Much that I shall have to say in the course of the next few chapters might be unintelligible, or at least liable to be misunderstood, if I were not to explain the circumstances under which I went to Constantinople as Correspondent of the New York Herald. My visit was, as indicated in the previous chapter, in direct connexion with the so-called “Armenian Atrocities,” and my mission was due to the shrewdness of one man, a great newspaper proprietor.

For some time past the diplomatic and consular representatives of the Powers at Constantinople had sent alarming reports to their respective Governments, and these, passing into the Press, and supplemented by harrowing accounts from the foreign newspaper correspondents in Constantinople, had fanned a flame of resentment directed against the Turks as Mohammedans. This was more particularly the case in England and the United States of America.^[2] The proprietor of the New York Herald, almost alone among newspaper magnates, had the discernment to perceive that the Armenian question was in the main a political one—in some respects similar to that of Bulgaria a generation previously—and that whatever might be the shortcomings of the Turkish Government and its local Administration, there was little or no reason for assuming that the disturbances had their source in religious fanaticism directed against the Christian as such; whilst evidence was accumulating that a vast Armenian conspiracy, nurtured in Russia and encouraged by the Nonconformist element in England, obscured the real issue, to which there were two sides. Mr. Gordon Bennett saw the chance of a journalistic “score” in giving the Turks an opportunity of making their own version of things known to the world—a chance which had been denied to them by the great English newspapers.

This was my first experience as a Special Correspondent abroad, and before starting, Mr. Gordon Bennett had given me his ideas of the duties of such as follows: “The Special Correspondent of a great newspaper possesses for the time being something of the influence of an Ambassador from one nation to another. Now, according to an axiom of Machiavelli, an Ambassador should endeavour to make himself persona grata with those to whom he is accredited, if only thereby to gain the best opportunities for obtaining every possible information and to be able to report events in a broad impartial spirit. The correspondent should give his sources wherever possible, and allow the reader to form his own opinion on the facts submitted. The views of the paper itself should be found in the editorial columns. The correspondent is to take no side, and to express no opinions of his own. In many cases it would appear that the matter sent to the papers by their correspondents in Turkey is biased against the Turks. This implies an injustice against which even a criminal on trial is protected.”

Having stated this much, I may add that it would be an error to suppose that it was expected of me to palliate or gloss over the gravity of any excesses which might have taken place, for such would only have frustrated the object in view. As a matter of fact, no foreign correspondent in Constantinople gave more unvarnished accounts than those published by the New York Herald of the terrible events which subsequently took place in the Turkish capital.

One of the salient features of Constantinople is the prevalence of idle gossip, and I had not been there many days before I became aware that my presence and its supposed purpose formed a topic of interest to people whose very existence was unknown to me. One day, entering the Club de Constantinople, near the Pera Palace Hotel, I was addressed in English by a fat, sallow-faced, beardless individual, who told me with the blandest of smiles that he had heard I had come to Constantinople to “write up the Turks,” and that I was to be paid neither more nor less than one million francs to do so. He asked me quite ingenuously whether this was indeed the case.

With such an auspicious opening it could not be a matter for surprise that before long the Herald correspondent became an object of curiosity to the large colony of “gobe-mouches” who supplied current gossip in the guise of personal news to Embassies and newspaper correspondents.

A conviction had gained ground in diplomatic circles, intensified by the Press in general, that the Turkish Government was, if not actually unwilling, at all events unable to prevent the recurrence of massacres. The agitation on the part of the Armenian Committees in the different capitals of Europe had been carried on to such purpose that there was hardly an American or English newspaper which had a good word left to say of the Turks, let alone of the Turkish Government. A horde of adventurers of various nationalities, dÉclassÉs of every sphere of life, cashiered officers among the rest, who had left their native country for its good, were eking out a precarious livelihood by providing newspaper correspondents, if not also Embassies, with backstair information. Others were in the pay of the Sultan or his chamberlains, at the same time acting as spies, watching and reporting the doings of people of note in the capital in the interests of the Palace.

Thus whenever a stray communication, signed with some pseudonym, appeared in a newspaper, it was at once assumed that it emanated from a tainted source. For such was the prejudiced state of Anglo-Saxon feeling against the Turks at this particular period—much to the delight of England’s rivals on the spot—that it was quite sufficient to be known as a philo-Turk to be credited with some kind of rascality.

My letters of introduction opened all doors to me, so that, had there been any news to get hold of, I was favourably placed to obtain it, more particularly from official Turkish sources. I was, therefore, much disappointed at the meagre information procurable, either at the Sublime Porte or at the Palace itself, since I had openly stated that my one desire was to be put in a position to get hold of important items of news, if possible earlier than my competitors, and to give the Turkish side, or version, of events as they took place. This was the only favour asked, and I was extremely surprised at the helplessness of the Turks to avail themselves of a powerful organ of publicity ready to give them fair play. Instead of meeting me in a sensible spirit, one of the first things the Turkish authorities did was to confiscate the New York Herald. Mr. Whittaker, the Times correspondent, whom I informed of what had taken place, said: “They are hopelessly dense. Tell them that if they want the truth told they must let a correspondent manage things in his own way.” But this the authorities were either disinclined to do or incapable of doing all the time I was in Constantinople. Thus almost every bit of news I obtained came to me independently of Turkish sources, and was the result of my own individual efforts. Powerlessness on the part of the official Turks to avail themselves of an influential journal anxious to show them to the world in their true colours (surrounded by enemies and slanderers as they were on all sides, in the face of a serious crisis) was confessed to me one day in pathetic terms by Mehmet Izzet Bey, one of the Sultan’s translators, in the words: “Mon cher, nous sommes un peuple taciturne; nous ne savons pas nous dÉfendre.”

I had been some weeks in Constantinople, and there was no sign of anything unusual being about to happen; nothing which would have justified me in continuing to idle away my time in that city. So I wrote to Mr. Bennett asking him to allow me to return home. But, as it soon became apparent, this was only the lull before the storm. On the afternoon of August 26, a Mr. Whittall, an English resident, volunteered to accompany me on a shopping expedition to the Bazaar in Stamboul. We took the funicular tunnel railway from Pera down to Galata, but had no sooner alighted at the latter station than we were witnesses of an extraordinary scene.

Everybody was in a state of wildest excitement. We were hustled out of the station, the iron gates of which were immediately shut, turning us, as it were, into the street, where on all sides the iron shutters of the shops were being hastily put up with a deafening din. Every door was closed against us, and we just managed to find shelter on some steps leading down into a cellar so as to survey the scene. All this happened with incredible rapidity. Simultaneously, a shrieking and gesticulating savage crowd, of the type seen unloading ships in the harbour, came along from the left, surging on towards the Galata Bridge. They were armed with what, as far as I could make out, were wooden laths, such as might have been split off from cases, or legs wrenched off tables and chairs, and were in hot pursuit of a couple of Armenians who, covered with blood, were running immediately in front of them, evidently flying for life. They passed so rapidly that it was difficult to distinguish between the pursued and the pursuers. The rattle of musketry was incessant; it played an accompaniment to the dramatic scene, and seemed to be coming from the vicinity of the Ottoman Bank, into which, as we only heard later in the day, a band of Armenian revolutionists had forced an entry, overpowered the personnel in charge, barricaded the doors, and begun throwing bombs and firing revolver shots out of the windows on to the crowd in the street.

Led by curiosity and the natural desire of a correspondent to see what was going on, we crept along, skirting the side of the houses in the direction of the firing, until we reached the corner of a narrow street leading up to the Ottoman Bank. From here we saw some Turkish soldiers standing in front of the Bank building and firing in the direction of the windows, from which came shots in return. Half-way between them and where we stood we could distinguish a number of dead bodies on the ground.

On our way up the hill, back to the hotel, we passed several more dead lying either in the road or in the side streets. Nobody came near them, as would have been the case in many European countries; no curiosity was shown: they lay prone as if death had been the result of some sudden cataclysm, or shock, which had subsided as suddenly as it came.

The pavement as well as the middle of the streets showed big patches of blood, proving that the massacres, which apparently had started among the harbour population of Galata and Stamboul, had spread to the heights of Pera. I took a walk through the Grande Rue de Pera and the adjoining thoroughfares, in which every shop was closed, but did not meet a soul. Had it not been for the dogs, which struck me as being unusually depressed, Constantinople might have been a deserted city, and this state of things lasted for several days. Such was the tension of nerves that when I returned to the hotel I found the messenger boy who had shown me the way to the telegraph office near the British Embassy, and whom I had subsequently lost sight of, in tears. He had spread the report that I had been murdered. As a matter of fact no Europeans ran any appreciable risk of harm during those days, except, perhaps, through the accident of an Armenian bomb exploding in the street in their immediate vicinity. At night a table was placed in the hall of the hotel, on which were placed a number of revolvers, so that each guest might take one up to his room, and have a weapon with which to defend himself. But for the dull thud of the bekdji’s (night watch) wooden staff striking the pavement an uncanny stillness prevailed, as of a dead city. During that night and the subsequent ones the dead were taken in carts past our hotel and hastily interred in the Armenian cemetery on the way to Tschishly.

Early next morning I went out with the correspondent of the Times. We visited the Ottoman Bank, from whence the Armenian conspirators had, only a few hours before, been taken away. Everything was in the greatest disorder. Pools of blood on the first floor and in the basement remained as evidence of what had taken place during the previous twenty-four hours. We were shown a heap of blood-stained coins. On the second floor we saw a table still littered with the remnants of the last meal of the Armenians. The staff of the Bank had escaped through the roof when the Armenians made their attack.

We thence wended our way to the Galata Bridge, upon which dense crowds had congregated, the Turkish guard being doubled at the head of the bridge, the wooden planks of which were dotted with a spray of blood spots. In the afternoon a friend took me to a house near the Galata Tower. We climbed up to the roof, from which we obtained a bird’s-eye view of the harbour, and saw a crowd rushing from all directions towards the quay—apparently on the alert to renew the outbreak.

I went up to the Palace in the afternoon and found everybody in a state of great excitement. There could be no doubt of the helplessness of the authorities in the face of the action of the mob; but great stress was laid on the provocation given by the Armenian conspirators, which nobody could have foreseen and which the Armenian Patriarch Osmanian had publicly repudiated and denounced. The Turkish officials were indignant that it should be said the movement was inspired by hatred of the Christians as such, and the Sultan’s second secretary proceeded to draw up a list for my information of the large number of Armenians who occupied some of the best paid Ministerial posts and were among the Sultan’s own staff of Court officials. The list I was assured ran to about twenty per cent. of the higher employees at Constantinople. The Keeper of the Sultan’s Civil List—Ohannes Effendi—was an Armenian, as was also the chief Censor of the Press.

Next morning I went by steamer to Buyukdere to see the Russian Ambassador, M. de Nelidow, who, through his chief dragoman, M. Maximow, had negotiated the escape of the Armenian bank-breakers. M. Maximow had gone up to the Palace, and by his language, the like of which had never been heard in the decorous precincts, frightened the Palace officials. There was some talk at the time of the British Fleet being ordered up to Constantinople, a rumour which I mentioned to the Russian Ambassador. It did not appear to please him, for he exclaimed rather excitedly: “Oh, par exemple! Nous ne rendrons jamais la clef de notre maison”—a remark the significance of which has never been absent from my thoughts from that day to this in connexion with Turkey and her future.

I then called on Abraham Pasha at his summer residence, also at Buyukdere. I had made his acquaintance a few weeks previously at the Sultan’s Palace, and had been his guest at the Cercle d’Orient. A great landowner and sportsman, as I could see the trophies in the hall of his palatial konak, he was reputed to be the wealthiest and most influential Armenian notability in Turkey, and had always been on the very best terms with Abdul Hamid. He had even had the honour of entertaining his predecessor, Abdul Aziz, at his country seat. I found him in bed, guarded by a body of armed retainers, in a state of great trepidation. “What is this? What is it all coming to? It is really too bad!” he ejaculated as I was ushered into his bedroom. As a matter of fact Armenians had been killed at Buyukdere. So great was the terror among the Armenians of position that one of the wealthiest, the banker Azarian, to whom I had brought a letter of introduction from the London house of Rothschild, closed his place of business and fled to the Prinkipo Islands. It was a novel sensation to see millionaires, thus exposed to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, being pursued like rats, and if caught knocked on the head as little better than vermin.

The most extraordinary feature of this popular rising against the Armenians, at least from an ethnological point of view, was the discrimination exercised by the mob in seeking their victims. Thus, to a stranger, it would be often difficult enough to distinguish between an Armenian and a Greek, an Italian, or a Jew, at least by the cast of his features; and among Armenians there are Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Orthodox Greek Churchmen. Yet those who belonged to the Orthodox Greek Church, and were thus supposed to be implicated in the revolutionary propaganda fomented in Russia, were sought out and hounded to death. Hardly any Roman Catholic Armenians were molested, for they were reported to have refrained from revolutionary activity. How the unlettered crowd of Kurds, Lazis, and other Turkish tribes constituting the lower classes of Galata were able to exercise such discrimination still remains a mystery to me.

In the midst of the massacres going on in broad daylight a Jewish money-changer in one of the streets of Galata was assailed by a crowd and was on the point of being felled to the ground. In his abject terror the man called out: “For God’s sake, let me go! I am not an Armenian; I am a Hebrew.” The mob, though in a frenzy of passionate excitement, desisted for a moment, and the man’s assertion proving to be true, the crowd released him. The terror-stricken wretch rushed away, leaving the contents of his stall, a mass of gold and silver coins, strewn on the pavement. Several Turks forming part of the murderous crowd pursued him, crying out: “Come back and pick up your money; we don’t want to rob you.”

It is only fair to state that the German colony stood practically alone in not succumbing to the prevailing panic. Even on the 26th of August, when, in the first hours of consternation, public offices of every other nationality were closed, the German Post Office, which is situated close to the Ottoman Bank—in the very centre of the disturbance—remained open and sent off its post-bags as usual. Bearing the German flag aloft, the officials took the sacks of letters over the Galata Bridge to the railway station in Stamboul, where the massacres were at their height. I mention this fact, even after this lapse of time, because the cool-headedness of the Germans on this occasion was one of the contributory causes which, from that time onwards, made them rise in the favour of the Sultan and the officials at the Palace at the expense of the influence of other nationalities, who, for the time being, had apparently lost all sense of proportion. This incident derives its significance not so much from the presence of mind which the Germans displayed as from the fact that it showed that they alone, among the foreign element, were conversant with the political nature of this outbreak, and refused to believe and to be influenced by its supposed religious origin. The Germans knew that as Christians or foreigners they had nothing to fear, whereas the agitation carried on in England by Canon McColl and the Duke of Westminster, backed by sundry fervent Nonconformists, had had the effect of exhibiting the fanatical Turk as thirsting for the blood of the Christian. Thus, when the crisis came, those who had allowed their minds to be dominated by these personages failed to show that calmness and self-possession which are otherwise marked characteristics of the English race when suddenly assailed by peril.

Only a few English families, such as the Whittalls, merchant princes who have lived in Smyrna and Constantinople for generations, and whose name is a household word among the Turks, did not lose their heads. They even exercised their influence to afford shelter to the Armenians whose lives were in danger.

Through a mere chance, brought about, moreover, by my ignorance of the conditions of the Press censorship prevailing at the time at Constantinople, I was enabled to secure a “score” for the New York Herald. For twenty-four hours that paper was the only one in the outside world which had the news of the Armenian attack on the Ottoman Bank and the massacres in Constantinople which were its immediate sequel. This came about as follows: Foreign newspaper correspondents in Constantinople, aware by experience of the difficulties put in their way by the censorship when forwarding news unfavourable to the authorities, were in the habit of sending their contributions by post to Philippopolis, the Bulgarian frontier town, where each of them kept a running account at the post office. From thence their communications were forwarded by telegraph to their destination; a procedure which, for newspaper purposes, involved a loss of twenty-four hours. This I was unaware of, and thus ingenuously sent my telegram direct from Constantinople to Paris, where it arrived the same evening, its contents appearing in Paris and New York the next morning, before the same item of news had even reached Philippopolis. It was afterwards stated that this priority was due to favouritism granted me as correspondent of the New York Herald; but this was not the case. It was simply an oversight on the part of the Press censor, probably due to the extraordinary excitement prevailing generally in Constantinople at the time. In proof of this, I may mention that the telegram I sent off the next day was stopped; indeed, it did not reach its destination at all, and the one I sent on the day after arrived in Paris containing the obviously exaggerated statement that twenty thousand Armenians had been massacred. Any favouritism I was credited with must in this last case have led to the publication of a piece of news very damaging to the Turks. Most of the other assertions made about that time respecting my activity as representative of the New York Herald had no better foundation in fact. The story that the Press censor had been discharged for stopping one of my telegrams was as baseless as the rest. As a matter of fact he retained his post until his death, and when I was last in Constantinople, in 1908, his son, also an Armenian, had been appointed his successor.

One day, immediately following upon the attack on the Ottoman Bank, the police discovered a large quantity of explosive bombs of different sizes in the cellar of a house in Pera, which, it was said, had been brought there with Russian connivance. Now, although the correspondents of the different European papers were invited to inspect the find, which was afterwards publicly exhibited at the Arsenal (TophanÈ), such was the general disinclination to admit any fact which could tell in favour of the great provocation the Turks had received from the Armenian revolutionists that hardly any publicity was given to this discovery of bombs.

One morning during the Armenian disturbances a card was brought to me bearing the name of his Excellency Ahmed Midhat Effendi, Vice-PrÉsident du Bureau ImpÉrial de SantÉ Publique (Sanitary Administration of the Ottoman Empire).

A tall, broad-shouldered, black-bearded man, in the prime of life, of imposing bearing and with flashing dark eyes, wearing the fez and dressed in the conventional black coat of high Turkish officials, termed Stambolin, without any decoration, gold braid, or other indication of his status, was shown in. He told me that he had come on the part of his Imperial Majesty the Sultan to place himself at my disposal, in case I should require his services, either to give me introductions, or to serve me as guide and interpreter, as he possessed a perfect command of the French language. He said the Sultan had read several of my communications to the New York Herald, and was pleased that there had come to Constantinople a correspondent who was ready and able to make allowances for the great provocation the Turkish authorities had received from the Armenian revolutionaries, and to treat Turkish affairs from an impartial standpoint.

As this gentleman will be mentioned several times in the course of these pages—for to my subsequent relations with him I am indebted for much of my insight into the Turkish character—a few words concerning him may not be out of place. The story of his early life and of his subsequent relations with Sultan Abdul Hamid is an interesting one, and calculated to throw a sympathetic light on the character of the Sovereign. Born of humble parents in the Island of Rhodes, his father was either a dealer in cloth, or, like President Andrew Johnson, a tailor; and he himself was apprenticed to the calling. Being, however, imbued with a taste for literature, Ahmed Midhat went into journalism and subsequently politics. Here he came into contact with the Young Turkish Movement of Midhat Pasha, and became implicated in the movement which led to the impeachment of that statesman in 1877. One day the Sultan sent for Ahmed Midhat, as he afterwards told me, and quite charmed him by his gracious manner, turning him from an opponent to a champion, convinced that his master’s one aim was the good of his country, so that he finally burst forth with the declaration that the Sultan could reckon on him as one of his devoted slaves. “I do not want you as a slave; I ask you to be my friend,” the Sultan replied, finally captivating the generous-minded, confiding man. Ahmed Midhat thus became an ardent and sincerely convinced adherent of the Hamidian rÉgime, and from all accounts he was one of the few who never turned their influence to unworthy ends. His position as part proprietor of the Terdjumani Hakkikat, a Turkish newspaper, secured him independence. In his spare time he turned to literature, and eventually became known and honoured throughout the Turkish Empire as a regenerator of the Turkish language. He had been to Paris, where he made the acquaintance of Victor Hugo and other literary notabilities, and several of his novels—of an almost childlike simplicity of thought—were translated into French and German. When I made his acquaintance he was the virtual head of the administration of public health, and one of the very few Turks who were given a private seal, which assured that whatever communication he might wish to make to the Sultan would immediately reach His Majesty. In spite of all these advantages Midhat was hardly ever to be met at the Palace. His private life was in harmony with his public conduct. He lived with his family in his own konak at Beikos, on the Bosphorus, not far from the Black Sea, under plain but patriarchal conditions, and there I was his guest on several occasions. He had two wives and sixteen children, six of whom were Christians he had taken into his family because they were poor and destitute and had brought up as his own. I asked him how he came to take such a course, and why he had not preferred to adopt Mohammedans. “They were my neighbours,” he said. “They were poor and had nobody to look after them, and I do not believe in proselytism. They are good and grateful; that is sufficient.”

I paid repeated visits to different Turkish mosques on the Mohammedan Sunday (our Friday). There had been statements in English newspapers referring to the Sultan’s unpopularity, and I discussed these with Ahmed Midhat. He said the suggestion that the Sultan had no following was not true, but I might easily convince myself, as there was no surer indication of the people’s feeling on this point than the popular attendance at the mosques. During the last months of Abdul Aziz’s reign the mosques had been quite deserted, for the people were disgusted with a Sultan-fainÉant—a drone who only lived for self-indulgence; whereas the present Sultan was venerated as a Sultan—“travailleur qui travaillait jour et nuit pour le bonheur de son peuple. In spite of the disastrous war of 1877, and even of these latest disturbances, the Sultan was beloved by his people.” In every case I found the mighty Aja Sophia in Stamboul crowded with worshippers; all classes mixed up promiscuously, the pasha kneeling next the Hamal, the common soldier beside the field-officer. An atmosphere of earnest devotional fervour pervaded the scene. Its sincerity was emphasized by children unconcernedly playing about the recesses of the building, and sundry old men—to all appearances beggars or cranks—moving along the aisle in and out of the kneeling crowd, unmolested. Looking up to the mosaic inlaid dome of the building, the outline of the figure of Christ was distinctly visible through the covering of whitewash, paint, or gilt which had in all probability been laid over it after the taking of Constantinople, when the Christians made their last stand in this very building.

In order to prove to me how baseless were the fables regarding the Mohammedan desecration of Christian churches, Ahmed Midhat drove me some days later to the KariÈ mosque, where the fresco figures of the saints of the Byzantine church, though somewhat dilapidated, were still plainly recognizable on the walls.

Shortly after the news had spread to Europe of the attack on the Ottoman Bank and the subsequent massacre of Armenians, a number of artists of illustrated newspapers arrived in Constantinople, commissioned to supply the demand for atrocities of the Million-headed Tyrant. Among these was the late Mr. Melton Prior, the renowned war correspondent. He was a man of a strenuous and determined temperament, one not accustomed to be the sport of circumstances, but to rise superior to them. Whether he was called upon to take part in a forced march or to face a mad Mullah, he invariably held his own and came off victorious. But in this particular case, as he confided to me, he was in an awkward predicament. The public at home had heard of nameless atrocities, and was anxious to receive pictorial representations of these. The difficulty was how to supply them with what they wanted, as the dead Armenians had been buried and no women or children had suffered hurt, and no Armenian church had been desecrated. As an old admirer of the Turks and as an honest man, he declined to invent what he had not witnessed. But others were not equally scrupulous. I subsequently saw an Italian illustrated paper containing harrowing pictures of women and children being massacred in a church.

The weeks following the outbreak of the Armenian conspiracy were of a somewhat trying nature. It was long before things regained their normal character. The clang of the closing of the iron shutters of the shops reacted on the nervous system of the inhabitants of Pera for years. Even after twelve years Turkish soldiers, who were ordered to patrol the streets of Pera after the massacres, were still to be seen in the Grande Rue de Pera at night doing the same drudgery.

In the course of my journalistic work I had occasion to visit the Gumysch Soujou Hospital, situated near the German Embassy. About forty Turkish soldiers were lying there, wounded by Armenian bombs or revolver shots during the street fighting. I wrote an article dealing with this subject and a description of the wounded, which must have been of a sympathetic character, for it was subsequently translated and reproduced in the Turkish newspapers. I was told that it had attracted the notice of the Sultan and that he would like to see me before I left Constantinople; but weeks passed by and I heard no more of the matter. It was the second week in October, and I was about to return home.

I was on the point of leaving Constantinople when a messenger from the Palace brought me word that Izzet Bey, the Sultan’s second secretary, wanted to see me at once. On arriving at the Palace he came towards me, smiling, with the words: “Sa MajestÉ vous offre un dÎner and wishes to see you before you leave Constantinople.” I returned to the hotel in order to don evening dress for the occasion, and on coming back to the Palace at about seven o’clock in the evening, I was ushered into a room in the centre of which stood a table already set for dinner, which was served and cooked in French style in contradistinction to the usual mode of the Palace. Wines of various kinds, including champagne, were handed round, presumably for my sole benefit, since the other guests only drank water. This gave the entertainment a somewhat incomplete character. After dinner Izzet Bey took me aside, and again expatiated on the great services I was supposed to have rendered to his country. “Mon cher, un milliard ne pourrait pas vous recompenser pour ce que vous avez fait pour nous,” were his words. I was then, and am still, conscious only of having acted in a fair and sympathetic spirit where others had persistently given a one-sided account of events. I replied to that effect, adding that as correspondent of the Herald I could not think of accepting any remuneration from anybody. Izzet Bey continued that the Sultan wanted to know something about my position in life, as he took an interest in me and would like me to come to Constantinople permanently and enter his service in a suitable capacity. He then asked me to follow him, as the Sultan would like to see me at once. It was about nine o’clock in the evening when we wended our way towards the one-storied villa-like white stucco structure where the Sultan habitually received visitors. We passed through a glass door into a spacious hall, in which stood groups of tall men clad in black frock-coats cut close up to the neck in Turkish fashion, and wearing fezes. These were apparently the Sultan’s body-servants. What struck me more particularly was that they wore no uniform or any insignia of office or distinctive mark, or bore any arms. Indeed, there was not a single armed or uniformed person about; a plain civilian attire was evidently de rigueur in the immediate vicinity of the Sovereign. There was something distinctly impressive in this simplicity. It suggested a striking contrast to the glittering pomp and circumstance surrounding some other monarchs. I still recall the deferential attitude of this little knot of Imperial servants towards the humble mortal who for the moment was lifted upon a pinnacle of earthly distinction by the desire of the Padishah to shake hands with him. My position reminded me of the French Ambassador who told the Russian Emperor Paul that an important personage in his empire took a great interest in a certain matter, whereupon the autocrat interrupted him sharply with the words: “There is nobody of importance in my empire except the man with whom I am now conversing, and only as long as I speak to him is he important.”

But an autocrat must not be kept waiting beyond the bare second which is required to leave one’s goloshes outside the door. This done, we passed through to the right into a brilliantly illuminated apartment, the floor of which was covered with a costly Turkish carpet; the chime of a beautiful grandfather clock heralded our arrival. The Sultan came towards me as I entered the room, shook hands, and led the way to a sofa, in front of which stood a small tabouret with coffee-cups and some cigarettes. Two gilt chairs were placed opposite the sofa, apparently for the occasion—to which he motioned us—whilst he himself sat down on the sofa and handed me a cigarette. He faced us resting both his hands on the hilt of his sword—for he was clad in the uniform of a Turkish General—with the Star of the Order of Imtiaz in brilliants suspended from his neck. I noticed then, as on subsequent occasions, that the Sultan wore a single ring. It was a large emerald. So much has been written in depreciation of this extraordinary man that I cannot resist the temptation of reiterating the impression of kindliness and sincerity which he made on me. In saying this I make all allowance for our common human weakness in crediting those of exalted station who are kind to us with every virtue, whilst viewing askance others who neglect us. But the fact remains that Abdul Hamid, without any physical advantage to speak of—rather the reverse, for the features and figure might without much imagination have been supposed to belong to a Galata money-changer—possessed an exceptional charm of manner, a simple dignity and grace of bearing, which were calculated to, and indeed did, gain the sympathies of those who were brought into contact with him. There was something in his look and in the even-toned balance of his sympathetic voice when addressing his secretary which betrayed the habit of command, the exaction of implicit, even slavish, obedience during a lifetime. It interested me to note the attitude of extreme deference of those surrounding him. Thus Izzet Bey only sat on the extreme edge of his chair with his hands crossed flat on his chest and his head bent low while the Sultan told him in Turkish what he desired should be communicated to me. The Sultan wished to thank me for the sympathetic manner in which I had written on Turkish subjects, and expressed his gratitude that for once a journalist had come to Constantinople apparently free from those prejudices against the Turks which were a source of so much trouble and annoyance to him.

Rightly or wrongly, the Sultan seemed to think that he was under a personal obligation to me which he did not deem sufficiently liquidated by the bestowal of decorative distinctions. He suggested that I should leave the New York Herald, come to Constantinople, and enter his service. He wished me to remain attached to his person in some capacity or other. I replied that I could not see my way to enter his service, as it seemed to me that he had already too many people round him who drew big salaries for doing little or nothing, and that at my time of life I had no desire to come to Constantinople and live there. I added that wherever I might happen to be I should always take pleasure in endeavouring to secure fair play for Turkey and her ruler—a promise I have since faithfully kept.

“Well then,” rejoined the Sultan, smiling good-humouredly, “if you will not enter my service, come and see me again as a friend and be my guest whenever you return to Constantinople; I shall always be glad to see you.”

Knowing that I was about to leave Constantinople and that I was personally acquainted with Prince Bismarck, His Majesty asked me to take a case of china ornaments—a pair of vases and a painted plaque—from the Imperial porcelain factory as a present from him to the Prince. The Sultan desired me to assure the Prince of his friendly regard and to tell him that he hoped he would always exercise his great influence in favour of Turkey, a country to which Moltke, his illustrious countryman, had in days gone by rendered valuable service. This commission I subsequently carried out on my way home through Germany.

When I left the Sultan and walked out into the open air, into the balmy calm of a starlit autumn evening, not a soul was to be seen. The splashing of water from a fountain which issued from a wall on the left was the only break of silence around, except the sound of our feet as they pressed the loose gravel. Nor did I meet a guard or soldier or any living soul as I passed the porter’s lodge out of the Palace. As far as I could tell there would have been nothing to prevent a determined band of half a dozen armed men from entering the Palace and kidnapping the Sultan there and then, as others had entered the Ottoman Bank, the porters of which, in their picturesque Albanian costume, were armed to the teeth.

I left Constantinople the next day, the 12th of October.