest ! Oh for his quiet ride where the sweet waters flow and the melons ripen ! Oh for repose beside the bright-faced Lesbian girl he left behind him in the harem ; who will soothe his aching temples with cooled rosewater, and lull him to sleep with her songs !

The Ambassador stands forward, his suite fall back, and he begins to speak after the manner of a popular preacher who is talking at a weak-kneed member of his congregation, for reasons known to both of them. Meanwhile the cold drops gather visibly on the Sultan's forehead, and his poor thumbs and toes are never still a moment. Excellency Internuncio, however, has not much to say just then ; the sterner part of the discipline he has to administer must be done privately. For the present he merely pronounces with a loud voice some of the commonplace civilities which are always offered to royalty, and concludes with a flourishing encomium on the power and glory of his own nation. Nothing more. The Sultan replies. What he says nobody knows : not the best Oriental scholars in the room, though they listen with strained ears, can make anything of it.

Certain dislo cated sentences are jerked painfully from his Majesty's lips in syllables and fragments— that is all. The Grand Interpreter, however, is by no means at a loss : he at least has got a neat little speech cut and dried ; he learned it by heart at mosque yes terday ; so he begins to bob and duck with great assiduity. He is a fat little man, whose clothes are too tight for him, and he does not appear to advantage in them, but he delivers himself suc cessfully. The Sultan gazes hopelessly up at the ceiling, then down at his boots, and once — oh, how longingly ! — at the door. There is silence ; one might hear a pin fall, while every eye is turned upon the changing countenance of the monarch. Then comes a bustle. Strangers must withdraw ; and the Ambassador, with his interpreter, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, and the Chief Dragoman of the sublime Porte remain in company un observed.

No wonder the Sultan looked so harassed ; he is safely shut up for an hour's lecture against all his most cherished opinions, against his prejudices, his education, his conscience, and religion. "The weary thing To be a king." Let us go scuffling out with the rest of the throng, dear Public, turning our backs upon Majesty with rather too little ceremony. We shall return to the room from whence we came, and there await the Ambassador's coming. Our feet are damp, our noses are blue, our uniforms pinch us under the arms, our corns are shooting wildly, for the costume in which usage requires men to present themselves before Princes is the most uncomfortable which can be devised by perverse ingenuity. We rejoice at the second appearance of coffee and pipes ; and when they are disposed of we look stiffly at each other from the giddy heights of our embroidered coat-collars, and our backs ache not a little.

A fair hour has elapsed. Many of us have long ceased to feel our noses at all ; they have passed from a state of chill and smarting into a comatose condition ; and our pipes have been burnt out and carried away before the Ambassador returns. But when he does dawn upon us, yellow as a living pancake, Die Sultan. 9 with gold lace before and behind, we perceive that he is quite radiant. He has delivered himself with startling effect ; he is a kind, good, sympathetic man in his ordinary intercourse with other people ; yet I soon learn that he has said things in his private audience with the poor limp Sultan which would pro vide him with his passports in twenty-four hours at any Court in Europe — yea, even at the court of Schwartzwurst-Schinkens hausen. Glancing from this self-satisfied Excellency to the Minister for Foreign Affairs (who has been recently appointed because his predecessor did not obey the orders of the Russian Prince Knockoff with sufficient promptitude), I note that he is blushing red with anger and humiliation ; that Minister's under lip has fallen, and he seems to be literally wincing corporally under the treatment he has received.

If the Ambassador were to speak to him suddenly just now, I should not be surprised to see him stand up with an outstretched hand in the attitude of a schoolboy who is going to receive punishment for having been caught beyond the limits of his playfield. However, as I said before, the Internuncio * is delighted, and his entrance into the room causes quite an agreeable reaction on our spirits. After a few words of course, we all rise, and putting on our clogs in the dark passage before mentioned we wade across the garden, which has now become deep in mire, and then cuddling ourselves up in our cloaks go coughing and sneezing homewards. Such is the ceremony at the reception of foreign ambassadors in Constantinople during the month of April in the year of grace one thousand eight hundred and fifty-three, while the Crimean war is brewing briskly.

The court of the Sultan has neither grace, dignity, nor splendour ; I confess I could not help being saddened by the spectacle. I was sorry to see the most gentle and merciful Prince who ever sat upon the blood-stained throne of the Caliphs so shorn of that magnificence which is espe cially prized by Orientals. * The words Internuncio and Ambassador are both used in this chapter as though they had the same signification ; but, strictly speaking, the Austrian Internuncio at Constantinople ranks between an Envoy Extra ordinary and an Ambassador. No one, indeed, can seriously regret the humbling of the Turkish power in Europe. One is too apt to remember the epitaph on a famous brigand, in which the traveller is advised not to mourn for the robber chief, because had he been living the traveller would have been dead.

The decay of Mussulman power is synonymous with the advance of Christianity ; and even the most sceptic philosopher could scarcely lament the gradual passing away of almost universal dominion from a race who never founded but one civilized* empire in the world, and who, from the palsying influence of Mohammedanism, have done nothing for art, science, or literature during the four hundred odd years that they have possessed in wealthy leisure one of the finest countries upon earth. They have done absolutely nothing, and worse, for they have suffered sand to collect over some of the most precious monuments of the past, and let the pride of many beauties crumble unheeded into dust. Where stood the Forum of Constantine, founder of the great city which they took from the Byzantines, with its porticoes of marble and lofty columns of porphyry ?

Where is the colossal statue of Apollo, supposed to be the work of Phidias, and in numerable other treasures which genius created for immor tality ? Where is the stately Hippodrome of the sport-loving Greeks of the lower empire, with its statues and obelisks ? The public baths, with their threescore images of bronze ? The circus ? The theatres ? The schools ? All those wonders of architecture which would have been standing to-day had they fallen into other hands ? Alas 1 every one of them is destroyed, and the traveller may look in vain for anything to remind him of the thousand glories of the past, which were committed to their keeping, and which have been either destroyed by neglect and unthrift, or ignorantly defaced. It is not fair, however, to cast up accounts with Turkey, so as to show too large a balance against her.

The Turks who came from the Golden Mountains, and followed the banner of the Blacksmith's Apron to the shores of the Bosphorus, were a far nobler and more vigorous type of men than the effeminate rabble they over came ; and Providence never seems to have decreed that the * Granada. The Sultan. 11 arts and treasures of a degenerate people should be any defence against the armed avengers of their sins. Tyre and Sidon, Babylon and Nineveh, not to speak of Jerusalem, could have doubtless shown finer collections of antiquities, and marvels of human handiwork more wonderful than any which were shattered or dispersed when the captain of a Paynim host rode on horseback into the Church of St. Sophia. Every now and then, in course of ages, the world receives one of those stern lessons which bids nations to put their trust on high, and there only.

The Turks have been long recognized by the wisest of statesmen as a political necessity ; and it is easy to show the truth ot that estimate of their position. The Ottoman Empire is an important barrier against a sullen military despotism of which all thinking persons stand most reasonably in dread. Let us therefore protect Turkey with a good-will, since we shall find our interest in doing so ; and perhaps while we are about it we might give our help a little less contemptuously, at all events till we can find an ally as useful and as strong. Moreover, it is altogether a queer and dangerous notion to suppose that if we did not extend our patronage and protection to the Turks they would all appear in Basinghall Street before Mr. Registrar Moneyman, and subsequently dissolve in writs and law costs.

On the contrary, they are a most fierce and warlike folk who, with exception of a few officials, would feel much rejoiced to be freed from the infliction of unpalatable advice. The result of a lovers' quarrel between us would probably be a massacre of every Christian throughout the Ottoman dominions, and the foundation of a new Mussulman Empire under a warlike leader, who would gather together the loose tribes of Moslems now scattered about from the Danube to the Oxus, from Syria and Egypt to Turkestan and Cabool, till we had to reckon with him upon our Indian frontier and make it up. Timurlenk and Bayazid, and Orchan, Suleyman and Saladin were all rough customers, and several Mohammedan gentlemen with sidelong looks and uneasy manners at a civic feast, have shown us, even within living memory, how Orientals can fight.

Havelock and Outram Lawrence and Clyde did not get their laurels without a tussle for them, whatever the organist's assistant at Exeter Hall may think about that objectionable business which happened during the sixth decade of the nineteenth century in Hindostan or elsewhere. I cannot, perhaps, conclude this chapter more conveniently than by contrasting, as a reminder to hectoring ambassadors, the reception which their predecessors in diplomacy received from the Ottoman despot, with that which I have already related. It may be useful to them. The receptions always took place on grand divan days, immediately after the payment of the troops ; so that Foreign Envoys admitted to the honours of an audience might see the Sultan on parade ; and that the soldiers under arms might give the stranger a fitting idea of the Ottoman might.

The Ambas sador was usually granted an audience upon a Tuesday ; and as the divan assembled shortly after daybreak, the Ambassador had to get up betimes in order that he might present himself at the Bagdsche Kapussi (garden gate of the palace) before sun rise, for after that there was no admittance. Here he was met by the Tschausch Bashi, an inferior dignitary of the Empire who was charged with his reception. This functionary welcomed the stranger Envoy as his guest, and arranged the order of his further proceedings. The Tschausch Bashi rode before a Minister Plenipotentiary, but gave a kind of surly precedence to an Ambassador, taking place, however, at his right hand, and before all his suite. When the procession reached the " Divan Joli," or grand street of the divan, it halted, and the Ambassador went on foot to visit the Grand Vizier.

He was often kept waiting the pleasure of the Grand Vizier for many hours. When the Vizier deigned at last to show himself, his suite took precedence of the Ambassador's, who were directed to march in order behind them at a respectful distance and at a measured pace. A little further on they were commanded to halt again, and the High Chamberlain made his appearance, carrying a silver staff, which he struck haughtily upon the ground as he walked. I cannot help fancy ing that he must have been a strange sight. Preceded by the important functionary with the silver stick, the Ambassador and his attendants, who must all have been rather tired and The Sultan. 13 hungry by this time, moved slowly on once more. At the divan the Ambassador was obliged to leave the greater part of his suite behind him.