On November 1, 1912, Lady Layard, the widow of Sir Henry Layard, died in her palazzo Ca’Capello in Venice. She was 69 and had outlived her husband by 18 years. He had been in Turkey as a young man in the 1830s and 1840s, working as an attaché to Sir Stratford Canning. As a Liberal member of parliament and junior minister in the 1850s and 1860s, he was the main turcophile voice in politics, helping found the Ottoman Bank and arguing for ‘fair play’ towards Turkey. He married Enid Guest in 1869 and was sent back to Istanbul in 1877 by the pro-Turkish prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli, just as Russia declared war on Turkey. The appointment of Layard as ambassador to the Ottomans was very unpopular with Turkey’s enemies and Layard was several times publicly attacked in speeches by William Gladstone.
In Istanbul, Enid and Henry had a hectic life, which in Enid’s case meant humanitarian work to help Bulgarian Muslims evicted from their country by the Russian army — Queen Victoria personally sent her material to make into clothing for the refugees. The Layards also had a lively social life, both in the English and diplomatic communities, and also with their Turkish friends. These included Mrs Hilmi Pasha, an ancestor of the Gülek family, and Ahmet Vefik Pasha, one of Turkey’s main political and cultural figures in the 19th century, and lifelong friend of Henry Layard.
Details of their daily life, including their visits to the Crimean Memorial Church (Christ Church) and St. Helena’s, can be found in the diary which Enid kept during her years as ambassadress. It is available both online and as a book from the Isis Press. Many features of daily life at the British Embassy in the late 1870s are still immediately recognizable to the international community in Istanbul today. The diary contains many vivid descriptions of Istanbul, including trips visits up the Bosporus to visit friends in their yalıs.
The most dramatic moment of the Layards’ embassy however was at the end of lunch during a snow storm in April 1878 when Vice-Admiral Sir Geoffrey Hornby stepped into their dining-room. The British navy had arrived to see off the Russian army which was poised to occupy Istanbul and might have done so but for Henry Layard.
One of Enid’s greatest friends and admirers in Istanbul was the young Sultan Abdul Hamid whom the Layards saw frequently. Though Abdul Hamid has generally had a bad press, he and Enid got on extremely well and, on some occasions, he would sit holding her hand. He also showered her with jewels to an extent which Sir Henry found a little excessive – but which Queen Victoria approved, declaring “The Sultan may give her whatever he wants.”
In April 1880 Disraeli fell from power and replaced by Gladstone. One of his first acts was to remove Layard from Istanbul. After a decade and a half in the wilderness, Sir Henry died a lonely and somewhat embittered figure. Enid continued to remember her years in Turkey with affection and sometimes exchanged messages with Abdul Hamid, even after he was deposed in 1909.
She never saw Turkey again, but always welcomed visitors from Istanbul including Mrs Hilmi Pasha. At a time when pro-Turkish attitudes were rare in the UK, Enid also resolutely took the side of the Turks in international disputes such as the April 1897 Graeco-Turkish war. Once, in October 1904, she glimpsed the Albanian provinces of the Ottoman Empire and sighed “How I longed to be able to go back in life & to be on my way to Constantinople which I know I shall never see again.”
David Barchard is a regular contributor to Cornucopia. He is currently writing a set of studies of Turkish-European relations over the last two hundred years, including the Eastern Question and Turcophobia, and has lectured widely on Turkish politics and economics as well as late Ottoman history.