We had now crossed the bridge. The pilgrims had hastened on to their steamer, which was alongside the quay. They were going back to Russia. But one of them lagged behind and almost bought a suit of clothes. I say almost, because it happened like this: A clothes-seller—Greek, or Armenian, or Heaven knows what!—was carrying a large heap of clothes: striped trousers, black waistcoats, and blue serge coats. The brown pilgrim chose a suit. The seller asked five roubles. The pilgrim offered three. All the steps of the bargain were gone through at an incredible speed, because the pilgrim was in a great hurry. The seller asked him among other things if he would like my blue serge jacket. The pilgrim said certainly not; it was not good enough. Finally, after looking at all the clothes and trying on one coat, which was two sizes too small, he made his choice and offered three roubles and a half. The bargain was just going to be closed when the pilgrim suddenly said the stuff was bad and went away as fast as he could, bidding me good-bye. He was a native of Voronezh.
After a short spell of cold weather the spring came back once more and opened “her young adventurous arms” to greet the day of the “Coronation” of the new Sultan. There was that peculiar mixture of warmth and freshness in the air, that intoxicating sweetness, which you only get in the South; and after a recent rainfall the green foliage in which the red-tiled houses of the city are embedded, like red bricks in moss, gleamed with a new freshness. The streets were early crowded with people eager to make their way towards Eyoub, to the mosque where the Sultan is invested with the Sword of Osman.
I drove with Aubrey Herbert across the old bridge into the straggling Jewish quarter on the other side of the Golden Horn. The houses there are square and wooden, rickety and crooked, top-heavy, bending over the narrow street as though they were going to fall down, squalid, dirty, dusty, and rotten; they are old, and sometimes you come across a stone house with half-obliterated remains of beautiful Byzantine window arches and designs. Every now and then you got glimpses of side streets as steep as Devonshire lanes and as narrow as London slums, with wistaria in flower trailing across the street from roof to roof. All along the road people were at their doorsteps, and people and carriages were moving in the direction of Eyoub. After a time, progress, which up to then had been easy and rapid, came to a dead stop, and the coachman who was driving Herbert and myself dived into a side lane and began driving in the opposite direction, back, as it seemed, towards Constantinople. Then he all at once took a turning to the right, and we began to climb a steep and stony track until we reached the walls of Constantinople. These walls, which were built, I believe, by the Emperor Theodosius, are enormously thick and broad. As we reached them, people were climbing up on to the top of them.
Soon we came to a crowd, which was being kept back by soldiers, and the intervention of an officer was necessary to let us drive through the Adrianople Gate into the road along which the Sultan was to pass on his way back to Constantinople after the ceremony. We drove through the gate, right on to the route of the procession, which was stony, rough, and steep. We were at the top of a high hill. To the right of us were the huge broad walls, as thick as the towers of our English castles, grassy on the top, and dotted with a thick crowd of men dressed in colours as bright as the plumage of tropical birds. At this moment, as I write, the colour of one woman’s dress flashes before me—a brilliant cerulean, bright as the back of a kingfisher, gleaming in the sun like a jewel. To the left was a vista of trees, delicate spring foliage, cypresses, mosques, green slopes, and blue hills. Both sides of the road were lined with a many-coloured crowd—some sitting on chairs, some in tents, some on primitive wooden stands. Lines of soldiers kept the people back. The road itself was narrow. It was a crowd of poor people, but it was none the less picturesque on that account. Vendors of lemonade and water-carriers walked up and down in front of the people. Some of the spectators hung small carpets from their seats. The tents varied in size and quality, some boasting of magnificent embroideries and others were such as gipsies pitch near a race-course. We drove on and on through this double line of coloured people and troops, down the narrow cobbled way, until we reached the level, and there, after a time, we were obliged to leave the carriage and go on foot.
The makeshift stands, the extemporary decorations, the untidy crowd, proved that in the East no elaboration and no complicated arrangements are necessary to make a pageant. Nature and the people provide colours more gorgeous than any wealth of panoplies, banners, and gems could display, and the people seem to be part of nature herself and to share her brightness.
We walked through a cordon of cavalry until we reached the mosque of Eyoub. The Sultan had already arrived and his carriage was waiting at the gate. The carriages of other dignitaries were standing in a side street. A small street of wooden houses led up to the mosque. We were beckoned to the ground floor of one of these houses by a brown personage in a yellow turban. We were shown on to a small platform divided into two tiers, crowded with Turkish men and women; others were standing on the floor. Some of the spectators were officers; some wore uniform; among those on the lower tier were some soldiers, a policeman, and a postman. We were welcomed with great courtesy and given seats. But whenever we asked questions, every question—no matter what it was about—was taken to mean that we were anxious to know when the Sultan was coming. And to every question the same answer was made gently by these kind and courteous people, as though they were dealing with children: “Have patience, my lamb, the Sultan will soon be here.”
Immediately in front of us stood the large French barouche of the Sultan, drawn by four bay horses, the carriage glittering with gilding and lined with satin. We waited about an hour, the people every now and then continuing to reassure us that the Sultan would soon be there. Then we heard the band. Two men spread a small carpet on the steps of the carriage, into which the Sultan immediately stepped, and drove off, headed by a sais dressed in blue and gold and mounted on a bay horse.
As this large gilded barouche passed, with the Sultan in uniform inside it, the spirit of the Second Empire seemed for one moment to hover in the air, and I half expected the band to play:
“Voici le sabre, le sabre, le sabre,
Voici le sabre, le sabre de mon père,”