CHAPTER IX

CONSTANTINOPLE IN 1884

“_13th Sept._ 1884.

“LEFT London in low spirits, aggravated by the announcement of Lord

Northbrook having presented a complimentary letter from the Queen to

that miserable Tewfik. I am on my way to Constantinople to try and urge

the Sultan to take a lead in reform. He must do so now, or he will lose

his hold over Islam for ever, but I do not expect to succeed; all is too

rotten there for any solid building.

“I arrived late at the Hotel St. Romain, and dined as in old days at

Bignon’s with Bitters.[77] Bitters is looking older, and we are all

sinking into the grave, whether we have worked or whether we have

played. Only Henri the fat waiter is unchanged, the same tremulous

mountain of flesh as of yore.

“_14th Sept., Sunday._—After breakfasting with Bitters in the Rue

Mazarine, I went to the races of Longchamps and saw Archiduc win a race

in fine style, galloping like a machine all the way. A beautiful day,

but few people, it being September. The only soul I knew there to speak

to, the Duke of Fernan Nuñez. At the Embassy there is no one, even

Atlee[78] gone to Dieppe, Lyons in England, and Sheffield and all of

them.

“Abdu and Sanua came to dinner—both despondent about affairs in Egypt.

“_15th Sept._—To the Wagrams at Gros Bois. I had intended only to spend

the afternoon, but have been asked to stay on. This is a most

interesting place. Gros Bois was built and enclosed with a wall by

Francis I’s mother, but the present house, or at least the inside of it,

is of much later date. The decorations are wholly _Empire_ as befits its

owners, and it forms a fine monument of the Bonapartist episode. I was

taken over the gallery and state rooms and shown the pictures and

relics, Napoleon’s bed from St. Helena and the rest, and driven out

afterwards in the great wood which surrounds the house—a delightful day.

All is on a large scale, but nothing is kept up. The grass grows where

it wills, and there are no flowers in the vases. The servants are

ancient, almost decrepit; in the stables are no fine horses. The little

Princess would change all this if she could, but her father-in-law will

not hear of having a chair altered. He and all the rest of the family

are away, only Prince Alexander and his wife and a little son and heir a

year old; they are in mourning, as his mother died this summer.

“_16th Sept._—The Prince is the best fellow in the world and the best

sportsman. He inherits his love of sport from his father, who, he tells

me, goes out shooting every day of the year, hunting the woods with dogs

for roe, even during the nesting season, and so doing endless damage to

game. Gros Bois is a place, however, which can stand a deal of

disturbance, and he took me out for a by-day with two old huntsman

keepers and a slow hound. It was an absolutely lovely morning and as hot

as July, and waiting in the green rides for roe to pass was delightful.

I shot two and missed a third. The second was hunted well by the dogs

and crossed a clearing twice before he came within shot, and I got him

at last with a snap shot across a ride, the dog close behind. We also

killed as many hares, a few rabbits, and a pheasant or two. There are in

the wood a number of _faisans venérés_, the sacred pheasants of China,

which have bred and multiplied since they first escaped from the

_faisanderie_, when the Prussians were here. The Prussians occupied the

Château and took a good many things, but on the whole did less damage

than might have been expected, the property being recommended to them by

the King of Bavaria, whose relative the Prince is. Altogether two most

delightful days, and it was like a douche to come back to this wretched

little Hotel St. Romain, with its drunken waiters. Dined and sat till

late at a café on the Boulevard with Abdu and Jemal-ed-Din.

“_17th Sept._—Anne arrived from England in the early morning; she tells

me Malet has been appointed Ambassador at Berlin. Malet did all Lord

Granville’s dirty work two years ago, let them suppress his dispatches,

ate dirt for them, told stories for them; and this is his fair reward.

Though not a man to command, he is a good servant, and if they want a

docile one at the end of a telegraph wire, they could not do better than

take him. He is not likely to let his imagination run away with him, or

make any scholar’s mistakes on points of detail. Bismarck no doubt has

asked for him, as a safe man, and because he (Bismarck) was a great

friend of Malet’s parents in old days at Frankfort. The only time I ever

met Bismarck[79] was at Lady Malet’s, or rather at old Lord Brougham’s,

where she was staying, in Dover Street some twenty years ago. Edward

Malet was at Frankfort when I first went there in 1860, not actually

_attaché_, but doing his father’s work with us in the chancery, always a

good boy but a dull one. We neither liked him nor disliked him,

Schomberg Kerr and I, and I don’t remember that we ever saw much of him

except in the chancery—a mouldy place it was, smelling of apples.

“Breakfasted with Bitters, and played tennis in the afternoon with

Leigh, winning three sets out of four. Biboche was there looking aged,

and Sérafin.

“_18th Sept._—To the Embassy, and saw Walsham, the first secretary, now

in charge.[80] There is a telegram from Gordon at Khartoum which sounds

as if he were in great straits and very wild. He says the Government is

responsible for all that has happened, that he expects two hundred

thousand Turkish soldiers, and wants £300,000; is going to destroy

Berber and send Stewart to relieve the garrisons on the White Nile and

Dongola. He wants an expedition quick.

“To Vienna by evening train.

“_20th Sept._—Vienna. Called at the Embassy and on Victor Drummond,[81]

whom I had not seen since we were at Athens together. With him I found

Hadji Petros, King George’s _aide-de-camp_, son of the original of

About’s ‘Hadji Stavros’ in the ‘Roi des Montagnes.’ How things have

marched since then, and they say people cannot govern themselves.

“Dined at the Embassy. Sir Augustus Paget very amiable. We talked about

Egypt. He remembers Nubar when Nubar was Abbas Pasha’s Dragoman, etc.

(as already given in my ‘Secret History’). Lady Paget talked about Mrs.

Howard and the Stanley family, especially about Lady Amberley and her

son.” This was the present Lord Russell, whom I had known from a child,

and had met a little while before at Naworth and liked. He had had a

strange bringing up of an almost Spartan kind. I remember finding him

once lying in the fender when I came to call upon his mother, his head

almost under the grate. I asked whether she did not think it dangerous;

she answered: ‘It will be useful to him. If a coal falls out it will

teach him not to lie there again.’ On the other side of me was the

Comtesse De la Torre, an old friend of Gobineau’s, of whom we talked

much.”

I had known Count Gobineau well, having made his acquaintance in 1870

through Lytton. It was during the Prussian war, and Gobineau was in

extremities for money, the Prussians being in occupation of his country

house. He had written to Lytton about some Oriental manuscripts he was

desirous of selling, and Lytton, who was at Vienna, had written to me

asking me to help him. I had done what I could for him, and had earned

much gratitude. After the war I went to stay with him at Trye and we

became close friends. I have some thirty or forty of his letters,

chiefly on literary subjects, and his own private copy of his celebrated

book “Sur l’inégalité des Races Humaines.” This book was, I think, the

first to protest against the old doctrine of the essential brotherhood

of man, and, as the author of it, Gobineau gained a great posthumous

renown in Germany, and became the founder of a school of thought there

called _Das Gobinismus_. He was a very agreeable man with much

imagination, a bit of a poet and a bit of an artist, besides being an

excellent talker on all subjects. He had been French Minister in Persia,

and in 1870 was Minister in Brazil, and an intimate friend of the

Brazilian Emperor.

“Dufferin was here only yesterday, and we have therefore just missed

him, which is most provoking.

“_21st Sept._—By night train to Lançut, Count Alfred Potocki’s country

place beyond Crakow, arriving on the 22nd. The Château is only a couple

of miles from the station, a very handsome building, partly of the last

century, partly older. It is very large, with one of the handsomest

suites of rooms I ever saw, the furniture having been brought from

Paris, at the time of the great Revolution, by the wife of the Potocki

of the day. Lançut was inherited from a Princess Lubomirska, who in turn

inherited it from an ancestor of the fourteenth century. These Potockis

are allied to, but of a different branch from, the Potocki who with

Branicki betrayed Poland to Catherine of Russia. They are very

patriotic. Their family has been distinguished in Poland for many

centuries, and in the long gallery there are portraits, most of them

badly restored, of some dozen of them. Four were Generalissimos or

Hetmans of the Polish army, and one, Stanislas, was killed before Vienna

in the last siege by the Turks, 1683. The present Count is about sixty,

a most distinguished man. Forty years ago he was _attaché_ in London,

and has since been Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior at

Vienna, and for eight years Governor of Gallicia. The Countess was a

Princess Sanguscko from Russian Poland, where she has large estates.

There are two sons, Roman, whom we met in Egypt three years ago, and

Joseph, who bought our horse Pharaoh, and two daughters; one of them is

here, Madame Tyschkiewicz, a charming person, as they all are.

“_23rd Sept._—This is an old-fashioned place. The Countess has two

dwarfs, who follow her about wherever she goes, of the size of children

of six or seven years old, but really of twenty-two and twenty-five, not

misshapen or ugly, children of a Polish peasant on the estate, the

father not being particularly small; the dwarfs’ two brothers are tall

enough to be in the army. It is the fashion with the nobility to keep

these little people; they get three florins a month, everything found,

and presents.

“Drove in the afternoon to a horse fair, I with Count Roman in a little

carriage with four ponies—three white and a spotted one. It used to be

the Polish fashion to have all spotted horses. From the high plain one

can see the Russian frontier to the north ten miles away, and to the

south the last ripple of the Carpathian Hills. This is a great country

for Jews, Gallicia containing nearly eight hundred thousand of them.

They wear long gowns, with felt hats and long curls. They are disliked

as moneylenders, but have not been persecuted here as they are in

Russia. The rest of the population is half Polish, half Ruthenian, three

millions of each. The Ruthenians are Slavs; they are Catholic, but use

the Greek Ritual and have married priests. In Russian Poland the

Ruthenians have been compelled to join the Orthodox Church. The Poles

are all Catholic. Roman tells me the estate here is about twenty

thousand hectares—forty thousand acres—none of it let, but cultivated

under intendants. They are suffering from the same thing here as

elsewhere, the low price of wheat. We met and overtook a number of Jews

upon the road, nine and ten in a cart. It is a joke here to laugh at the

Jews for going about so many together, and to count them with the

fingers. This makes them angry, as they think the last one counted will

die. At the fair the horses, for common horses, seemed pretty good,

better than you would see anywhere else out of England. The ponies of

the country are like the Asiatic ponies, and were brought here they say

by the Tartars. After this we drove in the forest, a great fir wood, and

got home in the dark.

“The young men, Tyschkiewicz and Roman, have been talking about the

meeting of the three Emperors; they declare it to have been directed

entirely against the anarchists, and to have no relation either to Egypt

or to England. When the Russian Emperor came through Warsaw, he received

a letter from the Nihilists telling him he had nothing to fear while in

Poland, as Poland had suffered too much already, and they would not

bring more trouble on its people. Half the Poles in Warsaw were

nevertheless arrested as a precaution. The Empress would not leave the

Emperor, but followed wherever he went. The Emperor had tried to speak

Polish, which is a finable offence at Warsaw.

“_24th Sept._—We went out, Roman and I, to the forest to try and get a

roebuck, but saw none but does. There was a part fenced off in which are

red and fallow deer, all too tame. A stag followed us about, butting at

the carriage. I was asked to shoot two young fallow deer, but missed

them, and not sorry. The forest is a great fir wood, with a sprinkling

of oak and birch on a sandy soil. We drove the four ponies again in a

little carriage like a sledge of the date of Napoleon the First. Joseph

has gone away to Antonin, their place in Russian Poland, where we are to

follow him to-morrow.

“_25th Sept._—Before going away, went over the house again. It is really

magnificent, with splendid Louis-Seize furniture, china, and bronzes. A

grand vase with brass mounts by Goutière, a whole service of Oriental

china on a large scale, a Sèvres stand valued at a hundred thousand

francs, and much else, a dozen rooms _en suite_, a theatre, a chapel and

a ball-room, all splendidly furnished. Of pictures some excellent

Bouchers, Dutch pieces in Snyders’ style, and a quantity more,—almost

all good. I liked especially a woman by Vincent, a small picture, but

first rate. The family lives in a corner of the house.

“To Lemberg with Countess Potocka, four hours by train, a handsome

country town of four thousand inhabitants. The Diet is sitting, and

Roman and his father are members. They have a house here at which we

dined, and went afterwards to the Governor Zalewski’s reception.

“_26th Sept._—Father Lubienski called, and told me much about politics.

He looks upon the Polish case as hopeless in Russia till there is a war,

but it is probable there may be some slight change for the better in

consequence of the meeting of the Emperors. The Austrian Government

succeeded in conciliating the Poles, so why not the Russian? Only the

Russians are altogether inferior intellectually and morally to the

Poles.

“Went to see the Museum of Natural History, which is the best of the

sort I ever saw. There are no fewer than twenty eagles, and every kind

of bird natural to Galicia is represented with nest and young, all well

stuffed. The beasts less well, but interesting. The elk is still found

in some of the forests, and the aurochs, or bison, just beyond the

frontier—but the last is almost extinct. There was a white roe in the

collection, shot last year by Count Arthur Potocki. This young man was

at dinner last night. He told me about the roe, and about the Branicki

stud—which he helps its owner to manage—also of some wonderful trout

fishing he had had, twelve hundred killed with the fly in a week, and

weighing four hundred pounds. Afterwards we were driven to the top of a

hill where there are public gardens with a fine view in the direction of

Russia.

“_27th Sept._—Started for Antonine, Father Lubienski seeing us to the

station. The fine weather is gone, and we had a disagreeable journey,

first by rail crossing the Russian frontier to Czerny Ostrov, a small

station in Volhynia, an eight hours’ journey, then by road. We were met

by two carriages and four, and drove fifty versts over fearfully muddy

roads to Antonine. The country here is like Salisbury Plain or the

Pampas, great rolling downs of black earth without a stone or pebble for

hundreds of miles, all under plough, no fences, no trees, except where

there are plantations of oak or birch. These are rare, but Antonine

itself is nearly surrounded by a very handsome oak wood of about eighty

years’ growth—fortunately no firs. The house is not a very large one and

without pretence, a good squire’s residence with pleasure grounds and

gardens of about forty acres. There is a large pond let to Jews at £200

a year for pike. Round this the village stands, and there are a dozen

respectable houses like bungalows occupied by the administrators of the

estate. This used to be a principality, and is still of thirty-five

thousand acres of land in hand, but the greater part now belongs to the

peasantry, who, thanks to their enfranchisement by Alexander II, are

well off. All the land they cultivated was by that act given them, the

Government paying the Lord of the Manor a small price for it. Their land

taxes are very low, not more than a tenth of what it is in Galicia. The

peasants are Ruthenians by race, but were forcibly converted a hundred

years ago to the Greek church, and are now to all intents and purposes

Russian. Industry thrives under protection, and the estate sugar mill

pays well.

“_28th Sept._—As far as I can make out, all is very well managed in this

part of Russia to the advantage of the Russian peasants, but the Polish

landlords are vexatiously treated. Poles in Russia are not allowed to

buy land, or to make wills, and are liable to confiscation at the

pleasure of the Emperor. They are, in fact, outlaws, and it is the

avowed policy to get rid of them. For this reason they stick closer to

the lands they have, and some of them are still very rich—the richest

being the Branickis, and next to them the Sangusckos. The Polish nobles

were originally granted their lands when these were uninhabited steppes

on the frontier liable to incursions from the Tartars, and the peasantry

were their feudal retainers, but of a different race, Ruthenian, living

under shelter of their castles. There are still some Catholic villagers,

but these are not Ruthenians; they are the descendants of impoverished

Polish nobles, and are still proud of their rank. The late Prince

Sanguscko, the owner of Antonine, took part in the Polish rising of

1830, and was exiled for ten years to Siberia and to serve as a common

soldier against the Circassians. He distinguished himself in the war,

and so was restored to his country. Afterwards he made several journeys

in the East, and brought back horses and mares from Aleppo, Damascus,

and Egypt, to add to his Arab stud already existing at Slavuta since

1803. He died three years ago, leaving half his lands to his daughter,

Countess Alfred Potocka, and half his stud to her son Joseph, now our

host. The half of the stud was then removed here, and there are now

forty-two brood mares.

“We went over the stud to-day. First, the stallions, of which Palatine

is about the handsomest horse imaginable. His fault is that he is rather

shallow in girth, but his head, neck, and carriage are superb, and he

has fine action, a gray with dark mane and tail. Artiste, a bay, fifteen

hands two, with beautiful action and carriage and a fine head, came

next. And after him Cyprian, a chestnut, of far more substance that

either of the other two. They like him, however, here the best and are

very likely right. Lastly, there was Pharaoh, looking more beautiful

than ever, and he gave me a pang of regret. He is fully appreciated

here, and has got some good colts this year of his own gorgeous dark bay

colour. Colour, it appears, is a very important point here at the sales,

gray being at a discount, and chestnut the favourite. The sales take

place in May, but the prices are small. A lovely team of four gray

stallions, fifteen hands, is now for sale at two hundred pounds, and a

team of gray mares, fourteen two, for a hundred and forty; all young

animals and perfectly broken. Twenty years ago Arabs were much more the

fashion, but now young Austria goes in for English blood.

“The brood mares are splendid, hardly a bad one among them, and a dozen

of the best are absolutely perfect. You could not find such a dozen

mares together anywhere in Arabia.

“_29th Sept._—There was Mass this morning in a funny little chapel in

the garden. Afterwards we went hunting with slow hounds and greyhounds,

and found two foxes in a marsh, which was drawn by black and tan hounds

of the dachshund sort, but bigger. Got the old one away, a fine old gray

fox, but the greyhounds were on the wrong side, and we had no run. Then

we coursed three hares, a greyhound I gave Joseph Potocki running well,

but the fastest was a brindled Circassian dog. The hares had no chance.

The country is a great open plain, but enclosed here and there with

banks and ditches.

“_30th Sept._—Another day among the horses and the brood mares at

pasture beside an oak wood, a very beautiful sight. Then to the sugar

mill, which brings in a profit of £250 a day for nearly three months

every year; that is £20,000, consuming 1,400 acres of beetroot, each

acre thus giving about £15, but the land can only grow it once in seven

years; still the profit is enormous, and they have other mills

elsewhere. The director of the stud, and the late Prince’s secretary,

worthy men, dine with us every evening, observing, however, much

etiquette with Count Joseph, after the manner of courts.

“_1st Oct._—Again out coursing, and drew a cover for a fox blank, and

then had some good runs after hares, getting four. I had a fall at one

of the banks. They are dangerous fences to ride fast at as the ditches

are ten feet wide.

“_2nd Oct._—We went to-day to see the cellars. There is one bottle of

Hungarian wine labelled 1683, and perhaps a thousand bottles of the last

century, as well as mead of the same date, which the Poles used to get

drunk on. To become intoxicating the honey must have been kept for

twenty-five years. There are also many dozens of brandy a hundred years

old or more, and all sorts of curious liquors and burgundies, and

ancient Spanish wines. The 1683 bottle was reserved to be drunk by the

King of Poland.

“Among the letters which came yesterday was one from Primrose; it

contained a copy of an apology written by Dr. Kerr to Villayet Ali (the

Patna case), a rather lame one. But as Primrose says, ‘it is a very

unusual thing to get an apology at all from an Englishman to any

native,’ so I suppose we must be content.[82]

“_3rd Oct._—We were to have gone to-day to the Branickis, but a telegram

came in the night altering our plan. This sends us straight to Odessa.

We started from Szepetovka station, thirty-two miles off, which we did

in four hours twenty minutes; this country has fine woods of oak and

birch, infested with swine, as in ancient Europe. These are spotted, as

are sometimes the cows and as were the mediaeval horses of Poland. At

Szepetovka we found that the Odessa express went in the morning, so we

stayed the night at the Potocki factory.

“_4th Oct._—To-day we have been travelling by train across ‘the unwise,

unjust, unmerciful Ukraine’ as far as Kasjatin. Our way lay through fine

forests, for the forest country begins here, and we are close to the

great bog of the Dnieper, a marsh as large as Ireland, and one of the

largest in the world.

“Further on, the country is open, and closely resembles the ‘campo’ of

Buenos Ayres.

“_5th Oct._—All night in the train, very dirty and stuffy. Russian

generals with spurs on. Fat women, half undressed, eating apples.

Windows nailed up for the winter.

“Found letters at Odessa, one from Rajah Emir Hassan which talks of a

Madrasa being opened on my plan at Lucknow. This looks as if the scheme

of a general university had been abandoned. Called on Consul-General

Perry, who hates Russia and Odessa, and every country but Spain.

“_6th Oct._—To the Odessa Exhibition, and saw the out of doors fair.

Here horses were exhibited, Russian trotters—a poor lot, and _soidisant_

Arabs, a poorer. The best horse was a large Russian dray stallion—white,

short legged, very strong, and with extraordinary good short limbs.

“_9th Oct._—After a disagreeable passage arrived in the Bosphorus and

anchored off the Asiatic shore in quarantine, near a pretty village with

two mosques, near enough to see the Mueddin in his tower, and the women

who come out in the evening to sit on the beach. The weather is heavenly

and consoles us for much. The quarantine is an act of reprisal by the

Ottoman Government against Europe. They have been pestered with advice

and remonstrance for the last hundred years about sanitary arrangements,

and now they are turning the tables. This has its excuse. I remember the

fiendlike action of the European Sanitary Board at Alexandria towards

the unfortunate Mecca pilgrims at Wej, and how the fat Greek Sinadino

boasted that they had been kept for I don’t know how many days without

water. Numbers died there, and it was one of the causes of the

revolution of 1882.

“_10th Oct._—I have been reading Madame de Crequy’s memoirs, a

delightful volume, lent me by Madame Coumarof, wife of a Russian

Secretary of Embassy, on her way to her husband’s post, a clever and

well informed woman. She believes in dreams and that she will be

crucified some day at Kief. She has told me a good bit about the Russian

peasantry, which is much what I found in Volhynia; they are well off,

eat meat daily, have good houses, and are able to live on their own

land. It is difficult to get labour for wages, hence land is cheap, this

in great Russia on the Volga.

“Hugh Wyndham came off to within speaking distance of our ship. He

brought the news that one of Gordon’s two steamers had gone ashore

somewhere near Berber, and the crew with Stewart had been killed by the

Arabs. I made Stewart’s acquaintance at Aleppo in 1881. He was a good

straightforward man, very enthusiastic about his work, but strangely

unsympathetic with the Eastern people he worked amongst. I gave him

letters of introduction to some of our desert friends near the

Euphrates, and he made a flying journey through the Sebaa and Shammar

tribes on a camel, but he distrusted the Bedouins and disliked them. I

put the violent line Gordon has taken against them down to his account.

I expect Gordon will be killed next—I wish it could be Wolseley or

Northbrook; it would disgust people with their unjust wars.

“_12th Oct._—Among our fellow passengers is an American named Howe, of

the romantic globe trotting sort, who is in ecstasies at all things, and

his fellow traveller, a Swede, Mr. Claes Lagergren, Chamberlain to the

Pope. The latter is the more interesting, as with a _doucereux_

ecclesiastical manner he is really well informed and sympathizes with

those things in the world which are right. These two have been

travelling together through Algeria, Spain, Sweden, and Russia, an oddly

assorted pair. Lagergren has been at Damascus and in Egypt. There was

also a Mohammedan on board from Kazan, who comes yearly to

Constantinople to trade. In the third class are some thirty Jew pilgrims

going to Jerusalem, very interesting people, very dirty, very devout.

They read their Bibles all day long, and say their prayers turning to

the east, and clothed in striped chasubles.

“_14th Oct._—Our five days’ quarantine over, we were landed in the

Embassy launch at Therapia, and went to see Hugh, and dined with him at

the Embassy. Count Corti was there, an ugly little man but sensible and

clever. Anne has had a good deal of conversation with him. I am more

than ever sorry to have missed Dufferin, who has left the best

reputation behind him in the Embassy, and would probably have been glad

to see us. We intend to stay a few days here at Therapia to make

acquaintance with the Ambassadors, especially Nélidof, whom I knew so

well at Athens.

“_15th Oct._—At Madame Petala’s Hotel, where I was in 1860; spent the

morning writing, and then by steamer to Buyukdereh to call on Madame

Coumarof, and also on the Russian Ambassador. Nélidof received me very

cordially, reminding me of many instances of our old life at Athens,

which I had forgotten, jokes I had made, the name of my dog, the paper

chases in the olive woods, Lady Dufferin’s visit, and twenty other

things which it gave me a pang to remember. He told me that Madame

Ozerof had died some years ago at Athens and Ozerof, his former chief,

had a post now of Grand Chamberlain at St. Petersburg, but was old and

lived with his married daughter in the Crimea, and that he had kept up

his intimacy with Haymerlé till the day of his death. Of Haymerlé he

said that his end was caused to a certain extent by chagrin. He was a

great worker and master of detail, and had made himself so necessary to

everybody that at last he had become Prime Minister of Austria. But,

once in power, he was unable to cope with the situation. He had married

a little _bourgeoise_ of Frankfort, and this had emphasized his own want

of birth; and Viennese society had given him the cold shoulder. He was

worried into his grave. We talked a little about politics, about the

possibility of reforming Mohammedan society, which he naturally does not

believe in. He said: ‘What will always prevent any reform is the

Caliphate.’ He then talked of a movement there had been in favour of the

Konieh branch of the Sultan’s family, being under the impression that

these were descended from the Koreysh; but I explained to him that this

was a mistake, and that the Konieh people represented only an elder

phase of the Turkish Sultanate, the Seljukian, not at all the Caliphate.

His ideas, like those of nearly every one, are quite vague on this

point. I was very much pleased with my visit.

“Later I met another old friend, Madame de Radowitz, the Prussian

Ambassadress, whom I had known at Berne in 1867. She, too, reminded me

of things which gave me a pang. The third old acquaintance was Mrs.

Goschen. Called with Hugh on Count Corti, who is most agreeable. He

remembers Constantinople in Bulwer’s time, and how his Excellency got

his island from the Sultan, and sold it afterwards for £20,000 to Ismaïl

Pasha. This little transaction was the ruin of Bulwer’s career. There is

an _entente cordiale_ between Corti and the English Embassy. We are to

lunch with him on Sunday.

“Later to the French Embassy. Monsieur de Noailles is not unlike Lord

Salisbury on a small scale. His wife is a Pole by birth, and acquainted

with all our Polish friends, has been a beauty, and is still a _femme

d’esprit_; has a salon; we found her agreeable and the house agreeable.

It is an old Turkish country house, with a single fine room, comfortable

and dignified—a great contrast to our own Therapia Embassy, which was

built by Sir Henry Elliot, in the Swiss Gothic style one sees at Bombay,

an eye-sore to the Bosphorus.

“_17th Oct._—With the Wyndham children to see the Palace of Belabeg on

the Asiatic shore; a modern building in very moderate taste, with a vast

deal of paint and gilding and marqueterie work and sham marble. It makes

one ill to think of the millions it must have cost, and the meanness of

the result. The views, however, from the windows are splendid, and in

the garden there are two fine tigers and some healthy looking ostriches.

We then steamed down the Bosphorus. Nothing in Stamboul is changed,

except that a railway has been run through the Seraglio gardens, and the

bridge of boats has become an iron one. But at Pera and Galata there are

marks of time, gaps where wooden houses have been burned, and a

multiplicity of tall new stucco houses.

“At Pera we are at the Hotel Royal. My first care has been to send

Stanley’s two letters of introduction to Achmet Vefyk and Khair-ed-Din

Pashas. They are away in their villas. Next I called on Hobart

Pasha;[83] he told us a great deal about the Sultan, who never goes out

now from Yildiz Kiosk, a small palace between Pera and Hissar, and has

not been in Stamboul for years. He says he likes him, that he is very

intelligent and well intentioned, but the Government is as bad as ever.

“The Sultan won’t hear of anything like independent administration in

the Provinces, which Hobart thinks with me would be the best cure for

the Empire. He talked a great deal about Halim Pasha, whose cause in

Egypt he has been pleading with Gladstone. Halim is supported strongly

by the Sultan. The Sultan told Hobart only the other day that if he

could do anything towards getting Halim back to Egypt, he would be

rendering him a great service. He urges me to see him and has promised

to let Halim know I am here. Dufferin, he says, has entirely destroyed

English influence by the violent line he has taken against the Sultan,

and the strong language he used about him. He had ended by ceasing to

have any communication at all with the palace, and had not seen the

Sultan for seven months when he was recalled. He escaped from all

business: whenever a message came on any matter he used to slip off in

his yacht and pretend he was too short-sighted to see the boats they

sent out after him. He had a yacht called the ‘Hermione,’ ingeniously

arranged so that he could be quite alone in her, managing the sails

himself by a system of ropes and pulleys, his own invention. Thus he put

off troublesome affairs.

“Henderson, the Consul at Aleppo, who is here, tells us the state of the

Provinces is much as it always was, or worse, the Pashas eating up the

people. Jamil Pasha at Aleppo has made £300,000 in the four years he has

been there. He is a great favourite with the Sultan, sending him horses

constantly.

“Just before sunset we rode out on hired ponies to the Okmaidan and saw

the Golden Horn in its glory. There is nothing like it, or near to it,

in the world.

“_18th Oct._—Whittaker, the Editor of the ‘Levant Herald,’ called. He

gave me much the same account of what is going on here. The Sultan is

played upon by the palace intriguers, who frighten him with stories of

plots. He is a timid man. The other day his horse reared with him in the

street, and he will not ride an Arab horse again. He rides, however,

‘pretty well for a Sultan,’ on trained horses, and shoots at a mark in

the old Turkish fashion. Khair-ed-Din he calls a wind-bag, and Vefyk a

man of crotchets. Of Saïd Pasha, the Vizier, he said: ‘He is an honest

man but quite ignorant of European affairs; knowing that he is ignorant

he tries to make up by reading, and he is now in a complete muddle. He

belongs to the old Turkish school, blindly hating all that is foreign;

he is personally honest, but has no power, for the Sultan always

interferes.’

“In the afternoon we rode round Stamboul: it is wonderfully shrunk and

depopulated since I first remember it, many houses abandoned and the

streets empty. The Seraglio point has been turned into a new semi-

European quarter of the most wretched kind, with roads and tramways and

stucco houses everywhere. The Mohammedan population seems scarcer,

turbans have almost disappeared, and it is difficult to distinguish

between Nazarene and Moslem. An interesting ride, but sad. Hobart called

again in the evening, keen that I should see Halim without delay. Khair-

ed-Din’s secretary has also called, fixing my visit to that Highness for

Monday morning.

“_19th Oct._—By the half-past nine boat to Therapia. Selim Faris joined

us as agreed at Ortakeui (he was afraid of being seen with me), and we

travelled on with him. His information was interesting. Of the Sultan he

gives much the same account as the rest, that is to say he speaks of him

as a good man, sincerely anxious to further the prosperity of Islam, and

immensely jealous of his position as Emir el Mumenin and Khalifa, but

quite ignorant of the means through which to act, a prey to charlatans

and intriguers of every kind, except the European kind. Faris has

friends at the palace, and declares that the Sultan shall see me,

although he tells me my name is in bad odour there. The Sultan was at

one time much pleased at my letters in the ‘Times,’ when I defended the

Egyptians before the war, but he was angry at my sticking to Arabi after

he himself had abandoned him; and Tewfik’s envoy, Sabit Pasha, is

constantly telling him that I am head of a party in England bent on

restoring the Arabian Caliphate. The Sultan, he assured me, supported

Halim, but there would be danger in making Halim an English candidate.

Arabi is quite out of favour. Faris’s paper, the ‘Jowaib,’ was stopped

last year because he had been to see Lord Granville in London, but he is

forgiven now. He thought the Sultan would take an interest in Indian

education, but the whole Turkish State was dying. The Caliphate would

some day return to Arabia. The Sultan knew it and was doing all in his

power to prevent it, but it must come. He charged me to keep this

conversation secret. Lunched with Count Corti, the Italian Ambassador,

agreeable but ugly, with the ugliness of Socrates, a great Anglomane and

friend of Dufferin’s. He told me he had been at one time favourite

Ambassador with the Sultan, who had given him beautiful horses, but he

once said something favourable about Dufferin in conversation, and from

that time the Sultan would have nothing more to do with him. Dufferin

was not generally liked here, Hugh tells me, and seems to have been a

fiasco politically. On to the French Embassy in Corti’s steam launch.

Everybody here is most amiable to us, I suppose because strangers are

rare.

“_20th Oct._—To call on Khair-ed-Din Pasha at Kurujesme. He has a

handsome house there, being very rich, a man of about fifty-five, tall,

not very agreeable in countenance, and with dyed hair. He received me

well, talked sensibly, explaining his ideas with considerable clearness,

and has the manner of a man used to State affairs. He had retired, he

told me, from these, but the Party he had represented was for progress

on Eastern lines, not in imitation of Europe. He asked me to explain to

him the British policy in Egypt, which I did, and I asked him in turn to

explain to me how it was that with a Sultan, who was admittedly a good

man and well meaning, things only got worse in the Empire. At this he

laughed, and excused himself from answering, he being he said a Tunisian

born, and a stranger. ‘But go to Vefyk Pasha,’ he said. ‘He knows

everything, and will tell you.’ He then gave me two volumes of

‘Controversial Theology,’ which he had had translated into French, and

one for Stanley. And we talked about India, and the danger there was for

the English of a quarrel with Islam. ‘But they don’t mind,’ he said.

‘They say the Mohammedans in India are so happy and so fond of them

there is no fear.’ We parted the best of friends.

“Then on to Achmet Vefyk’s. This is the most remarkable Turk I have ever

met, and one of the most remarkable men. He reminds me a little of old

Ragunath Rao,[84] having the same keen intelligence, power of vivid

expression, and bursts of wit. He is equally outspoken. Like the old

Rajah, he is a man of the past age. He lives in a little wooden cottage,

a kind of hermitage on the hill, to get to which you have to climb an

almost impossible path, and he affects an extreme simplicity of life. He

was out in his garden when I arrived, and I was shown upstairs to a

meanly furnished ante-room, but sunny and cheerful, where I sat on the

divan till he came in. He came upstairs slowly, like a man bent with

rheumatism, an old man in an old-fashioned dress, a gown and slippers,

with a large square fez of the time of Sultan Mahmoud. He took me into

an inner room a little better furnished, with some old-fashioned painted

chairs, covered with Broussa velvet. He talked about the decay of

Turkey. ‘The beginning of our ruin,’ he said, ‘was the Commercial Treaty

of 1832. Before that, our people had trades and industries. Now there

are one hundred and fifty thousand beggars in Stamboul alone. Look at

these chairs, the velvet on them is from a manufactory that supplied all

Europe. Now we buy our velvets, when we can afford to buy them, from

Lyons. They forced tariffs on us, which gave all the advantage to the

foreigner and broke up our trade corporations, which were the life of

the people. This is what has principally ruined us. Then we have had bad

luck. Our Sultans have been worthless. Formerly we should have deposed

them all, till we got a good one—but Europe interferes with our rights

now. You must not suppose that the deposition of a Sultan is a lawless

act. It is our right. The Sultan Khalifa Emir el Mumenin is not a

religious teacher, he is only the chief of the Moslems, and each of us

is as good as he, and better if he observes the law better. It is for us

to tell the Sultan what he is to do and not to do; and when I was young

there were ten thousand men ready to tell him this. Now there are only

myself and four or five others—old men; the rest have no courage except

to ask for money. You have just been to Khair-ed-Din. He came here as

leader of a party of reform—he has made himself rich, and he stops here

to get a place or a pension. He will do any dirty work the Sultan may

bid him do. I had refused to do that, and I live in this old tumble-down

house. The Sultan sends for me every now and then to beg me to be his

minister, but I will not be minister unless I have power. When the

Russians were at the gates of Constantinople I was made Vizier, and sent

to treat with them. The Grand Duke Nicholas wanted the Sultan to come

out and pay him a visit, that he might see how large his army was. But

the Sultan shut himself up, declaring that they wanted to make him

prisoner, and carry him away to Russia. I refused Nicholas point blank,

and said he must come first to the Sultan, and I succeeded. The Sultan

refused for twenty days, and for twenty days I put the Grand Duke off,

on one pretext or another, and in the end I got the Sultan to receive

him, and to pay him the return visit. The Grand Duke Nicholas was a man

altogether brutal and corrupt.’

“He then talked about India. ‘The English,’ he said, ‘have lost their

political senses. Formerly I remember many men who had correct ideas

about the East, and he named several, Alison and Lord Napier. Now they

seem deprived of reason. What did they mean by sending that young man

Bulwer to be Viceroy of India? I remember him here very many years ago,

a pretty little young man he was, fond of saying pretty things to the

ladies. A man with such a talent for writing poetry, how could he make a

Viceroy to sit on the throne of Sultan Akbar?’ I told him about the

misfortunes of the Indian Mohammedans, and how they had charged me to

speak to the Sultan if possible and enlist his sympathy. But he said: ‘I

advise you to be very cautious about this. If the Sultan was a man

worthy of his position, it would be well—but in confidence I tell you,

and do not repeat this even to Lord Stanley—he is mad. His is a peculiar

madness. He is clever and agreeable, and all who see him go away

convinced that he agrees with them, and so he does. For three days he

pays attention to what he has been told. Then he begins to suspect, and

then he sees a new person who tells him the other thing, and all his

ideas are changed. He is a man of fixed and violent ideas, which he

changes every week.’ ‘He is not then,’ I asked, ‘the good man people say

he is?’ ‘Do not believe it. The Sultan is _un misérable et un fou_. He

is out of his mind with fear and jealousy. Sometimes, when the fit is on

him, he will walk round and round in his palace for four days and

nights, never sleeping, hardly sitting down, hardly eating, and all for

fear of assassination. If you came to him to tell him such a thing as

you propose, he would listen to you and be delighted, then he would

suspect a plot, and be in a fever till you had left Stamboul. Already he

is probably asking himself why you have come, and when you mean to go. I

advise you to be very cautious. People will come to you from him telling

you this and that. He has an army of 4,000 spies, and you must not stay

long in Constantinople. Besides, if you gave him any such message from

India, it is possible he might take it up and make an intrigue of it,

and spoil it as he spoiled the movement in Egypt. He cares only for

intrigue and for being cleverer than all those he meets, and for

outwitting them—intrigue, and saving money, and fear of what is coming.

You had better wait. It will come in five or six months. The movement in

Bulgaria and East Roumelia will bring on the crisis, and he will be

deposed. Then with the new Sultan something might be done, but with this

one never. Do not forget that he is a madman and do not trust him.’ I

asked him what prince there was who could succeed him. ‘The prince next

in succession,’ he said, ‘is calm and reasonable. It is possible we may

have better luck with him—but our State is ruined through the men of the

present day, who are all corrupt. Look at the young Turkey Party, what

fools they are! Which of them cares for anything but folly, pleasure,

and money?—and we are all becoming paupers.’

“We talked about Egypt. Vefyk has an old grudge against the Turks of

Mehemet Ali, ‘who were every one of them worthless.’ The Egyptians he

despises; ‘Arabi may have been an honest man, but he was an ignorant one

who did not know what Europe’s power was. A couple of Turkish regiments

would have settled the matter at any moment. Arabi thought that he could

stand alone, without the support of the Sultan. He was a fool.’ I asked

him about Halim. ‘Halim,’ he said, ‘is like them all. He is an

intriguer, a man of no sense.’ Then we went on to talk about Stanley,

and it was agreed that I should come back with Anne and breakfast with

him on Wednesday. In going out he stopped me and said in a mysterious

way: ‘I must tell you something which I beg you will not forget. You are

going to see Halim Pasha. He is the best sportsman we have in

Constantinople, he has killed more bears and more wolves than any other.

Remember this, and when he asks you what I said of him, you will be able

to answer with a clear conscience that I told you something to his

credit.’ And the old man burst into a roar of laughter at his conceit,

and so I went away.

“I met Anne outside, who had come by the steamer, and we went on to

Prince Halim’s, which is close by—a fine house by the water side. We

were received at the door by a man whom I did not recognize, but who

turned out to be Ismaïl Jowdat, who had been Prefect of Police for the

foreigners at Cairo during the war, and who, having kept order and saved

much European life there, was exiled by Malet after Tel-el-Kebir. At the

top of the stairs we were met by Halim, who in looks is not remarkable,

and who, if he had not said ‘_c’est moi_,’ I should have taken for a

servant. He is short and fat, but is younger looking and less obese than

Ismaïl, and is more active and alert. His features are rough and without

defined expression, his eyes small and restless, and his manner, though

far from bad, is without grace or special charm. He is in fact a very

plain man, made plainer by his beard being dyed. There is something

frank, however, in his way of talking, and it is difficult not to see

that he is far more respectable than any of his cousins. He did not ask

me about Vefyk, so I was not obliged to make use of Vefyk’s little

stratagem, and we talked at once about Egypt.

“‘There is no solution,’ he said, ‘of the Egyptian question except

through the Sultan. Egypt at the present moment is on strike, and so

will remain as long as the Sultan is not invited to establish a new

order of things. If England were to annex the country outright, she

might perhaps manage it, but short of annexation she cannot get on

without help—help from Europe, and help from Constantinople. The Sultan

is the true solver of the riddle now, as he was in 1878, and whoever

undertakes to manage Egypt must reckon with him. The simplest solution

would be for the European Powers to beg the Sultan to name a new

Khedive. Anyone whom the Sultan named would meet with a good reception.

If the Sultan were to name Ismaïl once more I should bow to his

decision, although I should consider it a great misfortune for Egypt.

Ismaïl’s partisans are the capitalists and speculators of Europe; all

those who want the reign of pillage to begin again. The people do not

wish for them, and would not long endure him. But they would accept him

from the Sultan, and I too. Ismaïl was always false from a child. We

were at school together; he never quarrelled, but if a boy insulted him,

he went quietly and stole his exercises out of his desk so as to bring

him into trouble. We are both fifty-four years old, he being two months

younger than me, but he is old from the life he has led. I have all my

life been fond of sport, riding, moving about. This keeps a man

vigorous. It is a mistake to say I do not care to go back to Egypt; I do

care, and I feel sure it is my destiny, but I do not wish to make a

fiasco. They say I might have come forward before the war. I was twice

asked, but not through the intermediary of any one I could depend upon.

Once it was through Monsieur Ninet. He is very likely a good man, but I

ask you, was he a proper person to represent Egypt in a serious matter?

I tried hard to get into direct relations with Arabi, but never

succeeded. I will come forward if asked to do so by the Egyptians, or if

named by the Sultan.’ I asked him what he thought should be the form of

Government for Egypt. He said: ‘No constitution as yet. Egypt wants a

strong Government just now. She should be ruled by a Liberal despot, a

council if you will, but absolute power in the ruler. Eastern nations

understand this, not the other. As to finance, I see no difficulty. I do

not believe in Egypt’s exhaustion. She could pay all her debts with

economy. Certainly, if the interest on the debt could be lowered for a

few years, she would recover. But the peasants’ debts must be settled at

once. As to the Soudan, my policy would be that of my father, to hold

the whole Nile Valley as a trade route, as far as the Equator if

necessary, but not to leave the river banks. The Upper Nile is quite

necessary to Egypt; it must be reconquered.’ I understood him to expect

this to be done by Turkish troops.

“On the whole my impression of Halim is favourable. He is outspoken,

practical, and seems gifted with common sense. I should say he was

honest; he has very little of the prince about him, much more of the

_bourgeois_. Perhaps this is what Egypt requires. Ismaïl Jowdat and

Mustafa Bey, Arabi’s doctor, who are apparently living dependent on

Halim, accompanied us to the door and thanked me very warmly for having

saved their lives after the war.

“_21st Oct._—Went to see the Yeni-Jami and St. Sophia’s. In the latter

the _Asr_ was going on. Perhaps a hundred persons present. I wished I

could have joined in this, but only looked on from the gallery.

“Miss Laing called, who had been Princess Nazli’s governess, and is now

living with Princess Halim. She told us much that was interesting. She

had been very intimate with Arabi, and is very grateful to him for

having protected her during the war. She has no doubt in the world about

the Khedive’s complicity in the Alexandria riot. It was never intended

to go as far as it went, but was certainly planned. Dufferin extracted a

promise from her not to correspond with Arabi after his exile. Arabi was

a quite honest man, but no administrator, and not quite _à la hauteur de

la situation_. He would have carried the revolution through, however, if

Egypt alone had been concerned. The fellahin would certainly support

Halim, especially if he came back with Arabi.

“_22nd Oct._—Rode to Roumeli Hissar again, and breakfasted with Vefyk.

He gave us eleven Turkish dishes, a very good repast, and entertained us

with much historical disquisition. The word Arab and Europe he told us

are identical, and signify the Unknown Land. The first Arabs, the

Himyarites, were Hamites, and are the same people with the Abyssinians.

Queen Belkis was an Himyarite, but they were later invaded from Chaldea

by a Semitic race under Adnan. The Himyarites are the same with the

Phoenicians, as their names denote, both meaning red.[85] Perseus and

Andromeda were the Persians and the Medes, and he, Vefyk, had been

shocked to find Grote, in his ‘History of Greece,’ repeating the old

fables. He assured us that history, as he was explaining it to us, had

always been taught in the Oriental schools. Abraham was a new man, and

only got his nobility by marrying a daughter of the Himyarite king. From

that he went on to the modern history of his own doings on the

Euphrates, how he had divided the tribes, and built forts on the river

and starved out the Anazeh. On Midhat he was very severe as a make-

believe reformer. He himself, on the contrary, had done real good; he

had rebuilt the ruins of Nissa and the Baths of Broussa, and had made

roads as short cuts from village to village across the hills. Midhat

only made plans, and was in the hands of adventurers. He also gave us a

history of his doings with Nejd and the Ibn Rashids and the

Montefiks—and repeated what he had told me before about the Sultan.

“After breakfast we went on to Halim’s, and made acquaintance with his

wife and son. The Princess is certainly a superior person, and took part

in our conversation. The son is very like himself; they are at their

best on the subject of Bedouin life, horses, and sport. He told us about

the eighty-four mile race between his horse and the English mare in

1864. His horse was a bay Hadban from the Anazeh, but bought by a

dealer. The English mare’s name was Alabama, which seems to have

belonged to several owners, of whom the principal was Mr. Smart. After

about sixty miles, Alabama stopped, and Hadban came in gaily. An

objection was raised on the score of the jockey having lost five pounds

in weight, but eventually the money was paid. The race was run from Suez

to Cairo in seven hours fifty minutes. This is not very different from

the account given me by Hetherington, who trained Alabama, except that

according to him Alabama was some way ahead of Hadban when she stopped,

and nearer home. Hetherington said that he had ridden out to meet the

horses coming in, and stopped the mare to give her some gruel, after

which she could not move, but it is evident he would not have stopped

her if she had not been pretty nearly done. Halim assured us that he had

ridden one of his Arab horses once, at trot and canter, for twenty-four

hours, another for eighteen hours.

“Coming in after dark, Count Corti came. He has a poor opinion of Vefyk,

whom he calls mad. Of Halim, however, his opinion is high, and he had

reported it so to his Government when they had enquired about him. But

the Italian Government was all for Ismaïl.” The reason of the patronage

given by the Italian Government to the ex-Khedive was, that at the time

when Ismaïl could command money in plenty, he had lent a large sum to

the King of Italy.

“We have a fancy for taking a house at Bebek, just under Roumeli Hissar.

“_23rd Oct._—Went across the water to Kadikeui to see the Polish patriot

Langiewitz and his horses, for he has a small Arab stud. He was at the

head of the revolt of 1863, an unfortunate affair, which was not fully

joined in by the nobles, and was disapproved by the Potockis and others.

He is a very little man, with big beard and spectacles, more like a

Professor than a General, with an English wife—worthy people, very. He

has got a nice old-fashioned Turkish house, with large grounds, for

which he pays a rent of £160, and one might do worse than end one’s days

in such a retirement. He talked sympathetically of Arabi and the

Egyptian war. About Constantinople, he told us that a census of the

population had recently been taken, which showed the Mohammedans already

in a minority there. Here at Scutari and Kadikeui the decaying number

was equally noticeable. His wife had been thirty years in the country,

he nearly twenty. The state of things was wholly hopeless for the Turks.

“On coming in I found the Russian Ambassador, with whom I discussed the

same point, but he would not admit the population to be diminishing,

though he agreed that all lands habitable by Europeans would sooner or

later be possessed by them. He talked of the progress made by the

Germans in Asia Minor. We were talking about the Egyptian Revolution, as

to which he was anxious to hear the truth, when we were interrupted.

“Whittaker, who came in next, told some amusing stories of the Sultan

and his dealings with the Ambassadors. To avoid talking business with

them, he arranges to have inconvenient people present, or to be

interrupted, and when hard pressed a band of music strikes up. None of

the Ambassadors are on confidential terms with the Sultan. The last who

was so was Layard, and he had disgusted the Sultan with all foreign

intimacy. Layard, when he was Ambassador here, had his breakfast table

supplied daily by the Sultan—butter, milk, bread, and the rest—and dined

with him constantly; and there was a constant flow of presents,

sometimes of value. This while Disraeli was in power; but when Gladstone

came into office, Layard, who had hitherto supported the Sultan at the

Foreign Office, had, in the hope of keeping his place, written the

dispatch against him which Granville so treacherously published. Since

which the Sultan has trusted nobody. He treats his own ministers as

slaves, and, when one of his Viziers wrote on some occasion resigning

his office, all the answer he got was, ‘When I want you to leave me, you

dog, I will let you know.’

“_24th Oct._—Selim Faris called with great talk about my being received

at the palace, and advising me to write to Munir Pasha asking an

audience. I asked Faris to tell me frankly all his opinion of the

Sultan’s character and of the chance of my interview having some good

effect, and I think he was sincere in what he told me. He said: ‘The

Sultan is a man who has really good intentions and who really wishes to

serve the interests of the Mohammedans and of religion generally, and

especially of the Caliphate. But he is quite ignorant of the world, and,

to tell the whole truth, he is crazy. He cannot keep to any plan or line

of conduct, and he is ruining the Mohammedans and religion, and his own

Caliphate. The question of the Caliphate is one which is coming on now

very rapidly. The English Government, from its connection with India,

must eventually become its protector, whether it intends it or not, and

will guard the shores of the Red Sea, for the Caliphate must return to

Arabia. I should advise you nevertheless to see the Sultan if possible.

You might gain an influence over him, though there is nothing certain in

his conduct, and things cannot be worse than they are now. There is a

foundation of good in his character on which to work, and you need not

believe the stories of his caring only for money. He cares rather to

spend it. Send in your letter to Munir, and when the audience is agreed

to we will talk over what you should say to the Sultan, or rather what

you should not say.’ This decides me to stay on another week here in the

chance of succeeding. He also talked about Dufferin and the work

Mackenzie Wallace had done for him here, and how he had written most of

his Egyptian report for him. Wallace has now gone as Dufferin’s regular

secretary to India at £3,000 a year.

“At noon we went to the Selamlik to see the Sultan go to mosque, just

outside his palace walls. It was a very simple affair, a couple of

companies of rather ill-groomed soldiers, a few men on seedy horses,

half a dozen dust carts filled with sand to sprinkle the road, two

carriages full of ladies who did not enter the mosque, about fifty

officials in uniform, including Tahir Pasha, a Grand Chamberlain, and

Hafiz Behram-Agha, the Sultan’s chief Eunuch. This last is a grave,

respectable-looking person in black clothes, with considerable dignity

of manner. He stood on the doorstep outside during prayer with the rest

of the courtiers. Last of all the Sultan drove up in a victoria with the

hood up, two white horses of nondescript breed, two elderly officials on

the back seat, and a driver in a handsome Eastern dress. The Sultan got

out immediately the carriage stopped, turned an instant to salute the

people, and disappeared inside the mosque door. He is small and slight,

but being well shaped looks taller than he is. His face is handsome,

very black eyes, beard, and eyebrows, a nose of prodigious length and a

calm passionless expression—a dignified apparition. But I saw it all

from a considerable distance, and only for two seconds each time, going

in and coming out. As he drove away there was a melancholy attempt at

cheering, the hood was put down, and the Emir el Mumenin was rapidly

driven away from men’s sight. We occupied a little pagoda opposite the

mosque, with a couple of score of sight-seers and officials. Next me

were Ismaïl Jowdat and Husseyn Pasha, one of the Sultan’s aides-de-camp.

“Afterwards Ismaïl Jowdat came to the hotel, and spent three hours

giving me an account of the events of 1882 in Egypt.” These are embodied

in my “Secret History” and need not be repeated.[86]

“_25th Oct._—Rode to the Okmaidan and found the Jews keeping Sabbath in

their best clothes. Some of them were catching goldfinches in a net, and

we had the satisfaction of letting a bird go. These Jews talk Spanish;

one of them told me that their families had come four hundred years ago

from Spain.

“_26th Oct._—Count Corti came to take us in a steam launch to Therapia.

We had luncheon with the Wyndhams and called on the Noailles. The

arrangements of the French Embassy at Constantinople depend neither on

the Sultan nor on the Ambassador, but on the fancy of his son, a youth

of fifteen. Monsieur Doudou, as he is called, makes the rain and fine

weather on the Bosphorus, goes out sailing in a boat by himself to the

terror of his parents, who have him accompanied by another boat to pick

him up. When he goes out riding two negroes run beside him for the same

purpose, and when he goes out walking, he is surrounded by an Oriental

retinue. If Monsieur Doudou stays out late there is no dinner at the

Embassy, and the Ambassador cannot return to Pera until his son

consents. They are very anxious just now to gain his consent to this

necessary autumnal move, but Monsieur Doudou is out of humour, having

styes in his eyes, and will not be cajoled. A few nights ago, his

parents being out dining, he gave a ball at the Embassy to the

housemaids, and ended by smashing all the bells. When the Ambassador

returned, he enquired the meaning of the rumpus, and was told that it

was his son; ‘Rien, que cela!’ said M. de Noailles, and went off pleased

to his bed.

“On our way back to Constantinople Count Corti entertained us with

stories of the Berlin Congress, and of Lord Salisbury’s antics there.

Disraeli and Salisbury had gone there quite on their high horse to curb

the territorial ambition of Russia, and the publication of the secret

convention for the acquisition of Cyprus was a great shock to everybody.

Salisbury broke it gently to Waddington before the news was published;

and Waddington consulted his colleagues, it being generally agreed that

there was no middle course between going to war and saying nothing. ‘_Il

faut la guerre ou se taire_.’ But the publication was a great blow to

Disraeli, who took to his bed, and did not appear for four or five days.

Lord Salisbury, however, brazened it out and came to the Congress with

an air of defiance. There was no rupture between him and Waddington, and

they remained on apparently friendly terms—but Waddington had his

revenge. He was sitting one day with Salisbury, and, the conversation

leading that way, Waddington asked what the English Government would say

to France taking Tunis, and Salisbury said he did not see the harm.

Whereupon Waddington communicated this to Paris, and on his return the

French Ambassador in London was instructed to write to Lord Salisbury

reminding him of his words. Thus Salisbury was caught; ‘But,’ said

Corti, ‘if he had known anything of his business, he would have declined

to answer the note officially and would have pleaded a private

conversation.’ He did not believe that any arrangement of condominion

was come to between Salisbury and Waddington at that time, though I told

him, without mentioning names, of the letter Lytton had shown me.[87]

Count Corti is interesting diplomatically, as he has been to more

Congresses than any man in Europe. He said it was a pity the Sultan kept

up his feud with the English Government, but seemed inclined to agree

with me that our Government would have to come to terms with him about

Egypt. He spoke very strongly in favour of Halim, and of the Sultan’s

wish to make him Viceroy in Tewfik’s place. If it is true that Dufferin

holds this view, our chances look brighter than I have imagined. There

is a talk of Evelyn Baring as Ambassador here, a not unlikely thing

considering what a failure his policy in Egypt has been. He, like Malet,

has served the Government by holding his tongue, and letting his

dispatches be mutilated and suppressed. So he will be rewarded.

“_27th Oct._—Selim Faris called to ask whether I had received any answer

from the Sultan, but none has come. He said it was quite necessary the

English Government should come to terms with the Mohammedans for both

their sakes. This must eventually happen, as England would be obliged,

whether she liked it or not, to make herself their protector. With

regard to the Sultan he might be pacified by being allowed to appoint a

new Viceroy in Egypt, but it would be most dangerous to allow him to

administer the country. What he cared about most was to give the world

some striking proof of his power. He would jump at the idea. At the same

time Faris is convinced that he will never really forgive England, but

will take his revenge whenever the opportunity offers. I asked him if

the Sultan was on good terms with any of the foreign Ambassadors, and he

said: ‘Yes, with the German—and quite lately with the Russian.’ There

seems to be an alliance for the moment with Russia against England.

“Whittaker came in next, and I asked him the reason of Dufferin’s ill

success here. He explained that he had begun badly. The Sultan was

wanting in politeness to him, and he resented it, and Lady Dufferin was

shown no attention. During the whole of her stay at Constantinople she

was only once asked to the palace, and then the Sultan did not see her.

But it was almost impossible to deal with Abdul Hamid. In the

negotiation about Egypt he had changed his mind constantly, telegraphing

orders and counter orders to Musurus after he had agreed with Dufferin.

This made Dufferin say he lied. Then Dufferin with all his outside

amiability was a very hard man. Whittaker says he might be cruel if

occasion offered, and the transitions between the velvet and the iron

were too abrupt. The Turks did not like this. For the last eight months

he was neither invited to, nor went near, the Palace. Goschen was much

more successful, though he, too, gave offence by going to the Palace in

a shooting jacket; but Whittaker thinks that if he had stayed longer he

would have been liked on account of his frank manner.

“Henderson also called. He said we had been very near war over the

Dulcigno business. Goschen had given him orders at one time to pack and

be ready to leave the Aleppo Consulate. Next Ismaïl Jowdat. I read him

over the account of what he had told me on Friday about the events of

1881 and he corrected it on many points (see Appendix).

“_28th Oct._—Mustafa Bey, Arabi’s doctor, breakfasted with us. He is the

most satisfactory man of all I have yet met, and, having been with Arabi

throughout the war, he is excellent evidence. Arabi’s character, he

said, was quite distinct from that of all those who surrounded him. He

was the only one of those in high command who had real patriotism or

real religion, who did not seek his personal interest, and who saw

things clearly. His fault was that he was too confiding, too humane, and

too little censorious of others. He, Mustafa, was with Arabi at Tel-el-

Kebir to the last moment. No attack was expected, as Ali Yusuf, who

commanded the _avant-garde_, had been bought by Sultan Pasha, and Saoud

el Tehawi, who managed the scouting business, was also in the pay of

both sides. Arabi was asleep still in his tent when they heard a sound

of shots (not cannon he says) and presently soldiers running away

accompanied by Bedouins. Arabi drew his sword and tried to rally them,

begging them to fight for their country and their religion, but they

shouted to him ‘_Ya ibn el kelb_’—‘Why should we have ourselves killed

for you?’ The Bedouins, too, fired at him. It was the doctor who got

Arabi to mount and ride off. He himself, after having got into a train

which was stopped by the English, made his way to Zagazig on foot. He

says I am quite correct in my estimate of the characters of the six

exiles in Ceylon. Mahmud Fehmy and Abd-el-Aal are honest men. Mahmud

Sami and Yakub Sami joined the movement from personal motives of spite

against the Khedive; and Toulba was never anything but a worthless

_gamin_. Arabi was wrong to trust them, but he had few good men to

choose from, and when men swore oaths to him he trusted them. Thus he

trusted the Khedive. Ali Fehmy was only half-hearted. He was certainly

acting in concert with the Khedive in the affair of Abdin, but Arabi was

not in their confidence. The thing had been arranged as long before as

July, and Sherif was in the plot. Riaz wanted to make himself regent,

just as Sultan Pasha afterwards expected to be made regent when Tewfik

was to abdicate after Arabi’s trial. Sultan, at least, had told his

friends this, showing them the Order of Michael and George he had

received, ‘The same as had been given to the Sultan of Zanzibar.’

“He then gave us the whole history of the Tantah massacre in detail,

which he knew first from the official enquiry made before Arabi when it

happened, and at which he assisted, and secondly from Ahmed Minshawi

with whom he had lived afterwards at Beyrout, and who came here with

him, and who had repeatedly told him the story. The true facts were

these:

“The Mudir of Tantah, Ibrahim Adhem, with Osman Rafaat, excited the

populace against the Christians, as Ismaïl Jowdat related, telling them

that Arabi had ordered it; and the Mudir shut himself up also as

related. Minshawi lived at a village called Koreyshiyeh, and happening

to come in that day by train with Abd-el-Aal Pasha’s son, Emir Bey, and

Husseyn Wasif, a magistrate, they found Christians being killed, and

Minshawi interfered. They, the populace, called out to him that Arabi

had ordered it, but Minshawi had said to the effect of ‘Damn Arabi,’ and

insisted on their stopping. He had then gone with Abu Diab, who had also

been trying to stop the massacre, to the Mudirieh, and had kicked in the

door of his room and expostulated with him for letting the thing go

on—Abu Diab using strong language, for he was very angry. Then they

telegraphed to Arabi at Kafr Dawar to send soldiers to stop the

massacre, but the telegram had to go round by Ramleh, and was delayed.

But at last the massacre was stopped. The whole thing was enquired into

at Kafr Dawar immediately, and the Mudir was sent to Cairo and there

imprisoned till the end of the war, Darwish Pasha replacing him. After

the war Adhem was reinstated, and when the commission was sent to

Tantah, Ismaïl Yusri, the President, who was a comparatively honest man,

ascertained the truth and informed the Khedive that he should be obliged

to find him, Adhem, guilty, and so begged to be replaced by another on

the Commission. This was done, and an officer less scrupulous was

appointed who accepted the false evidence Ibrahim Adhem was allowed to

trump up against Abu Diab. Ibrahim Adhem, however, was deposed, and

Husseyn Wasif (a Circassian, not the same as the magistrate) was

appointed. He it was who was made a scape-goat of for Ibrahim Adhem’s

sake, and was deprived by Clifford Lloyd and sent to the Soudan. Mehariz

Bey, formerly sub-Mudir, is now Mudir of Boheyra. Minshawi is the son-

in-law of Abdallah Pasha, the English renegade, and his son Emir still

goes by the name of the Englishman.

“Mustafa Bey confirms all Ismaïl’s statements of the Khedive’s

connection with the Alexandrian massacres. He was at Alexandria at the

time, and was the doctor employed to examine the bodies. There were

fifty-one Christian bodies, twenty-three Mohammedan, of which eight were

_mustafezzin_, all the latter killed by pistol shots. The English doctor

wanted to make out the Christian bodies had wounds made by _des armes

blanches_, but this was not the case. Omar Lutfi certainly gave orders

to the mustafezzin to come unarmed. I like the worthy doctor much. In

face and figure he is not unlike Lord Lyons.

“We rode in Stamboul past the bazaars and the tower and the horse

market, and dined with Whittaker. Sat next to Mr. Laing, Director of the

_regie_, who seems a sensible man, and had a talk with a certain

Mohammed Bey, more or less of a spy I believe of the palace. I told him

a good deal of what I intend him to repeat there. Sinadino has gone

bankrupt at Cairo, so there is still justice in the world!

“_29th Oct._—The Egyptian Princes, Osman and Kiamyl, came to see us. I

never thought to like them so well, but they talked patriotically about

the late war, and were really improved by the part they played. [Here

follows the conversation I have recorded with Prince Kiamyl in my

‘Secret History.’] About Arabi’s trial Kiamyl said: ‘If you had only

gone on, Tewfik would have been broken. He was in a terrible fright,

knowing that his crimes would have been laid bare. It is a pity you

allowed the compromise.’ The Sultan, the Princes told us, was mad with

fear; the disease had begun fifteen years ago when a little girl he had

was burned to death. The least mention in praise of any man was

sufficient to arouse his suspicion. He had never received them except in

public audience. To ask for a private audience was enough to ensure his

displeasure. With them was Aarif Bey, who had been the Princes’ tutor,

the same who came with them two years ago to Crabbet. He is a Kurd of

Arab origin and a man of very superior education.[88] We have decided to

go by French boat to Marseilles on Wednesday, as there is small chance

of my getting an audience with the Sultan.

“_30th Oct._—With Count Corti to the Bazaars. Selim Faris came at five.

He gave an amusing account of the Sultan’s manœuvres to set every one by

the ears, which is his system, according to the _divide et impera_ rule.

‘You see the palace,’ he said. ‘The Sultan sits here with a plan before

him, showing the rooms occupied by each of his household. If he finds

two together making friends, he puts them far off each other. His whole

object is to put next each other those who hate each other most. His

chief chamberlain and his second chamberlain would poison each other if

they could; they are lodged together in this corner. There is Ghazi

Osman with Deli Nuzret whom he hates, and there again Abdallah Ibn Saoud

and Sheykh Ahmed Assad, both Arabs and bitter enemies. Thus the Sultan

comes to know everything, and there cannot be any plot against him he

thinks. It was just the same in Egypt; when he sent Dervish Pasha, he

also sent Sheykh Ahmed Assad, his greatest enemy, to watch, and, after

them, Kadri Bey, his secretary, to watch them both, and even that was

not enough, for they had not been there a fortnight when he sent a

fourth, Ahmed Bey, one of his aides-de-camp. Kadri wrote to the Sultan

complaining that this last was laughing at him, and insulting him

publicly, but the Sultan rewarded the aide-de-camp, and Kadri has been

in disgrace ever since. The Sultan has never seen him since his return

to Constantinople. The others told him he was bribed, but Kadri took

nothing but a few jewels. Dervish took money. He got £40,000 in

_consolidés_ from Tewfik, besides jewels and articles of value, but he

was clever enough to send presents by every post to the various members

of the household. Kadri didn’t. I know everything that goes on in the

palace through Zaffir Bey, the Sultan’s private secretary, the same who

wrote to Arabi. He and his father have been friends with my father for

forty years, and I have one other friend in the palace. It does not do

to have more, and even these I am obliged to pretend not to know. I

shall go to-morrow at six o’clock, before it is light, to find out about

your letter to Munir Pasha. I will let you know at breakfast time. I

should like you to see the Sultan for the sake of your friends in Ceylon

and India. But the Sultan cannot help you, he is so busy and has no

memory. He writes down everything that is told him in a diary, but he

has no memory. He has always been very kind to me, but I have been in a

mess with him several times. First because I would not write against

Ismaïl when they were going to depose him, and for other things. But I

am protected by Zaffir Bey, and he always intercedes till the Sultan

forgives me and makes me presents. I have three jewelled boxes from him,

and when I went to England last year he gave me £300; but I got into

disgrace by dining with Lord Granville, and my newspaper was suspended.

Now I am in favour again, and the _Jowaib_ is to go on next month as

before, I am very fond of the Sultan. He is so kind, but he is a child.

He does not understand, though he wants to know everything. He has spies

in every house, either the cook or a slave. When he wants particularly

to know about any of the Pashas, he makes them a present of one of his

women, and then he hears everything. I was offered one once, but I would

not have her. The Sultan has not so many women as some of the Sultans

have had—perhaps twenty-five or thirty at a time, but there are several

hundred more in the palace, servants and slaves of these. Abdul Hamid

has never been married legally. I knew him long before he came to the

throne. I never heard the story about his daughter being burnt, but it

was Abdul Aziz’s death and Murad’s dethronement that have driven him

mad.’

“Faris has promised to help me with all details in my History of the

Egyptian Invasion. He tells me he can tell me everything that went on

between the Sultan and Egypt, but I think I know all pretty well as it

is. Faris also gave a curious account of the dethronement of Ismaïl in

1879. Ismaïl had written to Abdul Hamid to say that he was threatened

with dethronement by the Powers, and to ask whether he should abdicate.

But the Sultan would not hear of this, and sent him word that he was

never to give in and that he would support him. At the same time he

called a council to discuss the matter, and hid himself in the council

room behind a curtain. Khair-ed-Din was Vizier, and spoke strongly in

favour of yielding to the Powers, saying that if they did not the Powers

would act without them, and the prestige of the Sultan would be lost.

Abdul Hamid, hearing this, changed his mind, and the Ministers were sent

at once to the telegraph office, and there wrote out the order deposing

Ismaïl. This tallies closely with what Lascelles told me of Ismaïl’s

surprise at the order. Faris was in the palace and heard everything as

it happened. ‘And I could have cried my eyes out,’ he said, ‘with

vexation, for Ismaïl was then my patron.’

“_31st Oct._—Stayed indoors. Our first visitor was Aarif Bey, and he and

Ismaïl Jowdat, who came later, stayed to luncheon. Aarif is more

interesting than I at all suspected in spite of his distinguished

appearance and pretensions to Arab descent. He told me his history and

that of his family. They are a family of Seyyids settled 700 years ago

in Kurdistan, where, until sixty-five years ago, they were hereditary

rulers, their capital being Mardin. But the centralization of the Empire

destroyed them, and his grandfather was brought away to live at

Constantinople by Sultan Mahmud. It is clear, however, that they have

preserved their descent pure, and he spoke in scorn of the mongrel Turks

of modern times. After lamenting the dangers and misfortunes of Islam he

communicated to me the secret that all was arranged for a Kurdish rising

next May, and that he was going to put himself at the head of it. They

would be able to put 80,000 men under arms,—this without the help of

Russia, which had offered them arms, but whose alliance they refused.

They did not wish to quarrel with the Sultan, but to stand to their arms

and demand the right of local self-government. Their country was

abominably misruled by ignorant and corrupt Stamboulis, and they felt

that if they did nothing they would one day be engulfed in the common

ruin of the Empire. Every year they were becoming poorer and weaker, but

the Kurds were a nation still of three millions, and warlike men. He

asked me whether I thought the English Government would give them its

moral support. He had seen Dilke when in London two years ago, and had

asked him about it, and Dilke had told him that, though the idea was not

discouraged, he considered the time an unfavourable one. This must have

been about a month before the bombardment of Alexandria, and it tallies

curiously with what Eddy Hamilton wrote to me about the projected Syrian

rising a little more than a year earlier.[89]

“I told Aarif in return the history of my correspondence with Downing

Street on just these points, and warned him not to trust to Mr.

Gladstone or to England, which was far too busy in all parts of the

world just now to attend to Kurdistan. Russia, too, would be sure to

prevent anything like Mohammedan Nationalism on her frontier. The

Russian design was to take possession of the Euphrates and the head of

the Persian Gulf. To this he said that the Kurds were willing to risk a

quarrel with Russia, that, if they waited, their fate would be only more

certain afterwards, and that at present Russia favoured them. And he

asked me to plead their cause in England. I promised him to do this, but

told him very frankly that it would be almost impossible to attract

sympathy in England for the Kurds. A Kurdish question would not be

understood there, and all that was known with us of the Kurds was taken

from the tales of travellers who had been robbed by them. I advised him

therefore strongly to put his case forward as part of the Armenian

question, which was already understood in England, and had attracted

sympathy, and was even provided for in the Treaty of Berlin. As an

Armenian rising, it would be understood, and would have a kind of legal

standing. He told me that the Armenians were with the Kurds in this

matter, but that there was the difficulty as to who should be their

chief, for the Armenians would want a Christian, while the Kurds would

have none but a Mohammedan. Anne suggested, however, that there might be

two chiefs, and we looked out the position on the map and found that in

fact the country might be divided into two districts. The north with Van

as capital would be Christian. The south with Diarbekr would be

Mohammedan. He assured us the Arabs, too, were with them, the Shammar,

the Taï, and the Jibouri—and the rising would begin for certain next

May.

“Aarif’s father is Seyyid Yusuf Sidki. His brother-in-law was one of the

leaders of the last Kurdish revolt with Sheykh Obeidallah. They would

have conquered Persia but for the Sultan’s intervention.

“Selim Faris also looked in. He has been to the Palace and finds that

Munir Pasha has not dared mention my name to the Sultan or forward my

letter. They are all afraid.

“_1st Nov._—Aarif Bey came again to tell me that he had arranged with

Ahmed Bey, the Sultan’s _Chef de Cabinet politique_, that we should meet

to-night at the theatre and have a talk, and he thinks that then Ahmed

Bey, who sees the Sultan every day, will arrange for an audience Monday

or Tuesday, and I have told him that I cannot and will not stay past

Wednesday, when the French steamer starts. Aarif, in spite of his

revolutionary projects in Kurdistan, is on confidential terms with the

Sultan’s Cabinet, and sends them reports on political subjects. When we

saw him in England in 1882 he seems to have had something of a private

mission, and has clearer ideas of English political parties than is

usual with foreigners. His estimates of Gladstone, Salisbury, and Dilke

were correct, and he described how, after an interview with Salisbury,

in which he, Salisbury, had held language entirely favourable to the

Sultan’s rights in Egypt, he had gone the next day to hear him speak

exactly in the opposite sense in the House of Lords. I asked him about

the relations existing between the Sultan and Russia, and he told me

that all the advances at present were on the side of Russia, that the

Sultan only trusted the Germans, who, he remarked, could not possibly

help him; that he still had some trust in Lord Salisbury with regard to

Egypt, if he should come into power again, but that he knew perfectly

well that there was no material help to be expected from England any

more. I told him I was quite of that opinion. Whatever else we might do,

we were quite certain never to send any more troops to help the Sultan

against a European Power, and that, if I had to advise for his good, it

would be to make an alliance with Russia. Russia, of course, never could

be a friend, but if they could tide over the next twenty-five years,

there might well be a revolution there, a European war, or heaven knew

what. But Russia was the greatest danger Turkey had, for it menaced it

in Asia, and the conquest of Asia Minor would be an end of all things.

Aarif quite agreed with this and said that if England continued in her

present line of policy, an alliance with Russia was inevitable. The only

thing that prevented it was that the Russian Government was _tellement

canaille_, that the Sultan would not trust them, but he would be driven

to it.

“Aarif also gave us a capital account of the way Lord Dufferin had

tricked the Sultan in the matter of the proclamation of Arabi’s

rebellion. The Sultan, he assured me, still had a kindly feeling for

Arabi, and it was entirely against the grain that he had issued the

proclamation. But Dufferin had bullied him by threatening to leave

Constantinople, or acknowledge Abd-el-Mutalleb, the Sherif of Mecca,

Caliph. Afterwards, when the Sultan wanted to sign the convention for

sending troops, Dufferin went off to the Princes Islands and could not

be got at. There had been a great debate among the Ulema as to the

legality of the proclamation, and he, Aarif himself, had pronounced

strongly against it on the ground of a certain _hadith_ which declared

every Mohammedan justified in defending Mohammedan interests against the

infidel, whether with the Caliph’s sanction or without it. He also told

us about his visit to the Oxford and British Museums, and the Arabic

documents he had found there.

“Next we went to tea successively at the German and Russian Embassies.

At the latter we made acquaintance with M. Onou, the Chancellier, who

knows Syria well and something of the desert. We talked about Arabia,

and I think I made some impression on Nélidof by the warmth of my

pleadings. His wife has a great hatred for Lord Dufferin. She was a

Princess, and her brother was the owner of that stud of 150 horses which

was burnt last year.

“At half past six Aarif returned and took us to dine at a restaurant,

and we went on to the theatre, but Ahmed Bey Jellal-ed-Din was not

there, and had sent us a message by Ahmed Pasha, another aide-de-camp,

to say that the Sultan had kept him on service. The play was, I forget

what—the ‘Princess Something.’ I hate these things.

“I have forgotten the principal event of the day, the visit of Ahmed

Minshawi. He came early in the morning, having been sent by the Syrian

banker. It is clear that Ismaïl Jowdat did not intend him to see us, and

they have quarrelled about something, as they all do. Minshawi is a true

fellah of the Arabi type, but altogether inferior to him, a large,

nervous, heavy-handed man, with his eyes rather too close together, and

a general heaviness relieved by occasional flashes. He was very

difficult at first to reassure, and explained that he had been so hunted

for the last two years by the police that he had lost all his courage.

It is not given to every one, he said, to be courageous, and he lamented

his fallen fortunes. ‘I used to be a man of large wealth. I lived like a

prince at home, respected by all, surrounded by friends, and confident

in myself. Now I am treated as a _fakir_. The Turks have no bowels of

compassion. They have no charity. With us the stranger is respected.

Here he is watched by the police,—and he asked nervously whether there

was any one listening, as the door creaked. ‘I used to have four

thousand acres of good land worth £60 or £70 each (I am not sure of the

figures), and half a dozen steamers on the river. Now I receive not £20

a year from my property. I am driven out of my home and live as I can on

what remains to me of the ready money I took with me.’ The tears rolled

down from his eyes as he spoke, and he sat for some minutes silent on

the sofa weeping.

“I asked him to tell me how it all came about, and he said it was from

his having interfered to save the lives of the Christians at Tantah. He

had gone into Tantah that morning thinking of nothing, and when he saw

the people being killed he had lost his temper and laid about him with

his stick to stop them, and he had expostulated with the Mudir, and he

had taken 150 of the people, Syrians, Jews, or Greeks, to his country

house, and had kept them at his own cost during the war. The people who

had got up the riot were Ibrahim Adhem and his wakil, Mehariz, who is

now Mudir. These two were solely answerable for it. He had heard of

Osman Rafaat’s coming to Tantah, but had not seen him. I asked him about

Abu Diab. ‘_Wallah!_’ he said, ‘if there was one innocent in the world

it was Abu Diab.’ I then tried to get out of him what his political

views were. But he was very cautious, after the manner of his people.

‘If,’ he said, ‘you were to take an ox or a camel or an ape, or even a

hare, and give it to the Egyptians as their Governor, they would be

grateful and loyal to it. Before the war we loved the English, but we do

not love them now. They have destroyed us, and they have given us to

those who have no mercy.’ After much pressing, I got out of him that he

would like Abbas with a regent, Riaz, or, if it were possible, Arabi. He

said Riaz because he would keep order, but Arabi the people would like

far better. He did not wish Ismaïl. He should have no objection to

Halim. But any one would be acceptable so long as Tewfik went away. I

urged him to come to England to give evidence, and he said he would, but

what was he to do with the family? His family was here, and he had no

friend to leave them with. I fear he is a rather helpless ally. Still we

must make what use of him we can, and he is to come again on Monday.

“_2nd Nov., Sunday._—By steamer to Roumeli Hissar to have luncheon with

Halim Pasha, and take leave. But we unfortunately missed the boat, and

did not get there till nearly two o’clock. The Princess is certainly a

very charming person, and still a pretty woman. She gave us luncheon in

the kiosk in the garden, a very handsome room. Some Turkish dishes,

among others one of chicken with walnut sauce. Afterwards I had a long

talk with Halim. Explained to him how the war had been brought about,

and Mr. Gladstone’s desire to be rid of Egypt, and begged him to further

my design of bringing forward now the charges against the Khedive, by

sending Ismaïl Jowdat and Mustafa Bey to England. And he promised to

send them and to get them to agree with Minshawi not to quarrel. At

going away I said to the Prince: ‘I suppose it is understood between us

that if Your Highness returns to Egypt, Arabi is to return too.’ He

said: ‘You may count upon it. I have never had any other idea, and I

only regret that I have not been able sooner to put myself in direct

communication with him. All the exiles shall be recalled.’ I like Halim

more the more I see him. He is plain spoken and direct in all he says.

“His Beatitude Stephen Peter X, Monseigneur Azarian, Patriarch of the

Catholic Armenians, called on us. He is a dignified and intelligent man,

to whom we had brought letters from Madame Volodkowich; and he told us

in detail the Armenian situation. The desire of the Catholic Armenians

was to have such a government as that of the Lebanon. They did not want

to be separated from the Porte, as their greatest danger was absorption

by Russia. But the administration had become worse than it had ever

been, and the people would bear it no longer. With regard to the Kurds,

he said they were much less fanatical than the Turks, and the accounts

of their misdeeds were very much exaggerated. He was sure that, if they

had a government like that of the Lebanon, they would all live together

very peaceably. The Turkish Government favoured the Catholics, as they

did not conspire with Russia, which the Orthodox did. But even these did

not wish Armenia to be absorbed by Russia.

“Of the Sultan he gave the most favourable account I have yet heard. He

says that he has known personally four Sultans, and Abdul Hamid is far

the best of them, and perhaps the best Sultan there ever was. He is a

good man, and works hard to know everything concerning his country, and

is most intelligent. He has no vices, has few women, neither drinks nor

amuses himself, and is severely economical. He has no debts, paying

everything, down to the last detail of his household, every Thursday. He

knew this as the Sultan’s accountant is an Armenian Catholic. Only, all

his servants are bad, and he trusts no one. The Government of the Porte

is worse than it ever was, a mere den of corruption, and it is

impossible that a catastrophe is not impending. The Greeks in Roumelia

are all members of secret societies, and so are the Syrians, and one of

these days it will occur. The finance will break down, for nobody is

paid and the people are all coming to beggary. Everything can be bought.

The new Greek Patriarch of Jerusalem is a man whose name stands first on

the list of those dangerous to the Empire, as he is a head centre of

Pan-slavism. Yet he procured his nomination by spending money. All was

going to ruin, and would go to ruin. He, the Patriarch, was sorry for

it. A worthy old man. Peace be with His Beatitude.

“_3rd Nov._—Our first visitor was Ahmed Minshawi, from whom we got

additional details, and I have drawn up a statement of the evidence he

is prepared to give, which will be most valuable.[90] As he gets more

confidence his face lights up, and he acquires even a certain eloquence.

He reminds me every now and then of Arabi, typical fellahin both. He was

driven away by the arrival of Doctor Dickenson. [Here follows Doctor

Dickenson’s account of the death of Abdul Aziz, which has been related

previously in my ‘Secret History,’ see pages 52 to 55.] Dr. Dickenson is

a very precise old gentleman, and the sort of witness whose evidence

would be accepted by any jury in the world. I therefore entirely believe

his account. Midhat and Damad, he told us, died in chains at Taïf, some

months ago, having been starved to death. Midhat’s end was hastened by a

carbuncle, but he was none the less made away with. The Sheykh el Islam

has also recently died there who gave the fetwa authorizing Abdul Aziz’s

deposition. This act of terror has given Abdul Hamid the absolute power

he now holds.

“We went to the Russian Embassy again to say good-bye, and see some

horses given by the Sultan to Nélidof. The horses are of no great

account, a chestnut and a gray worth £50 or £60 a piece.

“Coming back we found Mustafa Bey, and we have arranged that he is to

encourage Minshawi, and when we telegraph come with him to England and

give his evidence. Ismaïl Jowdat also came in. We wrote out a _procès

verbal_ for Minshawi to sign. What I intend to do is to invite Mr.

Gladstone to examine the evidence privately, or appoint Trevelyan or

somebody of equivalent integrity to examine it. If he refuses I shall do

it publicly. Ismaïl Jowdat will come at once with us to England.

“While we were talking, Aarif Bey came in with a message from Ahmed Bey

to the effect that they had been afraid to present my request of an

audience to the Sultan; but that they had spoken of my wish to see the

horses, etc., and that the Sultan had been most gracious, and would send

an aide-de-camp to-morrow to show us over the stables and the palace. I

confess the story did not sound to me quite coherent, and Selim Faris,

who looked in later, tells me that he has just been to the palace, and

that the true account of it is that Munir did give my letter to the

Sultan, but that he wishes to put off on others the responsibility of

not answering it, that he is as usual undecided, and would like to find

out a little more about me first, and he will probably send an aide-de-

camp on purpose to report concerning me to-morrow. He will see me later

if I will only wait. But I can’t wait. The Sultan asked Zaffir about me

on Friday, but Zaffir pretended he had never heard of me. This

invitation to the palace and stables is at any rate a proof that he is

not ill-disposed, and we must make the most of it. The idea of the

palace at present is that nothing new will come on in Egypt till next

summer, and he thinks if I come back then I shall be able to do a great

deal. Perhaps he is right. In any case we shall not have wasted our time

here.

“Our last visitor was Mr. de Leon, formerly American Consul-General at

Cairo, now agent of a company for making a ship-railway over the isthmus

of Akaba. The scheme seems to me chimerical from the fact that Suez is a

far easier, shorter, and more direct route.

“_4th Nov._—Ismaïl Jowdat came in the morning, having written out the

evidence given us by Minshawi in Arabic for him to sign. But Minshawi

did not appear till too late, for we had to go out at a quarter to one

to the old Seraglio, where the Sultan had appointed an aide-de-camp to

meet us and show us everything. This _Serai_ is a delightful old place,

and the position the finest, without exception, in the world. By good

luck the aide-de-camp on duty was old Vefyk Pasha’s son, an extremely

nice, intelligent young man, who knew the history of the various Sultans

well, and so was able to explain us everything. We were received in

State and conducted round by the whole staff of the Palace. The Treasury

is full of interesting things which belong to the domain of Murray. But

what was to me most attractive was the series of effigies of the Sultans

dressed in their actual clothes. This recalls past glories better than

anything else could do. Mahmud’s miserable hussar jacket closes the

series, but there are lower depths still since, left unrepresented. The

young man confessed himself ashamed of his wretched uniform and fez, a

rare instance of good taste in a modern Oriental. In the kiosk we drank

the Sultan’s coffee, which I confess I only sipped, remembering its

fatal name. The Dolmabakji to which we were next taken is without

interest inside, and we were disappointed of our promised visit to the

stables, as the Sultan was having the horses paraded at the Yildiz

Palace in order to choose one for an Ambassador. At least such was the

excuse given—but I half suspect they were afraid of our criticism. The

visit to the palaces is, however, a proof of the Sultan’s goodwill, and

when I thanked the young man and gave him a message of thanks to the

Sultan he told me that they all knew of me as a defender of Islam and a

friend.

“Selim Faris, who came in the evening, tells me it was Musurus (the

Turkish Ambassador in London) who set the Sultan against me, telling him

that I was seeking to found an Arabian Empire; but he is now undeceived.

He advises me to write a memorandum of my ideas to the Sultan.

“_5th Nov._—Ahmed Minshawi came and signed his evidence (see Appendix).

Mustafa Bey Nejdi also called, and then Count Corti, to wish us goodbye,

and we went on board the French steamer, having spent three weeks at

Constantinople, an interesting visit, though our main object of seeing

the Sultan remained unachieved. It was a dark evening with a huge bank

of black clouds to the north, signs of winter in the Black Sea, when we

steamed out of the Golden Horn and passed Seraglio point and the city

walls on our way home. Ismaïl Jowdat goes with us.

“_6th Nov._—Really there never was such good fortune. On board there is

an acquaintance of Ismaïl’s, Mohammed Assad Bey, Muteserif of Candia, on

his way to his post, uncle-in-law of our friend Aarif Bey. He is by

birth one of the hereditary Kurdish chiefs, but exiled at the age of

seventeen (he is now fifty-seven) on account of his father’s rebellion—a

most interesting man. He has been many years in Crete, and has seen many

changes in the Empire, all for the worse. He lamented the quarrels

between England and Islam, which he attributed to its true causes,

first, the obstinacy of the Porte in effecting no reforms, and secondly,

the dishonesty of England in regard to Egypt. In regard to the latter,

he said what they all say and to which there is no answer, that the

English caused misgovernment in Egypt so as to have an excuse for taking

it. He said that all his life he had been accustomed to respect

Englishmen as men of just dealing, but they were changed and he

respected them no more. If he had not seen Ismaïl Jowdat with us, he

should not have cared to make our acquaintance. From having the best

reputation in the East the English had now the worst. About his own

country, Kurdistan, he talked much in the sense that Aarif had done—only

he seemed to see less hope in the trouble which was coming. The Russians

he said were very busy stirring up the Christian Armenians, and the

thing would break out in the spring. It would begin with the Armenians,

then the Kurds would take up arms in self-defence. There would be

stories of bloodshed and massacre greatly exaggerated, and the Russians

would take it as a pretext for intervention. The Turks had about 150,000

Nizams in Asia Minor, and the Kurds could put a far greater number under

arms. But he augured ill for the result. The Russians wanted Mesopotamia

and Bagdad and Bussora. The Turks could fight well, but they had no

leader. All the Turkish commanders were corrupt and selfish, and they

would be bribed again by the Russians. I asked him who was the natural

Kurdish leader, and he said: ‘There are several hundred Kurds in the

Custom House at Galata. Yesterday, when I passed through, they all

bowed.’ His elder brother, however, would seem to be the man, and this

agrees with Aarif’s account. Obeidallah is the religious chief only. In

the evening Ismaïl Jowdat gave a full account of all he knew in

connection with Arabi and the events of 1881. [The substance of what I

learned from him is embodied in his statement (see Appendix).]

“_12th Nov._—We arrived without incident at Marseilles and went on

immediately to Paris.”