[50]. Before leaving Yozgad we had come to an arrangement with Price. If questioned he was to say that while digging in the garden at the spot mentioned above he had come on a tin with a false bottom, on opening which he found a gold lira and a circular piece of paper with curious hieroglyphics on it. The lira he had kept (we gave him one to produce), but he had lost the paper.
[51]. A type of nomenclature common amongst Turkish peasantry. “Hassan’s boy Ahmed” was a very incongruous name for a Pasha.
[52]. I gave the name of a well-known Scottish expert on nervous diseases—an old college friend of mine. It had the effect I desired. Whether they looked him up afterwards in some medical list or whether, as is more probable, they already knew of his writings and his reputation in the treatment of nervous diseases, I do not know. But some days later the chief doctor, Mazhar Osman Bey, tried to question me about “the Doctor Bey, M——, of Glasgow.” The “of Glasgow” showed me my friend was known to them, so assuming as cunning a look as I could, I denied ever having heard the name before. The Chief smiled to himself and went away.
[53]. A pamphlet of his (later, when I had become his favourite patient, he presented me with an autograph copy of it) was entitled, Spiritism Aleyhindé (Against Spiritualism). So far as I could understand it (it was written in very technical Turkish), he sought to prove that the proper abode for spiritualists is a private asylum, and the so-called “subconscious” replies to questions given in automatic writing, table-rapping, etc., and similar phenomena, are as much due to nervous derangement as are the conversations with spirits indulged in by sufferers from G.P.I. He challenged me to write a reply to his pamphlet from the spiritualist point of view. Perhaps this book will do instead.
[54]. On the strength of Mazhar Osman Bey’s suggestion to learn Turkish I promptly ordered “a hundred books on the Turkish language,” and gave nobody any rest until I was provided with one (at my own expense, of course). It was Hagopian’s Conversation Grammar—a most excellent book. I had plenty of teachers—every patient in the hospital and most of the doctors were delighted to give me a lesson whenever I asked for one—and to the delight of Mazhar Osman Bey I made rapid strides in Turkish. Needless to say, a sane occupation of this sort was of the utmost value to me, and my only regret was that, as a madman, my study of this most interesting language had to be spasmodic and irregular. Still, I learned enough to become something of a “show patient,” and to gain from the Dutch Embassy at Constantinople, whose medical representatives visited us about July, the following quite unsolicited and rather amusing “testimonial.” It was sent as a “Report” by the Embassy, and reached my family through the India Office:—
“Haidar Pasha Hospital.—We found here Lieut. Henry Elias Jones, Artillery Battery (volunteer). The 10 of May, 1918, he was sent down from Yozgad with mental disturbance. He was quite content and we had a long talk with him. He wants to be a Turk, and mistrusts all English, and will not take anything if it comes from his parents or from England. He wants a Turkish uniform and will settle down in Turkey. Intelligent as he is, he learnt Turkish with an astonishing good accent in an exceedingly short time. He will probably be sent back to England with the first exchange.”
[55]. This referred to a large drawing of a monstrous machine which was placed in my (Jones’s) kit for the doctors to find. The machine was designed to flatten out capes, fill up bays, and uproot all islands, thereby straightening the coastline and making the sea safe for navigation. The power was to be derived from the weight of the Great Pyramid, which was to be removed from Egypt and placed on a raft 500 feet long. The raft would rise and fall with the motion of the waves, and operate an enormous knife which would cut away capes, islands, etc. One of the uses to which the machine was to be put was to slice under the island of Great Britain. We would then turn it over and start a new England on the other side!
[56]. Somewhere in Hill’s kit (I don’t know if the doctors ever saw it), was the following incoherent document, written in a very scrawly hand—
“I, Elias Henry Jones, Master of Arts Assistant Commissioner in the Indian Civil Service Deputy Commissioner of Kyaukse District Upper Burma and Headquarters Assistant Moulmein Lieutenant Indian Army Reserve of Officers in the Volunteer Artillery Battery born at Aberystwyth and educated at Glasgow University and Balliol College Oxford CERTIFY and PROMISE by ALMIGHTY GOD that if you will assist me in my great scheme and do everything I require of you including draw and inventions of MACHINERY I certainly will be converted by you and give up all wickedness as you say as soon as my great scheme is finished and until then you must help me with designs and drawings and inventions of NECESSARY MACHINERY.
“Signed E. H. JONES.”