IN TURKEY
Leaving the sick man to the tender care of those ladies whose division of
labour we have just hinted at, we turn to other interests, and to one of
our characters, who, though to all seeming neglected, has not lapsed from
our memory.
Joe Atlee had been despatched on a very confidential mission by Lord
Danesbury. Not only was he to repossess himself of certain papers he had
never heard of, from a man he had never seen, but he was also to impress
this unknown individual with the immense sense of fidelity to another who
no longer had any power to reward him, and besides this, to persuade him,
being a Greek, that the favour of a great ambassador of England was better
than roubles of gold and vases of malachite.
Modern history has shown us what a great aid to success in life is the
contribution of a ‘light heart,’ and Joe Atlee certainly brought this
element of victory along with him on his journey.
His instructions were assuredly of the roughest. To impress Lord Danesbury
favourably on the score of his acuteness he must not press for details,
seek for explanations, and, above all, he must ask no questions. In fact,
to accomplish that victory which he ambitioned for his cleverness, and on
which his Excellency should say, ‘Atlee saw it at once--Atlee caught the
whole thing at a glance,’ Joe must be satisfied with the least definite
directions that ever were issued, and the most confused statement of duties
and difficulties that ever puzzled a human intelligence. Indeed, as he
himself summed up his instructions in his own room, they went no further
than this: That there was a Greek, who, with a number of other names, was
occasionally called Speridionides--a great scoundrel, and with every
good reason for not being come at--who was to be found somewhere in
Stamboul--probably at the bazaar at nightfall. He was to be bullied,
or bribed, or wheedled, or menaced, to give up some letters which Lord
Danesbury had once written to him, and to pledge himself to complete
secrecy as to their contents ever after. From this Greek, whose perfect
confidence Atlee was to obtain, he was to learn whether Kulbash Pasha,
Lord Danesbury’s sworn friend and ally, was not lapsing from his English
alliance and inclining towards Russian connections. To Kulbash himself
Atlee had letters accrediting him as the trusted and confidential agent of
Lord Danesbury, and with the Pasha, Joe was instructed to treat with an
air and bearing of unlimited trustfulness. He was also to mention that his
Excellency was eager to be back at his old post as ambassador, that he
loved the country, the climate, his old colleagues in the Sultan’s service,
and all the interests and questions that made up their political life.
Last of all, Atlee was to ascertain every point on which any successor to
Lord Danesbury was likely to be mistaken, and how a misconception might be
ingeniously widened into a grave blunder; and by what means such incidents
should be properly commented on by the local papers, and unfavourable
comparisons drawn between the author of these measures and ‘the great and
enlightened statesman’ who had so lately left them.
In a word, Atlee saw that he was to personate the character of a most
unsuspecting, confiding young gentleman, who possessed a certain natural
aptitude for affairs of importance, and that amount of discretion such
as suited him to be employed confidentially; and to perform this part he
addressed himself.
The Pasha liked him so much that he invited him to be his guest while he
remained at Constantinople, and soon satisfied that he was a guileless
youth fresh to the world and its ways, he talked very freely before him,
and affecting to discuss mere possibilities, actually sketched events and
consequences which Atlee shrewdly guessed to be all within the range of
casualties.
Lord Danesbury’s post at Constantinople had not been filled up, except by
the appointment of a Chargé-d’Affaires; it being one of the approved modes
of snubbing a government to accredit a person of inferior rank to its
court. Lord Danesbury detested this man with a hate that only official
life comprehends, the mingled rancour, jealousy, and malice suggested by a
successor, being a combination only known to men who serve their country.
‘Find out what Brumsey is doing; he is said to be doing wrong. He knows
nothing of Turkey. Learn his blunders, and let me know them.’
This was the easiest of all Atlee’s missions, for Brumsey was the weakest
and most transparent of all imbecile Whigs. A junior diplomatist of small
faculties and great ambitions, he wanted to do something, not being clear
as to what, which should startle his chiefs, and make ‘the Office’ exclaim:
‘See what Sam Brumsey has been doing! Hasn’t Brumsey hit the nail on the
head! Brumsey’s last despatch is the finest state-paper since the days of
Canning!’ Now no one knew the short range of this man’s intellectual
tether better than Lord Danesbury--since Brumsey had been his own private
secretary once, and the two men hated each other as only a haughty superior
and a craven dependant know how to hate.
The old ambassador was right. Russian craft had dug many a pitfall for the
English diplomatist, and Brumsey had fallen into every one of them. Acting
on secret information--all ingeniously prepared to entrap him--Brumsey had
discovered a secret demand made by Russia to enable one of the imperial
family to make the tour of the Black Sea with a ship-of-war. Though it
might be matter of controversy whether Turkey herself could, without the
assent of the other Powers to the Treaty of Paris, give her permission,
Brumsey was too elated by his discovery to hesitate about this, but at once
communicated to the Grand-Vizier a formal declaration of the displeasure
with which England would witness such an infraction of a solemn engagement.
As no such project had ever been entertained, no such demand ever made,
Kulbash Pasha not only laughed heartily at the mock-thunder of the
Englishman, but at the energy with which a small official always opens
fire, and in the jocularity of his Turkish nature--for they are jocular,
these children of the Koran--he told the whole incident to Atlee.
‘Your old master, Mr. Atlee,’ said he, ‘would scarcely have read us so
sharp a lesson as that; but,’ he added, ‘we always hear stronger language
from the man who couldn’t station a gunboat at Pera than from the
ambassador who could call up the Mediterranean squadron from Malta.’
If Atlee’s first letter to Lord Danesbury admitted of a certain
disappointment as regarded Speridionides, it made ample compensation by the
keen sketch it conveyed of how matters stood at the Porte, the uncertain
fate of Kulbash Pasha’s policy, and the scarcely credible blunder of
Brumsey.
To tell the English ambassador how much he was regretted and how much
needed, how the partisans of England felt themselves deserted and abandoned
by his withdrawal, and how gravely the best interests of Turkey itself were
compromised for want of that statesmanlike intelligence that had up to this
guided the counsels of the Divan: all these formed only a part of Atlee’s
task, for he wrote letters and leaders, in this sense, to all the great
journals of London, Paris, and Vienna; so that when the _Times_ and the
_Post_ asked the English people whether they were satisfied that the
benefit of the Crimean War should be frittered away by an incompetent youth
in the position of a man of high ability, the _Débats_ commented on the
want of support France suffered at the Porte by the inferior agency of
England, and the _Neue Presse_ of Vienna more openly declared that if
England had determined to annex Turkey and govern it as a crown colony, it
would have been at least courtesy to have informed her co-signatories of
the fact.
At the same time, an Irish paper in the National interest quietly desired
to be informed how was it that the man who made such a mull of Ireland
could be so much needed in Turkey, aided by a well-known fellow-citizen,
more celebrated for smashing lamps and wringing off knockers than for
administering the rights of a colony; and by which of his services,
ballad-writing or beating the police, he had gained the favour of the
present Cabinet. ‘In fact,’ concluded the writer, ‘if we hear more of
this appointment, we promise our readers some biographical memoirs of the
respected individual, which may serve to show the rising youth of Ireland
by what gifts success in life is most surely achieved, as well as what
peculiar accomplishments find most merit with the grave-minded men who rule
us.’
A Cork paper announced on the same day, amongst the promotions, that Joseph
Atlee had been made C.B., and mildly inquired if the honour were bestowed
for that paper on Ireland in the last _Quarterly_, and dryly wound up by
saying, ‘We are not selfish, whatever people may say of us. Our friends
on the Bosporus shall have the noble lord cheap! Let his Excellency only
assure us that he will return with his whole staff, and not leave us Mr.
Cecil Walpole, or any other like incapacity, behind him, as a director
of the Poor-Law Board, or inspector-general of gaols, or
deputy-assistant-secretary anywhere, and we assent freely to the change
that sends this man to the East and leaves us here to flounder on with such
aids to our mistakes as a Liberal Government can safely afford to spare
us.’
A paragraph in another part of the same paper, which asked if the Joseph
Atlee who, it was rumoured, was to go out as Governor to Labuan, could be
this man, had, it is needless to say, been written by himself.
The _Levant Herald_ contented itself with an authorised contradiction to
the report that Sir Joseph Atlee--the Sir was an ingenious blunder--had
conformed to Islamism, and was in treaty for the palace of Tashkir Bey at
Therapia.
With a neatness and tact all his own, Atlee narrated Brumsey’s blunder in a
tone so simple and almost deferential, that Lord Danesbury could show the
letter to any of his colleagues. The whole spirit of the document was
regret that a very well-intentioned gentleman of good connections
and irreproachable morals should be an ass! Not that he employed the
insufferable designation.
The Cabinet at home were on thorns lest the press--the vile Tory
organs--should get wind of the case and cap the blundering government of
Ireland with the almost equally gross mistake in diplomacy.
‘We shall have the _Standard_ at us,’ said the Premier.
‘Far worse,’ replied the Foreign Secretary. ‘I shall have Brunow here in
a white passion to demand an apology and the recall of our man at
Constantinople.’
To accuse a well-known housebreaker of a burglary that he had not
committed, nor had any immediate thought of committing, is the very
luckiest stroke of fortune that could befall him. He comes out not alone
innocent, but injured. The persecutions by which bad men have assailed him
for years have at last their illustration, and the calumniated saint walks
forth into the world, his head high and his port erect, even though a
crowbar should peep out from his coat-pocket and the jingle of false keys
go with him as he went.
Far too astute to make the scandal public by the newspapers, Atlee only
hinted to his chief the danger that might ensue if the secret leaked out.
He well knew that a press scandal is a nine-day fever, but a menaced
publicity is a chronic malady that may go on for years.
The last lines of his letter were: ‘I have made a curious and interesting
acquaintance--a certain Stephanotis Bey, governor of Scutari in Albania, a
very venerable old fellow, who was never at Constantinople till now. The
Pasha tells me in confidence that he is enormously wealthy. His fortune
was made by brigandage in Greece, from which he retired a few years ago,
shocked by the sudden death of his brother, who was decapitated at Corinth
with five others. The Bey is a nice, gentle-mannered, simple-hearted old
man, kind to the poor, and eminently hospitable. He has invited me down
to Prevesa for the pig-shooting. If I have your permission to accept the
invitation, I shall make a rapid visit to Athens, and make one more
effort to discover Speridionides. Might I ask the favour of an answer by
telegraph? So many documents and archives were stolen here at the time of
the fire of the Embassy, that, by a timely measure of discredit, we can
impair the value of all papers whatever, and I have already a mass of false
despatches, notes, and telegrams ready for publication, and subsequent
denial, if you advise it. In one of these I have imitated Walpole’s style
so well that I scarcely think he will read it without misgivings. With so
much “bad bank paper” in circulation, Speridionides is not likely to set a
high price on his own scrip.’