Constantinople old and new

by H. G. Dwight

But there is one spot in their park which must have gone far to make up for their disinheritance. It is the brow of a bluff which seems to drop sheer into the Bosphorus. There an artful group of cypresses and one gnarled olive frame the blue below; and there on sunny afternoons, there most notably on starry evenings, when shore lights curve fantastically through the underlying darkness and all land and water sounds have some summer magic in them, an Antony might dream away content the loss of Egypt.

Halim Pasha owned another splendid garden on Bebek Bay. Next to his faded pink wooden yalî in the dignified old Turkish style, and likewise linked by bridges across the public road to a park that climbs the hill behind, is the trim art-nouveau villa of the actual Khedive’s mother. This majestic old lady is one of the most familiar figures on the Bosphorus. Her annual approach and departure on her son’s big turbine yacht Mahroussah are the signals for spring and autumn to open their campaigns, while her skimming mahogany steam-launch is an integral part of summer. She is, moreover, a person whom the poor of her neighbourhood have cause to bless. During the lenten month of Ramazan she provides iftar, the sunset breakfast of the day, for any who choose to come to her door. So many choose to come that during that month her grocery bills must be quite appalling. And on occasions of public rejoicing she literally keeps open house—or open garden. She admits any and all within her gates, offers them coffee, ices, and cigarettes, and entertains them with music.

The custom, for the rest, is common among the Turks at all times of festivity. I remember going one night to another garden in Bebek, not by invitation but because any one was free to go in order to celebrate the accession day of his majesty Abd ül Hamid II. The garden belonged to a younger brother of that personage, popularly known as Cowherd Solomon Esquire. For Turkish princes have no title other than that of their humblest subject. A band was playing in the garden, which is on the very top of Bebek hill, and the Greeks of the village were dancing among the flower-beds, while a row of little princes and princesses in big gilt armchairs looked solemnly on. Beyond them a clump of huge umbrella-pines lifted themselves darkly against the fairy scene of the illuminated Bosphorus. Every other villa was outlined in light, the water burned with reflections of architectural designs or of Arabic texts of fire, and the far-away hill of Chamlîja was one twinkling field of the cloth of gold. Süleïman Effendi was reported to be not too strong in the head but to make up for it by possessing the Evil Eye and the greatest understanding of cows of any man in Constantinople. Of these he kept a large herd, selling their milk like any commoner; and when he wished to add to their number no man dared refuse to sell to him. If he did the cow in question was sure to die within the month by reason of the Evil Eye of the imperial milkman. Abd ül Hamid caused this eccentric old gentleman much unhappiness, tormenting him greatly with spies. Süleïman Effendi lived long enough to see the last of the spies, however, if not of Abd ül Hamid. And he must have been not altogether destitute of human qualities, for his wife died of grief the day after his death.

The Villa of the Sun, Kandilli

The picturesque bay of Bebek and the opposite headland of Kandilli are so involved with historic memories that I am more and more tempted to stray out of my gardens. Kandilli, in particular, is full of plane-trees and terraces and rows of stone-pines to prove that older generations were not blind to its enchantments. Among other sultans, Mehmed IV spent much of his time there. His favourite wife was the lady of taste and determination who built the mosque of the New Mother in Scutari. Discovering once that her lord spent more of his hours than she found proper in the society of a Circassian dancing-girl, she caused a man slave of her own to be educated in the terpsichorean art and presented him to the Sultan. She then asked one night, as they sat at the edge of the water at Kandilli, that the two dancers perform together for her amusement. The slaves accordingly danced on the terrace before their imperial masters, nearer and nearer the water, till the man, by a seemingly careless thrust of his foot, tripped his companion into the Bosphorus. She was immediately carried away into the dark by the current, here extremely swift; and the Sultana doubtless slept the more sweetly, knowing there was one less dancer in the world.

I do not know whether the imperial villa near the boat landing that was torn down in 1913 was the scene of this little drama. Yalî is the true name of such a country house, if it is built, as it should be, on the edge of the water, with gateways letting a little of the Bosphorus into the lower hall and making there a boat-house and porte cochère in one. In every country place of any size there is a kyöshk as well, otherwise a kiosk, built somewhere in the garden and constituting one of its more formal ornaments. I once had the honour of being received in a kiosk belonging to a member of the imperial family, which was larger than the yalî to which it belonged. It was, alas, no such place as I have read of in Lady Mary Montagu, who describes a room built by the sultan of her day for his daughter, “wainscotted with mother of pearl fastened with emeralds like nails.” She also speaks of wainscotting of “cedar set off with silver nails” and “walls all crusted with Japan China,” “the whole adorned with a profusion of marble, gilding, and the most exquisite painting of fruit and flowers.” These splendours were no invention of Lady Mary, for many other visitors testify to them, as well as Melling, Van Mour, and all their school of painters of the Bosphorus. Those villas never were of an enduring architecture, and the spell of Europe—more potent than ever for us was that of the gorgeous East—has been more fatal to them than time and fire. Still, the most modern yalî, if designed by an architect of the country, almost always has some saving touch of its own. And in the middle Bosphorus there are quite a number of houses which preserve the graceful old architecture.

The number of those which preserve even a remnant of the old interior decoration is much more limited. One of them is a kiosk at Emirgyan belonging to the Sherifs of Mecca. And it is quaint to see what an air, both whimsical and distinguished, that faded eighteenth-century decoration gains from the ugly modern furniture set about a fountain in the cross-shaped saloon of those descendants of the Prophet. The most complete example of the work of the same period is the house on Arnaout-kyöi Point belonging to an Armenian family, unmistakable by its projecting upper stories and the agreeable irregularity of its silhouette. Passers along the quay may catch a glimpse of a high rococo ceiling in rose and gold. But a glimpse of a more perfect ceiling is to be caught by any one who rows up the Asiatic shore from Anadolou Hissar—if he be not too contemptuous of certain crazy wooden piles which his caïque will pass.

An eighteenth-century villa at Arnaout-kyöi