From the Oak to the Olive Part 11

THE MISSIONARIES.

In the presence of the contradictions alluded to above, the position of the Greek church and of American Protestant missionaries becomes one of mutual delicacy and difficulty. The church allows religious liberty, and a.s.sumes religious tolerance. Yet it naturally holds fast its own children within its own borders. The Protestants are pledged to labor for the world's Christianization. When they see its progress opposed by antiquated usage and insufficient method, they cannot acquiesce in these obstacles, nor teach others to revere them. Here we must say at once that no act is so irreligious as the resistance of progress. Thought and conscience are progressive. Christ's progressive labor carried further the Jewish faith and tenets which were religious before he came, but which became irreligious in resisting the further and finer conclusions to which he led. "I come not to destroy, but to fulfil." Progress does fulfil in the spirit, even though it destroy in the letter.

Protestantism acknowledges this, and this acknowledgment const.i.tutes its superiority over the Greek and Catholic churches. The sincere reader of the New Testament will be ever more and more disposed to make his religion a matter lying directly between himself and the Divine Being.

His outward conformity to all just laws and good inst.i.tutions will be, not the less, but the more, perfect because his scale of obligation is an individual one, the spring and motive of his actions a deeply inward one. Church and state gain in soundness and efficiency by every individual conscience that functions within their bounds. Religion of this sort leads away from human mediations, from confessions, benedictions, injunctions, and permissions of merely human authority. It confesses first to G.o.d, afterwards, if at all, to those whom its confessions can benefit. It brings its own thought to aid and ill.u.s.trate the general thought. It cannot abdicate its own conclusions before any magnitude either of intellect or of age.

The Protestant, therefore, would be much straitened within the Greek limits. He is forced to teach those who will listen to him that G.o.d is much nearer than the priest, and that their own simple and sincere understanding of Christian doctrine is at once more just and more precious than the fallacies and sophisms of an absolute theology. Such teaching will scarcely be more relished by the Greek than by the Romish clergy; yet the Protestant must teach this, or be silent.

And this, after their fashion, the American missionaries do set forth and ill.u.s.trate. Their merits and demerits I am not here to discuss. How much of polite culture, of sufficient philosophy, goes with their honest purpose, it is not at this time my business to know or to say. Neither is their special theology mine. They believe in a literal atonement, while I believe in the symbolism which makes a pure and blameless sufferer a victim offered in behalf of his enemies. They look for a miraculous, I for a moral regeneration. They make Christ divine of birth, I make him simply divine of life. Their dogmas would reconcile G.o.d to man, mine would only reconcile man to G.o.d. Finally, they revere as absolute and divine a book which I hold to be a human record of surpa.s.sing thoughts and actions, but with the short-comings, omissions, and errors of the human historiographer stamped upon them. With all this diversity of opinion between the church of their communion and that of mine, I still honor, beyond all difference, the Protestant cause for which they stand in Greece, and consider their representation a just and genuine one.

In writing this I have had in mind the three dissenting missionaries, Messrs. Kalopothaki, Constantine, and Zacularius. The older mission of Dr. and Mrs. Hill is an educational one. I believe it to have borne the happiest fruits for Greece. Whenever I have met a scholar of Mrs. Hill, I have seen the traces of a firm, pure, and gentle hand--one to which the wisest and tenderest of us would willingly confide our daughters. In raising the whole scale of feminine education in Greece, she has applied the most potent and subtle agent for the elevation of its whole society.

She herself is childless; but she need scarcely regret it, since whole generations are sure to rise up and call her blessed.

Dr. Hill is at present chaplain to the English emba.s.sy, at whose chapel he preaches weekly. Mrs. Hill and himself seem to stand in very harmonious relations with Athenian society, as well as with the travelling and visiting world.

The missionaries preach and practise with unremitting zeal. They also publish a weekly religious paper. Their wives labor faithfully in the aid and employment of the Cretan women and children, and, I doubt not, in other good works. But of these things I have now told the little that I know.

THE PIAZZA.

Venice has a Piazza, gorgeous with shops, lights, music, and, above all, the joyous life of the people. Athens also has a Piazza, bordered with hotels and cafes, with a square of trees and flowering shrubs in the middle. It lies broadly open to the sun all day long, and gives back his rays with a torrid refraction. When day declines, the evening breezes sweep it refreshingly. Accordingly, as soon as the shadows permit, the s.p.a.ces in front of the cafes--or, in Greek, _caffeneions_--are crowded with chairs and tables, the chairs being filled by human beings, many of whom have ripened, so far as the head goes, into a fez--have unfolded, so far as the costume goes, into pali-kari petticoats and leggings.

Between the two hotels is mortal antipathy. Ours--"Des Etrangers"--has taken the lead, and manages to keep it. The prices of the other are lower, the _cuisine_ much the same, the upper windows set to command a view of the Acropolis, which is in itself an unsurpa.s.sable picture.

Where the magic resides which keeps our hotel full and the other empty, I know not, unless it be in the slippery Eastern smile of the landlord--an expression of countenance so singular that it inevitably leads you, from curiosity, to follow it further. In our case it led to no profound of wickedness. We were not cheated, nor plundered, nor got the better of in any way that I remember. Our food was good, our rooms proper, our charges just. Yet I felt, whenever I encountered the smile, that it angled for me, and caught me on a hook cunningly baited.

I must say that our landlord was even generous. Besides our three meals _per diem_,--which grew to be very slender affairs, so far as we were concerned,--we often required lemonades and lok.u.mia, besides sending of errands innumerable. For these indulgences no extra charge was made. In an Italian, French, or English hotel, each one of them would have had its penitentiary record. So the mystery of the smile must have had reference to matters deeply personal to its wearer, and never made known to me.

The cafes seemed to maintain a thrifty existence. But one of them took especial pains to secure the services of a band of music. Hence, on the evenings when the public band did not play, emanated the usual capriccios from Norma, Trovatore, and the agonies of Traviata. Something better and worse than all this was given to us in the shape of certain ancient Greek or Turkish melodies, obviously composed in ignorance of all rules of thorough-ba.s.s, with a confusion of majors and minors most perplexing to the cla.s.sic, but interesting to the historic sense. I rejoiced especially in one of these, which bore the same relation to good harmony that Eastern dress bears to good composition of color. It was obviously well liked by the public, as it was usually played more than once during the same evening.

Before the shadows grew quite dark, a barouche or two, with ladies and livery, would drive across the Piazza, giving a whiff of fashion like the gleam of red costume that heightens a landscape. And the people sat, ate and drank, came and went, in sober gladness, not laughing open-mouthed--rather smiling with their eyes. From our narrow hotel balcony we used to look down and wonder whether we should ever be cool again. For though the evenings were not sultry, their length did not suffice to reduce the fever of the day. And the night within the mosquito-nettings was an agony of perspiration. I now sit in Venice, and am cool; but I would gladly suffer something to hear the weird music, and to see the cheerful Piazza again. Yet when I was there, for ten minutes of this sea-breeze over the lagoons I would have given--Heaven knows what. O Esau!

DEPARTURE.

Too soon, too soon for all of us, these rare and costly delights were ended. We had indeed suffered days of Fahrenheit at 100 in the shade.

We had made experience of states of body which are termed bilious, of states of mind more or less splenetic, lethargic, and irritable. We dreamed always of islands we were never to visit, of ruins which we shall know, according to the flesh, never. We pored over Muir and Miss Bremer, and feebly devised outbreaks towards the islands, towards the Cyclades, Santorini, but especially towards Corinth, whose acropolis rested steadily in our wishes, resting in our memory only as a wish.

Towards Constantinople, too, our uncertain destinies had one moment pointed. But when the word of command came, it despatched us westward, and not eastward. By this time our life had become somewhat too literally a vapor, and our sublimated brains were with difficulty condensed to the act of packing. Perpetual thirst tormented us. And of this as of other Eastern temptations, I must say, "Resist it." Drinking does not relieve this symptom of hot climates. It, moreover, utterly destroys the tone of the stomach. A little tea is the safest refreshment; and even this should not be taken in copious draughts.

Patience and self-control are essential to bodily health and comfort under these torrid skies. The little food one can take should be of the order usually characterized as "nutritious and easy of digestion." But so far as health goes, "Avoid Athens in midsummer" will be the safest direction, and will obviate the necessity of all others.

In spite, however, of all symptoms and inconveniences, the mandate that said, "Pack and go," struck a chill to our collective heart. We visited all the dear spots, gave pledges of constancy to all the kind friends, tried with our weak sight to photograph the precious views upon our memory. Then, with a sort of agony, we hurried our possessions, new and old, into the usual narrow receptacles, saw all accounts discharged, feed the hotel servants, took the smile for the last time, and found ourselves dashing along the road to the Piraeus with feelings very unlike the jubilation in which we first pa.s.sed that cla.s.sic transit. It was all over now, like a first love, like a first authorship, like a honey-moon.

It was over. We could not say that we had not had it. But O, the void of not having it now, of never expecting to have it again!

Kind friends went with us to soften the journey. At the boat, Dr. and Mrs. Hill met and waited with us. I parted from the apostolic woman with sincere good-will and regret. Warned to be on board by six P. M., the boat did not start till half-past seven. We waved last adieus. We clung to the last glimpses of the Acropolis, of the mountains; but they soon pa.s.sed out of sight. We savagely went below and to bed. The diary bears this little extract: "The aegean was calm and blue. Thus, with great pleasure and interest, and with some drawbacks, ends my visit to Athens.

A dream--a dream!"

RETURN VOYAGE.

To narrate the circ.u.mstances of our return voyage would seem much like descending from the poetic _denouement_ of a novel to all the prosaic steps by which the commonplace regains its inevitable ascendency after no matter what abdication in favor of the heroic. Yet, as travel is travel, whether outward or inward bound, and as our homeward cruise had features, I will try, with the help of the diary, to pick them out of the vanishing chaos of memory, premising only that I have no further _denouement_ to give.

"Story? Lord bless you, I have none to tell, sir."

On referring, therefore, to Clayton's quarto, of the date of July 21, 1867, I find the day to have been pa.s.sed by us all in the hot harbor of Syra, on board the boat that brought us there. At seven A. M. we did indeed land in a small boat with Vice-Consul Saponsaki, and betake ourselves through several of the steep and sunny streets of the town. At one of the two hotels we staid long enough to order lemonades and drink them. The said hotel appeared, on a cursory survey, to be as dirty and disorderly as need be; but we soon escaped therefrom, and visited the theatre, the Casino, and the Austrian consul. The Casino is s.p.a.cious and handsome, giving evidence at once of wealth and of taste in those who caused it to be built. Such an establishment would be a boon in Athens, where there is no good public reading-room of any kind. The theatre is reasonable. Here, in winter, a short opera season is enjoyed, and, in consequence, the music books of the young ladies teem with arrangements of Verdi and of Donizetti. We found the square near the quay lively with the early enjoyers of coffee and the narghile. Every precious inch of shade was, as usual, carefully appropriated; but the sun was rapidly narrowing the boundaries of the shadow district. Our chief errand resulted in the purchase of an ok of _lok.u.mias_, which we virtuously resolved to carry to America, if possible. The little boat now returned us to the steamer, where breakfast and dinner quietly succeeded each other, little worthy of record occurring between. One interesting half hour reached us in the shape of a visit from Papa Parthenius, a young and active member of the Cretan Syn-eleusis. He came with tidings for our chief veteran,--tales of the Turks, and how they could get no water at Svakia; tidings also of brave young DeKay, and of his good service in behalf of the island. While these, in the dreadful secrecy of an unknown tongue, impart he did, I seized pen and ink, and enn.o.bled my unworthy sketch-book with a _croquis_ of his finely-bronzed visage. His countenance was such as Miss Bremer would have called dark and energetic. He wore the dress of his calling, which was that of the secular priesthood. He soon detected my occupation, and said, in Greek, "I regret that the kyrie should make my portrait without my arms."

We parted from him very cordially. Consul Campfield afterwards gave us a refreshing row about the harbor, bringing us within view of the two iron-clads newly purchased and brought out to run the Turkish blockade.

One of these was famous in the annals of Secessia. Both served that more than doubtful cause. Then we went back to the vessel, and the rest of the day did not get beyond perspiration and patience.

Towards evening a spirited breeze began to lash the waters of the harbor into hilly madness. White caps showed themselves, and we, who were to embark on board another vessel, for another voyage, took note of the same. The friendly Evangelides now came on board, and scolded us for not having sent him word of our arrival. We pleaded the extreme heat of the day, which had made dreadful the idea of visiting and of locomotion of any sort. He was clad from head to foot in white linen, and looked most comfortable. While he was yet with us, the summons of departure came. In our chief's plans, meanwhile, a change had taken place. Determining causes induced him to return to Athens, minus his female _impedimenta_: so the little boat that danced with us from the Lloyd's Syra to the Lloyd's Trieste steamer danced back with him, leaving three disconsolate ones, bereft of Greece, and unprotected of all and any. Nor did we make this second start without a _contretemps_. Having bidden the chief farewell, we proceeded at once to take account of our luggage; and lo!

the shawl bundle was not. Now, every knowing traveller is aware that this article of travelling furniture contains much besides the shawl, which is but the envelope of all the odds and ends usually most essential to comfort. For the second in command, therefore, previously designated as _a megale_, there was but one course to pursue. To hire a boat, refuse to be cheated in its price, tumble down the ship's side, row to the Syra steamer, pick up the missing bundle, astonish the chief in a pensive reverie, "_sibi et suis_," on the cabin sofa, and return triumphant, was the work of ten minutes. But the sea ran high, the little boat danced like a c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.l, and the neophytes were afraid, and much relieved in mind when the ancient reappeared.

The America (the Trieste steamer) did not weigh anchor before midnight.

Soon after the adventure of the shawl bundle, the Syra steamer fired a gun, and slipped out to sea. We had seen the last of the chief for a fortnight at least, and our attention was now turned to the quarters we were to occupy for four days to come. These did not at first sight seem very promising. Our state-rooms were small, and bare of all furniture, except the bed and washing fixtures. Just outside of them, on the deck, was the tent under which the Turkish women horded. For we found, on coming on board, a Turkish pacha and suite, bound from Constantinople to Janina, to take the place of him whom we had, a month before, accompanied on his way from Janina to Constantinople, via Corfu, where we were to be quit of the present dignitary. But before I get to the Turks, I must mention that good Christian, the Austrian consul at Syra, who came on board before we left, and introduced to me a young man in an alarming condition of health, a Venetian by birth, and an officer in the Austrian navy. His illness had been induced by exposure incident to his profession in the hot harbor of Kanea.

The first night we made acquaintance only with various screaming babies, the torment of young mothers who did not know how to take care of them, their nurses having been left at home. The night was sufficiently disturbed up to the period of departure, and these little ones vented their displeasure in tones which argued well for their lungs. The next morning showed us a rough sea, the vessel pitching and tossing, the ladies mostly sea sick--we ourselves well and about, but much incommoded by heat and want of room. A tall member of the pacha's suite came into our little round house, dressed princ.i.p.ally in a short, quilted sack of bright red calico. He carried in his arms a teething baby, very dirty and ill-dressed, and tried to nurse and soothe it on his knee, the mother being totally incapacitated by seasickness. This man was tall and fair. I thought he might be an Albanian. I made some incautious remarks in French concerning his dress, which he obviously understood, for he disappeared, and then reappeared dressed in a handsome European suit, with a bran-new fez on his head, but carrying no baby. Another of the suite, unmistakably a Turk, pestered the round-house. This individual wore white cotton drawers under a long calico night shirt of a faded lilac pattern, which was bound about his waist with a strip of yellow calico. The articles of this toilet were far from clean. Gla.s.ses and a fez completed it. The wearer we learned to be a fanatical Turk, who came among us in this disorderly dress to show his contempt for Christians in general. His motive was held to be, in his creed, a religious one. It further caused him to take his meals separately from us--a circ.u.mstance which we scarcely regretted. He was much amazed at the worsted work in the hands of one of the neophytes, and went so far as to take it up, and to ask a bystander who spoke his language whether the young girl spun the wools herself before she began her tapestry. He then asked the price of the wools, and on hearing the reply exclaimed, "What land on earth equals Turkey, where you can buy the finest wool for twelve piastres an ok!"

Besides these not very appetizing figures, we had on board some Fanariote Greeks, of aristocratic pretensions and Turkish principles; some h.e.l.lenes of the true Greek stamp; a Dalmatian sea captain, his wife and daughters, who spoke Italian and looked German; an Armenian lady and young daughter from Constantinople, bound to Paris; several Greeks resident in Transylvania, speaking Greek and German with equal facility; two Armenian priests returning from an Eastern mission, and _en route_ for Vienna; the Austro-Italian before spoken of; a Bohemian gla.s.s merchant; and an array of deck pa.s.sengers as varied and motley as those already enumerated as belonging to the first cabin. With all of the latter we made acquaintance; but although we moved among them with cordiality and good-will, the equilibrium of sympathy was difficult to find. The Fanariotes were no Philh.e.l.lenes, the Armenian ladies were frequenters of the sultan's palace; the Italian was thoroughly German in his inclinations, and spoke in utter dispraise of his own country when his feeble condition allowed him to speak. Of the Armenian priests, one was quite a man of the world, and somewhat reserved and suspicious. The other showed something of the infirmity of advanced age in the prolixity of his speech, as well as in its matter. In this Noah's ark _e megale_ moved about, mindful of the bull in the china shop, and tried not to upset this one's mustard-pot and that one's vase of perfume. And as all were whole when she parted from them, she has reason to hope that her efforts were tolerably successful.

In the human variety shop just described, I must not forget to speak of my sisters, the Turkish women, imprisoned in a small portion of the deck, protected by a curtain from all intrusion or inspection. As this sacred precinct lay along the outside part.i.tion of the ladies' cabin, I became aware of a remote window, through which a practicable breach might be made in their fortress. Thither, on the first day, I repaired, and paid my compliments. They were, I think, five in number, and lay along on mattresses, disconsolately enough. With the help of the stewardess, I inquired after their health, and learned that seasickness held them prostrate and helpless. Nothing ate they, nothing drank they.

Two of them were young and pretty. Of these, one was the wife of the bey who accompanied the pacha. She had a delicate cast of features, melancholy dark eyes, and dark hair bound up with a lilac c.r.a.pe handkerchief. The other was the mother of the teething child spoken of above, and the wife of the tall parent who nursed it. By noon on the second day the sea had sunk to almost gla.s.sy smoothness. All of the patients were up and about; the children were freshly washed and dressed, and became coaxable. One of the Armenian ladies now volunteered to go with me to look in upon our Turkish friends. We found them up and stirring, making themselves ready to land at Corfu. And to my companion they told what good messes they had brought from Constantinople, and thrown into the blue aegean; for the heat of the vessel spoiled their victuals much faster than they, being seasick, could keep them from spoiling. And they laughed over their past sufferings much after the fashion of other women. The pretty mother now appeared in a loose gown of yellow calico, holding up her baby. I made a hasty sketch of the pair as they showed themselves at the cabin window; but the flat, glaring light did not allow me to do even as well as usual, which is saying little. The oval face, smooth, black brows, and long, liquid eyes, were beautiful, and her smile was touchingly child-like and innocent. The bey's wife wore a lilac calico; another wore pale green. These dresses consisted of loose gowns, with under-trousers of the same material; they were utterly unneat and tasteless. I presently saw them put on their yashmacs, and draw over their calicoes a sort of cloak of black stuff, not unlike alpaca. They now looked very decently, and, being covered, were allowed to sit on deck until the time of the arrival in Corfu. The pretty one whom I sketched begged to look at my work. On seeing it she exclaimed, "Let no man ever behold this!" Nor could I blame her, for it maligned her sadly. Concerning the landing in Corfu, the meagre diary shows this pa.s.sage:--

"Went on sh.o.r.e at Corfu at 5.45 P. M., returning at 6.50. Expenses in all, ten francs, including boat, ices, and _valet de place_. The steamer was so hot that this short visit on sh.o.r.e was a great relief, Corfu being at this hour very breezy and shady. Every one says that the Ionian Islands are going to ruin since the departure of the English. This is from the want of capital and of enterprise. So it would seem as if people who have no enterprise of their own must be content to thrive secondarily upon that of other people. The whole type of Greek life, however, is opposed to the Occidental type. Its luxury is to be in health, and to be satisfied with little. We Westerns ill.u.s.trate the multiplication of wants with that of resources, or _vice versa_. [The diary, prudently, does not attempt to decide the question of antecedence and consequence between these two.] The Greeks seem, so far, to ill.u.s.trate the converse. Whether this opposition can endure in the present day, I cannot foresee. But this I can see--that Greece will not have more luxury without more poverty. The circle of wealth, enlarging, will more and more crowd those who are unfitted to attain it, and who must be content with the minimum even of food and raiment."

So far the pitiful, sea-addled diary. It does not recount how mercifully the captain of our steamer found a _valet de place_ for us, and told him to take care of us, and bring us back at a given moment. Nor how our payment of ten francs for three persons, instead of Heaven knows what exorbitation, was owing to this circ.u.mstance. For it may not be known to the inexperienced that the boatmen of Corfu are wont to make a very moderate charge for setting people ash.o.r.e on the island. This is done in order to disarm suspicion: _facile descensus Averni--sed revocare gradum_! But when you wish to return to your vessel, the need being pressing, and the time admitting of no delay, the same boatmen are wont to demand fifteen or twenty francs _per capita_, and the more you swear the more they laugh. Among the arrearages of justice adjourned to that supreme chancery term, the Day of Judgment, I fear there must be many of English et al. _vs._ boatmen. But under the captain's happy administration, I made bold, when the boatman insisted on being paid for the return trip in mid-sea, to refuse a single copper. Now, the gift of unknown tongues sometimes resides in the person who hears them. And I received it as a decided advantage that I understood no phrase of the boatmen's low muttering and grumbling. So they were forced to carry us to the gangway of the steamer, where the captain stood to receive us.

And I paid the men and the valet under the captain's supervision, and when the former demanded a _bottiglia_, the captain cried out, in energetic tones, "Get off of my ship at once, you scoundrels; you have been well paid already;" the which indeed befell.

Neither does the diary recount how the drivers of public carriages followed us up and down the streets, insisting upon our engaging them, first at their price, and then at ours, for a trip which we had neither time nor mind to make, desisting after half an hour's annoyance; nor how a money changer, given a napoleon, contrived to make up one of its francs by slipping in two miserable Turkish _paras_, not worth half a franc; nor how the whistle of the steamer made our return very anxious and hurried, the pa.s.sengers accusing us of having delayed the departure, while the captain confided to us that he had a.s.sumed this air of extreme hurry, in order to stimulate the disembarkation of the Turks, whose theory of taking one's own time was somewhat loosely applied in the present instance. Well, this is all I know of Corfu. It is little enough, and yet, perhaps, too much.

FARTHER.

Corfu was the last of Greece to us. A tightening at our heartstrings told us so. We consented to depart, but conquered the agony of making farewell verses, dear at any price, in the then state of the thermometer. Our feelings, such as they were, were mutely exchanged with the bronze statue of that late governor, who brought the water into the town. Unless he should prove as frisky as the Commendatore in Don Giovanni, they will never be divulged.

We now set our faces, in conjunction with the tide of conquest, westward. We all suffered heat, ennui, and baby-yell. The Italian invalid languished in his hot state-room, or in our cabin, his weak condition increasing the dangerous discomfort of perspiration--a grave matter when a chill would be death. Worsted work progressed, the hungry sketch-book got a nibble or two, and the mild good-wills of the voyage ripened, never, we fear, to bear future harvests of profit and intercourse. Not the less were we beholden to them for the time. And we will even praise thee here, Armenian Anna, with thy young graces, thy Eastern beauty, thy charming English, and thoroughly genial behavior.

Mother and daughter had _distinction_, in the French sense of the word.

From the former I had many _apercus_ of Eastern life. She was married at the early age of fourteen, and wore on that occasion the traditional veiling of threads of gold, bound on her brow and falling to her feet.

"How glad I was to remove it," she said, "it was so heavy!" "What did you do with it?" I asked. "I divided it into several portions, and endowed with them the marriage of poorer girls, who could not afford it for themselves." But madame informed me that this c.u.mbrous ornament has now pa.s.sed out of fashion, the tulle veil and orange flowers of French usage having generally taken its place. This lady was supposed by most people to be the elder sister of her pretty daughter. In her soberer beauty one seemed to see the dancing eyes and pouting cheeks of the other carried only a little farther on. And both were among the chief comforts of the voyage.