Sketches and Travels in London Read online

and yonder rocks crowned by the Doric columns of the Parthenon, and

  the thin Ionic shafts of the Erechtheum, to a man who has had

  little rest, and is bitten all over by bugs? Was Alcibiades bitten

  by bugs, I wonder; and did the brutes crawl over him as he lay in

  the rosy arms of Phryne? I wished all night for Socrates's hammock

  or basket, as it is described in the "Clouds;" in which resting-

  place, no doubt, the abominable animals kept perforce clear of him.

  A French man-of-war, lying in the silvery little harbour, sternly

  eyeing out of its stern portholes a saucy little English corvette

  beside, began playing sounding marches as a crowd of boats came

  paddling up to the steamer's side to convey us travellers to shore.

  There were Russian schooners and Greek brigs lying in this little

  bay; dumpy little windmills whirling round on the sunburnt heights

  round about it; an improvised town of quays and marine taverns has

  sprung up on the shore; a host of jingling barouches, more

  miserable than any to be seen even in Germany, were collected at

  the landing-place; and the Greek drivers (how queer they looked in

  skull-caps, shabby jackets with profuse embroidery of worsted, and

  endless petticoats of dirty calico!) began, in a generous ardour

  for securing passengers, to abuse each other's horses and carriages

  in the regular London fashion. Satire could certainly hardly

  caricature the vehicle in which we were made to journey to Athens;

  and it was only by thinking that, bad as they were, these coaches

  were much more comfortable contrivances than any Alcibiades or

  Cimon ever had, that we consoled ourselves along the road. It was

  flat for six miles along the plain to the city: and you see for

  the greater part of the way the purple mount on which the Acropolis

  rises, and the gleaming houses of the town spread beneath. Round

  this wide, yellow, barren plain,--a stunted district of olive-trees

  is almost the only vegetation visible--there rises, as it were, a

  sort of chorus of the most beautiful mountains; the most elegant,

  gracious, and noble the eye ever looked on. These hills did not

  appear at all lofty or terrible, but superbly rich and

  aristocratic. The clouds were dancing round about them; you could

  see their rosy purple shadows sweeping round the clear serene

  summits of the hill. To call a hill aristocratic seems affected or

  absurd; but the difference between these hills and the others, is

  the difference between Newgate Prison and the Travellers' Club, for

  instance: both are buildings; but the one stern, dark, and coarse;

  the other rich, elegant, and festive. At least, so I thought.

  With such a stately palace as munificent Nature had built for these

  people, what could they be themselves but lordly, beautiful,

  brilliant, brave, and wise? We saw four Greeks on donkeys on the

  road (which is a dust-whirlwind where it is not a puddle); and

  other four were playing with a dirty pack of cards, at a barrack

  that English poets have christened the "Half-way House." Does

  external nature and beauty influence the soul to good? You go

  about Warwickshire, and fancy that from merely being born and

  wandering in those sweet sunny plains and fresh woodlands

  Shakspeare must have drunk in a portion of that frank artless sense

  of beauty which lies about his works like a bloom or dew; but a

  Coventry ribbon-maker, or a slang Leamington squire, are looking on

  those very same landscapes too, and what do they profit? You

  theorise about the influence which the climate and appearance of

  Attica must have had in ennobling those who were born there:

  yonder dirty, swindling, ragged blackguards, lolling over greasy

  cards three hours before noon, quarrelling and shrieking, armed to

  the teeth and afraid to fight, are bred out of the same land which

  begot the philosophers and heroes. But the "Half-way House" is

  passed by this time, and behold! we are in the capital of King

  Otho.

  I swear solemnly that I would rather have two hundred a year in

  Fleet Street, than be King of the Greeks, with Basileus written

  before my name round their beggarly coin; with the bother of

  perpetual revolutions in my huge plaster-of-Paris palace, with no

  amusement but a drive in the afternoon over a wretched arid

  country, where roads are not made, with ambassadors (the deuce

  knows why, for what good can the English, or the French, or the

  Russian party get out of such a bankrupt alliance as this?)

  perpetually pulling and tugging at me, away from honest Germany,

  where there is beer and aesthetic conversation, and operas at a

  small cost. The shabbiness of this place actually beats Ireland,

  and that is a strong word. The palace of the Basileus is an

  enormous edifice of plaster, in a square containing six houses,

  three donkeys, no roads, no fountains (except in the picture of the

  inn); backwards it seems to look straight to the mountain--on one

  side is a beggarly garden--the King goes out to drive (revolutions

  permitting) at five--some four-and-twenty blackguards saunter up to

  the huge sandhill of a terrace, as His Majesty passes by in a gilt

  barouche and an absurd fancy dress; the gilt barouche goes plunging

  down the sandhills; the two dozen soldiers, who have been

  presenting arms, slouch off to their quarters; the vast barrack of

  a palace remains entirely white, ghastly, and lonely; and, save the

  braying of a donkey now and then (which long-eared minstrels are

  more active and sonorous in Athens than in any place I know), all

  is entirely silent round Basileus's palace. How could people who

  knew Leopold fancy he would be so "jolly green" as to take such a

  berth? It was only a gobemouche of a Bavarian that could ever have

  been induced to accept it.

  I beseech you to believe that it was not the bill and the bugs at

  the inn which induced the writer hereof to speak so slightingly of

  the residence of Basileus. These evils are now cured and

  forgotten. This is written off the leaden flats and mounds which

  they call the Troad. It is stern justice alone which pronounces

  this excruciating sentence. It was a farce to make this place into

  a kingly capital; and I make no manner of doubt that King Otho, the

  very day he can get away unperceived, and get together the passage-

  money, will be off for dear old Deutschland, Fatherland, Beerland!

  I have never seen a town in England which may be compared to this;

  for though Herne Bay is a ruin now, money was once spent upon it

  and houses built; here, beyond a few score of mansions comfortably

  laid out, the town is little better than a rickety agglomeration of

  larger and smaller huts, tricked out here and there with the most

  absurd cracked ornaments and cheap attempts at elegance. But

  neatness is the elegance of poverty, and these people despise such

  a homely ornament. I have got a map with squares, fountains,

  theatres, public gardens, and Places d'Othon marked out; but they

  only exist in the paper capital--the wretched tumble-down wooden

  one boas
ts of none.

  One is obliged to come back to the old disagreeable comparison of

  Ireland. Athens may be about as wealthy a place as Carlow or

  Killarney--the streets swarm with idle crowds, the innumerable

  little lanes flow over with dirty little children, they are playing

  and puddling about in the dirt everywhere, with great big eyes,

  yellow faces, and the queerest little gowns and skull-caps. But in

  the outer man, the Greek has far the advantage of the Irishman:

  most of them are well and decently dressed (if five-and-twenty

  yards of petticoat may not be called decent, what may?), they

  swagger to and fro with huge knives in their girdles. Almost all

  the men are handsome, but live hard, it is said, in order to

  decorate their backs with those fine clothes of theirs. I have

  seen but two or three handsome women, and these had the great

  drawback which is common to the race--I mean, a sallow, greasy,

  coarse complexion, at which it was not advisable to look too

  closely.

  And on this score I think we English may pride ourselves on

  possessing an advantage (by WE, I mean the lovely ladies to whom

  this is addressed with the most respectful compliments) over the

  most classical country in the world. I don't care for beauty which

  will only bear to be looked at from a distance, like a scene in a

  theatre. What is the most beautiful nose in the world, if it be

  covered with a skin of the texture and colour of coarse whitey-

  brown paper; and if Nature has made it as slippery and shining as

  though it had been anointed with pomatum? They may talk about

  beauty, but would you wear a flower that had been dipped in a

  grease-pot? No; give me a fresh, dewy, healthy rose out of

  Somersetshire; not one of those superb, tawdry, unwholesome

  exotics, which are only good to make poems about. Lord Byron wrote

  more cant of this sort than any poet I know of. Think of "the

  peasant girls with dark blue eyes" of the Rhine--the brown-faced,

  flat-nosed, thick-lipped, dirty wenches! Think of "filling high a

  cup of Samian wine;" small beer is nectar compared to it, and Byron

  himself always drank gin. That man never wrote from his heart. He

  got up rapture and enthusiasm with an eye to the public; but this

  is dangerous ground, even more dangerous than to look Athens full

  in the face, and say that your eyes are not dazzled by its beauty.

  The Great Public admires Greece and Byron: the public knows best.

  Murray's "Guide-book" calls the latter "our native bard." Our

  native bard! Mon Dieu! HE Shakspeare's, Milton's, Keats's,

  Scott's native bard! Well, woe be to the man who denies the public

  gods!

  The truth is, then, that Athens is a disappointment; and I am angry

  that it should be so. To a skilled antiquarian, or an enthusiastic

  Greek scholar, the feelings created by a sight of the place of

  course will be different; but you who would be inspired by it must

  undergo a long preparation of reading, and possess, too, a

  particular feeling; both of which, I suspect, are uncommon in our

  busy commercial newspaper-reading country. Men only say they are

  enthusiastic about the Greek and Roman authors and history, because

  it is considered proper and respectable. And we know how gentlemen

  in Baker Street have editions of the classics handsomely bound in

  the library, and how they use them. Of course they don't retire to

  read the newspaper; it is to look over a favourite ode of Pindar,

  or to discuss an obscure passage in Athenaeus! Of course country

  magistrates and Members of Parliament are always studying

  Demosthenes and Cicero; we know it from their continual habit of

  quoting the Latin grammar in Parliament. But it is agreed that the

  classics are respectable; therefore we are to be enthusiastic about

  them. Also let us admit that Byron is to be held up as "our native

  bard."

  I am not so entire a heathen as to be insensible to the beauty of

  those relics of Greek art, of which men much more learned and

  enthusiastic have written such piles of descriptions. I thought I

  could recognise the towering beauty of the prodigious columns of

  the Temple of Jupiter; and admire the astonishing grace, severity,

  elegance, completeness of the Parthenon. The little Temple of

  Victory, with its fluted Corinthian shafts, blazed under the sun

  almost as fresh as it must have appeared to the eyes of its

  founders; I saw nothing more charming and brilliant, more graceful,

  festive, and aristocratic than this sumptuous little building. The

  Roman remains which lie in the town below look like the works of

  barbarians beside these perfect structures. They jar strangely on

  the eye, after it has been accustoming itself to perfect harmony

  and proportions. If, as the schoolmaster tells us, the Greek

  writing is as complete as the Greek art; if an ode of Pindar is as

  glittering and pure as the Temple of Victory; or a discourse of

  Plato as polished and calm as yonder mystical portico of the

  Erechtheum: what treasures of the senses and delights of the

  imagination have those lost to whom the Greek books are as good as

  sealed!

  And yet one meets with very dull first-class men. Genius won't

  transplant from one brain to another, or is ruined in the carriage,

  like fine Burgundy. Sir Robert Peel and Sir John Hobhouse are both

  good scholars; but their poetry in Parliament does not strike one

  as fine. Muzzle, the schoolmaster, who is bullying poor trembling

  little boys, was a fine scholar when he was a sizar, and a ruffian

  then and ever since. Where is the great poet, since the days of

  Milton, who has improved the natural offshoots of his brain by

  grafting it from the Athenian tree?

  I had a volume of Tennyson in my pocket, which somehow settled that

  question, and ended the querulous dispute between me and

  Conscience, under the shape of the neglected and irritated Greek

  muse, which had been going on ever since I had commenced my walk

  about Athens. The old spinster saw me wince at the idea of the

  author of Dora and Ulysses, and tried to follow up her advantage by

  farther hints of time lost, and precious opportunities thrown away.

  "You might have written poems like them," said she; "or, no, not

  like them perhaps, but you might have done a neat prize poem, and

  pleased your papa and mamma. You might have translated Jack and

  Jill into Greek iambics, and been a credit to your college." I

  turned testily away from her. "Madam," says I, "because an eagle

  houses on a mountain, or soars to the sun, don't you be angry with

  a sparrow that perches on a garret window, or twitters on a twig.

  Leave me to myself: look, my beak is not aquiline by any means."

  And so, my dear friend, you who have been reading this last page in

  wonder, and who, instead of a description of Athens, have been

  accommodated with a lament on the part of the writer, that he was

  idle at school, and does not know Greek, excuse this momentary

  outbreak of egotistic despondency. To say truth, dear Jones, when<
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  one walks among the nests of the eagles, and sees the prodigious

  eggs they laid, a certain feeling of discomfiture must come over us

  smaller birds. You and I could not invent--it even stretches our

  minds painfully to try and comprehend part of the beauty of the

  Parthenon--ever so little of it,--the beauty of a single column,--a

  fragment of a broken shaft lying under the astonishing blue sky

  there, in the midst of that unrivalled landscape. There may be

  grander aspects of nature, but none more deliciously beautiful.

  The hills rise in perfect harmony, and fall in the most exquisite

  cadences--the sea seems brighter, the islands more purple, the

  clouds more light and rosy than elsewhere. As you look up through

  the open roof, you are almost oppressed by the serene depth of the

  blue overhead. Look even at the fragments of the marble, how soft

  and pure it is, glittering and white like fresh snow! "I was all

  beautiful," it seems to say: "even the hidden parts of me were

  spotless, precious, and fair"--and so, musing over this wonderful

  scene, perhaps I get some feeble glimpse or idea of that ancient

  Greek spirit which peopled it with sublime races of heroes and

  gods; {1} and which I never could get out of a Greek book,--no, not

  though Muzzle flung it at my head.

  CHAPTER VI: SMYRNA--FIRST GLIMPSES OF THE EAST

  I am glad that the Turkish part of Athens was extinct, so that I

  should not be baulked of the pleasure of entering an Eastern town

  by an introduction to any garbled or incomplete specimen of one.

  Smyrna seems to me the most Eastern of all I have seen; as Calais

  will probably remain to the Englishman the most French town in the

  world. The jack-boots of the postilions don't seem so huge

  elsewhere, or the tight stockings of the maid-servants so Gallic.

  The churches and the ramparts, and the little soldiers on them,

  remain for ever impressed upon your memory; from which larger

  temples and buildings, and whole armies have subsequently

  disappeared: and the first words of actual French heard spoken,

  and the first dinner at "Quillacq's," remain after twenty years as

  clear as on the first day. Dear Jones, can't you remember the

  exact smack of the white hermitage, and the toothless old fellow

  singing "Largo al factotum"?

  The first day in the East is like that. After that there is

  nothing. The wonder is gone, and the thrill of that delightful

  shock, which so seldom touches the nerves of plain men of the

  world, though they seek for it everywhere. One such looked out at

  Smyrna from our steamer, and yawned without the least excitement,

  and did not betray the slightest emotion, as boats with real Turks

  on board came up to the ship. There lay the town with minarets and

  cypresses, domes and castles; great guns were firing off, and the

  blood-red flag of the Sultan flaring over the fort ever since

  sunrise; woods and mountains came down to the gulf's edge, and as

  you looked at them with the telescope, there peeped out of the

  general mass a score of pleasant episodes of Eastern life--there

  were cottages with quaint roofs; silent cool kiosks, where the

  chief of the eunuchs brings down the ladies of the harem. I saw

  Hassan, the fisherman, getting his nets; and Ali Baba going off

  with his donkey to the great forest for wood. Smith looked at

  these wonders quite unmoved; and I was surprised at his apathy; but

  he had been at Smyrna before. A man only sees the miracle once;

  though you yearn over it ever so, it won't come again. I saw

  nothing of Ali Baba and Hassan the next time we came to Smyrna, and

  had some doubts (recollecting the badness of the inn) about landing

  at all. A person who wishes to understand France or the East

  should come in a yacht to Calais or Smyrna, land for two hours, and

  never afterwards go back again.

  But those two hours are beyond measure delightful. Some of us were

  querulous up to that time, and doubted of the wisdom of making the

  voyage. Lisbon, we owned, was a failure; Athens a dead failure;

  Malta very well, but not worth the trouble and sea-sickness: in