Robert College, on the Bosphorus
Certain incidents in connection with the foundation and early history of Robert College are quite romantic. During the Crimean war a New York merchant, Christopher Robert, was visiting Constantinople, and while crossing the Bosphorus one day in a boat to Scutari, the principal suburb on the Asiatic side, ran across a boat-load of bread which looked very much like that he was accustomed to at home. Upon inquiry he learned that the loaves came from the ovens of an American missionary school conducted by a man named Hamlin at Bebek, on the opposite side of the strait, and that they were on their way to hospitals established by Florence Nightingale for the care of the sick and wounded British soldiers. Mr. Robert, who was a keen Scotsman, was impressed with the sagacity of a missionary who would enter into an arrangement like that, and took an early opportunity of visiting the school. Dr. Hamlin explained that he obtained the contract to supply the British hospitals with bread: first, because he needed the money; second, because they needed the bread, and, third, because he had an industrial department in connection with his school and was trying to teach his students how to earn their living.
The missionary baker and the Scottish merchant soon became intimate friends, and Dr. Hamlin lost no opportunity to impress upon him the opportunities for an American college at the capital of the Ottoman Empire. As a consequence Mr. Robert gave Dr. Hamlin $30,000 to purchase a site and put up a building.
Dr. Hamlin selected the ground on which the college now stands, but the owner, Ahmed Vefik Pasha, Turkish ambassador to Paris, and a famous man in his day, declined to sell. So Dr. Hamlin had to go elsewhere, and examined twenty-two sites. As the best, he selected one above the village of Courouchesmeh, and bought it, but the Turkish notables in the vicinity protested against the erection of a Christian college in their neighbourhood, and the ground remained unoccupied until its sale a few years ago. Meantime Ahmed Vefik Pasha was in need of money, owing to the failure of the government to provide for his heavy expenses in Paris, and he accepted the offer he had refused before. A permit to build was obtained without much difficulty, but no sooner was work begun than the police stopped it, strange to say, upon the complaint of France and Russia, whose ambassadors objected to the influence of an American college on the banks of the Bosphorus.
But Dr. Hamlin was not to be deterred in his purpose and in September, 1863, with three professors and four students, began work in a room of a large house, now the residence of Mr. Heizer, the American vice-consul general, which was then used for Christian worship by members of the English and American colonies, and also by the missionaries of the American Board for a theological seminary. The college remained there for eight years while Dr. Hamlin was importuning the government for a permit to build on his own ground. He became such a nuisance that Ali Pasha exclaimed one day:
“Will this man Hamlin ever die and stop bothering me about his everlasting college?”
About that time the late Edwin D. Morgan of New York visited Constantinople and became interested in the embryonic institution. Upon his return to Washington he told Mr. Seward, then secretary of state, about the situation. The latter sent for the Turkish minister and gave him some very strong talk. The minister, being impressed with Mr. Seward’s earnestness, telegraphed the Sublime Porte to give a building permit to the American college at once, “lest it prove a thorny question.”
The thorn which he predicted, all unconscious of its own influence or the apprehension it created in the mind of the sultan, appeared in the Bosphorus a few weeks later in the form of that grand old man-of-war Hartford, with Admiral Farragut in command. The admiral was making a cruise around the world, without the slightest political or diplomatic responsibility, but the guilty conscience of the sultan needed no accuser.
Dr. Hamlin’s son Alfred, now a professor in Columbia University, New York, was so eager to see an American flagship that he persuaded his father very reluctantly to waste the time, as he then believed, to go on board; and, upon paying his respects to the admiral, he explained who he was and what he was trying to do in Constantinople, and his difficulty about getting a building permit from the Turkish government. Dr. Seropain, an Armenian physician, who understood the situation, was present at the interview, and, knowing that the admiral was to dine with the grand vizier that evening, suggested that he ask his host the simple question:
“Why do you refuse the American college permission to put up its buildings?”