Another memorable dinner was at the home of Eli Lazard, of Lazard Frères, bankers, where we met Judge Wilson and daughters, of Cincinnati. All of these hospitalities were very pleasant, but personally I should have been glad to escape them, for the late hours, together with the rich cooking of Paris, were not in accord with my quiet habits and simple tastes in food and drink.
In Vienna I called on our consul-general, Edmund Jussen, whose wife was the sister of my esteemed friend Carl Schurz, which fact really prompted me to make the call. Jussen himself was not very admirable. He had much of the arrogance of a German official, so out of place in an American representative. However, during our sojourn in the city he and his wife exchanged several visits with us. Mrs. Jussen did not much resemble her distinguished brother, except for an expression about the eyes. She was a very amiable woman with a good face. She told me much of her brother's childhood and school years—how he had to struggle hard for his education. Their father was a small shopkeeper, but no business man, and was never able to make money. Carl did not earn money, but always applied himself diligently. This and much more that has since been published about Schurz interested me greatly, of course.
We continued our journey to Varna on the Black Sea, there to take the steamer for Constantinople. In those days there was no railway connection with Constantinople. The Oriental Express went only to Varna, by way of Bucharest. On that particular part of our journey we got our first glimpses of the picturesque costumes of the Balkan district, especially those of the men with their bare legs and flying shirts.
The trip from Varna to Constantinople was beautiful and inspiring. We boarded the boat at about four in the afternoon and retired early so as to be up by five or six next morning, when we passed through the Bosphorus, round which clusters so much of classical memory. I suddenly realized how much of my Homer I had forgotten—the Homer on whom I had spent years of hard study. However, most of us meet so many new subjects that have a more direct relation to our surroundings that it is next to impossible to get that "elegant leisure" necessary for a continued interest in the classics.
The effect of the trip through the Bosphorus is quite like a dream. The high coast on both sides is covered with green, with here and there a house or some large huts; on one side is Europe and on the other side Asia, looking very much alike, bathed by the same sunshine, peaceful.
We sailed past Buyukdereh, Therapia, the summer residence of most of the diplomats, about twelve miles from Constantinople, where the English, French, Austrian, and Russian embassies had magnificent palaces and the Germans were engaged in building; on past the lovely old towers of Roumeli-Hissar, built eight hundred years before, when first the Turks set foot in Europe, and back of this the tower of Robert College.
Suddenly my ever-smiling and happy wife spied a launch flying a large United States flag at the stern. "It's our launch!" And sure enough, when we waved our handkerchiefs we discovered the members of my official family, who had come in the legation launch to meet us. There were Pendleton King, acting chargé d'affaires; Mr. Gargiulo, dragoman; J. Lynch Pringle, consul-general; Mehmet, the cavass; and several clerks of the consulate and legation.
The cavass, by the way, is a sort of bodyguard. He walks before the minister, or rides on the box beside the driver, and serves the purpose of designating that the minister or ambassador follows. He carries two huge pistols and a sword suspended from a gold belt, and his coat, sometimes red and sometimes blue, is much bebraided and embroidered. The natives know each minister or ambassador by his cavass.
Our first impression from the windows of the Royal Hotel in Constantinople was of picturesque dirt. As Mrs. Straus said at the time, dirt not only on the hard earth roads and the people, but even on the dogs. In time, however, one is less impressed by the dirt than by the picturesqueness—the venders calling out their wares of fish, fruit, meat, vegetables, all carried on the edges of baskets covered with leaves; the water-carriers with their urns carried on yokes; and the veiled women.