"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!
