'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎398] (453/714)

PERSIA
with great respect; lie is well posted in European politics, and the
personal criticism of the Continental journals is generally reported
to his ears. That the freedom of speech which he there encounters
and of which he has occasionally found himself the victim, does
not quite harmonise with his own ideas of the licence that should
be accorded to a press, will be evident when I come to an account
of the newspapers of Teheran.
That the Shah is not without artistic tastes is shown by his
fondness for music. In the Royal Museum is quite a collection
Tastes and of musical boxes 5 and the sound of military airs is
caprices peculiarly agreeable to his ears. To gratify this pro
pensity, he keeps both a French and an Austrian bandmaster.
Another respect in which he and his predecessors have so far
conquered native prejudice as to rely upon foreign assistance, is
in the employment of medical science. Abbas Mirza was the first
to set the example by appointing Dr. Cormick, an Englishman, to
be Physician of his Household. Mohammed Shah followed, with
Dr. Labat, a Frenchman, who on one occasion saved his life, and
later with Dr. Cloquet. Dr. Dickson, of the British Legation,
acquired a great reputation during the present reign; but the
personal physician of the Shah has, for many years, been another
Frenchman, Dr. Tholozan, whose name and personality are
familiar to most visitors to Teheran. Among the more trivial,
but not uninteresting characteristics of the monarch whom we are
discussing, there are three, which in this context are worthy of
mention. These are the Shah's childlike passion for novelty, his
incurable love of a joke, and his fondness for animals, about all of
which many good stories are current in the society of the capital.
Just as, in the course of his European travels, he picked up a vast
number of what appeared, to the Eastern mind, to be wonderful
curiosities, but which have since been stacked in the various apart
ments of the palace, or put away and forgotten ; so in the larger
sphere of public policy and administration he is continually
taking up and pushing some new scheme or invention which,
when the caprice has been gratified, is neglected or allowed to
expire. One week it is gas ; another it is electric light. Now
it is a staff college; anon, a military hospital. To-day it is a
Russian uniform ; yesterday it was a German man-of-war for the
Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. . A new army warrant is issued this year; a new code
of law is promised for the next. Nothing comes of any of these