I remember more than once being at the Palace rather late in the evening. Everybody had gone home long since. A few servants, wearing fezes and dressed in the black stambolin frock-coat, stood silently in the hall which adjoined the Imperial apartment. Otherwise not a soul, much less an armed man, was to be seen until you passed the sentry at the gate of exit. Nor, indeed, was a sound to be heard on the beautiful moonlight night, except the splashing of the water of the marble fountain, which issued from one of the side walls of the unpretentious one-storied wing. The Sultan was within, hard at work with his secretary in a suite of apartments opposite those of Ghazi Osman. A stranger might have remained there unmolested, as I did in front of the Sultan’s room, without a soldier to be seen, or a policeman to call upon him to “move on.”
It will always remain a strange feature connected with the dethronement of the Sultan that it came on a sudden, quite unexpected even by those who ought to have been in a position to form a correct estimate of what was going on. As a matter of fact the Sultan’s authority was being undermined some time before the catastrophe really took place. He no longer ventured as of yore to act in direct opposition to the advice of his Ministers by granting valuable concessions to his favourites. The pressure of foreign Ambassadors, notably Baron Marschall von Bieberstein, also became more embarrassing.
About this time the Turkish Ambassador at Madrid, Izzet Fuad Pasha, a grandson of the renowned Grand Vizier Fuad, published a book severely criticizing the conduct of Turkish affairs as embodying so many lost opportunities. He was recalled to Constantinople, put under surveillance in the Pera Palace Hotel, and forbidden to leave it even for an airing. Crowds of spies surrounded the hotel by day and by night. Of even greater significance were the doings of Fehim Pasha and his arraignment and disgrace, of which more later. The contradiction between the Sultan’s supposed diplomatic astuteness and the short-sightedness which appears to have marked his measures in meeting the forces which were destined to overthrow him has not yet found an explanation.
The personal appearance of the Sultan has been described by many writers, for no monarch in the world was seen so regularly in public as he. Anybody who wished to see him had only to walk up to the Imperial Palace, the Yildiz Kiosk (“Tent of the Stars”), on a Friday morning, and he was absolutely certain of seeing His Majesty as he drove in an open victoria, with Ghazi Osman sitting opposite him, out of the Palace gates to the Hamidiè Mosque to prayer, and half an hour later, on his way back, when he himself handled the ribbons. It is quite true that the road was double-lined with soldiers, but that in no way prevented the spectator from taking stock at his leisure of the Sultan and all his courtly surroundings. Then, again, a number of rooms adjoining the Palace, overlooking the whole pageant of the Selamlik, were placed by the Sultan at the disposal of foreign visitors and the better classes of Constantinople every Friday, and it used to be—until the last few years, as explained elsewhere—the easiest thing in the world for anybody with a decent coat to his back to obtain a card of admission, and thus, for the short period of one forenoon, to become de facto a guest of the Sultan. During the interval, whilst the Sultan was in the Mosque, excellent tea and sometimes, on exceptional occasions, even sweets and cigarettes were handed round to the visitors, whilst bags of bonbons were distributed among the crowd in the road on Mohammed’s birthday; a list of those present was also regularly handed to the Sultan, who perused it, and if any name was familiar to him, he would send his personal greeting to the visitor in question. Thus the privilege of witnessing the ceremony of the Selamlik from the rooms set apart for the purpose was one involving the acceptance of His Majesty’s hospitality. There every Turk appeared dressed in his best, wearing his decorations. This was not always realized by visitors of the English-speaking world, some of whom I have seen in flannel shirts, dirty shoes, and knickerbockers mingling, with complete self-possession, among diplomatists and others belonging to good society, who were carefully attired for the occasion.
The favourable impression which the Sultan is universally admitted to have produced on those who were privileged to come into contact with him was doubtless due to that charm of manner, that quiet dignity which is more or less characteristic of all well-bred Turks. But in his case it was supplemented by a kindly smile and an unusually sympathetic voice, the tones of which conveyed a pleasant impression even to the stranger who was unable to understand what His Majesty had said until it had been translated by the interpreter. The Sultan usually gave audiences on Friday after the ceremony of the Selamlik, when he wore a Turkish general’s uniform with the star of the Imtiaz Order in brilliants hung from his neck. As he sat in front of you, his hands resting on the hilt of his sword before him, and spoke to Munir Pasha in his quiet, dignified way, you could not resist the impression of a picturesque dignity. I have also seen him attired in a black frock-coat, cut in Turkish fashion, which just hid a white waistcoat with a gold watch-chain, scarcely differing in appearance from one of his secretaries or the other officials. The only other jewellery was a plain gold ring on the little finger of the right hand with a fair-sized cut ruby, or polished en cabochon. He received his visitors standing. It was customary to sit in the presence of the Sultan after being requested to do so; but the native-born Turk sat only on the very edge of the little gilt chair, and folded his arms across his chest, waiting for the Sultan to address him, and then muttered in reply, while bending low, and touching chest, lips, and forehead with the right hand: “Firman Effendemizen” (“Master, thy word is law”).
Many might find it difficult to account for the personal popularity of Abdul Hamid in face of the disasters which marked his reign, such as the Russo-Turkish war and the several Armenian risings. The explanation is to be found in the fact that Abdul Hamid represented the ideals of a ruler in the hearts of his people far more than any Sultan since Mahmud II, who ordered the extermination of the Janissaries. How far he deserved this attachment can be estimated only by making due allowance for the retentive memory of the Turks and their traditional attachment to their race and the tenets of their religion. It is impossible to do justice to Abdul Hamid without realizing to what a depth Turkey had sunk under Abdul Aziz. A knowledge of these facts alone enables us to appreciate the reforms which Abdul Hamid introduced, and for which he obtained credit from his subjects, but none at all from the outer world.
Even allowing for these things and the influence which they exercised upon the minds of the Turkish people, it would be difficult to understand how the Sultan maintained despotic sway for thirty years were it not for the realization that the Mohammedan has a different outlook upon the world from that of the other peoples of Europe. Reverence for the past, fidelity to his faith, deep attachment to the traditions of race and creed—these unfashionable virtues are instinctive with him. Abdul Hamid’s strength lay in this, that he represented in his own person, at least for a time, the ways of thinking of his people: that his ways were in essence theirs. In this connexion my thoughts ever and again revert to the scene of the Selamlik, when I saw Ghazi Osman Pasha sitting opposite the Sultan in his carriage. Nowhere in the Christian world can I call to mind such an inspiring picture as this of the white-headed old man being demonstratively honoured in public by his Sovereign and revered by the people, although his name will always be identified with one of the greatest catastrophes that ever overtook the Turkish arms in Europe. And yet in the eyes of his master there was no disgrace, only honour, for one who typified in himself all the virtues that belong to Islam. How can one help contrasting the treatment the Turks and their ruler meted out to their defeated champion with that which the ever ungrateful house of Habsburg bestowed upon that gallant soldier Field-Marshal Benedek, the unfortunate Austrian commander at the battle of Sadowa—all his former services, his splendid record in Italy in 1848–49, when the Archduke Albrecht presented him with the sword of his father the Archduke Charles, the victor of Aspern, his prowess in Hungary, his distinguished conduct at the battle of Solferino in the Franco-Italian war of 1859, all wiped out of memory, and he himself disgraced and sent to die of a broken heart in the obscure little town of Gratz.
Blow, blow, thou Winter wind!
Thou art not so unkind
As man’s ingratitude.