“We are the only diplomatists here. We are listened to. You are merely tolerated.”
And verily he spoke a great truth.
Our big grey Embassy in Pera, with its gorgeous Montenegrin kavass, may be extremely ornamental and impressive, but nowadays of little use. The British taxpayer is paying for the glorification of Great Britain without one single farthing’s worth of benefit. The Turkish Government—clever as they are—laugh in the face of our persevering and well-meaning Ambassador. They give him, or his representative, cups of rather badly-made coffee in Tewfik’s shabby anteroom at the Sublime Porte, and put their fingers to their noses behind his back. It is not the fault of our Ambassador, or of his staff. All of them are practised diplomatists, who endeavour to their utmost to do their duty to King and Country, and to protect British interests in the East. The fault lies in the timid policy and shrinking politeness adopted by our present Government. The late lamented Lord Salisbury, or Lord Beaconsfield, would never for a moment have submitted to the open rebuffs which Great Britain daily meets with nowadays at Constantinople.
The Turk knows that Germany is behind him, and is therefore defiant. So British diplomacy is beaten every time.
Constantinople swarms with spies. If you have ever been there, and landed from a steamer, you will recollect that a crowd of unwashed porters swarm on board directly the ship is made fast. Every man of that ragged rabble is a spy. He is only allowed on board on condition that he gives information to the Custom officers ashore as to any concealment of revolvers, books, or prohibited articles. Respectable dragomans are constantly asked to assist in this, and offered monetary reward, as well as a permit to board the ship, but they refuse—and leave the espionage to the rabble.
And so it is all through the Turkish capital. Spies are everywhere—they haunt one in all the hotels, even in the much-advertised Pera Palace—and every movement of the stranger is noted. If you happen to be a German and have shown your passport in the Custom House, then you go hither and thither and do whatever you like. But if you are of any other nationality you will be suspected and haunted by all sorts and conditions of secret agents, until you kick the mud of Constantinople off your boots.
I have been more than once in the Sultan’s capital, and on each occasion, on entering it, have been seized with a fit of depression, which has only been removed when I have got my passport viséd by the British Consul-General, and also by the Turkish police, preliminary to leaving the place.
The squalor in Galata, in Stamboul, and even in aristocratic Pera, sickens one. The streets, unswept for ages, are an inch deep in slimy mud, upon which one slides and slips at every step, and the grey, wolf-like dogs, held sacred by every Turk, prowl about in hordes, each in their own quarter, living in the streets and sleeping in doorways.
Constantinople, with the most picturesque and beautiful position in all the world, is the most filthy and uncomfortable of all cities. With the exception of the Grande Rue, at Pera, there is scarcely a single decent European business street. Every thoroughfare is crowded to excess by a motley throng of Mohammedans, both European and Asiatic, and every form of costume and physiognomy, from the Tartar to the Syrian, may be seen.
The pilgrimages were leaving for Mecca while I was there, and the whole city was filled with the Faithful from every part of the great Moslem world. The bridge at Galata was daily a perfect panorama of costume as the pilgrims assembled to embark.