Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. — a MemoirBiddulph, Elizabeth Philippa, Baroness
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Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. — a Memoir
Biddulph, Elizabeth Philippa, Baroness
Hardwicke, Charles Philip Yorke, Earl of, 1799-1873
'He now began to make his attendants play all sorts of tricks with the
Dervish to draw him out; who seemed to be a perfect prince in the art
of buffoonery. We were amazingly amused. He now told me he had a grand
_chasse_ in twenty-five days' time, and desired that I would come to
him on that day, bring my gun, and stay with him a week; nothing could
have pleased me more than this offer. And as I lay Gardo in Smyrna,
twenty-five days afterwards I again found myself in Magnesia, housed
with the old Greek Patriarch a second time. He now sent us down to the
village of Graviousken (?) (Infidel Village) where we were well lodged:
his cook and household chief accompanied us, and the following day he
came himself. Our hunt, tho' not much sport to English taste, yet was
most amusing. The magnificence of the horses and riders; their equipage
and management of the animal; riding at speed, as tho' they were on the
point of being dashed to pieces, against a wall or down a precipice, at
once coming to a dead stop. Riding at each other, delivering the
jareed, firing their pistols and wheeling short round in an instant,
and at speed in the opposite direction. We had greyhounds and killed a
few hares. The following days were unfortunately wet; we returned to
Magnesia.
'The first visit I paid the Bey this time, I honored him with my full
dress for reasons very good, he was not quite sure who I was. It was
also necessary that his people should have outward shew, to satisfy
them: this I was nearly paying dear for. There is a horrid custom in
this country, of paying a certain sum to the attendants of these great
people every visit you make. A few piastres had heretofore satisfied,
but on leaving, after this Golden Visit, they seized my interpreter the
moment he took his purse out, tore it away from him took all he had
saying, "they should never see such a man again" and returned him the
empty purse. He fortunately had been prepared for such an attack and
had a proper sum and no more in his purse, but had it not been for this
sagacity, I might have lost all the money I had with me. Our dinner at
Graviousken was capital, he had wine for us; fingers were again in
requisition, and we were obliged to eat of twenty-six dishes, each
brought separately on the table, one after the other, which you had no
sooner begun to think good, than it was immediately snatched away and
disappeared. After having given to my old Greek some presents of silks
for his wife, and caps for his daughters, we returned to Smyrna, where
I found H.M.S. _Cyrene_, Captn. Grace, and soon after arrived Clifford
in the _Euryalus_, who most kindly gave me an opportunity of seeing a
great deal of other countries by an order to visit the coast of Syria,
&c. &c.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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