Constantinople _Continued_--The Massacre of Kesanlyk--A
Sketching Expedition--Failure of Supplies--Correspondent for
the _Scotsman_ and the _Times_--Adrianople--The Case of the
Gueschoffs--The Bulgarians.
At first I thought the Constantinople fare the most delightful I had
ever encountered anywhere. At the first dinner at which I sat down we
were served amongst other things with red mullet, stuffed tomatoes and
quail--all excellent of their sort and admirably prepared. Red mullet,
_tomates farcies_ and quail appeared again for breakfast and were not
to be despised, but red mullet, tomates farcies and quail for luncheon,
began to be a trifle tiresome, and when all three appeared again at
dinner and at the next day's breakfast and luncheon, there were some of
us who began to hunger for a change. We made a little party and we
went across to the Valori restaurant. Here we encountered a polyglot
major-domo, who spoke all languages of Europe indifferently ill. “What
can we have for dinner?” asked our spokesman. “Ret moiled, domades
varcies, et qvail!” He smiled ineffably and evidently thought that he
was offering us food for the gods. We ate tough beefsteak, fried in oil,
and cursed the delicacies of the country. The diners at Valori's made up
the first really polyglot assembly I had ever seen. There were Bulgarian
notables--caring apparently to speak their own language only--Spanish
Jews from Eski Zaghra, Greeks, Turks, Germans, Italians, Armenians,
Englishmen, native volunteers for the Polish legion then forming, and a
Croat gentleman with bejewelled handles to his private arsenal of lethal
weapons, and starched expansive white petticoats. Our major-domo was
somehow equal to them all, and when the rush of service was partly
over, I found an opportunity to ask him how many languages he spoke.
He answered in a tone of apology and regret: “Onily twelluv, ich habe
vergessen les autres!”
A day or two later I encountered the official interpreter of the Persian
Embassy who spoke English as perfectly as I did and apparently all the
languages of the civilised world beside. I asked him seriously how many
tongues he professed to have mastered, and his reply was this: “If you
ask me in how many languages and dialects I can converse, I suppose I
should have to say seventy or eighty, but if you confine me to those in
which I can construct a grammar I should have to tell you fifteen at
the outside. No man can really say he knows a language until he can
construct a grammar for it.”
So much for a special detached faculty which I have found in the
possession of people who are otherwise entirely stupid.
The utter lawlessness of the Asiatic troops, by whom Constantinople was
supposed to be defended, gave me a fair foretaste of things to come.
It was certainly rather a curious thing that in a country about which
I travelled freely, and which was overrun by the most murderous ravage,
months passed before I heard a shot fired. It so fell out that I was
the discoverer of the fields of massacre in the district of the Rose
Gardens. I found twelve hundred unburied dead, all hacked and mutilated,
in a vineyard near Kesanlyk. I found Kalofer a smoking wilderness,
without a living soul left out of a population of twelve hundred. I
found Sopot a howling desolation, where only the village dogs were left
alive. Day by day, for weeks, I travelled stealthily in the rear of the
roving bands of Bashi-Bazouks and Zeibecks who were laying the country
waste and slaughtering its Christian population; but it was more than an
Englishman's life was worth to show himself among them, and I never came
near enough to see them actually engaged upon their dreadful business,
except during one week, when, from one of the lower slopes of the
Balkans, I could see the whole horizon red with the flame of burning
villages, and could sometimes even hear the shrieks of outraged women.
But in all this time I never heard a shot fired, so far as I can
remember, until I came to the Schipka, where a long-drawn artillery
duel was dragging on in the pass between the guns of Sulie-man Pasha and
General Gourko. Correspondents and doctors lived at that time, for the
most part, at a respectful distance from the scene of that monotonous
action. We were quartered at Schipka Keui, where we pitched our tents on
the edge of a forest of wild plum trees, and spent our idle time as best
we could, whilst we waited for developments. Amongst us was the English
volunteer on the Turkish side, mentioned in the last chapter, who bore
the rank of Colonel, and remembered by his old comrades as Schipka
Campbell. He was a man of the most extraordinary and daring valour, and
I really believe that he found a keen joy in danger. He was full of a
scheme for a night attack upon a position which Gourko had taken up in
a height which the Russians called St Nicholas Crag, and he got leave,
after a good deal of characteristic procrastination, to go into the
forts, and thence to take a sketch of the country he desired to travel
in the night-time. I was very eager to see things closer at hand than
I had been able to do till then, and it was arranged that I should
accompany Campbell on this sketching expedition. By the side of the
winding mountain way a sort of covering wall had been built for some
hundreds of yards, to shelter passing troops and convoys from the
observation of the enemy. It was a rather flimsy structure, and it could
have been beaten down by a single gun in an hour or two; but I suppose
that the rocks which commanded it from the other side of the pass were
inaccessible to artillery. In one place the ground dipped, and formed
a cup-like hollow, and, the big guns having brought down a good deal of
rain by their constant firing, a pond had gathered here, and had sapped
the foundations of the wall. There was left a clear space of rather
more than a dozen yards, and this place was thickly strewn with splashed
bullets which had struck the face of the overhanging rock. There was
probably a good cartload of spoiled lead strewn there, and the dark face
of the rock was pitted all over with grey bullet-marks.
Campbell informed me, in a casual sort of way, that there were always
some hundreds of the enemy's infantry on the lookout for a passenger at
this point, and that we were sure to draw a volley. Now, I had no really
pressing business to persuade me onward, and I had no special liking for
the prospect; but Campbell scoffed at the very thought of danger. Even
if the enemy were expecting us, he urged, a man could clear that space
in quicker time than a bullet would take to travel from the opposite
side of the pass, and it was just as likely as not that by nipping
across quickly we might fail to draw Are at all. This had an air
of reason about it, but I was not nearly so curious to see the
fortifications as I had been. I represented that the two journals for
which I was working at that time had no other representative on the
ground, that big events were probably imminent, and that it was my duty
to preserve a whole skin in the interests of my employers. Upon this
Campbell assured me of his belief that I was funking, and I immediately
concurred with him. It was a mere matter of fact, and I saw no ground
on which I could dispute it. I have never run away from anybody or
anything--though I have wanted to do so upon occasion--but I am not
fond of unnecessary danger. My guide declined to waste time on me, and,
leaving me in the shelter of the wall, he ran swiftly across the open
space, and turned crouching on the other side. It has turned me cold
a thousand times to think about it since; but I was just in the act
of nerving myself for a run when he impetuously waved me back, and a
perfect tempest of lead fell shrieking on the face of the rock. Had I
obeyed my own impulse, I should have been riddled like any colander.
The grey face of the rock seemed to flash white under the impact of the
volley. One splashed bullet struck the rock some yards above me,
and fell to the ground flattened to something like the form of a
five-shilling piece, with irregularly starred edges. I stooped to pick
it up, but it was at almost a melting-heat. I dropped it quickly, and
then, in answer to Campbell's call, I cleared the open space in safety,
and was followed by a belated random shot or two. But, to be quite
honest, I had no pleasure in the adventure, and I was careful not to
return until the shades of night had fallen.
The gentleman from Chicago, at whose instigation I had gone out to
Turkey, had supplied me with a sum of forty pounds, and had undertaken
to deposit more to my account at the Ottoman Bank. I called at that
establishment daily and found news of no remittance. I was in the
meantime vainly moving the Turkish authorities for a _teskerai_, which
would authorise me to go up country. No remittance, no leave to move,
the hotel bill growing to really alarming proportions, the outlook was
unpleasant; in a while it had grown no less than desperate. I bombarded
the Chicago man with cablegrams as long as I could afford it, but no
answer came, nor have I, from that day to this, received any explanation
of the circumstances which induced him to send me out and then to leave
me stranded. I had already made application to the British Consul, Mr
Fawcett, afterwards Sir John, to secure for me a passage home, when I
was delivered from my embarrassments by as remarkable a chance as ever
befell me in my life. After leaving the Consul's office, I strolled
into the Valori gardens, which were a dreary waste of small pebbles and
coarse gravel, with an oasis here and there consisting of a painted iron
table and a few painted iron chairs, where men of all nationalities
sat sipping vishnap and limoni, and extinguishing by their Babylonian
chatter the strains of a very indifferent band. I was making the circuit
of the gardens in tolerably low spirits; I had expended my last piastre,
had emptied my cigar-case, had listened to a violent objurgation from
the landlord of the Byzance Hotel and was now bound home at the expense
of the Consular funds--a failure confessed. Nobody likes to be beaten,
and it seemed to me at that moment that I tasted the full flavour of
ignominy, and whilst I was floundering in the depths of my despondency
I heard a voice speaking in English. “There you are--the _Weekly
Dispatch_--Constantinople in a state of siege. If I could find the man
who wrote that article, I should like to commission him to-morrow.” Now
it happened that I had written that article and had sent it home within
a day or two of my arrival. I had not even known that it had been
accepted and the revival of hope ran through me like an electric shock.
I claimed the article for my own and in ten minutes I had concluded
a bargain with the authorised agent of the _Scotsman_, had agreed
to accept the services of an interpreter, and had arranged, with a
_taskerai_ or without one, to take the 7.30 train to Adrianople from
the Stamboul station. There followed a hurried interview with the
Vice-Consul, Mr Wrench, at which it was arranged that my hotel bill
should be defrayed from future earnings, my baggage was released by the
Consular influence, and next morning, at the appointed hour, my dragoman
and I were being pulled across the waters of the Golden Horn by a
pair of sturdy _caiquejees_, and were bound for the front. With what
a rebound of high spirits on my part it is quite impossible to say t I
thought I had never seen so beautiful a morning, and indeed the scene,
apart from all considerations of mood, was very charming. The receding
hill of Galata, with its bowers of green, its mosques and minarets and
palaces, lay steeped in the early sunrise, and looked as lovely as a
dream.
It was on the eve of the Feast of Bairam that we set out, and when
we arrived at Adrianople, the city was illuminated and the street was
filled with joyful crowds. News had arrived to the effect that a pitched
battle had been fought between the Russian army and the forces of
Raouf Pasha, and the Turks were reported to have been magnificently
victorious. But Adrianople saw another sight next morning when the
trains from Yeni Zaghra, where the action had taken place, crawled
slowly into the station with their burden of one thousand two hundred
wounded. To one who was new to war, the spectacle of this one thousand
two hundred was a reminder of its horrors. There was a good deal of talk
about the Russians having fired on the white protective flag, but if
they had broken the rules of civilised combat in that way they had been
but indifferent marksmen, for no one of the long row of carriages was
so much as scarred. It was evident, however, that the trains had been
unskilfully driven and that there had been checks and shocks upon the
road, for the wounded, who had been bestowed along the benches at the
beginning of the journey, were lying all higgledy-piggledy on the floor
when they arrived. I helped to carry some of them from the train to
the rough eight-wheeled springless arabas in which they were borne to
hospital. In these wretched vehicles the wheel was not a cycle but an
octagon, and the wounded, who were jolted along the street, filled
the air with cries of agony. I made an immediate dash to the scene
of conflict and there I encountered seventeen officers who, with the
exception of the wounded I had seen already, were the sole survivors
of Raouf's army of seventeen thousand. One man, an artillerist, who had
been educated at Chatham and who spoke English faultlessly, gave me the
history of yesterday's battle. The man had looked at doom, and there was
doom still in his eyes. “We were beaten by their artillery,” he said,
“there was never such a scene of carnage. The Russians had a shell for
every man.”
In Philipopolis I was introduced to the Gueschoffs, a Bulgarian
mercantile family who had been established there for some generations.
The two sons had been educated at Owen's College, Manchester, and might
easily have passed anywhere for Englishmen. One of them was Deputy
Vice-Consul for Great Britain and the other held a similar office for
the United States. I dined with them and spent a very pleasant evening,
and I am sure that no visible shadow of mischance was then hanging over
the household. But a fortnight later I was amazed to learn that the
father and the two sons had alike been arrested on a charge of treason,
that they had all three been tried before a military tribunal and
condemned to death, whilst the whole of their possessions had been
sequestrated by the commandant of the city, Ibrahim Pasha. This was in
no special degree an affair of mine, but as soon as I heard the news I
hastened back to Philipopolis, and in the course of a hurried interview
with Mr Calvert, the British Vice-Consul, the conclusion was arrived at
that the official position of the two younger men was of a character to
afford them some protection against proceedings of so summary a nature.
It became entirely obvious as the result of a mere surface inquiry that
the charge against the Gueschoffs had been trumped up by the military
authorities simply and purely because they were wealthy people, and the
commandant saw his way to a handsome windfall.
Armed with such scanty proofs as I could gather, I set out for
Constantinople and, arriving there in the space of two days, I laid my
case before Sir Arthur Laird, who was then our Ambassador to the Porte,
and the Honourable Horace Maynard, who was Minister for the United
States. Sir Arthur was a pronounced Philo-Turk and would not for a
moment believe that any such abominable intrigue as I suggested could
have occurred to the mind of any Turkish official. He received me with
marked coldness and I felt from the first that I could make no headway
with him. Mr Horace Maynard met me in another spirit “One of these men,”
he told me, “is under the protection of the American flag and in his
case I shall insist upon a new trial and in the meantime the execution
shall be suspended.” A fortunate chance threw me into communication with
Lady Laird, who was less violently prepossessed in favour of the
Turkish Government than her husband. She promised me her most cordial
assistance, but for three days I hung about Constantinople in a fever
of apprehension, waiting for the imperial _firman_, by virtue of which I
trusted to secure an arrest of sentence.
The execution of the three Bulgarian merchants was fixed for eight
o'clock on the morning of the ensuing Saturday, and late on Wednesday
night the longed-for document came into my hands. I attempted at once
to telegraph the news to Philipopolis, but the wires had been cut in
a score of places and communication was impossible. The next train up
country started at seven o'clock in the morning and it seemed as if
I had ample time before me, but somewhere in the neighbourhood of
Adrianople a culvert had been blown up by the Bulgarian insurgents and
we were brought to a decisive standstill. There was nothing for it but
to complete the journey on horseback and here I was heavily handicapped
by the fact that I had mastered but a scattered phrase or two of the
language, and had the greatest difficulty in making my wants known. At
length, by good hap, I encountered a Bulgarian who spoke a little French
and by his aid I contrived to get a mount The moon was almost at the
full and it was absolutely impossible to miss the road. I set out upon
my journey with a better heart than I should have had if I had known
what I learned afterwards. The whole district between Adrianople and
Philipopolis had been suddenly overrun by the Irregulars, who were
carrying everything before them with fire and sword. Luckily for me
they shunned the high road and devoted their attentions to the outlying
villages. Anything at once more dreary and more exasperating than that
ride I cannot recall. I was badly mounted at the first and at
each succeeding stage, when after an infinitude of difficulty and
misunderstanding I had secured an exchange, it seemed to be always for
the worse. Some two months before at Kara Bounar, I had been affected by
a touch of dysentery and this assailing me anew when my journey was only
half through, made progress dreadfully difficult. But in the failing
light of Friday evening the great rock on which Philipopolis is built
came into sight and I could afford to make the last stage of my journey
at a foot pace, with the certainty that I held a good nine hours in
hand. I rode to the Roumelia Khan, the hostel at which I had left my
interpreter, and thence after a hurried meal, he and I set out in search
of the commandant who, with his staff, had taken possession of the
mansion of some Bulgarian notable. I produced the _firman_, duly signed
and sealed, and demanded that, in accordance with its provisions, the
prisoners should be removed, under safe escort, for re-trial at the
port of Varna. The Pasha--a little man with a close-cropped beard, which
looked like black varnished wire--glanced at the document and angrily
pronounced it an impudent forgery. I have not often seen a man so
inspired by rage; the hand in which he held the official document was
apparently as steady as a rock, but all the while he talked to us,
the stiff paper rustled noisily. He declared that the execution should
proceed and he threatened to hang me with the others. It was not at all
impossible in the existing condition of the country that he might have
ventured on that course, but I saw fit to remind him that I was for the
moment the authorized representative of Great Britain and the United
States, and that if he did violence to me in that capacity Turkey would
be wiped off the map of Europe in a fortnight. The little commandant
spoke French, and he surprised me greatly when I spoke of “_Les Etats
Unis_,” by interjecting in a tone of incredulous scorn: “_Les Etats
Unis! où sont les Etats Unis?_” My interpreter broke in volubly with the
statement that _Les Etats Unis_ were twenty times the size and had
twice the power of Great Britain, and he and the little Pasha were both
shouting together when, as Providence would have it, Mr Fawcett, the
British Consul-General, was announced. His presence calmed the storm at
once and he sternly bade Ibrahim to obey the “firman,” on peril of his
own head.
The Gueschoffs were duly deported, were retried and acquitted, and were
allowed, I believe, to retire to Odessa until the close of the campaign.
After that they returned to Philipopolis and, according to the latest
news I had of them, were prospering exceedingly. I had many other things
to see to for months to come, but it surprised me somewhat to find that
no communication reached me from them after they were known to be
in safety. I had a notion that the salvation of three lives at some
personal risk and trouble and expense was worth at least a “thank you,”
but years went on and the whole thing had almost faded out of mind when
it was brought back suddenly by my encounter with another Bulgarian
merchant, Melikoffby name, whom I met one fine summer's day at the
Strand end of Waterloo Bridge. I had met him at the Gueschoffs' table
and I asked for news of them. Such intelligence as he had to give was
wholly favourable; they were all well and prosperous. I suggested to
him that I thought it at least a little odd that no one of them had ever
thought it worth while to send me a line. “Well,” he answered, in some
embarrassment, “they found it impossible to recover a very large part of
their property when they got back to Philipopolis, and for some time I
can assure you that they were in considerable straits.” I answered that
they could scarcely have been in such straits as not to be able to buy a
postage stamp, but the upshot of the matter was simply this: At the
time at which I had been able to be of service to them I was the
representative of the _Scotsman_ and the _Times_, and was supposed to be
something of a personage. It was impossible at the time for them to have
offered what they thought would be a fitting recognition of my services,
and on the whole: it seems that they had thought it best to let sleeping
dogs lie and to say nothing at all about the matter. I might, it
appeared, have made some kind of claim against them which, though I
could not have enforced it legally, they would have been bound in honour
to recognise. I told him that this did not quite accord, with British
ideas of gratitude, but he appeared to think that he had offered a
perfectly satisfactory explanation. It was quite obviously beyond him
to conceive that I could have extracted any satisfaction from a mere
acknowledgment of service rendered, or that such an acknowledgment would
not have been used as the foundation for some more substantial claim.
As Edmund Burke said years ago, “It is impossible to indict a nation,”
but my experience does not lead me to believe that the Bulgarians are
a grateful people. In Kalofer, for example, I was introduced under
circumstances of dramatic secrecy to a refugee who was hiding for his
life and who had been concealed for days in a dark cupboard with
a sliding panel. I shall never forget the face of the haggard and
fear-stricken wretch who crawled out of that hiding-place into the light
of a solitary candle, or the enthusiastic protestations of gratitude on
the part of his wife when I proposed that he should disguise himself as
a farm labourer and should take a place amongst the men who were driving
down for me a set of empty arabas to Philipopolis. The simple plan
succeeded and the fugitive got over the frontier. The wife was very
eager to show how much she felt beholden to me. Her husband had been a
rose-grower and she had for sale a quantity of the precious attar which
she was willing to dispose of to me, and to me only, for a mere song.
She would have given it gladly but she had to join her husband and some
small amount of ready money was essential to her purpose. I bought from
her five very small phials each containing perhaps a spoonful and a half
of the liquid. She assured me that the essence was absolutely pure and
that I could hardly have secured its like for love or money elsewhere. I
was not the best pleased man in the world when I discovered that she had
palmed off on me a perfumed olive oil, which, by the time I examined it
in Constantinople, had turned rancid.
When I was engaged in the administration of the Turkish Benevolent
Fund., the raising of which was mainly due to the late Baroness
Burdett-Coutts, the fact that I was bound upon an errand of mercy,
and that I was instructed not to spare relief by any consideration of
religion or race, enabled me to penetrate into parts of the disturbed
districts into which I should not otherwise have dared to venture. In
the course of my journey I came to Kalofer, where I found a singularly
intelligent and attractive little Bulgarian boy whom I resolved to
rescue from the almost certain starvation which lay before him. His
father had been the Vakeel of the place and the child of course had been
decently reared. He was pinched and pallid with hunger, and he had but a
single garment, a pair of the baggy knickerbockers worn by the peasants
of the district, which enveloped him from heel to shoulder. I got him
decently attired, and in a while managed to place him in the care of
a colleague in Constantinople, and when I left the country my
brother-in-law, Captain William Thompson, who was engaged in the
Levantine shipping trade, gave him a free passage to Liverpool, where
for the space of some months he lived with my sisters, the younger of
whom turned schoolmistress for his advantage, and began to teach him
English. Mr Crummies used to wonder how things got into the papers,
though perhaps he was under some slight suspicion of having contributed
to their circulation. How the news of the young Bulgarian's arrival
in England got there I do not know, but there was a considerable
journalistic fuss about him, and the result was that a wealthy Bulgarian
family, resident in Manchester, made overtures to my sister, and with my
free consent, formally adopted the child. Before this happened he paid
them a preliminary visit during which he was presented with a pony, and
a male domestic was told off specially to his service. When his adoption
was finally decided upon he went back to my sister's house in Liverpool
to gather up his belongings and to say good-bye. The little ingrate
refused to say one word of farewell to either of them. “I not English
any longer,” he declared, “I Bulgar again,” and Bulgar through and
through he was, to my thinking, sure enough. It is quite true that you
can't indict a nation, but I shall need some persuasion before I go out
of my way again to be of use to any member of that particular section of
the human family.