A selsebil at Kandilli
A selsebil of Halil Edhem Bey
The Turkish architects have not scorned more imposing effects when they had the means, as did Ahmed III at Kiat Haneh. The marble cascades into which he turned the Barbyses are called chaghleyan—something which resounds. I have seen a smaller chaghleyan in a garden on the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus. This is a series of descending pools, one emptying into another till the water finally runs into a large round marble basin. The water starts, between two curved flights of stone steps, from three marble shells in the retaining wall of a terrace; and from the terrace an arbour looks down the perspective of mirroring pools to an alley that leads from the last basin away between arching trees. This beautiful old garden belongs to the Turkish painter Ressam-Halil Pasha, who studied in Paris at a time when the plastic arts were still anathema among the Turks. In his studio are figure studies, made during his student days, which even now he could scarcely exhibit in Constantinople; and it would be thought a scandalous thing if he tried to get Turkish models to sit for such pictures. When he heard where I came from he asked if there were in America a painter called Mr. Cox, who had studied with him under Gérôme.
There is rivalry between the gardens of the upper, the middle, and the lower Bosphorus with regard to their advantages of position. The upper Bosphorus is the most desirable from the European point of view. This preference is fairly well established, for Lady Mary Montagu wrote letters from Belgrade Forest two hundred years ago, and about the same time a summer colony composed of Europeans and of the great Phanariote families began to gather at Büyük Dereh and Therapia. In much earlier times, however, the Byzantine emperors built villas at Therapia, and the very name of the place indicates the antiquity of its repute as a place of resort. The name has come down in the story of Jason and the Argo, who sailed between these shores in the dawn of legend. When those early voyagers returned from Colchis with Medea, that formidable passenger threw out poison on the Thracian shore; whence the name Pharmakia, changed by the euphemism of the Greeks to Therapia, or Healing. There are reasons, to be sure, why it is better to look at Therapia than to be in it. The view it commands is the bleakest on the Bosphorus, and the prevailing north wind of midsummer, the meltem, which keeps the strait much cooler than you would imagine from its latitude, sometimes gets on one’s nerves. Nevertheless Therapia is a centre for an extraordinary variety of pleasant excursions, there are delicious gardens in the clefts of its hills, and from May till October the embassies impart to it such gaiety as the somewhat meagre social resources of Constantinople afford. I shall be surprised if the proximity of Belgrade Forest and the magnificent beach of Kilios on the Black Sea, to say nothing of the various other resources of the Bosphorus and the Marmora, do not some day make Therapia much more famous as a summer resort.
In the garden of Ressam Halil Pasha
Constantinople is, I believe, the sole diplomatic post to which summer residences are attached. Each envoy also has a launch for keeping in touch with the Sublime Porte, fifteen miles away. The local legend is that the birds which are so characteristic a feature of the Bosphorus—halcyons are they?—for ever skimming up and down just above the surface of the water, are the souls of the Phanariote dragomans who used to go back and forth so often between Therapia and Stamboul. A despatch-boat, as well, is at the disposal of each ambassador except the Persian. These dignities came about very naturally by reason of the epidemics and disorders which used to break out in the city, the distance of Constantinople from other European resorts, and the generosity of the sultans. The English, French, and German governments all own beautiful estates at Therapia, presented to them by different sultans, while the Russians are magnificently established at the neighbouring village of Büyük Dereh. Their great hillside park is a perfect wood, so dense in summer that the water is scarcely visible from it. The Italians also make villeggiatura at Therapia, the Austrians and Persians being installed farther down the Bosphorus. Our ambassador is the sole envoy of his rank obliged to hunt up hired quarters, though even some of the small legations occupy their own summer homes. Should Congress ever persuade itself that diplomatic dignity is a thing worthy to be upheld, or should some sultan present us with one of the old estates still available, I hope we shall build an embassy, like the one the French occupied so long, in keeping with its surroundings and not such a monstrosity as other Powers have put up. The charming old French embassy, which originally belonged to the famous Ypsilanti family, was one of the sights of the Bosphorus until it burned up in 1913. The grounds are not so large as some of the other embassy gardens, but none of the others seem to me so happily placed or so sapiently laid out. A bridge led from the house to the first terrace, whose trees and flowers irregularly follow the curve of the hillside. A formal avenue and steep wood paths mount to the grassy upper terrace, commanding between noble pines and beeches the mouth of the Black Sea.