Chapter EIGHT

What the Sultan of Turkey Told Me--His Distrust of the
Kaiser--The Ladies of the Imperial Harem--The Truth About
the Armenian Massacres--Their Authors Executed by Order
of the Sultan--How Noury Pasha’s Girls Escaped from the
Harem--A Chat with the Grand Vizier--His Fears--Professor
Vambery and the Sultan’s Carpets--A Day with the Prince of
Monaco on Board his Yacht--The Prince of Johore’s “Rags” at
Oxford--Painting the City “Red.”

Europe, and especially Great Britain, has never properly understood the Turk. She does not to-day.

Through the good offices of Tewfik Pasha, Grand Vizier of Turkey, and who is still my old and valued friend, I was granted an audience by the Sultan Abdul-Hamid--or “Abdul the Damned,” as he was popularly called in England--only a few weeks before the Young Turk Party arose in Constantinople and kicked out of Turkey his hooked-nosed Majesty bag and baggage, together with eighty-three ladies of the harem and two hundred and forty-four female slaves.

I had known Tewfik Pasha as Turkish Ambassador to Berlin, but on the first occasion I visited him in Constantinople, I received a rude shock. In a ramshackle cab I drove from the Pera Palace Hotel, through the dog-infested streets, to the Sublime Porte, as the Government Offices are called. Having passed the sentries, I found myself before a long, low, tumble-down building, the woodwork of which had not been painted for years; a shabby, neglected place with windows--some of them broken--that had not been cleaned for ages. Entering, a messenger in a worn-out frock-coat and a greasy fez greeted me, and ushered me along an endless corridor, up a flight of stairs, and along still another corridor, the flooring of which was so worn and rickety that through the cracks of the flooring one could see into the corridor below. At last he ushered me into a small, shabby room at the end, where there instantly appeared a servant bearing the usual cup of coffee and cigarette.

Then I signed the visitors’ book, and in it saw the signatures of all the diplomatic corps in Constantinople. Suddenly the Russian Ambassador entered briskly, and, with a cheery “_Bon jour, monsieur_,” also signed the book.

A moment later the secretary came, and, presenting to him His Excellency’s regrets, explained that he had already an appointment with me, and asked if he could call later. The representative of the Tzar said he would call on the following morning, and I was then ushered into the Grand Vizier’s private room, where there rose to meet me the most powerful man in the Ottoman Empire--as even he remains to-day. A quiet-mannered, quiet-spoken, grey-bearded old gentleman, with kindly eyes and fatherly manner, he is entirely the opposite of what one would expect of the “terrible Turk.”

In his frock-coat and well-ironed fez, he greeted me warmly.

With him stood my friend, Noury Pasha, a fair-bearded, slim man, much younger, who was _Secrétaire-Général_.

I had been in Constantinople once before, and have been there many times since, mostly on confidential matters, and, indeed, the reason of my presence there that day was that I was on a journey of inquiry.

We discussed politics for a couple of hours, and it was plain that His Excellency was greatly perturbed by the sudden rise of the Young Turk Party, for he showed me a copy of a manifesto issued by the “Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress.”

“This it was intended to issue broadcast,” he said. “But fortunately the police got wind of it and have seized the printing press and arrested fifteen of those who were responsible for its printing. I have ordered all copies to be destroyed except this one, so that it may not alarm the public. I have withheld its discovery from the Sultan. If he knew of it he would be furious, and woe betide the men under arrest. Read it!”

I took the small poster in my hand and read in French, as there was a translation with the Turkish:

“During the thirty years of his reign Abdul-Hamid has
brought ruin on the land; one half of our patrimony he has
delivered to the enemy (Germany); he has destroyed our Fleet;
disorganized our Army; he has reduced the people to misery; he
has annihilated our Government system, and has left nothing
to the civil organization of the civilization of the past.
He has concentrated the whole Government into his own hands,
and has dismissed all his tried and experienced Ministers,
transferring the reins of office to self-seekers and traitors
willing to become his tools.”

The manifesto, continuing, urged that the despotic régime must end, and prophesying that if it did not the enemies of the country would again provoke disorders, in the hope that they would bring about foreign intervention. It concluded with a firm demand that all should unite “to depose the Sultan and make a clean sweep of the rotten and traitorous Government.”

“Yes,” I said, as I handed it back to him, “it is certainly calculated to inflame public opinion.”

“It is,” declared His Excellency vehemently, “and, between ourselves, we are very uneasy about it.”

He had cause to be. Indeed, the incident is, I have thought, worth recording in these pages because it was the first time that the Turkish Revolutionary Party had been taken seriously, and I had been let into the secret--one that I did not fail to transmit as soon as possible to the proper quarter in London.

That night I dined with Noury Pasha at his pretty house, together with his son. The Secretary-General of the Sublime Porte had held the post for eighteen years, and to him was due Turkey’s constant and clever juggling with the Powers. He pitted his wits against those of the greatest European statesmen, and usually won. He held the distinction of having had bestowed on him more foreign decorations than any living man, and the late Lord Dufferin, in referring to him one day when we were discussing him, called him “The Ironmonger,” on account of the stars and crosses with which his breast was decorated.

In the diplomatic circle there was a legend that if he had to wear all his stars he would have to pin some of them on his back. As it was, he always wore his medals--about ten of them--suspended from a bar high on his left shoulder.

Nevertheless, he was a most charming man, and a delightful companion, who was ever a good friend of mine--and of Great Britain--throughout a number of years.

In the cosy room on the ground floor of his artistic home where we dined he removed his fez, an action done only towards an intimate friend, and as we chatted I saw the many signed photographs of all the great statesmen of Europe.

As one of the cleverest men in all Europe, I always enjoyed his conversation. He enjoyed the full confidence of the Sultan, and was almost incessantly consulted by His Majesty.

Over our meal, although I knew it to be a great breach of etiquette, I ventured to inquire of the health of his wife and two daughters. I had never seen either of the ladies without the yashmak, or veil, but the girls both wore gauzy ones, and I had seen that they were uncommonly good-looking.

“Ah!” he laughed. “Since you were here last I fell into terrible disgrace.”

I inquired how.

“Well,” he replied, laughing, “it was in this way. You know that I look at most things from your Western standpoint. I believe in your Western progress and Western ideas, so neither my wife nor myself were desirous that the girls should lead a secluded harem life, as do all our Turkish girls. But there was a difficulty--one which I resolved to overcome, even though I might be compelled to overstep the bounds of conventionality. The plan my wife and I adopted was this: First we engaged an elderly lady, whom I knew in Paris, to come here and become their French governess. Then, after a year, Madame Perrin went back to Paris and enlisted the services of two young nephews of hers, who were eager to have a trip out here to the Bosphorus. They came, and stayed at the Pera Palace for a week or so, and one day they purchased four tickets back to Paris by the Orient Express. At seven o’clock on the following morning the two young Frenchmen brought ladders to the wall of my garden, and at half-past seven both girls with their ‘young men’ were in the express on their way to the West. When I heard of their elopement I naturally pretended to foam at the mouth. That Madame Perrin’s nephews should have betrayed me! Oh! it was an unspeakable breach of trust!”

And he paused, with his cigarette held in his long, slim fingers.

“Well, the expected very soon happened. Half an hour later even before I had finished my lamentations on the loss of my daughters, a message came from the Yildiz, summoning me at once to the presence of His Majesty. I guessed what it was about. His spies, who exist everywhere, had not been idle. When I presented myself in his little audience-room in the kiosk in the park he was, I saw, in a towering rage. ‘Noury,’ he cried, pale with anger, ‘I have trusted you, and yet you have juggled with me, as you have juggled with Britain and France!’ I pretended ignorance. ‘You have not kept a strict paternal eye on your daughters. They have left Turkey!’ I pretended to gasp in surprise. ‘Yes’ His Majesty went on, ‘you know that I have issued a decree that no Turkish woman shall leave our country!’ I replied that I was well aware of the decree, for, as a matter of fact, I had myself drawn it up! ‘Then I declare it to be disgraceful on your part that you have not properly guarded your two daughters. Here are two young Frenchmen who come from Paris, meet them surreptitiously--how, we know not!--and elope with them!’ I humbly apologized for my lack of surveillance. But it did not appease the Old Gentleman. He wrought himself up into a most violent temper, and, shouting to me, ordered me to go after them at once to bring them back. And he added that after their return he would consider what punishment he would inflict on them and on myself! I had left the room much crestfallen, for I saw myself suddenly out of favour, when His Majesty yelled after me: ‘Noury! Come back!’ I went back, when suddenly His Majesty burst into a fit of laughter and said in a quiet, conciliatory voice: ‘Noury, I have ordered you to go after your girls, and you must go--by the next train. But--well’--and his dark eyes twinkled merrily--‘you need not go farther than the frontier!’ He knew that by the time I reached the Bulgarian frontier they would have passed seven or eight hours, and be well on their way to Paris! Of course I made the journey, and returned to report my non-success,” laughed my friend, “and my girls are now finishing their education at Neuilly, and will never, I hope, return to Turkey.”

On the day following, after the Selamlik, the weekly attendance of the Sultan at the mosque, Noury, in uniform with his many decorations, drove me, attired in my best dress-suit, to that Palace, or collection of Palaces, known as the Yildiz Kiosque.

Just before we drove into the gateway of the Imperial demesne our carriage was stopped by four sentries, and my companion being recognized, it was allowed to pass the four or five idling police-agents in plain clothes and a detachment of the Sultan’s bodyguard in rather shabby blue uniforms.

Then suddenly we found ourselves in a glorious park, driving beside a broad lake over which the trees hung, gay with blossom. A party of veiled, laughing women were being rowed along by four negro oarsmen, while a fat eunuch sat in the stem. They were, Noury explained, ladies of the Imperial harem taking the air.

We pulled up before a good-sized house, built in the style of a handsome villa on the French Riviera, which stood in a garden ablaze with flowers, and which had a verandah along the lake-side. A negro servant in the Imperial livery bowed low as we descended, and next moment two more negro servants of higher grade appeared.

Noury Pasha spoke to them in Turkish, whereupon, in a few seconds, a sallow-faced Turk in uniform, with decorations, appeared. It was Hahki Pasha, the Sultan’s private secretary, to whom I was introduced.

After a laughing conversation in Turkish with my friend, we were conducted to an exquisite little room, with gilt furniture of the Empire period, a great crystal chandelier, a priceless cream-coloured silk carpet, decorated with bunches of wistaria, and several luxurious divans.

“His Majesty knows English fairly well, but it is not etiquette to speak it. He will only converse in Turkish,” Noury muttered to me, as I stood awaiting the appearance of the aristocratic ruler of over two hundred million souls--the man who was known to the world, because of his callous disregard for human life, as “The Red Sultan.”

“But you will translate, eh?” I asked.

“Of course. His Majesty told me that he would be pleased to see you because you are a writer. He writes himself, you know. Though the world is ignorant of it, he has written some of the finest poetry in our language, and two historical romances that, however, have only been printed at his private press. He has a printing press here in the Yildiz.”

At that moment the long white-and-gold doors were thrown open and a rather wizened little old man in neat black, and wearing a fez, entered.

I was in the presence of the Sultan of Turkey! His marked Hebraic features were familiar to me in pictures, but he had never allowed a photograph to be taken of himself. The sharp aquiline face, the quick dark eyes under their shaggy brows, the high forehead and the beard, were exactly the same as I had expected, though he seemed a thin, worn old man, shrunken so that his clothes hung loosely on him.

We both made our obeisance, to which His Majesty grunted something in Turkish in response.

Then the Sultan seated himself with dignity on a small divan covered with cream silk, on which was a design in cherry colour. We, of course, remained standing.

He addressed to Noury some words in Turkish, evidently making some inquiry concerning me, and then my companion, turning to me, said:

“His Majesty welcomes you. He has heard of your previous visit to us, and is glad to receive you.”

“I thank His Majesty for his kindly greetings,” I replied. “And please assure him of my friendliness towards Turkey through many years. I know that we in Britain unfortunately do not understand her.”

“His Excellency Tewfik Pasha has already mentioned you to His Majesty,” said Noury, after conversing again with the Sultan. “His Majesty wishes me to say that he is much gratified by your friendship. He is fully aware that he is known in England as ‘The Red Sultan,’ and is believed to have been directly responsible for the massacres in Armenia. His Majesty has said, ‘Noury, you know the real truth. I wish you to tell it.’ So I will do so.”

Then Noury Pasha went on, while the Sultan, who understood English, listened. He told me the following, which I found very interesting--the real truth of the terrible massacres.

“One afternoon, while at the Sublime Porte, I received an urgent command from His Majesty to come here, which I did, with all speed,” he said. “On arrival in this room I found His Majesty greatly perturbed and terribly angry. He showed me a message that he had just received from his private intelligence department (for the Turkish capital always swarms with spies) stating that there had been wholesale slaughter of men, women, and children in various districts in Armenia. ‘Look!’ cried His Majesty. ‘What does this mean? Who gave such an order? Find out, and he shall pay for it! It is a plot! A plot to blacken me further in the eyes of all Europe! The Kaiser, though he pretends to be my friend, hates me. He intends to make war, depend on it, and he intends to extend his territory to the Bosphorus. But the evil is done! What can I do?’ His Majesty cried.”

And at this the Sultan nodded approvingly, having understood all his Secretary-General’s words.

“His Majesty had no hand whatever in the Armenian massacres, though all Europe declared that he had. They were, we know, the result of a plot engineered from Berlin, and seven of our officers of high rank were executed by order of the Sultan for the dastardly part they played. The Under-Governor, who had given the order for the massacre of Christians, was also executed, and at His Majesty’s orders I went to Armenia, and there had built three large orphanages, for which His Majesty has paid and endowed from his own private purse for the children whose parents were killed.”

This was an entirely different version from that which had reached Europe, and while Abdul-Hamid has been denounced everywhere, I feel confident, in view of facts afterwards proved, that what I was told was the actual truth.

Even to-day many people believe that the Sultan was responsible, and aided and abetted those who committed the terrible atrocities, but it was really a plot of the Young Turk Party, fostered and aided in secret by Germany. Indeed, within a week of my audience of “Abdul the Damned” the Young Turks proclaimed themselves, entered the closely-guarded Yildiz Kiosque, overran the great harem, seized his Majesty, bundled him on board a steamer, and took him to Salonica. A number of his favourite wives followed him into exile, but hundreds of other women were dispersed and the great Palace was closed.

Then, to the surprise of everyone, my old friend Tewfik Pasha--who had hitherto supported his Imperial master most loyally--was asked to return to his office as Grand-Vizier, which he did, and later acted as Turkish Ambassador in London, where, before the betrayal of Turkey into Germany’s hands, I often used to spend an evening with him at the Embassy in Portland Place.

Old Abdul-Hamid struck me as very refined, but of rather abrupt manner. His nose was decidedly a hooked one, and his hands were thin, yellow, even claw-like; his skin like tightly-drawn parchment over his high cheek-bones; and his speech high pitched and squeaky. While he sat talking to Noury and listening to the translation of his conversation into English he smoked cigarettes, the aroma of which was delicious, and I noticed that in the ring on his finger was a magnificent, priceless ruby, which had been drilled in the centre and a magnificent diamond set in it.

His chief hobbies were literature and music, for among the monarchs of the world he was perhaps the most highly cultured. Unbounded was his generosity towards those to whom he gave audience and to whom he took a fancy.

The great Oriental scholar, Professor Vambery, once told me an amusing incident. He had had audience of Abdul several times, for he could speak Turkish, therefore the Sultan conversed freely.

“Ah!” said His Majesty one day, “you have never seen my carpet-factory! You must go and see it. I will send one of my secretaries to you to-morrow morning at ten o’clock.”

The Professor was compelled to pretend that he would be delighted to see over the factory, though, as a matter of fact, he had booked his journey to Vienna for the next morning.

The morning came, and at the Pera Palace Hotel there appeared a smart young secretary with one of the Imperial carriages, in which the Professor was taken to see the manufacture of those magnificent silk Turkish rugs and carpets that the Imperial factory produces. The carpets are of the most gorgeous and most expensive in the world, and were, and are still, given as presents to royal houses, and as offerings at the holy shrine at Mecca.

The Professor admired a number of them, and declared himself much interested, yet at heart feeling very annoyed at missing his train, for he had to wait two days for the next through express.

Some three months later the Professor chanced to be looking out of the window of his flat at Wilmersdorf, outside Berlin, when he saw a motor-lorry drive up piled high with bales of carpets!

Presently a man arrived with the news that he had a consignment of carpets from Constantinople, whereupon the Professor put on his hat, went downstairs, and ordered the man to drive to a certain dealer in rich furniture in Berlin, where they were unpacked. Before he left the place the Professor had sold them for several thousands of pounds, and took away the cheque in his pocket!

The Sultan had treated the Professor just as King Ferdinand of Bulgaria had treated me. Each carpet he had admired had been noted, and the whole lot packed and sent to him.

Through the clever scheming of the Kaiser, whom Abdul-Hamid so distrusted, notwithstanding his constant declarations of friendship, Turkey became alienated from us. But, notwithstanding Kemal’s influence, Tewfik Pasha is still a most formidable power in the Empire, and he certainly has never been other than pro-British. I met Kemal several times at the house of Noury Pasha, and I found him to be most intelligent, and a splendid conversationalist.

Enver Pasha, of whom we heard so much during the war, I also met once or twice, the last occasion being at Adrianople, after his unsuccessful expedition against the Skreli and Kastrati tribes in Northern Albania. He was sent to the Albanian mountains with a large force, but the brigands, whom I have already described, assisted by several other tribes, held Enver and his army at bay for four months, inflicting many losses by means of sniping till he received orders from Constantinople to withdraw.

Then the tribes against whom he had been fighting threatened terrible reprisals. They were Greek Christians and declared that at a given signal they would swoop down from the mountains and massacre every Mohammedan in the town of Scutari. For that reason all the Christian inhabitants placed the sign of the cross in red paint over their doors, and even to-day Scutari is not exactly happy, for the tribesmen hate the Turks.

Enver was the “big noise” in the Turkish Army. He held Britain in supreme contempt, and was a puppet of the Kaiser, full of blatant bombast and wonderful schemes that never matured.

* * * * *

Among the minor royalties I have met was Prince Albert of Monaco--“Le Prince Rouge-et-Noir,” as King Edward called him.

I happened to be in Tromsö, in the North of Norway, with my friend Harry de Windt, on our way around the North Cape to the Kola Peninsula, and the Prince’s fine steam-yacht, _Princess Alice_, was lying in the harbour. The irrepressible Harry knew the Prince, and took me on board.

The ruler of Monaco, a good-looking, cheery, elderly man, with laughing eyes and a small grey beard, greeted us in quite a homely fashion. He was in a much-worn, even shabby, yachting suit, while his officers and crew were all very spic-and-span, and the splendid vessel very well kept.

The Prince was returning from a cruise off Spitzbergen, where he had been taking specimens from the deeper depths of the ocean. He showed us some queer fish, some alive in tanks, but others preserved, they having died as soon as the heavy pressure of water had been taken off them. The study of oceanography interested me greatly, and the Prince showed me various specimens of hitherto unknown shell-fish, seaweed, etc., which they had dredged up, and which he was taking to his wonderful museum at Monaco, which I expect many who read these lines have seen.

Being entirely ignorant of oceanography, I spent a most instructive couple of hours, for both Harry and I sat with him while he was engaged in mounting a specimen, and in the meantime he gave us a quantity of information on a most absorbing subject.

His Highness explained to us the dredges, the appliances that, worked by electricity, bored into the bed of the ocean and took specimens of its geological formation; of grapplers, and nets that could be opened and closed when at the bottom of the sea; of fish-traps and contrivances for collecting vegetable growth in the depths of perpetual darkness, all of which were entirely new to me.

At the Prince’s invitation we remained to luncheon, the quartette being completed by the yacht’s captain.

The Prince invited me to visit him the next time I went to Monaco, and I was afterwards his guest at luncheon there. He was certainly an expert in his own branch of science, and he had the knack of telling you a thing so vividly that you immediately understood. Till that well-remembered day at Tromsö, I never knew there were so many secrets of the ocean-bed.

Next day, when we sailed on the black old Norwegian cargo-boat, the _Mercur_, for Vardö, that fishing-station round in the stormy Arctic Sea, His Highness waved as we passed the yacht, and, as a send-off, the _Princess Alice_ gave us three loud blasts on her siren, awakening the echoes of the mountains around the fiord.

The two sons of the Sultan of Johore have recently spent several years in England. I have seen a good deal of them, and they were often my guests at Guildford for several weeks on end. The Crown Prince Ismail is a slim, dark-haired, and rather elegant young man, whose features are only slightly bronzed, and who is very English-looking. Indeed, he has lived in England nearly all his life, and cannot speak Malay. To his intimates at Oxford, where he was under a private tutor, and afterwards at the London clubs, he is known as “Biffy.”

One day, after lunching with me at the Devonshire Club, a friend of mine, who was one of the party on that occasion, said:

“Well, Biffy, I suppose one day ere long we shall see your face on the Johore postage-stamps, eh?”

“I don’t know,” drawled the Crown Prince. “But, if you do, I hope it will please your school-girls who stick stamps into albums.”

Biffy, is, _par excellence_, a lady-killer. He is extremely good-looking, perfectly courteous to a dowager-marchioness or a pretty _débutante_ alike. In certain smart circles in London he is an idol, for he is an extremely amusing conversationalist, a splendid dancer, and, while he has all the Oxford culture and merriment, he is nevertheless a very level-headed young man, quite fitted to succeed his popular father.

To my home circle, with my valued secretary, Miss Mabelle Lodge, who had typed my books for some years, and who is an outspoken critic, and my two step-daughters, both he and his brother, Prince Ahmed, had an open invitation. They came and went just as they pleased. Prince Ahmed, the younger brother, is much more staid than the Crown Prince. He graduated at Balliol, and on coming down studied in the engineering department of the General Post Office, under that well-known telegraph-engineer, Mr. J. H. Haynes, the Sultan, his father, being determined that he should be no idler. The Colonial Office asked Mr. Haynes to take him as pupil, and when he left to return to Johore a short time ago he had earned full qualifications as an assistant telegraph engineer.

The two young Princes, who were angled after by many girls in London society, have a keen sense of humour.

While at Balliol, Prince Ahmed was foremost in any Oxford “rag,” and, living in Oxford as I did during one year of the war, I was often let into secrets of what was about to happen.

One rag that was rather amusing was brought off about a week before the Armistice. Somebody in the “lab” invented a new indelible vermilion paint.

With this pigment a fellow-undergraduate at Balliol, Constantine Gallop--a brilliant and coming man, by the way--Prince Ahmed and a dozen others scrambled up to those big classical busts near the Sheldonian, in the “Broad,” and daubed their faces red!

At the same time another party was waiting in St. Giles’s, where, underneath a shop occupied by a “bazaar,” was a long glass sign under the windows bearing the words “Finest Collection in the World.”

This latter they detached swiftly, having on the previous night released all the screws, and, carrying it to the “Broad,” hung it beneath the vermilion-coloured busts!

The police were soon on the spot, but the delinquents fled. Ahmed spent that night in the Randolph Hotel, where I had my rooms, and next morning Oxford rose to the fact that the city had been “painted red.”

The paint in question was a great triumph, for though, after much scrubbing and sand-papering, the classical busts were restored to their true stone colour, yet Balliol wrote some most insulting words in the same paint on the walls of Trinity, and so deeply did the pigment sink into the stonework that they had to be dug out, and new stones substituted!

While the Crown Prince Ismail is a charming and refined young man, and essentially a pet of the ladies, a sybarite in the manner of Oriental princes. Prince Ahmed is just the reverse. He is splendid at all games, a fine tennis-player, a keen motor-cyclist, and a good golfer.

Both were our intimate friends for six years, and we were deeply sorry when, a few months ago, the time came for their return to Johore. But the Sultan, who is growing old, felt that “Biffy” should be instructed in his duties towards the State over which he will eventually rule.

We often exchange letters, and both the young Princes express regret that they are so far away from London, and from my two yapping miniature Pomeranians--my pets “Toby” and “Tweedles,” to whom they were devoted, and who never leave me while I sit at my table at work.