A Caïque on the Bosphorus
Turkish Women in the Country
To me it seems almost as if it were the home of the ancient Greeks, with all their artistic instincts and roguery, all their faults, and all their primitive charm. From my open window, which looks into a canaletto, I heard the song of a gondolier. His voice was the sweetest I have ever heard; no opera singer ever gave me greater pleasure. Now that I know the number of his boat, I have engaged him as my gondolier, and every evening after dinner, instead of wasting my time at Bridge, I go on to the canal, leaving it to the discretion of my guide where he takes me; and when he is tired of rowing, he brings me back. All the time he sings and sings and I dream, and his beautiful voice takes me far, far away—away from the unfriendly West.
Amongst its other attractions, Venice has an aristocracy. They are poor certainly, but, with such blood in their veins, do they need riches? And surely their charm and nobility are worth all the dollars put together of the vulgar Transatlantics who have bought the big historic palaces of Venice. I feel here as I felt in London, the delight of being again in a Kingdom, and I can breathe and live. How restful it is, after the nervous strain of the exaggerated Democracy of France.
*****
Brussels, Nov. 1911.
I have had this letter quite a fortnight in my trunk. I did not want to send it to you. Somehow I felt ashamed to let you see how much I had loved Italy—Turkey’s enemy.
I left Venice the day after the Declaration of War, if such a disgraceful proceeding would be called a Declaration of War. For a long time I could not make up my mind that that nation of gentlemen, that nation of poetry and music and art, that nation whose characteristics so appealed to my Oriental nature, that nation whom I thought so civilised in the really good sense of the word, could be capable of such injustice.