Читать книгу Under the Turk in Constantinople: A record of Sir John Finch's Embassy, 1674-1681 онлайн

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This may be described as our Factor’s first stride. He was now captain of his own ship. Only, as English merchants did not care to trust single agents abroad, because on their deaths, or even in their lives, there was always danger of embezzlement, he thought fit to take into partnership his younger brother Montagu, who, like himself, had been bred a Turkey Merchant and then resided as factor at Aleppo. Henceforward North’s career was one continuous run of prosperity. He soon became the chief English merchant in Constantinople, was elected Treasurer by the Levant Company, and went on amassing wealth at a great rate, deeming no enterprise too high or too low for the end he had in view, imparting to everything he did a touch of his own original genius.

The ordinary Englishman in the polyglot Levant was content to transact his business through interpreters. North would have nothing to do with vicarious communication. He acquired Italian, which was the Lingua Franca of the Near East, the debased Spanish spoken by the Jews of Turkey—descendants of the refugees expelled by Ferdinand and Isabella—who had made themselves indispensable as brokers to Franks and Turks alike, and (a much rarer accomplishment) the Turkish tongue. Moreover, he learnt the laws of Turkey. In litigation before a Turkish court he was his own pleader, as in conversation he was his own interpreter. He did not, however, trust implicitly to his own intimacy with the subtleties of Ottoman Justice. He kept a tame Cadi to whose advice he had recourse upon occasion. Further, before a trial, he took care to make his case known to the judge and to quicken the judge’s intelligence with a present. When his case came on, if North had no true witnesses to produce, he produced false ones. Indeed, he preferred the latter kind on principle, having found by experience that a false witness was safer; for, if the judge had a mind to confuse a witness, an honest man who did not know the game could not so well wriggle through the net of captious questions as a rogue versed in all its rules.