Dangerous Gifts: Imperialism, Security,

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Ozan Ozavci
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Dangerous Gifts
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 OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 21/6/2021, SPi

Dangerous Gifts
Imperialism, Security, and Civil Wars
in the Levant, 1798–1864

OZAN OZAVCI

1
OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 21/6/2021, SPi

3
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© Ozan Ozavci 2021
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First Edition published in 2021
Impression: 1
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should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above
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OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 21/6/2021, SPi

For my students
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 OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 21/6/2021, SPi

Foreword

Almost six years ago, when I embarked upon this book project, the preliminary
concept I had in mind was very different from the end result. My plan was to write
a comprehensive micro-history of the international commission that was dis-
patched to Ottoman Syria after the violent summer of 1860. Along the way—and,
I must confess, not soon after I began the project—a set of questions struck me,
upended the book’s structure, and resulted in an enormous review of my inten-
tions: by what right, I wondered, did the so-called European Great Powers claim
the responsibility to supply security in the Levant in the long nineteenth century
even when the sovereign authority was opposed to their intervention? On what
legal grounds? How did it all begin?
At first, I thought of explaining these in a long background chapter before
I delved into the history of the commission. But this didn’t quite work. The more
I read the fascinating existing literature on the several episodes that formed the
prehistory of 1860, the more questions I was left with about these events, about
their connections with one another, their micro-global nuances, and the historical,
political, legal, and economic continuities. The ambitious endeavour to address
them almost organically led me to a massive restructuring of the manuscript half-
way through the project.
What was supposed to be a book about the years 1860–62 thus turned into a
study of nearly a century of European Great Power interventionism in the Levant,
and the reception and implications of these acts, as well as persistent patterns, and
cultures of security. My task then became writing a history that hinges together the
existing literature, filling the gaps as far as I was able—a book that highlights the
long-standing vectors, overt or covert, previously noticed or unnoticed, but
without losing sight of the ideas, ideals, emotions, and observations of several
historical figures whose lives and biographical experience have usually remained
un- or under-explored in previous studies.
Yet, in doing so, my aim has hardly been to write another Saidian, anti-
Orientalist or post-Orientalist book. Instead, I have endavoured to uphold a
third narrative that goes beyond both Orientalism and its (corrective) rejection,
beyond the likes of both Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami and Edward Said. This
narrative embraces the complexity of the historical reality through in-depth and
multi-archival research to offer a more substantiative and less impressionistic
analysis of interventionism and violence in the Levant.
The very same consideration led me to propose a new paradigm, and to use
security as a driving force of political and social change, rather than producing
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viii 

another history of westernization, modernization, or secularization of the

(Ottoman) Middle Eastern societies after their ‘encounter with the West’. Since
the spatial scope of the book is limited to the eastern Mediterranean coasts, and
since I devote only very limited space to the events that simultaneously transpired
in areas including Mesopotamia and the Arabian Peninsula, I have decided to use
the term ‘the Levant’ as the geographical focus of the book, even though the region
that became a theatre of interventions covered in the book has come to be known
as ‘the Middle East’ as of the early twentieth century.
Dangerous Gifts came into being as part of a larger project funded by the
European Research Council (ERC), ‘Securing Europe, Fighting Its Enemies’.
Thanks to this, I have been able to cooperate with several brilliant scholars. One
of them, the prime investigator of the project, Beatrice de Graaf, read the draft
chapters of the book and made most useful comments. With her patience and
encouragement, with the occasional lunch and dinner meetings she organized, she
has been a source of immense moral support. Constantin Ardeleanu, Erik de
Lange, Annelotte Jensen, Wouter Klem, Melle Lyklema, Trineke Palm, Joep
Schenk, and Jossie Til-Duijsters as assiduously read my draft chapters and offered
insightful comments. Susanne Keesman has been of great help in guiding me
through the bureaucratic minutiae of the project as well as helping me to settle in
the Netherlands. Myrthe van Groningen and Andrea Dörr kindly helped me to
sort out copyright and other practical issues in the final stages of the project. Erik
Goosman designed the appealing maps used in this book.
The ERC funding has also allowed me to enlist the support of a number of
research assistants whose linguistic and/or logistical reach brought to my consid-
eration primary and secondary sources in several languages and from numerous
archives, which I would not otherwise have been able to make use of. Markus
Wegewitz, Dominik Loibner, and Theresa Herzog supplied me with materials
from archives and libraries in Berlin and Vienna, working with the challenging
Kurrentschrift, taking notes, and translating their notes from German into
English. Elena Linkova found and dispatched sources from the archives and
libraries in Moscow and St Petersburg. Zienab al-Bakry and Tarek Sabra provided
assistance with locating, taking notes, and translating Arabic primary (mostly
archival) and secondary materials from Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon. Filiz
Yazıcıoğlu has been tremendously generous in offering her support. Not only
did she hasten to the Ottoman archives and Islamic Research Institute in Istanbul
and send me copies of an archival material or a book whenever I needed her
urgent help. She also helped me ‘decipher’ some of the more intricate Ottoman
texts. I am indebted to Pavlos Kardoulakis for taking copies of archival materials
in Britain and France for my use.
The task of freeing the manuscript from my linguistic mistakes was skilfully
taken up by Alastair Paynter.
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 ix

Selim Deringil, Jonathan Conlin, and Jonathan Parry have read the draft
manuscript and provided me with excellent feedback. I was lucky to find Selçuk
Dursun (abi) within reach whenever I needed his support with the transliteration
of subtle Ottoman sources.
My editors at Oxford University Press, especially Stephanie Ireland, believed in
the project from the beginning. Together with Katie Bishop and Cathryn Steele,
she displayed an impressive degree of professionalism in arranging for timely peer
reviews and putting together the contract. Stephanie, Katie, and Cathryn have
patiently responded to my endless questions and inquiries during the various
stages of this publication journey. My copy-editor Sarah Barret was admirably
diligent, while Saravanan Anandan has been a model professional during the
production of the book.
Devoting nearly six years of my life to researching and writing a historical book
has been a demanding endeavour, to say the least, which sometimes entailed a
hermit-like-life style, spending weeks in archives, and sacrifices of sorts, especially
on the part of those I love. My dearest family and friends have tirelessly supported
me all along even when I disappeared from their lives for extended periods of time.
They have shown an indefatigable faith in me and the project, which has been my
main source of motivation and energy. Esther Meininghaus has also helped me
with the transliteration of Arabic sources, while patiently listening to me for hours
rambling about the contents of the book. Julia Kozak has assisted me with the
transliteration of Russian sources, and uncomplainingly read all draft chapters,
telling her honest opinion even when I wouldn’t like it. I am grateful to all of them
for their endless patience, support, and, above all, for their presence.
Grateful I am also to all the truly helpful archivists and librarians I met during
research, and my numerous colleagues and students, whose names I unfortunately
cannot list in the little space I have here. I can, however, say that I have been
privileged to have the opportunity to discuss the very questions I asked myself
while writing the book—not only with expert scholars but also with my students,
hundreds of them, from all walks of life and literally from all over the world,
during the teaching of several course modules. Nearer the completion of the
project, I shared with my students the draft chapters of the manuscript, and
fine-tuned its contents and tone following their suggestions. They even conducted
research into the various subjects covered in the book as part of their assignments,
which introduced me to new literature and primary sources that I had not been
aware of.
‘I like reading stories,’ one of my students at Utrecht once told me, not soulless
scientific analyses. Among the several challenges in writing a book on entangled
histories, the most difficult one has been to develop out of a fiendishly complex
story a narrative that is both intelligible and captivating for readers. They should
be the judge of the extent to which I succeed in this.
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x 

In short, Dangerous Gifts has been the result of a tireless team effort. The fact
that my name appears as its single author ought not to outshine the degree of
collaborative labour which allowed it to materialize. Without my research team,
without the support of my colleagues, without my family and friends, and without
my students, this book could not have seen the light of the day. I dedicate it to
these unseen co-creators.

Utrecht Ozan Ozavci

November 2020
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Contents

List of Figures and Maps xiii

Note on Transliteration xv

Introduction 1

PART I. AVANT LE MOT

1. Crossing the Mediterranean 21

Defining the ‘Eastern Question’ 24
France and the Ottoman Empire 31
Preparation for the Egyptian Expedition 35
2. The Circle of Justice and the Napoleonic Wars 42
The Circle of Justice 43
The Sultan’s Bafflement 54
The Wrecked Victory 65
3. The Chase in the Desert: Empires and Civil War in Egypt,
1801–1812 74
Ottoman Egypt before the Eastern Question 75
Useful Allies, Dangerous Enemies 81
The Tripartite Civil War 88

PART II. THE INVENTION OF

THE EASTERN QUESTION
4. A New Era? The Vienna Order and the Ottoman World 105
The Eastern Question in the 1810s 108
A ‘Humanitarian’ Intervention: Navarino 1827 115
5. Old Enemies: Cairo, Istanbul, and the Civil War of 1832–1833 132
Hüsrev and Mehmed Ali 133
‘The Civil War of Islamism’ 146
6. The Russian Peace in the Levant 158
The Russian Intervention: ‘We Have Been Sick, You the Medicines’ 159
Preaching to the Winds: The Disconcert of Europe and the
Diplomatic Impasse 170
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7. An Unusual Quest for Revenge: Civilization, Commerce,

and Reform 177
Civilization 178
Commerce and Security: A Capo d’Opera? 192
‘We Are Still Called Barbarians!’ 197
8. Return of the Ashes: The Concert of Europe and the 1840
Intervention 211
The Quadruple Alliance and France 212
The 1840 Intervention 217

PART III. THE MOUNTAIN

9. Beginnings: Mount Lebanon before 1840 229
The Land of the Muqatadjis 231
When the Egyptians Came 239
10. The Age of the Eastern Question 245
‘The Old Days Have Passed’: The Civil War of 1841 and its
Aftermath 246
The Racing Clouds: The Stand-Off and the Civil War of 1845 265
11. The Two Wars: Crimea and Mount Lebanon 277
The Crimean War and a Perilous Peace 278
Anno 1860: The Civil War in Mount Lebanon 291
12. An Untimely Return of the Eastern Question? 302
Responsibility Towards Humanity: Thouvenel’s Démarche 303
Against Intervention: Propaganda and Diplomacy 309
13. Returning the Sense of Security: The International Commission
on Syria 318
Reluctant Imperialists 319
Securing Hearts: Relief and Reparations 326
The Scapegoats? Retributive Justice and Règlement Organique 334
Epilogue 353

Select Bibliography 369

Index 395
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List of Figures and Maps

Figures
1. Selim III’s childhood 44
2. Jacques-Louis David’s Le Sacre de Napoléon 106

Maps
1. The French expedition to Egypt 22
2. Egypt 92
3. Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor 154
4. Lebanon 261
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Note on Transliteration

Arabic names, words, and titles are transliterated according to the system of the
International Journal of Middle East Studies. Russian names, words, and titles are
transliterated according to the GOST 7.79-2000 system. Modern and Ottoman
Turkish names, words, position, and titles are kept in their original or used with
Ottoman transliteration. Pașa instead of pasha or pacha, vali instead of wali,
Şeyhülislam instead of Sheikh-ul Islam, etc.
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Introduction

Justice is a balance set up among mankind.

Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddimah¹

Two months after his arrival in Ottoman Syria in September 1860, the Prussian
bureaucrat Johann Ludwig Guido von Rehfues (1818–97) and his colleagues set
off on a hauntingly memorable journey to Damascus.² Leaving Beirut early in the
morning, they rode first up Mount Lebanon. From all the heights to which their
path took them, they could see the smoke-stained rubble of once flourishing
villages in the countryside.³ The picturesque hills did not hide the grim fact that
a civil war had struck there half a year earlier. It was the last day of November and
the men on horseback were representatives of the European Powers at the
commission they had been tasked with setting up: Pierre Jean Adolphe de
Weckbecker (1808–71) was the Austrian plenipotentiary, Leon Philippe Béclard
(1819–64) the French, and Evgenii Petrovic Novikow (1826–1903) represented
Russia. Since he was unwell, the British commissioner, Frederick Hamilton-
Temple-Blackwood, 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava (1826–1902), had stayed
in Beirut.
The five commissioners had been dispatched to Syria for what was arguably a
‘humanitarian’ mission to investigate the origins of violence, monitor the retribu-
tion and indemnification processes, and reorganize the country’s administration.
They were the first men to establish an international security institution in the
Levant.⁴ After crossing the plains of the Bekaa valley and overcoming the chal-
lenges of the Anti-Lebanon Mountains, the companions made their entrance into
Damascus behind an Ottoman imperial cavalry unit on 1 December. The streets

¹ Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, vol. 2, trans. Franz Rosenthal (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), 145.
² In 1860, the term ‘Syria’, or Bilâd al-Sham, referred to the area that encompasses present-day Syria,
Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine: Bruce Masters, ‘Syria’, in Encyclopaedia of the Ottoman Empire, ed.
Bruce Masters and Gábor Ágoston (New York: Facts on File, 2009), 550.
³ Johann Ludwig Guido von Rehfues to Alexander Gustav Adolph Freiherr von Schleinitz, 2 Dec.
1860, GStA, III. HA MdA, I Nr. 7568, f. 385.
⁴ By the term ‘Levant’ I refer here not only to the Arab mashriq but to the region along the eastern
Mediterranean coasts of the late Ottoman Empire that stretched from Alexandria in Egypt to Izmir/
Smyrna, the Straits that connect to the Black Sea, the eastern Greek coasts, and their hinterland. The
term ‘Levantine’ will be used to denote the inhabitants of these spaces. For a recent study on the
concept of ‘Levant’, see Rana Issa and Einar Wigen, ‘Levantine Chronotopes: Prisms for Entangled
Histories’, Contemporary Levant 5(1) (2020): 1–12.

Dangerous Gifts: Imperialism, Security, and Civil Wars in the Levant, 1798–1864. Ozan Ozavci, Oxford University Press.
© Ozan Ozavci 2021. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198852964.003.0001
OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 21/6/2021, SPi

2  

were filled with a compact crowd attracted by the curious sight.⁵ When they
arrived at their residence, Rehfues immediately went to the Christian quarter to
see for himself the town’s condition. During the course of half a day, he conducted
a thorough investigation, and visited the locations at which the killings had taken
place in July, which resembled, in his words, ‘persecutions in the earliest time of
the Christian calendar’. He frequently halted in his journey, and only a strong
desire to observe the tragic scenes for himself gave him the strength to carry on.
Although five months had passed since the events, and the bodies of those
murdered had been taken away or at the very least covered with rubble, the
manifold remaining traces still painted a disturbing picture of what had happened
there. In the hours he spent at the site, it was as if Rehfues had witnessed the
horror for himself. The next day, he wrote in a dispatch to Berlin that he would
never forget what he had seen in Damascus.⁶
In the lands the European commissioners rode past during those two days,
more than 10,000 people had perished and tens of thousands had been displaced
between late May and early July 1860. The worst violent outburst in late Ottoman
Syria, the Druze–Maronite civil war, later sparked the killing of around 3,000
Damascene Christians on 9–10 July.⁷ The news alarmed European capitals,
attracted immense public attention, and provoked fury and consternation on
the part of the Ottoman government. Even though Sultan Abdülmecid
I appointed Fuad Pașa (1814–69), one of his eminent ministers, as special envoy
to suppress the ‘disturbances’ and establish order and tranquillity in the country,
the diplomatic manoeuvres of the Sublime Porte⁸ would not be enough to prevent
the dispatch of a French expeditionary army to ‘aid the Sultan’ in protecting the
Christian populations.⁹ Nor would they suffice to avoid the establishment of an
international commission which, Ottoman ministers believed, infringed the sov-
ereignty of their empire.
The 1860 intervention was only one of many European interventions in the
Levant in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Starting with Napoleon
Bonaparte’s occupation of Egypt in 1798, the self-defined five Great Powers (in
alphabetical order, Austria, Britain, France, Prussia, and Russia) had previously
assumed responsibility, either individually or collectively, for supplying security in
the region. They had staged hitherto unprecedented military occupations ‘for the
benefit of the locals’. They had drawn lines, partitioned lands, and imposed rules,

⁵ Leon Béclard to Antoine Thouvenel, 12 Dec. 1860, AMAE 50MD/139.

⁶ Rehfues to Schleinitz, 2 Dec. 1860, GStA III. HA MdA, I Nr. 7568, 385.
⁷ On the Damascene events, see Eugene L. Rogan, ‘Sectarianism and Social Conflict in Damascus:
The 1860 Events Reconsidered’, Arabica 51(4) (Oct. 2004): 493–511.
⁸ ‘The Sublime Porte’ or Bâb-ı Âli (‘the Porte’) is a term used by European and Ottoman agents as of
the late 18th c. to refer to the Ottoman imperial ministries.
⁹ R. Edwards, La Syrie, 1840–1860. Histoire, politique, administration, population, religions et
mœurs, événements de 1860 d’après des actes officiels et des documents authentiques (Paris: Amyot,
1862), 164.
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 3

laws, administrative systems, and treaties on the locals, usually against their will.
They had also ventured on the first so-called ‘humanitarian’ interventions in
history, before establishing as-yet-unknown international security institutions,
such as the commission on Syria that Rehfues and his companions were tasked
with setting up.¹⁰
My book is about these eighteenth- and nineteenth-century foreign interven-
tions in the Levant—their making, theatres, reception, and repercussions. It traces
the genealogy of these unique practices of recent history, asking how it all began—
how, from the late eighteenth century, the threat perceptions and interests of the
Western Powers and Levantine inhabitants became interwoven, and how and why
historical actors, both imperial and peripheral,¹¹ European and Levantine, unwar-
ily grappled with a vicious and intricate paradox there: an ever-increasing demand
for security despite its increasing supply.¹²
After each major European Great Power intervention, i.e. the use of force or
pressure by one or more dominant states ‘to interfere with and exert power over
the affairs of a weaker sovereign entity’, eastern Mediterranean coasts were further
destabilized and became vulnerable to civil wars.¹³ First, the strife in Ottoman
Egypt (1802–11) that followed the French occupation of 1798–1801 and over-
lapped with the British intervention of 1801–3; then, following the 1827 Navarino
interference, the civil war between the pașa of Egypt, Mehmed Ali, and the
Sublime Porte that engulfed the entire Ottoman world (1832–41); and, finally,
the hostilities between the Druze and Maronites (1841–60) in Ottoman Syria
between the Quadruple Alliance’s intervention in 1840 and the 1860 armed
intervention. All these outbreaks of violence had diverse and compound origins
rooted in numerous, predominantly domestic, factors. Yet, at the same time, they
were all fuelled by international dynamics, connections, and interactions, and
were then quelled almost always through the filter of global imperial interests.

*
There is already a rich and diverse literature on the historical episodes considered
in this book. The French invasion of Egypt in 1798, the so-called ‘humanitarian’

¹⁰ For discussions of what makes these interventions in the Ottoman Empire ‘humanitarian’, see esp.
Gary J. Bass, Freedom’s Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention (New York: Random House,
2008); Alexis Heraclides and Ada Dialla, Humanitarian Intervention in the Long Nineteenth Century:
Setting the Precedent (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015); and Davide Rodogno, Against
Massacre: Humanitarian Interventions in the Ottoman Empire (1815–1914) (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2011).
¹¹ I use the term ‘periphery’ as a structural metaphor to demarcate the hierarchical, asymmetrical,
and exploitative nature of both the Ottoman and global imperial systems, whereby the main bene-
factors of the asymmetries were the imperial centres (metropoles).
¹² On the notion of ‘security paradox’, see Christopher Daase, ‘On Paradox and Pathologies:
A Cultural Approach to Security’, in Transformations of Security Studies: Dialogues, Diversity and
Discipline, ed. Gabi Schlag, Julian Junk, and Christopher Daase (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), 86.
¹³ On the definition of ‘foreign intervention’, see Elizabeth Schmidt, Foreign Intervention in Africa:
From the Cold War to the War on Terror (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 3.
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And when afterwards, through stress of circumstances, he found
himself compelled to become the captain of a band of outlaws, he
found consolation in this wise:
How use doth breed a habit in a man!
This shadowy desert, unfrequented woods,
I better brook than flourishing peopled towns:
Here can I sit alone, unseen of any,
And to the nightingale’s complaining notes
Tune my distresses and record my woes.[234]

It will be recollected that among the tantalising tricks played off by

the lord and his servants upon Christopher Sly, he was asked
Wilt thou have music? Hark! Apollo plays
And twenty caged nightingales do sing.[235]

Nor can we forget the magnanimous offer of Bottom when he wanted

to play the part of the lion, and the danger of his frightening the
duchess and the ladies was pointed out to him:
But I will aggravate my voice so, that I will roar you as
gently as any sucking dove; I will roar you an ’twere any
nightingale.[236]
 The Nightingale

The romance of the nightingale’s song was never more thoroughly

discarded than by Portia when she returned from her memorable trip
to Venice and found a light and music in her hall. She remarked to
Nerissa that by night music sounds much sweeter than by day, and
received in reply the explanation that “Silence bestows that virtue on
it, madam.” Portia, however, with her ingenuity of a barrister, insisted
in a passage already referred to:
The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark,
When neither is attended; and I think
The nightingale, if she should sing by day,
When every goose is cackling, would be thought
No better a musician than the wren.[237]
 The lapse of two centuries from the time of
Chaucer witnessed a change in the mood of Progress of
English poetry in regard to its treatment of birds. English Poetry
The simple and unaffected joy in the voices of the
grove, so conspicuous in the poems of the author of the Canterbury
Tales, had not become less, but it had been accompanied by the
growth of a more observant and contemplative spirit. While bird-
music was as much appreciated as ever, a much wider field of
interest in the feathered tribes had been entered upon. Greater
familiarity with bird-life had been attained, and much more was
known about the habits of birds. Of this knowledge use was made by
way of simile and illustration in regard to human life. How often and
how vividly, for instance, does Shakespeare, by means of an
analogy from the world of birds, portray the depth of man’s feelings,
—his joy, his sorrow and his suffering!
The law of evolution, which has been so
supreme in the history of organised life on the Birds in later
globe, does not leave the human mind outside of Poetry
its influence. If there was proof of progress in
poetic insight between the days of Chaucer and those of
Shakespeare, we may expect to find on examination that other two
centuries did not pass without leaving some evidence of change in
the tone of our poetry. To test this inference, some typical examples
may be taken from the poetry of the nineteenth century where it
deals with birds, for comparison with the quotations which have been
cited from our great dramatist. The subject is obviously far too wide
to be fully entered upon here; but it may be briefly illustrated by
selecting three well-known poems by three of the most illustrious of
the English poets of the nineteenth century—the “Ode to the
Cuckoo” of Wordsworth, the “Ode to the Nightingale” of Keats, and
the “Ode to the Skylark” of Shelley.
 Coming anew to these poems from a prolonged perusal of
Shakespeare, we are first struck by the fact that although so distinct
from each other in thought as well as in music, they are akin in being
not mere references to the birds, but actual addresses to particular
members of the feathered tribes. In each case the ode is no cold
description, but a monologue, glowing with appreciation and love,
and spoken as it were directly to the subject itself. The birds are
recognised as, like ourselves, “travellers between life and death.”
Instead of being regarded as “unreasonable,” that is, devoid of any
reasoning faculty, and gifted only with what is called “instinct,” they
are felt to be linked with us by the possession of many qualities that
are closely akin to some of the purest virtues of humanity. And they
are acknowledged to be fellow-creatures, partners with us in the
great mystery of life. They are communed with as if man’s longings
could be made known to them, and as if they in turn might be
brought to feel the reality and depth of his affectionate interest in
them, or even perhaps be induced to reveal to him the secret of their
careless happiness. The poets in their mystic rapture idealise these
songsters until they almost seem to cease to be corporeal beings.
Thus Wordsworth:
O Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird,
Or but a wandering voice?
* * * * * * *
Even yet thou art to me
No bird, but an invisible thing,
A voice, a mystery.

Shelley’s ethereal melody becomes even more ecstatic in his

address to the Skylark:
Hail to thee, blithe spirit— Wordsworth,
Bird thou never wert— Shelley and
* * * * * * * Keats
Teach us, sprite or bird,
What sweet thoughts are thine.
To the modern poet the voices of the birds seem to express more
directly and simply than any other kind of music the pure joie de
vivre. Shelley wrote of his Skylark:
Sound of vernal showers
On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers,—
All that ever was,
Joyous and clear and fresh,—thy music doth surpass.
* * * * * * *
Yet, if we could scorn
Hate and pride and fear,
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Keats recognised the same joyous feeling in his Nightingale:

’Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thy happiness,—
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

Each poet seeks to interpret for himself the meaning of the song of
the bird and the sources of its inspiration. To Wordsworth the Cuckoo
seems to be
Babbling to the vale
Of sunshine and of flowers.

To Keats the Nightingale was singing of “summer.” Shelley asks the

Skylark:
What objects are the fountains
Of thy happy strain?
What fields, or waves, or mountains?
What shapes of sky or plain?
What love of thine own kind? What ignorance of pain?
Again, to the poet’s ear the bird-music awakens memories of the
past. To Wordsworth the notes of the Cuckoo brought “a tale of
visionary hours” in his boyhood when, in his endeavour to set eyes
upon the bird, he would
Often rove
Through woods and on the green;
And thou were still a hope, a love;
Still longed for, never seen.

To Keats the vista unfolded of the past reached far beyond his own
time:
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown;
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charmed magic easements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

The modern poet finds in the varied notes of the birds not the
bodings and portents, superstitiously associated in the olden time
with such cries as those of the raven and the owl, but high and
solemn thoughts of death and the hereafter. Shelley wrote of his
Skylark:
Waking or asleep,
Thou of death must deem
Things more true and deep
Than we mortals dream,
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

And Keats found his heart attuned by the voice of the Nightingale to
the contemplation of his own dissolution:
Darkling I listen; and for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
 Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod.

What the future course of English Poetry will be in this same

domain cannot be confidently predicted. Already, after the lapse of
another century since the three poems appeared which we have
been considering, a certain change in the poetic mood with regard to
living Nature can be more or less distinctly perceived. With such a
splendid past to contemplate, we may be well assured that our
Poetry will continue to be radiant with sympathy for all living things.
The birds will not fail to retain their “pride of place” in the affections of
each generation of poets, and their voices, in the future as in the
past, will abide with man as the source of some of the purest
pleasure that can solace his heart.
A Friendly Chough
 FOOTNOTES:
[1] Legende of Goode Women, Prologue, 30.
Again he declares:
As for myn entent
The birdes song was more convient
And more pleasaunt to me by many fold
Than mete or drink or any other thing.
Flower and Leaf, 118.

[2] Prologue, 9.
[3] Parlement of Foules, 190.
[4] The Flower and the Leaf, 34. Even if this poem be held not to
have come from the pen of Chaucer, it shows that he was not
alone at an early time in his enthusiasm for birds and their song.
[5] Much Ado about Nothing, ii. i. 197.
[6] 3 Henry VI. ii. ii. 26.
[7] Titus Andronicus, ii. i. 93.
[8] Macbeth, iv. ii. 34.
[9] 2 Henry VI. i. iii. 86.
[10] Hamlet, iii. iii. 67.
[11] 3 Henry VI. v. vi. 13.
[12] Lucrece, 87.
[13] Venus and Adonis, 601, 604.
[14] Ib. 67.
[15] Lucrece, 457.
[16] 3 Henry VI. iv. vi. 10.
[17] King Lear, v. iii. 8.
[18] ii. i. 31.
[19] iv. iii. 103.
[20] ii. v. 1.
[21] v. iii. 17.
[22] ii. i. 15.
[23] ii. i. 22.
[24] ii. i. 46. The dramatist may perhaps have been thinking of this
scene when he afterwards put into Hamlet’s mouth a reiteration of
the same view of the indifference of the crowd:
Why, let the stricken deer go weep,
The hart ungalled play,
For some must watch, while some must sleep:
Thus runs the world away.
Hamlet, iii. ii. 265.

[25] Venus and Adonis, 680.

[26] Ib. 697.
[27] iii. i. 80.
[28] King Lear, iv. i. 37.
[29] Titus Andronicus, v. i. 141.
[30] Venus and Adonis, 316.
[31] Titus Andronicus, iii. ii. 52.
[32] 2 Henry IV. iv. iv. 91.
[33] Titus Andronicus, ii. iii. 12.
[34] Passionate Pilgrim, xxi.
[35] Ibid. xx.
[36] Sonnet, lxxiii.
[37] Love’s Labour’s Lost, v. ii. 908.
[38] Titus Andronicus, v. iii. 68.
[39] Venus and Adonis, 431.
[40] Lucrece, 869.
[41] Henry V. i. i. 60.
[42] Passionate Pilgrim, xxi.
[43] Lucrece, 1107-1125.
[44] Phoenix and Turtle, 9.
[45] Chaucer places at the head of his large company of feathered
creatures “the royal egle that with his sharpe look perceth the
Sonne,” Parlement of Foules, 330.
[46] Richard II. iii. iii. 68.
[47] 3 Henry VI. ii. i. 91.
[48] iv. iii. 327.
[49] iv. iii. 222.
[50] Timon of Athens, iv. iii. 222.
[51] Coriolanus, iii. i. 136.
[52] Troilus and Cressida, i. ii. 235.
[53] Richard III. i. iii. 70.
[54] Ib. i. i. 132.
[55] Henry V. i. ii. 169.
[56] Cymbeline, iii. iii. 19.
[57] Timon of Athens, i. i. 51.
[58] Titus Andronicus, iv. iv. 83.
[59] Venus and Adonis, 55.
[60] 1 Henry IV. ii. iv. 320.
[61] Taming of the Shrew, iv. i. 172.
[62] Romeo and Juliet, ii. ii. 158. The tassel-gentle or tercel-gentle
was the male gos-hawk, much used in falconry.
[63] 2 Henry VI. ii. i. 1-46.
[64] Chaucer alludes to
The gentil faucon, that with his feet distreyneth
The Kinges hond.
Parliament, 337.

[65] Macbeth, ii. iv. 12.

[66] Richard II. i. iii. 61.
[67] Lucrece, 506.
[68] ii. v. 102.
[69] Merry Wives of Windsor, iii. iii. 18. Musket or Musquet-hawk
was an old name for the cock Sparrow-hawk, and ‘eyas’ meant a
fledgling.
Before passing from the subject of hawks and hawking, I should
state that the sport is not yet wholly extinct in this country, and
that we have at least two extant memorials of the time when it
was a favourite pastime here. There is still among our King’s
Court officials a Hereditary Grand Falconer, the office being held
in the family of the Duke of St. Albans. In old times, and for many
generations, the royal stud of hawks was kept at Charing Cross in
buildings that were known as The Mews. In the reign of Henry
VIII. these mews were turned into stables for horses, but the time-
honoured name still clung to them. It became customary to call by
this name lanes flanked with stables, and this practice has
continued down to our own day. When we speak of “mews,”
however, it is always horses and never hawks that come into our
minds.
[70] Taming of the Shrew, ii. i. 206.
[71] Dictionary of Birds, p. 67.
[72] 2 Henry VI. iii. ii. 191. Chaucer refers to “the coward Kyte.”
[73] iii. i. 248.
[74] ii. iii. 184.
[75] Julius Caesar, v. i. 84.
[76] 2 Henry VI. v. ii. 9.
[77] Winter’s Tale, iv. iii. 23.
[78] Lear i. iv. 262.
[79] Coriolanus, iv. vii. 33.
[80] Macbeth, iv. iii. 73.
[81] Venus and Adonis, 551; Lucrece, 556.
[82] 1 Henry VI. iv. iii. 47.
[83] Lear, ii. iv. 132.
[84] 2 Henry IV. ii. iv. 249.
[85] As You Like It, iv. i. 134.
[86] Merchant of Venice, i. i. 52.
[87] Othello, ii. iii. 270.
[88] 1 Henry IV. ii. iv. 95.
[89] 1 Henry IV. i. iii. 33-52.
[90] 1 Henry IV. iv. i. 97.
[91] 2 Henry VI. iv. x. 27.
[92] Richard II. ii. i. 38. Love’s Labour’s Lost, i. i. 4. Coriolanus, i. i.
119. Troilus and Cressida, ii. ii. 6.
[93] Hamlet, iv. v. 142.
[94] Lear, iii. iv. 71.
[95] Macbeth, v. iii. 11.
[96] iv. vi. 17.
[97] ii. iii. 82.
[98] Thus in the song of the “Ewie wi’ the crooked horn” the knave
that did the mischief is thus maledicted:
O had I but the loon that did it,
I hae sworn as well as said it,
Though the parson should forbid it
I wad gie his neck a thraw.

[99] Hamlet, iv. v. 40.

[100] Venus and Adonis, 529.
[101] 2 Henry VI. i. iv. 16.
[102] Love’s Labour’s Lost, v. ii. 899.
[103] 3 Henry VI. ii. i. 130.
[104] Macbeth, ii. iv. 13.
[105] Macbeth, ii. ii. 2-4.
[106] Ibid. ii. iii. 57.
[107] Julius Caesar, i. iii. 26.
[108] Richard II. iii. iii. 182.
[109] Midsummer Night’s Dream, v. i. 364. Chaucer refers to “The
oule that of dethe the bode bringeth.” Parlement, 343.
[110] Henry VI. v. vi. 44.
[111] Macbeth, iv. i. 17.
[112] Tempest, v. i. 88.
[113] Midsummer Night’s Dream, ii. ii. 5.
[114] ii. ii. 188.
[115] v. ii. 881.
[116] Merchant of Venice, v. i. 110.
[117] 1 Henry IV. iii. ii. 75.
[118] Anthony and Cleopatra, ii. vi. 28.
[119] Lucrece, 848.
[120] 1 Henry IV. ii. iv. 343.
[121] 3 Henry VI. i. iv. 61.
[122] Hamlet, i. iii. 115.
[123] Twelfth Night, ii. v. 77.
[124] Winter’s Tale, iv. iv. 727.
[125] Much Ado about Nothing, ii. i. 128.
[126] Othello, i. iii. 379. In Shakespeare’s time the bird was also
called snite, under which form it is referred to by his contemporary
poet, Drayton, who speaks of
The witless woodcock and his neighbour snite.
The use of the word “snipe” as a disparaging epithet for an
individual is not yet extinct in the north.
[127] Antony and Cleopatra, ii. iii. 34.
[128] Troilus and Cressida, v. i. 48.
[129] Comedy of Errors, iv. ii. 27. It was this instinct of deception
that Chaucer had in mind when he wrote of “the false lapwing ful
of trecherye.” Parlement, 347.
[130] Much Ado about Nothing, iii. i. 23.
[131] Measure for Measure, i. iv. 31.
[132] 1 Henry IV. ii. ii. 95.
[133] Antony and Cleopatra, iii. x. 19.
[134] Venus and Adonis, 85.
[135] Sonnets, cxxvii.
[136] Romeo and Juliet, iii. ii. 17.
[137] Midsummer-Night’s Dream, ii. ii. 113.
[138] King John, iv. iii. 152.
[139] Twelfth Night, v. i. 125.
[140] Romeo and Juliet, iii. ii. 75.
[141] Titus Andronicus, ii. iii. 153.
[142] As You Like It, ii. iii. 43.
[143] Othello, iv. i. 20.
[144] Macbeth, i. v. 35.
[145] Macbeth, iii. ii. 50.
[146] Sonnet, lxx.
[147] Romeo and Juliet, i. v. 45.
[148] Lucrece, 1009.
[149] Romeo and Juliet, i. ii. 86.
[150] King Lear, iv. vi. 11.
[151] Ibid. 58.
[152] Hamlet, v. ii. 85.
[153] Tempest, ii. i. 254. Chaucer’s epithet for the Chough was
“the theef.”
[154] All’s Well that Ends Well, iv. i. 19.
[155] Midsummer-Night’s Dream, iii. ii. 19. The chough, by
association with man, may become a companionable creature. At
Ardkinglas, Loch Fyne, Lady Noble has kept for some years a
couple of choughs, brought from Ireland, which are at liberty to fly
about the woods and hills, but come back to the mansion house
for food and attend their mistress or her guests along the
pathways. They even come into the house and perch on the hand
of any one who has the courage to invite them.
[156] Macbeth, iii. iv. 123.
[157] 1 Henry IV. i. iii. 221.
[158] 1 Henry VI. ii. iv. 16.
[159] 3 Henry VI. v. vi. 46. Chaucer’s epithet for this bird was “the
jangling pye.”
[160] Tempest, ii. ii. 158.
[161] Merry Wives, iii. iii. 34.
[162] Cymbeline, iii. iv. 47.
[163] Taming of the Shrew, iv. iii. 165.
[164] 1 Henry IV. ii. i. 15. Chaucer’s reference to the bird is “The
cok, that orloge is of thorpes lyte.” Parlement, 350.
[165] Romeo and Juliet, iv. iv. 3.
[166] Tempest, i. ii. 384.
[167] Hamlet, i. i. 147-164.
[168] Midsummer-Night’s Dream, iii. ii. 20.
[169] King Lear, ii. iv. 45.
[170] As You Like It, ii. vii. 86.
[171] Romeo and Juliet, ii. iv. 69.
[172] Cymbeline, iii. iv. 138.
[173] 1 Henry IV. v. iii. 56.
[174] Titus Andronicus, iv. ii. 101.
[175] Antony and Cleopatra, iii. ii. 48.
[176] 3 Henry VI. i. iv. 19.
[177] Lucrece, 1611. Chaucer had already chronicled “the jalous
swan, ayens his deth that singeth.” Parlement of Foules, 342.
[178] King John, v. vii. 20.
[179] Othello, v. ii. 249.
[180] Merchant of Venice, iii. ii. 43.
[181] v. i. 14.
[182] Twelfth Night, ii. v. 28.
[183] 1 Henry IV. ii. i. 25.
[184] 1 Henry VI. iii. iii. 5. Chaucer refers to
The pecock, with his aungels fethres brighte.
[185] Troilus and Cressida, iii. iii. 244.
[186] King Henry V. iv. i. 195.
[187] Comedy of Errors, iv. iii. 74.
[188] Venus and Adonis, 1190.
[189] Merchant of Venice, ii. vi. 5.
[190] 2 Henry IV. v. i. 25.
[191] Merchant of Venice, ii. ii. 123.
[192] 3 Henry VI. ii. ii. 17.
[193] Antony and Cleopatra, iii. xiii. 196.
[194] 3 Henry VI. i. iv. 40.
[195] Chaucer’s phrase is:
The wedded turtel, with hir herte trewe. Parlement, 355.
It was the moaning croon of the bird from the high elms that dwelt
in Virgil’s memory.
[196] 1 Henry VI. ii. ii. 30.
[197] iv. iv. 154.
[198] Love’s Labour’s Lost, v. ii. 315.
[199] Hamlet, ii. ii. 572.
[200] Midsummer-Night’s Dream, iii. i. 114.
[201] Venus and Adonis, 853.
[202] Troilus and Cressida, iv. ii. 8.
[203] ii. iii. 19.
[204] Romeo and Juliet, iii. v. 1-32.
[205] 2 Henry IV. iii. ii. 7. I have heard in East Lothian a
remarkably dark-complexioned child called “a blacket ouzel.”
[206] Winter’s Tale, iv. iii. 9.
[207] Macbeth, iv. ii. 8.
[208] Cymbeline, iv. ii. 304.
[209] Merchant of Venice, v. i. 104.
[210] 2 Henry VI. iii. ii. 42.
[211] King Lear, ii. ii. 59.
[212] ii. v. 5.
[213] Cymbeline, iv. ii. 219. Chaucer speaks of “the tame
ruddock.”
[214] Two Gentlemen of Verona, ii. i. 16.
[215] 1 Henry IV. iii. i. 260.
[216] King Lear, i. iv. 214.
[217] Troilus and Cressida, v. i. 34.
[218] Hamlet, v. ii. 212.
[219] As You Like It, ii. iii. 44.
[220] Tempest, iv. i. 99.
[221] Troilus and Cressida, ii. i. 67.
[222] Chaucer regarded this bird from another point of view:—
The swalow, mordrer of the flyës smale
That maken hony of floures fresshe of hewe.
Parlement, 353.

[223] Richard III. v. ii. 23.

[224] Titus Andronicus, ii. ii. 23.
[225] 2 Henry IV. iv. iii. 31.
[226] Winter’s Tale, iv. iv. 118.
[227] Timon of Athens, iii. vi. 29.
[228] Merchant of Venice, ii. ix. 28.
[229] Macbeth, i. vi. 3.
[230] Passionate Pilgrim, xxi.
[231] Lucrece, 1079.
[232] Sonnet, cii.
[233] Midsummer-Night’s Dream, ii. ii. 13.
[234] Two Gentlemen of Verona, iii. i. 178, v. iv. 1.
[235] Taming of the Shrew, Induction, Scene ii. 33.
[236] Midsummer-Night’s Dream, i. ii. 72.
[237] Merchant of Venice, v. i. 102.