Some Early Italian Parallels to the Locution The Sick Man of the East

The wide diffusion through Europe of our modern locution the sick man of the East is due to circumstances largely factitious. At no time has the epithet been conspicuously just, as those meddling too intimately in Turkish affairs have found to their sorrow. And we shall see herewith that at the beginning of its vogue, a half century ago, it was by no means novel. As a matter of fact, the locution gained its foothold in journalism from a striking diplomatic incident; and it has derived its vitality from that vague hostility, partly religious, partly humanitarian, and largely ill-informed, with which the commercial interests of the Christian Occident have watched Turkish affairs in Armenia and the Asiatic colonies. The expression began to have wide currency in 1854. It seems that early in the previous year the British chargé d'affaires in St. Petersburg had a conversation with the Emperor Nicholas regarding Turkish conditions. This talk was ostensibly en gentilhomme, as the phrase went, and should not properly have been reported: in diplomacy, every conversation with a sovereign is in confidence. It is quite possible, however, that the Emperor actually intended thus informally to publish his attitude toward the Porte, without entering into binding declarations or agreements. At any rate, from the correspondence of Sir George Seymour with his home office the matter crept into the public press, much in the following tenor: Nicholas, referring to the bad condition of Turkey, said: “Tenez, nous avons sur les bras un homme malade, un homme gravement malade; ce sera, je vous le dis franchement, un grand malheur, si, un de ces jours, il devait nous échapper, surtout avant que toutes les dispositions nécessaires fussent prises.” Seymour replied: “Votre Majesté est si gracieuse qu'elle me permettra de lui faire encore une observation. Votre Majesté daignera m'excuser si je lui fais observer que c'est à l'homme généreux et fort de ménager l'homme malade et faible.” The Emperor was so pleased with this metaphor that in another conversation some days later he returned to the subject in similar terms: “I am less anxious to know what shall be done with the sick man, than to arrange with England what shall not be done.” To Seymour's objection that there was “no reason to think he was dying,” Nicholas insisted: “The sick man is dying.” This sinister revelation of Russia's attitude, coming at a crisis of public interest in the East, and combined with the undiplomatic language in which it was expressed—partly too with the unconventional manner in which Seymour failed to respect the Emperor's confidence,—assured the incident and the locution wide publicity. The expression, with various modifications of form and connotation, has since been revived at every important moment in Ottoman history.