* * * * *

We can hardly call it a discovery that the architects made when they

first detached a street fountain from the wall and made something more

monumental out of it. The thing had already been done indoors and in the

courts of mosques. The earliest specimens, however, show their evolution

very clearly. They are nothing but wall fountains applied to a cube of

masonry. I suppose the religious associations of the _shadrîvan_ kept its

tradition from being followed, but with experience freedom was gained in

the treatment of the detached fountain. Typical of its kind is a fountain

in the waterside grove of plane-trees at Chibouklou, to which Ibrahim

Pasha, the Grand Vizier of Ahmed III, gave the name of Feïzabad—Place of

the Abundant Blessing of God. A great oblong pool reflects the trees,

and nearer the Bosphorus is a raised space of the kind the Turks call

a turf sofa. On one side of it a concave tablet, carved with a lamp

swinging from a chain, indicates the direction of prayer. On the other

stands a simple marble fountain, bearing three chronograms of 1133 or

1721. Twenty-eight Mehmed was then in Paris, and the new fashion was not

yet launched in fountains. An early and a very happy experiment in that

fashion adorns Ahmed’s park at Kiat Haneh. But the model and masterpiece

of this little golden age is the great fountain at Top Haneh, beside the

mosque of Don Quixote. It lacks, alas, the domed roof and broad eaves

that Melling represents in one of his pictures. Moreover a trolley post

has been planted squarely at its most conspicuous corner, while ugly iron

fences attack two of its sides; and the War Department thinks nothing

of making a dumping-ground of the enclosed angle. Yet none of these

indignities affect the distinction of the floral reliefs that cover its

white marble, or of its frieze of gold inscriptions spaced in a double

row of blue cartouches.

[Illustration: Fountain of Ahmed III in the park at Kiat Haneh]

[Illustration: Detail of the fountain of Mahmoud I at Top Haneh]

A less ornamental but a deservedly famous fountain of the same period

is to be seen on the upper Bosphorus, at Beïkos. I suspect, however,

that it was once more ornamental than it is. A tall marble pavilion

hospitably opens its arches on three sides to the streets of the village.

At the bottom of the wall on the fourth side water pours noisily out

of fifteen bronze spouts—or I believe they are thirteen now—into three

marble troughs sunk below the level of the street, and runs away through

a marble channel in the middle of the pavilion. From this T-shaped lower

level steps rise to two marble platforms at the outer corners, where

you may sip a coffee while drinking in the freshness and music of the

water. This delightful fountain was also built by Mahmoud I. I know not

whether the inhabitants of Roumeli Hissar got from Beïkos the idea of a

fountain of their own, much smaller, which is flat on top and furnished

with benches that are very popular on summer evenings. Another, at

Beïlerbeï, has a place of prayer on the top, which you reach by a steep

little stair of stone. Yet another might be pointed out at Top Haneh, in

front of the big mosque, as at least one good deed of the late Sultan

Abd ül Hamid II. It would not be fair to compare this structure with its

greater neighbour at the other end of the parade-ground. Nevertheless,

in spite of its ugly sculpture, it is one of the most successful modern

fountains in Constantinople. Suggested, perhaps, by a fountain behind the

Arsenal, built by the Admiral Süleïman Pasha in 1750, it is much happier

in its lines. And the architect had something like a stroke of genius

when he opened a space above the taps and filled it with twisted metal

work. The little dome was originally surmounted by an intricately wrought

_alem_. But the winter after the donor retired to Salonica this ornament

disappeared as well.

[Illustration: Fountain of Abd ül Hamid II]

* * * * *

No one can explore much of Stamboul without noticing certain large

grilled windows with metal cups chained to their sills. These are the

windows of _sebils_, which I have referred to as one type of street

fountain. If I have not yet mentioned them more fully it is because their

chronological place is after the wall fountain. They are also much less

numerous, though architecturally rather more important. The word _sebil_

means way or path: to build a _sebil_ is a step on the way to God. The

water comes into a small room or pavilion, and an attendant is supposed

to keep cups filled where they will be easily accessible from the street.

A simpler form of foundation provides for a man to go about the streets

giving water to those who ask for it. Or sometimes dervishes seek this

“way” of acquiring merit. They usually wear green turbans, and the inside

of the small brass bowl into which they pour water from a skin slung over

their shoulders is inscribed with verses from the Koran.

[Illustration: _Sebil_ behind the tomb of Sultan Mehmed III]

The Seljukian Turks of Asia Minor, I have been told, were the inventors

of this graceful philanthropy, remembering the thirst of the martyr

Hüsseïn at Kerbela and the women who brought water to the companions

of the Prophet at the battle of Bed’r. The earliest _sebil_ I know of

in Constantinople, however, is the one at the corner of the triangular

enclosure where the architect Sinan lies buried, near the great mosque he

built for Sultan Süleïman. Small and simple though it is, the lines have

the elegance that distinguishes the work of this master. And it proved

full of suggestion for succeeding architects. It showed them, for one

thing, how to treat a corner in a new and interesting way. And while the

metal work of the windows is the simplest, the designers in iron and

bronze found a new field for their craft. One or two architects took a

hint from the openwork that lightens the wall beyond the _sebil_ and

filled their windows with pierced marble, as in the fountain adjoining

the tomb of Sultan Mehmed III at St. Sophia. But most architects

preferred the lightness and the contrast of metal. Some of their

experiments may be rather too complicated and spidery. Nevertheless, the

grille work of _sebil_ windows would make an interesting study by itself.

In time _sebils_ were treated in the same variety of ways as other street

fountains. Perhaps the first example of an applied _sebil_ is that of

the eunuch Hafîz Ahmed Pasha. The fountain forms an angle of his mosque,

not far from that of the Conqueror. Ahmed Pasha was twice Grand Vizier

under Sultan Mourad IV. Shortly before his death the Conqueror appeared

to him in a dream, angrily reproaching him for building a mosque so near

his own and threatening to kill him. The old man was greatly troubled by

this vision of evil omen; and, sure enough, he was murdered about two

months afterward. There is something very attractive in his unpretentious

_sebil_, with its tall pointed windows, its little arched door, and its

lichened cupola. Another applied corner _sebil_, built by Sultan Ahmed

I behind his mosque, is unusual in that it is lined with tiles. Similar

tiles are to be seen in the window embrasures of that Sultan’s tomb.

Their conventionalised peacock eyes, a green-rimmed oval of blue on a

white ground, would be too coarse in the open; but seen in shadow through

the small hexagons of the grille, they are wonderfully decorative. By

an odd chance they were not destroyed by the fire that raged through

this quarter in 1912. Among other fountains which came off less happily

was one uniting a _sebil_ and a _cheshmeh_. This experiment, if I am not

mistaken, was first tried in the time of Ahmed III. A beautiful example

is to be seen on the busy street of Shah-zadeh, where Ahmed’s Grand

Vizier, Ibrahim Pasha, is buried within his own _medresseh_. Four windows

round the corner with a curve of handsome grille work, while the tall

arch of the _cheshmeh_ decorates the side street with its gilding and

delicate reliefs.

[Illustration: _Sebil_ of Sultan Ahmed III]

The most beautiful example of all, the king, in fact, of Constantinople

street fountains, is the one which Ahmed III built outside the great

gate of the Seraglio. It stands four-square on a circular marble base,

having a curved _sebil_ window at each corner and the pointed arch of a

_cheshmeh_ in the middle of each side. The overhanging roof is crowned

by live fantastic little domes and gilded _alems_. The traceries are not

quite so delicate, perhaps, as those of Top Haneh, nor does the whiteness

of marble make up any of the effect of this fountain. The brightness

of its original polychrome decoration has acquired a soft patina of

time. The main effect is given here by the great gold inscriptions on a

blue-green ground, framed in plain terra-cotta, and by a frieze of blue

and white tiles enclosed between two bands of a delicious dark velvety

green. The principal chronogram of the fountain, facing St. Sophia,

was written by the Sultan himself. It is said that his first version

added up to four less than the required sum, which should have been

1141 (1729). It read: “The date of Sultan Ahmed flows from the tongue

of the faucet. Praising God, drink of the fountain and pray for Ahmed

Khan.” A witty ecclesiastic to whom his majesty confided his dilemma

solved the difficulty by suggesting that it was necessary to turn on the

water before it would flow. The imperial poet thereupon added the word

“open” to his second hemistich and completed the chronogram. The other

inscriptions were chosen by competition from among the chief poets of

the day. This fountain is unsurpassed for the richness of its detail.

Even the under-side of the eaves is decorated with wavy gilt mouldings

and painted reliefs of fruit and flowers. But the details take nothing

away from the general effect. It is the balance of them, after all, the

admirable silhouette, the perfect proportion, that give this monument its

singular beauty and dignity.

There is another large detached _sebil_ in Galata, near the bridge of

Azap Kapou. It was built soon after the fountain of Ahmed III by the

mother of Sultan Mahmoud I. Crowded between the surrounding houses, it

enjoys no such advantages of perspective as its more famous rivals of

St. Sophia and Top Haneh. The greater part of the edifice, indeed, is no

more than a blank stone reservoir. But the side facing the main street is

treated with a masterly sense of its position. Projecting out from the

centre is the circular _sebil_ window, filled with a rich bronze grille,

while set a little back on either side, and slightly inclined toward

either perspective of the street, are two tall _cheshmehs_. The niche

of each and the whole face of the structure is incrusted with intricate

floral reliefs more delicate even than those of Top Haneh, though not

executed in so white a stone. There are also pots and vases of flowers

and sheaves of wheat, and above the tap of each niche is a pointed

openwork boss of bronze. Here, too, the richness of the ornament combines

with the composition and height of the façade and the sweep of the eaves

to reach something not far from a grand air.

No other _sebil_ of the left bank is executed in so refined a style as

this. But many other fountains, in all parts of the city, have a happy

knack of filling a space or turning a corner or screening a dark interior

with twisted metal work. The difficulty is to choose instances. I might

mention the _sebil_ of Baïram Pasha at Avret Bazaar; of Mehmed Emin

Effendi, half fountain and half tomb, which lends its elegance to the

neighbourhood of Dolma Ba’hcheh Palace; of Abd ül Hamid I at Fîndîklî; of

Laleli Jami, the Tulip Mosque, which Moustafa III built at Ak Seraï. For

the Western architect they are full of unexpected suggestions, if he have

the eye to see, while to the mere irresponsible impressionist they make

up a great part in the strangeness and charm of the Turkish capital.

XIII

A TURKISH VILLAGE

There are larger villages. There are more prosperous villages. There

are villages more fashionable. Great ladies lift their eyebrows when we

pronounce its name, even ladies not so great, and decide that we will

hardly do for their visiting lists. But few villages are so picturesque

as ours. And in one respect at least we are surpassed by no village.

For we sit on that cleft promontory of the Bosphorus where, during the

league-long coquetry of the two continents before their final union,

Europe most closely approaches Asia. The mother of nations, as we see her

some eight hundred yards away, is a slope sunburnt or green according to

the time of year but always discreetly overlooked by farther heights of

blue, a slope sharp enough, not too high, admirably broken by valleys and

points and one perfect little bay for which I sometimes think I would

give all the rest of the Bosphorus, a slope beaded irregularly along

the bottom with red-roofed summer _valîs_, variegated with gardens and

hamlets and nestling patches of wood, and feathered along the top with

cypresses and stone-pines in quite an Italian manner. For my part, I fail

to see why any one should ever have desired to leave so delectable a

continent, particularly at a period when the hospitality of our village

must have been more scant than it is now. But history has recorded many

a migration to our side of the strait. Here Xenophon crossed with the

remnant of his ten thousand. Here Darius sat upon a throne of rock and

watched Persia swarm after him against the Scythians. Here, too, the

great emperor Heraclius, returning to Constantinople after his triumphs

in the East, caused a pontoon bridge to be railed high with woven

branches in order to screen from his eyes the water he dreaded more than

blood. And here Sultan Mehmed II opened the campaign which ended in the

fall of the Roman Empire.

The castle he built in 1452, the summer before he took Constantinople, is

what gives our village its character and its name. Roumeli Hissar means

Roman, Greek, European, or western castle, distinguishing us from the

opposite village of Andolou Hissar, where stand the ruins of the earlier

fortress of Baïezid the Thunderbolt. To see the two round towers of

Roumeli Hissar facing each other across a ravine, the polygonal keep at

the water’s edge, the crenelated walls and turrets irregularly enclosing

the steep triangle between them, you would never guess that they sprang

up in about the time of a New York apartment-house. Yet that they did

so is better attested than the legend that their arrangement reproduces

the Arabic letters of their builder’s name. Having demanded permission

of the Greek emperor to put up a hunting-lodge on the Bosphorus, the

Conqueror proceeded to employ an army of masons, in addition to his

own troops, with orders to destroy any buildings they found convenient

to use for material. So it is that the shafts and capitals of columns,

the pieces of statues, the fragments of decorative brick and marble,

that give so interesting a variety of detail to the structure are a

last dim suggestion of the ancient aspects of the village. One of its

Byzantine names was that of the _Asomaton_, the Bodiless Angels, to whom

a monastery in the place was dedicated, while earlier still a temple of

Hermes had existed there. In three months the hunting-lodge was ready

for occupancy, and the Sultan called it Cut-Throat Castle, a play on the

Turkish word which means both throat and strait. It put the Bosphorus

at his mercy, as a Venetian galley that went to the bottom under a big

stone cannon-ball was the first to testify—though the Genoese commanded

the mouth of the Black Sea from another pair of castles. But in spite

of their hasty construction the walls have withstood the decay and

the earthquakes of nearly five hundred years. Will as much be said of

existing New York apartment-houses in the twenty-fifth century?

[Illustration: Cut-Throat Castle from the water]

[Illustration: The castle of Baïezid the Thunderbolt]

Powerful as the fortress was in its day, and interesting as it remains

as a monument to the energy and resource of its builder, it never played

a great part in the martial history of the Turks. The Bosphorus was not

then the important highway it is now. After the capture of Constantinople

the castle degenerated into a garrison of Janissaries and a state prison

of less importance than the Seven Towers. Not a few passages of romance,

however, attach to that diminished period. More than one European

diplomat spent a season of repose within the walls of Cut-Throat Castle,

in days when international law was less finical on such points than

it since has grown. And it formed a residence less agreeable than the

present country embassies, if we may judge from the account that has come

down to us of one such _villeggiatura_. This was written by a young

Bohemian attaché who spent two years of the sixteenth century in enforced

retirement at Roumeli Hissar. His name, Wenceslas Wratislaw, with those

of other prisoners, may still be seen in the stone of a little chamber

high in the north tower. In the same tower, commanding a magnificent

view, the Conqueror lived while preparing his great siege. Whether this,

or the angular tower by the water, or some other donjon of the Bosphorus

was the Black Tower which has so unsavoury a name in Turkish annals I

have never quite made up my mind.

To-day the castle has outlived even that period of usefulness. The true

cut-throats skulk in the bare hills at the mouth of the Black Sea, while

the ambassadors—with the single exception, it is true, of our own—pass

their summers in pleasant villas presented to them by different Sultans.

As for the towers, they survive only to add their picturesqueness to

the narrowest part of the Bosphorus, to flaunt ivy and even sizable

trees from their battlements, and to afford a habitation to bats and

carrion-crows. The last vestige of military uses clinging to them is the

pseudo-classic guard-house that crouches under the waterside keep. The

walls at least subserve the purpose, however, of sheltering a quarter of

our village. One of our thoroughfares enters the double gate by the north

tower, descends a breakneck alley of steps lattice-bordered and hung

with vine, pauses between a fountain, a ruined mosque, and a monstrous

mulberry-tree, and finally emerges upon the quay by a low arch that was

once the boat entrance to the sea tower. There is to a prying foreigner

some inheritance of other days in the inhabitants of this hanging suburb.

They are all of the ruling race and there is about them something

intrenched and aloof. The very dogs seem to belong to an older, a less

tolerant, dispensation. The Constantinople street dog, notwithstanding

the reputation that literature has attempted to fasten upon him, is in

general the mildest of God’s creatures. But the dog of Cut-Throat Castle

is quite another character. He is a distinct reactionary, lifting up his

voice against the first sign of innovation. It may be that generations

of surrounding walls have engendered in him the responsibilities of a

private dog. At all events he resents intrusion by day, and by night is

capable of the most obstinate resistance thereto.

[Illustration: The north tower of the castle]

Another memento of that older time is to be seen in the cemetery lying

under the castle wall to the south. It is, perhaps, the oldest Mohammedan

burying-ground in Constantinople, or at least on the European shore

of the Bosphorus. It certainly is the most romantic, with its jutting

rocks, its ragged black cypresses, its round tower and crenelated wall,

overhanging a blue so fancifully cut by Asiatic hills. It has, too, a

spicy odour quite its own, an odour compounded of thyme, of resinous

woods, of sea-salt, and I know not what aroma of antiquity. But its

most precious characteristic is the grave informality it shares with

other Mohammedan cemeteries. There is nothing about it to remind one of

conventional mourning—no alignment of tombs, no rectilinear laying out

of walks, no trim landscape gardening. It lies unwalled to the world,

the gravestones scattered as irregularly on the steep hillside as the

cyclamens that blossom there in February. Many of them have the same

brightness of colour. The tall narrow slabs are often painted, with the

decorative Arabic lettering, or some quaint floral design, picked out

in gold. It is another expression of the philosophy of the guard-house

soldiers who so often lounge along the water, of the boy who plays his

pipe under a cypress while the village goats nibble among the graves,

of the veiled women who preen their silks among the rocks on summer

afternoons. The whole place is interfused with that intimacy of life and

death, the sense of which makes the Asiatic so much more mature than the

European. The one takes the world as he finds it, while the other must

childishly beat his head against stone walls. It is the source of the

strength and of the weakness of the two stocks.

We also love to congregate, or in Empedoclean moods to muse alone, about

another old cemetery. There, on top of the steep slope behind the castle,

you will often see a row of women, like love-birds contemplating the

universe, or a grave family picnic. There too, especially on moonlight

nights, you will not seldom hear voices uplifted in the passionate minor

which has so compelling a charm for those who know it of old, accompanied

perhaps by an oboe and the strangely broken rhythm of two little drums.

It is the true music for a hilltop that is called the Place of Martyrs.

The victims of the first skirmish that took place during the building of

the castle lie there, under a file of oaks and cypresses. At the north

end of the ridge a few broken grey stones are scattered among tufts of

scrub-oak that soon give way to the rounded bareness of the hillside. At

the other end newer and more honourable graves, protected by railings,

attend a _tekkeh_ of Bektash dervishes. This establishment was founded

by a companion of the Conqueror. Mohammed gave him, as the story goes,

all the land he could see from the top of the hill. The present sheikh is

a descendant of the founder, but I do not believe he inherited all the

land he can see. The view from the Place of Martyrs is one of the finest

on the Bosphorus. I am not of the company of certain travellers in the

matter of that famous strait. I have seen hills with greater nobility of

outline and waters of a more satisfying blue. But when one has made all

due reservations in the interest of one’s private allegiances the fact

remains that the Bosphorus is a charming piece of water enclosed between

charmingly moulded hills. It bends below you like a narrow lake as you

see it from the Place of Martyrs. The northern sea is invisible; but

southward the tops of islands look over the heights of Scutari, and the

Marmora glimmers to the feet of a ghostly range that sometimes pretends

not to be there.

Nothing could be more abrupt than the contrast between the slopes facing

each other across the busy waterway, with all their picturesque detail

of garden, roof, and minaret, and the plateau of which the Bosphorus is

nothing but a crooked blue crack. From the Place of Martyrs it rolls

desolately away to the west, almost without a house or a tree to break

its monotony. Gullies cut it here and there. Patches of scrub-oak darken

its surface. Sheep move slowly across it, looking in the distance like

maggots in a texture of homespun. Otherwise you would never suppose that

life existed there. As you watch the sun set across those great empty

fields it is incredible that somewhere beyond them tilled lands and

swarming cities are. Your impression is not of mere wildness, however.

Two abandoned stone windmills on a far-off hill give the note of the

impression. Such silence is the silence that follows upon the beating

of many drums. You may sit upon that hilltop in evening light and

drink melancholy like an intoxication, musing upon all the change and

indifference of the world. Yet life lingers there still—life that neither

indifference nor change, nor time nor ruin nor death can ever quite stamp

out. Threads of water creep through some of the dry gullies, swelling

after rain into noisy brooks. Above them hang patches of cultivation,

dominated by the general brownness and bareness, but productive of

excellent strawberries in the spring. That, too, is one of the times

when the brown brightens for a little to green, while June colours whole

tracts of hillside with butcher’s-broom and the wild rose. And then I

have said nothing of heather, of crocuses, of violets, of I know not

how many flowers scattered along certain lonely lanes. On the edge of

the village these are paved like streets and pleasantly arched with

bay-trees. In the bottoms of the ravines, also, they have in their season

quite a sylvan air. They lead to stony trails in the open where you may

meet a soldier, an Albanian shepherd, or a peasant in gay jacket and

baggy blue trousers, wandering from nowhere to nowhere.

But I wander too far from our village, from that larger part of it

which the exigencies of space must long ago have pushed northward out

of the castle close into the underlying valley. There are those who

deprecate our streets, their many steps, the manner of their paving, the

irresoluteness with which they proceed to their destined ends, and the

desultoriness of their illumination at night. I, however, am partial to

a Gothic irregularity, and I applaud the law which admonishes us not

to go abroad two hours after sunset without a lantern. We do not take

the admonition too seriously, but there are chances enough of breaking

our necks on moonless nights to maintain a market among us for paper

lanterns. These, with the candles flaring in front of sacred tombs and

the casual window lamplight so pleasingly criss-crossed by lattices, make

Whistler nocturnes for us that they may never know who dwell in the glare

of electricity.

If I find anything to deprecate it is the tendency gaining ground among

us to depart from the ways of our fathers in the matter of domestic

architecture. The jig-saw and the paint pot begin to exercise their

fatal fascination upon us who were so long content with simple lines and

the colour of weathered wood. But the pert gables of the day are still

outnumbered by square old many-windowed houses with low-pitched roofs

of red tiles and corbelled upper stories inherited from the Byzantines.

Under the eaves you will often see a decorative text from the Koran,

framed like a picture, which insures the protection of heaven better

than premium or policy. No house is too small to have a garden, walled

as a garden should be, and doing more for the outsider by its green

suggestions of withdrawal than by any complete revelation of its charms.

Few of these pleasances do not enjoy some view of the Bosphorus. I know

one such, containing a Byzantine capital that makes the cedar of Lebanon

above it throw as secular a shade as you please, so cunningly laid out

at length on the hillside that the Bosphorus is a mere ornamental water

of a lower terrace. This Grand Canal of Constantinople enters bodily

into certain thrice enviable _yalîs_ on the water’s edge. Their windows

overhang the sea, or are separated from it merely by a narrow causeway.

And each contains its own marble basin for boats, communicating with the

open by a water-gate or by a canal or tunnel through the quay.

Distinctively Turkish as the flavour of our village is, we yet resemble

the city and the empire to which we are tributary in the variety of our

population. Of Greeks there are few. It was perhaps natural for them

to flee the first stronghold of their conquerors on this side of the

Bosphorus—if they ever inhabited it in any number. An Armenian quarter,

however, scrambles up the north side of the valley. You can recognise the

houses by their lack of lattices, and the priest by the high conical

crown of his hat. There are also Albanians, Croats, Jews, Macedonians,

and Montenegrins among us, in addition to nothing less exotic than a

small Anglo-American colony. It dwells on the upper fringe of habitation,

the American part of it being connected, principally, with the college

founded by a Mr. Robert of New York.

The grey stone buildings stand on a splendid terrace above the south

tower of the castle, visible from afar. And they always make me

sorry that such a chance was lost for some rare person equal to the

opportunity, who should have combined a knowledge of modern educational

requirements with a feeling for the simple broad-eaved houses of the

country and their picturesque corbels. However, there the grey stone

buildings stand, ugly and foreign, but solid and sufficient, an object

of suspicion to some, to others an example of the strange vicissitudes

of the world, whereby above a promontory sacred once to Hermes, later to

Byzantine saints, and again to Mohammed, there should fly to-day the flag

of a country so distant as our own. The condition on which the flag flies

is not the least picturesque of these incongruities. The proprietors

from whom the first land was obtained were the holy cities of Mecca

and Medina, and in conformity with the law governing such property the

college bound itself to pay them, in addition to the price of purchase, a

yearly tribute of some fourteen dollars.

I might speak of other public institutions flourishing in our midst: of

the primary school by the water where you hear the children studying

aloud while they rock back and forth over the Koran; of the Sünbüllü

dervishes farther down the quay, to whom laden wood boats throw out a few

sticks as they tow up the five-mile current; of the howling dervishes,

and the clever ruse by which they obtained their building; of our

three mosques—to say nothing of the _imam’s_ mother of the smallest

of them, an active yet beneficent public institution in herself, who,

when the American college dug foundations for a wall round a slope long

beloved by the Turkish ladies, threw her ample person most literally

into the breach and could only be persuaded to retire therefrom by the

Ministry of Public Works. Nor should I pass over our village green,

which was once a cemetery, but which is now a common meeting-place for

those of us who are happy enough to live about it. Some of us spend

most of our time there, in the company of our wives, our children, our

horses, our donkeys, and our hens. Most notable among the habitués—at

least to an alien eye—is a lady of African descent, espoused to a meek

Caucasian water-carrier and the mother of an infinite chocolate-and-cream

progeny. Her ardent disposition is reported to have led her through

many vicissitudes, matrimonial and otherwise. On one occasion it led

her to scratch out the eyes of another _habituée_ of the green, over

some matter of mulberries. It is a proof of the reasonableness of

justice among us that when condemned to a brief term of imprisonment she

first succeeded in postponing the execution of the sentence, I believe

through some expectation of presenting the happy water-carrier with a

new chocolate-cream, and then in causing her term to be subdivided,

alternately languishing in dungeons and enjoying the society of her

family until she had paid the full penalty of the law.

A larger, the true centre of our municipal life, is the _charshî_, or

market-place. Very notable, to the mind of one admirer, is ours among

market-places. My admiration is always divided between that crooked

street of it, darkened by jutting upper stories that sometimes actually

jump across it, wherein are situate the principal shops, the minor cafés,

a fountain or two, and the public bath, and that adjoining portion of

it which lies open to the sea. The latter certainly offers the most

facilities for the enjoyment of life. Indeed, one end of it is chiefly

given up to a Company for the Promotion of Happiness—if one may so

translate its Turkish name—whose English steamers carry us to town, seven

miles away, or to the upper Bosphorus, as quickly, as regularly, and

as comfortably as any company I know. It also does much to promote the

happiness of those who do not travel, through the sociable employees of

its wharf and by affording a picturesque _va et vient_ at almost any hour

of the day. I fear, however, that it does less to promote the happiness

of the boatmen who await custom at the adjacent wooden quay. They wait

in those trim little skiffs, so much neater than anything of the sort we

see for hire at home, which have almost superseded caïques because they

hold more passengers with greater comfort. And to one who observes how

much of the time they do wait, and how modestly they are remunerated for

their occasional excursions, it is a miracle how they contrive to live.

There is no fixed tariff. If you know the ropes you pay two and a half

piastres, some twelve cents, to be rowed across the Bosphorus or to the

next village. For ten they will take you almost anywhere. But they eke

out their incomes by fishing. We are famous for our lobsters at Roumeli

Hissar.

The boatmen, and others with them, often prefer to wait in certain

agreeable resorts along that same wooden platform. The first of these

is the café of the Armenian, whose corner rakes the Company for the

Promotion of Happiness. He profits thereby not a little, for when we

wish to take a steamer we do not always trouble ourselves to look up

the time-table beforehand. The Armenian is also a barber, and in his

low-ceiled room of many windows you may hear, to the accompaniment of

banging backgammon boards, the choicest of conversation. The only thing I

have against him is that I have to pay twice as much for my coffee as a

customer who wears a girdle and a fez.

[Illustration: The village boatmen and their skiffs]

A few doors away dwell the Albanians. You may know them by the gay

stockings, red embroidered with gold, which they wear outside the tight

white trousers of their country. Theirs is the dispensary of ice-cream in

summer and of _mahalibi_ in winter—the latter being a kind of corn-starch

pudding sprinkled with sugar and rose-water. These comestibles, of which

their people have a practical monopoly, they also peddle about the

streets. But it is better to partake of them in their shop, surrounded

by lithographic royalties and battle scenes of 1870; and best of all

in front of it, sitting comfortably in a rush-bottomed chair while the

never-ending diorama of the Bosphorus rolls by.

In suggestive proximity to this establishment is a Greek drug store.

It might be Venetian, so impregnate is it with the sound and light of

water. For situation, however, I never saw its equal in Venice. It has,

indeed—especially when late sunlight warms the opposite shore—so perfect

a view, the platform in front of it is so favourite a resort, the legend

“La Science est Longue, mais la Vie Courte” curls with such levity

about a painted Hippocrates within, that the place rather gives you the

impression of an operatic drug store. The polyglot youth in charge of it

stands at the door exactly as if he were waiting for the chorus on the

stage outside to give him his cue; and you cannot help asking yourself

whether there be anything in the porcelain jars about him.

[Illustration: In the market-place]

I have spoken with unbridled admiration of our market-place and its two

main branches. How shall I now speak admiringly enough of the square with

which they both communicate and which unites in itself the richness of

their charms? It is not a square in any geometric sense. It is a broad

stone quay of irregular width, tree-shaded, awning-hung, festooned with

vines and fish-nets, adorned of a flat-topped fountain whose benches

are a superior place of contemplation, bordered by a quaintly broken

architecture of shops, cafés, and dwellings, and watched upon by a high

white minaret. It is not subject to the intermittent bustle of the

Company for the Promotion of Happiness, but it carries on its own more

deliberate and more picturesque activities. Here commerce goes forward,

both settled and itinerant, with loud and leisurely bargaining. Here the

_kantarji_ exercises his function of weighing the freights unloaded by

the picture-book boats at the quay. The headquarters of one of them is

here, in a deep arch over the water. This is the bazaar caïque, that

goes early in the morning to the Golden Horn for the transport of such

freight and passengers as do not care to patronise the more expensive

Company for the Promotion of Happiness—a huge row-boat with an incurving

beak and a high stern, to pull whose oars the rowers drop from their feet

to their backs. And here is also the headquarters of the _hamals_, most

indispensable of men. These are Asiatic peasants who combine with many

others the offices of carts and carters in flatter towns. They carry our

furniture and fuel from the water on their backs. They chop our wood,

to saw it being what they refuse. They keep guard of our houses when we

go away. They patrol our streets at night, knocking the hour with their

clubs on the pavement and rousing us with blood-curdling yells if so much

as a hen-coop burn down at the Islands twenty miles away. They likewise

act as town criers; and during the holy month of Ramazan they beat us

up with drums early enough in the morning to be through breakfast by

the time you can tell a black hair from a white. They are a strong, a

faithful, even—if you choose to expend a little sentiment upon them—a

pathetic race, living in exile without wife or child, sending money home

as they earn it, going to their “countries” only at long intervals, and

settling there when they are too old to work for their guild.

Altogether a man might spend his days in that square and be the better

for it. As a matter of fact, a surprising number of us find it possible

to do so, sipping coffee, smoking cigarettes or water-pipes, and watching

life slip by on the strong blue current of the Bosphorus. And as I sit

there too, treated always with a charming courtliness yet somehow made

to feel the vanity of thanking God that I am not as other _gyaours_ are,

I often ask myself how these things may be. In other parts of the world

people enjoy no such leisure unless they have rents or an indifference as

to going to destruction. In Roumeli Hissar we neither go to destruction

nor have rents. The case may be connected with the theory that all

inhabitants of Constantinople are guests of its ruler. We are not subject

to military duty, we are exempt from certain burdens of taxation, and

other inducements are offered those of the true faith to settle in the

City of the Sultans. I have no means of knowing how persuasive these

may be, but it is astonishing how overwhelming a proportion of the less

skilled labour of the place is performed by outsiders—witness the Greek

shopkeepers of our village, the Albanian sweet vendors, and the _hamals_.

The case at all events is not without its charm. We may not accomplish

great things in the world. We may not perform memorable services for

state or humanity. We may not create works that shall carry our names

down the generations. But we live. We enjoy the sun, we taste each

other’s society, and we are little troubled for the morrow. Could life be

more?

XIV

REVOLUTION

1908

Constantinople is finished! So a reactionary impressionist groaned

to himself on a certain summer day—to be precise, on the 24th of

July, 1908—when the amazing truth became known that the constitution,

suppressed thirty-two years before, had been re-established.

Constitutions were well enough in their place, but their place was not

Constantinople. A Constantinople at whose gate your Shakespeare was not

taken from you as being a perilous and subversive book, a Constantinople

through whose custom-house you could not bribe your way, a Constantinople

which you might explore ungreeted by a derisive “_Gyaour!_” or a casual

stone, a Constantinople of mosques open to the infidel without money

and without price, a Constantinople wherein you were free to walk at

night without a lantern, a Constantinople indifferent to passports or

to ladies’ veils, a Constantinople where it was possible to paint in

the streets, to meet and see off steamers, to post a local letter—and,

what is more, receive one—a Constantinople without a censor, a spy, or a

dog, might be a Constantinople of a kind; but it would not be the true

Constantinople. It could never be the impenetrable old Constantinople

that lent a certain verisimilitude to stories like “Paul Patoff” and

made it possible for a romantic Gladstone to be taken seriously at his

most romantic moments. Violated of its mystery, laid open to the deadly

levelling of Western civilisation, what could save it from becoming a

Constantinople of straight streets, of pseudo-classic architecture,

of glaring lights, of impatient tram and telephone bells, of the

death-dealing motors that Abd ül Hamid would never allow, of the terrible

tourists—the German _Liebespaar_, the British old maid, the American

mother and daughter—who insist on making one place exactly like another?

Well, the Constantinople of a reactionary impressionist is finished. A

good deal of it vanished by magic on the night of the revolution. Of

the outward and visible remainder more has disappeared already than an

outsider might suppose. The dogs and the beggars went very soon, followed

by the worst of the cobblestones and the bumpy old bridge that every

traveller wrote a chapter about; and when I took a little journey in the

world after this process was well started it struck me that the streets

of Paris and New York were less clean than those of Stamboul. As for

the censor and the spies, if they still exist it is in a tempered form.

In the meantime the telephones, the motors, the dynamos so redoubted

by Abd ül Hamid, have made their appearance. And with them has come a

terrifying appetite for civic improvement. The mosaics of Justinian are

about to be lighted by electricity. Boulevards have been cut through

Stamboul. Old Turkish houses have been torn down by the hundred in

the interests of street widening. Only a miracle saved the city walls

from being sold as building material. I could wish that the edifices

encumbering the sphendone of the Hippodrome might be sold as building

material, in order to give back to the city its supreme ornament of a

sea view. Imagine what such a wide blue vision might be, seen from the

heart of the town—perhaps through a dark-green semicircle of cypresses!

In the meantime the Hippodrome has been made to blossom, not quite as the

rose, depriving Stamboul of its one good square and threatening to hide

the beauty of Sultan Ahmed’s marble mosque. If the new gardens also do

something to hide the Byzantino-Germanico-Turkish fountain which William

II, in remembrance of a memorable visit, had the courage to erect in

line with the obelisk of Theodosius and the twisted serpents of Platæa,

they will not have been planted altogether in vain. But direr changes

still have the people of Constantinople witnessed since their revolution

night—fire, pestilence, earthquake, mutiny, war. They have even lived to

hear, from streets of something less than sweet security, the nearing

thunder of cannon, and to ask themselves if the supreme change were at

hand, and Constantinople itself was to go.

Of all these things more has been written than is profitable to read.

It is still too soon to know very much about the Young Turks—their real

leaders, their real motives, their real aims, their real accomplishment.

It is fairly safe to conclude, however, that they were neither the

demigods acclaimed in 1908 as the saviours of their country nor

the rascals execrated as its destroyers in 1912. They were, in all

likelihood, men neither better nor worse than the rest of us, who found

their country in an evil case and who for no shameful reason lacked the

knowledge and the power to make it an earthly paradise. Yet it seems to

me that history will give them credit for breaking the spell of Abd ül

Hamid, that strange and tragic figure of myth who struggled to keep the

thirteenth century alive in the twentieth. Nor do I see how they could

have matched him otherwise than as they did, with his own weapon of

secrecy. And whatever their subsequent mistakes may have been, it also

seems to me that history will absolve them from much of the reproach

of losing their European empire. No one can fairly blame them for

wishing to make the Turk the dominant element in his own empire, and

for wishing to make that empire independent of the foreigner. Neither

they nor any one else, moreover, could in the long run have saved their

European provinces. It is a serious question whether they will succeed

in saving certain of their provinces that remain—or whether their own

good advises them to do so. There are influences of common blood and

common tradition which no mere political influence can indefinitely

withstand. In any case, I have come to look upon the Turkish revolution

with other than the eye of a reactionary impressionist. It would be a

reactionary impressionist indeed who put the picturesqueness of Stamboul

before the good of a people—and a blind one who failed to see what there

was of human colour in those dramatic events. And although time has

only partially fulfilled so many generous hopes, or has turned them to

bitterness, I refuse to believe that they were totally insincere. I shall

always count it, on the contrary, among the most enlarging experiences of

my life to have been in Constantinople in 1908, and to have seen a people

at one of those rare moments when it really lives.

[Illustration: Badge of the revolution: “Liberty, Justice, Fraternity,

Equality.”]

It is strange to recall, in the light of all that has happened since,

how silently that momentous change announced itself. We knew that there

were disturbances in Macedonia; but there were always disturbances in

Macedonia. We gathered that there were dissensions at the Palace, for

on the very day of his decoration by William II with the Black Eagle,

Ferid Pasha, the Albanian Grand Vizier, fell. But there were usually

dissensions at the Palace. And when, two days later, we read at the top

of our morning papers a bare official announcement that the constitution

had been re-established, that long-suspended constitution, the promise of

which had brought Abd ül Hamid to the throne, we asked each other what it

meant. Apparently no one could tell—least of all the diplomats supposed

to sit at the fountain-heads of information. The most frequent conjecture

was of a trick to gain time. It was only later that rumours began to run

about, in the true Constantinople way, of the revolt of Macedonia; of

the telegrams exchanged between Salonica and Yîldîz, and the memorable

night council at which Abd ül Hamid, fainting with exhaustion and rage,

acknowledged himself beaten at last; of the mysterious Committee of Union

and Progress that had performed the miracle, and of the men who had gone

about the country, disguised as pedlers and dervishes, feeding the hunger

for liberty and the courage to demand it, and of the women who carried

messages from harem to harem and so delivered them without writing, and

of the revolutionary circles that flourished under the eyes of spies,

subordinate to the larger circles of Constantinople, Salonica, and Paris,

wherein only one or two members knew of the definite existence of another

circle, and then of only one or two of its members.

When the lancers rode through the streets that Friday morning of the

24th of July to guard the Sultan on his way to mosque, a few Greeks

cheered them. The soldiers looked uneasy. Such a thing had never happened

to them. That afternoon a few shopkeepers hung out their flags. The

police went about zealously taking down the offenders’ names. By the

next day, however, the police gave up trying to keep track of the flags.

The whole city flapped with them. And other strange manifestations took

place. Music marched through the streets. Orators sprang up at every

corner. Newspapers quadrupled their editions and burst into extras at

the novelty of containing news. Hawkers everywhere sold long red badges

bearing golden words that it had been forbidden to utter—Liberty,

Justice, Equality, Fraternity. It was as if a cover had suddenly been

taken off. For thirty years this people had been kept in constantly

closer restriction, had lived under the eyes of that vast army of

informers from which they were not safe even within their own doors, had

been robbed one by one of all the little liberties of life so common in

other countries that we think nothing of them—to visit one’s friends, to

gather for amusement or discussion, to read the book of one’s choice,

to publish one’s sentiment or protest, to go out at night, to travel at

will. Hundreds of thousands had grown up to man’s estate knowing no other

manner of life. And from one day to another they were told that it was

all at an end—that they were free. Was it any wonder that at first they

were dazed? Was it not rather a wonder that they did not lose their heads?

The natural goodness and peaceableness of a race that has been accounted

one of butchers could have had no more triumphant proof than those trying

days when the whole machinery of government was disorganised. But of the

sanguinary scenes that have marked other revolutions there were none.

In Salonica, to be sure, where the constitution was proclaimed one day

earlier, a policeman was shot for tearing down the proclamation. Ten

notorious spies were also shot in honour of the date. Their comrades

had the Julian calendar to thank that the number was not twenty-three!

In Broussa another spy, the infamous Fehim Pasha of Constantinople, was

killed by a crowd he unwisely went out of his way to insult. In the

capital, however, although the Stamboul troops were ready to occupy Pera

and cut off Yîldîz, extreme measures proved unnecessary. The moderation

of the revolutionists, the astuteness of the Sultan, and the character

of the people combined to make the affair pass off without bloodshed. If

it had not been for foreigners employed in some of the public services,

who promptly set about fomenting strikes, nothing would have occurred

to disturb the peace. Zeki Pasha, it is true, the man who would have

repeated the Bloody Sunday of St. Petersburg, had his windows smashed.

Otherwise the hostility of the people toward the ringleaders of the

old régime restricted itself to cartoons of the most primitive drawing

and satire, which had an enormous sale in the streets and which were

ultimately suppressed by the Committee of Union and Progress. The

Committee sedulously fostered the belief that the real author of the

Hamidian régime had merely been the victim of his advisers.

The Bloody Sunday which might have been was the Sunday after the coup

d’état, when all day long deputation after deputation marched up

to the Palace in the July sun, until a hundred thousand fezzes and

turbans packed the avenues of approach. They had been the day before to

each of the ministers in turn, demanding their oaths to maintain the

constitution. They now came to the Sultan, loyal and unarmed, but asking

from him too an assurance that he would not a second time withdraw the

instrument which he had been the first of his line to promulgate. The

Palace guards did not resist, but within was such terror as those without

had never dreamed of inspiring. The Sultan, always chary of his person,

uncertain as to the designs of a mob the like of which he had never seen

before, refused to show himself. He merely sent messages to the people

and begged them to disperse. They would not. Then Zeki Pasha, Grand

Master of Artillery, asked leave to clear the crowd away—with his cannon.

Fortunately, most fortunately, the old martinet’s advice was not taken.

But still the Sultan did not appear. Finally, late in the evening, the

last deputation of all arrived. It was composed of the more enlightened

element of the population and contained members of the Committee. Like

those who had preceded them, they respectfully asked to see his majesty.

They were told that his majesty had retired. They insisted, with what

arguments one may never know. And at last, near midnight, his majesty

appeared on a balcony of the Palace and asked the people what they

wished. They, amid frantic demonstrations of loyalty, said that they

wished to see the imperial master who had so long been kept from them

by traitors, and to hear him swear fealty to his own constitution. He

replied: “My children, be certain that I shall shrink before no sacrifice

for your happiness. Henceforth your future is assured. I will work with

you in common accord. Live as brothers. I am overcome by the sentiments

of devotion and gratitude which you show. Return to your homes and take

your rest.” This speech, characteristic of its maker’s adroitness,

satisfied the thousands who did not hear it, and they went away.

It did not satisfy the instigators of the demonstration, who later

obliged the Sultan to make the desired oath on the Koran. It was his only

chance to save his throne. But bitter as his surrender doubtless was,

he must have had moments of compensation. One of them occurred on the

succeeding Friday, when a hundred thousand people gathered again to see

him go to mosque. Hours before the time of the ceremony the precincts of

the Palace were invaded, and _hamals_ kicked their heels from the edge

of the terrace reserved for visitors with cards from their embassies.

A great tree near the mosque was so full of men and boys that two or

three branches cracked off. When the imperial cortège came down from

the Palace there was such cheering as Abd ül Hamid, accustomed to the

perfunctory “_Padishah’m chok yasha!_” of his guard, could scarcely have

heard before. The monarch who all his life had been most afraid of bombs

and bullets may never have been so nervous, but he stood up like a man,

saluting his people with the red-and-white rosette of the constitution

pinned to his shoulder. They responded in a frenzy of emotion, tears

streaming from many of their eyes. After returning to the Palace the

Sultan showed himself again at a balcony and spoke a few words. Could

there have been only terror for him in the joyful shouting of a mob that

would have torn an assassin to shreds? Could he have seen there only

enemies who had overcome him by the brute force of numbers? Could he have

felt only the irony of his undoing by the very schools he had created, by

the very means he had taken to stamp out individual liberty?

There may be question as to whether any real generous impulse, any true

glimmer of repentance, visited that old lion at bay. But there can be

none as to the temper of the crowds that marched about the streets for

days with flags and music, cheering the army that had freed them,

cheering the Sultan who, they said, had been kept from them by traitors,

cheering the orators who told them again and again of their happiness

and assured them that thenceforward in the Ottoman Empire there was no

distinction between Armenian, Greek, Jew, and Turk: all were Ottomans,

all were brothers, all were free. It was, of course, too good to be true.

Yet, even in the light of subsequent history, I persist in remembering

those days as a little golden age which no one was the worse for having

known. A carriage wheel was crushed in the press. The hat—or should one

say the fez?—was instantly passed around, and the happy jehu was given

the wherewithal to buy fifty new wheels. A shop-window, again, was

accidentally broken. The shopkeeper presently had reason to wish that the

crowd would break a window every day. Ladies who never before would have

dared go alone through certain streets, or through any street at certain

hours, went unmolested when and where they chose. Races that had lived

under an armed truce, and not always that, suddenly fell on each other’s

necks. A cold-hearted impressionist more than once found it in him to

smile at respectable old gentlemen who insisted on kissing fervent young

orators on both cheeks. And when priests of different religions exchanged

such salutes it was even more a case of the lion lying down with the lamb.

[Illustration: Cartoon representing the exodus of the Palace camarilla]

The scattering of the Palace camarilla was one of the most picturesque of

the many picturesque events of the day. The true story of those precious

rascals is a piece of the Middle Ages—or of the flourishing days of New

York. Some of them were ministers, some chamberlains and secretaries,

one of them no more than an Arab astrologer, who gained immense credit

during the Greek war of 1897 by holding over telegrams and prophesying

their contents to the Sultan. Without this star-chamber nothing was done

in the empire. The council of ministers sat at the Sublime Porte, but the

true cabinet sat secretly in Yîldîz Palace. If the Grand Vizier did not

happen to belong to it, so much the worse for him. He must be prepared

to see his orders countermanded and his promises rendered void. It was

always possible to obtain such a result. Those who knew the ropes knew

the department of each member of the kitchen cabinet, and his price. For

that matter they were willing to be accommodating. They took from each

according to his means. And they were not too proud to be known as the

_kehayas_ of the industrial guilds. One accepted two hundred pounds a

month from the butchers of Constantinople, in return for leniency in the

matter of inspection. Another received a handsome allowance from the

corporation of bakers, who were also obliged to subsidise the police in

order to prevent the seizure of undersized loaves from being too serious.

A third drew a dollar for every bag of flour that came into the city. I

even heard of a pasha who allowed his kitchens to be supplied with butter

by a Kürdish chief. There was no possible source of revenue which these

men had not tapped—public funds, private enterprises, the distribution of

places, the granting of concessions. It mattered nothing to them that the

country was going to ruin, the development of its incalculable resources

stopped, so long as they built great palaces on the Bosphorus and fared

sumptuously every day.

The constitution took them more completely than any by surprise.

Accustomed to the variable climate of the court, they were prepared to

fall from favour, to be exiled, or even to lose their lives. But they

were not prepared for this. Not many of them were quick enough to grasp

the situation. The first to do so was Selim Pasha Melhameh, a Syrian. As

Minister of Agriculture, Mines, and Forests he was in the way of getting

good things from people who wanted concessions. His already comfortable

fortune was agreeably increased during his last winter in office by a

scarcity of fuel that caused great misery among the poor of the capital.

An imperial order was issued to bring down wood from the forests of the

interior and sell it at a fixed price. The wood was brought down and

the price fixed—by Selim Pasha. He is said to have been absent from the

all-night council at which the constitution was granted. At first he

would not believe the news, but when proof was given him he called for

his wife and told her to pack at once. She did so with such expedition

that three days later, borrowing the Italian embassy launch on the

pretext of seeing off their son, who was going to his post in the Turkish

embassy at Rome, they sailed on the steamer with him.

The next to leave was the notorious Izzet Pasha, the Sultan’s first

chamberlain. There was a mediæval character for you—that perfect

gentleman and connoisseur, descended from robber Bedouins beyond

Damascus, who became the greatest robber in the empire. He robbed so

shamelessly, he robbed so amusingly, that an irresponsible impressionist

cannot help investing him with a romantic interest. When the coup d’état

took place, his Syrian wit told him that a country he had plundered for

years was no longer the country for him. He accordingly bought for eight

thousand pounds, in the name of a French lady, a small Greek passenger

steamer worth some fifteen hundred, and prepared to decamp. When the

captain learned the identity of his new owner he refused to serve him.

Rather than excite suspicion by drumming up another crew, Izzet proceeded

to buy another steamer, this time under the British flag. Having been

bitten once, he stipulated that the owners should be paid in three

instalments—two thousand pounds down, fifteen hundred when he should get

away, by cash deposited with a third party, and fifteen hundred more

from his first port of call. When the owners presented their cheque for

two thousand pounds at Izzet Pasha’s bank they were informed that the

latter had withdrawn his account. Izzet Pasha expressed infinite regret

at the mistake, and courteously wrote out a second cheque on a bank

from which he had withdrawn his account. Before the owners had time to

present that Izzet Pasha, boarding his steamer from the German embassy

launch and a series of tugs, had got away with three of his four wives,

in spite of the crowd that shook their fists after him from Galata quay.

At the Dardanelles he was stopped. And perhaps the most novel of all

his experiences was to see a handful of gold he gave to the officer

keeping him under guard thrown scornfully overboard. But the English

register of his boat and a commission he displayed, sending him abroad

on imperial business, saved his skin. He was not heard from again till

he turned up at Genoa. There, telling his captain he was going to take

his family ashore for a walk, he took ticket for England. The captain

waited patiently till there was nothing left on board to eat or to burn,

and then he wired to his former owners. They had not received their third

payment, but as the second was duly made and as they got their boat back

they did not come off so badly.

The rest of the gang were not allowed to escape. They were entertained

at the War Department until they began to disgorge gold and lands. Zeki

Pasha gave up no more than ten thousand pounds; but Hassan Rami Pasha,

who had been Minister of Marine a year, handed over some two hundred

thousand. This act of penance performed, they and their colleagues were

sent to Prinkipo, where, under due surveillance, they were granted the

liberties of an island six miles in circumference until such time as

parliament should investigate their affairs.

In contrast to the scurrying to cover of the old régime was the return

of the exiles. During Abd ül Hamid’s long reign, and most actively

during the latter part of it, there had been a systematic clearing out

of independent personalities. Men who would not hide their disapproval

of the government, who could not be bought or silenced in any other

way, or whom chance spies happened to report on adversely, were banished

to remote parts of the empire. Others fled to countries where life was

made less difficult for them. Sixty thousand exiles are said to have

left Constantinople alone. And there remains the large number of those

who were suppressed in unavowed ways. One of the first acts of the new

government was to issue an amnesty for exiles and political prisoners.

There consequently set in an immediate tide of return. It happened that

the old French steamship line of the _Messagéries Maritimes_ brought

back most of the exiles, partly because many of them were settled in

Paris, partly because of the sympathy of educated Turks and of all

revolutionaries for France. So the arrival of the _Messagéries_ boat

became a weekly event of the city. Steamers would be chartered to go

down the Marmora, crowds would blacken the Galata quay, the windows,

balconies, and roofs overlooking it, the adjacent shipping, the old

bridge, to welcome back with flags, music, cheers, and frantic whistles

men like old Deli Fouad Pasha, mad Fouad Pasha, who prevented the

massacre of Armenians in Scutari in 1896; like the Armenian Patriarch who

proved too intractable at the same period; like young Prince Sabaëddin,

the Sultan’s nephew, who came back from Paris with the coffin of his

fugitive father. But not all of these returns were joyful. There were

tragic meetings at the coming of men broken by imprisonment or deadly

climates—as once when a pale figure was carried from the ship in a chair,

amid a silence that was broken only by some one sobbing on the quay. And

there were those who returned to the quay every week, scanning the decks

of arriving steamers for faces they never found.

Altogether there was matter enough for the eye of an impressionist

resentful of the demolishing of his city. Space would never suffice

me to report the scenes characteristic or picturesque, the stories

romantic and humorous, that could not fail to mark so great an event.

The sudden outburst of literary and dramatic activity, the movement

toward emancipation of the Turkish women, the honours paid by the Young

Turks to the memory of the Armenians massacred in 1896, the visits of

friendly deputations from Bulgaria, Greece, and Roumania, the events in

the Balkans and the Austrian boycott, the manœuvres of the reactionaries,

the removal of the Palace guard, the procedure of the elections, added

each its note of colour. Nothing, perhaps, filled the public eye quite

so obviously as the primary elections for parliament. Symbolic of what

the revolution had striven to attain, this event was celebrated in each

district with fitting ceremonies. One district in Stamboul solemnly

brought its voting urn to the Sublime Porte on the back of a camel. Five

villages on the Bosphorus, forming another district, made a water pageant

that reminded one of state days in Venice. But the five great fishing

caïques, with their splendid incurving beaks, their high poops gay with

flags and trailing rugs, their fourteen to twenty costumed rowers, were

no imitation of other days, like the Venetian _Bissone_. Most imposing

of all was the procession that carried the urns of Pera through the city

in decorated court carriages, attended by music, banners, soldiers,

school children, and other representative bodies to the number of

several thousand. Two of these were peculiarly striking. Near the head

of the procession, led by an Arab on a camel, rode a detachment of men

representing the different races of the empire, each in the costume of

his “country.” And later came a long line of carriages in which _imams_

and Armenian priests, _imams_ and Greek priests, _imams_ and Catholic

priests, _imams_ and Jewish rabbis, drove two and two in the robes of

their various cults.

The opening of parliament itself, with all the circumstance that arms and

majesty could lend it, marked a term for those effervescent days. The

Young Turks made it a particular point that the ceremony of December 17

should be held, not in the throne-room of Dolma Ba’hcheh, as the Sultan

wished, but in the place where the parliament of 1876 had been dissolved.

This Palladian structure behind St. Sophia, originally built for the

university and remodelled after the dissolution of the first parliament

for the uses of the Ministry of Justice, contained no hall of suitable

size. There was not even room in the chamber of deputies for the two

hundred odd members—if they all had arrived in time for the opening. The

invitations were consequently restricted to the smallest possible number:

to the greater dignitaries of state, to the heads of foreign missions

and their first dragomans—leaving out disappointed secretaries and

wives—and to a few representatives of the press. There was perhaps more

heartburning among these spoilt children of the century than among any

other section of the public. Some of them had travelled great distances

to attend this historic inauguration, only to be shut out of it. The

press of the country naturally had the first claim. The thorny question

of allotting tickets among the press of other countries was settled by

giving each head of a foreign mission two tickets to dispose of as he

chose. Those fortunate enough to get them were inclined to grumble at the

quarters assigned them—a species of low, dark theatre box above that of

the ambassadors, from which only the ten or fifteen first to arrive could

see the floor. But all could see the imperial box, directly opposite.

And I, for one, being no journalist, counted myself lucky to be there at

all.

The first arrival of importance was that of the diplomatic corps, led by

their formidable German dean, Baron Marschall von Bieberstein. Not least

noticeable among them was the Persian ambassador, in a coat so thickly

incrusted with gold that one could not tell what colour it was, and wide

scarlet trousers and black astrakhan cap. The tall chargé d’affaires

of Montenegro was also a striking figure in the national dress of his

country—loose trousers thrust into top-boots, embroidered bolero and

hanging sleeves, and black pill-box with red top—as was Mgr. Sardi, the

Apostolic Delegate, in his flowing violet robes. Another splash of colour

was presently made to the right of the tribune by the senators, in gala

uniform and decorations. They are forty in number, appointed for life

by the Sultan from among active or retired functionaries of state. A

sprinkling of green robes of the cult was conspicuous among them. They

were followed by the deputies in a body, or by as many of them as had

arrived. For in the remoter parts of the empire the elections were not

quite through by the time parliament, already a month late, opened. Their

prevailing soberness of frock coat and fez was relieved by an occasional

military uniform and by a surprising proportion of religious turbans.

There were also a few Syrian or Arab head-dresses above picturesque robes

of striped silk. In the meantime ministers, religious dignitaries, and

certain unofficial guests of the kind known in the East as notables, had

been taking their places. The ministers sat at the left of the tribune,

facing the house. They were resplendent in gold lace and orders, with the

single exception of the white-bearded Sheï’h ül Islam in his simple white

robe. Facing the ministers were the green, purple, and fawn-coloured

robes of the _ülema_. On the other side of the steps of the tribune, in

front of the senators, were the heads of the non-Moslem sects of the

empire. Their black robes and head-dresses made a contrastingly sombre

group, in which the red-topped turban of the _locum tenens_ of the Grand

Rabbinate and the crimson hat and veil of the Armenian Catholic Patriarch

were vivid notes of colour. But the most conspicuous contrast was made

by certain of the “notables” present, among whom were members of that

loquacious body known as the Balkan Committee and their ladies. I do

not know whether the latter appreciated the honour that was done them,

alone of their sex. These _komitajis_ were prudently tucked as far out of

sight as possible, where, nevertheless, their wayworn British tweeds and

sailor-hats did not fail to attract musing Oriental eyes, and to suggest

to light-minded impressionists the scenarios of comic operas.

By noon only the president’s tribune and the two boxes facing those of

the diplomats and the journalists, reserved for guests from the Palace,

remained without an occupant. Great doubt had been expressed as to

whether the imperial box would be filled at all. If the matter had been

left to Abd ül Hamid’s preference the box would doubtless have remained

empty. But the Committee had found a way of overcoming Abd ül Hamid’s

preferences, and not only did he reopen in person the parliament he had

tried to suppress, but he drove all the way from Beshiktash to Stamboul

to do it. He had not seen so much of his capital for fifteen years. The

arrival of his brilliant cortège we did not witness from our black pen

under the ceiling of the parliament chamber. We heard the fanfare of

bugles heralding the approach of majesty, the bands striking up one after

the other the Hamidieh March, the cheers sounding nearer and nearer till

the last rose from the court below. A few glittering personages near

the tribune, a deputy or two from the front row, who had gone to the

windows, resumed their places. There was a general stir of expectancy,

a last preening of orders and epaulets. After a few minutes a group of

very literally gilded youths was ushered into the left hand of the three

compartments of the imperial box. They were five of the Sultan’s sons,

accompanied by his cousin Abd ül Mejid Effendi. A moment later the box

above them filled with members of the imperial suite. In the midst of

their gold lace and jewels the black face and white eyeballs of a Palace

eunuch were a characteristic note.

These personages had time to admire and to be admired of all beholders

before the more august guest of the occasion arrived. In fact it was a

full quarter of an hour before a new splendour of uniforms was seen to

mount the stairs at the rear of the box, and the Sultan came in sight.

He then made the mistake of entering the compartment reserved for his

brother Mehmed Reshad Effendi and his cousin Youssouf Izzeddin Effendi,

the next two heirs to the throne—who failed to honour the occasion. With

earth-sweeping salaams the master of ceremonies inducted his majesty into

the central compartment. There seemed to be something less than imperial

ease in the hesitation with which he lingered a moment in the rear of

the box. He dropped his glove, and the master of ceremonies picked it

up. The dead silence that greeted him when he did step forward was a

surprise to those who had witnessed European acclamations of royalty. All

rose to their feet and stood with folded hands in the Oriental attitude

of respect. They did, however, permit themselves to look up. The Sultan

stood with his hand on his sword of empire, looking down, a figure of

dignity in his plain dark military overcoat, visibly bowed by years and

anxiety, yet not so grey as one might expect, keen-eyed, hawk-nosed,

full-bearded, taking in one by one the faces that represented every race

and region of his wide domains. The silence and the intentness of that

mutual regard grew dramatic as the seconds gathered into minutes. “A wolf

in a cage!” whispered some one behind me. There was too little room in

the epigram for the strangeness of the scene. One could fill the silence

with what one pleased of historic visions, of tragic memories, of hatreds

and ambitions, of victory and defeat. But all the East was in that

unyielding surrender and in that uncelebrated triumph.

The silence was suddenly broken by the voice of the Sultan’s secretary,

who began to read, beside the steps of the tribune, the speech from the

throne. My Turkish is too small and too colloquial to take in much of so

high-flown a document, but I caught references to the perfidy of Austria

and Bulgaria and to the author’s satisfaction in being able to open again

the assembly for which thirty years ago the country had not been ripe.

Twice the house broke into applause, which the Sultan acknowledged with

a military salute. At the close of the reading a green-robed _mollah_

offered prayer. The majority of those present listened to it, as Moslems

do, in an attitude very much like that of the Greek _adorante_ in Berlin,

except that the hands are held lower and closer to the body. When the

prayer came to an end, with a fervent responsive _amin_, the Sultan did

a thing that no one had expected. He made a brief speech. But the signal

had already been given, according to programme, for bands and cannon to

announce the inauguration of the new era. The consequence was that few

heard even the sound of his majesty’s voice. In a moment more he was

gone.

The entire ceremony, during which all remained on their feet, lasted

less than half an hour. When it was over, those who had lost the

spectacle of the Sultan’s arrival made haste to secure places whence they

might witness that of his departure. The view from the windows of the

parliament house was one never to forget—for its own picturesqueness,

for its historic significance, for its evocations of the unconquerable

vitality, of the dramatic contrasts and indifferences of life. The

sun was in gala mood that day, to match the mood and to bring out the

predominatingly Asiatic colour of the thousands that packed the square

which had been the Forum Augustæum of New Rome. Not only did they pack

the square, those Asiatic thousands, and every radiating open space as

far as the eye could reach; they loaded its bare trees, they filled the

windows and lined the roofs overlooking it, they darkened the buttresses,

the cupolas, the minaret galleries of St. Sophia. Two men even clung to

the standard of the crescent at the apex of the great dome. The brown

_chasseurs_ of Salonica, in recognition of the part they played in the

revolution, were given the honour of keeping open a narrow lane through

the middle of the square. They were assisted by tall blue Anatolians of

the imperial guard and by deputations with flags and inscribed banners. A

gilded barouche drove into the courtyard where once had stood the Roman

senate. A scarlet-and-gold coachman drove the four superb iron-grey

horses, and in front of them pranced a fifth iron-grey mounted by a

blue-and-silver outrider. Three buglers in black and scarlet faced the

porte-cochère. At the sound of their bugles the soldiers presented arms

and a band burst into the imperial march. The thin blue and brown fringe

of guards undulated with the eddies of motion that surged through the

pressing thousands in their frenzy to see the monarch whom they had

shorn of his power. Then, surrounded by the glitter of the princes and

his aides, preceded and followed by the scarlet flutter of the lancers’

banderoles, the Caliph of Islam flashed away toward the column of

Constantine.

XV

THE CAPTURE OF CONSTANTINOPLE

1909

What could be more aggravating to a greedy impressionist than to have

sat nearly two years in Constantinople, to have watched the amicable

revolution of 1908, to have been one of a privileged few to assist at

the reopening by Abd ül Hamid of the parliament he suppressed thirty-two

years ago, and then to have been caught in an ignoble Florentine pension,

among ladies passionate after pictures, when the mutiny of April 13 broke

out in Stamboul? And nothing, from the meagre Italian telegrams, was more

difficult to make out than the origin of that mutiny. Had the Committee

of Union and Progress made the mistakes their friends had feared? Had

the opposition liberals been unconsciously playing into the hands of

reactionaries? Had the Sultan, who appeared to swallow the revolution in

so lamblike a manner, merely been lying low? The only thing was to go

back and find out, and to get what reparation one could by seeing the

end of the affair—if end there were. For it must be recorded against the

sagacity of impressionists, or of one particular impressionist, that he

thought nothing at all might happen.

The first hint of anything to the contrary came from a _Neue Freie

Presse_, obtained at a Croatian railway-station, which announced that

by the 19th a Macedonian army would concentrate at Chatalja, some

twenty-five miles from Constantinople. The 19th was the next day, and I

was due in Stamboul on the morning of the 20th. There might, then, be

sights to see on the way. I had a further hint of them after getting into

the Constantinople sleeper that night at Belgrade. Two men were already

in bed in the compartment, and before morning I became conscious of the

porter telling one of them in Turkish that he must change for Salonica

in twenty minutes. I told myself that he must be a Young Turk hurrying

back from Europe to take part in—what? I had the strangest sense, as we

whistled through the dark toward Nisch, of forces gathering silently for

an impending drama.

We spent the next day crawling through Bulgaria, along that old highway

of the empire where Janissaries march behind the sacred banner of the

Prophet no more. Being no master of Slavic languages, I was dependent

on our polyglot porter for news. This gloomy individual, a Greek from

Pera, gathered assurance with each kilometre—and they were not few, for

the philanthropic Baron Hirsch, who was paid for each one, put in as

many of them as he could—that his family had been massacred. He looked

for confirmation of his fears at Moustafa Pasha. We reached that humble

frontier station about ten o’clock that night. There was no news, but

there were soldiers of a new kind, sturdy fellows in moccasins and white

leggings, who strode up and down between tracks with a businesslike air

entirely different from the usual Moustafa Pasha military. I was to see

more of those white leggings.

I got up early the next morning, in order to steal a march on the

lavatory. The porter, gloomier than ever, assured me that I need not have

taken the trouble. We had been delayed by troop trains and could not

reach Constantinople much before noon. That began to look interesting.

I must confess, though, that the interest paled as we stood still—and

breakfastless—at a small way station for something over an hour, with no

apparent reason. The reason became apparent at the station following,

where we overtook a long train of freight-cars. Their freight consisted

of horses, of camp baggage, and notably of soldiers, many of them in

moccasins and white felt leggings bound with black. Many others wore

the strong pointed slippers of the country, with the counter turned

under their heels, and white felt Albanian skull-caps. All of them were

friendly, curious as to a train so much more comfortable than their own,

and good-humouredly willing to be photographed. A whitecap who led a

party of inspection through our sleeping-car explained to his companions

why I could not instantly present them with their portraits. He did a

little photography himself, he told me; also that he was by profession

a municipal clerk in Macedonia, although for the moment a volunteer. I

asked him, in my ignorance, what side he was on and what he was going

to do. “We are for liberty,” he answered gravely. “We are going to kill

Sultan Hamid. In Stamboul the great men sit and eat _pilaf_ while we

starve. We have had enough.” And that was the general chorus. “Papa Hamid

is finished,” said a young officer whom I later met again in Stamboul. It

was clear what the Macedonians thought of the situation. The Sultan had

had his chance and he had lost it.

[Illustration: Soldiers at Chatalja, April 20]

The troop train left us to meditate for two or three hours on a siding,

but toward noon we renewed acquaintance with it—at Chatalja. That

name had yet to become a household word. Nevertheless I looked with

considerable interest at Chatalja, where the rumoured concentration

should by this time have taken place, where already existed the line of

fortifications that was to save Constantinople in 1912, and where of old

a Byzantine wall ran from sea to sea. Of Byzantine walls however, of

modern fortifications, or of concentrating armies, there was no sign.

There was merely a red-brown wooden station, a dusty road, a scarce less

dusty coffee-house beyond it, a group of quarantine shanties farther

away, and on a low rim of green that lifted itself against the April

blue something that looked like a ruined watch-tower. For the study

of this simple _mise en scène_ not less than five hours were afforded

us. The slightest incident, accordingly, assumed a grave importance.

A plump person in shoulder-straps rattled down the dusty road in an

ancient landau. Was he the generalissimo of the investing army? I

later had occasion to learn that he was not. A naval officer appeared

from somewhere and was fervently embraced by the officers of our troop

train. He might be bringing them assurance of the loyalty of the fleet.

In fact, I believe he did. Two individuals in black robes and white

turbans were brought in under guard of a new kind of soldier, smart

fellows in lightish blue. I was told that the priests were agitators

who had been caught trying to corrupt the soldiers, while their captors

belonged to the famous Macedonian gendarmerie. And after our troop train

had gone another one came, gaily decorated with boughs and flags. The

men were all volunteers—Albanians, Bulgars, Greeks, Jews, Vlachs. But

there was nothing of the tyro in the way they carried their rifles and

cartridge belts. I have no doubt that many of them were ex-brigands and

_komitajis_, turned into patriots by the mutiny at Constantinople. And

excellent patriots they made, poor fellows, many of whom were killed four

days later in the city to which they went so light-heartedly.

So the day passed, with long stops, with short advances, with pangs

of hunger which a disgusted Orient Express—itself some nine hours

late—reluctantly consented to appease, with melodramatic rumours of

battle, and with a final sight of soldiers making a thin black ant trail

over a bare hill. Night came upon us in the green valley of Sparta

Kouleh, at the end of which a gleam of the Marmora was visible, and the

Bithynian Olympus ethereal with snow. A bonfire reddened the twilight in

front of us, soldiers were singing not far away, frogs or tree-toads made

a silver music in the distance. To what grim things, I wondered as we so

mysteriously waited, did nature make this soft antithesis? At last a long

train, fifty-seven empty freight-cars, rumbled out of the dark from the

direction of the city. We then started on again, stopping only to take on

and let off officers at way stations, and reached town, fourteen and a

half hours late, at half past ten.

Expectation, after a checkered approach, had been raised to a pitch. But

Constantinople proved a most singularly beleaguered city. I perceived

that when I saw a couple of Macedonian officers get off the train with

me. I perceived it again when I passed the customs with an unaccustomed

ease and drove away through streets that gave no hint of siege. Still

more clearly did I perceive it during the three long days that followed

my arrival. Beleaguering there was, for rumour peopled the fields of

Thrace with advancing thousands, and Hüsseïn Hüssnü Pasha, commander of

operations at the front, issued manifestoes. To the garrison he offered

immunity on condition of their taking a solemn oath of obedience before

the Sheï’h ül Islam. To those of the populace not implicated in the late

uprising he promised security of person and property. And both apparently

made haste to put themselves on the right side. Deputation after

deputation went out to the enemy’s camp in token of surrender. The War

Office made plans for provisioning the invaders. Parliament assembled at

San Stefano in the shadow of the Macedonian camp, and the fleet followed

suit. At the same time the air was tense with the feeling that first came

to me when the porter of my sleeping-car called that unknown passenger at

Nisch. What was going to happen? It was an indication of the colour of

people’s thoughts that the outgoing steamers were crowded during those

days, and panics ran through the town like rumours. Some one would shout:

“They are coming!” The streets would instantly fill with the rush of

feet, the clang of closing shutters.

On Friday, the 23d, I went to _Selamlîk_. I also wrote a last will and

testament before doing so, which I left with careless conspicuousness

on my desk, for there was much talk of bombs and depositions. So much

was there that in the diplomatic pavilion, to which I was admitted by

courtesy of our embassy, no heads of missions were present. There were

also fewer general spectators than usual, and they were kept at a greater

distance. Otherwise the ceremony took place with its old pomp. I missed

the handsome white Albanian and the blue Arab zouaves, recently expelled

from the imperial guard; but the dark-blue infantry, the black-and-red

marines, the scarlet-pennoned lancers, the matched cavalry of Daoud

Pasha, a brown battalion of sappers, and even a detachment of the

Salonica sharpshooters, marched up the hill with sounding brass. Before

they had quite banked up the approaches to the Palace and the mosque the

sun, breaking from morning clouds, brought out all the colour of that

pageant set for the last time. Toward noon five closed court carriages

of ladies drove slowly down the avenue, surrounded by solemn black

eunuchs, and turned into the mosque yard. A group of officers in gala

uniform took their places in line opposite the diplomatic pavilion. At

their head stood Prince Bourhan ed Din, the Sultan’s favourite son. His

presence excited no little interest, for it had been reported that he

had run away. He looked unusually pale. Suddenly the _müezin’s_ shrill

sweet cry sounded from the minaret and the bands began to play the

Hamidieh March. Then the Sultan’s cortège—of brilliant uniforms on foot,

of trusty Albanian riflemen, of blue-and-silver grooms leading blooded

chargers—emerged from an archway in the Palace wall. Abd ül Hamid, in a

hooded victoria drawn by two beautiful black horses, sat facing Tevfik

Pasha, the Grand Vizier of the moment, and his son Abd ür Rahim Effendi.

He looked bent and haggard, the more because his sunken cheeks were

so palpably rouged. As he passed under the terrace of the diplomatic

pavilion he glanced up to see if any of the ambassadors were there. The

fact that none of them were was afterward said to have irritated him

intensely. He did not betray it, at all events, as he passed down the

avenue, saluting right and left to his cheering soldiers. After leaving

his carriage at the mosque door, where his little son Abid Effendi waited

quaintly in the uniform of an officer, he turned and saluted again before

going up the steps.

When the bowed figure disappeared it was as if a spring were suddenly let

go. Guards and spectators alike relaxed from a tension. There had been no

bomb. There had been no irruption of invading armies. There had been no

sign of disloyalty among troops who were supposed to have gone over to

the Macedonians. Indeed, they had cheered as I never heard them except

at the _Selamlîk_ after the re-establishment of the constitution. It did

not look very much as if Papa Hamid were finished, to quote my Macedonian

officer. It looked, on the contrary, as if what an aide-de-camp whispered

might be true—that Papa Hamid took the famous beleaguering as a bluff,

and proposed to call it. The situation became more equivocal than ever.

In the meantime big English tea baskets were brought up the avenue, and

the soldiers were served with tea, coffee, and biscuits at the expense of

a paternal sovereign. Then a bugle sounded and they jumped to attention,

gulping down last mouthfuls as the imperial carriage left the mosque. The

Sultan returned with the same ceremony as before, except that Bourhan ed

Din Effendi accompanied him. After he had entered the Palace the troops

dispersed in review order, marching up one side of the avenue to the

Palace gate and marching down the other. When most of them were gone the

Sultan appeared for a moment at a window overlooking the terrace of the

diplomatic pavilion. Again he was enthusiastically cheered.

It was for the last time. But the situation seemed to clear. That

afternoon Mahmoud Shefket Pasha, generalissimo of the Macedonian forces,

whom I did not see at Chatalja, issued the first of a notable series of

manifestoes. He announced his assumption of command at the front and his

intention to punish only those responsible for the late disturbance. One

phrase attracted particular attention. He said: “Certain intriguers,

in fear of punishment, have spread the rumour that the above-mentioned

forces have arrived in order to depose the sovereign. To these rumours I

oppose a formal denial.” Every foreign correspondent in Constantinople

thereupon telegraphed to his paper that the Salonica troops would make a

peaceful entry into the city and that Abd ül Hamid would remain on the

throne.

* * * * *

The next morning, Saturday, I was roused before six o’clock by a member

of our country household. “I don’t know,” he said, “but do you hear

anything?” I listened. I heard a light air in the garden trees, a

pervading twitter of birds. Then it seemed to me that I heard something

else in the distance, something faintly crackling, followed occasionally

by something more deeply booming. It sounded like firing, and I suddenly

remembered my friends of the white leggings. Yet the morning was so

delicious, the sky was so soft, the garden so full of birds. By the

time I got down to the wharf a few people were gathered there, talking

gravely in low voices. The shots we heard did not altogether break the

tension of the last few days. My friend the ticket seller gave me serious

advice. “Go back to your house,” he said. “Sit in your garden, and be

at peace. Lead falls into the sea like rain at Beshiktash. No steamers

run. They have all been sent back.” I was disinclined to believe him. It

seemed incredible that anything particular was happening—on such a day,

after so many overtures to the Macedonians. Among those at the _scala_ I

saw Habib the boatman, whom all men know for a liberal and a reader of

papers. “Habib,” I said, “let us row to the city. It is necessary for

me to go, and there seem to be no steamers. I will pay you a dollar.”

Habib regarded me as one might regard a lunatic for whom one entertains

friendly sentiments. “_Effendim_,” he replied, “what do you say? They

are fighting at Yîldîz, and not for one or for many dollars will I go.

What have you to do in town to-day?” I began to be rather annoyed. I had

to get some films, and there was no reason why I shouldn’t, if they were

fighting at Yîldîz. It didn’t occur to me that there could be trouble

anywhere else in the town. But neither boat nor boatman could be induced

to go down the Bosphorus.

I climbed Hissar hill again, to warn the rest of a town-going household

of the situation and to collect recruits for a forced march of seven

miles across country. They were not difficult to obtain. Three of us

were starting for a last reconnaissance of the _scala_, when we heard a

steamer whistle. We were just in time to jump triumphantly on board. So

the croakers were mistaken, after all! The passengers were few, however.

At the next station of Bebek, where a considerable English colony lives,

a number of friends joined us. At the station below that the captain

threw up the sponge. An up-bound steamer was there, which had turned

back. We told our captain he was a fool, a coward, and as many other

uncomplimentary things as we could think of, but he refused to budge.

We accordingly got off and took the stony street following the shore to

the city. People stared at us as Habib had stared at me. The tide of

travel was all the other way. There were carriages full of Turkish women,

with eunuchs on the box. There were Armenians, Greeks, and Jews of the

lower classes—the last distinguishable by the furred robes of the old

men—hurrying northward on foot, with babies and bundles in their arms.

There were, more notably, soldiers of the garrison, singly, in groups,

with or without rifles. We stopped the first we saw and asked what was

up. They all declared that they knew nothing, showing much haste to be

on. We afterward realised that they were running away. We saw some of

them bargaining for boats to take them to the Asiatic side.

There had been no firing for some time, and the sight of row-boats so

much nearer the scene of action than Hissar convinced me anew of a

false alarm. The Macedonians had probably come into town at last. The

Palace guard might very well have made a row. Perhaps even the Sultan

had been deposed, and had objected to it. But how was it possible

that there should be any general fighting? At Orta-kyöi, next to the

imperial suburb of Beshiktash, six of us got in to two _sandals_. We

soon separated. The boat in which I sat had not gone far toward the

harbour before firing broke out again. There was no doubt about it this

time. The crack of musketry, intensely sharp and sinister in the clear

spring morning, would be followed by the deeper note of a field-piece.

But we could see nothing. The roofs of Yîldîz nestled serene as ever

among their embosoming gardens. The imperial flag still floated from its

accustomed staff. Not a cloud, not a puff, indicated the direction of

the firing. It was uncanny. What could have happened? We skirted the

artillery magazines of Top Haneh, passed the embassy despatch-boats, and

began rounding into the harbour. Suddenly the man in the stern of the

boat uttered a quick “By Jove!” and ducked. A bullet had whizzed behind

his ear. Another splashed the water off our bow. A third sang over our

heads. I began to think that they had not been wrong at Roumeli Hissar

when they advised me to sit in my garden and be at peace. I was far from

being at peace and I decidedly wished that I were in my garden. The next

best place seemed to be the bottom of the boat. In the face of public

opinion, however, as represented by two Englishmen and a Turk, the only

course left a scared impressionist was to continue taking uncomfortable

impressions in as erect a posture as possible and be shot like a

gentleman. The sole satisfaction I had was in meditating of my last will

and testament, providently made the day before, and of its eventual

discovery. But it was never discovered and none of us were laid low.

While a few more bullets spattered around us, we were soon out of range

alongside Galata quay.

The first thing I saw there was a pair of white leggings on guard at a

gate. I went up to the sunburned soldier who wore them as to a long-lost

brother, and asked for news. My reception, I regret to confess, was not

too cordial. “Do not stop,” admonished the Macedonian. “If you have

business, do it and go. There is no danger, but the bridge is closed and

boats do not run. To-morrow everything will be the same as yesterday.” In

one respect, at least, he was right. The bridge was closed. Access not

only to Stamboul but to the great street of Galata was cut off by white

leggings. There was, accordingly, no chance of making the tunnel to Pera.

As my friends were divided as to their projects, I explored certain

noisome alleys leading back from the quay to see if I could reach the

street of steps climbing past the Genoese tower. On the way I met a party

of American tourists, hurrying for their steamer in charge of an embassy

_kavass_. They amusingly looked to an impressionist forgetful of his

partiality for the bottoms of boats as if they doubted whether they would

escape with their lives. Step Street luckily proved open. The shops,

however, were shut, and pedestrians were remarkably scarce. Moreover

most of them wore white leggings, or grey-blue ones. Young gentlemen so

apparelled, with rifles slung across their backs and cartridges festooned

about them, strolled up and down the streets or lolled in front of public

buildings. There was an engaging negligence about these picturesque

persons, who had an air of keeping an eye on things in spite of manifold

cigarettes. Rifles might pop desultorily in the distance, but there was

no doubt what had happened. The Macedonians had captured Constantinople.

[Illustration: Macedonian volunteers

Photograph by W. G. M. Edwards]

I went to the American Embassy to obtain details as to this historic

event. I found the gate guarded by cadets of the War College and

Macedonian Blues. One of the latter smoked cigarettes on the sidewalk

and scrutinised every one who passed. At a sign from him an approaching

group of marines was stopped and searched. A Turkish _hoja_ was even more

roughly handled, for his honourable cloth had been a favourite disguise

for political agitators. No one suspected of carrying weapons was let

by. The man in blue, it transpired, was one of many officers who escaped

during the mutiny and came back with the invading army as privates, or

so dressed for strategic reasons. As for news, it was remarkably meagre.

The Macedonians had occupied both banks of the Golden Horn early in the

morning and had encountered resistance at some of the barracks. There

were conflicting reports of the first shots being due to a mistake and of

treacherous flags of truce. At all events, the affair was not finished,

for every now and then we heard firing. But so far as any one knew there

had been no fight at Yîldîz.

What made me realise more sharply than anything else the seriousness of

the affair was the further news that Frederick Moore, of the New York

_Sun_, whom I had often met during the last six months, had been badly

wounded. I started up Pera Street to see what I could see. More people

were about by that time, but the shops were shut and no cabs or trams

were running. All the embassies, legations, and consulates were guarded,

like ours, by cadets and Macedonian gendarmes. Other Macedonians, they of

the white caps and white leggings, they of the careless Mauser and the

casual cigarette, mingled informally with the crowd. As an inhabitant of

a captured city, it was interesting to note the friendliness of captives

and captors. A rare shot was the sole reminder that there might be more

than one side to this question. By the time I reached the vicinity of

the Taxim artillery barracks, however, there were other reminders. I

saw an iron shutter neatly perforated by dozens of small round holes.

The windows of houses in otherwise good repair were riddled and broken.

Walls were curiously pockmarked, and I saw a shell embedded in one. These

phenomena were particularly visible about the local guard-house, which

I was told had only just surrendered. Several stretchers passed me,

carrying soldiers in contorted attitudes. A man went into the guard-house

with a ridged pine coffin on his back, followed by two of the dervishes

who wash the bodies of dead Mohammedans. I didn’t count how many more

coffins and dervishes I saw go into that guard-house.

[Illustration: A Macedonian Blue]

I followed one of the stretchers into the adjoining French hospital,

in hope of hearing from Moore. The resources of the place were

evidently overtaxed, and I took the liberty of going farther to verify

the information given me by a white-winged sister of charity. At a

hospitable English house across the street I found Mrs. Moore. Mr.

Graves, of the London _Times_, who had been reported as dead, was also

there, and two English officers of the Macedonian gendarmerie. They

had come up unofficially from Salonica to see how their men acquitted

themselves. It seemed they and Mr. Booth, of the _Graphic_, had been

with Moore that morning. They ran into the firing before they knew it,

thinking, as other people did, that the action was taking place around

Yîldîz. Their position was the more awkward because the Macedonians

were determined to prevent the soldiers of the garrison from getting

down into Pera, and there was cross-firing from side streets. The two

correspondents were wounded almost at the same moment, Booth getting

a bullet that grazed his scalp, and Moore being shot clean through

the neck. A Greek behind him was killed, apparently by the same ball.

The officers got Booth into an adjoining house, but by a regrettable

misunderstanding they left Moore lying in the street, whence he was

rescued by a young Greek sculptor.

[Illustration: Taxim artillery barracks, shelled April 24]

The streets grew more animated until the Grande Rue de Pera assumed the

appearance of a Sunday afternoon. But another aspect of the situation

was presented to me when I bearded the Blues of the telegraph office

for Mrs. Moore, and heard clerks politely regretting that all wires

were down except those to Europe by way of Constantza. I concluded that

Shefket Pasha, who did not trouble Yîldîz until he was sure of the

city, proposed to leave no loophole for reactionary telegrams to the

provinces. Returning to the Taxim for further reconnaissance, I was

taking snap-shots when shots of another kind began to snap again. They

were neither near nor many, but they caused an extraordinary panic.

People ran wildly back into Pera, the women screaming, the men tucking

those near and dear to them under their arms or abandoning them to the

mercy of the foe as their motor centres dictated. I, seeing some soldiers

grin, waited in the lee of a tree. When the street was clear I went on

to the artillery barracks that had given so much trouble in the morning.

The big building was quiet enough now, under the afternoon sun that made

jagged black shadows in the holes torn by Macedonian shells. Beyond, at

the far corner of the Taxim Garden, I saw a group of white leggings. A

bugle blew, and some of them crept around the wall into the side street.

As I came nearer a soldier ran toward me, brandishing his rifle. “What

are you doing here?” he demanded. I replied as politely as I could

that I was taking photographs. “Is this a time to take photographs?”

he vociferated. “We are killing men. Go back!” If other argument were

needed I had it in the form of renewed shots that banged behind him,

where I could see through trees the yellow mass of Tash Kîshla. I went

back less rapidly than I might have done, remembering the people who had

just run away. Opposite the garden was the parade-ground of the barracks,

bounded on its farther side by stables and a strip of wall behind which

heads bobbed. I began to repent of my retreat, also to thirst for human

companionship, and I resolved to join those comfortably ensconced

spectators. As I strolled toward them across the great empty space of sun

they hailed me from afar. I then perceived with some embarrassment that

they wore white caps, _à la macédonienne_, and that a portentous number

of rifle barrels were gaping at me. They were, in fact, reserves posted

for the afternoon attack on Tash Kîshla.

I cannot say that they received me too civilly. Grace, however, was

given me to appreciate that the moment was not one for civilities,

especially from men who had been under action for twelve hours. I also

appreciated the opportunity, urged without forms upon me, of studying

their picturesque rear. Tired soldiers smoked or slept on a steep grass

slope, and a mule battery lurked in the gully below. Wondering if it

might not yet be possible to see what was going on, I approached a young

man who stood at the door of a house behind the artillery stables and

asked him in my best French if he objected to my ascending to a balcony I

saw on the top story of his house. He, being a Greek, replied in his best

English that he would be happy to accompany me thither. On the way up he

pointed out to me, at a broken window of the opposite stable, the figure

of an artilleryman, his rifle across his knees, sitting dead and ghastly

against a wall. And he told me about the engagement of which he had been

an uncomfortably close witness: how the Macedonians marched in from the

valley of the Golden Horn early in the morning; how the first of them

were allowed to pass the artillery barracks, and were even cheered; how

another lot, who scrambled up the gully from Kassîm Pasha, saw a white

flag flying from the artillery stables, advanced more confidently, and

were met by a treacherous fire; how they then retired for reinforcements,

brought up machine guns and field-pieces, and took stable, barracks, and

guard-house after a nasty little fight of five hours.

[Illustration: They were, in fact, reserves posted for the afternoon

attack on Tash Kîshla]

From the balcony we had a perfect view of the last operations around

Tash Kîshla. That great yellow barracks will be memorable in the annals

of the Turkish revolution. Many an officer is said to have been tortured

there on suspicion of being connected with the Young Turks. It was there

that a detachment of the imperial guard fired on the first sharpshooters

brought up from Salonica to replace them. And there a battalion of those

same sharpshooters, who had been corrupted into fomenting the late

revolt and who knew how little quarter they might expect from their old

comrades, held out desperately, long after the other barracks had given

in. The last act of the tragedy looked less real than a stage tragedy on

that divine spring afternoon while we watched, as from a box at the play,

the white-legged figures crouching behind their wall, the farther figures

stealing up the side of a sunny road, the sortie of the last handful of

sharpshooters from their shot-riddled stronghold. They took refuge in a

garden before the barracks, where rifles blazed and men dropped until a

desperate white handkerchief fluttered among the trees.

The surrender of Tash Kîshla—the Stone Barracks—practically completed

the occupation of the city. But the tension was not over. There were

yet three days of uncertainty, of waiting, of a strange sense in the

air of contrast between the April sunlight and dark forces working in

silence. For Yîldîz, as ever, remained inscrutable. From the top of Pera

we could see, across the valley of Beshiktash, the scene of Friday’s

_Selamlîk_. No sign of life was visible now at the archway in the Palace

wall, on the avenue leading to the mosque. Had the Sultan surrendered?

Had he abdicated? Had he fled? All we knew, until the end, was that

white flags floated over two of the imperial barracks and that white

leggings nonchalantly appeared on Sunday morning at the Palace gates.

In the meantime Shefket Pasha, the man of the hour, continued to secure

his position. The redoubtable Selimieh barracks, scene of Florence

Nightingale’s work in Haïdar Pasha, he took on Sunday with half a dozen

shells. On the same day he proclaimed martial law. No one was allowed in

the streets an hour after sunset, weapons were confiscated, suspicious

characters of all sorts were arrested, and the deserters of the garrison

were rounded up. Thousands of them were picked out of row-boats on the

Bosphorus or caught in the open country. The poor fellows were more

sinned against than sinning. The most absurd stories had been spread

among them: that the invaders were Christians come forcibly to convert

them; that the son of the King of England intended to turn Abd ül Hamid

off the throne in order to reign himself; that if taken they would all

be massacred. Dazed by all that had been told them, lost without their

officers, worn out by the excitement and confusion of the last ten days,

their one idea was to get back to their Asiatic villages. On Monday

morning several hundred of them, including the remnant of the Tash Kîshla

sharpshooters, were marched away to the court martial at Chatalja. The

rest, who were merely the victims of an ignorant loyalty to their Caliph,

were sent to Macedonia for lessons in liberalism and road making.

[Illustration: Burial of volunteers, April 26

Photograph by George Freund]

I wondered whether it were by accident that the prisoners sent to

Chatalja marched down the hill by which their captors had entered

Pera, as preparations were being made on the same height, since named

of Perpetual Liberty, for the funeral of the first volunteers killed.

A circular trench was dug on the bare brown hilltop, and in it fifty

ridged deal coffins were symmetrically set toward the east, each covered

with the star and crescent and each bearing a fez at the head. Then a

long double file of whitecaps drew up beside it, and a young officer

made a spirited address. Not knowing, in my ignorance, who the officer

was or much of what he said—he turned out to be the famous Nyazi Bey

of Resna—I wandered away to the edge of the bluff. A few tents were

still pitched there, overlooking the upper valley of the Golden Horn.

Seeing a camera and hearing a foreign accent, the men were willing

enough to be photographed. They were from Cavalla, they said, where an

American tobacco company maintains a factory. One of them offered me his

tobacco-box in English. He had lived two years and a half in New York.

When I got back to the trench the soldiers had gone and the coffins were

almost covered. One officer was left, who made to the grave-diggers and

the few spectators a speech of a moving simplicity. “Brothers,” he said,

“here are men of every nation—Turks, Albanians, Greeks, Bulgarians, Jews;

but they died together, on the same day, fighting under the same flag.

Among us, too, are men of every nation, both Mohammedan and Christian;

but we also have one flag and we pray to one God. Now, I am going to

make a prayer, and when I pray let each one of you pray also, in his own

language, in his own way.” With which he raised his hands, palms upward,

in the Mohammedan attitude of prayer. The other Mohammedans followed his

example, while the Christians took off their caps or fezzes and crossed

themselves; and a brief “_amin_” closed the little ceremony.

[Illustration: Deputies leaving Parliament after deposing Abd ül Hamid,

April 27

Photograph by W. G. M. Edwards]

By Tuesday, parliament having returned to town the day before, and having

sat in secret session with no outward result, people began to say again

that the Sultan would keep his throne. As the morning wore on, however,

there began to be indications of a certain nature. In Pera Street I

encountered a long line of open carriages, each containing two or three

black eunuchs and a Macedonian soldier. The odd procession explained

itself. The eunuchs were from the Palace. Some of them looked downcast,

but the majority stared back at the crowd with the detachment supposed

to be of their nature, while a few of the younger ones appeared to be

enjoying an unaccustomed pleasure. It was not so with a procession I saw

later, crossing Galata Bridge. This was composed of the lower servants of

the Palace, on foot, marching four and four between a baker’s dozen of

sardonic Macedonians. There was no air of palaces about them. Some were

in _stamboulines_, frock coats with a military collar, that looked the

worse for wear. Others wore a manner of livery, coarse black braided with

white. Others still were in the peasant costume of the country. They were

followed by the last of the Palace guard, shuffling disarmed and dejected

between their sharp-eyed captors. A few jeers were raised as they passed,

but quickly died away. There was something both tragic and prophetic

about that unhappy company.

Returning to Galata, I found the approaches of the Bridge guarded by

soldiers, who kept the centre of the street clear. The sidewalks were

packed with people who waited—they did not know for what. More soldiers

passed, with flags and bands. It began to be whispered that a new sultan

was going over to Stamboul that afternoon. The rumour was presently

confirmed by an extra of the _Osmanischer Lloyd_, an enterprising

Franco-German paper, which was the first in Constantinople to publish the

news of Abd ül Hamid’s dethronement and the accession of his brother.

But still people could not believe the news they had been expecting

so long. They continued to wait, to see what would happen. I met some

friends who suggested going to the vicinity of Dolma Ba’hcheh Palace,

the residence of the heir presumptive. If he went out that afternoon

we should be surer of knowing it than if we joined the crowds in the

city. At the junction of the Pera road with the avenue behind Dolma

Ba’hcheh we were stopped by a white-legginged Albanian with a Mauser.

This tall, fair-haired, hawk-nosed, and serious young man saw no reason

why we should occupy better posts than the rest of the people—happily not

many—he held at bay. We accordingly waited with them, being assured by

the inexorability of the Albanian and by the presence of gunners mounting

guard beyond him that we should not wait in vain.

In front of us a wide paved space sloped down to the Bosphorus,

pleasantly broken by fresh-leaved trees and a stucco clock-tower. To

the left ran a tree-shaded perspective cut off from the water by the

white mass of Dolma Ba’hcheh. Before long we saw three steam-launches

pass close in front of us, making for the harbour. A few minutes later

a cannon banged. Another banged after it, another, and another, till

we could doubt no longer that what we had been waiting for had really

happened at last. Then, before we had time to taste the rushing emotion

of new and great things, a small-arm cracked in the distance. That

sharp little sound caused the strangest cold sensation of arrest.

More rifles cracked. People looked at each other. The soldiers began

feeling for their cartridges, their eyes on their officers. As the

firing became a fusillade, and drew nearer, one of the latter made a

sign to our Albanian. “Go back!” commanded that young man fiercely,

thrusting his musket at us. There was an instant retreat. Could it be

that reactionaries had chosen this moment to make an attack on the new

Sultan, that there had been a reply, and that battle was beginning again

in the streets? We had not gone far, however, before we saw men shooting

revolvers into the air and laughing. So we returned, not without

sheepishness, to our places. We were just in time to see our Albanian

discharge his rifle with the delight of a boy. The volley that followed

did not last long. “Who told you to fire?” demanded the officer who had

been so uneasy a moment before. “Eh, the others are firing,” replied the

Albanian. “Never mind what the others do,” retorted the officer sharply.

“We came here to show that we know how to obey orders. Now, stop firing.”

His soldiers did, although the city was by that time one roar of powder.

[Illustration: Mehmed V driving through Stamboul on his accession day,

April 27

Photograph by W. G. M. Edwards]

It was not long after three o’clock. We still had nearly four hours to

wait before Sultan Mehmed V should land at Seraglio Point, proceed to

the War Office for the first ceremonies of investiture, return to the

Seraglio to kiss the mantle of the Prophet, and then drive past us to

his palace. I could not help thinking of the other palace on top of the

hill from which the servants had been taken that morning. The boom of

saluting guns, the joyous crackle accompanying it, must have gone up with

cruel distinctness, through the still spring afternoon, to the ears of

one who had heard that very sound, on the supplanting of a brother by a

brother, thirty-three years before. As the time wore away our Albanian

grew less fierce. The light, unfortunately, did likewise, until all hope

of snap-shots failed. I then took my place at the edge of the avenue.

Finally, toward seven o’clock, a piqueur galloped into sight from behind

the wall that hid the right-hand stretch of the street. Behind him, in

the distance, rose a faint cheering. It came nearer, nearer, nearer,

until a squadron of dusty cavalry clattered into sight. After the

cavalry clattered a dusty brougham, drawn by two black horses, and in

the brougham an elderly man with a double chin bowed and smiled from the

windows as the crowd shouted: “_Padishah’m chok yasha-a-a!_” I shouted

with them as well as I could, not stopping to inquire why anything should

impede the throat of an indifferent impressionist from oversea, at the

spectacle of a fat old gentleman in a frock coat driving out between

two disreputable columns of cavalry. They made a terrific dust as they

galloped away through the young green of the avenue toward the white

palace—dust which a condescending sun turned into a cloud of glory.

* * * * *

During the days and nights of flags and illuminations that followed

there were other sights to see. One of them was the _Selamlîk_ of the

ensuing Friday. It took place at St. Sophia, whither Mehmed II rode to

pray after his conquest of Constantinople, and where popular opinion

willed that a later Mehmed, after this memorable recapture of the town,

should make his first public prayer. About this ceremony was none of

the pomp that distinguished the one I had witnessed the week before.

A few Macedonian Blues were drawn up by the mosque, a few Macedonian

cavalrymen guarded the gates of the Seraglio, and they were not all

in place by the time the Sultan, in a new khaki uniform, drove slowly

through the grounds of that ancient enclosure. Again, on the succeeding

Monday, we beheld the grisly spectacle of those who fomented the mutiny

among the soldiers, and who, in long white shirts, with statements of

their names and deeds pinned to their bosoms, swung publicly from great

tripods at the scene of their several crimes—three at the Stamboul end

of the Bridge, five in front of Parliament, and five in the square of

the War Department. And the new Sultan was once more the centre of

interest on the day he was girded with the sword of Osman. He went to

the sacred mosque of Eyoub with little of the pageantry that used to

celebrate that solemn investiture—in a steam-launch, distinguishable

from other steam-launches only by a big magenta silk flag bearing the

imperial _toughra_. From Eyoub he drove round the walls to the Adrianople

Gate, and then through the city to the Seraglio. His gala coach, his

scarlet-and-gold coachman, his four chestnut horses, his blue-and-silver

outriders, and his prancing lancers were the most glittering part of that

long procession. The most Oriental part of it was the train of carriages

bearing the religious heads of the empire, white-bearded survivors of

another time, in venerable turbans and green robes embroidered with gold.

But the most significant group in the procession was that of the trim

staff of the Macedonian army, on horseback, headed by Mahmoud Shefket

Pasha. Not least notable among the conquerors of Constantinople will be

this grizzled, pale, thin, keen, kind-looking Arab who, a month before

that day, was an unknown corps commander in Salonica. His destiny willed

that hardly more than four years after that day he should even more

suddenly go again into the unknown. His fate was a happy one in that it

overtook him at the height of power a Turkish subject may attain, when

he was at once Field-Marshal, Minister of War, and Grand Vizier, and

that it left in suspense the colder judgment of his time with regard

to the actual degree of his greatness. Legends and hatreds naturally

gathered around such a man. I do not know whether it was true that he

took the city before he was ready, with barely fifteen thousand men,

on a sudden night warning that the desperate Sultan plotted a massacre

for the next day. Neither was I there to see whether he actually sent

back to the new Sultan his present of a magnificent Arab charger, saying

that he was a poor man and had no stable for such a steed. The crucial

test of the Balkan War he had no opportunity to undergo. But less than

any other personality discovered by the Turkish revolution does he need

the favouring kindness of uncertainty. At the moment when if he chose

he might have been dictator, he did not choose. And the decision, the

promptness, the tact, the strategic ability with which he grasped the

situation of the mutiny and threw an army into Chatalja before the

blundering mutineers knew what he was about, made for him the one clear

and positive record of that confused time. They say he suffered from an

incurable disease, and captured cities for distraction.

[Illustration: Mehmed V on the day of sword-girding, May 10

Photograph by Apollon, Constantinople]

I had the honour of meeting Mahmoud Shefket Pasha a little later, in

company with Mr. Booth; and I owed it to the latter’s bandaged head and

to the interest which the general took in the wounded journalist that I

also obtained the coveted leave to visit Yîldîz. Yîldîz had so long been

a name of legend that one approached it with the vividest curiosity—even

though the innermost enclosure, jutting out into the park from the

crest of the hill on a gigantic retaining wall, at first remained

impenetrable. When at last the gates of the Forbidden City itself were

opened, it was strange to discover that the Sultan who stood for all that

was conservative and Oriental, who spent as he pleased the gold of the

empire, who might have created anew the lost splendours of the Seraglio,

had chosen to surround himself with would-be European cottages, for the

most part of wood, with a profusion of gables and jig-saw carpentry.

The more ornate were those intended for the reception of ministers and

ambassadors. The simplest and the largest was the long, low, L-shaped

structure where Abd ül Hamid lived with his extensive family. His private

apartments gave a singular picture of that singular man. The rooms were

all jealously latticed, even behind the fortifications of Yîldîz, and

one was scarcely to be distinguished in its use from another, so full

were they all of desks, screens, couches, weapons, and pianos. In one

of the least ambiguous, where white chairs stood about a long table,

was shown the gilt Vienna _Récamier_ in which Abd ül Hamid received the

notification of his dethronement. An orchestrion filled one end of the

room, where also was a piano. No less than four of these instruments

were in another room. Farther on were the empty safes where the old man

hoarded his gold and his famous jewels, a cupboard of ugly tiles that

was a mixture of Turkish _hamam_ and European bath, without the luxuries

of either, and a perfectly appointed carpenter’s shop. It is an old

tradition for the princes of the house of Osman to learn some trade,

in case their _kîsmet_ should suddenly require them to make their own

living. One chamber had more the air of a bedroom than any other. For

the Sultan rarely slept two nights in succession in the same place, or

undressed to do so. On a table were two of the bullet-proof waistcoats he

wore at _Selamlîk_. A handsome case of arms stood by the door. High on

the walls hung some crude pictures which he perhaps painted himself. He

was fond of playing with the brush. A canvas somewhere else represented

a boat full of priests, standing, to whom a group of plump pink sirens

beckoned from an arsenic shore. The officer in charge told us that the

faces of the priests were those of Midhat Pasha and other reformers.

With all their oddity, the rooms had a familiar air of habitation.

Things of use and of ornament were where Abd ül Hamid dropped them the

night he was taken away. Writing materials were strewn on the desks. A

photograph of the German imperial family looked out of a gold frame set

in brilliants. In a corner stood a table, a chair, and a footstool, all

with crystal legs, where the Sultan sat in thunder-storms. The whole

palace was full of small human touches of the suspicious, ignorant,

lonely old man who lived there. And East and West were strangely jumbled

in his well-worn furniture, as they were in his ancient empire—as they

were in the visitors inquisitively trampling the carpets and fingering

the belongings of the fallen master of the house.

The harem, by a characteristic piece of Oriental reserve, was not opened

even by its despoilers to the gaze of the profane. But we were allowed

to go into the harem garden, overlooked by the Sultan’s lattices.

An artificial canal wound through the middle of it. Row-boats, a

motor-boat, even a small sailboat, were moored there. Under the trees

stood a miniature replica of the fountain at Gyök Sou. Pigeons fluttered

everywhere and water-fowl were playing in the canal, while against the

wall cutting off the immense prospect the garden might have enjoyed stood

cages of gaudy birds. At one spot only did a small kiosk, execrably

furnished, give access to the view. Through the telescope on the upper

floor Abd ül Hamid used to watch the city he dared not enter. We also

saw a little theatre that communicated by a bridge with the harem. In

this bonbon box of red velvet the singers and variety actors visiting the

city used to be invited to perform—sometimes before a solitary spectator.

King Otto of Bavaria would have found no kinship with him, though. On the

wall a photograph of Arturo Stravolo, an Italian transformationist, hung

beside a large and bad portrait of Verdi.

Outside this inner citadel the fabled gardens descended to the sea.

Fabled they proved, indeed—as some city park, perhaps, though not so

neatly kept. A driveway, fabulously dusty, led between the massive

retaining wall and a miniature lake to Merassim Kiosque, a tawdry little

palace in an enclosure of its own which was built for William II of

Germany. I threaded a tortuous space, at one end of it not quite touching

the bastion of the Forbidden City, where a small iron door in the kiosk

faced a small iron door in the bastion. They had a potency, those small

iron doors, upon the imagination of a romantic impressionist. Beyond

stretched courts and stables, deserted save for a few last activities

of departure. A eunuch was giving shrill orders to a soldier. A drove

of buffaloes stood mild-eyed under a plane-tree, waiting to be driven

away. A horse whinnied in the silence. A cat lay blinking in the sun,

indifferent to the destinies of kings.

On a slope of thin shade farther on were grouped an ornate wooden

villa, a castellated porcelain factory, kennels where a few dogs yelped

miserably, and enclosures for all sorts of animals and birds. The one

really charming part of the park was the ravine behind Chira’an Palace,

cool with secular trees and the splash of water. Nightingales and strange

water-fowl had their habitation there, and some startled colts galloped

away as I descended a winding path. The look of the paths, neither wild

nor ordered, made me wonder again what four hundred gardeners did at

Yîldîz. I suppose they did what any gardener would do whose master never

came to see his garden. Chalets and summer-houses with red seals on their

doors stood among the trees. I went into an open lodge beside a gateway.

A bed was torn to pieces, clothes and papers strewed the floor, a cut

loaf and an open bottle stood on a shelf as if dropped there in some

hasty flight.

There was a point on the hillside whence a long view opened—of domed

Stamboul and cypressed Scutari reaching toward each other across an

incredible blue, with dim Asiatic mountains in the background. From the

height above he must often have looked out on that scene who brooded for

thirty-three years, in silence and darkness, behind the walls his terror

raised. So noble against sea and sky, so vastly spreading, so mysterious

in its invisible activities, the city must have been as redoubtable

to him as his bastioned hilltop was to the city. And I could not help

imagining how, during the days so lately passed, as he watched the city

that feared his power and whose power he feared, sounds must have come up

to him: of the foolish firing he ordered for the 13th of April; of a more

sinister firing eleven days later, when he waited for his deluded and

officerless soldiers, shut up in their barracks, to save his throne; of

that last firing, for him the sound of doom, proclaiming to his face the

joy of the distant city that his power over it was no more.

As we went away a line of buffalo carts, piled with nondescript

furniture, began to creak down the avenue where the imperial guard used

to parade at _Selamlîk_. A Macedonian gendarme stood in the great arched

gateway of the Palace court and checked them as they passed. Behind him a

monkey sat in the coil of a black tail, surveying the scene with bright,

furtive, troubled eyes.

XVI

WAR TIME

1912-1913

I.—THE HORDES OF ASIA