and afterwards I sat to draw under a bower of banksia roses, surrounded
by a marvellous group of Turkish figures, in the Saddlers’ Bazaar
(_serra-jobane-jamissi_). Here the people were good to us, as there are
so many Christians in that quarter of the town, but generally the
natives never cease cursing those who are breaking the second
commandment by making a likeness of something in heaven or earth. In the
courtyard of Suleimanyeh I was less fortunate: a number of soldiers
crowded in front, wholly obstructing all view, and on Dimitri
remonstrating, their officer came up quite furious, with ‘My men shall
stand where they like, and if they wish to hide the man’s view they
shall certainly do so.’ Twice I have toiled to the distant mosque of
Mehmedyé, for Mahomet the Conqueror built it on the site of the famous
church of the Holy Apostles, founded by Constantine the Great, and where
he was buried with eleven other emperors. A dial over a gate near this
is inscribed (from the Koran), ‘Didst thou not see thy Lord, how He
extended thy shadow?’ On some of these excursions it has been most
difficult to procure anything whatever for luncheon, for it is the fast
of Ramazan, when no good Turk allows any food whatever to pass his lips
between sunrise and sunset, on the approach of which he will begin to
hold in his hands the viands which he will devour the very instant the
gun fires. Wine at all times is described as ‘the father of all
abominations,’ yet Solyman the Great, who burnt all the vessels laden
with wine in the port, himself died drunk: Murad IV., who cut off the
head of any one who smelt of wine, was a regular drunkard: Bajazet I.
and II. both drank, and to Selim II. was given the surname of
‘mesth’--the drunkard: so much for the far-famed Turkish consistency.
“We went to the evening service at St. Sophia, three white-turbaned
figures receiving us in the dark at a postern door, and--after exacting
ten francs apiece--conducting us by a winding stair to the broad
gallery, far beneath which the great chandeliers gleamed like
flower-beds over the immense grey space, intersected by long lines of
black figures--all males, for women are soulless--bending, curvetting,
prostrating symmetrically like corn in a wind, and with the same kind of
rush and rustle. It is a curious but monotonous sight, a repetition of
the same movement over and over again, and the shrill harsh cry of the
swaying and falling lines, even more discordant in its echo by the
choir, soon grates upon one: especially as the priests never cease
whispering and worrying for extra baksheesh.
“After waiting one morning for a weary time with an order at the
‘Selamlik,’ we saw the Sultan go to the Yildis mosque. The coachman was
gorgeous in his golden livery, but the ‘Sultan of Sultans, the King of
Kings,’ was a piteous sight, a mixture of boredom and terror. Cringing
cowardice prevents his going to Stamboul more than one day in the year,
and this occurred lately. It is a great day for the court ladies, who
are all allowed to accompany him in three hundred carriages, and avenge
themselves for veiled faces by exhibiting their bare arms covered with
bracelets and as much else as they dare. Mahomet says, ‘He who espouses
only one wife is praiseworthy,’ and now it is considered indiscreet to
have more than four legitimate wives, who are all equal, and who have
each their own dowry and servants. Women are generally well treated
here now, a divorce is easy, and each wife has a right to a separate
room, and may even exact a separate house, if she cannot get on with the
other wives.
“Almost every night through the streets there is a rush of the
Talumbodgi or firemen--half-naked savages with primitive engines, who
scurry to save the valuables of burning houses, not for the owners, but
for themselves, so that they are far more dreaded than the flames. In
recent conflagrations in Galata and Pera it is certain that the fire
began in three or four places at the same moment; for when a street in
Constantinople is wholly bad or unsafe, the authorities do not scruple
to set fire to it, regardless of the consequences, though the people are
such fatalists that they will not leave their dwellings till the last
moment, and then fly, leaving everything behind them.”
* * * * *
“_May 22._--I write during a quiet day with George at the Embassy, after
my return from Broussa, where I have been spending a week.... It was a
voyage of five hours in a steamer crowded with Turks on their carpets,
sleeping, praying, or reciting the Koran, and at the ends of the vessel
knots, lumps, and clusters of women. Outside Seraglio Point the view of
Stamboul is very fine, St. Sophia and the Achmet mosque rising above the
old sea-walls, and the gardens lovely with rich green and pink Judas
bloom. We passed the islands--Antigone, where Sir H. Bulwer lived with
the Greek princess, and Prinkapo, to which the Empress Irene was
banished, and where she is buried. After two hours it became very
rough, and all were sick, especially a number of Turkish officers, who
up to that time had been eating voraciously. So it was indeed a relief
when we entered the comparatively calm bay of Mudania, with its glorious
leaping ‘multitudinous seas’ of sapphire and chrysoprase waves, amid
which endless dolphins--true clowns of the sea--were tumbling and
sporting.
“At Mudania a horde of half-naked savages leaped on board to seize our
luggage, and a hand-to-hand fight ensued, during which we had to scale
the bulwarks of the vessel to reach the pier. Then came a scramble and a
bargaining for carriages, but at last we were off and up the hills,
where boys were selling piles of cherries for half a piastre (1¼ d.)
on the ascent. In the valley beyond, we came up with a knot of carriages
in a desolate place, the inmates standing in the road round one whose
wheel was coming off. It had contained two ladies, and I took up one of
them, who turned out to be Miss Holmes, sister of the librarian at
Windsor. Very lovely was the ascent to Broussa, through the rich green
walnut-woods and by rushing streams, to the exquisite chain of mosques
and minarets under the lower slopes of Olympus. At the table-d’hôte we
had the British Consul, who stated that he ‘was not at all gone on
mosques;’ he had been seventeen years in Constantinople and had seen
nothing but St. Sophia--‘what on earth was the good?’ The hotel was
delightful, and nothing could be more exquisite than the view from my
window, whence I watched the long lines of camels following the
inevitable donkey, and the handsome population, arrayed in every colour
of the rainbow as to male turbans and girdles and the loose robes women
are arrayed in. Thence also, I constantly heard, from the mosque of
Murad, the shrill voice ‘La Ilah il Allah vè Mohammed resoul Allah,’
calling the people to prayer.
“On the first day I joined Miss Holmes and her friend Miss Bacon on a
long excursion through the town, going first to the famous Green Mosque
(Yéchil-Djami), which stands on a platform with old trees and a glorious
view over the plain. We were not allowed to enter at once; it was the
service for women, who are permitted this mosque only. ‘Priest very old
and well covered up: it must be so,’ said the dragoman; ‘it is necessary
to guard their moralities: just let them a little loose, and it is a
very bad job.’
“Close by is a beautiful _turbé_ with an entrance worthy of the
Alhambra, and lovely tiles and jewelled glass within. Beneath the dome
lies the sarcophagus of Mahomet I., with those of his son, his six
daughters, and their nurse--the last very plain, but close to the royal
coffins. In the centre of the mosque itself is a beautiful fountain,
which freshens the air with a rush of falling waters: around are
inscriptions--‘God is love,’ ‘Mahomet is the prophet of God,’ and the
names of the six caliphs who were the companions of Mahomet. The
_mimber_ here is only ascended by the Sheik el Islam himself, when he
gives the blessing with the Koran. As an interior, Oulou-Djami, the
great mosque in the centre of the town, has even more perfect
proportions--a perfection of interlacing architecture inclining to
gothic, forming twenty-four cupolas, and centering in the great dome
above a splashing fountain. Outside this mosque, facing the street, a
bay-tree overshadows the tomb of a sainted dervish: sick people hang
bits of their clothes around it, and think that, with them, they leave
their ailments there. Oulou-Djami stands on the edge of the vast bazaar,
where splendid Eastern dresses are seen in perfection: the perfectly
fitting jackets and breeches of the men, of richest embroidered stuff,
never costing less than from £3 to £10, so that one wondered at their
not minding the frequent torrents of rain; but it is all ‘kismet.’ When
at home these glorious-looking Turks do nothing, for there is nothing to
do: if a house takes fire, they do not care--there is nothing to burn
but a few divans: perhaps the owner takes his clothes with him when he
escapes--there is nothing else to take. They rise early and have a cup
of coffee, at ten they breakfast, at six is dinner, at eight they go to
bed: a few possible visits are the only variety of the day.
“It was a delightful drive to the Citadel, where all the space not
occupied by wonderful old buildings is shaded by the most magnificent
planes and cypresses, watered by crystal streams, which have their
source here. The tombs of the first Osmanli princes, Osman and Orchan,
are here, restored after an earthquake. On the tomb of Osman lies the
order of the Osmanlieh: two of his sons and fourteen of his daughters
surround him. A more curious family burial-place is that of Mouradié, a
green enclosure, bright with fountains and roses, and containing a whole
succession of venerable _turbé_ of the family of Murad I. and Mehemet
II., chiefly murdered victims. Amongst the latter, the tomb of the
hero-prince Djem is especially rich and striking. The grave of Murad, by
his own desire, is left open to the rain of heaven, and is covered with
sickly grass. Of the early Broussa Sultans, several--being sons of
fathers of eighteen and mothers of sixteen--were generals of armies and
governors of provinces at fourteen, and their enormous families were due
to the fact that they continued to have children from sixteen to
seventy.
[Illustration: THE BATHS, BROUSSA.]
“We drove on to another noble mosque at Tchékirgué, about two miles from
Broussa, with more tombs and relics. Amongst the latter is shown a
prayer, inscribed on wood and enclosed in a bottle. ‘When the bottle
breaks, Broussa will become christian,’ is the tradition--suggesting an
easy and cheap enterprise for missionaries. In front of this mosque
(Ghazy-Hounkiar) is a fountain surrounded by cold and hot springs
alternately, and a little below the village, on the edge of the valley,
are the picturesque old domed baths, the strong sulphuric springs of
which are famous throughout Turkey. All around Broussa is rich soil and
vegetation; hollyhocks grow wild along the hedges: it is a glorious
climate: only justice and government are needed.
“I am sorry to go away without seeing more of the Bosphorus, but I have
just been to Therapia, where the _villeggiatura_ life in summer must be
delightful.”
* * * * *
“_May 23._--My last hours at Constantinople were spent in an expedition
with the Whites in their picturesque state barge to the Sweet Waters of
Europe. I believe I have said nothing of Sir William White, though he is
the ambassador in whose house I have been living so long. His simple
manners are full of bluff humour. He is said to understand the Turk
perfectly, and rose entirely by his own merits, with the help of a lucky
appointment to the Conference of 1876-77.”
* * * * *
_To_ LOUISA, MARCHIONESS OF WATERFORD.
“_Ober-Ammergau, June 2._--We have seen the Passion-Play. It is a day to
have lived for: nothing can be more sublimely devotional, more
indescribably pathetic.
“Our journey from Constantinople was accomplished very easily. We stayed
to see Buda-Pesth, a very handsome modern city, and then had two days
of perfect enjoyment at Halstadt and the exquisite Gosau Lake. On Friday
night we slept at Oberau, and drove here early on Saturday morning,
finding the Lowthers at once in the village street, and spending most of
that day in drawing with them. We went at once to the house of the
Burgomaster to inquire where we were billeted. All the material part of
life is most comfortably and economically arranged for visitors. I am
quartered with St. Thomas, and all through the day one meets peasants
with long hair, recalling Biblical figures. The Burgomaster’s beautiful
daughter is the Virgin Mary. In a gracious and touching spirit of
unselfish love all these villagers live together for mutual help and
comfort. They have been trained under their late pastor, Aloys
Daisemberger, to regard the Passions-Spiel, which is the great event of
their quiet lives, not only as a religious service of thanksgiving to
which every talent and energy must be contributed for the glory of God,
and a manifestation of gratitude for His preservation of them, but they
are also taught to look upon it as an instrument which God’s grace has
placed in their hands for the calling back of Europe to Christianity,
through the dark mists of infidelity which have been creeping over it in
the nineteenth century. And truly in this the actual visit to
Ober-Ammergau may be as full of teaching as the great representation
itself--the simple contact with such men as ‘Christus Maier,’[488] as he
is called, whose life’s work is ‘to endeavour to do God’s will _aufs
innersten_, and to be helpful to those around him.’ Here, in
Ober-Ammergau--perhaps here alone--religion takes no heed of Roman
Catholic or Protestant vagaries; the will of God, the example of Christ,
those are the only guidance of life. In the five sermons of Daisemberger
preparatory to the Passion-Play of 1871,[489] there is not a single word
which indicates Romanism. ‘Look, O disciples of Christ,’ says
Daisemberger to his people; ‘see your Master, how gentle, how kind He
is, how mild in His intercourse with those around Him, how full of
heartiest sympathy for their joys and sorrows. Then can you, in your
intercourse with those around you, be grumbling, rough, discourteous,
self-asserting, repellent, and wanting in sympathy? Oh no! you could
never endure to be so unlike your Master.’
“It is a beautiful place, a high upland mountain valley, covered with
rich pastures and enamelled with flowers. A long street, or rather road,
lined by comfortable detached timber houses, leads to the handsome
church, around which the older part of the village groups itself above
the clear rushing Ammer, and is highly picturesque. Beyond the village,
in the meadows overlooked by the peak of the Kofel, is the theatre where
the great drama of the Passion is enacted, which, ever since 1634, has
commemorated every tenth year the then deliverance of Ammergau from the
plague which was devastating the neighbouring villages.
“All through Friday it was curious to meet a succession of London
acquaintances, and most unexpected ones, but from all being here with
one object, no one was uncongenial. And all is so perfectly managed,
there is no fuss or hurry; comfortable accommodation, good seats,
excellent food are provided for all who are permitted to come, for the
visitors for every performance are limited to the 2000 for whom there is
room; no unexpected persons, no excursionists are ever admitted. No
thought of gain has ever the slightest influence upon the villagers, and
the prices are only such as pay what is absolutely due.
“Yesterday morning, I imagine, no visitor could sleep after four, when
their peasant hosts began to tramp overhead and clatter down their
narrow oak staircases. Then, after an excellent breakfast of hot coffee,
cream, eggs, and toast, many visitors and all the people of
Ober-Ammergau hurried to the six-o’clock service in the church, where
all the five hundred actors knelt with their pastor in silent prayer,
and many of them received the Sacrament. At eight all were comfortably
placed in their seats in the open-air theatre, and the soft wild music
of Schutzgeister, which seems to come from behind the hills, preluded
the performance.
[Illustration: OBER-AMMERGAU.]
“One might be seated in the Piazza del Popolo at Rome with one’s back to
the gate. There is the same vast intervening space, and the same three
branching streets (the central closed by an inner theatre for tableaux),
with marked buildings at the entrance. Only here those buildings are the
houses of Annas, Caiaphas, and Pilate, and the streets are those of
Jerusalem, lined with Eastern houses, domes, and here and there a
palm-tree, and they melt far away into lovely ethereal mountain
distances, the real mountains of the Bavarian Alps. The performance
begins when the spirit-chorus of eighteen persons, male and female, in
many-coloured tunics and mantles, advance in stately lines from either
side of the stage, and in a chaunt, weird but most distinctly audible,
explain what is coming, and urge those present to receive it in a humble
spirit of reverence and adoration of God. Then, on the central stage,
begin the strange series of types and antitypes, and, as the veil falls
the second time, the vast Hosanna-procession of five hundred men, women,
and children, singing, shouting, and strewing palm-branches, appears
down the distant streets, and, as it draws nearer, and the mountains
resound with jubilant shouts and the whole air is ablaze with life and
colour, the serene, rapt, stately figure of the Christus, riding upon
the ass, but even then spiritualised into absolute sublimity by the
sense of his divine mission, comes for the first time before us.
Afterwards, through the long eight hours of thrilling tension which
follow, overshadowing the endless, almost wearisome, series of Old
Testament scenes, drawing every heart and eye nearer to himself through
the agony of the trial, the cross-bearing, the crucifixion, does that
sublime figure become more familiar; never again can the thought of the
God-man be severed from it. And in the great drama itself one sees all
the rest, but one feels with, one lives for, the Christ alone; and the
dignity of his lofty patience, unmoved from the holy calm which pervades
his whole being even when four hundred savage Jews are shouting and
jibing round in clamorous eagerness for his death, must be present with
one through life.
“I cannot tell it all. Words fail and emotions are too much. Through
that long day--oh! is it that day alone?--one knows how to live with, to
suffer with Christ: one is raised above earth and its surroundings: one
dies with Him to sin and suffering: one is raised with Him into heavenly
places. After some hours, England is forgotten, Germany is forgotten.
You are a Jew. Jerusalem is your home: all, _all_ your interests are
centred there: nothing earthly is of the very least importance to you
except the great tragedy that is being enacted before your eyes. It is
perhaps the humanity of Christ which is brought most forcibly before
you; but oh! how divinely human, how humanly divine!
“Could one wonder that Mr. Vanderbilt, the American millionaire, said
that he owed everything--everything for this world and the next--to
Ober-Ammergau? it had unveiled and explained religion for him: it had
made the Bible a living reality.
“I think of the Old Testament scenes, the Fall of the Manna is the most
beautiful. More than four hundred Israelites, including a hundred and
fifty children, are seen--groups of the most exquisite and harmonious
colour--with Moses and Aaron in the desert; and between you and them,
and amongst and around them, falls mysteriously the soft vaporous manna;
whilst the chorus in sweet, wild, lingering monotone chaunt the
beautiful hymn beginning--
‘Gut ist der Herr, gut ist der Herr.’
“Of the New Testament scenes, the leave-taking with the family of
Bethany is perhaps the most pathetic. It is an exquisite sunset scene.
Huge olive-trees stretch their gnarled boughs overhead and are embossed
against the amber sky, in the distance the village of Bethany stands out
in the soft blue mists of evening. Through the sunset comes the Christ
in lingering last words with the sisters and Lazarus, and there, under
the old trees, is their last farewell, touching indescribably, after
which the weeping family return to Bethany, and he goes away, a solitary
figure upon the burnt hills in the twilight, to his death at Jerusalem.
“At Ober-Ammergau one for the first time realises the many phases of
the trial--in the house of Caiaphas, of Annas, of Pilate, of Caiaphas
again, of Pilate again; and all is terribly real--the three crosses, for
instance, so really heavy, that none but a very strong man can support
them. One thinks better of Pilate after the performance, through which
one has watched his struggles--his weary, hopeless struggles to save the
life of Christ. Almost every act, nearly every word, is directly taken
from the Gospel history. Amongst the few touches added is that of Mary
the mother, accidentally arriving at Jerusalem, meeting the other Marys
in one of the side streets and talking of the condemnation of a Galilean
which has just taken place. Then, as the street opens, suddenly seeing
the cross-bearing in the distance, and thrilling the whole audience with
anguish in her cry of ‘It is my son: it is Jesus!’ The Last Supper is an
exact reproduction of Leonardo’s fresco, and many of the other scenes
follow the great masters.
“How thrilling were the words, how almost more thrilling were the
_silences_, of Christ.[490]
“The evening shadows are beginning to fall as we see Christ raised on
the cross. He hangs there for twenty minutes, and most indescribably
sublime are the words given from thence. When all is over, it is so
real, you think that _this time_ death must really have taken place. The
three crosses, the bound thieves, the fainting women, the mounted
centurion, the soldiers drawing lots, all seem to belong to real events,
enacted, not acted. The deposition of the dead Christ on the white
sheet is a vast Rubens picture.[491]
“The resurrection is more theatrical, but in the final scene, where the
perfect figure of the spiritual Christ is seen for the last time, he
goes far away with his disciples and the Marys, and then, upon Olivet,
in the midst of the group relieved against the golden sunset, he
solemnly blesses his beloved ones, and whilst you gaze rapt, seems to be
raised a little, and then you look for him and he is not.
“Each one of the four thousand spectators then sits in a vast sense of
loneliness amid the silent Bavarian hills. The long tension is over. The
day is lived out. The Master we have followed we can follow no longer
with material sight. He has suffered, died, and risen from the grave,
and is no longer with us: in the heavens alone can we hope to behold Him
as He is.”
* * * * *
After leaving Ober-Ammergau, Hugh Bryans and I went with the Lowthers
and Mrs. Ridley to Rothenburg, still an unaltered diminutive mediaeval
city, and the most interesting place in Germany. Then I paid a
delightful visit to my dear Bunsen friends at Carlsruhe and Herrenalb,
and on our way back to England we saw the marvellous Schloss Eltz,
going thither in a bullock-cart up the bed of the river from the
attractive little inn at Moselkern, kept by a very old man and woman,
sitting upon the very border-land of heaven.
* * * * *
During the varied occupations of this summer of 1890 I was asked to
write biographies of several members of my family for the “Dictionary of
National Biography,” and did so. My articles appeared, but greatly
altered. The editor had a perfect right to condense them at his
pleasure, but I was astonished to find _additions_. Bishop Hare was
saddled with a third son, Richard Hare, “an apothecary of Winchester,”
who was the father of James Hare, afterwards called the “Hare with many
friends.” This son of my great-great-grandfather is entirely imaginary;
our family was never in the remotest degree related to Richard or James
Hare. It gave one a terrible impression of how the veracity and
usefulness of a work of really national importance might be spoilt by
the conceited ignorance of an editor; and to add such trash to an
article published with the signature of another was as unjustifiable as
it was abominable.
* * * * *
_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.