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ON BOARD THE “PIERRE LOTI”—TURKEY’S DEBT TO LOTI’S MAGIC PEN

Over a sea as smooth as ice, the sun shining brightly most of the way, the Messageries Maritimes steamer Pierre Loti is carrying us to Smyrna. Ten years ago, to a beaten Turkey (unable, it was supposed, to face an enemy for years to come), I had taken the same trip. And now, despite the prophets, I am returning to a victorious people; doubly victorious, since all the odds were against them.

“That is the kind of story I love,” I remarked to the sympathetic captain and his daughter, with whom I generally lunched as guest in their own cabin. They, indeed, were particularly interested in my adventure, for they knew the Near East well, and this was to be their last visit. Because he had just reached the age limit of those who ‘go down to the sea in ships,’ though it was only when you caught the word ‘papa’ upon his daughter’s lips that anyone would suspect the fact.

So they are blessed who marry young!

“It seems strange,” I told him one morning, “to be here—on board the Pierre Loti, and surely a presage of good luck, since his books have done so much to increase and widen my inborn sympathies with the East.”

Still more strange it proved; since the captain himself had named the ship for his admiration of the great French writer and in memory of personal friendship between them. A rare literary association for a steamer once in the service of the Czars. Wherefore, also, I found the master’s works in the ship’s library, and could renew acquaintance with many an old favourite: “Ramuntcho,” “Matelot,” “Ispahan,” “Les Pêcheurs d’Islande” and the “Désenchantées.”

The captain told me of his visit to Rochefort, and I told him how Antoine went to the same house for final instructions upon the staging of “Ramuntcho,” which, however, did not prove a success. How, indeed, could anyone think of dramatising Pierre Loti, whether in prose or verse? He gives us neither psychology nor dramatic incident. I can only suppose that Antoine permitted them to be produced—to show once for all that the thing could not be done; a hard lesson for the master!

“Among Loti’s collection of priceless treasures, rifled from every corner of the East, Antoine sought in vain for somewhere to place his hat! Finally, he hooked it on to an Eastern idol, and their talk began. In a few moments, however, there was a pause, for the astonished dramatist caught sight of the offending headgear suspended, as he supposed, in mid-air. However, a closer look revealed that it was resting upon a thin stream of water. The Eastern idol was a fountain!”

The captain expressed his surprise that I should not only be so familiar with Loti’s work, but that I could really know anything intimately of his private life, “seeing how the Frenchman disliked my own country.”

“My dear sir,” I replied, “if we are to find our friends to-day only among those who love England, we should be limited indeed. You and your charming daughter, par exemple, are you precisely admirers of the British Government?...

“To me, Art is first, and the rest—nowhere! I care not whether the genius first saw daylight in Paris, in New York, or in Timbuctoo. I have more friends out of England than in England. Like Kipling’s cat, ‘all places are alike to me.’ I only ask that your land be warm; and with all peoples who do not rob me I am ready and eager to be good friends. To ‘guard the frontiers’ in Art would be to bring back the Dark Ages. The most sincere love of one’s own country should never teach one to be disdainful of les autres.”

“You are going to Nationalist Turkey,” he replied, “you will find yourself right up against Chauvinism all the time.”

“I don’t believe it. Forgive me, I really think you exaggerate. And besides—with my strong sympathies for the Turks!—I have always found Orientals the most broad-minded men.”

Then I brought back the talk to Pierre Loti. “Why do you say that he dislikes England so much?” I asked. “He does object to golf near the Pyramids; he is a little sarcastic about ‘Messrs. Thos. Cook & Co., Egypt, Ltd.,’ forgetting what it means to travel without them; he dislikes our Government for its pro-Greek policy and its injustice towards the Turks. As an Englishwoman I agree. And, like him, too, I regard New York as the nearest earthly approach to hell! We certainly do not hate America; only its noise, its materialism, and its advertising.

“I knew Pierre Loti best, perhaps, at his charming Basque home in Hendaye—thanks to my friendship with his heroines, Melek and Zeyneb. I know, at one time, he resented what seemed to him our Edward VII.’s ‘interference’ in French affairs. But that master of diplomats never gave his advice unasked; and, when he was told of the great Frenchman’s hostility, Pierre Loti was promptly invited to Windsor, and they became the best of friends. Would he were with us now, that he might but talk with the Ministers of both nations!

“After Windsor, Loti, I’m sure, would have spared his sarcasm. ‘There is one thing left now,’ he once declared. ‘We must appeal to H.M. Edward VII. He only can do what he likes in France!’ The French Admiralty had just refused him permission to carry away from one of their ships the table on which he had written the ‘Désenchantées.’”

The captain, it seemed, was ready to waive this point.

“But I do not consider,” he resumed, “that Loti’s books are a true picture of Turkey as she is.”

“They would not, indeed, suit his arch-enemy Messrs. Cook,” I replied; “as Turner painted, he wrote, for those who have eyes to see. Tell him you never saw his Turkey, and he would reply: ‘Don’t you wish you could?’...

“Had Loti himself been English, he would, naturally, have reached a larger public among us. The warmth of his colouring is too often lost in translation. As a schoolgirl I learnt by heart the wonderful Preface to his “Ispahan”: ‘Qui vent venir avec moi voir les roses d’Ispahan,’ and I have dreamt of those roses ever since.”

The captain then spoke of the avenue at Constantinople which bears his name.

“A charming remembrance,” I replied, “but he needs no such ‘rosemary.’ Do we realise, I wonder, what French influence in the Near East owes to his supreme art. In England, except for a small minority, the word Turkey only means a vision of fair houris, veiled in the mysteries of the past, the great ‘Red’ Sultan, and massacres in Armenia. To France it means Aziadé, the Green Mosque at Brousse, Djénane, and the Fantômes d’Orient. Public opinion, to-day, can be ‘manufactured’ as easily as butter and cheese; but the imaginations once stirred by the magician’s pen will not yield so easily to the last Brew of Hate. France is not going to lose her dream of the East woven from Loti’s pen. A debt of gratitude neither she, nor Turkey itself, can ever pay.”

To travel by this steamer, bearing the name of a writer one loves so well, brings unceasing delight. Your menu-card, the life-belts on deck, even the towels, all bear a name to fill the mind with memory of beautiful things. As my eyes fell on the Pierre Loti’s lifeboat, swinging on its davits, I recalled the “Pêcheurs d’Islande,” with its tragic close: “and he never returned!” All the sorrow, the suffering, and the heart-ache; the useless watching, waiting, and longing—this, for the women, is War!

Are we, indeed, to begin that all over again? For a “Greater Greece” than the Greeks themselves can sustain?

If all women who have suffered (and who has not?) would march to Westminster to protest, would any hear and pause? Can we fight a Press in the service of profiteers, bolstering up the Government, blocking the public view?

Are we not, after all, mere “pawns” of a Destiny that none can avert?

Pierre Loti’s long and interesting life is now very quickly drawing to its close. He has written his last words—a defence of his beloved Turks.