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The story of my struggles: the memoirs of Arminius Vambéry, Volume 2

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Title: The story of my struggles: the memoirs of Arminius Vambéry, Volume 2

Author: Ármin Vámbéry


        
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF MY STRUGGLES: THE MEMOIRS OF ARMINIUS VAMBÉRY, VOLUME 2 ***

THE STORY OF MY STRUGGLES




_BY THE SAME AUTHOR._


ARMINIUS VAMBÉRY:

His Life and Adventures.

Imperial 16mo, cloth, 6s. Boys' Edition, crown 8vo, cloth gilt, gilt
edges, 5s.


THE STORY OF HUNGARY.

Fully Illustrated. Large crown 8vo, cloth, 5s. (THE STORY OF THE NATIONS
SERIES.)

LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN.


[Illustration: VAMBÉRY AFTER HIS RETURN FROM CENTRAL ASIA.

_Photographed in Teheran, 1863._

_Frontispiece to Vol._ II.]




THE STORY OF MY STRUGGLES

THE MEMOIRS OF ARMINIUS VAMBÉRY

PROFESSOR OF ORIENTAL LANGUAGES
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF BUDAPEST

VOLUME II

[Illustration: Logo]

LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN
PATERNOSTER SQUARE . 1904


(_All rights reserved._)




Contents


CHAPTER VII.
                                                PAGE
FROM LONDON TO BUDAPEST                          237


CHAPTER VIII.

MY POLITICAL CAREER AND POSITION IN ENGLAND      283


CHAPTER IX.

THE TRIUMPH OF MY LABOURS                        317


CHAPTER X.

AT THE ENGLISH COURT                             329


CHAPTER XI.

MY INTERCOURSE WITH SULTAN ABDUL HAMID           343


CHAPTER XII.

MY INTERCOURSE WITH NASREDDIN SHAH AND HIS
SUCCESSOR                                        391


CHAPTER XIII.

THE STRUGGLE'S END, AND YET NO END               411


APPENDICES                                       459




Illustrations


PROFESSOR VAMBÉRY AFTER HIS RETURN FROM
CENTRAL ASIA                              _Frontispiece_

PROFESSOR VAMBÉRY AND HIS TARTAR, 1864 _Facing page_ 393




From London to Budapest




CHAPTER VII

FROM LONDON TO BUDAPEST


I have often been asked how it was that, after the bitter disappointment
I had experienced in my native land on my return from Asia, and after
the brilliant reception accorded to me in England, I yet preferred to
settle down permanently in Hungary.

People have been surprised that I should choose a quiet literary career,
whereas my many years of intimate intercourse with various Eastern
nations might have been turned to so much better account, and a
practical, active career would have been so much more in keeping with my
character. All these questions were asked of me at the time in London,
but filled as I then became with a sense of oppression and a great
longing for home I could not give a satisfactory answer to these
queries. Now that the cloud has lifted, and my vision is clear, now that
sober reflection has taken the place of former rapture and exultation,
the causes which influenced my decision are perfectly clear. I see now
that I could not have acted differently; that the step I took was
partly the result of my personal inclination and views of life, and
partly influenced by the circumstances of my birth and bringing up, and
the notions then generally prevailing in Hungary; nor have I cause or
ground to regret my decision.

In the first place I have to confess that in England, notwithstanding
the noisy, brilliant receptions I had, and all the attention paid to me,
no one ever made me any actual proposal with a view to my future
benefit, and no one seemed at all disposed to turn to account my
practical experiences in the service of the State or of private
enterprise. The Memorandum about the condition of things in Central
Asia, written at the time in Teheran at the request of the British
Ambassador there, had duly found its way to Lord Palmerston, the Prime
Minister. The gray statesman received me most kindly; I was often a
guest at his private house, or dined with him at Mr. Tomlin's, of
Carlton House Terrace, or at Sir Roderick Murchison's, of 16, Belgrave
Square. At his initiative I was invited to other distinguished houses,
for the merry old gentleman was much entertained by my lively
conversation and my anecdotes from Asia, which I used to relate after
dinner when the ladies had retired. My stories about the white ass of
the English Embassy at Teheran, of diplomatic repute, and similar
amusing details of court life in Persia and the Khanates of Central
Asia, tickled the fancy of the most serious, sober-minded of these high
lords, and went the round in the fashionable West End circles. But for
all that they saw in me merely the "lively foreigner," the versatile
traveller, and if here and there some interest was shown in my future,
it amounted to asking what were my latest travelling plans, and when I
thought of setting out in search of fresh discoveries. As if I had not
been on the go for two-and-twenty years, ever since I was ten years old!
as if I had not battled and struggled and suffered enough! And now that
for the first time in my life I had lighted on a green bough and hoped
to have accomplished something, was I again straightway to plunge into
the vague ocean of destiny? "No, no," I reflected; "I am now thirty-two
years old, without for one moment having enjoyed the pleasures of a
quiet, peaceful life, and without possessing enough to permit myself the
luxury of resting on my own bed, or of working comfortably at my own
table." This uncertain, unsatisfactory state of things must come to an
end sometime; and so the desire for rest and peace necessarily overruled
any inclination for great and ambitious plans, and nipped in the bud all
projects which possibly might have made my career more brilliant, but
certainly not happier than it afterwards turned out.

The kind reader of these pages who is familiar with the struggles and
troubles of my childhood, who has followed me in thought on the thorny
path of early youth, and knows something of my experiences as
self-taught scholar and tutor, will perhaps accuse me of dejection, and
blame me for want of perseverance and steadiness of purpose. Possibly I
have disregarded the golden saying of my mother, "One must make one's
bed half the night, the better to rest the other half." I did give way
to dejection, but my resolve, however blameworthy it may be, should be
looked upon as the natural consequence of a struggle for existence which
began all too early and lasted sadly too long. Man is not made of iron,
too great a tension must be followed by a relaxation, and since the
first fair half of my life began to near its ending, my former iron will
also began to lose some of its force. The wings of my ambition were too
weak to soar after exalted ideals, and I contented myself with the
prospect of a modest professorship at the University of my native land
and the meagre livelihood this would give me.

In England, where a man in his early thirties is, so to speak, still in
the first stage of his life, and energy is only just beginning to swell
the sails of his bark, my longing for rest was often misunderstood and
disapproved of. In London I met a gentleman of sixty who wanted to learn
Persian and start a career in India; and I was going to stop my
practical career at the age of thirty-two! The difference seems
enormous, but in the foggy North man's constitution is much tougher and
harder than in the South. My physical condition, my previous sufferings
and privations, may to some extent account for my despondency; I had to
give in, although my object was only half gained.

Emotions of this kind overpowered me even in the whirl and rush of the
first months of my stay in London. Before long I had seen through the
deceptive glamour of all the brilliancy around me; and as I very soon
realised that my personal acquaintance with high society and the most
influential and powerful persons would hardly help me to a position in
England, I endeavoured at least to use the present situation as a step
towards a position at home, in the hope that the recognition I had
obtained in England would be of service to me in my native land, where
the appreciation of foreign lands is always a good recommendation. First
of all I set to work upon my book of travels, an occupation which took
me scarcely three months to accomplish, and which, written with the
experiences all yet fresh in my mind, resolved itself chiefly into a dry
and unadorned enumeration of adventures and facts. The introduction of
historical and philological notes would have been impossible in any
case, as my Oriental MSS. were detained in Pest as security on the money
loan, and also because in England everything that does not actually bear
upon political, economical, or commercial interests is looked upon as
superfluous ballast. When the first proof-sheets appeared of my
_Travels in Central Asia_ many of my friends regretted the brevity and
conciseness of the composition, but the style was generally approved of,
and after its publication the various criticisms and discussions of the
work eulogised me to such an extent, that my easily roused vanity would
soon have got the better of me, had I not been aware of the fact that
all this praise was to a great extent an expression of the hospitality
which England as a nation feels it its duty to pay to literary
foreigners. This, my literary firstfruits, necessarily contributed a
good deal to increase my popularity, and enlarged the circle of my
acquaintance in high society to which I had been semi-officially
introduced by my Asiatic friends. My fame now spread to all scientific,
industrial, and commercial circles all over England. I had no time to
breathe. The post brought me double as many invitations as before; I was
literally besieged by autograph hunters and photographers; and it is no
exaggeration to say that for months together I had invitations for every
meal of the day, and that my engagements were arranged for, days and
weeks beforehand.

Wearisome and expensive as this enjoyment of popularity was--for in my
outward appearance and bearing I could not neglect any of the prescribed
forms which mark the "distinguished foreigner"--my position afforded me
the opportunity of studying London society, and through it the aims and
objects of the highest representatives of Western culture, in a manner
which might otherwise not have come within my reach. When in my youth I
journeyed Westward I never went beyond the frontiers of Austria, and it
was always only in literary pursuits that I came in contact with Western
lands: hence I never saw any but the theoretical side of things. And now
I was transplanted from the depths of Asia, _i.e._, from the extreme end
of old-world culture and gross barbarism into the extreme of Western
civilisation and modern culture; and overpowering as was the impression
of all that I saw and experienced, equally interesting to me was the
comparison of the two stages of human progress.

What surprised me more than anything was the wealth, the comfort, and
the luxury of the English country houses, compared to which the rich
colouring of Oriental splendour--existing as a matter of fact mostly in
legends and fairy tales--cuts but a poor figure. As for me, who all my
life had only seen the smile of fortune from a distance, I was struck
with admiration. Most difficult of all I found it to get used to the
elaborate meals and the table pomp of the English aristocracy. I could
not help thinking of the time of my Dervishship, when my meals consisted
sometimes of begged morsels and sometimes of _pilaw_ which I cooked
myself. Now I had to eat through an endless series of courses, and drink
the queerest mixtures. During this period of my lionship it was
strangest of all to think of the miseries of my childish days and the
time when I was a mendicant student. It was the realisation of the fairy
tale of the beggar and the prince; and with reference to this I shall
never forget one night which I spent at the magnificent country house of
the Duke of A., not far from Richmond. I was guest there together with
Lord Clarendon, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and other English
notabilities. After dinner the company adjourned to the luxuriously
furnished smoke-room, and from there shortly before midnight every guest
was conducted to his respective bedroom by a lacquey preceding him with
two huge silver chandeliers. When the powdered footman dressed in red
silk velvet had ushered me into the splendidly furnished bedroom,
provided with every possible comfort and luxury, and began to take steps
to assist me in undressing, I looked at the man quite dumbfounded and
said with a friendly smile, "Thank you, I can manage alone." The footman
departed. I feasted my eyes upon all the grandeur around me. It was like
a cabinet full of precious curiosities and overflowing with silver
articles and wonderful arrangements of all sorts. When I turned back the
brocaded coverlet and lay down on the undulating bed, my fancy carried
me back twenty years, and I thought of my night quarters in the Three
Drums Street at Pest with the widow Schönfeld, where I had hired a bed
in company with a tailor's apprentice, he taking the head and I the
foot of the bed. Musing upon the strange alternations of man's lot, and
the difference between my condition then and now, I could not go to
sleep, but tossed about half the night on my silken couch. It was after
all merely a childish reflection, for, though now in splendour, I was
but a guest. But it is difficult to divest oneself of the impression of
the moment, and as often as I found myself in a similar position the
comparison between the mendicant student suffering want and the petted
lion of English society has brought me to a contemplative mood.

More even than by the wealth and prosperity I was struck by the spirit
of freedom which, notwithstanding the strictly aristocratic etiquette of
society, must surprise the South-Eastern European, and more still any
one who from the inner Asiatic world finds himself suddenly transplanted
to the banks of the Thames. Formerly, in my native land it was always
with unconscious awe and admiration that I looked up to a prince, a
count, or a baron, and afterwards in Asia I had to approach a Pasha,
Khan, or Sirdar with submissive mien, sometimes even with homage. And
now I was surprised to notice how little attention was paid to dukes,
lords, and baronets in the clubs and other public places in England.
When for the first time I went into the reading-room of the Athenæum
Club, and with my hat on stood reading the _Times_ opposite to Lord
Palmerston and at the same desk with him, I could hardly contain myself
for surprise, and my eyes rested more often on the strong features of
"Mister Pam" than on the columns of the city paper. Later on I was
introduced in the Cosmopolitan Club to the Prince of Wales, then
twenty-three years old. This club did not open till after midnight. When
I saw the future ruler of Albion sitting there at his ease, without the
other members taking the slightest notice of him, I fairly gasped at the
apparent indifference shown to the Queen's son. I could but approach the
young Prince with the utmost reverence and awe; and it was entirely
owing to the great affability and kindness of heart of this son of the
Queen that I plucked up courage to sit down and hold half an hour's
conversation with him. Since that time this specially English
characteristic of individual freedom and independence has often struck
me forcibly, and could not fail to strike any one accustomed to the
cringing spirit of Asia and the servility of Eastern Europe. Truly a
curious mixture of the sublime and the ridiculous, of really noble and
frivolous impressions, marked these first months of my sojourn in
England. Feelings of admiration and contempt, of delight and scorn
alternated within me; and when I ask myself now what it was that I
disliked about England, and drove me to unfavourable criticism, I would
mention in the first place the rigid society manners, utterly foreign to
me, which I found it hard to conform to and consequently detested. The
straitjacket of etiquette and society manners oppresses the English
themselves more than they care to acknowledge; how, then, must it affect
the Continental and the wanderer fresh from the Steppes of Asia? The
second reason which made the idea of a longer stay in London quite
impossible for me was the dislike, nay, the absolute horror I had of the
incessant hurrying, rushing, bustling crowds in the thoroughfares; the
desperate efforts to gain honour and riches, and the niggardly grudging
of every minute of time. Standing at the corner of Lombard Street or
Cheapside, or mixing with the crowds madly hurrying along Ludgate Hill,
I felt like a man suddenly transported to pandemonium. To see how these
masses push and press past one another, how the omnibus drivers swing
round the corners, regardless of danger to human life, for the mere
chance of gaining a few coppers more, and to realise how this same
struggle for existence goes on in all stages of society, in all phases
of life, relentless, merciless, was enough to make me think with longing
of the indolent life of Eastern lands; and, without admitting the
Nirvana theory, all this fuss and flurry seemed out of place and far too
materialistic. My nature altogether revolted against it.

Of course this view was quite erroneous. For what has made England great
was, and is, this very same prominent individuality, this restless
striving and struggling, this utter absence of all fear, hesitation, and
sentimentality where the realisation of a preconceived idea is
concerned. But unfortunately at that time I was still under the ban of
Asiaticism; and although the slowness, indolence, and blind fanaticism
of the Asiatics had annoyed me, equally disagreeable to me was the
exactly opposite tendency here manifested. I wanted to find the "golden
middle way," and unconsciously I was drawn towards my own home, where on
the borderland between these two worlds I hoped to find what I sought.

And now, after the lapse of so many years, recalling to mind some
personal reminiscences of London society, I seem to recognise in the
political, scientific, and artistic world of those days so many traits
of a truly humane and noble nature, mixed with the most bizarre and
eccentric features which have been overlooked by observers.

The gigantic edifice of the British Empire was then still in progress of
building, the scaffolding was not yet removed, some portions still
awaited their completion; and as the beautiful structure could not yet
be viewed in its entirety, and an impression of the whole could,
therefore, not be realised, there was in the nation but little of that
superabundant self-consciousness for which modern times are noted. They
listened to me with pleasure when I spoke of England's mighty influence
over the Moslem East, they heard with undisguised gratification when I
commended England's civilising superiority over that of Russia, but yet
they did not seem to trust their own eyes, and to many my words were
mere polite speeches with which the petted foreigner reciprocated their
hospitality. The interest shown by a foreigner in a foreign land must
always seem somewhat strange, and my appreciative criticisms of England
may have appeared suspicious to many of my readers. Only later
statements by such men as Baron Hübner in his _Travels in India_, or
Garcin de Tassy's learned disquisitions on the influence of English
culture on Hindustan, have lent more weight to my writings.

Of all the leading statesmen of the time I felt most attracted towards
Lord Palmerston. I recognised in him a downright Britisher, with a
French polish and German thoroughness; a politician who, with his
gigantic memory, could command to its smallest details the enormous
Department of Foreign Affairs, and who knew all about the lands and the
people of Turkey, Persia, and India. He seemed to carry in his head the
greater portion of the diplomatic correspondence between the East and
the West; and what particularly took my fancy were the jocular remarks
which he used to weave into his conversation, together with _bon-mots_
and more serious matters. In the after-dinner chats at the house of Mr.
Tomlin, not far from the Athenæum Club, or at 16, Belgrave Square with
Sir Roderick Murchison, where I was an often invited guest, he used to
be particularly eloquent. When he began to arrange the little knot of
his wide, white cravat, and hemmed a little, one could always be sure
that some witty remark was on its way, and during the absence of the
ladies subjects were touched upon which otherwise were but seldom
discussed in the prudish English society of the day. I had to come
forward with harem stories and anecdotes of different lands, and the
racier they were the more heartily the noble lord laughed. The Prime
Minister was at that time already considerably advanced in years. The
most delicate questions of the day were freely discussed, and I must
confess that it pleased me very much when they did not look upon me as
an outsider, but fully took me into their confidence. Lord Granville,
afterwards Minister of Foreign Affairs, treated me also with great
kindness. He was a little more reserved, certainly, but an intrinsically
good man, and it always pleased him when I was at table with him to hear
me converse with the different foreign ambassadors in their native
tongue. His sister, Mrs. James, an influential lady in high life,
provided me with invitations from various quarters, and it was she who
urged me to settle in London. Similar encouragements I also received
from Sir Justin Sheil, at one time British Ambassador in Persia, and his
wife, most distinguished, excellent, people, who instructed me in the
ways of fashionable life, and taught me how to dress and how to comport
myself at table, in the drawing-room and in the street. Blunders against
the orthodoxy of English customs were resented by many; and once a lady
who had seen me on the top of an omnibus, from where the busy
street-life of London can best be observed, said to me in full earnest,
"Sir, take care not to be seen there again, otherwise you can no longer
appear as a gentleman in society." Admittance into society is everything
in England. One is severely judged by the cut and colour of one's
clothes. Society ladies demand that hat, umbrella, and walking-stick
come from the very best shop, and most important is the club to which
one belongs, and of course also the circle of one's acquaintances. When
I was able to give as my address, "Athenæum Club, Pall Mall," the
barometer of my importance rose considerably.

One can easily understand that all these trifles were little to my
taste. I had always been fond of simplicity and natural manners. All
these formalities and superficialities were hateful to me, but at that
time I had to yield to necessity and make the best of a bad job; nay,
even be grateful to my instructors for their well-meant advice in these
matters.

Honestly speaking, I have found among these people some very
noble-minded friends who, from purely humane motives, interested
themselves in me, and whose kind treatment I shall not forget as long as
I live. Amongst these I would especially mention Lord Strangford,
already referred to, a man of brilliant scientific talents, and
possessing a quite extraordinary knowledge of geography, history, and
the languages of the Moslem East. He had lived for many years on the
banks of the Bosphorus as Secretary to the Embassy, and was not only
thoroughly acquainted with Osmanli, Persian, and Hindustani, but also
with the Chagataic language, then absolutely unknown in Europe. He could
recite long passages from the poems of Newai. He was as much at home in
the works of Sadi, Firdusi, and Baki as in Milton and Shakespeare, and
well informed as regards the ethnography and politics of the Balkan
peoples, and the various tribes of Central Asia and India. Lord
Strangford, indeed, was to me a living wonder, and when he shook his
long-bearded, bony head in speaking of Asia and criticising the politics
of Lord Palmerston, I should have liked to note down every word he said,
for he was a veritable mine of Oriental knowledge. It is very strange
that this man was not used as English Ambassador at one of the Oriental
courts, and it has often been laid to Lord Palmerston's charge that he,
the illustrious Premier, was not well disposed towards his Irish
countryman, who sometimes expressed his resentment of the slight in the
columns of the _Pall Mall Gazette_, the _Saturday_, or the _Quarterly
Review_. As far as I am concerned Lord Strangford was always a most kind
and considerate patron, one of the best and most unselfish friends I
had in England, and his early death was a great grief to me. He died of
brain fever, and, as Lady Strangford afterwards wrote to me, holding in
his hand the volume of my Chagataic Grammar which I had dedicated to
him.

Next to the noble Lord Strangford I would mention the great
mathematician, Mr. Spottiswoode, who often asked me to his house; also
Sir Alexander Gordon, in Mayfair, whose sister, knowing something of
Egypt, took a special interest in my travels. I was also a welcome guest
at Lord Houghton's, both in town at Brook Street and in the country at
Ferrybridge, Yorkshire. The lunch parties at his town residence were
often of a peculiarly interesting nature. The master of the house, a
lover of sharp contrasts, used to gather round his table the fanatical
admirer of Mohammedanism, Lord Stanley of Alderley, and the equally
fanatical Protestant Bishop of Oxford, Dr. Wilberforce known as "Soapy
Sam." Most lively disputes took place at times in defence of the
teachings of Christ and Mohammed, in which the disputants did not deal
over-gently with one another, and their forcible attacks upon each
other's convictions sometimes caused the most ridiculous scenes. Still
finer were the meetings at Ferrybridge, Lord Houghton's country seat.
During one visit there I made the acquaintance of such celebrities as
Lord Lytton, afterwards Viceroy of India; the poet Algernon Swinburne,
who used to read to us passages of his yet unpublished poem, _Atalanta
in Calydon_, over which the slender youth went into ecstasies; and last,
but not least, of Burton, just returned from a mission in the North-West
of Africa. Burton--later Sir Richard Burton--was to spend his honeymoon
under the hospitable roof of the genial Lord Houghton. The company,
amongst which Madame Mohl, the wife of the celebrated Orientalist, Jules
Mohl, specially attracted my attention, had met here in honour of
Burton, the great traveller, and as he was the last to arrive, Lord
Houghton planned the following joke: I was to leave the drawing-room
before Burton appeared with his young wife, hide behind one of the
doors, and at a given sign recite the first _Sura_ of the Koran with
correct Moslem modulation. I did as arranged. Burton went through every
phase of surprise, and jumping up from his seat exclaimed, "That is
Vambéry!" although he had never seen or heard me before. In after years
I entertained the most friendly relations with this remarkable man, whom
I hold to be, incontestably, the greatest traveller of the nineteenth
century, for he had the most intimate knowledge of all Moslemic Asia; he
was a clever Arabic scholar, had explored portions of Africa together
with Speke, and gone through the most awful adventures at the court of
Dahomey; he had explored the unknown regions of North and South America,
and also made himself a literary name by his translations of the
_Lusiade_ and _The Thousand and One Nights_; in a word, this strangely
gifted man, who was never fully appreciated in his own country, and
through his peculiarities laid himself open to much misunderstanding,
was from the very first an object of the greatest admiration for me. His
contemporary and fellow-worker, Gifford Palgrave, I also reckoned among
my friends. He was a classical Englishman, first belonging to the
Anglican and afterwards to the Roman Catholic Church. For some time he
was in the service of the Society of Jesus, as teacher in the mission
school at Beyrût; and as he was quite at home in the Arabic language, he
under-took a journey into the then unknown country of Nedjd, the chief
resort of the Wahâbis, about whom his book of travels contains many
interesting new data. Being a classical orator, he used to fascinate his
audience with his choice language, and what Spurgeon has been in the
pulpit and Gladstone in Parliament, that was Palgrave in the hall of the
Geographical Society. I liked the man fairly well, only a peculiar
twinkle of the eye constantly reminded me of his former Jesuitism. In
David Livingstone, the great African explorer, I found a congenial
fellow-labourer, whose words of appreciation, "What a pity you did not
make Africa the scene of your activity!" sounded pleasant in my ears.

Other travellers, such as Speke, Grant, Kirk and others, I was also
proud to reckon among my friends; and in the field of literature I
would mention in the first place Charles Dickens, whose acquaintance I
made at the Athenæum Club, and who often asked me to have dinner at the
same table with him. Dickens was not particularly talkative, but he was
very much interested in my adventures, and when once I declined his
invitation for the following evening with the apology that I had to dine
at Wimbledon with my publisher, John Murray, he remarked, "So you are
going to venture into the 'Brain Castle,' for of course you know," he
continued, "that Murray's house is not built of brick but of human
brains." Among politicians, artists, actors, financiers, generals--in
fact in all classes and ranks of society--I had friends and
acquaintances. I had no cause to complain of loneliness or neglect; any
one else would no doubt have been supremely happy in my place, and would
have made better use also of the general complaisance. But I was as yet
absolutely new to this Western world; I was as it were still wrapped in
the folds of Asiatic thought, and, in spite of my enthusiasm for modern
culture, I had great difficulty in making myself familiar with the
principal conditions of this phase of life, with its everlasting rushing
and hurrying, the unremitting efforts to get higher up, and the cold
discretion of the combatants. In fact, my first visit to England made me
feel gloomy and discouraged.

This depression was yet enhanced by the disappointment in regard to the
material results of my book, and the rude awakening out of my dreams of
comparative prosperity. To judge from the enthusiastic reception of my
work both in Europe and America, and after all the laudatory criticisms
of the Press, I expected to get from the sale of the first edition a sum
at least sufficient to ensure my independence. The newspapers talked of
quite colossal sums which my publisher had paid or would pay me, and I
was consequently not a little crestfallen when at the end of the year I
received the first account, according to which I had made a net profit
of £500, a sum of which I had spent nearly a third in London. The modest
remainder, in the eyes of the former Dervish a small fortune, was as
nothing to the European accustomed to London high-life, and not by a
long way sufficient for the writer, anxious to make a home for himself.
The vision of all my fair anticipations and bold expectations vanished
as a mist before my eyes, and after having tasted of the golden fruit of
the Hesperides, was I to go back to my scantily furnished table, nay,
perhaps be reduced again to poverty and the struggle for daily bread?
After twenty years of hard fighting I was back again where I was at the
beginning of my career, with this difference, that I had gained a name
and reputation, a capital, however, which would not yield its interest
till much later.

I am therefore not at all surprised that in my desperate frame of mind
I clutched at a straw, and looked upon a professorship at Pest and the
doctor's chair of Oriental languages as the bark of salvation upon the
still turbulent ocean of my life. True, my cold reception at home had
somewhat sobered me, and made the realisation of even this modest
ambition not quite so easy of attainment, but my longing for my native
land and for a quiet corner admitted of no hesitation, no doubt. With
incredible light-heartedness I disengaged myself from the embrace of the
noisy, empty homage of the great city on the Thames and sped to Pest to
present myself to my compatriots after my triumphal campaign in England
and crowned with the laurels of appreciation of the cultured West. As
may be supposed, my reception was somewhat warmer but not much more
splendid than on my return from Asia. Small nations in the early stages
of their cultural development often follow the lead of greater,
mightier, and more advanced lands in their distribution of blame or
praise. The homely proverb, "Young folks do as old folks did," can also
be applied to whole communities, and, especially where it concerns the
appreciation and acknowledgment of matters rather beyond the
intellectual and national limits of the people, such copying or rather
echoing of the superior criticism is quite permissible and excusable. On
my return from England my compatriots received me with marked
attention, but Hungary was still an Austrian province, and in order to
attain the coveted professorship I had to go to Vienna and solicit the
favour of an audience with the Emperor. The Emperor Francis Joseph, a
noble-minded monarch and exceptionally kind-hearted--who was not
unjustly called the first gentleman of the realm--received me most
graciously, asked some particulars about my travels, and at once granted
me my request, adding, "You have suffered much and deserve this post."
He made only one objection, viz., that even in Vienna there are but few
who devote themselves to the study of Oriental languages, and that in
Hungary I should find scarcely any hearers. On my reply, "If I can get
no one to listen to me I can learn myself," the Emperor smiled and
graciously dismissed me.

I shall always feel indebted to this noble monarch, although, on the
other hand, from the very first I have had much to bear from the
Austrian Bureaucracy and the fustiness of the mediæval spirit which
ruled the higher circles of Austrian society; perhaps more correctly
from their innate ignorance and stupidity. The Lord-High-Steward, Prince
A., whom I had to see before the audience, regardless of the
recommendations I brought from the Austrian Ambassador in London,
received me with a coldness and pride as if I had come to apply for a
position as lackey, and while royal personages of the West, and later
on also Napoleon, had shaken hands with me and asked me to sit down,
this Austrian aristocrat kept me standing for ten minutes, spoke roughly
to me, and dismissed me with the impression that a man of letters is
treated with more consideration in Khiva and among the Turkomans than in
the Austrian capital.

And this, alas! hurt me all the more, as the social conditions at home
in my native land were no better. Here also the wall of partition, class
distinctions and religious differences rose like a black, impenetrable
screen adorned with loathsome figures before my eyes, and the monster of
blind prejudice blocked my way. The enormous distance between the
appreciation of literary endeavours in the West and in the East grew in
proportion as I left the banks of the Thames and neared my native land;
for although the public in Hungary warmly welcomed their countryman,
re-echoing the shouts of applause from England and France, nay, even
looked upon him with national pride, I could not fail to notice on the
part of the heads of society and the leading circles a cold and
intentional neglect, which hurt me.

The fact that this Hungarian, who had been so much fêted abroad, was of
obscure origin, without family relations, and, moreover, of Jewish
extraction, spoiled the interest for many, and they forcibly suppressed
any feelings of appreciation they may have had. The Catholic Church,
that hotbed of intolerance and blind prejudice, was the first in attack.
It upbraided me for figuring as a Protestant and not as a Catholic, as
if I, the freethinker, took any interest in sectarian matters!

I was the first non-Catholic professor appointed according to Imperial
Cabinet orders to occupy a chair of the philosophical faculty at the
Pest University. Thus not to give offence to this University--unjustly
called a Catholic institution--by appointing a so-called Protestant,
_i.e._, a heretic, the title of professor was withheld from me, and for
three years I had to content myself with the title of lector and the
modest honorarium of 1,000 florins a year--a remuneration equal to that
of any respectable nurse in England when besides her monthly wages we
take into account her full keep! Truly, from a material point of view,
my laborious and perilous travels had not profited me much!

To justify this humiliation certain circles at home took special care to
depreciate me at every possible opportunity. Wise and learned men, for
instance, professed to have come to the conclusion that my travels in
the Far East, and the dangers and fatigues I had professed to have gone
through, were a physical impossibility on account of my lame leg. "The
Jew lies; he is a swindler, a boaster, like all his fellow-believers."
Such were the comments, not merely in words, but actually printed in
black and white; and when I introduced myself officially to the Rector
of the University, afterwards Catholic bishop of a diocese, I was
greeted with the following gracious words, "Do you suppose we are not
fully informed as to the treacherousness of your character? We are well
aware that your knowledge of Oriental languages is but very faulty and
that your fitness to fill the chair is very doubtful. But we do not wish
to act against His Majesty's commands, and to this coercion only do you
owe your appointment." Such was the gracious reception I had, and such
were the encouraging words addressed to me after the learned
Orientalists of Paris and London had loaded me with praise and honour,
and after I had accomplished, in the service of my people, a journey
which, as regards its perilousness, privations, and sufferings, can
certainly not be called a pleasure trip.

As it is only natural that small communities on the lower steps of
civilisation are either too lazy or too incapable to think, and are
guided in their opinion by the views of the higher and leading ranks of
society, I am not surprised that in certain circles of Hungary for years
together I was looked upon with suspicion, and that my book of travels,
which in the meantime had been translated for several Eastern and
Western nations into their mother-tongue, was simply discredited at
home. Similar causes have elsewhere, under similar conditions, produced
similar effects. When the nickname of "Marco Millioni" could be given
to the celebrated Venetian who traded all over Asia, why should I mind
their treatment of me in Hungary, where, apart from national
archæological considerations, nobody evinced any great interest in the
distant East? Among the millions of my countrymen there was perhaps no
more than one who had ever heard the names of Bokhara and Khiva, and
under the extremely primitive cultural conditions of those days
geographical explorations were not likely to excite very great interest.
The nation, languishing in the bonds of absolutism, and longing for the
restoration of Constitutional rights, was only interested in politics;
and, since the few scientists, who in their inmost minds were convinced
of the importance of my undertaking, had become prejudiced by the
reception I had received abroad and were now filled with envy, my
position was truly desperate, and for years I had to bear the sad
consequences of ill-will. When the first Turkish Consul for Hungary
appeared in Budapest he was asked on all sides whether it was really
true that I knew Turkish, and when he replied that I spoke and wrote
Turkish like a born Osmanli, everybody was greatly surprised. One of my
kind friends and patrons said to me in reply to my remark that I should
talk Persian with Rawlinson, "You can make us believe this kind of
thing, but be careful not to take in other people." A few weeks later
Rawlinson took me for a born Persian, but at home they said it was
unheard of for a Hungarian scientist to be able to speak Persian. So
deplorably low was the standard of Hungarian learning in those days!

Under these conditions the reader may well be surprised, and I must
confess that I am surprised myself now, that my deeply-wounded ambition
did not revolt against these saddest of all experiences, but that I
meekly bore these constant insults and calumnies. This extraordinary
humility in the character of a man who in every fibre of his body was
animated by ambition and a desire for fame, as I was in those days, has
long been an enigma to me. I have accused myself of lack of courage and
determination, and I should blush for shame at the memory of this
weakness if it were not for the extenuating circumstance that I was
utterly exhausted and wearied with my twenty years' struggle for
existence, and that my strong craving for a quiet haven of rest was a
further extenuation. What did I care that my supposed merits were not
appreciated at home, since in the far advanced West the worth of my
labours had been so amply recognised? Why should I trouble myself about
the adverse criticism of my rivals and ill-wishers since I had at last
found a quiet corner, and in possession of my two modestly furnished
rooms could comfort myself with the thought that I had now at last found
a home, and with the scanty but certain income of some eighty florins
per month I could sit down in peace to enjoy the long wished-for
pursuit of quiet, undisturbed literary labour? When I had completed the
furnishing of my humble little home, and, sitting down on the
velvet-covered sofa, surveyed the little domain, which now for the first
time I could call my own, I experienced a childish delight in examining
all the little details which I had provided for my comfort. Thirty-three
years long I had spent in this earthly vale of misery, a thousand ills,
both physical and mental, to endure, before it was granted me to
experience the blissful consciousness, henceforth no longer to be tossed
about, the sport of fortune, no longer to be exposed to gnawing
uncertainty, but quietly and cheerfully to pursue the object of my life,
and by working out my experiences to benefit the world at large. To
other mortals, more highly favoured by birth, my genuine satisfaction
and delight may appear incomprehensible and ridiculous: one may object
that I longed for rest too soon, and that the small results were
scarcely worthy of all the hard labour. But he whom Fate has cast about
for years on the stormy ocean hails with delight even the smallest and
scantiest plot of solid land, and he who has never known riches or
abundance enjoys his piece of dry but certain bread as much as the
richest dish.

Such were the feelings which animated me when I settled down in
surroundings altogether apart from my studies, my desires and views of
life, and such also were the feelings which made me proof against all
the attacks and slights of a criticism animated more by ignorance than
intentional ill-will. I simply revelled in the enjoyment of these first
weeks and months of my new career. The healthy hunger for work acted
like a precious tonic, the old indestructible cheerfulness returned, and
when after my daily labour of eight or ten hours I went for a walk in
the country I fancied myself the happiest man on earth. On account of
the marked difference of treatment I had received in England and in
Hungary, and in order not to subject myself to unnecessary slights, I
had at home avoided all social intercourse as far as I possibly could.
Thus on the one hand I had all the more leisure for my work, and on the
other hand, through my large correspondence with foreign countries, I
was led to remove the centre of gravity of my literary operations and
the chief aim and object of my pursuits to foreign lands. At first this
necessity troubled me; but the remark of my noble patron, Baron Eötvös,
that Hungary never could be the field of my literary labours, and that I
should benefit my native land far more by putting the products of my pen
upon the world's market in foreign languages soon comforted me. I wrote
mostly in German and English, and enlarged my mind in various branches
of practical and theoretical knowledge of Asiatic peoples and countries.
Two years had scarcely passed before my pen was the most in request on
subjects of the geographical, ethnographical, philological, scientific,
and political literature of Central Asia--in fact, of the whole Moslemic
East. During this period I saw the realisation of the boldest ideas of
my early days, and only now began to reap the benefit of my studies. I
read the different European and Asiatic languages without the help of a
dictionary, and as in most of them I had had practical experience, I
could understand them the more easily, and also write in them. Gradually
I had got together a small library of special books, and on account of
the lively correspondence I kept up with my fellow-literati and friends
of Oriental study, I was enabled to work with energy far from the centre
of my studies as linguist, ethnographer, and editor. Now and then the
want of intellectual stimulus and personal intercourse with my
fellow-labourers made itself felt. I longed particularly for an
interchange of ideas with authorities on the East, as in Pest itself I
could only meet with a few orthodox scholars of Ural-Altaic comparative
philology; but in the zeal and enthusiasm for one's undertaking one
easily dispenses with encouragement, and with the device, "_Nulla dies
sine linea_," which I always conscientiously followed, I must ultimately
reach the goal and overcome all obstacles.

With industry and perseverance, energy and untiring zeal, I could
conquer anything except the stupidity of human nature galled by envy.
The more I worked to keep up my literary repute and the repute I had
gained as traveller, the more furiously raged my opponents, and the more
they endeavoured to discredit me, and to accuse me of all imaginable
mistakes and misrepresentations. Once when I complained about this to
Baron Eötvös, this noble and high-minded man rightly remarked, "The
regions of your travels and studies are unknown in this land, and you
cannot expect society to acknowledge its ignorance and incapacity to
understand. It is far easier and more comfortable to condemn one whom it
does not understand as a liar and a deceiver." Now this was exactly my
position; all the same it grieved me to meet with so much opposition on
every side. Not in any period of my life, when some public
acknowledgment on the part of the Academy or of the newly-established
Hungarian Government would have been such a help to one of my almost
childish sensitiveness, had I ever received the slightest token of
appreciation of my labours. Twelve years after my return from Central
Asia I was elected ordinary member of the Academy, and then only after
several quite insignificant men had preceded me, and I simply could not
be passed over any longer. Others of higher birth, but without any
literary pretensions, were made honorary members or even placed on the
directing staff. As regards the State's want of appreciation of my work,
although I may now look upon it as of no significance, it made me feel
very sore at the time, especially during the Coronation festivities
when Hungarian literati and artists were picked out and I was utterly
ignored. At other times they were glad enough to distinguish me as the
only Magyar who had brought Hungarian knowledge on to the world's stage,
and had been instrumental in making the name of the Hungarian Academy
known to the Western world. I could give many other proofs of this
intentional neglect and ignoring of my claims, but why should I weary
the reader any longer with revelations of wounded vanity? The conviction
that I had become a stranger in my own land impressed itself more and
more upon me; the false position in which I was placed must necessarily
become more and more conspicuous. No wonder, then, that I grew
indifferent towards the place which formerly had been the object of all
my desires, and I now began to long for England, the foreign land where
I was better understood and more appreciated, and where I had found more
interest in my studies and more encouragement of my efforts.

Nothing, therefore, was more natural than that in these circumstances I
should undertake a journey abroad, to cheer and comfort myself by
personal contact with congenial society. These motives drew me towards
Germany, France, and particularly England. In Germany I made the
acquaintance of distinguished Orientalists whose theoretical knowledge
excited my admiration as much as their practical incapacity and
awkwardness surprised me. They were kind, modest, worthy men, who, since
I was outside their particular set, met me very pleasantly, but they
looked very doubtful when I seemed not to be acquainted with their
theories or betrayed an insufficient knowledge of their treatises,
notes, and glossaries. They listened to me, but I saw at once that they
looked upon me as a dilettante, outside the pale of learning. This
opinion of my literary accomplishments was not altogether unjust, for I
was and remained always a practical Orientalist, and these theorists
might have remembered that a mere bookman could not possibly have
travelled through so many Islamic lands as Dervish and faced all dangers
and vicissitudes in close intercourse with the people.

In France I fared somewhat better. Here the political situation had
revealed the necessity of practical knowledge of Asiatic conditions, and
side by side with the theoretical guardians of Oriental science there
had at all times been a considerable number of practical authorities on
Asia, who now received me very warmly. Of the personages with whom I
became acquainted in Paris I will mention in the first place Napoleon
III., who admitted me to an audience more because it was the fashion
than to satisfy his scientific curiosity. When I entered the Tuileries
in company with Prince Metternich, then Austrian Ambassador at Paris,
and caught sight of the Emperor before the Pavillon de l'Horloge as he
was taking leave of Queen Christina of Spain, the vision of this
thick-set man, with his flabby features and pale, faded eyes, made a
miserable impression upon me. And still more lamentable was the result
of my half-hour's interview with him. He appeared to have been preparing
himself for my visit, for on his writing-table, covered with papers and
documents, I saw spread out the map which accompanied the English
edition of my _Travels_, and, after the usual ceremonies, he told me to
sit down by him and began to converse about Hungary. When I remarked
that I had undertaken these travels into the interior of Asia at the
request of the Academy, the Emperor replied he had heard a good deal in
praise of Hungary, and after receiving some information as to the
intellectual efforts of Hungary, he led the conversation on to Central
Asia. At first he attempted to give the conversation a more scientific
character, and, with reference to his _Jules César_, which had just
appeared, he began to talk about the ethnical origin of the Parthians.
Gradually he dropped into a consideration of the political condition of
Central Asia, and put to me the question whether in the Memorandum I had
presented to Lord Palmerston I had touched upon the politico-economic
relations between Central Asia and India, and wherein lay the danger for
England. My explanations did not seem to suit his preconceived notions,
for he tried to refute my views as regards the danger to English
interests by pointing out the strong position England held in India, so
gloriously maintained in the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, while Russia was only
just beginning to make conquests in Central Asia. When I replied that
Russia's object was not so much to conquer India, but rather to cripple
the English military forces, in order to tie the hands of one of the
chief opponents of Russia's designs upon Constantinople, the Emperor was
driven into a corner and said: "Such an eventuality is a long way off
yet, and as to this point in the Oriental question, there are yet other
factors to be considered." Leaving the discussion of politics, which did
not seem to please the Emperor, he suddenly turned the conversation
again upon my travels, and began to compliment me on my adventures and
the linguistic proficiency which had so helped me to success. He said,
"You have evidently a great talent for acting, and the fact that you,
with your physical weakness (hinting at my lameness), have been able to
go through so many fatigues, is altogether astonishing."

I had occasion later on to meet the Emperor in the salon of the Princess
Mathilde, but I must honestly say that I could not discern a trace of
that greatness of which for years I had heard so much. He could be
affable and pleasant; between taciturnity and gravity he simulated the
deep thinker, but his pale eyes and artificial speech soon betrayed the
adventurer who had been elevated to his exalted position by the
inheritance of a great name and the wantonness of the nation. His
minister, Count Drouyn de Lhuys, was somewhat more inquisitive and
better informed; but the most interesting personality of my Parisian
acquaintance was decidedly the great Guizot, to whom I was introduced in
the Rue de Bac at the salon of Madame Mohl. The old gentleman, then in
his 78th year, was full of sparkling humour, and his memory was quite
marvellous. He seemed to be most amused to hear me hold a lively
conversation in various European and Asiatic languages, and he made a
point of bringing me in contact with several more nationalities with the
object of confusing me. Monsieur Guizot took a warm interest in me; at
his suggestion I was invited to the various salons, but all these
civilities could not chain me to the Parisian world. In the leading
themes, belle lettres, music, and plastic art, I was an ignoramus and
had not a word to say; the superfine manners of society worried me, for
I missed here the lively interest in things Asiatic which in the London
circles, in spite of the no less strict etiquette, was constantly
evinced. Men such as Barthélemy de St. Hilaire, Garcin de Tassy, Pavet
de Courteille, and other experts, had a strong fascination for me, but
generally speaking France left me cold, for I missed even the great
cosmopolitan ideas, the lively interest in the movements of mankind in
the far-away corners of the globe, and I realised that national vanity
would not so easily admit a stranger to its platform.

On the other side of the Channel it was quite different, and in course
of time the oftener I came to England the more I felt at home there, and
the closer became the ties of friendship in various classes of society.
When in London I was often invited to the provincial towns to give
public lectures on some one or other subject of Inner-Asiatic
conditions, and thus became acquainted with the principal centres of
industry. My lectures were mostly limited to the description of those
Central Asiatic lands where I had resided for some considerable time,
and dealt with commerce, industry, natural products, and other such
practical points. In many places, as, for instance, in Birmingham, I was
asked to bring my costume bought in Central Asia, to give the
manufacturers an insight into the colour, material, and fashion of the
national costume, and, as I learned afterwards, similar goods of English
manufacture have since been imported into Bokhara by the way of
Afghanistan. In other places again, I had to speak of my travelling
adventures in connection with geographical and ethnographical interests,
and even in the smallest towns I always found an attentive and
interested audience. I also used to touch upon the political side of my
travelling experiences, and the more I railed against Russia the louder
was the applause. Sometimes there were comical episodes during my
lectures. After I had finished, the public always addressed various
questions to me, and once the learned entomologist, Mr. D., asked
whether I could not oblige him with some Central Asiatic lice, as he had
made a special study of these insects, and was on the point of
publishing a large book on the subject. On my reply that in Central Asia
I had been in quite too close contact with these creatures, but that
now, thank Heaven, there was a great distance between us, the scientist
asked whether, perhaps, my Tartar could oblige him with a few specimens.
He explained that he had various kinds, Chinese, Siamese, and other
lice, but he had not been able to procure any from Central Asia. Again,
I had to reply in the negative, but the enthusiastic entomologist would
not yet give in. "Could not," he suggested, "a European louse (a
Hungarian one in this case) be brought into contact with my Tartar? it
would be interesting to note what transformation would take place."
Needless to say, I did not perform this charitable duty to science, but
this little episode with Mr. D., who soon afterwards published a work in
two thick volumes upon _pedicula_, has often amused me. My lectures in
England have always had an exhilarating effect upon me. Commencing in
1868, I visited in this manner, with short intervals, many different
towns of the United Kingdom. Bath, Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield,
Bradford, Leamington, Norwich, Kendal, York, Wakefield, Edinburgh,
Belfast, Halifax, Glasgow, Dundee, Aberdeen, Newcastle-on-Tyne,
Brighton, Cardiff, and other places, were visited once, twice, and even
oftener. Everywhere I enjoyed the hospitality of the most distinguished
and richest inhabitants of the place, and thus I got an insight into the
social, religious, ethical, and political standing as well as the
prevailing ideas and notions of the British people which increased my
admiration and enthusiasm for this remarkable nation. After two years of
uninterrupted sojourn in Hungary I always felt the need for what the
French call, "me retremper dans l'esprit européen," and to strengthen my
nerves and refresh my ideas by a trip to England. Just as on my journey
home from the East I felt that step by step I was advancing in Western
ways of living and thinking, in Western manners and customs, until they
reached their culminating point in England, so also when returning home
from thence I felt that each step was bringing me nearer to Eastern
notions of life, and to the errors, abuses, and superstitions of the Old
World. Year after year I made the same disappointing observation. It
always struck me in the same unpleasant manner; and if in spite of all
this I did not follow the promptings of my heart to make my permanent
home in the centre of Western thought and culture, so much more
congenial to my own conceptions of life, the fault lies not with me, but
with various external causes. In the first place the immediate contact
with these factors of Western culture, the incessant buzzing and
whirring of the machinery, had a stunning and exhausting effect upon me.
I realised that this restlessness, this everlasting mad rushing and
wrestling was unavoidable and indispensable to the attainment of the
object in view, but I preferred to watch the grotesque spectacle from a
distance, and to renew my strength by occasional visits to the field of
action. In the second place, notwithstanding all the many contradictions
and oppositions in which I constantly found myself with my countrymen on
account of my different views and notions of life, I clung far too
strongly to the soil of my native land to separate myself from it
altogether, and finally break with so many homely manners and customs
yet dear to me. And in the third place I was a Hungarian and had
presented myself to the world as the explorer of the early history and
language of my people. As such, an expatriation might reasonably have
shed a doubtful light upon my character as man and writer. My fate
compelled me to remain at home, to persevere, and to make myself as
comfortable as I could in the uncongenial surroundings. A hard struggle,
an everlasting self-denial, a constant incognito seemed to be my
appointed lot both in Europe and in Asia. Here, as there, my
surroundings were foreign and uncongenial to me, and while for many
years I accommodated myself to the necessity, and silently bore all
manner of mental injuries, I had always the consolation of work; for in
literary occupation I forgot everything else and was supremely happy.

I have often been asked why I did not from a patriotic point of view
join the national political endeavours, and take part in the movement of
1867? From a utilitarian point of view, and considering my eminently
practical views of life, my entering the Hungarian Parliament seemed to
commend itself; but serious considerations held me back. In the first
place I had no taste for this career. I had never studied Hungarian law,
and my knowledge of the political and economical conditions of the land
were far too slight for me to occupy a position as practical Hungarian
politician worthy of my ambition. And secondly, if these difficulties
could have been overcome, there were yet many other obstacles in the
way, which made a successful career such as I desired, practically
impossible. In Hungary, and elsewhere on the European Continent, birth
and origin play an important part in public life. The saying, "_Boni
viri vinique non quæritur origo_," is and always will be only a figure
of speech; and although, perhaps, the strong spirit of liberalism which
marked the commencement of Hungary's constitutional era might have
favoured my ambition--which I doubt, as so far not a single citizen of
Jewish extraction has succeeded in becoming a leading statesman--it was
not very likely that the highest circles of Vienna society would brook
a breach of their old conservative notions. I was bound to reckon with
this circumstance, and as my ambition could tolerate no half measures
and limitations, I preferred to keep altogether aloof from the political
arena of Hungary.




My Political Career and Position in England




CHAPTER VIII

MY POLITICAL CAREER AND POSITION IN ENGLAND


Many people have wondered how the various professions of Orientalist,
ethnographer, philologist, and political writer could all be united in
one and the same person, and that I applied myself to all these literary
pursuits has often been made a matter of reproach. Personally, I cannot
see either virtue or advantage in this odd mixture of study, but I have
gone on with it for years, and I will now shortly mention the reasons
which induced me thereto. I have already related how, during my first
stay in Constantinople, I became a Press correspondent, and how, through
constant intercourse with the political world, I entered the list of
writing politicians. My interest in political affairs has never flagged;
indeed, it rose and became more active when, on account of my personal
experiences in Persia and Central Asia, I became, so to speak, the
authority for all such information concerning them as related to the
political questions of the day, and of which even initiated politicians
were ignorant. The traveller who keeps his eyes open necessarily takes a
practical view of all that goes on in social, political, and
intellectual life, and it is perfectly impossible that the wanderer,
entirely dependent upon his own resources for years together, and mixing
with all classes and ranks of society, should cultivate merely
theoretical pursuits. To me the various languages were not merely an
object, but also a means, and when one has become practically so
familiar with foreign idioms in letter and in speech that one feels
almost like a native, one must always retain a lively interest in their
respective lands and nations, one shares their weal and woe, and will
always feel at home among them. Of course, it is quite another thing for
the theoretical traveller, whose object is of a purely philological or
archæological nature. To him land and people are secondary matters, and
when he has procured the desired theoretical information, and left the
scene of operation, he forgets it all the sooner, since he has always
remained a stranger to his surroundings, and has always been treated as
such.

This could never be the case with me. I had so familiarised myself with
Osmanli, Persian, and East Turkish that I was everywhere taken for a
native. In those three languages my pen has always been busy up to an
advanced age, and I believe there is hardly another European who has
kept up such varied correspondence with Orientalists in distant lands.

When, on my return from Asia, I took part in the discussion of the
political questions of the day, and, as eye-witness of current events,
was questioned by the leading statesmen of the day, I could not with the
best will in the world have escaped entering upon a political career.
Lord Palmerston gave me the first incentive by requesting me, through
Sir Roderick Murchison, then President of the London Geographical
Society, to draw up a memorandum. I did as I was asked, and handed in my
report about the position of Russia on the Yaxartes, and the state of
political affairs in Central Asia, with the necessary digressions into
the regions of Persian and Turkish politics. All this was easy enough to
me, for at the Porte I had been an eye-witness of the political
movements. I had already been actively employed as political
correspondent, and both in Teheran and in Constantinople I had
constantly been in contact with the diplomatic circles. During the many
interviews which Lord Palmerston granted me, he always took all my
remarks jokingly, and never appeared the serious diplomatist. He told me
that I looked at things through the spectacles of anti-Russian patriotic
Magyarism, that Hungarians and Poles were hot-brained, and that the
Thames would discharge a good deal more water before the Cossacks
watered their horses at the Oxus. When, a few months after my arrival
in London, the news came of the taking of Tashkend by Chernayeff, and
soon after the celebrated Note of Gorchakoff was presented at Downing
Street, the jocular character of the English Premier toned down
somewhat. In influential political circles I was questioned more
frequently about the defensive strength of the Emir of Bokhara, about
the high-roads, and the public opinion of the Central Asiatics. But even
then Lord Palmerston, always cheerful in spite of his advanced age,
would not allow his real motives to transpire. He feigned an Olympic
quietness or an icy indifference, and the only sign of interest he
showed me was his encouragement to continue writing my letters to the
_Times_, and to enlighten the English public concerning the land and the
people of Central Asia.

But the press and the public in England behaved quite differently. The
great majority, of course, was optimistic. The terror of the Afghan
Campaign in 1842 still filled all hearts with dismay, and after the
unsuccessful termination of the Crimean War they easily drifted into the
Ostrich policy, said that the advance of Russia towards the frontiers of
India was a chimera, and laughed at my firm and consistent assertions
that there was danger threatening from the side of Russia. If I were now
to publish all the newspaper articles, essays, and parliamentary
speeches which appeared at the time to contradict my views, and to
pacify the public in England and India, it would display indeed a sad
picture of self-deception and a wilful lulling to sleep in fancied
security. On my side were only a few staunch Conservatives, since this
party, decidedly anti-Russian, had stood out for an energetic policy;
but personally I took no notice either of the indifference of the masses
or of the scorn and mockery of the optimists. The more they laughed at
my ideas the more fervently and zealously did I defend them. I spared
neither time nor trouble to bring forward the most striking proofs. I
kept up my relations with Central Asia and Persia by constant
correspondence. I read the Russian papers industriously, and so I had
always an important weapon of defence at hand. The columns of the
_Times_ and the fashionable monthly and weekly periodicals were open to
me, and I had little difficulty in displaying such activity in writing
as would impress even my political opponents, and finally break down the
indifference of the great reading public. Many looked upon me as a
Magyar thirsting for revenge on Russia, others again were pleased to
find in me, a foreigner, a zealous defender of British State interests;
and this caused the more surprise, as such concern for foreign State
interests is always a rarity, and in England, much envied and little
beloved on the Continent, had never been heard of before. Had I been
seeking to obtain a public appointment in England, and had I settled
there, no doubt my efforts would have appeared in quite another light,
and the attention and subsequent acclamation I received would doubtless
have been pitched in a lower key. But since, in my humble function of
professor, I abode in Hungary, and as a foreigner continued in a foreign
land, without ostentation or hope of material preferment, to carry on
the defence of British interests on the Continent of Europe, and even
persevered in influencing public opinion in England itself, I succeeded
in banishing all suspicion of self-interest, and finally in disarming
even the bitterest political opponents. Amongst the few who particularly
disliked my political energy was Mr. Gladstone, the zealous advocate of
an Anglo-Russian alliance in Church and politics. And yet I have been
told that he had remarked to a friend, "Professor Vambéry's agitation
seemed at first suspicious to me, but since I have heard that he is a
poor man I believe in his fanaticism." The insular separatist, the proud
Englander, had in the end to submit to a foreigner mixing himself up
with his national concerns, giving his unbidden opinion about Great
Britain's foreign policy, and finally, by dint of perseverance,
influencing public opinion in England.

Of course all this was not the work of a few weeks or months, but of a
whole series of years. Between 1865 and 1885 I published a quantity of
letters, articles, and essays on political and politico-economic affairs
in Central Asia, Persia, and Turkey in English, German, French,
Hungarian, and American periodicals, which, if collected, would make
several volumes. In England it was chiefly in the _Times_, and sometimes
in other daily papers, as also in periodicals such as the _Nineteenth
Century_, the _Fortnightly Review_, the _National Review_, _Army and
Navy Gazette_, the _New Review_, the _Journal of the Society of Arts_,
the _Asiatic Quarterly Review_, the _Leisure Hour_, and _Good Words_. In
Germany I wrote in the _Münchener_ (formerly _Augsburger_) _Allgemeine
Zeitung_, _Unsere Zeit_, _Die Deutsche Rundschau_, _Die Deutsche Revue_,
_Welthandel_, and in a few other daily and monthly papers, long since
discontinued. In Austro-Hungary I often wrote in the _Pester Lloyd_, but
only seldom in the _Neue Freie Presse_ and in the _Monatschrift für den
Orient_, while in France I contributed to the _Revue des deux Mondes_,
and in America to the _Forum_ and the _North American Review_. Only when
the Central Asiatic question became acute--as, for instance, on the
occasion of the taking of Samarkand in 1868, the campaign against Khiva
in 1873, the conquest of Khokand in 1876, and the Pendjdeh affair--was
my pen in actual request. For the rest I had to force myself upon the
public, and not only on the Continent, but in England also, I often had
difficulty in getting a hearing. As long as the Russians had not so far
consolidated their power that it was dangerous for foreign travellers to
be admitted in the conquered districts I was able to maintain myself as
chief and only authority on Central Asiatic affairs. Later I had
gradually to relinquish this privilege. The number of writers versed in
Central Asiatic concerns constantly increased, but my knowledge of the
Oriental and Russian languages, and also my prolonged and intimate
acquaintance with the theme, always gave me a certain amount of
advantage over my literary competitors. From time to time, when the
Central Asiatic question came to the foreground, I entered the arena
with larger, more substantial essays. Thus, for instance, my _Power of
Russia in Asia_, which appeared in German and Hungarian, depicted the
gradual progress of the Russian conquests in Asia. As foundation for my
article I used MacNeil's _The Progress and Present Position of Russia in
the East_, which appeared at the time of the Crimean War. This I
elaborated with new facts and data. Like my predecessor, I preached then
(1871) to deaf ears. People troubled themselves very little about
Russia's Asiatic politics. They called me a blinded Russophobe, and
now--since the Northern Colossus has thrown his polyp-like arm over the
half of Asia, and is looked upon as the peace-breaker of the Western
world--when I remember the scornful laughter of the great politicians, I
cannot help thinking what a pity it was that timely precautions were not
taken to ward off the coming danger, and that people did not realise
that the power gained in Asia might one day stand Russia in good stead
in its dealings with Europe.

The second independent book about political matters which I brought out
was entitled, _Central Asia and the Anglo-Russian Frontier Question_,
published in English and German. It was, correctly speaking, a
collection of my different political articles published in various
periodicals. This book, coming out at the time of the Khiva campaign,
when people showed a much keener interest in what took place in the
inner Asiatic world, found a good sale, and although not of much
material advantage to me, gave me a good deal of moral encouragement.

Of great effect was my article about _The Coming Struggle for India_,
published in 1885, at the time when the question of the rivalry between
the two Colossi in Asia had reached a seething-point, and after the
affair at Pendjdeh nearly involved England and Russia in a war. This
booklet, which I wrote in twenty days, and issued simultaneously in
English, French, German, Swedish, and Guzerati (East Indian language),
caused a great sensation far beyond its intrinsic worth. It proved also
a lucrative speculation.

_The Coming Struggle for India_, which was the English title of the
book, brought me quite a stream of commendatory grateful letters from
England, America, and Australia; I was eulogised as a prophet, and held
up as an English patriot whose merits would never be forgotten nor too
highly thought of in Albion. On this occasion I also received some less
flattering communications from English Socialists and Anarchists, who in
the first place reproached me with interfering in the affairs of their
country, and in the second place endeavoured to prove how unjust and
inhuman it was for England to waste life and money on the civilising and
conquest of foreign nations, while at home hundreds of thousands of
their compatriots were perishing of poverty and distress. The colonial
policy enriches the aristocrats who revel in luxury, while the labourer,
oppressed by the capitalist, is left to starve. Thus complained one of
my unbidden correspondents.

The middle classes and the aristocracy of England thought differently,
however. Regardless of all scornful and derisive remarks I had now for
twenty years pursued my political campaign with unremitting zeal, and
had always had the interest of England at heart. Many, therefore, looked
upon me as a true friend, and although I was stamped by some as a
fanatic, an Anglomaniac, or even a fool, the majority saw in me a writer
who honestly deserved the respect and recognition of the country; a man
who in spite of his foreign extraction should be honoured as a promoter
of Great Britain's might and power. Cold, proud, and reserved as the
Britisher generally appears before strangers, I must confess that at my
public appearances both in London and in the provinces I have always
been received with the utmost cordiality and warmth.

Many were struck with the pro-English spirit of my writings, and I have
frequently been asked how it was that I, far from the scene of action,
was often more quickly and better informed about current events than the
English Government which had Embassies and secret agencies at its
disposal. The reason is clear enough. In the first place I had personal
experiences at my disposal, and, supported by my correspondents in the
Far East, many of my views have thus in course of time been justified by
events. Secondly, I had paid far greater attention to the communications
of the Russian press than the politicians in England, where the Russian
language was not much known yet. I was surprised myself to find that my
political activity was even discussed in the English Parliament and led
to interpellations. On the 22nd of May, 1870, Mr. Eastwick asked the
Government: "Whether there was any truth in the rumours, mentioned in
Mr. Vambéry's letter published in the _Times_ on the 18th of this month,
that Herat had been taken by Yakub Khan?" Lord Enfield, then Secretary
of State, denied my statement; nevertheless I was right, for Herat was
actually in the hands of the rebel son of Shir Ali Khan. On the 3rd of
June, 1875, Mr. Hanbury asked the Minister of Foreign Affairs, "Whether
his (the minister's) attention had been called to a letter of Mr.
Vambéry's in the _Times_ of the 2nd of June relating to a new Russian
expedition to hitherto unknown districts of the Upper Oxus; whether the
purpose of the expedition had been communicated to the English
Government, and whether, as stated by Mr. Vambéry, the diplomatist, Mr.
Weinberg, was a member of the expedition, and whether it was of a
political as well as of a scientific character?" To this Mr. Bourke,
then Secretary of State, replied in Parliament: "That he had read Mr.
Vambéry's letter with great interest, but that Government had not yet
received any information regarding the matter therein mentioned." Again
I was on the right side and had the priority in point of information;
thus naturally the weight of my writings continually increased.

Without desiring or seeking it I was acknowledged in England as the
Asiatic politician and the staunch friend of the realm. Year after year
I received invitations to give lectures about the present and the future
condition of England in Asia, and when, tired of writing, I longed for a
little change and recreation, I travelled to England, where in various
towns--London, Manchester, Birmingham, Bradford, Sheffield, Leeds,
Edinburgh, Glasgow, &c.--I gave lectures for a modest honorarium. On
these occasions I drew the attention of the public to their commercial
and political interests in the Orient, and urged them to exercise their
civilising influence over Asia. Foreigners who for years together
concern themselves about the weal or woe of a land not their own belong
certainly to the rarities, and consequently I was received everywhere in
England with open arms and made much of by all classes of society.

This was very patent during the critical time in the spring of 1885, and
the ovations I received in London and other towns of the United Kingdom
I shall never forget. On the 2nd of May I gave a lecture in the great
hall of Exeter Hall about the importance of Herat. On my arrival I found
the house full to overflowing with a very select audience. Lord
Houghton, who presided at this meeting, thanked me in the name of the
nation, and the next day almost all the newspapers had leading articles
about the services I had rendered, and the resoluteness with which I
always met the woeful optimism and blunders of leading politicians led
astray by party spirit.

A few days later I spoke under the auspices of the Constitutional Union,
before an aristocratic Conservative gathering in Willis's Rooms, on the
subject, "England and Russia in Afghanistan, or who shall be lord and
master in Asia?" The heads of English aristocracy were present, and when
on the platform behind me I recognised a duke, many lords, marshals,
generals, ex-ministers, and several famous politicians and writers of
Great Britain I was really overcome.

My thoughts wandered back into the past. I remembered the chill autumn
night, which I, a beggar, spent under the seat on the promenade at
Presburg. I thought of the scorn, the contempt, and the misery to which
I had been exposed as the little Jew boy and the hungry student, and
comparing the miserable past with the brilliant present, I could not
help marvelling at the strange dispensations of fate. Modesty forbids me
to speak of the manner in which Lord Hamilton, Lord Napier of Magdala,
Lord Cranbrook, and others expressed themselves both before and after my
lecture about my person and my work, but I repeat it, my modesty is not
the feigned, hateful modesty of the craft. Suffice it to say that I had
the satisfaction of warning the proud English aristocracy against the
sinful optimism of the Liberals then in power. If this episode stands
out as the crowning point of my political labours it also shows the
magnanimity and noble-mindedness of the Englishman (so often condemned
for his insular pride) where it concerns the impartial acknowledgment of
merit and the interests of his fatherland!

In the zeal with which I had taken up the political questions of England
all these points did not present themselves to me till afterwards. There
was one incident with regard to this matter which deserves mention.
When, after the conclusion of the last Afghan War, 1880, the Liberal
party came into power, they did all they could to upset the politics of
their opponents, and decided to give back to the Afghans the important
frontier station, Kandahar. I then addressed an open letter to Lord
Lytton, at that time Viceroy of India, in which I warned him against
this step, and pointed out the danger which would ensue. This letter was
reproduced by the whole Press, and a few days after I read in the German
papers the following despatch:


"LONDON, _22nd February_.

"An important meeting being held to-day in favour of the continuance of
the occupation of Kandahar, a letter of Vambéry's to Lytton has come
very opportunely. It is therein stated that to give up Kandahar would do
irreparable damage to England's prestige in Asia, for the Asiatics could
look upon it only as a sign of weakness. Vambéry further asserts that
the occupation of Kandahar under safe conditions would decidedly not
show a deficit, but, on the contrary, be profitable to India, for the
Kandaharis are the best traders of all Central Asia. Finally, Vambéry
points out that the Russians, even without the occupation of Merv, would
within a few years stand before the gates of Kandahar."


Lord Lytton himself wrote to me as follows about this matter.--


"KNEBWORTH PARK,
"STEVENAGE, HERTS,
"_February 22, 1885_.

"DEAR PROFESSOR VAMBÉRY,--"I am very much obliged to you for your
interesting and valuable letter about Kandahar, and you have increased
my obligation by your permission to publish it, of which I have availed
myself. I little thought, when I had the honour of making your
acquaintance many years ago at Lord Houghton's [_see_ p. 255], that I
should live to need and receive your valued aid in endeavouring to save
England's Empire in the East from the only form of death against which
not even the gods themselves can guard their favourites--death by
suicide. I fear, however, that its present guardians, who have Moses and
the prophets, are not likely to be converted--even by one of the dead.
At least, the only form of conversion to which they seem disposed, is
one which threatens to reverse the boast of Themistocles by converting a
great Power into a little one.

"Believe me, dear Professor Vambéry,
"Very sincerely yours,
"LYTTON."


In non-English Europe great statesmen seldom or never condescend to
write in such terms to mere journalists! And where such encouragements,
characteristic of a free nation, are bestowed on the ambitious writer,
they urge him on with still greater enthusiasm. And, further, what must
be the feelings of the writer who knows all about England's glorious
doings in Asia, and from his earliest youth has dreamed of political
freedom; who, hampered hitherto by the mediæval prejudices still
prevalent in Austria, finds himself all at once able to move and act
without restraint, and has not to be ashamed of his low birth? One may
say what one likes against the English (and they have no doubt some very
glaring faults), but this one thing must be allowed--before all things
they are men, and only after that are they British. In the enlightened
nineteenth century they have made more progress than any, and a part
such as that played by Disraeli and others would be perfectly impossible
not only in Germany and Austro-Hungary--still more or less imbued with
the spirit of mediævalism--but even in liberty-boasting France. And I
further ask who could possibly remain indifferent while keenly watching
the _rôle_ played on the world's stage by this small group of islands,
how it rules over several hundred millions of people of all colours,
tongues, and religions, and educates them up to better things!

This extraordinary and almost phenomenal energy must surely excite the
admiration of any thinking man interested in the history of humanity.
When even Rome in the zenith of its glory impresses us with the
magnitude of its power, how could the actions and operations of Albion,
so infinitely greater, mightier and more impressive, leave us
indifferent? These and similar ideas from the very first attracted me
towards England; I felt interested in all her doings, and when it came
to the question of the Anglo-Russian rivalry in Asia, I naturally
always took the side of England. Besides, could I, or dare I, have acted
differently considering the outrageous interference of Russia in the
Hungarian struggle for independence in 1848, and also mindful of the
fact that the government of the Czar, that frightful instrument of
tyranny, that pool of all imaginable slander and abuse, that disgrace to
humanity, must on no account be strengthened and supported in its thirst
for conquest? In proportion as the dominion of the Czar grows in Asia,
so do his means increase for checking the liberty of Europe, and the
easier will it be for Russia to perform acts of benevolence and
friendship towards those of our sovereigns who long for absolutism.
England's greatness can never damage, but rather profit us; as the
worthy torch-bearer of nineteenth-century culture no liberal-minded man
will follow her successful operations in Asia with envious eyes.

And so my literary activity was a thorn in the eyes of the cunning
Muscovites, and the ways and means they used to counteract it are not
without interest. One day in Pest I received a visit from a well-known
Russian statesman, who introduced himself to me with the following
remark, "When the great Greek General fled to Persia, he presented
himself before Cyrus the greatest enemy of the Greeks. I have come to
Hungary to pay my respects to you." Of course I received him as
pleasantly as possible, and when the wily diplomatist looked round my
poor abode he remarked with a smile, "You work a great deal, and yet you
do not appear to be very well off. _You would probably be in better
circumstances if you did not work so much._" I replied, also with a
smile, that I had accustomed myself to a Dervish life in Asia, that it
suited me admirably both morally and physically, and that with reference
to the intellectual result, I felt no desire or need to make any change.
"Just so," remarked the Muscovite, looking me straight in the face, and
soon turned the conversation on to other subjects. Various other
attempts were made to turn me aside from the path I pursued and to
discredit me in the eyes of England and of the Continent. But their
trouble was all in vain, for the bitter hostility of a despotic
Government and their venomous darts must remain without effect against
the expressed approval of a free nation and the approbation of the whole
liberal West.

In the spring of 1885, during my stay in London, I received invitations
to various other towns. A war between England and Russia was then
pending in consequence of the Pendjdeh affair. The number of letters and
telegrams I daily received became so numerous, that I could only master
them with the assistance of a private secretary, who had offered his
services gratis, from purely patriotic motives. I accepted invitations
only to some of the principal provincial towns, as the labour of
travelling every day to be honoured every evening with a public
reception in a different place, give a lecture and attend a banquet, was
too tiring and proved too much for my physical strength. As the most
memorable evenings of this tour I would mention my _début_ at
Newcastle-on-Tyne and at Brighton. In the first-named great industrial
town of the North of England, I gave my lecture, or rather my discourse,
in the large theatre. The house was filled to the top, one could have
walked over the heads, and the galleries were full to overflowing.
Tailor's apprentice, servant, tutor, Effendi, Dervish, I have been
pretty well everything in my life, but a stage hero I was now to be for
the first time, and although not seized with the fever of the
footlights, the masses before me and their enthusiastic reception had an
unusual effect upon me. I spoke for an hour and a half, often
interrupted for several minutes at a time by loud applause, and when,
referring to the danger which threatened the Indian Empire, I called out
to my audience, "The spirits of the heroes fallen in the struggle for
India, who have enabled this small island to found one of the greatest
Asiatic Empires, who have made you mighty and rich, their spirits ask
you now, Will you allow the fruits of our labour to perish, and the most
precious pearl of the British crown to fall into the enemy's hand?" the
frantic, "No! No!" from all parts of the house almost moved me to
tears, and I saw with astonishment what a pitch of excitement these
people of the foggy North can be led up to. A similar scene awaited me
at Brighton, where my speech had also a wonderful effect upon my
hearers. At the close of the lecture many, as usual, pressed forward on
to the platform to shake hands. Among others an elegantly dressed,
elderly lady came up to me, took both my hands and said in a choking
voice: "Oh, my dear, precious England, you have indeed done it good
service. Sir, it is a glorious, golden land; continue to promote its
welfare; God in heaven will reward you." The poor woman trembled as she
said this, and as long as I live I shall never forget the look of
agitation depicted on her face.

I must not omit to mention some of the very characteristic proofs of
friendship I received on this lecturing tour from private individuals
hitherto absolutely unknown to me. At several railway stations the door
of my compartment suddenly opened and dainty luncheon baskets
plentifully filled were pushed in with inscriptions such as: "From an
admirer," or, "from a grateful Englishman." The most remarkable of all
these tokens of appreciation was the hospitality shown me by Mr. Russell
Shaw in London. He offered it me by letter in Budapest, and on my
arrival in London I was met at the station by a footman, who handed me a
letter, in which Mr. Shaw put his carriage at my disposal. The footman
looked after my luggage, we drove to the West End, stopped at No. 26,
Sackville Street, and I was led to the richly furnished apartments made
ready for my reception. Here I found everything that could make me
comfortable; the finest cigars, liqueurs, a beautiful writing-table,
stamps, &c.; everything was put at my disposal, and I had scarcely
finished my toilet when the cook came to ask what were my favourite
dishes, and what time I wished to lunch and to dine. Not until afternoon
did my host appear, after he had begged permission to introduce himself.
Of course I received Mr. Shaw in the most friendly manner in his own
house. He left me after having asked me to invite as many guests as I
liked, and freely to dispose of his kitchen, cellar, and carriage. For
three weeks I remained in this hospitable house. Mr. Shaw hardly ever
showed himself, and only on the day of my departure he paid me another
visit, asked if I had been comfortable and satisfied about everything,
and, wishing me a prosperous journey, he left me. I have never seen him
again. He was unquestionably a true type of English amiability!

Is it surprising, then, that these and other spontaneous expressions of
appreciation made my political labours appear to me in quite a different
light from what I had ever thought or expected? I realised, of course,
that it was not only my political writings which made me of so much
weight, but that it was founded on my purely scientific labours, which,
although unknown to the public at large, had won me credit with the
influential and governing circles of England. Political writings, after
all, can only be appreciated as an excursion from the regions of more
serious literature; and just as newspaper writing in itself is naturally
not highly rated, so strictly and exclusively theoretical writing bears
rather too often the character of sterility. True, not every science can
be animated and popularised by practical application, but when the study
has to be kept alive by active intercourse with far distant nations,
politics, as the connecting link between theory and practice, become an
absolute necessity, and the lighter literary occupation is as
unavoidable as it is energising and beneficial in its effect upon the
mind.

After I had spent a few hours with comparative grammars and
text-editions, or had been occupied with purely ethnographical studies,
I always felt a desire to write a newspaper article, and to refresh
myself from the monotony of word-sifting in the field of political
speculation. The best time of the day, that is to say, the morning
hours, I spent exclusively in serious study, and at the age between
thirty and fifty I could also devote a few hours in the evening to
graver study. In the forenoon, between ten and twelve, and in the
afternoon, between two and five, I used to apply myself to politics and
journalism, with the help of a secretary. Through practice and custom I
had now got so far that I could dictate two or even three leading
articles or other matters in different languages at the same time. When
I approached the fifties, however, such _tours de force_ gave me
headaches and congestion, and I had to abandon them; but long after I
had passed the fifties I continued to dictate extempore--in fact, I
generally wrote and worked from memory even in my scientific studies.
Except the notes I wrote down during my Dervish tour in Arabic letters
and in the Hungarian language, I have never had a notebook, and
consequently never collected notes for future writings. Of course as was
the material, so was the work produced, and it would be arrant
self-deceit to try to conceal the blunders and defects under which so
many of my literary productions laboured because of my mode of working.
No, vanity has not altogether blinded me. Uncommon and curious as my
schooling had been, equally curious was my subsequent literary
productivity, and if there be anything to make me reflect with
satisfaction upon those twenty years of literary activity, it is my
untiring zeal and the strict adherence to my device "_Nulla dies sine
linea_," in which I spent the beautiful summer of my life. Nothing of
any kind or description either in my private or public life has ever
made me break this rule, and no pleasures of any kind could ever replace
for me the sweet hours of study or deter me from my once formed
resolution.

I had the good fortune never to have sought or known what is vulgarly
called entertainment, recreation, or diversion. As in the years of my
trying apprenticeship I had to spend eight or ten hours a day in
teaching, and devoted six hours to my private studies, so, thanks to my
perfectly healthy constitution, I have been able till close upon the
sixties to work at first for ten and later on for six hours daily, apart
from the time spent in reading the newspapers and scientific
periodicals. During the whole of my life I have only very rarely visited
the theatre, and concerts were not in my line either, as I had no
knowledge of the higher art of music. Social evenings, where I might
have refreshed myself in conversation with my fellow-labourers, and have
profited by an interchange of ideas, would have been very welcome to me,
but in my native land, where society had only political aspirations and
ideals at heart, there was no one who cared for the practical science of
the East, no one interested in the actual condition of Asia, and with
the few scholars, mostly philologists, who in the evenings used to
frequent the ale-houses, I could not associate, because spirituous
drinks and excess of any kind have always been obnoxious to me. A
home--a "sweet home"--in the English sense of the word, has never fallen
to my lot, even on ever so modest a scale, for my wife, a homely,
kind-hearted, and excellent woman, was ill for many years, and if it had
not been for the beautiful boy with whom she presented me, I should
never have known what domestic happiness was. My study and my library
were the stronghold of my worldly bliss, the fortress from which I
looked upon three continents, and by a lively correspondence with
various lands in Europe, Asia, and America, could maintain my personal
and scientific relationships. Mentally I lived continually in the most
diverse lands and tongues, and through my correspondence with Turks,
Persians, Ozbegs, Kirgizes, Germans, French, English, and Americans, I
could remain conversant with the different idioms, and also continually
be initiated in the smallest details of the political, commercial, and
religious relationships of those distant lands. My post was, as it were,
the link of union between the distant regions in which I had lived, and
where I always loved to dwell in fancy.

I attribute it more to this than to my inborn linguistic talent, that
after more than a quarter of a century I was able to speak correctly and
fluently the various Asiatic and European languages. Hungarian, German,
Slovak (Slav), Serbian, Turkish, Tartar, Persian, French, Italian, and
English were all equally familiar to me, and the greater or lesser
perfection of accent and of syntactic forms depended chiefly upon the
longer or shorter practice I had had in speaking with natives. I cannot
say the same for the writing in these languages. Here the Latin proverb,
"_Quot linguas calles, tot homines vales_," did not hold good, for
although I could write in several languages, I cannot say that I could
write any one language ready for the Press, _i.e._, without any
mistakes. In former days I used to write Hungarian a good deal and
fairly well. But afterwards I wrote mostly in German and English, and
all that I have published since 1864 has been written in one or other of
these two languages. In order to obtain more fluency of expression,
_i.e._, to feel more at home in a foreign tongue, I used at one time to
read for half an hour or more a day in the particular language. Thus I
became familiar with the manner of speaking, or rather the peculiarities
of expression in that tongue, and when I had thus learned to think
fluently in English, German, or Turkish, I also managed to obtain a
certain amount of fluency in writing. I fear there can be no question
with me of a mother-tongue, and the argument that the language in which
one involuntarily thinks is one's real mother-tongue I cannot agree
with, were it only for this one reason, that long practice and custom
enabled me to think in any language with which I had been familiarised
for some length of time. From my earliest youth I had read a good deal
of German. I had studied in that language; and afterwards in Hungary of
all foreign languages I came most in contact with German, and it seemed
to come most easy to me. But afterwards I wrote English quite as
easily--that is to say, after I had spent a few weeks in England, and
although I never got so far as to be taken for a native, as was the
case with Turkish, French, German, and Persian, I had the satisfaction
of reading in the criticisms at the time that the absence of the foreign
accent in my conversation and my idiomatic style were remarkable.

From these observations about the linguistic conditions and changes
during the fairly long term of my literary activity I will now pass on
to a subject which has given rise to various conjectures in the circle
of my acquaintance, and will not be without interest to the general
reader. I refer to the material benefits derived from my literary
labours, which, on account of their many-sidedness, and the
international character of my pen, have been considerably overrated. I
have already mentioned how much I made by my first book of travels
published by Murray, and expressed at the time the bitter disappointment
I experienced, how different was what I had hoped for and what I got.
Subsequent English publications fared not much better; none of them
brought me in more than £200 sterling, most of them barely half that
sum. In Germany the honorarium paid for literary work was still poorer
and closer, and 500 thaler (£75) was the highest sum ever paid me for
any of my popular writings. I purposely say "popular," because for
purely scientific works I received nothing, and my two volumes of
Chagataic and Uiguric studies and my "Sheibaniade" alone have cost me
some thousand florins, not reckoning the expenses incurred with my
_Ursprung der Magyaren_ and _Türkenvolk_, for which I never received a
penny.

Journalism was a good deal more profitable, especially in England, where
some periodicals paid twenty or thirty guineas per sheet. I came to the
conclusion that one hour of English article-writing pays better than six
hours of German literary work, with this difference, however, that
German periodicals lend themselves to the most theoretical, widely
speculative subjects, while the English Reviews, in their eagerness for
_matter of fact_, accept only practically written articles of immediate
interest. German Review literature seems only lately to have realised
that it is possible to write essays about serious matters without
wearying the reader with a heavy style and endless notes, and one
frequently meets now in the German periodicals with attractively written
articles about the political and commercial relations of distant
countries and people.

This was not the case when I began my literary career. German
Orientalists, unquestionably the most learned and solid in the world,
have always occupied themselves preferably with the past of the Asiatic
civilised world, with textual criticisms of well-known classical works
and grammatical niceties in the Semitic and Aryan tongues, while the
practical knowledge of the East, until quite lately, for want of
national political interest, was not at all encouraged. England, on the
other hand, on account of her Indian Empire, and her many commercial
ties all over the Asiatic continent, has for long enough evinced a
lively interest in the manners and customs of the Orientals, and since
English writers have dealt largely with these, the general public has
been interested mostly in this branch of Oriental literature. Of course
the former traveller, once retired into his library, cannot so easily
come forward with new practical suggestions. It is but seldom that he
can offer a new contribution, and in spite of the excellent honorarium,
the productions of his pen become gradually less, and do not give him a
secured existence as is the case, for instance, with literary writers,
or scholars who can write in an interesting and popular style upon some
subject which is of all-engrossing interest in everyday life.

Taking everything into consideration, I must look upon my many years of
literary labour only from the moral standpoint, and as such my reward
has been rich and abundant. A collection of criticisms and discussions,
which, quite accidentally, came into my possession, contains very nearly
two hundred articles in German, French, English, Italian, Hungarian,
Turkish, Russian, and Modern Greek, which make laudatory mention of my
literary work. The number of criticisms of which I have never heard may
possibly run into many hundreds more; witness the many letters I have
received from all parts of the world, and which on the whole have
rather burdened than edified me. In spite of gross mistakes and many
shortcomings, my literary labour has secured me a position far beyond my
boldest expectations, and would justify the saying, "_Et voluisse sat
est_." Work has kept me in good health, it has made me happy and
therefore rich, and work is consequently to my mind the greatest
benefactor and the greatest blessing in the world.




The Triumph of my Labours




CHAPTER IX

THE TRIUMPH OF MY LABOURS


From reading the preceding pages the reader will easily gather how it
was that, after so many years of hard fighting and struggling, my labour
brought its own triumph and gave me the gratification of my dearest
wishes.

The psychological problem is clear enough, and the solution is not hard.
Other children of men, animated by a desire to produce something new,
give themselves neither rest nor peace in the pursuit of their object,
but they hide the true motive which instigates them under a mask of
modesty; they pretend to be the unwilling instruments of fate. I frankly
admit that what animated me was the indomitable ambition to do something
out of the common, something that would make me famous. I think I must
have been born with this fire in my veins, this devil in my flesh. The
confession brings no blush of shame to my face, for now in my seventieth
year, looking back upon the thorny path of my life, I am fully convinced
it was this longing for fame and the insatiable thirst for activity in
the early stages of my career which were at the bottom of all the
inconsistencies of my life. On the one hand, the desire to put to some
practical use the experience and the knowledge I had gained urged me on
to take an active part in whatever was going on in Europe or Asia,
while, on the other, my natural propensities, or, perhaps more
correctly, the poverty and simplicity of my bringing up, made me lean
more towards a quiet, contemplative life and the retirement of my own
study. The severe rules of etiquette and the demands of society, where
everybody is so important in his own eyes, have ever been distasteful to
me, and often when I mixed with the leading people of the diplomatic
world or of high life I felt wearied with the empty talk and hollow,
would-be importance of these folks. These feelings were not calculated
to lit me for a diplomatic career, for, notwithstanding my eminently
practical turn of mind, I was anything but a man of the world.

Possibly--in fact, probably--these feelings would have become
considerably modified in process of time if at the commencement of my
public life, _i.e._, on my return from Central Asia, I had had the
chance of entering upon an active career instead of contenting myself
with purely scientific pursuits. I had always had a secret longing for
public activity, as I mentioned before, but at that time insurmountable
obstacles and difficulties stood in my way. In England I was certainly
a _distinguished foreigner_, but still I was a foreigner, and not likely
to receive the nation's unreserved confidence in important matters of
State. In Austria every chance of coming to the front was cut off for me
by ancient prejudices; and as for Hungary, its foreign affairs being
entirely managed in Vienna, there can even to this day be no question of
diplomatic activity. In bureaucratic and nobility-crazed Prussia the
prejudices against plebeian descent had already been somewhat mitigated,
and in so far overcome that the Iron Chancellor found for nearly all
German travellers who had gained experience in foreign lands some
employment in the diplomatic service. Nachtigal and Rohlfs have been
entrusted with missions to West and North Africa, for Emin Pasha there
was a regular fight, and Brugsch, who in company with Minutoli made only
one journey to Persia, was appointed First Secretary to the German
Embassy at Teheran. In spite of my excellent reception in England and
the rest of Europe, in spite of my energetic publicistic activity in
Asiatic politics, I was so absolutely unknown in Austria that when the
Ministry for War once had the unlucky idea of publishing a map of
Central Asia, obtained by secret means, and wanted to have it revised by
an expert, they submitted it to Kiepert in Berlin. He advised the
gentlemen in Vienna to refer the matter to one of their compatriots who
had visited the scene, and only after that the Military Geographical
Institute thought of me. This wilful and persistent ignoring of me
lasted for several years. When Austria sent its first Embassy to
Teheran, and the Press mentioned my name, an application of mine met
with the reply that I had not and could not come into consideration,
because in point of social rank I was not even a _Truchsess_ (_i.e._
chairbearer) at court; and yet, as I learned afterwards, the Shah and
his Government had received the newspaper report with pleasure. When
Austria, before the Bosnian occupation, sent a mission to Constantinople
to intercede for an amicable settlement of this affair, nobody thought
of me, although, as was afterwards clearly shown by my personal
intercourse with Sultan Abdul Hamid, no one could more easily than I
have brought about a conciliation, saving the country thousands of human
lives and millions of money, which the occupation campaign ultimately
claimed. At the critical period of the last Russo-Turkish War it was
considered advisable for the country to be represented at the Bosphorus
by a non-diplomatic ambassador. The choice fell on an aristocrat held to
be exceptionally cunning and clever, who before this was supposed to
have displayed his sagacity in various ways; but of Oriental affairs he
had not the faintest notion, and through ignorance and simplicity he
committed some gross mistakes. The fact that my many years' personal
intercourse with the Porte, my familiarity with the national customs,
languages, and conditions, and my personal acquaintance with the Sultan,
might have served the country far better, never entered anybody's mind;
not even my own countryman, Count Andrássy, who was then at the head of
foreign affairs, thought of me. Ridiculous! The very idea of it would
have been preposterous in the eyes of Austria. A Jew, a plebeian by
birth, how could he be admitted into the diplomatic service? Knowledge
and experience are of second or third-rate importance; and as for
literary proclivities, these had always been looked upon rather as a
crime than a virtue in Austria. Birth, position, rank, and the art of
dissimulation and cringing are worth more than all knowledge, and the
proverbial stupidity of Austria's diplomacy best illustrates how
strongly this mediæval spirit has asserted itself there.

In these circumstances it would have been only reasonable if, after
settling down in Austro-Hungary as a writer, I devoted myself henceforth
solely to literary pursuits. Quietly seated at my writing-table I
learned to appreciate the sweet fruits of liberty and independence. Here
I was safe against the chicaneries and whims of superior persons and the
constraint of social forms; the moral reward which honest work never
withholds was worth more to me than all the vain glamour of rank and
position coveted by all the world round me. Without wishing it, perhaps
against my own will, the force of circumstances finally landed me on
the right track, and I found a vocation more in keeping with my past
career. An active participation in Asiatic affairs might possibly have
made me richer and more noted, but certainly not happier or more
contented, for although I am not blind to the fact that literary fame
can never, either with the public at large or in the higher circles,
boast of the same recognition which birth and position claim as their
due, I have nevertheless noticed with satisfaction that the fruit of
intellectual labour is more real and lasting, more worth fighting for
than all the pomp and vanity people are so fond of displaying. Whatever
may be said in disparagement of writing, it remains true that the pen is
a power, and its victories greater, more durable, and nobler than the
advantages which other careers, be they ever so brilliant, have to
offer. The pen needs not the gracious nod of high personages; it depends
on none save on the hand that wields it; and if, in the face of the
amount of general and light literature produced in our days, some might
incline to think that the pen has lost its power, that its influence is
gone, and that for a writer to rise from obscurity and the lowest
position to the pedestal of esteem and appreciation is no longer
possible, the story of my life will help to reveal the fallacy of such
views. Even as the strenuous labour of my younger days raised me, the
quondam servant and Jewish teacher, to attract the attention of all
cultured Europe, even so my unremittent efforts in literary work have
secured me a position far beyond my merits and surpassing my wildest
expectations.

I have already mentioned the widespread popularity of my writings,
extending over three continents; I will only add here that, with regard
to some exclusively literary works, certain circles--not ordinarily
given to express admiration--could not help expressing their
appreciation of them, and the Press of England, which for years had
laughed at my political utterances, had at last ruefully to admit that I
was right, that I had rendered the State great service, and that I had
contributed many a brick to the building up of the wall of defence
around the Indian Empire. During a lecture which I delivered in 1889 in
Exeter Hall the late Commander-in-Chief of India, Sir Donald Stewart,
remarked that my writings had often stimulated the sinking courage of
the officers in India and stirred them up to endure to the end.
Frequently I received letters of appreciation from various parts of
India thanking me for my watchfulness over occurrences in Central Asia,
and the constant attacks I made on English statesmen who were so easily
rocked to sleep in false security.

There is a peculiar charm in the literary success attained after many
years of persistent work--a success which hostile criticism in vain
tries to minimize; for, in spite of an occasional disproportion between
the battle and the result, the pen leaves traces behind which often,
after many years, come back to us as the echo of long-forgotten
exploits. As I have just spoken of my political activity, I will here
mention, by way of curiosity, that Prince Reuss, late ambassador of the
German Empire on the Neva, drawing my attention to the effect produced
by my leading article published in the _Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung_,
said to me at the house of the German Consul-General Boyanowsky at
Budapest: "You do not seem to know how much importance the Asiatic
Department in St. Petersburg attaches to your enunciations in regard to
Central Asiatic politics. Your articles served the Russians at the time
not only as guides, but also as encouragement, and you have rendered but
a problematic service to England by their publication." Personal
experience on the scene of action, a constant, keen interest in the
development of events in the inner Asiatic world, and the stimulus of
ambition may have helped to give me a bolder and more far-reaching view
than this body of statesmen possessed, but that my writings should carry
so much weight I never thought. Comical episodes are not wanting either;
they are sure to occur in any public career pursued for many years
together. When the despatch of the German Emperor to Krüger, at the time
of the Jameson Raid in the Transvaal, caused such tremendous excitement
in London, and everybody was talking about the increasing Anglophobia in
Germany, I discussed this question, of course from the point of view
favourable to England, in a letter dated the 12th of January, 1896. The
_Times_ saw fit to publish my letter, which took up a whole column of
its front page, and on a Saturday, too, so that the letter might lie
over all the longer. Of course this article, signed "A Foreigner,"
attracted much attention in the German Press. Just at that time Leopold
II., King of the Belgians, happened to be in London, and the German
papers hit on the curious idea of connecting his Belgian Majesty with
the "foreigner." Of course all were up in arms against the "Coburger,"
and the _Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung_ of January 21, 1896, delivered
quite a peppered sermon against him. It could not leave me quite
indifferent to see a crowned head taken to task for my utterances, and I
communicated the real state of affairs to the Belgian Ambassador in
Vienna, but this _quid pro quo_ has never been made public, for the
_Times_ never betrays its co-operators. One would scarcely believe how
much the influence of the Press is felt, even in the remotest corners of
the earth. In consequence of the expression of my views about the
Islamic nations, either in Turkish or Persian, I received letters not
only from all parts of the Ottoman Empire, but also from the Crimea,
Siberia, Arabia, and North Africa, and hardly ever did a Moslem, or
Dervish, or merchant pass Budapest without coming to see me to assure me
of the sympathy of his fellow-countrymen.

The Mohammedans of India[1] were particularly friendly, on account of
my relations with the Sultan, and invited me to give lectures in some of
their towns, an invitation which tempted me very much, as I was rather
curious to see the effect of a Persian speech delivered by a European
among these genuine Asiatics. An open letter to the Mohammedans of India
did much to strengthen these friendly feelings, and if it had not been
for the sixty years which weighed on my shoulders I should long ere now
have made a trip to Hindustan.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] See Appendix III.




At the English Court




CHAPTER X

AT THE ENGLISH COURT


In proportion as my works found consideration in the most obscure parts
of the Old and of the New World, their effect in Europe was felt even in
the highest Government circles, and it is not surprising that the
travelling staff and the pen brought the obscure author into contact
with sovereigns and princes. In England, where, in spite of the strict
rules of Court etiquette, the genealogical relations of the self-made
man are not considered of such great importance, my ardent defence of
British interests could not be overlooked.

After the appearance of my book, _The Coming Struggle for India_, I was
invited by Queen Victoria, whom I had already met on the occasion of my
stay at Sandringham with the Prince of Wales, to visit her at Windsor,
and the reception this rare sovereign accorded me was as great a
surprise to the world in general as it was to me.

It was in the year 1889, on the occasion of my stay in London, that I
received a card bearing the following invitation.--


                  THE LORD STEWARD
      has received her Majesty's command to invite
                 PROFESSOR VAMBÉRY
     to dinner at Windsor Castle on Monday, the 6th
      May, and to remain until the following day.
             WINDSOR CASTLE, _5th May_, 1889.


I had already been informed of the intended invitation by telegram, and
as, for political reasons, it was not thought wise to invite and do
honour to the anti-Russian author without further reason--it would have
seemed like a direct challenge to the Court at St. Petersburg--the
telegram bore the further message: "To see the library and the sights of
the Castle." When I read these words I reflected that if the Czar,
Alexander III., could receive and mark out for distinction the
pro-Russian author, Stead, without further ado, this excuse was almost
superfluous, and Queen Victoria could very well receive the
representative of the opposite party. However, I paid no further heed to
these needless precautions, but went down to Windsor. A royal carriage
awaited me at the station, and I drove to the Castle, where I was
received by the Lord Steward, Sir Henry Ponsonby, an amiable and
noble-minded man, who greeted me warmly and conducted me to the
apartment prepared for me. I had hardly got rid of the dust of the
journey when Sir Henry Ponsonby re-entered the room and, according to
the custom at Court, brought me the royal birthday book, requesting me
to enter my name, with the day and year of my birth.

It was a noble company in whose ranks my name was to figure, for the
book was full of signatures of crowned heads, princes, great artists,
learned men, and noted soldiers of the day. As I prepared to comply with
the request the uncertainty of the date of my birth suddenly occurred to
me, and as I gazed hesitatingly before me Sir Henry asked me with a
pleasant smile the reason of my embarrassment.

"Sir," I said, "I do not know the exact date of my birth, and I should
not like to enter a lie in the royal book."

When I had told him the circumstances written on the first page of these
Memoirs he took me by the hand, remarking pleasantly, "You need not be
ashamed of that. Her Majesty lays less weight upon the birth of her
guests than upon their actions and merits."

So I entered the conventional date of the 19th of March, 1832, and am
quite sure that among the many guests at Windsor there was never another
to whom the day and year of his entry into this world were unknown.

With the exception of this rather unpleasant, but otherwise comical,
episode my stay at Windsor was a most pleasant one. The Court officials,
whose acquaintance I made at lunch, vied with each other in their
amiability to the foreign defender of British interests in Asia, and
this was especially the case among the military officers, who soon
struck up a political conversation with me. An Englishman, be he
courtier, soldier, or an ordinary mortal, speaks unreservedly of his
political opinions without any consideration for the party in office,
and I was much surprised to hear one of the higher Court officials, an
ardent admirer of Mr. Gladstone, speak in very sharp terms of the
politics of the Conservative, Lord Salisbury, even drawing me into the
criticism.

My apartments were in one of the round towers of the Castle, so full of
historical memories, and as I gazed at the lovely landscape, with the
Thames winding in and out among the trees, and remembered the ideas I
had formed of this royal castle when I read Shakespeare, I was deeply
moved at the wonderful change in my position. If some one had told me in
the days gone by that I, who was then living in the poorest
circumstances, and even suffering hunger, should one day be the honoured
guest of the Queen of England and Empress of India at Windsor, that men
in high position would lead me through the ancient halls, show me the
royal treasures, and that I should sit next but two to the Queen at
table, I should, in spite of my lively imagination, have thought him a
fool and have laughed in his face. The crown jewels never dazzled me to
such an extent as to force me to worship their wearer. But every one
must agree that the natural simplicity of Queen Victoria's manner, her
rare amiability and kindness of heart, and the way in which she knew how
to honour Art and Science, had a most fascinating effect on those who
came into contact with her. It is a great mistake to imagine that this
princess, placed at the head of the monarchical republic, as England may
be called on account of its constitution, was only the symbolical leader
of the mighty State, having no influence on its wonderful machinery.
Queen Victoria had a remarkable memory; she knew the ins and outs of
every question, took a lively interest in everything, and in spite of
her earnest mien and conversation, sparks of wit often lighted up the
seemingly cold surface and reminded one of the fact that she was a
talented princess and a clever, sensible woman.

Queen Victoria has often erroneously been depicted as a woman cold in
manner, reserved, and of a gloomy nature, who, with her carefully worded
questions and answers made a rather unfavourable impression on her
visitor. This idea is quite incorrect. She certainly was a little
reserved at first, but as soon as her clever brain had formed an opinion
as to the character and disposition of the stranger, her seeming
coldness was cast aside, and was replaced by a charming graciousness of
manner, and she warmed to her subject as her interest in it grew.

When, at Sandringham, I had the honour of walking in the park next to
her little carriage drawn by two donkeys, she seemed at first to be
paying scant attention to my conversation with the gentleman-in-waiting
who accompanied us, but when I began to speak about my adventures and
experiences in Central Asia, her interest visibly increased, and she
made inquiries as to the smallest details. What most surprised me was
that she not only retained all the strange Oriental names, but
pronounced them quite correctly, a rare thing in a European, especially
in a lady; she even remembered the features and peculiarities of the
various Asiatics who had visited her Court, and the opinions she formed
were always correct.

One evening, I think it was at Sandringham, she conversed with me for a
long time about the East, chiefly about Turkey. She remembered all the
Turkish ambassadors of half a century, and after having spoken for some
time about Fuad Pasha, I took courage, and asked her if the following
anecdote which I had often heard in the East were true:--

"They say," I began, "that during one of his missions to the English
Court, Fuad Pasha brought your Majesty a beautiful brooch as a present
from the Sultan, Abdul Medjid, and that some years afterwards your
Majesty had a pair of earrings made of it. When on another mission Fuad
Pasha saw and admired the earrings, your Majesty is said to have
remarked: 'N'est ce pas, sa Majesté le Sultan sera bien faché
d'entendre, que j'ai gâté la broche dont il m'a fait cadeau?' Fuad Pasha
is said to have given the following witty answer: 'Au contraire, Madame,
mon souverain sera enchanté d'entendre que votre Majesté prête l'oreille
à tout ce qui vient de sa part.'"

The Queen listened silently, then remarked--

"It is a pretty story, but it is not true."

I found that this princess had more sense of the importance of
strengthening British power in Asia, than many of her noted ministers;
and the Shah of Persia, on the occasion of his visit to Budapest, told
me astonishing stories of the Queen's familiarity with Oriental affairs.
I was not a little surprised when she, at the age of seventy, told me of
her studies in Hindustani, and showed me her written exercises in that
tongue. The two Indian servants, with their enormous turbans and wide
garments, who waited on the Queen at table and accompanied her on her
excursions, were a living proof of the interest the Empress of India
took in the establishment of British power in Asia; and when I saw with
what devotion and respect these long-bearded Asiatics waited on a woman,
and what is more, a _Christian_ woman, handing her food and drink, and
watching for the least sign from her, I could hardly refrain from
expressing my admiration. The knowledge that the most powerful sovereign
in the world, who guides the destinies of nearly four hundred million
human beings, stands before you in the form of a modest, unassuming
woman is overwhelming. And when I saw in the Royal Library at Windsor
the numerous addresses and Presentations, and assurances of devotion
from the Emir of Afghanistan and other Asiatic potentates, written on
scrolls of parchment in large golden letters, or when I admired the
crowns, sceptres, and Oriental arms, preserved in the Royal Treasury at
Windsor, I could never tire in my admiration of the power and greatness
of Britain.

Discretion forbids me to say more of Queen Victoria, and I will only add
that the graciousness with which she received me, and the words in which
she acknowledged my literary efforts on England's behalf, will always be
more precious to me than all the orders and treasures with which
sovereigns think to have repaid the author.

After the Queen's death in 1901 her successor, Edward VII., showed me
many marks of favour. I had made his acquaintance (as I remarked on p.
248) in 1865, and during all the time he was Prince of Wales he never
missed an opportunity of showing his appreciation of my literary
efforts. Of all the monarchs of Europe and Asia not one has visited and
studied other countries and nationalities of the Old and of the New
World as he has done; consequently he is very capable of leading the
politics of the giant kingdom he rules over. When, in the course of
conversation with him, I touched upon the situation in Turkey, Persia or
India, I found him quite familiar with all these subjects, and his
opinion was never influenced by differences in race or in religion.
Having noticed during his visit to Budapest that the Hungarian
aristocracy did not pay the same honour to the man of letters as was
done in London, he gave an evening party, and appeared in the
drawing-room arm in arm with the present writer, whom he introduced to
the assembled guests as "My friend, Professor Vambéry!"

King Edward is at once a clever writer and a good orator, as is proved
by the book entitled, _Speeches and Addresses of H. R. H. The Prince of
Wales_, 1863-1888, London, 1889. When I visited him in 1901, shortly
after his accession to the throne, I found, greatly to my satisfaction,
that the possession of a crown had caused no change in his character. He
was as amiable as before, and begged me to visit him as often as I came
to England. He also proved his nobleness of mind on the occasion of my
seventieth birthday, when I received the following telegram from the
King's private secretary, Lord Francis Knollys: "The King commands me to
send you his warmest congratulations on the seventieth anniversary of
your birthday."

A few days later I received the following communication.--


     "MARLBOROUGH HOUSE,

     "PALL MALL, S. W.,

     "_March 18, 1902._

     "Dear PROFESSOR VAMBÉRY,--I am commanded by the King to inform you,
     that he has much pleasure in conferring upon you the third class
     (Commander) of the Victorian Order on your 70th birthday, as a mark
     of his appreciation of your having always proved so good and
     constant a friend to England, and as a token of His Majesty's
     personal regard towards you.

     "I beg to remain, dear Professor Vambéry,

     "Yours very faithfully,

     "FRANCIS KNOLLYS."


This proof of royal favour naturally caused a sensation abroad, and also
at home, where Government had taken but scant notice of my festival, and
it was generally highly appreciated. As to why Hungary on this occasion
again tried to prove the truth of the adage that no man is a prophet in
his own country I have spoken in another part of this book.

All I wish to prove now is that King Edward VII. has always shown a
lively appreciation of literary efforts and aspirations, and in spite of
his exalted position does not allow himself to be influenced by
difference in rank or religion. Directly after his accession he
requested the representatives of foreign powers in London to introduce
to him all the foreign artists and authors who might come to London, as
he wished to make their acquaintance. Thus he proves himself to be a
true son of liberal Albion, and filled with the democratic spirit of our
century.

As though to prove the truth of the proverb, "The fruit never falls far
from the tree," the present Prince of Wales distinguishes himself in the
same way, and by his amiability he has already won all hearts. At the
time of my visit to Sandringham I lived in the apartments of the late
Duke of Clarence, who was absent at the time, and thus I became the
neighbour of Prince George, as he was then called. One afternoon, while
I was occupied with my correspondence, I received an invitation from the
Queen to join her in the garden; as I wished to wash my hands before
going down I rang several times for warm water, but no one came. At
length the young Prince came to my door, and asked me what I wanted. I
told him, and he disappeared, returning in a few minutes with a large
jug in his hand, which he placed, smiling, on my washstand.

Not at all bad, I thought, for the poor Jewish beggar-student of former
years to be waited upon by a Prince! I have often laughed at the
recollection of this incident, and have since dubbed the future
sovereign of Great Britain, "The Royal Jug-bearer."

The King's other children also resemble him in this respect, and I
often think of the following episode. One evening, at Sandringham, a
gala-dinner was given in honour of Queen Victoria, and I was to take
Princess Louise in to dinner; the Prince of Wales, now Edward VII., took
a glance at the assembled guests, then approached me, saying: "Vambéry,
why did you not put on orders?"

I was just going to make some excuse when the Princess (the present
Duchess of Fife) remarked: "Why, Papa, Professor Vambéry ought to have
pinned some of his books on to his coat; they would be the most suitable
decorations."

It was a thoroughly democratic spirit which reigned in the home of the
present King when he was Prince of Wales--a spirit which he has
introduced into Buckingham Palace to the no small anger of many
narrow-minded aristocrats. King Edward VII. understands the spirit of
his times better than many of his brother sovereigns, and his popularity
in England and America is a very natural result.




My Intercourse with Sultan Abdul Hamid




CHAPTER XI

MY INTERCOURSE WITH SULTAN ABDUL HAMID


Speaking of royal appreciation, I cannot leave unmentioned the reception
I had from the Sultan of Turkey, a curious contrast indeed to my former
life in Constantinople.

My personal acquaintance with Sultan Abdul Hamid dates from the time
that I lived in the house of Rifaat Pasha, who was related to Reshid
Pasha. The son of the latter, Ghalib Pasha, who had married a daughter
of Abdul Medjid, wanted his wife to take French lessons, and I was
selected to teach her because it was understood that, being familiar
with Turkish customs, I should not infringe upon the strict rules of the
harem. Three times a week I had to present myself at the Pasha's palace,
situated on the Bay of Bebek, and each time I was conducted by a eunuch
into the Mabein, _i.e._, a room between the harem and the selamlik,
where I sat down before a curtain behind which my pupil the princess had
placed herself. I never set eyes upon the princess. The method of
instruction I had chosen was the so-called Ahn-system, consisting of
learning by heart small sentences, gradually introducing various words
and forms. I called through the curtain, "Père--baba; mère--ana; le père
est bon--baba eji dir; la mère est bonne--ana eji dir," etc., and the
princess on the other side repeated after me, and always took trouble to
imitate my pronunciation most carefully. Fatma Sultan, as the princess
was called, had a soft, melodious voice, from which I concluded that she
had a sweet character, and she was also considerate and kind-hearted,
for after the lesson had been going on for some time she told the eunuch
by my side, or more correctly, stationed in the room to keep watch over
me, to bring me some refreshments, and afterwards she inquired after my
condition and private circumstances. It was during these lessons in the
Mabein that amongst the visitors who entered from time to time I was
particularly struck by a slender, pale-looking boy; he often sat down
beside me, fixed his eyes upon me, and seemed interested in my
discourse. I asked what his name was, and learned that it was Prince
Hamid Effendi, a brother of my pupil, and that he distinguished himself
among his brothers and sisters by a particularly lively spirit. In
course of time this little episode, like many others, faded from my
memory.

After my return from Central Asia, when I found other spheres of work,
I kept aloof from Turkey, and I only remained in touch with the Ottoman
people in so far as my philological and ethnographical studies had
reference to the linguistic and ethnical part of this most Westerly
branch of the great Turkish family. In my political writings, chiefly
taken up with the affairs of inner Asia, the unfortunate fate of the
Porte has always continued to touch me very deeply. The land of my
youthful dreams, to which I am for ever indebted for its noble
hospitality, and where I have felt as much at home as in my own country,
could never be indifferent to me. Its troubles and misfortunes were
mine, and whenever opportunity offered I have broken a lance for Turkey;
without keeping up personal relations with the Porte, I have always
considered it a sacred duty with my pen to stand up for the interests of
this often unjustly calumniated nation. My Turkophile sympathies could,
of course, not remain unknown on the banks of the Bosphorus, and when,
after the opening of railway communication with Turkey, I went to
Stambul, I received from the Turks and their ruler a quiet,
unostentatious, but all the warmer and heartier reception. Our mutual
relationship only gradually manifested itself. On my first journey I
remained almost unnoticed, for after a space of thirty years only a few
of my old acquaintances were left, and the _ci-devant_ Reshid Effendi,
under which name I was known at the Porte, was only remembered by a
few. My second visit was already more of a success, and my reappearance
in public revived the old memory, for my fluency of speech had lent "the
foreigner" a new attraction in Turkish society. Wherever I appeared in
public I was looked at somewhat doubtfully, for many who had not known
me before imagined from my real Turkish Effendi conversation that I was
a Turkish renegade. Thanks to my old connections, the problem was soon
solved. The Turkish newspapers gave long columns about my humble person,
and extolled the services which, in spite of many years' absence, I had
rendered to the country.

Sultan Abdul Hamid, a watchful and enlightened ruler, full of national
pride, although perhaps a little too anxious and severely absolute, was
certainly not the one to lag behind his people in acknowledging merit;
and as an unpleasant incident prevented him from showing me his
sympathies on my first visit, I was invited a few months later to pay
another visit to the Turkish capital as his special guest. To make up
for former neglect I received an almost regal reception. The slope up to
Pera which in 1857 I had climbed a destitute young adventurer, I now
drove up in a royal equipage accompanied by the court officials who had
received me at the station; and when I had been installed in the
apartments prepared for me by the Sultan's command, and was soon after
welcomed by the Grandmaster of Ceremonies on behalf of the sovereign,
that old fairy-tale-feeling came over me again. My first quarters at
Püspöki's, swarming with rats; my _rôle_ of house-dog in the isolated
dwelling of Major A., my _début_ as singer and reciter in the
coffee-houses, and many other reminiscences from the struggling
beginning of my career in the East, flitted before my eyes in a cloudy
vision of the past.

On the morning after my arrival I could have stood for hours gazing out
of the window on the Bosphorus, recalling a hundred different episodes
enacted on this spot, but I was wakened out of these sweet dreams by an
adjutant of the Sultan who called to conduct me to an audience at the
Yildiz Palace. As I passed through the great entrance hall of the
Chit-Kiosk, where the Sultan was wont to receive in the morning,
marshals, generals, and high court officials rose from their seats to
greet me, and on many faces I detected an expression of astonishment,
why, how, and for what their imperial master was doing so much honour to
this insignificant, limping European, who was not even an ambassador.
When I appeared before the Sultan he came a few steps towards me, shook
hands, and made me sit down in an easy chair by his side. At the first
words I uttered--of course I made my speech as elegant as I
could--surprise was depicted on the face of the Ruler of all True
Believers, and when I told him that I remembered him as a
twelve-year-old boy in the palace of his sister, Fatma Sultan, the wife
of Ali Ghalib Pasha, attending the French lesson which I was giving the
princess, the ice was broken at once, and the otherwise timid and
suspicious monarch treated me as an old acquaintance. At a sign the
chamberlain on duty left the hall, and I remained quite alone with
Sultan Abdul Hamid--a distinction thus far not vouchsafed to many
Europeans, and not likely to be, as the Sultan is not acquainted with
European languages, and therefore, according to the rules of court
etiquette, cannot hold a face-to-face interview with foreigners. The
conversation turned for the greater part upon persons and events of
thirty years past, upon his father, Sultan Abdul Medjid, to whom I had
once been presented, Reshid Pasha, Lord Stratford Canning, whom the
Sultan remembered distinctly, and many other persons, questions, and
details of that time. As the conversation progressed the splendour and
the nimbus of majesty disappeared before my eyes. I saw merely a Turkish
Pasha or Effendi such as I had known many in high Stambul society, only
with this difference, that Sultan Abdul Hamid, by his many endowments, a
wonderful memory, and a remarkable knowledge of European affairs, far
surpasses many of his highly gifted subjects. Of course I became
gradually freer in my conversation, and when the Sultan offered me a
cigarette and with his own hand struck a match for me to light it, I was
quite overcome by the affability of the absolute Ruler, Padishah, and
Representative of Mohammed on earth, or "Shadow of God," as he is also
called.

The first audience lasted over half an hour, and when, after being
escorted to the door by the Sultan, I again passed through the entrance
hall crowded with high dignitaries, the surprise of these men was even
greater than before, and for days together the topic of conversation in
the circles of the Porte at Stambul, and in the diplomatic circles of
Pera, was the extraordinary familiarity existing between the generally
timid and reserved Sultan and my humble self. As this intimacy has also
been commented upon and explained in various ways in Europe, I will
shortly state what was the real motive of the Sultan's attentions to me,
and why I have been so anxious to retain his favour.

First of all I must point out that I was the first European known to the
Sultan who was equally at home in the East as in the West, familiar with
the languages, customs, and political affairs of both parts of the
world, and who, in his presence, was not stiff like the Europeans, but
pliant, like the Asiatics of the purest water. I always appeared before
him with my fez on; I greeted him as an Oriental greets his sovereign; I
used the usual bombastic forms of speech in addressing him; I sat,
stood, went about, as it becomes an Oriental--in a word I submitted to
all the conventionalities which the Westerner never observes in the
presence of the Sultan. Moreover, he was impressed by all my
experiences, and in his desire for knowledge he was pleased to be
instructed on many points. All these things put together were in
themselves enough to attract his attention towards me. The second reason
for the friendship and amiability shown me by Sultan Abdul Hamid was my
Hungarian nationality, and the Turcophile character of my public
activity, of which, however, he did not hear more fully till later. The
friendly feelings exhibited by Hungary during the late Russo-Turkish war
had touched the Sultan deeply, and his sympathies for the Christian
sister-nation of the Magyars were undoubtedly warm and true. Now as to
the possible merits of my writings, the Sultan, like the Turks in
general, was well aware of my Turcophile journalistic activity, but none
of them had the slightest conception of my philological and ethnological
studies in connection with Turkey. They had never even heard of them,
and when I handed the Sultan a copy of my monograph on the Uiguric
linguistic monuments, he said, somewhat perplexed, "We have never heard
of the existence of such ancient Turkish philological monuments, and it
is really very interesting that our ancestors even before the adoption
of Islam were many of them able to write, as would appear from these
curious characters." With regard to the skill and tact of Sultan Abdul
Hamid I will just mention in connection with the subject of the old
Turkish language, that he, recognising at once my keen interest in
everything of an old Turkish nature, drew my attention to some pictures
in his reception-room, the one of Söyjüt in Asia Minor (the cradle of
the Ottoman dynasty), and the other of the Mausoleum of Osman; and he
told me with some pride that these pictures were the work of a Turkish
artist. He also told me that in the Imperial household, which lives in
strict seclusion from the other Osmanli, a considerable number of
Turkish words and expressions are used quite unknown to the other
Osmanli more accessible to outside influences. The Sultan quoted some
specimens, and, as I recognised in them Azerbaidjan, _i.e._, Turkoman
linguistic remains, the Sultan smiled, quite pleased, thinking that with
these monuments he could prove the unadulterated Turkish national
character of the Osmanli dynasty. This vanity surprised me greatly, as a
while ago the Turks were rather ashamed of their Turkish antecedents,
and now their monarch actually boasted of them!

The third, and perhaps the most valid, reason for the Sultan's
attentions to me lay in the international character of my pen, and more
especially in the notice which England had taken of my writings. Sultan
Abdul Hamid, a skilful diplomatist and discerner of men, one of the most
cunning Orientals I have ever known, attached great importance to the
manner in which he was thought and talked of in Europe. Public opinion
in the West, scorned by our would-be important highest circles of
society--although they cannot hide their chagrin in case of unfavourable
criticism--has always seemed of very great moment to the Sultan; and in
his endeavours to incline public opinion in his favour this clever
Oriental has given the best proof that he has a keener insight into the
political and social conditions than many of his Christian
fellow-sovereigns. Fully conscious that his ultimate fate depends on
Europe, he has always endeavoured to make himself beloved, not at one
single court, but by the various people of Europe, and is anxious to
avoid all cause of blame and severe criticism. England's opinion he
seemed to think a great deal of; for although he simulated indifference
and even assumed an air of hostility, in his innermost mind he was
firmly convinced that England from motives of self-interest would be
compelled to uphold the Ottoman State, and at the critical moment would
come to the rescue and lend a helping hand. To hide this last anchor of
hope he has often coquetted with France, even with Russia, in order to
annoy the English and to make them jealous; but how very different his
real inmost feelings and expectations were I have often gathered from
his conversations. Sultan Abdul Hamid has always been of a peculiarly
nervous, excitable nature; against his will he often flew into a
passion, trembled in every limb, and his voice refused speech. On one
occasion he told me how he had been brought up with the warmest
sympathies for England, how his father had spoken of England as Turkey's
best friend, and how now in his reign, through the politics of Gladstone
and the occupation of Egypt, he had had to undergo the most painful
experiences. Then every appearance of dissimulation vanished, and I
could look right down into the heart of this extraordinary man.

It was during a conversation about the advisability of an English
alliance in the interests of the Ottoman State, that the Sultan in the
fire of his conversation told me the following: "I was six or seven
years old when my blessed father commanded my presence, as he was going
to send me to one of my aunts. I found him in one of his apartments,
sitting on a sofa in intimate conversation with an elderly Christian
gentleman. When my father noticed me, he called to me to come nearer and
kiss the hand of the stranger seated by his side. At this behest I burst
out in tears, for the idea of kissing the hand of a Giaour was to me in
my inexperience absolutely revolting. My father, generally so
sweet-tempered, became angry and said: 'Do you know who this gentleman
is? It is the English Ambassador, the best friend of my house and my
country, and the English, although not belonging to our faith, are our
most faithful allies.' Upon this I reverently kissed the old gentleman's
hand. It was the Böyük Eltchi, Lord Stratford Canning. My father's words
were deeply engraved upon my mind, and so I grew up with the idea that
the English are our best friends. How bitterly I was disillusioned when
I came to the throne! England left me in the lurch, for the
demonstration of the fleet in the Sea of Marmora, as was said in
Constantinople, was instigated more by the interests of England than of
Turkey, which is not right. Her ambassadors--_i.e._, Elliot and
Layard--have betrayed me, and when I was in want of money and asked for
a small loan of £150,000, I received a negative reply. So that is what
you in the West call friendship, and thus the beautiful dreams of my
youth have come to naught," cried the Sultan with a deep sigh. My
explanation that in England, without the consent of Parliament, no large
sums of money can be lent or given away did not in the least enlighten
the Sultan. Oriental sovereigns do not believe it even now, for to them
constitution and Parliament are mere names, invented to mislead the
public. To born Asiatics, moreover, the liberal methods of Governments
of the West are altogether unreasonable, and Feth Ali Shah said to the
English Ambassador, Malcolm, these well-known words: "And you call your
sovereign a mighty ruler, who allows himself to be dictated to by six
hundred of his subjects (the members of Parliament), whose orders he is
bound to follow? A crown like that I would refuse," said this king of
all Iran kings; and my friend Max Nordau is much of the same opinion,
for in his _Conventional Lies_ he suggests that all genuine
constitutional sovereigns of Europe should be sent to the lunatic
asylum, because they imagine themselves to be rulers and are ruled over
by others.

Like Feth Ali Shah, and even more than he, Sultan Abdul Hamid hated all
liberal forms of government. He never made a secret of this opinion, and
during the many years of our acquaintance the Sultan repeatedly
expressed his views on this matter frankly and without palliation. In
one way, as already mentioned, it was my thorough Turkishness in
language and behaviour--he always addressed me as Reshid Effendi and
also treated me as such--which led him to make these confidences and to
overcome his innate timidity and suspicion. Then, again, my relations
with the successor to the English throne carried weight with him, and
the invitation I had received from Queen Victoria induced him to see in
me something more than an ordinary scholar and traveller; in fact, he
looked upon me as a confidant of the English court and Government--two
ideas which to him were inseparable--to whom he might freely and safely
open his heart.

"I am always surrounded by hypocrites and parasites," he said to me one
day; "I am weary of these everlasting laudations and this endless
sneaking. They all want to take advantage of me, all seek to gratify
their private interests; and all that come to my ears are base lies and
mean dissimulations. Believe me, the truth, be it ever so bitter, would
please me better than all these empty compliments to which they feel
bound to treat me. I want you to speak frankly and openly to me; you are
my superior in years and experience; you are at home both in the East
and in the West, and there is much I can learn from you." This candid
speech, of a sort not very usual with Oriental potentates, naturally
encouraged me still more, and during the hours spent in confidential
_tête-à-tête_ with Sultan Abdul Hamid I could touch upon the tenderest
and most delicate points of the home and foreign politics of his court
and the characteristics of his dignitaries. The Sultan always surprised
me with his sound remarks. He bitterly complained of the
untrustworthiness of his first ministers, called them not very
complimentary names, and from the confidences of this apparently mighty
autocrat I caught a faint glimmer of his impotence and utter loneliness.
Once when I called his attention to the ignoble conduct of his chief
courtiers, he appeared to be specially excited, and cried, "Do you think
I do not know every one of them, and am not aware of it all? Alas! I
know but too well. But whence can I procure other and better people in a
society which for centuries has wallowed in this pool of slander? Only
time and culture can do salutary work here; nothing else can do it."
And, indeed, contrary to all previously conceived notions, the Sultan
had admitted into his immediate surroundings such young people as had
distinguished themselves in the schools, and were in no way connected
with the leading families. His object was to create a circle of his own
round him, and like these confidants at home, he wanted me, abroad, to
show him my friendship by sending him at least twice a month a report
written in Turkish about public opinion in Europe; about the position of
the political questions of the day; about the condition of Islam outside
Turkey, and to answer the questions he would put to me.

I readily promised my services, but soon realised that with all his
apparent frankness, these confessions of a monarch brought up in
strictly Oriental principles were not to be taken in real earnest, for
when one day, in the heat of conversation, I made some slightly critical
remarks, and ventured to question the expediency or the advisability of
certain measures and plans of his Majesty, I noticed at once signs of
displeasure and surprise on his countenance, and from that time little
clouds have darkened the horizon of our mutual intercourse. And how
could it be otherwise? Potentates, and above all Orientals, are far too
much accustomed to incense; the coarse food of naked truth cannot be to
their taste; and when an absolute ruler is superior to his surroundings,
not only in actual power but also in intellectual endowments, an adverse
opinion, no matter how thickly sugared the pill may be, is not easily
swallowed. From the very beginning of his reign Sultan Abdul Hamid has
never tolerated any contradiction; apparently he listened patiently to
any proffered advice, but without allowing himself to be shaken in his
preconceived opinion; and when some Grand-Vizier or other distinguished
himself by steadfastness to his own individual views, as was the case,
for instance, with Khaired-din Pasha, Kiamil Pasha, Ahmed Vefik Pasha,
and others, they soon have had to retire. True, through his
extraordinary acuteness the Sultan has mitigated many mistakes resulting
from his defective education. In conversation he hardly ever betrayed
his absolute lack of schooling, although he was not even well versed in
his own mother-tongue. He said to me frequently, "Please talk ordinary
Turkish!" His excellent memory enabled him to turn to good account a
thing years after he had heard it, and his flowery language deceived
many of his European visitors. But, taking him altogether, he was a
great ignoramus and sadly needed to be taught, though in his sovereign
dignity and exalted position of "God's Shadow on Earth," he had to fancy
himself omniscient. Thoroughly convinced of this, I have, in my
subsequent intercourse with the Sultan, exercised a certain amount of
reserve; I learned to be ever more careful in my expressions, and when
the Sultan noticed this I replied in the words of the Persian poem--


     "The nearness of princes is as a burning fire,"


which he took with a gratified smile. In a word, I was a dumb
counsellor, and I much regret that the European diplomats on the
Bosphorus did not look upon my position in this light, but laid all
sorts of political intrigues to my charge; and that my relations to the
Sultan, who had me for hours together in his room--and when I was there
kept even his most intimate chamberlain at a distance--necessarily gave
rise to a good deal of speculation. The long faces, the frowns, the
despairing looks which the court officials in the Sultan's immediate
vicinity showed me, and the way they measured me when after a long
audience I crossed the hall or the park, often startled me and made me
feel uncomfortable. These simple folks took me for the devil or some
magic spectre personified who had ensnared their sovereign, and was
leading him, God only knows whither. There were but few who had a good
word for me, and many were quite convinced that at every visit I carried
away with me into the land of unbelievers quantities of treasures and
gold. When later on through my intercourse with the Moslem scholars and
Mollas at court I had made a name as a practical scholar of Islam, and
became conspicuous on account of my Persian and Tartar conversational
powers, they were still more astonished, and the head-shaking over my
enigmatic personality became even more significant. They took me for a
deposed Indian prince, a Turkestan scholar exiled by the Russians, but
most often for a dangerous person whom it had been better for the
Sultan never to have known. To the European circles of Pera I was
likewise a riddle. Sometimes alone, sometimes in company with Hungarian
academicians, I used to search in the Imperial treasure-house for
remains of the library of King Mathias Corvinus, captured by the Turks
in Ofen and brought over to Constantinople. I discovered many things,
but I was branded as a political secret agent of England. A well-known
diplomatist said, "Ce savant est un homme dangereux, il faut se défaire
de lui." But the good man was mistaken. I was neither _dangereux_ nor
secret agent of any State; for, in the first place, my self-esteem
revolted against the assigned _rôle_ of dealer in diplomatic secrets;
and, moreover, what Cabinet would think of employing a secret agent
outside their Legation, maintained at such great expense? I do not for a
moment wish to hide the fact that in my conversations with the Sultan
about political questions I always took the side of Austro-Hungary and
England; that I was always up in arms against Russia, and launched out
against the perfidy, the barbarism, and the insatiable greed for land of
the Northern power. More anti-Russian than all Turks and the Sultan
himself, I could not well be, and the more I could blacken Russia
politically the better service did I fancy I rendered to our European
culture. To obviate any suspicion, the Sultan once wanted to invite me
to a court dinner together with the Russian Ambassador Nelidoff;
however, I begged to be excused. Of the various ambassadors I have only
attended a public court dinner with the Persian Ambassador (Prince
Maurocordato), the plenipotentiary of Greece, and with Baron Marshal von
Bieberstein, and these diplomatists were not a little surprised to
notice the attention with which the Sultan treated me.

For several years I thus enjoyed the Sultan's favour and occupied this
exceptional position at his court. As long as the Grand Seigneur saw in
me a staunch Turcophile and defender of Islam, who, led by fanaticism,
palliated all the mistakes and wrong-doings with which Europe charged
all Oriental systems of government; as long as I regarded Turkey as an
unwarrantably abused State, and European intervention as unjustifiable
at all times, he gave me his undivided confidence and astonished me by
his unfeigned candour.

Many years of experience in Turkish society had taught me that the
Sultan is regarded as an almost Divine being, and consequently this
extraordinary affability was all the more surprising. He treated me, so
to speak, as a confidential friend, talked with me about State concerns,
and the interests of his dynasty, as if I had been an Osmanli and
co-regent of the empire. He conferred with me about the most delicate
political questions, with a candour, which he never displayed even
before his Grand-Vizier and his Ministers; and consequently my letters
to him from Budapest were free and unrestrained, and such as this
sovereign had probably never received before.

Now, if there had only been questions of purely Turkish interests,
internal reforms and improvements, there would have been no occasion to
shake the Sultan's confidence in me, but Sultan Abdul Hamid's mind was
always busy with foreign politics, and because in regard to these I
could not always unconditionally agree with him, this was bound to lead
in process of time, if not to an absolute rupture, at any rate to a
cooling of our former warm friendship. For some time the Egyptian
Question was the chief point of discussion. The Sultan often complained
to me about the unlucky star which ruled over his foreign politics; that
he had lost so many of the inherited provinces, that the loss of the
Nile-land, that precious jewel of his crown, was particularly grievous
to him, and that the faithlessness of the English troubled him above all
things. As a matter of course he vented his wrath especially upon the
English Government; and although he was not particularly enamoured of
any of the European Cabinets, nay, I might say, hated and feared them
all alike, it was the St. James's Cabinet which, whether Liberal or
Conservative, had always to bear the brunt of his ire. He was on very
bad terms with the two English Ambassadors who shortly before and
shortly after his accession to the throne represented the Cabinet of St.
James's in Constantinople. Once, Lady Layard sent me for presentation
to the Sultan, a picture of herself in a very valuable frame, and when I
delivered it on the occasion of an evening audience the Grand Seigneur,
generally so completely master of himself, became quite excited, and
pointing to the portrait he said to me, "For this lady, whom you see
there, I have the greatest respect; for during the war she has tended my
wounded soldiers with great self-sacrifice, and I shall always feel
grateful to her; but as for her husband," he continued, "I have torn him
out of my heart, for he has shamefully abused my confidence." Thereupon
he tore at his breast as if he would pull something out, and slinging
his empty hand to the ground, he tramped excitedly on the floor, as if
he were demolishing the heart of the absent delinquent. This act of
passionate emotion I have noticed more particularly among Turkish women,
and there are many traits in the Sultan's character which speak of the
harem life. I tried to pacify the angry monarch by reminding him that
Layard, as ambassador, had but done his duty in delivering the message,
and that those gentlemen alone were to blame who had allowed such
confidential communications to become public property. I quoted,
moreover, the Koran passage which says, "La zewal fi'l sefirun" ("The
envoy is not to be blamed"); but it was all in vain, the name of this
deserving English diplomat had quite upset the Sultan; he was unwilling
and unable to distinguish between the actions of the statesman and of
the private gentleman.

One cannot altogether blame the Sultan either, when we think of the
bitter experiences he so often has had to undergo; but in politics,
justice and fairness have quite a different meaning from what they have
in ordinary life, and Sultan Abdul Hamid most decidedly acted
imprudently when, without taking into consideration England's most vital
interests, he demanded of this State a policy which, on account of the
altered general aspect of affairs, and on account of the growing insular
antipathy against Turkey, had become impossible. That the Conservatives,
in spite of all Mr. Gladstone's Atrocity-meetings, dared to appear with
a fleet in the Sea of Marmora, to prevent Russia from taking
Constantinople, has never been appreciated by the Sultan. He had always
before his eyes the comedy of Dulcigno and Smyrna, instigated by the
Liberal Government of England, and the occupation of Egypt appeared to
him more perfidious than the challenge of Russia, and all the injury he
had sustained from the Western Power.

In course of time the relations between the Porte and the Cabinet of St.
James were bound to become cooler. _Inter duos litigantes_, Russia was
the _tertius gaudens_; and when in addition to the previous coldness the
Armenian difficulties arose, the two great European Powers completely
changed places in Asia, for the Russian arch-enemy became the bosom
friend and confidant of the Turkish court (not of the Turkish nation),
and England was looked upon as the _diabolus rotæ_ of the Ottoman
Empire. With regard to the Armenian troubles Sultan Abdul Hamid's anger
against England was not altogether unfounded; for although in London
good care was taken to keep aloof publicly from the disturbances in the
Armenian mountains, the agitation of English agents in the North of Asia
Minor is beyond all doubt. The Sultan was carefully informed of this
both foolish and unreasonable movement. Whatever the Hintchakists and
other revolutionary committees of the Armenian malcontents brewed in
London, Paris, New York, Marseilles, &c., full knowledge of it was
received in Yildiz; the Armenians themselves had provided the secret
service. As early as the autumn of 1890 the Sultan complained to me
about these intrigues, and twelve months later he made use of the
expression, "I tell you, I will soon settle those Armenians. I will give
them a box on the ear which will make them smart and relinquish their
revolutionary ambitions." With this "box on the ear" he meant the
massacres which soon after were instituted. The Sultan kept his word.
The frightful slaughter in Constantinople and many other places of Asia
Minor has not unjustly stirred up the indignation of the Christian
world, but on the other hand the fact should not have been lost sight of
that Christian Russia and Austria in suppressing revolutions in their
own dominions have acted, perhaps, not quite so severely, but with no
less blood-thirstiness. That his drastic measures roused the public
opinion of all Europe against the Sultan was no secret to him. He was
aware of the beautiful titles given to him, "Great Assassin," "Sultan
Rouge," "Abdul the Damned," &c., and once touching upon the Western
infatuation against his person, he seemed in the following remark to
find a kind of apology for the cruelties perpetrated in his name. "In
the face of the everlasting persecutions and hostilities of the
Christian world," the Sultan said, "I have been, so to speak, compelled
to take these drastic measures. By taking away Rumenia and Greece,
Europe has cut off the feet of the Turkish State body. The loss of
Bulgaria, Servia, and Egypt has deprived us of our hands, and now by
means of this Armenian agitation they want to get at our most vital
parts, tear out our very entrails--this would be the beginning of total
annihilation, and this we must fight against with all the strength we
possess." In truth, notwithstanding all the evident signs of a total
downfall the Sultan still nursed high-flown ideas of regeneration and
security for his Empire. He often spoke of the cancelling of
capitulations and of the certain advantages to be derived from his
Alliance schemes. He has always placed great confidence in the
Panislamic movement which he inaugurated, and which he certainly
directed very skilfully. His agents traverse India, South Russia,
Central Asia, China, Java, and Africa; they proclaim everywhere the
religious zeal, the power and the greatness of the Khaliph; up to the
present, however, they have succeeded only in making the birthday of the
Sultan a day of public rejoicing throughout Islamic lands, and in
preparing the threads wherewith to weave the bond of unity. One day, as
we were talking about these plans, he denied them altogether, and
pretended to be very much surprised. These schemes for the future were
his particular hobby; he spoke of them only to his most intimate
servants and court officials, and to no one besides, not even to his
ministers. The latter he called fortune-hunters, who deserve no
confidence. "How can I believe my ministers?" he said at one time. "When
a while ago I sent for my police minister, he came into my presence
quite intoxicated. I drove the swine out of the room and dismissed him
next day." That he encouraged the evil, that with his strictly
autocratic and absolutist ideas he prevented the growth of capable
statesmen, that no clever politicians could possibly thrive under
him--all this he would never realise, although I often hinted at it and
reminded him of the Prophet's warning, "Ye shall consult one another."
He was and always will be an incorrigible Arch-Turk, who in the shadow
of his Divine reputation would have free disposal of all things; and
when his First Secretary told him that I had been a _protégé_ of the
late Grand-Vizier Mahmud Nedim Pasha, the friend of Ignatieff, he said,
turning to me, "Yes, Mahmud Nedim Pasha was a singularly clever man, a
true Turk and Moslem, and a faithful servant to his master."

I soon came to the conclusion that with a sovereign of this kind, there
was not much good to be done, and without flatly contradicting him, I
quietly adhered to my own political views. As I look at things now, it
seems quite natural that I excited his displeasure, and that he looked
askance at my English predilections. The Sultan expected of me
unconditional approval of his political views; he wanted to have in me a
friend, absolutely Turkish in my views, as opposed to the Christian
world, and willing, like many a prominent man in Europe, to hold up the
East as noble, sublime, humane, and just, and to put down the West as
reprobate, crude, and rapacious. No, that was expecting a little too
much of my Turkish sympathies! I have always been too much imbued with
the high advantages of our Western culture, too fully convinced of the
beneficial influences of nineteenth-century ideas, to lend myself to
sing the unqualified praises of Asia--rotten, despotic, ready to
die--and to exalt the Old World over the New! No, neither imperial
favour nor any power on earth could have induced me to do this, and when
the Sultan realised that, he began to treat me with indifference; he
even told me once that he did not like children who could cling to two
mothers, and without actually showing me any hostility or dislike, as
my international penmanship was not quite a matter of indifference to
him, he dismissed me, to all appearance, graciously. He was undeceived,
but I remained what I always have been, a friend of Turkey.

How it came about that, in spite of his ill-will, the Sultan for many
years after still showed me favour, and even invited me more than once
to visit Constantinople, I can only explain by the fact that, although
distrusting everybody, even himself, he did not lose sight of the use my
pen could be to him. Sultan Abdul Hamid, as I said before, had an
indescribable dread of the public opinion of Europe, which he took into
account in all his transactions; he always wanted to act the
enlightened, liberal, patriotic, order-loving, and conscientious ruler.
He always wanted to show off the very thin and light varnish of culture
which a very defective education and a flying visit through Europe
(1868) had given him. Without knowing French he would often interlard
his Turkish conversation with French words and sayings, to impress the
ambassadors and other exalted guests, just as in company with Moslem
scholars he made a special point of introducing theological and
technical terms, without ever rising above the level of a half-cultured
Moslem. Thanks to his remarkable memory, he was never at a loss for such
terms, but his actual familiarity with either European or Asiatic
culture was very slight, since his kind-hearted but far too lenient
father had never kept his children to their books. Kemal Effendi, the
tutor of the imperial prince, told me in the fifties quite incredible
things about the indolence of his imperial pupil. Reshad Effendi, the
heir presumptive, had a taste for Persian and Arabic, and had at an
early age made some attempts at Persian poetry, but Hamid Effendi, the
present Sultan, was not so easily induced to sit on the school bench.
Harem intrigues and harem scandal were more to his liking, and if one
wanted to know anything about the secrets of individual members of the
imperial _gynécée_, one had but to go to Hamid Effendi for information.
It is a great pity that this lively and really talented prince had not
received a better education in his youth. Who knows but what he might
have made a better sovereign on the throne of the Osmanlis?

My intercourse with this man was to me of exceptional interest, not so
much in his capacity of prince, but rather as man and Oriental. When in
the evening I was with him alone in the Chalet Kiosk we used to sit
still, trying to read each other's thoughts, for the imperial rogue knew
his man well enough; and after we had thus contemplated one another for
some time, the Sultan would break the silence by some irrelevant remark,
or occasionally he would ask me something about my Asiatic or European
experiences. As it is not seemly for a Khaliph, _i.e._, a lawful
descendant of Mohammed, to hold intimate conversation with an
unbeliever, or, what is worse, to ask his advice, the Sultan used to
treat me as an old, experienced, true believer, called me always by my
Turkish name, Reshid Effendi, and particularly emphasised the same when
at an audience pious or learned Moslems happened to be present. Sultan
Abdul Hamid, one of the greatest _charmeurs_ that ever was, knew always
in some way or other how to fascinate his guests. He delighted in paying
compliments, lighting the cigarette for his guest, with a civility
vainly looked for amongst ordinary civilians.

Of course, his one aim and object was to captivate and charm his
visitors with this extreme affability. Sometimes also he was quite
theatrical in his demeanour; he could feign anger, joy, surprise,
everything at his pleasure, and I shall never forget one scene provoked
by a somewhat animated discussion of the Egyptian Question. In order to
pacify his anger against England, I ventured to remark that after the
settling of the Egyptian State debt the yearly tribute would be paid
again. The Sultan misunderstood me, and concluding that I was speaking
of redemption money, he jumped up from his seat and cried in a very
excited voice, "What! do you think I shall give up for a price the land
which my forefathers conquered with the sword?" His thin legs shook in
his wide trousers, his fez fell back on his neck, his hands trembled,
and almost ready to faint he leaned back in his seat. And yet all this
excitement was pretence, just as when another time in his zeal to
persuade me to enter his service and to remain permanently in Stambul,
he grasped both my hands, and with assurances of his unalterable favour,
promised me a high position and wealth. What induced the sly, suspicious
man to this extraordinary display of tenderness was undoubtedly my
practical knowledge of Islamic lands and of Turkey in particular. More
than once he said to me, "You know our land and our nation better than
we do ourselves." My personal acquaintance with all circles of the Porte
of former days was not much to his liking, neither did he like my
popularity with the Turkish people, the result of many years of friendly
intercourse with them; yet he had to take this into account, and _nolens
volens_ must keep on good terms with me. Curiously enough, devoted as he
was to his severely despotic principles, this monarch sometimes had fits
of singular mildness and gentleness. Once I was sitting with him till
far into the night in the great hall of the Chalet Kiosk. It was the
height of summer, and in the heat of the conversation his Majesty had
become thirsty, and called to the attendant in the ante-room, "Su
ghetirin" ("Bring water"). The attendant, who had probably fallen
asleep, did not hear. The Sultan called twice, three times, clapped his
hands, but all in vain, and when I jumped up and called the man, the
Sultan said to him, almost beseechingly, "Three times I have asked for
water, and you have not given it me; I am thirsty, very thirsty." With
any other Oriental despot the servant would have forfeited his head, but
Abdul Hamid's character was the most curious mixture imaginable of good
and bad qualities, which he exhibited according to the mood in which he
happened to be.

Honestly speaking, these _tête-à-têtes_ with the Sultan were anything
but unmixed pleasure. Notwithstanding his pleasing manners and outward
amiability, his sinister and scrutinising look had often a very
unpleasant effect upon me. One evening, seated as usual alone with the
Sultan in the Chit Kiosk, sipping our tea, I fancied my tea was not
quite sweet enough, and while talking I stretched out my hand towards
the sugar basin, which stood near the Sultan. He gave a sudden start and
drew back on the sofa. The movement suggested that he thought I had
intended an attack upon his person. Another time, it was after dinner, I
was taking coffee in his company. I noticed that in the ardour of his
conversation he was suddenly seized with an attack of shortness of
breath. He actually gasped for air. The sight of his oppression was
painful, and I could not help thinking what would be my fate if in one
of these attacks the Sultan were to choke. One may say it is foolish,
and call me weak, but any one knowing something of life in an Oriental
palace will agree with me that the situation was anything but a joke.
Apart from this I got my full share of the moodiness of Oriental
despotism; sometimes it was almost too much for my much-tried patience.
In spite of politely worded invitations I often had to wait for days
before I was received in audience. Four, six, eight days together did I
wait in an antechamber, until at last I was told, "His Majesty extremely
regrets, on account of pressing business, or on account of sudden
indisposition, to have to delay the reception till the next day." The
next day came, and again the same story, "the next day." I remember
once, during a visit to Constantinople, to have packed and unpacked my
effects five times, awaiting permission to return home. Complaints,
entreaties, expostulations, all were of no avail, for the Muneddjim
Bashi (Court Astrologer) regulates his Majesty's actions, and these
ordinances are most strictly adhered to. My intercourse with the Sultan
was certainly not perfectly harmonious. I did my utmost to preserve my
influence over him, but at last I had to realise that all my trouble was
in vain, and that my efforts would never bear any fruit.

And it could not well have been otherwise. His policy was partly of a
purely personal nature, as with all Oriental despots; such policy,
strictly conservative in tendency, was concerned with the maintenance
of an absolutely despotic _régime_. Partly, also, it was of necessity
influenced by the temporary political constellations of the West. The
indecision which characterises his least action is a result of the
spirit which prevails in the imperial harem, where no one trusts
another, where every one slanders his neighbour, and tries to deceive
and annihilate him, where everything turns round the sun of imperial
favour. Our diplomatists on the Bosphorus have often had to pay dearly
for this characteristic of Abdul Hamid. At the time of the negotiations
about the Egyptian Question Lord Dufferin once had to wait with his
secretary in the Yildiz Palace for the Sultan's decision from ten
o'clock in the morning till after midnight. Six times the draft of the
treaty was put before him to sign, and each time it was returned in
somewhat altered form until the English Ambassador, wearied to death at
last, lost his patience, and at two o'clock in the morning returned with
his suite to Therapia. Lord Dufferin had already retired to bed, and was
fast asleep when he was roused by the arrival of a special messenger
from the Sultan to negotiate about another proposal, but the English
patience was exhausted and the fate of Egypt sealed. On other occasions
there were similar and often more dramatic scenes, and even with simple
dinner invitations it has often occurred that the ambassadors in
question received a countermand only after they had already started _en
grande tenue_ on the way to Yildiz.

As regards the distrust displayed by the ruler of Turkey, worried as he
was on all sides, some excuse may be found for him, for true and
unselfish friendships are unknown quantities in diplomatic intercourse.
But Sultan Abdul Hamid behaved in the same manner towards his Asiatic
subjects. He has always been a pessimist of the most pronounced type; he
scented danger and treason wherever he went, and everything had to give
way before his personal interests. "The future of Turkey and the
well-being of the Ottoman nation are always being discussed, but of me
and my dynasty nobody speaks," he said to me one day. To all intents and
purposes he always behaved as if he were master and owner of all Turkey,
and as nothing in the world could make him see differently, I very soon
saw the fruitlessness of my endeavours, and in future I acted only the
_rôle_ of onlooker and observer.

A sovereign who for well-nigh thirty years has ruled and governed with
absolute power, who has succeeded in carrying autocracy and absolutism
to their limits, while the greatest as well as the very smallest
concerns of the State and of society pass through his hands, such a
sovereign runs great danger of becoming conceited and proud, since his
servile surroundings continually extol and deify him beyond all measure.
Sultan Abdul Hamid imagines it is owing to his statesmanship that
Turkey, after the unfortunate campaign of 1877, has not been completely
annihilated, and that at present it not only exists, but is sought after
by the Powers as their ally. Laughing roguishly, he said with reference
to this, "There is no lack of suitors; I am courted by all, but I am
still a virgin, and I shall not give my heart and hand to any of them;"
but all the while he was in secret alliance with Russia. What Sultan
Abdul Hamid is particularly proud of is his relation to the German
Emperor, which is, as a matter of fact, his own work, and not at all
approved of by the more cautious portion of his people. The confidential
_tête-à-tête_ between the Osmanli and the gifted Hohenzollern is unique
in its kind and abounds in interesting incidents. The Emperor William
II. admires the talent of the ruler in his friend, which in its
autocratic bearing he would like to imitate if it were possible; but he
is clever enough to discount the reward for this admiration in various
concessional privileges, &c. Well-paid appointments for German officers,
consignments of arms, concessions for railway lines, manufactures, &c.,
the German Emperor has obtained playfully, as it were, and he will get
more still, for in the Imperial German the Sultan sees his only
disinterested, faithful, and mighty protector, and he is firmly
convinced that as long as this friendship continues no one will dare to
touch him, although Turkey, _stante amicitia_, lost Crete after the
victorious termination of the war with Greece. The patriotic and
progressive Turk, however, thinks otherwise. He has not a good word to
say for the German Emperor, for he looks upon him as one of those
friends who encourage the Padishah in his arrant absolutism, whose
visits diminish the treasures of State, and who has checked the national
development of free commercial life, taking all for Germany and leaving
Turkey nothing but some high-sounding compliments which flatter the
Sultan's pride.

And so this political accomplishment of Abdul Hamid is most severely
censured in Turkey itself, and the much extolled alliance with Germany
may, in the event of a change on the throne, meet with quite unexpected
surprises. With me the Sultan never discussed this relationship, only
his favourite son, Burhaneddin, told me of his sympathies for the
Kaiser, whose language he was learning. No true friend of Turkey, I
think, can have much against an alliance with Germany; it would work
very well, only Germany should advise the Sultan to introduce certain
reforms in his country to raise the spirit of the nation, and instead of
this wild absolutist _régime_, to work at the cultivation of capable
officials. I have often told the Sultan so in writing, but lately my
memoranda have remained without effect, for we have been deceived in one
another. I have come to the conclusion that, with all my science and all
my ambition, I can never be of much use to Turkey; and the Sultan has
realised that he could not make a willing tool of me, and that therefore
I am of no use to him. I must not omit to mention, however, that the
greatest obstacle to a mutual understanding between the Sultan and
myself lies in the political views we hold as to the most beneficial
alliance for Turkey. While the Sultan, by his personal relations with
the Emperor William II., thinks to screen himself securely against all
possible danger, and as far as appearances go, likes to be exclusively
Germanophile, he has not forgotten that the Russian sword of Damocles
hangs over his head. He knows but too well that Russia has her thumb on
his throat, that Asia Minor from the side of Erzerum is open to the
troops of the Czar, that the Russian fleet could sack Constantinople
within two or three days, and that this imminent danger, if not entirely
warded off, would at any rate be considerably mitigated by submissive
humility and feigned friendliness. Hence his peculiar complaisance and
amenableness towards the court of St. Petersburg, and his behaviour
altogether as if he were a vassal already of the "White Padishah on the
Neva." Considering this state of affairs, it is not very astonishing
that the rumour spread in Europe of a secret treaty between Turkey and
Russia--a treaty according to which the Sultan had engaged himself not
to fortify the Bosphorus at the entrance of the Black Sea, and not to
erect new fortifications in the north of Asia Minor, and other similar
concessions. This treaty is said to bear the date 1893, and when the
matter was discussed by the European Press, and I asked for information
from the First Secretary of the Sultan, Sureja Pasha, the latter wrote
me in a letter dated September 3, 1893, as follows:--


     "VERY HONOURED FRIEND!--His Imperial Majesty, my sublime Master,
     has always held in high esteem your feelings of friendship in the
     interests of Turkey, and your attacks on Russia, which has done so
     much harm to Turkey, have not remained unnoticed. But you know full
     well that nothing in this world happens without cause, and that the
     war Russia waged against us was also founded on certain causes. All
     this belongs to the past. To-day the Sublime Porte is on the best
     of terms with _all_ the Powers; there is no necessity for any
     private treaties, and when the newspapers speak of a private treaty
     between Turkey and Russia, this is nothing more or less than a
     groundless and idle invention. In case such a treaty had been
     necessary, Turkey, being in no way restricted in its movements,
     would have notified and published the facts."


Later on I also touched upon this subject in conversation with the
Sultan. We were speaking about the comments made in Europe regarding
the negligence in the fortifications at the entrance to the Black Sea,
when the Sultan interrupted me and said, "Why should Europe criticise
this? I have a house with two doors; what does it matter to anybody if I
choose to close the one and open the other?" In a word, the Sultan has
given me several irrefutable proofs that the persistent anti-Russian
tendency of my publications was inconvenient to him, and that he would
be better pleased if I attacked England or kept quiet altogether. Of
course he would like best of all to banish pen and ink altogether from
the world, and as it was impossible for me to support him in his
absolute autocratic principles, a cooling of our mutual relationship was
unavoidable.

The breach between us was made still wider by the publication of my
pamphlet _La Turquie d'aujourd'hui et d'avant quarante ans_, Paris,
1898, in which I tried to refute the thesis--so constantly and
erroneously advanced in Europe--that the Turks as a nation are incapable
of being civilised, by comparing the state of their culture as it is now
and as it was forty years ago. Naturally in a study of this kind I had
to draw the connection between the progress of culture and the political
decline of the land, and the question why, if the Turks are really
advancing in culture, they should politically be overtaken by Rumania,
Servia, Bulgaria, and Greece, I could only answer by pointing to the
autocratic and absolutist tendencies of the Sultan. Only the court and
the unconscionable clique reigning there are to blame for the present
decline of Turkey. With this article I increased my popularity in
Turkey, but at court they were, of course, anything but pleased.
Nevertheless the Sultan invited me to pay him a visit; I did so, and the
reception I had was highly characteristic. While the Padishah thanked me
for the service I had rendered to the Turkish nation, the offended
autocrat took my measure with angry looks, without, however, betraying
his anger. It was interesting to watch the internal struggle of the
offended tyrant, and I consider it only reasonable that henceforth he
would have no more to do with me.

Thus ended my intimate intercourse with Sultan Abdul Hamid. The only
benefit it has been to me was a rubbing up of my impressions of life in
the Near East, a renewal of old relationships, and the editing of a few
valuable old Slav manuscripts which I found in the treasure-house of the
Sultan, and which were lent me for a considerable length of time. But
the renewal of my acquaintance with the Orient was void of that charm
which it had for me on my first visit. The East and myself are both
thirty years older; the East has lost much of the glory of its former
splendour, and I have lost the vigour of my youth. I fancied myself an
elderly man who, after thirty years meeting again the adored beauty of
his youthful days, misses the wealth of her locks, the fire in her eyes,
the brightness of her rosy cheeks. Old Stambul, the Bosphorus, and
Pera--everything was changed. The Sultan's mad love of extravagance, the
unfortunate war of 1878, and above all the loss of Bulgaria--in fact
nearly the whole of Rumania--had reduced the dominating class almost to
beggary. Gone were the rich Konaks in Stambul, empty the once glorious
yalis (villas) on the Bosphorus, and of the Effendi world, flourishing
and well-to-do in my time, only a few miserable vestiges remained.

The Christian element, as compared with the Moslem, has increased
enormously; the European quarter of the city is full of life and
animation, and the Turk, always wont to walk with bowed head, now bends
it quite low on his breast as he loiters among the noisy, busy crowds of
the Christian populace. He is buried in thought; but whether he will be
able to pull himself together and recover himself is as yet an open
question.

When speaking of my renewed visits to Turkey and my personal intercourse
with the Sultan, I made mention of my English sympathies; and I feel
bound to say a word about the rumours then prevalent, which made me out
to be a secret political agent of England, the more so since a member of
Parliament, Mr. Summers, has questioned the Conservative Government
regarding this matter. I have never at any time stood in any official
relation to the English Government. My intercourse with the Conservative
and Liberal statesmen on the Thames and on the Hugli (Calcutta) has
always been of a strictly private nature, and, just as my utterances in
the daily papers were taken notice of by the public, so my occasional
memoranda to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have been accepted as the
private information of an expert, friendly to the cause of
England--information for which nobody asked me, and for which labour
therefore I could claim no compensation from anybody. This anomalous
position of mine was touched upon by the Central Asiatic writer, Mr.
Charles Marvin, in his _Merv, the Queen of the World_[2] issued, in
1881. He there blames the English Government for having neglected me,
and for leaving me in poverty, in spite of all my services. As regards
this, I must say that I had at one time a modest yearly income, while
working with all my might for the defence of India, a possession from
which England derived in commercial profits alone many million pounds
sterling; but I never suffered actual poverty, and it never entered my
mind to take steps to obtain material acknowledgment of my services.
English statesmen least of all thought of making any such
acknowledgment. They looked upon me merely as a writer in pursuit of a
purely platonic object, and this English cynicism went so far that when
I published, in 1885, my Osbeg Epic, the "Scheibaniade," entirely at my
own cost, and asked for a subscription for twenty copies, the India
Office declined the offer, although this work furnished so many data for
the history of Baber, the founder of the Mongol dominion in India. The
supposition, therefore, that my journalistic labours, although
appreciated in England, ever met with any material recognition on the
part of the Government, is altogether false. In after years I had an
offer to enter the English service, but this I never entertained for a
moment; and when on the Bosphorus I furthered English interests, I did
so from the standpoint of European peace, as an opponent of the
overbearing power of despotic Russia, and as a Hungarian whose native
land has common interests with England in the Near East. Of course such
motives bore no weight with the Sultan. He judges everybody by his own
standard; and when I tried to defend myself against such accusations,
and even one day quoted to him the saying of Mohammed, "_El fakru
fakhri_" ("Poverty is my pride"), he took the remark with a diabolical
smile, and turned the conversation into another channel.

I must confess the character of Sultan Abdul Hamid has always been a
riddle to me. I strained every nerve to penetrate him, but all in vain.
Brilliant qualities and incredible weaknesses were always at strife in
him. The man and the ruler were constantly at war with one another, and
in the same manner his Oriental views always came into collision with
the ever more pressing demands of modern civilisation. Fear and
suspicion were naturally at the bottom of this moral condition, and if
from time to time he would have recovered himself, and listened to the
dictates of his heart--for I did not find him heartless, as he is
generally supposed to be--the instruments of his despotic arbitrariness
kept him back, and made him commit deeds which in the eyes of the world
were rightly condemned. In keeping with his own character was also the
quality of the officials around him, who after the decline of the Porte
acted as ministers of State. Divided into various cliques according to
their personal interests, the secretaries, adjutants, chamberlains,
court-marshals, body-servants, &c., have created quite a chaos of
intrigues, plots, and calumnies round the person of their ruler, which
he was quite able to cope with when in the full vigour of his manhood,
and with his marvellous perspicacity could fathom at a glance. But even
Sultan Abdul Hamid could not be expected to do superhuman things;
physically never very strong, his nervous system at last grew
perceptibly weaker, and in the thirtieth year of his reign he became
very infirm. The reins of government fell from his hands, and gradually
he sank from a ruler to being ruled over, and he fancied himself secure
against all danger only in the mutual envy, malice, and hatred which he
had provoked among those immediately surrounding him. In this terrible
position the Sultan himself was most to be pitied, and this doleful
picture of the so-called autocrat I have often had occasion to
contemplate at close quarters. Great State cares, pressing financial
troubles, the threatening grouping of the European Powers, and the
fearful phantom of an internal revolution, all of which tormented the
Sultan, left him neither rest nor peace. The Sultan's fear of Young
Turkey was exaggerated, for in Turkey revolutions are not instigated by
the masses, but by the upper classes, and since these were quite
impoverished and dependent on their official position, a revolt against
the Crown is not very probable nowadays, especially as the old party of
the time of the forcible dethronement of Abdul-aziz exists no more, and
the Osmanlis darkly brooding about the future of their land cannot so
easily be roused from their sleep. If Sultan Abdul Hamid had been a
little less despotic, and had taken account a little more of the liberal
ideas of the more enlightened Osmanlis, he w

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