“To have been an Ambassador at Constantinople,” one of the most distinguished of them once said to me, “is to have been somebody, at least for once in a lifetime. Compared with an Ambassador here, even an Imperial Chancellor, who is continually badgered and bullied by Press and Parliament, is almost a nobody,” he added with a self-satisfied smile. The diplomatic light who expressed himself thus was also quite frank in his estimation of the world in which he moved. Potentates he regarded as merely kings on a chess-board, to be separated from their protecting pieces, and, if of opposing colour, to be hustled, circumvented, and checkmated. He declared that he had become satiated with, and quite indifferent to, decorative distinctions. These had been showered upon him in such profusion that he now only prized those studded with brilliants, “avec de grosses pierres,” such as Gortschakoff asked for from Bismarck.
The facilities for telegraphic and postal communication between the different Embassies at Constantinople and their Governments at home have hitherto not been of that perfect kind which reduces an Ambassador in some other countries to the status of a cipher at the end of a wire. Therefore, a wider field was open for personal initiative on the part of an Ambassador there than elsewhere. The complex personality of Abdul Hamid, round whom everything revolved, also afforded until quite recently exceptional scope to the abilities of an Ambassador, and lent great importance to the dragoman service, i.e. the man who holds the responsible post of official interpreter to an Embassy. His rôle demanded varied linguistic accomplishments, tact, and a liberal course of diplomatic education. Among the chief dragomans of the Embassies of the Great Powers were to be found some of the ablest, most astute and cultivated of men, particularly Levantines of Italian or Greek origin. The dragomans form so conspicuous a feature of diplomatic life at Constantinople that the Turks declare the souls of those who have passed away in the course of time flit on the waters of the Bosphorus in the bodies of the flocks of birds so often seen skimming the blue waters at sunset.
Like Bucharest—another preparatory school of budding Ambassadors—Constantinople has long been a seminary, a high school for diplomatists of every country. Here it is that uncouth youths, taken raw from the Foreign Office, their hands everlastingly thrust in their pockets, a pipe in their mouth, with slouching gait and pitiable embarrassment, on entering the room of their official superiors come gradually to discard their angularities and are taught to behave themselves in accord with cosmopolitan usage. They are put through their paces, and finally learn to roar in true leonine fashion in the name of their country.
The gaucheries of the young diplomatists might be a theme for ridicule, but I refrain. On one important matter, nevertheless, a word may be said. It would be well if the British Ambassadorial staff were to abandon that hauteur which some of its members are apt to display towards those of their countrymen who visit Constantinople charged with important commercial interests. It is not necessary that a British Ambassador should imitate the policy of those who use their diplomatic position to champion the commercial interests of their country at the expense of higher trusts and higher standards; but it is advisable to avoid the other extreme of ignoring everything and ostentatiously snubbing everybody connected with commerce as beneath the dignity of diplomacy. Yet this has repeatedly been the line of conduct, as it has been that of inclination. For it was only in 1908 that our Embassy first took official notice of the British Chamber of Commerce at Constantinople and sent a representative to attend its sittings, who probably thought he was demeaning himself in being called upon to do so. This aloofness towards trade interests and their representatives is all the more inexplicable as many of these young men come of families which owe their worldly position to trade, either as bankers, brewers, meat contractors, or even less reputable connexions. Both the Anglo-Saxon and the Teuton take on a most necessary coat of social polish in Constantinople by rubbing against the more subtle and elusive elements of the Levant, the more graceful-mannered Italian or Spaniard and the well-bred Turk, from the “Excellency” down to the caikdji (boatman) of the Bosphorus. “Texas Jack” can go to school here, did go to school, and so profited by tuition received that on his return home he could not reconcile himself to the every-day rough-and-tumble uncouthness of Yankee-land. He had been favourably impressed by the Turks, and they liked him in return, for there was a touch of genuine unspoilt human nature about the man. One winter the Sultan sent and begged his acceptance of a fur coat to keep the cold out. Thereupon a howl went up in the American Press; accusations of graft, bribery, and corruption—not in New York, but in Constantinople! Altogether it may be said that the diplomatists the United States sends to Turkey, even if they may have been somewhat ignorant of diplomacy as a profession, are invariably men of sterling worth and value in themselves, not chosen on account of their family connexions or financial resources. And this is a matter of importance inasmuch as things are apt to vary according to the character of the representative of a country. The well-bred gentleman would naturally inculcate that urbanity of manner and that cultivation of heart and mind which, far more than any other accomplishments, form the true charm of the élite of European society. The Ambassador less happily constituted can hardly fail to leave his mark on his subordinates in a corresponding degree.
A peculiar type of Ambassador is he who arrives on the scene unduly advanced in life, “un peu gaga, ramolli,” whose mechanical style of address and response acts like a yawn on his surroundings. There is again the Ambassador who has been sent to Constantinople in order to be got decently out of the way from his own country. He is known to be in the wake of business, and spites the diplomatic world by giving no entertainment beyond a cup of tea, thus saving a good proportion of his salary, but thereby inculcating the habit of economy among a class only too readily given to spend money. It was said of one such that he “stole like a raven,” and had become a millionaire since he came to Constantinople. He managed to keep on excellent terms with the wily representative of another great country, and more particularly with certain journalists who might easily have exposed his menées. One of his exploits was to join the representative of another Power in bullying the Sultan and ultimately blackmailing the Turks shamefully, who thus had good reason to hurl their maledictions at his head when he departed.
A pitiable figure of the diplomatic world is the poor Ambassador: one whose private income is unequal to the calls upon his position and whose life is besides bankrupt in happiness. He sits alone in glittering dejection in his beautiful palace, with no money to entertain and no wife to comfort him and cheer his solitude.
Diplomatic Constantinople is exceptional in that an Ambassador and his staff live out of social contact with the nation to which they are accredited, and are thus thrown much more on their own resources—those of their immediate circle and nationality—than anywhere else in Europe. The Embassies form a social centre for those who come under their influence such as is not readily met with elsewhere in European society. I need only mention, as far as England is concerned, the brilliant names of the past, the many references to be found in diplomatic memoirs to such men as Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, Sir Henry Layard, Lord Dufferin, Sir William White, and last, but not least, the late Sir Nicholas O’Conor, all of whom exercised a beneficial influence over those who passed their time of diplomatic apprenticeship under them. Hence the rôle of an Ambassador at Constantinople—and partly that of an Ambassadress as well—is of an educational nature. Many a young attaché has found in the wife of his chief a motherly and sympathetic confidante whose counsel has kept him out of mischief in this dangerous centre of temptation. For the family life of the English diplomatic world in Constantinople has long been an exemplary one: one to look up to. English diplomacy can boast of having always preserved personal integrity, an aloofness from every species of sordid and illegitimate transaction and from all concession-mongering and cadging for favours of any and every description in the Turkish capital. The English Ambassadorial staff has left such dealings severely alone, a course of conduct which has redounded to England’s honour in the past; and as it has always been highly appreciated by the best class of Turks, even in the worst days of England’s unpopularity at the Palace, it can scarcely fail to redound to her permanent advantage in her dealings with Turkey in the future. For here we have an ideal of conduct worthy of a great nation.
Turkish diplomatists have always been picturesque figures in European society even when their salaries were in arrear; but when they return to Constantinople they are to be pitied. Many of them have been spoiled by their experience in other lands. A few years in the social whirl of Paris, Vienna, Berlin, or London does not improve them: the Mohammedans in particular are apt to acquire undesirable habits and modes of thought. They become imbued with the worldly cunning, the artificiality and insincerity of European fashionable life, with the extravagant homage Europeans pay to social position, so different from the patriarchal instincts of home, and they are consequently disenchanted when they return to Constantinople to find that they are nobodies, mere hangers-on at the Palace, perhaps destined to spend years as suppliants for work. Without private means, accustomed to spend money like water, these officials are in a hopeless plight. Society in London and Paris has deadened every unspoilt interest and ideal. They have become sceptics and cynics. I met one who was the son of a Minister, said to be one of the most notorious personages in Turkey. He quoted Renan and La Rochefoucauld, and would tell you that vanity and egotism are the driving forces of every human action. Such a man finds his countrymen stupid, not “up-to-date.” He believes Turkey to be rotten to the core, and if you tell him that you are a philo-Turk he will take you for a rogue who is in the pay of the Palace. Has the Sultan “received” you or not? That is all that interests him about you. And if you ask him what he does to earn a living, he will be quite surprised. He is military attaché of the Ottoman Embassy at X. “Yes, but what are you doing here?” “Oh, I’m on leave.” “Yes, but surely not permanently?” “Well, for a year or two.”
The lack of a distinctive, dominant national feature which marks intellectual or social life generally at Constantinople extends to the cuisine. There are not half a dozen establishments in the whole city in which the Western European can obtain a meal that in any way satisfies a discriminating palate. Even at the Club de Constantinople the cooking has the irritating, kaleidoscopic, nondescript character of its members; it is of every and of no nationality. It is only at the Cercle d’Orient, the club of the diplomatic world, and at the Embassies that the cuisine has that Parisian foundation to which the epicure can look forward with pleasure. Under such circumstances it is a great treat to be invited by one of the “gros bonnets” of the diplomatic world whose dinners enjoy a well-deserved popularity. It was on such an occasion that, carried away by the excellence of the fare, I ventured to express myself to his Excellency to the following effect. I had noticed that there was not a single member of his Ambassadorial staff who had not been decorated by the Sultan, so I suggested that he might perhaps prevail upon His Majesty to bestow a decoration upon his cook, whose culinary feats appeared to me to constitute an appreciable auxiliary force telling in the scale of his Excellency’s many diplomatic triumphs.
Not overwork, but over-eating, late hours, and no exercise constitute the real handicap to longevity in the diplomatic world in Constantinople, for Ambassadorial dinners and dinner-giving go on all the year round, each Embassy in turn inviting the others: “cutlet against cutlet.” This means sitting up late. It is almost impossible for the heads of the different Embassies, who are supposed never to take a walk abroad except when preceded by dragomans and kavasses, to indulge in a quiet daily “constitutional” either on foot or on horseback. Such a mode of living requires a tough constitution, and it is not surprising to find that an Ambassador at Constantinople rarely attains a great age.