The Levant Consular Service

One of several specialised sections of the British network of consuls in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Levant Service covered the Ottoman Empire and its fringes, or what today is called the Balkans, Turkey and the Middle East. It grew out of the consular posts inherited from the Levant Company in 1825, though it was not formally constituted as a reformed separate service employing natural-born British subjects until 1877. With heavy, and especially judicial, responsibilities under the capitulations and mounting political tasks as Anglo-Russian rivalry increased, the Levant Service was exceptionally large, elaborate and expensive; its consuls also had a higher status than those in the general service and by the First World War had replaced the China Service, the other main specialised service, as the most prestigious element in the whole consular establishment. Because of the ending of the capitulations, among other reasons, the independent Levant Consular Service was amalgamated with the General Consular Service in 1934, and matters have gone downhill ever since.

Beauty and the Beast

From Hanna, an Iranian blogger in Tehran:

'I am listening to all my favourite pop songs. Before the rally I will go to the beauty salon to get my eyebrows plucked ... It may get violent. I might be one of those who gets killed ... I am writing so the next generation do not think we were sentimental and didn’t know what we are doing.'

From Our Man in Jerusalem, 1841

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From Our Man in Jerusalem, 1851

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The Golden Journey to Samarkand

James Elroy Flecker has already been mentioned here, and his poem The Golden Journey To Samarkand is here. But also you can listen to it by clicking here.

When the Going was Good

THE GOLDEN JOURNEY TO SAMARKAND
by James Elroy Flecker

PROLOGUE:

We who with songs beguile your pilgrimage
And swear that Beauty lives though lilies die,
We Poets of the proud old lineage
Who sing to find your hearts, we know not why, -
What shall we tell you? Tales, marvellous tales
Of ships and stars and isles where good men rest,
Where nevermore the rose of sunset pales,
And winds and shadows fall towards the West:
And there the world's first huge white-bearded kings
In dim glades sleeping, murmur in their sleep,
And closer round their breasts the ivy clings,
Cutting its pathway slow and red and deep.


EPILOGUE:

At the Gate of the Sun, Bagdad, in olden time.

The Merchants (together)
Away, for we are ready to a man!
Our camels sniff the evening and are glad.
Lead on, O Master of the Caravan:
Lead on the Merchant-Princes of Bagdad.

The Chief Draper
Have we not Indian carpets dark as wine,
Turbans and sashes, gowns and bows and veils,
And broideries of intricate design,
And printed hangings in enormous bales?

The Chief Grocer
We have rose-candy, we have spikenard,
Mastic and terebinth and oil and spice,
And such sweet jams meticulously jarred
As God's own Prophet eats in Paradise.

The Principal Jews
And we have manuscripts in peacock styles
By Ali of Damascus: we have swords
Engraved with storks and apes and crocodiles,
And heavy beaten necklaces, for Lords.

The Master of the Caravan
But you are nothing but a lot of Jews.

The Principal Jews
Sir, even dogs have daylight, and we pay.

The Master of the Caravan
But who are ye in rags and rotten shoes,
You dirty-bearded, blocking up the way?

The Pilgrims
We are the Pilgrims, master: we shall go
Always a little further: it may be
Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow,
Across that angry or that glimmering sea,

White on a throne or guarded in a cave
There lives a prophet who can understand
Why men are born: but surely we are brave,
Who make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.

The Chief Merchant
We gnaw the nail of hurry. Master, away!

One of the Women
O turn your eyes to where your children stand.
Is not Bagdad the beautiful? O stay!

The Merchants (in chorus)
We take the Golden Road to Samarkand.

An Old Man
Have you not girls and garlands in your homes,
Eunuchs and Syrian boys at your command?
Seek not excess: God hateth him who roams!

The Merchants (in chorus)
We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.

A Pilgrim with a Beautiful Voice
Sweet to ride forth at evening from the wells
When shadows pass gigantic on the sand,
And softly though the silence beat the bells
Along the Golden Road to Samarkand.

A Merchant
We travel not for trafficking alone:
By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned:
For lust of knowing what should not be known
We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.

The Master of the Caravan
Open the gate, O watchman of the night!

The Watchman
Ho, travellers, I open. For what land
Leave you the dim-moon city of delight?

The Merchants (with a shout)
We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.

(The Caravan passes through the gate)

The Watchman (consoling the women)
What would ye, ladies? It was ever thus.
Men are unwise and curiously planned.

A Woman
They have their dreams, and do not think of us.

Voices of the Caravan (in the distance, singing)
We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.

James Elroy Flecker (1884-1915)

James Elroy Flecker died of consumption in 1915, only thirty years of age. Flecker was of the Levant Consular Service, and also he was a poet. One of his best known poems, though he is far less known than he deserves to be, is To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence.


I who am dead a thousand years,
And wrote this sweet archaic song,
Send you my words for messengers
The way I shall not pass along.

I care not if you bridge the seas,
Or ride secure the cruel sky,
Or build consummate palaces
Of metal or of masonry.

But have you wine and music still,
And statues and a bright-eyed love,
And foolish thoughts of good and ill,
And prayers to them who sit above?

How shall we conquer? Like a wind
That falls at eve our fancies blow,
And old Mæonides the blind
Said it three thousand years ago.

O friend unseen, unborn, unknown,
Student of our sweet English tongue,
Read out my words at night, alone:
I was a poet, I was young.

Since I can never see your face,
And never shake you by the hand,
I send my soul through time and space
To greet you. You will understand.