The kind reader of these pages who is familiar with the struggles and troubles of my childhood, who has followed me in thought on the thorny path of early youth, and knows something of my experiences as self-taught scholar and tutor, will perhaps accuse me of dejection, and blame me for want of perseverance and steadiness of purpose. Possibly I have disregarded the golden saying of my mother, "One must make one's bed half the night, the better to rest the other half." I did give way to dejection, but my resolve, however blameworthy it may be, should be looked upon as the natural consequence of a struggle for existence which began all too early and lasted sadly too long. Man is not made of iron, too great a tension must be followed by a relaxation, and since the first fair half of my life began to near its ending, my former iron will also began to lose some of its force. The wings of my ambition were too weak to soar after exalted ideals, and I contented myself with the prospect of a modest professorship at the University of my native land and the meagre livelihood this would give me.
In England, where a man in his early thirties is, so to speak, still in the first stage of his life, and energy is only just beginning to swell the sails of his bark, my longing for rest was often misunderstood and disapproved of. In London I met a gentleman of sixty who wanted to learn Persian and start a career in India; and I was going to stop my practical career at the age of thirty-two! The difference seems enormous, but in the foggy North man's constitution is much tougher and harder than in the South. My physical condition, my previous sufferings and privations, may to some extent account for my despondency; I had to give in, although my object was only half gained.
Emotions of this kind overpowered me even in the whirl and rush of the first months of my stay in London. Before long I had seen through the deceptive glamour of all the brilliancy around me; and as I very soon realised that my personal acquaintance with high society and the most influential and powerful persons would hardly help me to a position in England, I endeavoured at least to use the present situation as a step towards a position at home, in the hope that the recognition I had obtained in England would be of service to me in my native land, where the appreciation of foreign lands is always a good recommendation. First of all I set to work upon my book of travels, an occupation which took me scarcely three months to accomplish, and which, written with the experiences all yet fresh in my mind, resolved itself chiefly into a dry and unadorned enumeration of adventures and facts. The introduction of historical and philological notes would have been impossible in any case, as my Oriental MSS. were detained in Pest as security on the money loan, and also because in England everything that does not actually bear upon political, economical, or commercial interests is looked upon as superfluous ballast. When the first proof-sheets appeared of my Travels in Central Asia many of my friends regretted the brevity and conciseness of the composition, but the style was generally approved of, and after its publication the various criticisms and discussions of the work eulogised me to such an extent, that my easily roused vanity would soon have got the better of me, had I not been aware of the fact that all this praise was to a great extent an expression of the hospitality which England as a nation feels it its duty to pay to literary foreigners. This, my literary firstfruits, necessarily contributed a good deal to increase my popularity, and enlarged the circle of my acquaintance in high society to which I had been semi-officially introduced by my Asiatic friends. My fame now spread to all scientific, industrial, and commercial circles all over England. I had no time to breathe. The post brought me double as many invitations as before; I was literally besieged by autograph hunters and photographers; and it is no exaggeration to say that for months together I had invitations for every meal of the day, and that my engagements were arranged for, days and weeks beforehand.
Wearisome and expensive as this enjoyment of popularity was—for in my outward appearance and bearing I could not neglect any of the prescribed forms which mark the "distinguished foreigner"—my position afforded me the opportunity of studying London society, and through it the aims and objects of the highest representatives of Western culture, in a manner which might otherwise not have come within my reach. When in my youth I journeyed Westward I never went beyond the frontiers of Austria, and it was always only in literary pursuits that I came in contact with Western lands: hence I never saw any but the theoretical side of things. And now I was transplanted from the depths of Asia, i.e., from the extreme end of old-world culture and gross barbarism into the extreme of Western civilisation and modern culture; and overpowering as was the impression of all that I saw and experienced, equally interesting to me was the comparison of the two stages of human progress.
What surprised me more than anything was the wealth, the comfort, and the luxury of the English country houses, compared to which the rich colouring of Oriental splendour—existing as a matter of fact mostly in legends and fairy tales—cuts but a poor figure. As for me, who all my life had only seen the smile of fortune from a distance, I was struck with admiration. Most difficult of all I found it to get used to the elaborate meals and the table pomp of the English aristocracy. I could not help thinking of the time of my Dervishship, when my meals consisted sometimes of begged morsels and sometimes of pilaw which I cooked myself. Now I had to eat through an endless series of courses, and drink the queerest mixtures. During this period of my lionship it was strangest of all to think of the miseries of my childish days and the time when I was a mendicant student. It was the realisation of the fairy tale of the beggar and the prince; and with reference to this I shall never forget one night which I spent at the magnificent country house of the Duke of A., not far from Richmond. I was guest there together with Lord Clarendon, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and other English notabilities. After dinner the company adjourned to the luxuriously furnished smoke-room, and from there shortly before midnight every guest was conducted to his respective bedroom by a lacquey preceding him with two huge silver chandeliers. When the powdered footman dressed in red silk velvet had ushered me into the splendidly furnished bedroom, provided with every possible comfort and luxury, and began to take steps to assist me in undressing, I looked at the man quite dumbfounded and said with a friendly smile, "Thank you, I can manage alone." The footman departed. I feasted my eyes upon all the grandeur around me. It was like a cabinet full of precious curiosities and overflowing with silver articles and wonderful arrangements of all sorts. When I turned back the brocaded coverlet and lay down on the undulating bed, my fancy carried me back twenty years, and I thought of my night quarters in the Three Drums Street at Pest with the widow Schönfeld, where I had hired a bed in company with a tailor's apprentice, he taking the head and I the foot of the bed. Musing upon the strange alternations of man's lot, and the difference between my condition then and now, I could not go to sleep, but tossed about half the night on my silken couch. It was after all merely a childish reflection, for, though now in splendour, I was but a guest. But it is difficult to divest oneself of the impression of the moment, and as often as I found myself in a similar position the comparison between the mendicant student suffering want and the petted lion of English society has brought me to a contemplative mood.
More even than by the wealth and prosperity I was struck by the spirit of freedom which, notwithstanding the strictly aristocratic etiquette of society, must surprise the South-Eastern European, and more still any one who from the inner Asiatic world finds himself suddenly transplanted to the banks of the Thames. Formerly, in my native land it was always with unconscious awe and admiration that I looked up to a prince, a count, or a baron, and afterwards in Asia I had to approach a Pasha, Khan, or Sirdar with submissive mien, sometimes even with homage. And now I was surprised to notice how little attention was paid to dukes, lords, and baronets in the clubs and other public places in England. When for the first time I went into the reading-room of the Athenæum Club, and with my hat on stood reading the Times opposite to Lord Palmerston and at the same desk with him, I could hardly contain myself for surprise, and my eyes rested more often on the strong features of "Mister Pam" than on the columns of the city paper. Later on I was introduced in the Cosmopolitan Club to the Prince of Wales, then twenty-three years old. This club did not open till after midnight. When I saw the future ruler of Albion sitting there at his ease, without the other members taking the slightest notice of him, I fairly gasped at the apparent indifference shown to the Queen's son. I could but approach the young Prince with the utmost reverence and awe; and it was entirely owing to the great affability and kindness of heart of this son of the Queen that I plucked up courage to sit down and hold half an hour's conversation with him. Since that time this specially English characteristic of individual freedom and independence has often struck me forcibly, and could not fail to strike any one accustomed to the cringing spirit of Asia and the servility of Eastern Europe. Truly a curious mixture of the sublime and the ridiculous, of really noble and frivolous impressions, marked these first months of my sojourn in England. Feelings of admiration and contempt, of delight and scorn alternated within me; and when I ask myself now what it was that I disliked about England, and drove me to unfavourable criticism, I would mention in the first place the rigid society manners, utterly foreign to me, which I found it hard to conform to and consequently detested. The straitjacket of etiquette and society manners oppresses the English themselves more than they care to acknowledge; how, then, must it affect the Continental and the wanderer fresh from the Steppes of Asia? The second reason which made the idea of a longer stay in London quite impossible for me was the dislike, nay, the absolute horror I had of the incessant hurrying, rushing, bustling crowds in the thoroughfares; the desperate efforts to gain honour and riches, and the niggardly grudging of every minute of time. Standing at the corner of Lombard Street or Cheapside, or mixing with the crowds madly hurrying along Ludgate Hill, I felt like a man suddenly transported to pandemonium. To see how these masses push and press past one another, how the omnibus drivers swing round the corners, regardless of danger to human life, for the mere chance of gaining a few coppers more, and to realise how this same struggle for existence goes on in all stages of society, in all phases of life, relentless, merciless, was enough to make me think with longing of the indolent life of Eastern lands; and, without admitting the Nirvana theory, all this fuss and flurry seemed out of place and far too materialistic. My nature altogether revolted against it.
Of course this view was quite erroneous. For what has made England great was, and is, this very same prominent individuality, this restless striving and struggling, this utter absence of all fear, hesitation, and sentimentality where the realisation of a preconceived idea is concerned. But unfortunately at that time I was still under the ban of Asiaticism; and although the slowness, indolence, and blind fanaticism of the Asiatics had annoyed me, equally disagreeable to me was the exactly opposite tendency here manifested. I wanted to find the "golden middle way," and unconsciously I was drawn towards my own home, where on the borderland between these two worlds I hoped to find what I sought.
And now, after the lapse of so many years, recalling to mind some personal reminiscences of London society, I seem to recognise in the political, scientific, and artistic world of those days so many traits of a truly humane and noble nature, mixed with the most bizarre and eccentric features which have been overlooked by observers.
The gigantic edifice of the British Empire was then still in progress of building, the scaffolding was not yet removed, some portions still awaited their completion; and as the beautiful structure could not yet be viewed in its entirety, and an impression of the whole could, therefore, not be realised, there was in the nation but little of that superabundant self-consciousness for which modern times are noted. They listened to me with pleasure when I spoke of England's mighty influence over the Moslem East, they heard with undisguised gratification when I commended England's civilising superiority over that of Russia, but yet they did not seem to trust their own eyes, and to many my words were mere polite speeches with which the petted foreigner reciprocated their hospitality. The interest shown by a foreigner in a foreign land must always seem somewhat strange, and my appreciative criticisms of England may have appeared suspicious to many of my readers. Only later statements by such men as Baron Hübner in his Travels in India, or Garcin de Tassy's learned disquisitions on the influence of English culture on Hindustan, have lent more weight to my writings.
Of all the leading statesmen of the time I felt most attracted towards Lord Palmerston. I recognised in him a downright Britisher, with a French polish and German thoroughness; a politician who, with his gigantic memory, could command to its smallest details the enormous Department of Foreign Affairs, and who knew all about the lands and the people of Turkey, Persia, and India. He seemed to carry in his head the greater portion of the diplomatic correspondence between the East and the West; and what particularly took my fancy were the jocular remarks which he used to weave into his conversation, together with bon-mots and more serious matters. In the after-dinner chats at the house of Mr. Tomlin, not far from the Athenæum Club, or at 16, Belgrave Square with Sir Roderick Murchison, where I was an often invited guest, he used to be particularly eloquent. When he began to arrange the little knot of his wide, white cravat, and hemmed a little, one could always be sure that some witty remark was on its way, and during the absence of the ladies subjects were touched upon which otherwise were but seldom discussed in the prudish English society of the day. I had to come forward with harem stories and anecdotes of different lands, and the racier they were the more heartily the noble lord laughed. The Prime Minister was at that time already considerably advanced in years. The most delicate questions of the day were freely discussed, and I must confess that it pleased me very much when they did not look upon me as an outsider, but fully took me into their confidence. Lord Granville, afterwards Minister of Foreign Affairs, treated me also with great kindness. He was a little more reserved, certainly, but an intrinsically good man, and it always pleased him when I was at table with him to hear me converse with the different foreign ambassadors in their native tongue. His sister, Mrs. James, an influential lady in high life, provided me with invitations from various quarters, and it was she who urged me to settle in London. Similar encouragements I also received from Sir Justin Sheil, at one time British Ambassador in Persia, and his wife, most distinguished, excellent, people, who instructed me in the ways of fashionable life, and taught me how to dress and how to comport myself at table, in the drawing-room and in the street. Blunders against the orthodoxy of English customs were resented by many; and once a lady who had seen me on the top of an omnibus, from where the busy street-life of London can best be observed, said to me in full earnest, "Sir, take care not to be seen there again, otherwise you can no longer appear as a gentleman in society." Admittance into society is everything in England. One is severely judged by the cut and colour of one's clothes. Society ladies demand that hat, umbrella, and walking-stick come from the very best shop, and most important is the club to which one belongs, and of course also the circle of one's acquaintances. When I was able to give as my address, "Athenæum Club, Pall Mall," the barometer of my importance rose considerably.