Constantinople

“ Flocks of gray birds flit aimlessly across the water—the restless souls of women, says Turkish legend—the waves lap round the tower of Leander, the light wind comes whispering down between the exquisite Bosphorus shores, bringing the breath of Russian steppes to shake the plane-leaves in Scutari streets. Constantinople the Magnificent gathers her rags round her, throws over her shoulders her imperial robe of sunshine, and sits in peaceful state with her kingdom of blue waters at her feet.... But all around you the dead speak and command your ears. ”

“ Byzantium Before Constantine.
It is impossible to approach Constantinople without seeing the beauty and the wonder of its site. Whether you pass rapidly down the Bosphorus, between banks crowned with towers and houses and mosques, that stretch away hither and thither to distant hills, now bleak, now crowned with dark cypress groves; or up from the Sea of Marmora, watching the dome of S. Sophia that glitters above the closely packed houses, till you turn the point which brings you to the Golden Horn, crowded with shipping and bright with the flags of many nations ”

“ Its dense array of houses swells upward from the water’s edge, and spreads over the domes of many hills; and the gardens that peep out here and there, the great globes of the mosques, and the countless minarets that meet the eye every where, invest the metropolis with the quaint Oriental aspect one dreams of when he reads books of eastern travel. Constantinople makes a noble picture.
But its attractiveness begins and ends with its picturesqueness. From the time one starts ashore till he gets back again, he execrates it. ”

“ To one who had been accustomed to Paris and Vienna, where it is never night in this sense, where gas and arc lamps form an admirable substitute for sunlight, and where the patter of feet on the trottoirs and the hum of human life in the cafés are practically ceaseless, the sensation of wandering through these dark, deserted streets among hordes of starving curs was a strange one. By day Constantinople is modern, pulsating, alive. ”

“ Constantinople is a much more primitive city than one would expect the largest of all Eastern cities to be. It impresses you as a city without any municipal control whatsoever, and you come upon a building with the stamp of the municipal palace upon it with as much surprise as you would feel in finding an underwriter's office at the north pole. In many ways it is the most primitive city that I have ever been in. In all that pertains to the Sultan, to the religion of the people, of which he is the head, and to the army, the recognition due them is rigidly and impressively observed. ”

“ In smells, the vilest of the vile, including the acrid variety that cuts the nostrils like a razor, Constantinople stands forever and alone on a plinth of infamy, and no language that can be dragged into the arena of expression can be utilized to describe them. They paralyze the intellect and dull the sense of punishment and acute agony. ”

“ And so arose Constantinople,—a city known by many names, the one familiar to the majority of those of Western race is that of the City of Constantine, Constantinople, familiar but with subconscious charm of strange remoteness: the Slavs still talk of Tsarigrad, the Castle of Cæsar; to the Turk this is Stamboul, a corruption of εἱς τἡν πὁλιν—the phrase they must have so often heard on the lips of the vanquished Greeks, but through all ages this is Byzantium in romance. The first thing a man does when he comes into any kind of property, is to safeguard it somehow. ”

“ As for Constantinople itself, it was in the tenth century a city which struck with astonishment the Westerns, who were accustomed to the narrow and dark streets of Paris or the winding lanes of London. There were wide open spaces, or places, stately churches, with ornate services, long crowded quays, splendid houses of the nobles, and a vast imperial palace. A population exceeding that of any dozen cities of France taken together, swarmed in the streets within the city and overflowed into the suburbs. ”

“ It is true that the interior of Constantinople is exceedingly dirty, and that the number of small houses, the narrow streets, the unevenness of the pavement, the filthy dogs, etc., do not strike the beholder as excessively picturesque; but then he soon comes upon some magnificent edifice of the time of the Moors or Romans, some wondrous mosque or majestic palace, and can continue his walk through endless cemeteries and forests of dreamy cypresses. ”

“ The city lies on a peninsula between the Sea of Marmora and the spacious harbor called the Golden Horn. Washed on three sides by the water and, like Rome, enthroned upon seven hills, Constantinople occupies a site justly celebrated as the noblest in the world. It stands in Europe, looks on Asia, and commands the entrance to both the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. As a sixteenth century writer pointed out, Constantinople "is a city which Nature herself has designed to be the mistress of the world." ”

“ The most abiding one was that of the Constantinople campagna. It undulated to the horizon so desolate [483] in its autumn colour, so bare save for a few tawny clumps of wood, so empty and wild, that no one would suspect the vicinity of a great capital. We met almost no one. A few Greek peasants came or went to market, apparently oblivious to wars or rumours of them. Not so a convoy of Turkish refugees, toiling up a hill with all they had in the world piled under matting on ox-carts with huge ungainly wheels. ”

“ All the wealth of the world, but for what little trickles through their fingers, have the Greeks amassed in Constantinople. Never were there such riches. Gold and gems and silks and spices—everything that men set store by flows to Constantinople from the East and the West, from the North and the South. ”

“ Constantinople, like haughty Rome, is built on seven hills—the houses being so disposed that they do not intercept the view commanded by each on the amphitheatrical acclivities. But the streets are narrow, crooked, and uneven ”

“ From its geographical situation, as well as from its history, Constantinople naturally takes the front rank among the cosmopolitan cities of the world, and the crowds thronging its busy thoroughfares embrace every condition of man between the kid-gloved exquisite without a wrinkle in his clothes and the representative of half-savage Central Asian States incased in sheepskin garments of rudest pattern. ”

“ Constantinople has five times as many people as it can house, a city now of appalling unhappiness and misery, and of a concomitant luxury and waste. A scene at night: two children, a boy and a girl, lie huddled together on the pavement sleeping whilst the rain beats down upon them. The crowd keeps passing, keeps passing, and some step over them, many glance questioningly downward, but all pass on. No one stops. ”

“ For then, as now, 25 Constantinople was a patchwork of divers nations and languages and customs, and their quarters were like distinct towns,—some filthy, noisy and unhealthy, some rich and stately, some quiet and poor, some asleep all day and riotous all night, others silent as sleep itself from nightfall till dawn, and noisy all day with the hum of business or the ceaseless hammering clang and clatter of workmen's tools. ”

“ Nature, indeed, cannot relieve men of their duty to be wise and brave, but, in the marvellous configuration of land and sea about Constantinople, nature has done her utmost to enable human skill and courage to establish there the splendid and stable throne of a great empire. ”

“ Yet in spite of her shorn territories Constantinople remained the greatest city in Europe, not merely in her magnificent site and architecture, nor even in her commerce, but in the hold she preserved over the imagination of men. ”

“ All ages, from the day of its erection till the hour in which we live, have agreed that it is fitted, in the hands of a great and enterprising power, to be the metropolis and arbiter of the world; and Constantinople is, therefore, condemned to the melancholy fate of being the useless and unappreciated capital of a horde of irreclaimable barbarians. ”

“ In this sheltered spot, and in the district of Phanar, stretching between the inner bridge over the Golden Horn and the ultra-Moslem suburb of Eyûb, remain the last links of Constantinople with the ancient Christian city. Round the patriarchal church, with the Christian schools and colleges, in the houses that are still half fortresses, cluster ancient memories that survive to-day. ”

“ And many a Turkish monument has interest for them only because its marbles are anagrams that spell anew the glory of the ancient world.
Need I say that I am no such man? The essential colour of Constantinople is for me, who am neither Byzantinist nor Orientalist, a composite one, and the richer for being so. I confess I do not like the minarets of St. Sophia, but it is only because they are ugly. I am sorry that the palace of Constantine has so completely disappeared, but I am Philistine enough to suspect that the mosque built on its site may lift quite as imposing a mass against the sky. ”

“ At the same time I have tried to catch an atmosphere of Constantinople that change does not affect and to point out certain things of permanent interest—as in the chapters on mosque yards, gardens, and fountains, as well as in numerous references to the old Turkish house. Being neither a Byzantinist nor an Orientalist, and, withal, no expert in questions of art, I realise that the true expert will find much to take exception to. ”

“ The city stands in the centre of an enormous plain, 140 miles, or about five days’ journey from Constantinople. It is distinguished by the approaching traveller at the distance of many miles, by the tall minarets of the mosque of Selim piercing the sky, when all other objects of the city are imperceptible. An Oriental town is never discovered like one where coal is consumed, by the dense vapours which fill the atmosphere about it, but obscuring every other object. ”

“ The very geography of the place offers a wide outlook. As a part of his everyday experience, a resident of Constantinople lives within sight of Europe and Asia. Every day of his life, he sees the waterway that runs between the two great continents thronged with vessels of every nation, hurrying to and fro to bring the ends of the earth together. Then, how much human power has been enthroned here—the dominion of Byzantium for one thousand years; the rule of Constantine and his successors for eleven centuries; the sway of the Ottoman Sultans through four hundred and fifty years. ”

“ If Rome, however, had been built on fourteen hills it would have been just as easy to find the same number in Constantinople. That steep promontory advancing between sea and sea toward a steeper Asia must always have been something to look at. But I find it hard to believe that the city of Constantine and Justinian can have marked so noble an outline against the sky as the city of the sultans. ”

“ On arriving in Constantinople for the first time, one is much surprised, after all he has heard of the thraldom of the Turkish women, to see them, everywhere and at all hours of the day, coming and going with apparently the same freedom as the women of any other city in Europe. ”

“ The view of the city displays a mountain of houses, as far as the eye can reach: the seven hills form an undulating line along the horizon, crowned with imperial mosques, among which the grand Solimanie is the most conspicuous. These edifices are extraordinary structures, and, from their magnitude and position, give to Constantinople its most characteristic aspect. They consist of large square buildings, swelling in the centre into vast hemispherical domes, and crowned at the angles with four slender lofty minarets. ”

“ What changes those fields have known! armies pouring into Asia full of enterprise and the lust of conquest, returning to escort a victorious emperor in triumph through the Golden Gate, or beaten remnants of a host to seek refuge behind the city walls. And a plough of the same construction, drawn by the same faithful servants, stopped its course a while to watch, and then went on its way unchanging.
But the fairest road is still that glittering waterway with its ever-increasing number of craft, so we pass on to Constantinople. ”

“ It pains me to think of Constantinople without inhabitants or commerce, its splendors decaying, its palaces given over to owls, its harbor void of ships, its churches vacant except of spiders, its hills desolations to eyes afar on the sea. If it become not once more the capital city of Europe and Asia, some one shall have defeated the will of God; and I cannot endure that guilt or the thought of it. 'Sins are many in kind and degree, differing as the leaves and grasses differ,' says a dervish of my people ”

“ In younger days wars were waged because some fair lady had been carried off, some rich jewel stolen, and in order that black insults might be wiped out. We live nowadays beneath a more sombre sky. From isolated incidents our motives have crystallized into definite principles, and it needs the delicate eye of the artist to see any of the old lustre in our honest if humdrum efforts to defend them.
Constantinople—the name conjures up dreams of Eastern colour, Eastern sights, and Eastern smells: visions of Turks in baggy breeches and jaunty fez ”