But if newspaper correspondents are placed at some disadvantage, what can be said for those well-assured travellers who pay a three months’ visit to Turkey, spend the time pleasantly at Pera, or perhaps at the country-houses of some Pashas, and then consider themselves qualified to judge the merits of each class in each nationality of the mixed inhabitants of the land. It is unpleasant to have to say it; but it is well known that scarcely a single book upon Turkey is based upon a much longer experience than of three months.
In this dearth of trustworthy information, it was with no little interest that I learnt that an English lady, who had lived for a great part or her life in various provinces of European and Asiatic Turkey, and whose linguistic powers perfected by experience enabled her to converse equally with Greeks, Turks, and Bulgarians as one of themselves, had formed a collection of notes on the people of Turkey—on their national characteristics, the way they live, their manners and customs, education, religion, their aims, and ambitions. In any case the observations of one who had for more than twenty years enjoyed such exceptional advantages must be valuable. Of the opportunities of the Author there could be as little doubt as of her conscientious accuracy in recording her experience. The only question was not the quality but the quantity of the information. But in this the manuscript surpassed all expectations. Every page teemed with details of life and character entirely novel to all but Eastern travellers. Every subject connected with the people of Turkey seemed to be exhaustively treated, and it was rarely that any need for more ample information was felt.
In editing what, as I have had nothing to do with the matter of it, I may without vanity call the most valuable work on the people of Turkey that has yet appeared, I have strictly kept in view the principle laid down by the Author—that the book was to be a collection of facts, not a vehicle for party views on the Eastern Question, nor a recipe for the harmonious arrangement of South-eastern Europe. Politically the book is entirely colorless. It was felt that thus only could it commend itself to both, or rather all, the disputing parties on the question, and that only by delicately avoiding the susceptible points of each party could the book attain its end—of generally imparting a certain amount of sound information on the worst-known subject of the day.
The reader, therefore, must not expect to find here a defence of Turkish rule nor yet an attack thereon: he will only find an account of how the Turks do rule, with a few incidental illustrations scattered throughout the book. Comment is, as a rule, eschewed as superfluous and insulting to the intelligence of the reader. Still less must he look for any expression of opinion on the wisdom or folly of the policy of Her Majesty’s Government. All these things are apart from the aim of the work. It is wished to provide the data necessary to the formation of any worthy views on the many subdivisions of the Eastern Question. It is not wished to point the moral. Once conversant with the actual state of the people of Turkey, once knowing how they live, what are their virtues and vices, what their aims and ambitions, and it is easy for any rational man to draw his conclusions; easy to criticise favorably or otherwise according to the merits of the case the policy of the British Government towards Turkey and towards Greece, to decide whether after all the supposed rising in Bulgaria (about which little is said here, because everything has already been well said) was ever a rising at all; whether the Turks are or are not incapable of the amenities which many believe them then to have indulged in; whether the Bulgarians are friendly to Russia, or are really the very humble servants of the Porte; in short, whether half the questions which have for two years been the subject of perpetual contention admit of debate at all.
The book has been divided into four parts. In the first, the general characteristics of the various races of Turkey are sketched. Very little is said about their history, for it is not the history but the present state—or rather the state just before the war—of the people that is the subject of the book. But the Author has tried to bring home to the reader the social condition and the national character of their different races. The Bulgarians, Greeks, Albanians, Turks, Armenians, and Jews are in turn described, and the, for the time, scarcely less important Circassians, with the Tatars and Gypsies, have their chapter.
In the second part, the tenure of land in Turkey and the state of the small peasant farmers are explained, and an account is given of houses and hovels in Turkey, including that most superb of Turkish houses, the Seraglio of the Sultan, to which with its inmates a very detailed notice is devoted; and the part ends with an account of Municipality and Police in Turkey, together with the kindred subject of Brigandage.
The third part is occupied with the manners and customs of the races. Few things give such an insight into the character of a people as a study of their customs, and it is believed that these chapters on the extraordinary ceremonies employed in Turkey on the occasion of a birth or marriage, or a death, the dress, food, amusements, of the Greeks, Bulgarians, Turks, and Armenians will prove of as much value as interest. The fact, for example, that in many parts of Bulgaria the weddings take place not in the church but in the cellar of the bridegroom’s house speaks volumes on the insecurity of a woman’s person while Turkish governors rule in Bulgarian towns. The custom of the Bulgarian bridegroom flinging a halter over his bride’s neck and dragging her into his house is an interesting relic of capture, and the subsequent knocking of the bride’s head against the wall as a warning against infidelity illustrates the general chastity of the people. The indecent exhibitions, again, at Turkish weddings help to explain the want of refinement and womanly feeling among Turkish ladies. The ceremonies of the Greeks are interesting from another point of view, inasmuch as very many of them are identical with those of the ancient Greeks.
The last part is devoted to the education, superstition, and religion of the people of Turkey. It is here that we get to the root of Turkish manners; for we see how the Turk is brought up, how he learns the vices that have become identified with the thought of his race, how he remains, in spite even of a western education, deeply imbued with superstition, and finally how he loses all the energy of the old Othmanli character by the operation of the fatal doctrine of Kismet. The chapters on Education are among the most valuable in the book; whilst those on Religion will serve to explain some of the difficulties that beset the proper adjustment of affairs in Southern Europe.
The study of the facts thus brought together points to a considerable modification of the views commonly entertained with regard to the characters of the peoples of Turkey. The Author’s long experience leaves no doubt of the vast superiority of the Greeks to the other races; yet there is no people that one is more accustomed to hear spoken of with distrust and even contempt. The Greeks are commonly charged with a partiality for sharp practice, with intolerable vanity; their character is summed up as petty. There is always a grain of truth in a calumny: when plenty of mud is thrown some of it sticks, not because of the quantity of the mud, but because there is sure to be an adhesive sympathy with some part of the object of the attack. The Greeks have in some degree laid themselves open to these charges. It was very unwise of them to take the first rank as merchants in the East, and thus arouse the jealousy of the merchants of all European nations, whom they have eclipsed by their superior business capacities. Envy will pick holes anywhere, but it is especially easy to criticise the customs of a merchant class. Mercantile morality all over the world is a thing of itself, not generally understanded of the people. But there is nothing to show that the Greek merchants are less scrupulous than the rest, though their temptations are infinitely greater. If a little sharp business is said to be permissible, and even perhaps necessary, at Liverpool, for instance, it is à fortiori essential in Turkey. It is a perfectly well-understood principle that in Turkey, where everything is done by bribery and corruption, a merchant, unless he wishes to be ruined, must steer a somewhat oblique course. So long as the late Turkish rule extended over Greek subjects, it was necessary to do in Turkey as the Turks do. French and English merchants sin as much as the Greeks in this manner; but the superior commercial ability of the Greeks and their consequent success have drawn on them the whole evil repute. It is not that the Greeks cheat more than other commercial nations: it is merely that they make more money on the same amount of cheating. Hinc illæ iræ!
The Greeks, again, are certainly conceited, and with excellent reason. It would be absurd to expect anything else. They are but newly freed; after centuries of Ottoman tyranny, followed by a generation of Bavarian despotism, they have at last been allowed to enjoy some fifteen years of freedom. Even under the stiff court of George, but much more during the last fifteen years, they have made prodigious progress. Having worked out their own freedom, they have been making themselves fit for freedom. From craven slaves of the Turk they have become a liberty-loving people. Their thoughts have been casting back to the noble ancestry which they claim as their own, and looking onward to the great future that is in store for them. They have measured themselves intellectually with the rest of Europe and have not been worsted. They have spent the last twenty years in the work of self-education, and so successful have been their efforts that it is well known that no nation can compare with Greece in the general education of its people—that to Greece alone can be applied the ambiguous taunt that she is over-educated.