CONSTANTINOPLE.
I am in Constantinople, founded 658 B.C. by Byza, King of Megara, after
whom it was called Byzantium. After some hundreds of years it fell into
the hands of the Romans, who, like the Scotch, kept everything they could
lay their hands on; and then came Constantine the Great, whose mother,
some people say, lived in East Anglia, who enlarged and beautified the
city, built the Hippodrome (one of the wonders of the place), and would
have made it the capital of his enormous empire. No one can blame the
Emperor for preferring Constantinople to Rome.
The city soon became worthy to be the seat of empire. It commanded from
its seven hills the opposite shores of Asia and Europe. The climate was
healthy, the soil fertile, and the harbour capacious and secure. The
Bosphorus and the Hellespont were its two gates, which could always be
shut against a hostile fleet. A hundred years after its foundation, a
writer, quoted by Gibbon, describes it as possessing a school of
learning, a circus, two theatres, eight public and a hundred and
fifty-three private baths, fifty-two porticos, five granaries, eight
aqueducts, four spacious halls for the meetings of the senate and courts
of justice, fourteen churches, fourteen palaces, and four thousand three
hundred private houses, which from their size and beauty deserved to be
distinguished from the multitude of plebeian buildings. Successive wars
and invasions impaired the wealth and the magnificence of the city. Of
the time of Constantine little remains but the ruins of the Hippodrome.
The Christian Church of St. Sophia, which he erected to the Eternal
Wisdom, and from the pulpit of which Gregory of Nazianzen and Chrysostom
the golden-mouthed thundered, was burnt in the reign of Justinian, and
his Church of St. Sophia is now a Turkish mosque. The city was the seat
and centre of the controversies originated in Alexandria as to the nature
of the Trinity, and its rival factions, the Greens and the Blues, were
ever ready to engage in bloody and disastrous conflict. As a rule, a
man’s zeal is according to his ignorance, and at Constantinople the
meanest mechanics spent most of their time in discussing mysteries of
which the acutest intellects can never even form an adequate idea, and
which no human creed can properly define and express. The Crusaders, who
knew little of these matters, seem to have been quite awestruck when they
made their way to Constantinople. ‘That such a city could be in the
world,’ writes one of the old chroniclers, ‘they had never conceived, and
they were never weary of staring at the high walls and towers with which
it was entirely compassed; the rich palaces and lofty churches, of which
there were so many that no one could have believed it if he had not seen
with his own eyes that city—the queen of all cities.’
There are few places naturally so picturesque—no city where the suburbs
are so charming. One never wearies of Scutari, Gallipoli, washed by the
splendid waters of the Sea of Marmora, the Bosphorus, or those of that
magnificent harbour, the Golden Horn, which extends eight miles, and
affords an anchorage for a fleet of twelve hundred vessels. Indeed,
whether viewed from sea or land, or from such a wonderful standpoint as
the marble tower of the Seraskierat, Constantinople on its seven hills,
divided as it were between Europe and Asia, presents a marvellous display
of scenic beauty. You gaze on stately white palaces, surrounded by
domes, towers, cupolas, standing amidst tier above tier of many-coloured
dwellings, surrounded on all sides by graceful masses of dark cypresses
and sombre pines. High above all rises the grand marble mosque of St.
Sophia, resplendent with mosaics, and sending up heavenwards its lofty
minarets, whence five times a day the cry of the muezzin calls the world
to prayer. As you look and admire, you feel, with the poet,
‘That every prospect pleases,
And only man is vile’—
that is, ever since the Turk has been there. And thus it appears that
Constantinople has been, socially and politically, a centre of
abominations. It was in 1453 that Mahomet II. took it as his own, and it
is there that the unspeakable Turk has ever since remained, and mainly in
consequence of English diplomacy and the prodigal expenditure of English
treasure and blood. The climax was reached in the days of Lord Stratford
de Redcliffe—the Great Elchi, as he was termed. He insisted on reforms,
and the Sultan granted them. He insisted that all religions should be
equal in the eye of the law, and the precious boon was at once declared.
[Picture: A busy street in Constantinople. (From a photograph)] Under
the pressure of the Great Elchi, the Sultan issued a proclamation,
stating his desire of renewing and enlarging the numerous improvements
suggested in his institutions, with a view of making them worthy of the
place which his empire held among civilized nations. He was anxious, he
said, to promote the happiness of his people, who in his sight were all
equal and equally dear. ‘Every distinction or designation tending to
make any class of subjects of my empire inferior to any other class on
account of their religion, language, or race shall be for ever effaced.’
No one was to be hindered in future on account of his religious creed; no
one was to be compelled to change his religion. Such was the spirit of
the famous _hatti Humayun_ of 1856. Then came the Treaty of Paris, to
destroy the influence of England in the East. The French cared nothing
for Turkish reform, and have cared nothing ever since. Bulgarian
atrocities, murder and massacre in Cyprus, murder and massacre on a
larger scale in Armenia or wherever Armenians are gathered together—of
these things the gay world of Paris takes little heed, except when an
occasion offers to sneer at John Bull. What cares La Belle France, so
long as it has its boulevards and theatres, for the deadly sufferings of
any nationality? When did it ever fight for men and women dying by the
thousand—ay, tens of thousands, under the despotic sway of a Sultan Abdul
Hamid? France does not fight; its aim is to sneer at others and to
glorify itself, to make better people as heartless, as cynical, as
frivolous as itself. And are we much better—we, whose people, and
nobles, and courtiers, and statesmen, and princes, have just done
throwing themselves under the feet of [Picture: A Mosque on the
Bosphorus. (From a photograph by Frith and Co., Reigate)] the Czar?
Yes, but John Bull can act when he has a mind—that is, when he has his
inferiors to deal with. It was beautiful when we brought Greece on her
knees over the Don Pacifico affair! How bitterly we made China pay for
her attack on the _Arrow_! How we settled the would-be Sultan of
Zanzibar! How we have smitten the Dervishes hip and thigh! When I was
in Ceylon, I had an interesting interview with Arabi Pasha. I left him
hoping, and that is what we all do as regards Turkish affairs—hoping for
what never comes.
In the Dardanelles we make our first acquaintance with the Turk. He
arrives in a small steamer, with a crew of men wearing the red fez, and
at the stern of his boat floats the red flag of Turkey, bearing the
crescent. He gives us permission to pursue our way past the forts on
either side at the mouth and along the Dardanelles, at the entrance to
which point are lying off on our right the far-famed plains of windy
Troy. I see also a couple of ironclads, but of what nationality I cannot
exactly make out. We are soon out of the Dardanelles, and at Gallipoli,
the last town on the European side, and we enter the Sea of Marmora. In
current language, Constantinople includes Stamboul, Galata, and its
suburbs, which stretch up both sides of the Bosphorus. Galata, the
mercantile and shipping quarter, occupies the point and slopes at the
right-hand side of the Golden Horn.
Constantinople looks best at a distance. It is true here that distance
lends enchantment to the view. Outside it glitters with magnificence.
Inside it is foul and beastly, with pavements detestable to walk along or
drive, with ruins at every corner, and with refuse [Picture: The Quay,
Constantinople. (From a photograph by Fradelle and Young)] lying to
fester in the blazing sun all day long—certainly a remarkable
illustration of what Lord Palmerston affirmed, that dirt was only matter
in the wrong place. If you drive you are choked with dust, and the
streets are by no means broad enough for the constant business and
bustle. Enter the mosques, and you are astonished at their grandeur and
the air of desolation and neglect all round. On the waters you miss the
gay caique, now superseded by the steam-ferries, ever vomiting clouds of
sulphurous smoke. In the city you see the tramcar, a very shabby one,
doing a roaring trade. Down by the harbour you see the police, well
armed and in small detachments, carefully guarding the streets. The men,
with the exception of the red fez, mostly wear the European costume. The
women you see in the streets are old and ugly, and, happily, veiled, so
that you see nothing of their ugliness but the nose and eyes. Some of
the little urchins and girls are very bright-looking, but I fancy they
are mostly Greeks. The Turkish boy of the middle class seemed to me very
heavy, but, however that may be, he develops into a fine man, with a
grand dark face and powerful nose, and looks especially well when on his
Arab steed—small, but active and strong, as if he were born to drive
everyone before him. Alas! in his little shop he seems very listless and
apathetic, but the man in the street is very pertinacious, and I have
just bought an elegant walking-stick for half a crown, after being asked
four shillings, which I hold to be the cheapest bargain I have made for
some time.
We are quite mistaken in England as to the safety of walking the streets
in Constantinople. I heard of a row last night, but by day the streets
are quite as secure as they are in London. One thing that astonishes me
is the utter ignorance of the people of what is going on outside
respecting Turkish affairs, and the action, if any, of the diplomatists.
You never hear a word on the subject. To sell seems to be the only aim
of the Turk. The shops are prodigious. In London their owners would be
a great middle class, and form an enlightened public opinion. Here they
do nothing of the kind, and there is not a street that has a decent
pavement nor a corner that is not a dunghill. There seems to be no
attempt at improvement. The dogs—very much like Australian dingoes—bark
and bite all day and howl all night. Confusion and decay seem to reign
paramount. Now and then you come to an open space—as at the old
slave-market, the mosques, and the Hippodrome, where a few trees, chiefly
acacias, manage to live, and then you plunge into Holywell Street as it
existed half a century back, and all is darkness and dirt again.
Constantinople seems to live chiefly on corn imported from Roumelia and
Bulgaria; but they say they are going to open up Asia Minor by means of
railways, and the wheat-grower there will then have his chance. There
are few liquor-shops, but many for the sale of lemon-and-water and grapes
and melons. In many a shop I see Sunlight Soap and the biscuits of
Huntley and Palmer and Peek and Frean. The donkeys and horses have an
awful time of it as they go along the narrow streets, with panniers on
each side, which appear to get in everyone’s way. Then comes a rickety
waggon, drawn by two big oxen, which seem as if they must grind the
pedestrian to powder. Then follows the porter, perspiring and bending
under his heavy load, and the aged crone, more or less veiled, as if she
had—which she has not, unhappily—a glimpse of female charm to display.
Now and then you meet a priest with his red-and-white turban and long
brown robe, and if you make your way into a mosque—and they are all worth
visiting—there, in a little wooden recess, seated cross-legged on an
Indian mat, you will find a priest or devout layman by himself, repeating
verses of the Koran. The mosques are grotesque outside, but inspiring
from their size inside.
Constantinople is not the place to come to on a hot November day, and the
commercial port is, I hold, utterly unfit for shipping. We have a good
deal of diarrhoea on board, nor can you wonder, when you remember that
into this one spot flows all the filth and sewage of Galata. It is worse
than Naples; it is worse than Athens, and that is saying a good deal.
Coleridge’s Cologne, with its numerous stenches, is nothing to it. If
there be any truth in sanitary science, there must be an awful waste of
life in these parts. Here we hear not a whisper of the Turkish crisis,
or of the driving out of the Turk, ‘bag and baggage,’ as Lord Stratford
de Redcliffe wrote fifty years before Mr. Gladstone adopted the
celebrated phrase. Be that as it may, Constantinople gives you an idea
of a densely-populated city. It is with real difficulty that you make
your way anywhere. The fat official Turk, who dines in some gorgeous
palace—and the place is full of them—and drives in his brougham and pair,
may have an easy time of it; but the majority of the inhabitants, in
their narrow shops and darkened houses, must have a bad time of it. I
sigh for the wings of a dove, that I may fly away and be at rest. Under
this pestiferous atmosphere and bright, blazing sun, it is impossible to
do anything but sleep; but that is not easy in one’s small cabin,
floating on this wide waste of sewage. There seems nothing to amuse the
people. In the course of my peregrinations I met with but one minstrel,
and he was far away. Next to the mosques, the coolest place I have yet
visited is the new museum, with a [Picture: Galata Bridge,
Constantinople. (From a photograph by Fradelle and Young)] fine
collection of Greek and Roman and Egyptian antiquities; but I am no
friend to a hurried visit to a museum, which leaves the mind rather
confused and uninformed. As yet I have made no attempt to penetrate into
the mysteries of the harem. For one thing, I am rather past that sort of
thing. But if I may judge from what I have seen outside the harem, there
can be but little to tempt one to enter within; and with the poet I
exclaim, ‘Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.’
I fancy we are most of us tired of Constantinople. To me it is a place
where a little sight-seeing goes a long way. Our gallant captain, on the
contrary, tells me that he could put in three months here very well. As
it is, there are about 2,000 English here, to say nothing of naturalized
Greeks and Maltese. I suppose Constantinople is not a bad place for a
short residence. The hotels are good, and in some you may have a bedroom
for four francs a day. Provisions are not dear, but house-rent is very
expensive. The population of the place is dense, at which I wonder, as
Constantinople seems to me the most unhealthy city I have ever seen. The
only nuisances are the guides, who will persist in following you
everywhere, and whose knowledge of English and of the things you really
want to know is very limited. For instance, I passed two obelisks one
day. I asked my guide about them. ‘They come from Egypt,’ was his
reply. I could have told him as much myself.
If you need rest, seek it not in Constantinople, with its noisy crowds by
day and its noisy dogs by night; seek it not in its narrow streets, where
horses and asses and big bullocks, dragging along the most rickety of
waggons, are ever to be seen; seek it not as you drive along its uneven
and disgracefully-paved streets. The mosques are cool and spacious—there
you may rest; but if there is a service, you are not permitted to remain
unless you are a Mohammedan. One advantage of the mosques is that there
is generally a large open space attached to them, where people can wash
themselves and also hold a market. People seem to [Picture: An old
street, Constantinople. (From a photograph by Fradelle and Young)] do
much as they like, as they talk and smoke and play cards, and indulge in
coffee or lemon-and-water. I have never yet seen a drunken man or—what
is worse—a drunken woman, and yet an English lady, a clergyman’s wife,
told me that she only went on shore once, and was so shocked that she
resolved never to set foot in the place again. The people were so
degraded; the poor porters were so overburdened; and, then, they were all
such awful idolaters. I presume the lady knows nothing of parts of
London where worse sights are to be seen every day.
The Bosphorus is beautiful beyond description. It beats the Rhine, it
beats the American Hudson; indeed, it is the grandest panorama in the
world. At its back rise the green wooded hills, and the front is lined
with pleasant villas and palaces—white or yellow, built in Turkish
fashion, with innumerable windows everywhere. There must be great wealth
in the district to build and support such places. Everywhere there is a
great appearance of religion. Go into a mosque any hour you will, and
you see a priest or layman sitting in a quiet corner, fenced with a
wooden rail, cross-legged, repeating the Koran. One of the oddest sights
I saw in the grand Mosque of St. Sophia was that of an old-fashioned
London clock. One of my troubles as I explored the mosque—the floor of
which is lined with Indian matting—was to keep on my Turkish slippers.
An attendant who followed me had to stoop down every minute to put them
on, that I might not reveal the deck-shoes which I wore inside. A
gentleman who had visited the mosque told me that on one occasion, when
he took off a pair of new boots there which he was wearing, he never saw
them again.
It is wonderful how cheap provisions are: beef, threepence a pound;
bread, a halfpenny; grapes, a halfpenny; fowls for sevenpence; and
mountains of melons everywhere. There is free education, and an abundant
supply of schools. The labouring classes are well employed. The English
here are chiefly merchants or agents or engineers. On our way back we
pass that favourite resort of the Turkish holiday-makers—the Valley of
Sweet Waters—and have a good view of the hospital at Scutari, built by
Florence Nightingale—now utilized as barracks—and of the monuments in
front of the cemetery in memory of the British officers and soldiers who
died during the Crimean War.
It is a relief to us all to get back into the Dardanelles and sail over
the spot where Xerxes built his famous bridge, the narrow strait across
which Leander swam nightly to visit his lady-love—a feat performed by our
great poet Byron at a later age—and wander in fancy as we again catch
sight of the plains of Troy, the spot where the Greek hero Protesilaus
first struck the Trojan strand, and thus gave occasion to our Wordsworth
to write his immortal poem—a poem that will be read and admired when all
the puny poets of the present age are dead and forgotten. Out in the
Ægean Sea the weather is almost cool and delightfully refreshing, just
like a fine morning in spring at home. The first isle of any importance
we make is Tenedos, behind which, on the mainland, lies Troas, visited by
the Apostle Paul. To the north lies Besika Bay, where once the French
and English fleets assembled prior to their passage of the Dardanelles,
and where the British fleet, under Admiral Hornby, lay in 1887–88 during
the Russo-Turkish War. Next we reach the ancient Lectum, the most
westernly point of Asia, and get a glimpse of the beautiful island of
Mitylene, the ancient Lesbos. Mitylene, on the east coast, is prettily
situated, and does a considerable trade. There are few remains of the
ancient city. The island has 115,000 inhabitants, mostly Greeks.