CHAPTER IV.
CONSTANTINOPLE AND LORD PONSONBY. 1840.
Colonel Hodges had been hospitable and very kindly disposed towards me, but I hailed with pleasure the day when I embarked—in an Austrian steamer, in consequence of relations being broken off with Mehemet Ali—to proceed to Beyrout and thence to Constantinople, to join the Embassy.
At Beyrout, where I spent a few hours, I went on board the flag-ship of Admiral Sir Charles Napier, where I heard it was decided to attack Acre, and that a battle was impending between the army of Ibrahim Pasha, and the Turkish and British troops commanded by General Smith.
On arrival at Constantinople, I presented myself to Lord Ponsonby, who, after listening to the tidings I brought, directed me to address him a dispatch reporting all I had related to his Excellency; adding, that I must lose no time in preparing it, as he was about to dispatch a messenger overland to England.
Never having written a dispatch in my life, though I had corresponded privately on passing events in Egypt with members of the Embassy at Constantinople and the Foreign Office, I felt very nervous—especially as the report was required immediately by his Excellency. Half-an-hour after my interview with Lord Ponsonby, while I was still writing, the late Percy Doyle, then first attaché, came in with a message from the Ambassador to request that my report should be brought to his Excellency at once. I said the draft was not quite finished, and that I wished to copy it out.
Doyle answered he must take it up at once to his Excellency, so, after I had scribbled the few lines that remained, without allowing me even to read it over, he carried it off. I waited for some time for his return and then, to my dismay, he announced that Lord Ponsonby had read my draft, and, as there was no time to have it copied, had enclosed it, as it was, in a dispatch to Lord Palmerston. It was published in the Blue Book, with other dispatches on Eastern affairs.
It was in this year, when a victory had been gained over the Egyptian army in Syria by the combined British and Turkish forces, that a number of trophies in flags, banners, &c., were sent by General Smith and Admiral Sir Charles Napier, who commanded the British forces, to the Ambassador to present to the Sultan.
A day having been fixed for the audience, Lord Ponsonby prepared the speech he proposed to deliver, and directed Mr. Frederick Pisani, Chief Dragoman of the Embassy, to write out a translation into the Turkish language, and to learn it by heart. He was instructed not to pay any attention to Lord Ponsonby’s utterances during the audience, but, when requested by his Excellency, he was to repeat the prepared speech, and subsequently the replies, which had likewise been prepared in answer to the Sultan’s language, of which his Excellency was able to guess the purport. Lord Ponsonby gave these directions, as he knew that Mr. Pisani was a nervous man, and might find it difficult on such an occasion to render the Ambassador’s language adequately into eloquent and polite Turkish, if not prepared beforehand.
The Ambassador and members of the Embassy in uniform, with numerous kavasses, proceeded in the state kaik from Therapia to the Sultan’s palace.
To each attaché a banner or flag was given, to carry for presentation at the audience. To me was allotted a Turkish banner, on a very long pole, with crescent and spear.