From the Oak to the Olive Part 10

The boughs of this tree, with the cleared s.p.a.ce under them, formed a sort of rustic _salon_, cool and delightful even in the heat of the day.

The unfailing cafe was near at hand; its chairs and tables were scattered about these rustic purlieus, and its servants waited for orders. Here our companions encountered various acquaintances from the city, who have come hither to pa.s.s the season of the great heats. They wore white veils on their straw hats, as is much the custom here, and had altogether the enfranchised air which city men are wont to a.s.sume in country retirement. Mail and public conveyance they had none. One of our party brought them letters, and took the answers back to Athens. We now went in search of the source of the Kephisus, called Kefalari. We found a deep spring of the purest water, very cool for these parts, and constantly welling up. So clear was this pool that one saw without impediment the smallest objects at the bottom of the water. There were waving trees beside it. We sat down, and drank, and rested. Our walk next brought us to a wine factory, and, as we entered to look at it, the sound of a grand piano, skilfully touched, arrested us. Our friends guessed the unseen artist, and knocked at her door for admittance.

Entering, we found two ladies, mother and daughter, of whom the elder was the mistress of the musical instrument. The daughter, very young, but already married, bears the historical name of Colocotroni, her husband being the grandson of the old revolutionary chieftain of that name. These ladies own extensive possessions in this vicinity, and the establishment in which we were belonged to them. They have a large villa at some distance; but fear of the brigands induces them to be satisfied with the shelter of two or three rooms, divided off from the rest of the factory, in which they live in comfortable simplicity. The table was laid for their _dejeuner_ in a little arbor made of pine tree branches.

Dinner they took at twilight, without shelter. They entertained us with the invariable _gliko_ and water, and, at our request, the elder lady gave us a specimen of her skill in dealing with the piano-forte. Madame Colocotroni speaks both French and English, and the books and pamphlets in her drawing-room had quite a cosmopolitan air of culture.

After these doings, we returned to the great house, and sheltered ourselves in its shady rooms. Here reading, worsted work, and conversation beguiled the time until dinner was announced. The gentlemen, meanwhile, had retired to smoke and discuss political questions. The dinner was much too well-appointed for a country picnic.

Our munificent entertainers had sent out their own valets and _chef de cuisine_. And so we had potage, and entrees, and dessert, with Kephissia wine, both white and red, of which I found the former much like a Sauterne wine, and very mild and pure in quality. One of the guests was an Asiatic Greek from Broussa. His politics were of the backward sort--those of the Greek Greeks were radical and progressive. The dinner arena developed therefore some amicable differences of opinion. He from Broussa gave me a few characteristic particulars of his life. When he was but a year old, his father chartered a ship, put much of his property on board of her, and sent therewith his children to be educated in Europe. After many years of absence, M. L. returned to Broussa, to seek some traces of his family. Such as remained of them had been compelled by the pressure of circ.u.mstances to adopt the Turkish language, and to profess Mohammedanism. Their Christian prayers they always continued to recite in private, but were fain by every outward expedient to escape the ill treatment which Christians receive in a country in which Turkish authority is dominant. He told me--what I hear strongly corroborated by other testimony--that the Turks had often cut out the tongues of Greek women, in order that they should not be able to teach their children either their own language or their own religion.

Under these circ.u.mstances the gradual absorption of the race in those regions seems almost inevitable.

An after-dinner nap and a ramble completed our experience of Kephissia.

At sunset we started homeward, the carriages all open, the _gens d'armes_ galloping, the dust playing a thousand solid antics, and writing hieroglyphics of movement all over our garments and faces. We found the little village of Maroussi cool with the evening shadows, and the women and children with their pitchers gathered around the marble fountain. We ourselves came back to Athens in a cooled and consoled condition, and said at parting, commanding the little Greek we knew, _Poly kala-evkarist_.

HYMETTUS.

It happened that the next day was fixed upon for a visit to Hymettus, whose water is celebrated, as well as its honey. A certain monkless monastery on the side of the mountain receives travellers within its shady courts, and allows them to feed, rest, and amuse themselves according to their own pleasure. We started on this cla.s.sic journey soon after five A. M., carrying with us a basket containing cold chicken, bread, and fruit. We filled one carriage; a party of friends accompanied us in another. The road to Hymettus is hilly and difficult; and our own troubles in travelling it were augmented by those of our friends in the foremost carriages, whose horses, at an early period in the ascent, began to back and balk. As these horses, who go so ill, insist upon going first, and refuse to stir the moment we take the lead, it comes to pa.s.s that in some steep ascents they press back upon us, to our discomfort and danger.

An anxious hour brings us to the convent, which stands at no great elevation on the side of the mountain. The sun is already burning, and we are glad to take refuge in the shady inner court of the convent, where we are to pa.s.s the day. Our friends of the other carriage have brought with them Hatty, a child two years of age, and Marigo, a little servant of thirteen. The latter has somewhat the complexion of a potato-skin, with vivacious eyes, and dark hair, bound, after the Greek fashion, with a handkerchief. A young brother follows on a slow donkey, which he belabors to his heart's content.

The court just spoken of is a small enclosure, surrounded on all sides by whitewashed walls, of which one includes a small chapel, with its tapers and painted images. In one corner a doorway leads into a den which must once have served as a kitchen. It is roughly built of stone, with no chimney, its roof presenting various apertures for the issue of smoke. Here a fire of sticks is hastily kindled on a layer of stones, and the coffee, boiled at home, is made hot for us. A wooden table is allowed us from the convent, which we decorate with a white cloth and green leaves. Rolls, b.u.t.ter, hard-boiled eggs, and fruits, together with the coffee, const.i.tute a very presentable breakfast. We have around us the shade of vines and of lemon trees. Our repast is gay. When it is ended, we amuse ourselves with books, work, and conversation of a scope suited to the weather. An Athenian Plato could discourse philosophy in the present state of the thermometer. We need it more than ever he did, but we cannot attain it.

While we sit cheerful and quiescent, dodging the sharp sunlight, which slyly carries one position after another, sounds of laughter from the outer court reach our ears. This is a feast day, and in this outer court a company of Athenian artisans, of the Snug and Bottom order, are keeping it after their fashion. Following their voices, we come to a shady terrace, where some eight or ten men are seated on the ground around a wooden table, one foot in height, while two or three of their comrades are employed in cutting up a lamb newly roasted, spitted on a long, slender pole.

The cooking apparatus consisted of two or three stones, on which the fire of sticks was kindled, and of two forked stakes, planted upright, across which the spit and roast were laid. While the two before mentioned were hacking the paschal lamb with rude anatomy, a third was occupied with the salad, consisting of cuc.u.mbers sliced, with green herbs, oil, and vinegar. Olives, bread, and wine completed the repast.

As we stood surveying them, one of their number approached us, bearing in one hand a plate containing choice morsels of the roasted meat. This he offered to each of us in turn, with great courtesy. In the other hand he carried a rather dirty fragment of cotton cloth, which he also presented to each in turn, as a towel. We took the meat with our fingers, and ate it standing, in true Pa.s.sover fashion. The doubtful accommodation of the table napkin also we were glad to accept. Having fed each of us, he presently returned with a gla.s.s and bottle of wine, which he poured out and offered, saying, "_Eleuthera, eleuthera_" which signifies "free, free." The wine, however, was a little out of rule for us, and was therefore declined.

This man wore neither coat nor shoes, but his manners were full dress.

His comrades, meanwhile, had fallen to attacking their provisions with a hearty good will. When the wine was poured out, a toast was proposed, and "_Eleutheria tis Cretis_" ("the liberty of Crete") rang from every lip. "Amen, amen," answered we, and the _entente cordiale_ was at once established. Having eaten and drunk, they began to sing in a monotonous strain, keeping time by clapping their hands. Retiring to our court, we still heard this cadence from theirs. Their song, though little musical, had no brutal intonations. It breathed a rather refined good nature and hilarity. When we again visited our neighbors, they were dancing. All, save two of them, formed a line, joining hands, the leader and the one next him holding together by a pocket handkerchief. They sang all the while, stepping rather slowly. The leader, at intervals, made as though he would sit upon the ground, and then suddenly sprang high, with an _oich!_ something like the shout in a Highland fling. In another figure, they all lay upon their backs, springing up again quite abruptly, and continuing their round.

These doings, together with talking, writing, and needle-work, brought on the hour at which, in these climates, sleep becomes necessary. In Greece, if you have risen early in the morning, by noon, or soon after, you are sensible of a sudden ebb of energy. The marrow seems to forsake your bones, the volition your muscles. You may not feel common sleepiness, but your skeleton demands instant release from its upright effort. You ask to become a heap, instead of a pile, and on the offer of the first accommodation, you fall like the disjointed column of Jupiter Olympius, more fortunate only in the easier renewal of your architecture. Such a fall, at this moment, the stiffest of us coveted.

Meanwhile, an ancient hag, from the inner recesses of the building, had waited upon us, with copious chattering of her pleasure in seeing us, and of the drawback which the brigands had offered to her little business of serving the strangers who used to visit the convent before Kitzos and others made them afraid. For, the convent no longer containing monks, those who occupy it are glad to accommodate visitors from Athens and elsewhere. And the hag brought some heavy mats and quilts, and spread them on the floor of a little whitewashed out-house.

And on these the little two-year-old child and others of the party lay down and slept. But "_e megale kyrie_"--meaning here the elder lady,--said the hag, "cannot sleep on the floor. I have a good bed up stairs; she shall lie there."

So up stairs mounted the _megale kyrie_, and found a quiet room, and a bed spread with clean sheets in one corner. A rude chintz lounge, a wooden chest, and an eight-inch mirror completed the furniture of this apartment. Here, in the bed-corner, the Olympian column of _e megale_ fell, and barbarian sleep, sleep of the _middle ages_, at once seized upon it and kept it prostrate. After a brief interval of Gothic darkness, the column rose again, and confronted the windows commanding a view of the court. On one of its wooden settles lay the young Greek secretary in wholesome slumber. Not far from him rested the Greek missionary, a graduate of Amherst, and a genial and energetic man. And presently the two-year-old, waking, desires to waken these also, and makes divers attempts against their peace, causing _e megale_ to descend for their protection. On her way, in an outer pa.s.sage, she encounters a poor woman, lying on a heap of cedar boughs, and bewailing a bitter headache. Dinner-time next arrives. The wooden tables are once more set out with meat and fruit. We exert ourselves to give the feast a picturesque aspect, and are not altogether unsuccessful in so doing. The true feast, however, seems to consist in saying over to one's self, "This is Greece--this is Hymettus. I am I, and I am here." And now the greatest heat of the day being overpast, a ramble is proposed.

The young people, escorted by the missionary, climb half the steep ascent of the mountain. _E megale_ and the secretary pause in the outer court, to whose festivities a new feature is now added. Our friends, the artisans, have feasted again, and little of the lamb remains save the bones. They are singing and dancing as before, but a strange figure from the mountain has joined them. He calls himself a shepherd, but looks much like a brigand. He wears a jacket, fustanella, and leggings, of the dirtiest possible white--a white which mocks at all washings, past and future. He has taken the leadership of the coryphees, and now executes a dance which is called the "Klepht." His sly movements express cunning, to which the twinkle of his sinister eyes responds. Now he pretends to be stabbed from behind; now he creeps cautiously upon a pretended foe.

His dancing, which is very quiet, fatigues him extremely; but before making an end, he performs the feat of carrying a gla.s.s of wine on his head through various movements, not spilling a drop of it. The artisans are now intending to break up. They cork the bottles of wine and vinegar, empty and repack the dishes. We have brought them some fruit from our dessert. One of them makes a little speech to us, in behalf of all, thanking for our interest in the freedom of Crete and in the prosperity of their country. And "_Zeto! zeto!_" (live! live!) was the pleasant termination of the discourse, to which we were obliged to respond through the medium of a friendly interpretation.

Finally the day began to wane, and we to pack and embark. The bell of the little church now made itself heard, and, looking in, we saw the priest engaged in going through his service, while a very homespun a.s.sistant stood at the reading-desk, wearing spectacles upon his nose, and making responses through it. A circlet of tapers was burning before the altar. One old woman or so, a peasant mother with her child,--these were the congregation. The idea of the Greek as of the Catholic ma.s.s is, that it effects a propitiation of the Divine Being; so the priest performs his office, often with little or no following. As to those who should attend, I believe that one pays one's money and has one's choice; there is nothing absolute about it. And now _e megale_ bestows a trifling largess upon the hag, who has also dined off the relics of our feast. The books and work are gathered, the carriages summoned. Item, our driver wore a Palicari dress, and took part, very lamely, in the dances we witnessed. Farewell, Hymettus! farewell, shady convent, clear and sparkling water! We kiss our hands to you, and cherish you in our remembrance.

On our homeward way we soon pa.s.sed the Athenian party, riding ten or twelve in a one-horse cart, carrying with them for an ensign the pole on which their lamb had been spitted. They saluted us, and we shouted back, "_Eleutheria tis Kritis!_" Amen, simple souls! your instincts are wiser than the reasons of diplomatists.

ITEMS.

My remaining chronicles of Athens will be brief and simple--gleanings at large from the field of memory, whose harvests grow more uncertain as the memorizer grows older. In youth the die is new and sharp, and the impression distinct and clean cut. This sharpness of outline wears with age; all things observed give us more the common material of human life, less its individual features. In this point of view it may well be that I shall often speak of things trivial, and omit matters of greater importance. Yet even these trifles, sketched in surroundings so grandiose, may serve to shadow out the features of something greater than themselves, always inwardly felt, even when not especially depicted. It is in this hope that I bind together my few and precious reminiscences of Grecian life, and present them, inadequate as they are, as almost better than anything else I have.

THE PALACE.

Armed with a permit, and accompanied by a Greek friend, we walked, one bitter hot afternoon, to see the royal palace built by King Otho, it is said, out of his own appanage, or private income. As an investment even for his own ultimate benefit, he would have done much better in expending the money on some of the improvements so much needed in his capital. The salary of the King of Greece amounts to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars; and this sum is sufficiently disproportionate to the slender monetary resources of the kingdom, without the additional testimony of this palatial monument of a monarch who wished to live like a rich man in a poor country. The palace is a very large one. It not only encloses a hollow square, but divides that square by an extension running across it. The internal arrangements and adornments are mostly in good taste, and one can imagine that when the king and queen held their state there, the state apartments may have made a brave show. The rooms now appear rather scantily furnished; the hangings are faded; and one can make one's own reflections upon the vanity and folly of ambitious expense, unperverted by the witchery of present luxury, which always argues, "Yes, the peasants have no beds, but see--this arm-chair is so comfortable!" Now, luxury was for the time absent on leave, and we thought much of the peasant, and little of the prince. For the peasant is a fact, and the prince but a symbol, and a symbol of that which to-day can be represented without him; viz., the unity of will and action essential to the existence of the state. This unity to-day is accomplished by the cooperation of the mult.i.tude, not by its exclusion.

The symbol remains useful, but no longer sublime. No need, therefore, to exaggerate the difference between the common symbol and the common man.

Fortify your unity in the will and understanding of the people, not in their fear and imagination. And let the king be moderate in his following, and ill.u.s.trious in his character and office. So shall he be a leader as well as a banner--a fact as well as a symbol.

While I thought these things, I admired Queen Amalia's blue, pink, and green rooms, the l.u.s.tres of fine Bohemian gla.s.s, the suite of apartments for royal visitors, the ball-room and its marble columns, running through two stories in height, and altogether well-appointed. "The court b.a.l.l.s were beautiful," said my companion, "and the hall is very brilliant when lighted and filled." "Is the queen regretted?" I asked.

"Not much," was the moderate reply.

The theatre interested me more, with its scenes still standing. In the same hall, at the other end, is a frame and enclosure for "tableaux vivants," of which the court were very fond. The prettiest girls in Athens came here, and _posed_ as Muses, Minervas, and what not. I have the photograph of one, with her white robe and lyre. And this brings to me the only good word I can say for Otho and Amalia, in the historic light in which I view them. They were not gross, nor cruel, nor s.l.u.ttish. Their tastes and pleasures were of the refined, social order, and in so far their influence and example were softening and civilizing in tendency. The temporary prevalence of the German element has introduced a tendency towards German culture. And while the Greeks who seek commercial education very generally migrate to London or Liverpool, the men most accomplished in letters and philosophy have studied in Germany. All this may not have hindered the German patronage from becoming oppressive, nor the German rule from becoming intolerable to the people at large. But, with the examples of this and other ages before one, one thanks a monarch for not becoming either a beast or a butcher. Otho was neither. But neither was he, on the other hand, a Greek, nor a lover of Greeks. Nor could he and his queen present the people with a successor Greek in birth, if not in parentage. This absence of offspring, which is said to have sorely galled the queen, was really a weak point in their case before the people. To be ruled by a Greek is their natural and just desire.

Europe, which has so little charity for their divergence from her absolute standard, must remember that it is not at their request that this expensive and uncongenial condition of a foreign prince has been annexed to their system of government. The superst.i.tions of the old world have here planted a seed of mischief in the gardens of the new.

England finds it most convenient to be governed by a German; France, by an Italian; Russia, by a Tartar line. What more natural than that they should m.u.f.fle new-born Greece in their own antiquated fashions? The Greeks a.s.sa.s.sinated Capo d'Istrias for acts of tyranny from which they knew no other escape. For, indeed, the head of their state was very clumsily adjusted to its body by the same powers who left out of their construction several of its most important members. An arbitrary president was no head for a nation which had just conquered its own liberty. A foreign absolute prince was only the same thing, with another name and a larger salary. By their last resolution the Greeks have attained a const.i.tutional government. If their present king cannot administer such a one properly, he will make room for some one who can.

To his political duties, meanwhile, military ones will be added. Greece for the Greeks,--Candia, Thessaly, and Epirus delivered from the Moslem yoke,--this will be the watchword, to which he must reply or vanish.

It is in the face of America that the new nations, Greece and Italy, must look for encouragement and recognition. The old diplomacy has no solution for their difficulties, no cure for their distresses. The experience of the present century has developed new political methods, new social combinations. In the domestic economy of France and England these new features are felt and acknowledged. But in the foreign policy of those nations the element of progress scarcely appears. In this, force still takes the place of reason; the right of conquest depends upon the power of him who undertakes it; and in the farthest regions visited by their flags, organized barbarism gets the better of disorganized barbarism. The English in India, the French in Algeria, were first brigands, then brokers. Of these two, we need not tell the civilized world that the broker plunders best.

Greece is a poor democracy; America, a rich one. The second commands all the luxuries and commodities of life; the first, little more than its necessaries. Yet we, coming from our own state of things, can understand how the Greek values himself upon being a man, and upon having a part in the efficient action of the commonwealth. Greece is reproached with giving too ambitious an education to her sons and daughters. Her inst.i.tutions form teachers, not maids and valets, mistresses and masters, not servants. But for this America will not reproach her--America, whose shop-girls take music lessons, whose poorest menials attend lectures, concerts, and b.a.l.l.s. A democratic people does not acquiesce either in priestly or in diplomatic precedence. Let people perform their uses, earn their bread, enjoy their own, and respect their neighbors; these are the maxims of good life in a democratic country.

"Love G.o.d, love thy neighbor," is better than "fear G.o.d, honor the king." As to the sycophancy of sn.o.bs, the corruption of office, the contingent insufficiency alike of electors and elected,--these are the accidents of all human governments, to be arrested only by the constant watchfulness of the wiser spirits, the true pilots of the state.

By the time that I had excogitated all this, my feet had visited many square yards of palace, comprising bed-room, banqueting-room, chief lady's room, chapel, and so on. I had seen the queen's garden, and the _palmas qui meruit ferat_, and which she has left for her successor. I had seen, too, the fine view from the upper windows, sweeping from the Acropolis to the sea. I had exchanged various remarks with my Athenian companion. New furniture was expected with the Russian princess, but scarcely new enthusiasm. The little king had stopped the movement in Thessaly, which would have diverted the Turkish force now concentrated upon Crete, giving that laboring island a chance of rising above the b.l.o.o.d.y waters that drown her. Little love did the little king earn by this course. One might say that he is on probation, and will, in the end, get his deserts, and no more. And here my friend has slipped some suitable coin into the hand of the smiling major-domo, who showed us over the royal house. Farewell, palace: the day of kings is over.

Peoples have now their turn, and G.o.d wills it.

THE CATHEDRAL.

In close juxtaposition with the state is the church. In America we have religious liberty. This does not mean that a man has morally the right to have no religion, but that the very nature of religion requires that he should hold his own convictions above the ordinances of others. The Greeks have religious liberty, whose idea is rather this, that people may believe much as they please, provided they adhere outwardly to the national church. The reason a.s.signed for this is, that any change in the form or discipline of this church would weaken the bond that unites the Greeks out of Greece proper with those within her limits. This outward compression and inward lat.i.tude is always a dangerous symptom. It points to practical irreligion, an ever widening distance between a man's inward convictions and his outward practice. Pa.s.sing this by, however, let us have a few words on the familiar aspect and practical working of the Greek church as at present administered. Like other bodies politic and individual already known to us, it consists of a reconciled opposition, which, held within bounds, secures its efficiency. The same, pa.s.sing those bounds, would cause its annihilation. Like other churches, it is at once aristocratic and democratic. It binds and looses. It is less intellectual than either Catholicism or Protestantism; perhaps less intolerant than either, so far as dogma goes. I still think it narrower than either in the scope of its sympathies, lower than either in its social and individual standard. Taken with the others, it makes up the desired three of human conditions; but before it can meet them harmoniously, it has a long way to go.

Refusing images, but clinging to pictures; allowing the Scriptures to the common people, but discouraging their use of the same; with an unmarried hierarchy of some education, and a married secular clergy of none,--the Greek church seems to me to be too flatly in contradiction with itself and with the spirit of the age to maintain long a social supremacy, a moral efficiency. The department of the clergy last mentioned receive no other support than that of the contingent contributions of the people, paid in small sums, as the wages of services better withheld than rendered. Exorcisms, benedictions, prayers recited over graves, or secured as a cure for sick cattle,--these are some of the sacerdotal acts by which the lesser clergy live. Those who wish to keep these resources open must, of course, discourage the reading of the New Testament, whose great aim and tendency are to subst.i.tute a religion of life and doctrine for a religion of observances. Congregations reading this book for themselves, no matter how poor or ignorant in other matters, will ask something other of the priest than the exorcism of demons or the cure of cattle.

Of the higher clergy, some have studied in Germany, and, reversing Mr.

Emerson's sentence, must know, one thinks, better than they build.

Orthodox their will may be, firm their adherence to the establishment, strict their administration of it. But they must be aware of the limits that it sets to religious progress. And so long as they cannot preach to their congregations the full sincerity and power of their inward convictions, their ministration loses in moral power,--the house is divided against itself.

I visited the Cathedral of Athens but once. It is a s.p.a.cious and handsome church, in what I should call a modern Eastern style. It was on Sunday, and ma.s.s was going on. The middle and right aisles were filled with men, the left aisle with women. I do not know whether I have mentioned elsewhere that in the Greek and Russian, as in the Quaker church, men and women stand separately--stand, for seats are neither provided nor allowed. I found a place among the women, commanding a view of the high altar. The archbishop, a venerable-looking man, in gold brocade and golden head-dress, went through various functions, which, though not identical with those of the Romish ma.s.s, seemed to amount to about the same thing. There were bowings, appearings and retirings, the swinging of censers, and the presentation of tapers fixed in silver candelabras, and tied in the middle with black ribbon, so as to form a sheaf. These candelabras the archbishop from time to time took, one under each arm, and made a step or two towards the congregation. The dresses of the a.s.sistant priests were very rich, and their heads altogether Oriental in aspect. One of them, with his gold-bronzed face and golden hair, looked like pictures of St. John. The vocal part of the performance consisted of a sort of chant, with responses intensely nasal and unmusical. This psalmody, which is little relished by Greeks of culture, is yet maintained, like the discipline, intact, lest the most trifling amelioration should weaken the tie of Christian brotherhood between the free Greek church and the church that is in bondage with her children. To one familiar with the pretexts of conservatism, this plea of union before improvement is not new nor availing. One laughs, and remembers the respectabilities who tried to paralyze the American intellect and conscience in order to save the Union, which, after all, was saved only by the measures they abhorred and denounced. I had soon enough of what I was able to hear and see of the Greek ma.s.s. As I stole softly away, I pa.s.sed a sort of lesser altar, before which was burning a circular row of tapers. An old woman had similar tapers on a small table, for sale, I suppose. I was invited, by gesture, to consummate a pious act by the purchase of some of these, but declined, not without remembering that I was some time since elected a lay delegate from a certain Unitarian church to a certain Unitarian conference. This fact, if communicated, would not have heightened my standing in the approbation of the sisters who then surrounded me. "What, no candle?"

said their indignant glances. I was silent, and fled.