Constantinople old and new

by H. G. Dwight

The first arrival of importance was that of the diplomatic corps, led by their formidable German dean, Baron Marschall von Bieberstein. Not least noticeable among them was the Persian ambassador, in a coat so thickly incrusted with gold that one could not tell what colour it was, and wide scarlet trousers and black astrakhan cap. The tall chargé d’affaires of Montenegro was also a striking figure in the national dress of his country—loose trousers thrust into top-boots, embroidered bolero and hanging sleeves, and black pill-box with red top—as was Mgr. Sardi, the Apostolic Delegate, in his flowing violet robes. Another splash of colour was presently made to the right of the tribune by the senators, in gala uniform and decorations. They are forty in number, appointed for life by the Sultan from among active or retired functionaries of state. A sprinkling of green robes of the cult was conspicuous among them. They were followed by the deputies in a body, or by as many of them as had arrived. For in the remoter parts of the empire the elections were not quite through by the time parliament, already a month late, opened. Their prevailing soberness of frock coat and fez was relieved by an occasional military uniform and by a surprising proportion of religious turbans. There were also a few Syrian or Arab head-dresses above picturesque robes of striped silk. In the meantime ministers, religious dignitaries, and certain unofficial guests of the kind known in the East as notables, had been taking their places. The ministers sat at the left of the tribune, facing the house. They were resplendent in gold lace and orders, with the single exception of the white-bearded Sheï’h ül Islam in his simple white robe. Facing the ministers were the green, purple, and fawn-coloured robes of the ülema. On the other side of the steps of the tribune, in front of the senators, were the heads of the non-Moslem sects of the empire. Their black robes and head-dresses made a contrastingly sombre group, in which the red-topped turban of the locum tenens of the Grand Rabbinate and the crimson hat and veil of the Armenian Catholic Patriarch were vivid notes of colour. But the most conspicuous contrast was made by certain of the “notables” present, among whom were members of that loquacious body known as the Balkan Committee and their ladies. I do not know whether the latter appreciated the honour that was done them, alone of their sex. These komitajis were prudently tucked as far out of sight as possible, where, nevertheless, their wayworn British tweeds and sailor-hats did not fail to attract musing Oriental eyes, and to suggest to light-minded impressionists the scenarios of comic operas.

By noon only the president’s tribune and the two boxes facing those of the diplomats and the journalists, reserved for guests from the Palace, remained without an occupant. Great doubt had been expressed as to whether the imperial box would be filled at all. If the matter had been left to Abd ül Hamid’s preference the box would doubtless have remained empty. But the Committee had found a way of overcoming Abd ül Hamid’s preferences, and not only did he reopen in person the parliament he had tried to suppress, but he drove all the way from Beshiktash to Stamboul to do it. He had not seen so much of his capital for fifteen years. The arrival of his brilliant cortège we did not witness from our black pen under the ceiling of the parliament chamber. We heard the fanfare of bugles heralding the approach of majesty, the bands striking up one after the other the Hamidieh March, the cheers sounding nearer and nearer till the last rose from the court below. A few glittering personages near the tribune, a deputy or two from the front row, who had gone to the windows, resumed their places. There was a general stir of expectancy, a last preening of orders and epaulets. After a few minutes a group of very literally gilded youths was ushered into the left hand of the three compartments of the imperial box. They were five of the Sultan’s sons, accompanied by his cousin Abd ül Mejid Effendi. A moment later the box above them filled with members of the imperial suite. In the midst of their gold lace and jewels the black face and white eyeballs of a Palace eunuch were a characteristic note.

These personages had time to admire and to be admired of all beholders before the more august guest of the occasion arrived. In fact it was a full quarter of an hour before a new splendour of uniforms was seen to mount the stairs at the rear of the box, and the Sultan came in sight. He then made the mistake of entering the compartment reserved for his brother Mehmed Reshad Effendi and his cousin Youssouf Izzeddin Effendi, the next two heirs to the throne—who failed to honour the occasion. With earth-sweeping salaams the master of ceremonies inducted his majesty into the central compartment. There seemed to be something less than imperial ease in the hesitation with which he lingered a moment in the rear of the box. He dropped his glove, and the master of ceremonies picked it up. The dead silence that greeted him when he did step forward was a surprise to those who had witnessed European acclamations of royalty. All rose to their feet and stood with folded hands in the Oriental attitude of respect. They did, however, permit themselves to look up. The Sultan stood with his hand on his sword of empire, looking down, a figure of dignity in his plain dark military overcoat, visibly bowed by years and anxiety, yet not so grey as one might expect, keen-eyed, hawk-nosed, full-bearded, taking in one by one the faces that represented every race and region of his wide domains. The silence and the intentness of that mutual regard grew dramatic as the seconds gathered into minutes. “A wolf in a cage!” whispered some one behind me. There was too little room in the epigram for the strangeness of the scene. One could fill the silence with what one pleased of historic visions, of tragic memories, of hatreds and ambitions, of victory and defeat. But all the East was in that unyielding surrender and in that uncelebrated triumph.

The silence was suddenly broken by the voice of the Sultan’s secretary, who began to read, beside the steps of the tribune, the speech from the throne. My Turkish is too small and too colloquial to take in much of so high-flown a document, but I caught references to the perfidy of Austria and Bulgaria and to the author’s satisfaction in being able to open again the assembly for which thirty years ago the country had not been ripe. Twice the house broke into applause, which the Sultan acknowledged with a military salute. At the close of the reading a green-robed mollah offered prayer. The majority of those present listened to it, as Moslems do, in an attitude very much like that of the Greek adorante in Berlin, except that the hands are held lower and closer to the body. When the prayer came to an end, with a fervent responsive amin, the Sultan did a thing that no one had expected. He made a brief speech. But the signal had already been given, according to programme, for bands and cannon to announce the inauguration of the new era. The consequence was that few heard even the sound of his majesty’s voice. In a moment more he was gone.

The entire ceremony, during which all remained on their feet, lasted less than half an hour. When it was over, those who had lost the spectacle of the Sultan’s arrival made haste to secure places whence they might witness that of his departure. The view from the windows of the parliament house was one never to forget—for its own picturesqueness, for its historic significance, for its evocations of the unconquerable vitality, of the dramatic contrasts and indifferences of life. The sun was in gala mood that day, to match the mood and to bring out the predominatingly Asiatic colour of the thousands that packed the square which had been the Forum Augustæum of New Rome. Not only did they pack the square, those Asiatic thousands, and every radiating open space as far as the eye could reach; they loaded its bare trees, they filled the windows and lined the roofs overlooking it, they darkened the buttresses, the cupolas, the minaret galleries of St. Sophia. Two men even clung to the standard of the crescent at the apex of the great dome. The brown chasseurs of Salonica, in recognition of the part they played in the revolution, were given the honour of keeping open a narrow lane through the middle of the square. They were assisted by tall blue Anatolians of the imperial guard and by deputations with flags and inscribed banners. A gilded barouche drove into the courtyard where once had stood the Roman senate. A scarlet-and-gold coachman drove the four superb iron-grey horses, and in front of them pranced a fifth iron-grey mounted by a blue-and-silver outrider. Three buglers in black and scarlet faced the porte-cochère. At the sound of their bugles the soldiers presented arms and a band burst into the imperial march. The thin blue and brown fringe of guards undulated with the eddies of motion that surged through the pressing thousands in their frenzy to see the monarch whom they had shorn of his power. Then, surrounded by the glitter of the princes and his aides, preceded and followed by the scarlet flutter of the lancers’ banderoles, the Caliph of Islam flashed away toward the column of Constantine.

XV
THE CAPTURE OF CONSTANTINOPLE
1909

What could be more aggravating to a greedy impressionist than to have sat nearly two years in Constantinople, to have watched the amicable revolution of 1908, to have been one of a privileged few to assist at the reopening by Abd ül Hamid of the parliament he suppressed thirty-two years ago, and then to have been caught in an ignoble Florentine pension, among ladies passionate after pictures, when the mutiny of April 13 broke out in Stamboul? And nothing, from the meagre Italian telegrams, was more difficult to make out than the origin of that mutiny. Had the Committee of Union and Progress made the mistakes their friends had feared? Had the opposition liberals been unconsciously playing into the hands of reactionaries? Had the Sultan, who appeared to swallow the revolution in so lamblike a manner, merely been lying low? The only thing was to go back and find out, and to get what reparation one could by seeing the end of the affair—if end there were. For it must be recorded against the sagacity of impressionists, or of one particular impressionist, that he thought nothing at all might happen.

The first hint of anything to the contrary came from a Neue Freie Presse, obtained at a Croatian railway-station, which announced that by the 19th a Macedonian army would concentrate at Chatalja, some twenty-five miles from Constantinople. The 19th was the next day, and I was due in Stamboul on the morning of the 20th. There might, then, be sights to see on the way. I had a further hint of them after getting into the Constantinople sleeper that night at Belgrade. Two men were already in bed in the compartment, and before morning I became conscious of the porter telling one of them in Turkish that he must change for Salonica in twenty minutes. I told myself that he must be a Young Turk hurrying back from Europe to take part in—what? I had the strangest sense, as we whistled through the dark toward Nisch, of forces gathering silently for an impending drama.

We spent the next day crawling through Bulgaria, along that old highway of the empire where Janissaries march behind the sacred banner of the Prophet no more. Being no master of Slavic languages, I was dependent on our polyglot porter for news. This gloomy individual, a Greek from Pera, gathered assurance with each kilometre—and they were not few, for the philanthropic Baron Hirsch, who was paid for each one, put in as many of them as he could—that his family had been massacred. He looked for confirmation of his fears at Moustafa Pasha. We reached that humble frontier station about ten o’clock that night. There was no news, but there were soldiers of a new kind, sturdy fellows in moccasins and white leggings, who strode up and down between tracks with a businesslike air entirely different from the usual Moustafa Pasha military. I was to see more of those white leggings.