all his stars he would have to pin some of them on his back. As it
was, he always wore his medals--about ten of them--suspended from a
bar high on his left shoulder.
Nevertheless, he was a most charming man, and a delightful companion,
who was ever a good friend of mine--and of Great Britain--throughout
a number of years.
In the cosy room on the ground floor of his artistic home where we
dined he removed his fez, an action done only towards an intimate
friend, and as we chatted I saw the many signed photographs of all
the great statesmen of Europe.
As one of the cleverest men in all Europe, I always enjoyed his
conversation. He enjoyed the full confidence of the Sultan, and was
almost incessantly consulted by His Majesty.
Over our meal, although I knew it to be a great breach of etiquette,
I ventured to inquire of the health of his wife and two daughters.
I had never seen either of the ladies without the yashmak, or veil,
but the girls both wore gauzy ones, and I had seen that they were
uncommonly good-looking.
“Ah!” he laughed. “Since you were here last I fell into terrible
disgrace.”
I inquired how.
“Well,” he replied, laughing, “it was in this way. You know that I
look at most things from your Western standpoint. I believe in your
Western progress and Western ideas, so neither my wife nor myself
were desirous that the girls should lead a secluded harem life, as
do all our Turkish girls. But there was a difficulty--one which I
resolved to overcome, even though I might be compelled to overstep
the bounds of conventionality. The plan my wife and I adopted was
this: First we engaged an elderly lady, whom I knew in Paris, to
come here and become their French governess. Then, after a year,
Madame Perrin went back to Paris and enlisted the services of two
young nephews of hers, who were eager to have a trip out here to
the Bosphorus. They came, and stayed at the Pera Palace for a week
or so, and one day they purchased four tickets back to Paris by the
Orient Express. At seven o’clock on the following morning the two
young Frenchmen brought ladders to the wall of my garden, and at
half-past seven both girls with their ‘young men’ were in the express
on their way to the West. When I heard of their elopement I naturally
pretended to foam at the mouth. That Madame Perrin’s nephews should
have betrayed me! Oh! it was an unspeakable breach of trust!”
And he paused, with his cigarette held in his long, slim fingers.
“Well, the expected very soon happened. Half an hour later even
before I had finished my lamentations on the loss of my daughters, a
message came from the Yildiz, summoning me at once to the presence
of His Majesty. I guessed what it was about. His spies, who exist
everywhere, had not been idle. When I presented myself in his little
audience-room in the kiosk in the park he was, I saw, in a towering
rage. ‘Noury,’ he cried, pale with anger, ‘I have trusted you, and
yet you have juggled with me, as you have juggled with Britain and
France!’ I pretended ignorance. ‘You have not kept a strict paternal
eye on your daughters. They have left Turkey!’ I pretended to gasp
in surprise. ‘Yes’ His Majesty went on, ‘you know that I have issued
a decree that no Turkish woman shall leave our country!’ I replied
that I was well aware of the decree, for, as a matter of fact, I had
myself drawn it up! ‘Then I declare it to be disgraceful on your part
that you have not properly guarded your two daughters. Here are two
young Frenchmen who come from Paris, meet them surreptitiously--how,
we know not!--and elope with them!’ I humbly apologized for my lack
of surveillance. But it did not appease the Old Gentleman. He wrought
himself up into a most violent temper, and, shouting to me, ordered
me to go after them at once to bring them back. And he added that
after their return he would consider what punishment he would inflict
on them and on myself! I had left the room much crestfallen, for I
saw myself suddenly out of favour, when His Majesty yelled after me:
‘Noury! Come back!’ I went back, when suddenly His Majesty burst into
a fit of laughter and said in a quiet, conciliatory voice: ‘Noury, I
have ordered you to go after your girls, and you must go--by the next
train. But--well’--and his dark eyes twinkled merrily--‘you need not
go farther than the frontier!’ He knew that by the time I reached
the Bulgarian frontier they would have passed seven or eight hours,
and be well on their way to Paris! Of course I made the journey, and
returned to report my non-success,” laughed my friend, “and my girls
are now finishing their education at Neuilly, and will never, I hope,
return to Turkey.”
On the day following, after the Selamlik, the weekly attendance
of the Sultan at the mosque, Noury, in uniform with his many
decorations, drove me, attired in my best dress-suit, to that
Palace, or collection of Palaces, known as the Yildiz Kiosque.
Just before we drove into the gateway of the Imperial demesne
our carriage was stopped by four sentries, and my companion
being recognized, it was allowed to pass the four or five idling
police-agents in plain clothes and a detachment of the Sultan’s
bodyguard in rather shabby blue uniforms.
Then suddenly we found ourselves in a glorious park, driving beside
a broad lake over which the trees hung, gay with blossom. A party of
veiled, laughing women were being rowed along by four negro oarsmen,
while a fat eunuch sat in the stem. They were, Noury explained,
ladies of the Imperial harem taking the air.
We pulled up before a good-sized house, built in the style of a
handsome villa on the French Riviera, which stood in a garden ablaze
with flowers, and which had a verandah along the lake-side. A negro
servant in the Imperial livery bowed low as we descended, and next
moment two more negro servants of higher grade appeared.
Noury Pasha spoke to them in Turkish, whereupon, in a few seconds,
a sallow-faced Turk in uniform, with decorations, appeared. It was
Hahki Pasha, the Sultan’s private secretary, to whom I was introduced.
After a laughing conversation in Turkish with my friend, we were
conducted to an exquisite little room, with gilt furniture of the
Empire period, a great crystal chandelier, a priceless cream-coloured
silk carpet, decorated with bunches of wistaria, and several
luxurious divans.
“His Majesty knows English fairly well, but it is not etiquette to
speak it. He will only converse in Turkish,” Noury muttered to me, as
I stood awaiting the appearance of the aristocratic ruler of over two
hundred million souls--the man who was known to the world, because of
his callous disregard for human life, as “The Red Sultan.”
“But you will translate, eh?” I asked.
“Of course. His Majesty told me that he would be pleased to see you
because you are a writer. He writes himself, you know. Though the
world is ignorant of it, he has written some of the finest poetry in
our language, and two historical romances that, however, have only
been printed at his private press. He has a printing press here in
the Yildiz.”
At that moment the long white-and-gold doors were thrown open and
a rather wizened little old man in neat black, and wearing a fez,
entered.
I was in the presence of the Sultan of Turkey! His marked Hebraic
features were familiar to me in pictures, but he had never allowed a
photograph to be taken of himself. The sharp aquiline face, the quick
dark eyes under their shaggy brows, the high forehead and the beard,
were exactly the same as I had expected, though he seemed a thin,
worn old man, shrunken so that his clothes hung loosely on him.
We both made our obeisance, to which His Majesty grunted something in
Turkish in response.
Then the Sultan seated himself with dignity on a small divan covered
with cream silk, on which was a design in cherry colour. We, of
course, remained standing.
He addressed to Noury some words in Turkish, evidently making some
inquiry concerning me, and then my companion, turning to me, said:
“His Majesty welcomes you. He has heard of your previous visit to us,
and is glad to receive you.”
“I thank His Majesty for his kindly greetings,” I replied. “And
please assure him of my friendliness towards Turkey through many
years. I know that we in Britain unfortunately do not understand her.”
“His Excellency Tewfik Pasha has already mentioned you to His
Majesty,” said Noury, after conversing again with the Sultan.
“His Majesty wishes me to say that he is much gratified by your
friendship. He is fully aware that he is known in England as ‘The Red
Sultan,’ and is believed to have been directly responsible for the
massacres in Armenia. His Majesty has said, ‘Noury, you know the real
truth. I wish you to tell it.’ So I will do so.”
Then Noury Pasha went on, while the Sultan, who understood
English, listened. He told me the following, which I found very
interesting--the real truth of the terrible massacres.
“One afternoon, while at the Sublime Porte, I received an urgent
command from His Majesty to come here, which I did, with all speed,”
he said. “On arrival in this room I found His Majesty greatly
perturbed and terribly angry. He showed me a message that he had
just received from his private intelligence department (for the
Turkish capital always swarms with spies) stating that there had been
wholesale slaughter of men, women, and children in various districts
in Armenia. ‘Look!’ cried His Majesty. ‘What does this mean? Who
gave such an order? Find out, and he shall pay for it! It is a plot!
A plot to blacken me further in the eyes of all Europe! The Kaiser,
though he pretends to be my friend, hates me. He intends to make
war, depend on it, and he intends to extend his territory to the
Bosphorus. But the evil is done! What can I do?’ His Majesty cried.”
And at this the Sultan nodded approvingly, having understood all his
Secretary-General’s words.
“His Majesty had no hand whatever in the Armenian massacres, though
all Europe declared that he had. They were, we know, the result of a
plot engineered from Berlin, and seven of our officers of high rank
were executed by order of the Sultan for the dastardly part they
played. The Under-Governor, who had given the order for the massacre
of Christians, was also executed, and at His Majesty’s orders I went
to Armenia, and there had built three large orphanages, for which
His Majesty has paid and endowed from his own private purse for the
children whose parents were killed.”
This was an entirely different version from that which had reached
Europe, and while Abdul-Hamid has been denounced everywhere, I feel
confident, in view of facts afterwards proved, that what I was told
was the actual truth.
Even to-day many people believe that the Sultan was responsible, and
aided and abetted those who committed the terrible atrocities, but
it was really a plot of the Young Turk Party, fostered and aided in
secret by Germany. Indeed, within a week of my audience of “Abdul
the Damned” the Young Turks proclaimed themselves, entered the
closely-guarded Yildiz Kiosque, overran the great harem, seized his
Majesty, bundled him on board a steamer, and took him to Salonica. A
number of his favourite wives followed him into exile, but hundreds
of other women were dispersed and the great Palace was closed.
Then, to the surprise of everyone, my old friend Tewfik Pasha--who
had hitherto supported his Imperial master most loyally--was asked to
return to his office as Grand-Vizier, which he did, and later acted
as Turkish Ambassador in London, where, before the betrayal of Turkey
into Germany’s hands, I often used to spend an evening with him at
the Embassy in Portland Place.
Old Abdul-Hamid struck me as very refined, but of rather abrupt
manner. His nose was decidedly a hooked one, and his hands were
thin, yellow, even claw-like; his skin like tightly-drawn parchment
over his high cheek-bones; and his speech high pitched and squeaky.
While he sat talking to Noury and listening to the translation of his
conversation into English he smoked cigarettes, the aroma of which
was delicious, and I noticed that in the ring on his finger was a
magnificent, priceless ruby, which had been drilled in the centre and
a magnificent diamond set in it.
His chief hobbies were literature and music, for among the monarchs
of the world he was perhaps the most highly cultured. Unbounded was
his generosity towards those to whom he gave audience and to whom he
took a fancy.
The great Oriental scholar, Professor Vambery, once told me an
amusing incident. He had had audience of Abdul several times, for he
could speak Turkish, therefore the Sultan conversed freely.
“Ah!” said His Majesty one day, “you have never seen my
carpet-factory! You must go and see it. I will send one of my
secretaries to you to-morrow morning at ten o’clock.”
The Professor was compelled to pretend that he would be delighted to
see over the factory, though, as a matter of fact, he had booked his
journey to Vienna for the next morning.
The morning came, and at the Pera Palace Hotel there appeared a
smart young secretary with one of the Imperial carriages, in which
the Professor was taken to see the manufacture of those magnificent
silk Turkish rugs and carpets that the Imperial factory produces. The
carpets are of the most gorgeous and most expensive in the world,
and were, and are still, given as presents to royal houses, and as
offerings at the holy shrine at Mecca.
The Professor admired a number of them, and declared himself much
interested, yet at heart feeling very annoyed at missing his train,
for he had to wait two days for the next through express.
Some three months later the Professor chanced to be looking out of
the window of his flat at Wilmersdorf, outside Berlin, when he saw a
motor-lorry drive up piled high with bales of carpets!
Presently a man arrived with the news that he had a consignment of
carpets from Constantinople, whereupon the Professor put on his hat,
went downstairs, and ordered the man to drive to a certain dealer
in rich furniture in Berlin, where they were unpacked. Before he
left the place the Professor had sold them for several thousands of
pounds, and took away the cheque in his pocket!
The Sultan had treated the Professor just as King Ferdinand of
Bulgaria had treated me. Each carpet he had admired had been noted,
and the whole lot packed and sent to him.
Through the clever scheming of the Kaiser, whom Abdul-Hamid so
distrusted, notwithstanding his constant declarations of friendship,
Turkey became alienated from us. But, notwithstanding Kemal’s
influence, Tewfik Pasha is still a most formidable power in the
Empire, and he certainly has never been other than pro-British. I met
Kemal several times at the house of Noury Pasha, and I found him to
be most intelligent, and a splendid conversationalist.
Enver Pasha, of whom we heard so much during the war, I also met
once or twice, the last occasion being at Adrianople, after his
unsuccessful expedition against the Skreli and Kastrati tribes in
Northern Albania. He was sent to the Albanian mountains with a large
force, but the brigands, whom I have already described, assisted by
several other tribes, held Enver and his army at bay for four months,
inflicting many losses by means of sniping till he received orders
from Constantinople to withdraw.
Then the tribes against whom he had been fighting threatened
terrible reprisals. They were Greek Christians and declared that at
a given signal they would swoop down from the mountains and massacre
every Mohammedan in the town of Scutari. For that reason all the
Christian inhabitants placed the sign of the cross in red paint over
their doors, and even to-day Scutari is not exactly happy, for the
tribesmen hate the Turks.
Enver was the “big noise” in the Turkish Army. He held Britain in
supreme contempt, and was a puppet of the Kaiser, full of blatant
bombast and wonderful schemes that never matured.
* * * * *
Among the minor royalties I have met was Prince Albert of Monaco--“Le
Prince Rouge-et-Noir,” as King Edward called him.
I happened to be in Tromsö, in the North of Norway, with my friend
Harry de Windt, on our way around the North Cape to the Kola
Peninsula, and the Prince’s fine steam-yacht, _Princess Alice_, was
lying in the harbour. The irrepressible Harry knew the Prince, and
took me on board.
The ruler of Monaco, a good-looking, cheery, elderly man, with
laughing eyes and a small grey beard, greeted us in quite a homely
fashion. He was in a much-worn, even shabby, yachting suit, while
his officers and crew were all very spic-and-span, and the splendid
vessel very well kept.
The Prince was returning from a cruise off Spitzbergen, where he had
been taking specimens from the deeper depths of the ocean. He showed
us some queer fish, some alive in tanks, but others preserved, they
having died as soon as the heavy pressure of water had been taken off
them. The study of oceanography interested me greatly, and the Prince
showed me various specimens of hitherto unknown shell-fish, seaweed,
etc., which they had dredged up, and which he was taking to his
wonderful museum at Monaco, which I expect many who read these lines
have seen.
Being entirely ignorant of oceanography, I spent a most instructive
couple of hours, for both Harry and I sat with him while he was
engaged in mounting a specimen, and in the meantime he gave us a
quantity of information on a most absorbing subject.
His Highness explained to us the dredges, the appliances that, worked
by electricity, bored into the bed of the ocean and took specimens
of its geological formation; of grapplers, and nets that could be
opened and closed when at the bottom of the sea; of fish-traps
and contrivances for collecting vegetable growth in the depths of
perpetual darkness, all of which were entirely new to me.
At the Prince’s invitation we remained to luncheon, the quartette
being completed by the yacht’s captain.
The Prince invited me to visit him the next time I went to Monaco,
and I was afterwards his guest at luncheon there. He was certainly
an expert in his own branch of science, and he had the knack of
telling you a thing so vividly that you immediately understood. Till
that well-remembered day at Tromsö, I never knew there were so many
secrets of the ocean-bed.
Next day, when we sailed on the black old Norwegian cargo-boat, the
_Mercur_, for Vardö, that fishing-station round in the stormy Arctic
Sea, His Highness waved as we passed the yacht, and, as a send-off,
the _Princess Alice_ gave us three loud blasts on her siren,
awakening the echoes of the mountains around the fiord.
The two sons of the Sultan of Johore have recently spent several
years in England. I have seen a good deal of them, and they were
often my guests at Guildford for several weeks on end. The Crown
Prince Ismail is a slim, dark-haired, and rather elegant young
man, whose features are only slightly bronzed, and who is very
English-looking. Indeed, he has lived in England nearly all his
life, and cannot speak Malay. To his intimates at Oxford, where he
was under a private tutor, and afterwards at the London clubs, he is
known as “Biffy.”
One day, after lunching with me at the Devonshire Club, a friend of
mine, who was one of the party on that occasion, said:
“Well, Biffy, I suppose one day ere long we shall see your face on
the Johore postage-stamps, eh?”
“I don’t know,” drawled the Crown Prince. “But, if you do, I hope it
will please your school-girls who stick stamps into albums.”
Biffy, is, _par excellence_, a lady-killer. He is extremely
good-looking, perfectly courteous to a dowager-marchioness or a
pretty _débutante_ alike. In certain smart circles in London he is an
idol, for he is an extremely amusing conversationalist, a splendid
dancer, and, while he has all the Oxford culture and merriment, he
is nevertheless a very level-headed young man, quite fitted to
succeed his popular father.
To my home circle, with my valued secretary, Miss Mabelle Lodge, who
had typed my books for some years, and who is an outspoken critic,
and my two step-daughters, both he and his brother, Prince Ahmed,
had an open invitation. They came and went just as they pleased.
Prince Ahmed, the younger brother, is much more staid than the Crown
Prince. He graduated at Balliol, and on coming down studied in
the engineering department of the General Post Office, under that
well-known telegraph-engineer, Mr. J. H. Haynes, the Sultan, his
father, being determined that he should be no idler. The Colonial
Office asked Mr. Haynes to take him as pupil, and when he left to
return to Johore a short time ago he had earned full qualifications
as an assistant telegraph engineer.
The two young Princes, who were angled after by many girls in London
society, have a keen sense of humour.
While at Balliol, Prince Ahmed was foremost in any Oxford “rag,” and,
living in Oxford as I did during one year of the war, I was often let
into secrets of what was about to happen.
One rag that was rather amusing was brought off about a week before
the Armistice. Somebody in the “lab” invented a new indelible
vermilion paint.
With this pigment a fellow-undergraduate at Balliol, Constantine
Gallop--a brilliant and coming man, by the way--Prince Ahmed and
a dozen others scrambled up to those big classical busts near the
Sheldonian, in the “Broad,” and daubed their faces red!
At the same time another party was waiting in St. Giles’s, where,
underneath a shop occupied by a “bazaar,” was a long glass sign under
the windows bearing the words “Finest Collection in the World.”
This latter they detached swiftly, having on the previous night
released all the screws, and, carrying it to the “Broad,” hung it
beneath the vermilion-coloured busts!
The police were soon on the spot, but the delinquents fled. Ahmed
spent that night in the Randolph Hotel, where I had my rooms, and
next morning Oxford rose to the fact that the city had been “painted
red.”
The paint in question was a great triumph, for though, after much
scrubbing and sand-papering, the classical busts were restored to
their true stone colour, yet Balliol wrote some most insulting words
in the same paint on the walls of Trinity, and so deeply did the
pigment sink into the stonework that they had to be dug out, and new
stones substituted!
While the Crown Prince Ismail is a charming and refined young man,
and essentially a pet of the ladies, a sybarite in the manner of
Oriental princes. Prince Ahmed is just the reverse. He is splendid
at all games, a fine tennis-player, a keen motor-cyclist, and a good
golfer.
Both were our intimate friends for six years, and we were deeply
sorry when, a few months ago, the time came for their return to
Johore. But the Sultan, who is growing old, felt that “Biffy” should
be instructed in his duties towards the State over which he will
eventually rule.
We often exchange letters, and both the young Princes express regret
that they are so far away from London, and from my two yapping
miniature Pomeranians--my pets “Toby” and “Tweedles,” to whom they
were devoted, and who never leave me while I sit at my table at work.
CHAPTER NINE
Some Secrets of Well-known Women--The Charlady’s daughter
who is a Peeress--The Woman German Spy who has Married a
Peer--The Daughter of a Peer Marries a Gendarme at Monte
Carlo--A Blackguard who has been Knighted.
In the course of my cosmopolitan life I have met many notable men
and women of to-day, both British and foreign, who have been--by one
freak of fortune or another--in the public eye, and are therefore
celebrities. They range from bishops to crooks, and from peeresses to
adventuresses.
When I review my many friends, I hardly know where to begin, or what
to say about them.
Perhaps it will interest the reader if I am indiscreet and tell
secrets of some well-known people I have met.
Two young women well-known and highly popular in Society to-day,
are uppermost in my mind as I write these lines. Both are pretty,
and both welcomed everywhere. And both will, of course, hate me for
disclosing their secrets.