Audience appointed with Ali Pasha--Description of the Vizier's
Person--An Audience of the Vizier of the Morea
The progress of no other poet's mind can be to clearly traced to
personal experience as that of Byron's. The minute details in the
Pilgrimage of Childe Harold are the observations of an actual
traveller. Had they been given in prose, they could not have been
less imbued with fiction. From this fidelity they possess a value
equal to the excellence of the poetry, and ensure for themselves an
interest as lasting as it is intense. When the manners and customs
of the inhabitants shall have been changed by time and the
vicissitudes of society, the scenery and the mountains will bear
testimony to the accuracy of Lord Byron's descriptions.
The day after the travellers' arrival at Tepellene was fixed by the
Vizier for their first audience; and about noon, the time appointed,
an officer of the palace with a white wand announced to them that his
highness was ready to receive them, and accordingly they proceeded
from their own apartment, accompanied by the secretary of the Vizier,
and attended by their own dragoman. The usher of the white rod led
the way, and conducted them through a suite of meanly-furnished
apartments to the presence chamber. Ali when they entered was
standing, a courtesy of marked distinction from a Turk. As they
advanced towards him, he seated himself, and requested them to sit
near him. The room was spacious and handsomely fitted up, surrounded
by that species of continued sofa which the upholsterers call a
divan, covered with richly-embroidered velvet; in the middle of the
floor was a large marble basin, in which a fountain was playing.
In marble-paved pavilion, where a spring
Of living water from the centre rose,
Whose bubbling did a genial freshness fling,
And soft voluptuous couches breathed repose,
ALI reclined; a man of war and woes.
Yet in his lineaments ye cannot trace,
While Gentleness her milder radiance throws
Along that aged, venerable face,
The deeds that lurk beneath and stain him with disgrace.
It is not that yon hoary, lengthening beard,
Ill suits the passions that belong to youth;
Love conquers age--so Hafiz hath averr'd:
So sings the Teian, and he sings in sooth--
But crimes that scorn the tender voice of Ruth,
Beseeming all men ill, but most the man
In years, have mark'd him with a tiger's tooth;
Blood follows blood, and through their mortal span,
In bloodier acts conclude those who with blood began.
When this was written Ali Pasha was still living; but the prediction
which it implies was soon after verified, and he closed his stern and
energetic life with a catastrophe worthy of its guilt and bravery.
He voluntarily perished by firing a powder-magazine, when surrounded,
beyond all chance of escape, by the troops of the Sultan his master,
whose authority he had long contemned.
Mr Hobhouse describes him at this audience as a short fat man, about
five feet five inches in height; with a very pleasing face, fair and
round; and blue fair eyes, not settled into a Turkish gravity. His
beard was long and hoary, and such a one as any other Turk would have
been proud of; nevertheless, he, who was more occupied in attending
to his guests than himself, neither gazed at it, smelt it, nor
stroked it, according to the custom of his countrymen, when they seek
to fill up the pauses in conversation. He was not dressed with the
usual magnificence of dignitaries of his degree, except that his high
turban, composed of many small rolls, was of golden muslin, and his
yataghan studded with diamonds.
He was civil and urbane in the entertainment of his guests, and
requested them to consider themselves as his children. It was on
this occasion he told Lord Byron, that he discovered his noble blood
by the smallness of his hands and ears: a remark which has become
proverbial, and is acknowledged not to be without truth in the
evidence of pedigree.
The ceremonies on such visits are similar all over Turkey, among
personages of the same rank; and as Lord Byron has not described in
verse the details of what took place with him, it will not be
altogether obtrusive here to recapitulate what happened to myself
during a visit to Velhi Pasha, the son of Ali: he was then Vizier of
the Morea, and residing at Tripolizza.
In the afternoon, about four o'clock, I set out for the seraglio with
Dr Teriano, the Vizier's physician, and the Vizier's Italian
secretary. The gate of the palace was not unlike the entrance to
some of the closes in Edinburgh, and the court within reminded me of
Smithfield, in London; but it was not surrounded by such lofty
buildings, nor in any degree of comparison so well constructed. We
ascended a ruinous staircase, which led to an open gallery, where
three or four hundred of the Vizier's Albanian guards were lounging.
In an antechamber, which opened from the gallery, a number of
officers were smoking, and in the middle, on the floor, two old Turks
were seriously engaged at chess.
My name being sent in to the Vizier, a guard of ceremony was called,
and after they had arranged themselves in the presence chamber, I was
admitted. The doctor and the secretary having, in the meantime,
taken off their shoes, accompanied me in to act as interpreters.
The presence chamber was about forty feet square, showy and handsome:
round the walls were placed sofas, which, from being covered with
scarlet, reminded me of the woolsacks in the House of Lords. In the
farthest corner of the room, elevated on a crimson velvet cushion,
sat the Vizier, wrapped in a superb pelisse: on his head was a vast
turban, in his belt a dagger, incrusted with jewels, and on the
little finger of his right hand he wore a solitaire as large as the
knob on the stopper of a vinegar-cruet, and which was said to have
cost two thousand five hundred pounds sterling. In his left hand he
held a string of small coral beads, a comboloio which he twisted
backwards and forwards during the greater part of the visit. On the
sofa beside him lay a pair of richly-ornamented London-made pistols.
At some distance, on the same sofa, but not on a cushion, sat Memet,
the Pasha of Napoli Romania, whose son was contracted in marriage to
the Vizier's daughter. On the floor, at the foot of this pasha, and
opposite to the Vizier, a secretary was writing despatches. These
were the only persons in the room who had the honour of being seated;
for, according to the etiquette of this viceregal court, those who
received the Vizier's pay were not allowed to sit down in his
presence.
On my entrance, his highness motioned to me to sit beside him, and
through the medium of the interpreters began with some commonplace
courtly insignificancies, as a prelude to more interesting
conversation. In his manners I found him free and affable, with a
considerable tincture of humour and drollery. Among other questions,
he inquired if I had a wife: and being answered in the negative, he
replied to me himself in Italian, that I was a happy man, for he
found his very troublesome: considering their probable number, this
was not unlikely. Pipes and coffee were in the mean-time served.
The pipe presented to the Vizier was at least twelve feet long; the
mouth-piece was formed of a single block of amber, about the size of
an ordinary cucumber, and fastened to the shaft by a broad hoop of
gold, decorated with jewels. While the pipes and coffee were
distributing, a musical clock, which stood in a niche, began to play,
and continued doing so until this ceremony was over. The coffee was
literally a drop of dregs in a very small china cup, placed in a
golden socket. His highness was served with his coffee by Pasha Bey,
his generalissimo, a giant, with the tall crown of a dun-coloured
beaver-hat on his head. In returning the cup to him, the Vizier
elegantly eructed in his face. After the regale of the pipes and
coffee, the attendants withdrew, and his highness began a kind of
political discussion, in which, though making use of an interpreter,
he managed to convey his questions with delicacy and address.
On my rising to retire, his highness informed me, with more polite
condescension than a Christian of a thousandth part of his authority
would have done, that during my stay at Tripolizza horses were at my
command, and guards who would accompany me to any part of the country
I might choose to visit.
Next morning, he sent a complimentary message, importing, that he had
ordered dinner to be prepared at the doctor's for me and two of his
officers. The two officers were lively fellows; one of them in
particular seemed to have acquired, by instinct, a large share of the
ease and politeness of Christendom. The dinner surpassed all count
and reckoning, dish followed dish, till I began to fancy that the
cook either expected I would honour his highness's entertainment as
Caesar did the supper of Cicero, or supposed that the party were not
finite beings. During the course of this amazing service, the
principal singers and musicians of the seraglio arrived, and sung and
played several pieces of very sweet Turkish music. Among others was
a song composed by the late unfortunate Sultan Selim, the air of
which was pleasingly simple and pathetic. I had heard of the
Sultan's poetry before, a small collection of which has been printed.
It is said to be interesting and tender, consisting chiefly of little
sonnets, written after he was deposed; in which he contrasts the
tranquillity of his retirement with the perils and anxieties of his
former grandeur. After the songs, the servants of the officers, who
were Albanians, danced a Macedonian reel, in which they exhibited
several furious specimens of Highland agility. The officers then
took their leave, and I went to bed, equally gratified by the
hospitality of the Vizier and the incidents of the entertainment.