You come across a queer medley of races, languages, and nationalities in the narrow streets of Pera, somewhat trying to the nerves in its promiscuous incongruity. Almost with a shock you see the name of Pericles over a grocer’s shop, Demosthenes over that of a tailor or a barber, and Socrates or Euripides staring you in the face as the name of a bootmaker. Enter a cafÉ or brasserie and you find Germans, Austrians, French, Greeks, Italians, and Armenians at one and the same table playing dominoes or tric-trac. One of such a group, to whom I had mentioned that I should go mad if I lived for long in such kaleidoscopic surroundings, retorted: “We are accustomed to it here. Indeed, I should feel depressed unless I could express myself in half a dozen languages before I went to bed. When I get home to-night, I shall converse in Hungarian with my father-in-law, in German with my wife, in Greek with my children, and in English with their governess. And I shall probably wind up by addressing my servants in Roumanian or Turkish.”

I have known a Levantine civil pasha married to an Austrian lady whose three-year-old son would prattle in English, German, Greek, and Turkish. Nor am I quite sure that this list of the prodigy’s accomplishments is complete. Such polyglot proficiency as is to be met with among the Levantine element is calculated to impress the monolingual Anglo-Saxon; but in the long run it is not without its drawbacks. Never was the saying, “Qui trop embrasse mal Étreint,” more applicable than here. Listening to superficial, aimless small talk, defectively conveyed in half a dozen different languages, is apt at last to irritate even the most hardened and indulgent listener. For it goes without saying that these are spoken indifferently, and when put to paper written ungrammatically. According to Continental standards of mental culture, the level of the Levantine is not a high one. The artisan class in this as in other respects are, I should say, decidedly superior to their social betters, and lead a healthier life generally. You may meet individual cases of excellent musicians in Pera society; but the gramophone, not to say the French horn, and third-rate French music-hall entertainments more correctly indicate the average taste of the community. I found it impossible to obtain the songs of Schumann or Franz, and only a poor selection of the works of other great composers was to be had in any of the music-shops of Pera. Whatever taste for belles-lettres may exist partakes of a second-rate French order. The lack of a definite nationality acts unfavourably in the direction of the cultivation of intellectual pursuits, with the possible exception of the Greek colony, which maintains a touch with the literature of ancient Hellas. This defect also shows itself in the nondescript character of the cookery at the principal hotels and restaurants, as already stated.

A strange and wondrous world this, and, what is equally remarkable, a free-and-easy one into the bargain. To all appearances it is Liberty Hall right round the compass. More particularly does this apply to the stranger within the gates. And all are strangers here who by their pseudo-nationality can claim to come under the privileges of the Capitulations which the Sultans, even in the plenitude of their power, tolerantly allowed to continue in force. Strangers pay no taxes either as individuals or as house-owners. It was only quite recently, and with the greatest difficulty, that the Turkish Government succeeded in making foreigners pay a small stamp duty for receipts on bills, etc. There is full liberty to revile the authorities as much as you please, and even now and then to introduce bombs and explosives with the connivance of a certain Great Power. No wonder that the late Sultan was driven in self-defence to keep a huge staff of professional spies in his service.

Nevertheless, there are no police to be seen, and no regulations in force when to close or when to open your business, whatever its nature. If you sit in a cafÉ or a brasserie, there is really no valid reason why you should ever get up, unless to go to the hospital, of which there are any number—to die! No boards are to be seen informing you that you will be prosecuted in case of trespass, no walls (except those round the Imperial Palace) to shut out the sight of the beautiful country, which apparently belongs to all alike. Indeed, there seems no reason why the mule-driver with his load of bricks should not unload where he stands and begin to erect a palazzo of his own on the spot, for the land would appear to belong to anybody, to judge by the absence of enclosures. There is also liberty to cheat to your heart’s desire and go bankrupt ad libitum. An English financier who had lived in Constantinople for years once told me that the one thing he regretted on leaving the city was the sense of unlimited personal freedom he had enjoyed there.

I used to stroll through narrow streets into which the sun never enters, though in the summer months it may burn the roofs of the houses. You hear loud shouting across the road from an obscure beer-house, and fancy the place is on fire; which would be no joke in such exiguous surroundings. But it is only a few Germans with beaming faces shouting “Hoch! Hoch! Hurrah!” unable to restrain their delight over the excellent beer Herr Kusch provides for his customers and anxious to give an expression to their unbroken fidelity to the German Emperor. Further up the street, peering through a small damp window, you can see a middle-aged man sitting by a lamp writing a letter. He is a grandfather, but in Constantinople this need not clip the wings of amorous fancy. He is writing a passionate letter to an English girl. He has only seen her a couple of times in his life, and will probably never see her again, for she has gone away to Egypt. But he wants to tell her that she is a “houri”—the ideal of his dreams. It can only be in Constantinople that old men indulge in such fancies, and it is wondrous strange how they are received and reciprocated at times. In a beautifully appointed konak on the hill there dwells a haughty beauty, one of the loveliest women in the Empire. She sails into the room and tosses her empty little thoroughbred head in lofty disdain as she passes her Greek servant. But he does not lower his gaze. On the contrary, the flash of his dark eyes betrays that he has no need to do so. There is no impassable gulf here between high and low born, no helot-bred menial race marked with an abject inferiority, physical, mental, and moral, by the ruthless inbreeding of generations. Beneath an outward veneer of self-control there is a deal of the unbridled, unbroken master man of the Middle Ages left in this population. The slums of Constantinople have before now sent forth lovers for queens and wives for emperors. The Greek valet has the same pride in his veins as the more highly placed, for people in his humble station of life, men and women alike, still possess that sense of unsubdued personality the loss of which is one of the dark shadows which cloud our more “civilized” communities. There may be little education or character here in the conventional sense, and not overmuch reliability perhaps in any sense, but there is plenty of unrestrained human nature. This it is which the high-born lady pines and sighs for, and when she leaves Constantinople she will take her Greek servant with her, to while away the time for her and enliven the dreary surroundings of her aristocratic home, for she has grown to loathe the sight of her uninteresting money-grabbing husband with his sordid interests.

Each nationality, except such as belong to the artisan class, keeps more or less to itself in the Turkish capital and has its separate cliques. The English merchant class long resident in Turkey make an exception in associating and occasionally intermingling with the better Greek families. This exclusiveness is partly a result of the insurmountable barrier of language, so that Europeans may live in Constantinople for years without coming into contact with a Turk above the status of an arabadji. My friend Hugo Avellis was an exception to this rule. Few Europeans had mixed more with other nationalities, more especially with Turks of every class, in the course of a residence of thirty years in Constantinople. What he did not know about Constantinople, the habits, customs, and ways of thinking of its inhabitants, was not worth knowing. Many are the pleasant hours I used to spend listening to his stories and gaining information from him on subjects which were far more interesting to me than the dancing or howling dervishes, the gossip of drawing-rooms in Pera, or the intrigues of the Palace or the Embassies.

A German by birth, educated at one of the excellent Berlin classic gymnasia, Avellis, like many of his countrymen, had already become acclimatized in the land of his adoption. He retained, however, an inborn instinct for thoroughness in his vocation, and with this a strong love of literature, mingled with a thoroughly German idealism in its sanest and best acceptation. German thus by thoroughness and intellectual interests, he had become almost a Turk in his humane recognition and love of his fellow-men. “Bravo!” he would impulsively exclaim on hearing of a generous action.

“If you would judge of the fibre of a man,” says a French aphorist, “inquire of his dentist.” This dictum applies equally to the doctor or surgeon; and my friend’s experiences as a member of the Red Cross during the Russo-Turkish campaign gave him rare opportunities for observing the Turk there, where he is seen at his best: in his silence, in his capacity for patient suffering and self-denial. Avellis was present at the siege of Plevna. He saw the harrowing scenes depicted by the brush of Vereschagin, and witnessed the surrender of Ghazi Osman to the Russians. He came to Constantinople after the war, where his business as maker of surgical instruments, together with the practical experience of surgery gained in the field hospitals during the war, brought him from time to time into contact with all classes of the community, from Imperial Princes and Grand Viziers, the present Sultan included, down to the humble water-carrier. Even the mysteries of the harem are not quite hidden from those of his calling. The high-class Turks value a fellow-man independently of his station in life, and often honour him with their confidence, though his social status be far beneath their own. The “medicine man” in particular has often played a great part in Eastern intrigue. Dr. Mavrogeni, the Sultan’s physician in the seventies, was not without political influence. He intrigued against the German Ambassador, Count Hatzfeldt, and fell into disgrace in consequence.

Avellis spoke Turkish fluently, though unable to read its written characters. He was a good Latin scholar, and was familiar with both ancient and modern Greek. With the devotion of a Hellenist he loved to quote Homer in both versions. He also spoke French, Russian, English, Roumanian, and Hungarian, his wife being a native of Hungary. With such opportunities and accomplishments he became a rare judge of the Turk and a reliable guide to the intricacies of Oriental life. I see him still in the Passage Oriental, abutting on the Grande Rue de Pera, in his little shop, over the doorway of which a large signboard announced that he was “By Special Appointment Purveyor of Surgical Instruments to his Imperial Majesty the Sultan.”

Quite a queer and characteristic nook of Constantinople is this Passage Oriental, in which from early morn is heard the cry of the huckster, the zazavatij, selling vegetables, and, in the autumn, luscious grapes and oranges; the fishmonger extolling his red mullet, mackerel, turbot, and swordfish. Opposite Avellis’ shop was a branch of the French post office, on the top floor of which a French dressmaker plied her trade and flirted with the Greek tailor and also with the Greek barber, both of whom had their establishments a few doors off. Nor must I forget the French book-shop, to which came the Perote lady to buy the latest French novels on the sly.

I follow Avellis upstairs into his old-fashioned, musty consulting-room, his sanctum—whither his patients of both sexes (veiled Turkish ladies with the rest) came to consult “Monsieur le Docteur”—with its mysterious bottles in which sundry medical viscera were preserved in spirits of wine, its cases of stuffed birds, and its aquarium. Two photographs of an Albanian peasant hung on the wall, one showing him deprived of his upper lip, the other with artificial nose and moustache supplied by Avellis by order of the Sultan, who subsequently took this man and many others into his service in the Palace after they had been mutilated by Christian Montenegrins in the great struggle of 1876.

When driving or walking through the city on a Sunday afternoon with Avellis, it used to surprise me to see the number of people who returned his greeting. Among them were some of the highest personages in the land, and their marked cordiality was in striking contrast to the treatment usually meted out in Europe to those of an inferior class.

Sauntering along the Grande Rue de Pera with him one Sunday afternoon, we were passed by a State carriage, drawn by two magnificent black horses, with that rich gilt harness peculiar to the Imperial family. It contained the present Sultan of Turkey, at that time, by force of circumstances, a do-nothing Prince under strict police and Palace spy surveillance, but by no means an indoor prisoner, as was currently reported. Avellis knew the Prince well, and gave me an interesting account of his sadness, his all-absorbing care and anxiety regarding the future of his country, his kind-hearted benevolence, and his unassuming simplicity of manner and character. Carried away by his admiration for the man, Avellis demonstratively took off his hat as the Prince drove past, who returned the unusual attention with evident satisfaction, though both actions were almost sure to have been noticed by spies and reported to the Palace: a proceeding which might well result in Avellis receiving a broad hint that a “Purveyor of Surgical Instruments to his Imperial Majesty the Sultan” must be more careful in future in the choosing of his friends.

It is true that all these people might have been brought into contact with Avellis through business; but it was not only business. “C’est un brave homme,” say Turks and Rajahs alike. This in itself is sufficient to secure for a man the respect and goodwill of his fellow-citizens, even though he may not have five pounds in the world to call his own. And here it is only fair to mention that the Christian and Jewish population in Constantinople join with Mohammedans in paying respect to personal character. I have seen a crowd of hundreds of people—more than would be likely with us to be present at the funeral of many a man of worth and learning—follow one to his last resting-place, although during his lifetime all that could have been said of him was, “C’est un brave homme.”