Debarred from carrying out the purpose of my expedition, I contented myself with making such a survey of that part of the island as should serve the Inst.i.tute for another attempt when the artificial obstacles should be removed; and I was on the point of visiting Gortyna when troubles broke out, initiated by the murder of two Mussulmans at Gortyna, revenged by the murder of Christians at Candia, and there was nothing to be done but to get back to civilization. From the Mussulmans of the island I had less hostility to endure than from the more influential of the Christian Cretans, with whom the dominant pa.s.sion of life seemed to be that of intrigue, and with whose mendacity and unscrupulousness I could not contend.
I had a curious instance of the honesty of the Mussulman in a dealer in bricabrac, embroideries, and stuffs with whom I used to deal at Candia. Arapi Mehmet, as he was called, i.e. Mahommed the Arabian, was a man in whom no religious fanaticism disturbed his relations with his fellow-men; no English agnostic could be more liberal, and we often had dealings in which his honesty was evident. On one of the last visits I made to his shop I looked at two embroidered cushion covers which I wanted to purchase, but the price he put on them made it out of the question, and as he refused to take less I gave up the bargaining, and he called for the coffee. While we were drinking it and conversing of other matters, I said to him, "Arapi, why do you ask such absurd prices? You know that the cushions are not worth so much."
"Oh," he replied, "you are rich and can afford it." "What makes you think I am rich?" I asked. "You travel about and see the world, and take your pleasure," he said. "But I am not rich," I said; "I am a workingman; I do not travel for pleasure, but to earn my living. I am a scribe, and am paid for what I write, and what I earn is all I have to live on. I have no property." "Is that true?" he asked me, earnestly, looking me in the eyes. "That is quite true; I have nothing but what I earn," I replied; "I make the living of my family in this way. If I do not write we have no bread." The cushions had meanwhile been sent back to his house, as he kept all his fine goods there; and, without another word to me, he shouted to his shop boy to go and get them, and, when brought, he threw them to me, saying, "Take them and give me what you like."
I always found that the Mussulman merchants were more trustworthy in their dealings with me than the Christians, and, though there was, as a matter of course, at first an amount of bargaining and beating down the prices, which was expected, they never attempted to deceive me in the quality of the goods, and they often called my attention to articles of artistic or archaeological value, which were cheap, and when they came to know me well they gave me, at the outset, the lowest price they could take, while it never happened with a Christian shopman in Crete that I was treated with frankness or moderation. The next time I went back to Candia, Arapi was dead.
Returning to Canea, my archaeological mission being abortive, I was told by the Christian secretary of the pasha that the difficulty had been that I had not offered to give to His Excellency the coins that might be found in the excavations, and that if I did this I might hope for a firman. As it was not in my power to give what, by the agreement arrived at with the proprietor of the soil, had been definitely disposed of, half to him and the other half to the museums of the island, and as the troubles had begun, there was nothing more to be done, and I made a flying trip to some parts of the island which I had not seen. Of this, the pa.s.sage through the valley of Enneochoria (the nine villages) will remain in my memory as the most delightful pastoral landscape I have ever seen, and the ideal of Greek pastoral poetry. A beautiful brook, to the perennial flow of whose waters the abundant water-cresses testified, which is a very rare thing in an Aegean scene, meandered amongst mingled sycamores and olives, and gave freshness to glades where the sheep fed under the keepership of the antique-mannered shepherd lads and la.s.ses; and in the opening of the bordering trees we saw the far-off and arid mountains, rugged and picturesque peaks. The Cretan summer for three or four months is rainless, and a valley where the vegetation is fed by the springs so abundantly as to sustain a perpetual flora is rarely to be met in one"s travels there. I saw many new flowers there, and amongst them a perfectly white primrose, in every other respect like the common flower of the English hedgerows. The scenery had that attractive aspect which can be found only where immemorial culture, without excessive invasion of the axe, has left nature in the undiminished possession of her chief beauties, without a trace of the savage wildness--a nature which hints at art. It was cla.s.sic without being formal, but no description can give an idea of the charm of it in contrast with the general aridity of the Cretan landscape.
As we rode through the villages we found the population animated by that joyous hospitality which belongs to an antique tradition, to which a stranger guest is something which the G.o.ds have sent, and sent rarely so that no tourist weariness had worn out the welcome.
Something of the welcome was, no doubt, due to the reputation I had acquired in former times as a friend of the Christians of the island, but I found that in Crete, where the invasion of the foreign element had been at a minimum and the people were most conservative, ancient usages and ancient hospitality had retained all their force, as, to a lesser extent, I had found them in the Peloponnesus, while in continental Greece I never found hospitality in any form. The Cretans are probably the purest remnant of the antique race which resulted from the mixture of Pelasgian, Dorian, Achaian, Ionian, and the best representative of the antique intellect.
It was almost impossible to travel in the interior of the island, where the Christian element still held its own unmixed, without coming in contact with remnants of the most ancient superst.i.tions. In one place my guide pointed out to me a cave where Janni the shepherd one day gathered his sheep in the midday heats to fiddle to them, when there came out of the sea a band of Nereids, who begged him to play for their dancing. Janni obeyed and lost his heart to one of the sea damsels, and, sorely smitten, went to a wise woman to know what he should do to win her, and was told that he must boldly seize her in the whirl of the dance and hold her, no matter what happened. He followed the direction, and though the nymph changed shape many times he kept his hold and she submitted to him and they were married. In process of time she bore a child, but all the while she had never spoken a word. The wise woman, consulted again, told Janni to take the child and pretend to lay it on the fire, when his wife would speak. He obeyed again, but made a slip, and the child, falling into the fire, was burned to death, whereupon the wife fled to the sea and was never seen again. This was told me in all seriousness as of a contemporary event, and was evidently held as history. I bought from a peasant one of the well-known three-sided prisms with archaic intaglios of animals on the faces, and had the curiosity to inquire the virtues of it, for I was told that it was greatly valued and had been worn by his wife, who reluctantly gave it up. He replied that it had the power of preventing the mother"s milk from failing prematurely.
We pa.s.sed through Selinos, where the riflers of the antique necropolis brought me quant.i.ties of gla.s.s found in the graves, and a few bronze and gold ornaments; and when I had loaded myself and my attendants with all the gla.s.s we could safely carry, the people begged me still to buy, if only for a piastre each piece, what they had acc.u.mulated for want of a buyer. But what is found in this district is mainly or entirely of a late period, that of the Roman occupation of the island, I suppose, for we found no archaic objects of any kind, or early inscriptions, and only a few in late characters. But the ride through this section of the island is one of the most delightful one could take, so far as I know, in cla.s.sical lands. The kindly, hospitable Seliniotes, known for centuries as the bravest of all the Cretan clans, persecuted with all the cruelty of Venetian craft in the days when the island city ruled the island sea, always refractory under foreign rule and often unruly under their own regime, seem to have enjoyed in the later centuries of Roman rule and the earlier of the Byzantine a great prosperity, if one may judge from the evidence of the necropolis, the graves in which yield a singular indication of a well-distributed wealth. These graves lie for great distances along every road leading to what must have been the princ.i.p.al centre of the civilization, though there are no ruins to mark its location. This singular absence of ancient ruin indicates a peculiarity in the civilization of that section of the island which history gives no clue to. Northward, near the sea, there are the remains of great Pelasgic cities, of which when I first traveled in the island the walls were in stupendous condition, but of which at this visit I had found hardly a trace--the islanders had pulled them down to get stone for their houses. The site of Polyrhenia, connected in tradition with the return of Agamemnon from Troy, was one of the finest Pelasgic ruins I have ever seen when I first visited it, but on this visit I could hardly find the locality, and of the splendid polygonal wall I saw in 1865 not a stone remained.
Our route brought us through Murnies, celebrated for its orange groves and for the horrible execution of many Cretans by Mustapha Kiritly in the "great insurrection"--that of 1837--to punish them for a.s.sembling to pet.i.tion the Sultan for relief. It is one of the most ghastly of all the dreadful incidents of Turkish repressions, for the Cretans, pacifically a.s.sembled without arms, were arrested, and all their magnates, for the better repression of discontent and to overawe rebellions to come, were hanged on the orange-trees in such numbers that, as the old consul of Sweden, an eye-witness, told me during my consulate, the orchard was hung with them, and left there to rot.
According to the statement of the consul, not less than thirty of the chief men of that district were so executed.
But the history of the Venetian rule shows that it was no less cruel and even more treacherous, and Pashley gives from their own records the story of the slaughter of many of the chief people of the same district to punish refractoriness against the government of that day.
Read where we will, so long as there is anything to read, we find the history of Crete one of the most horrible of the cla.s.sic world--rebellion, repression, slaughter, internecine and international, until a population, which in the early Venetian times was a million, was reduced in 1830 to little more than a hundred thousand, and during my own residence was brought nearly as low, what with death by sword and bullet, by starvation and disease induced by starvation, added to exile, permanent or temporary. Yet in 1865 it had been reckoned at 375,000, Christian and Mussulman. But it must be admitted that the Cretan was always the most refractory of subjects, and, though at the time of this visit the island had obtained the fundamental concessions which it had fought for, in the recognition of its autonomy with a governor of the faith of the majority, in a later visit in 1886 I found it ravaged by a sectional war of vendetta, Christian against Christian, in which, as Photiades Pasha a.s.sured me, in one year 600 people had been killed and 25,000 olive-trees destroyed in village feuds. But the evidence was at hand to show that the pasha himself, finding the islanders no less difficult to control for all the concessions made them, had been obliged in the interest of his own quiet and permanence in government to turn the restlessness of the Cretans into sectional conflicts during which they left him in peaceful possession of his pashalik. In eastern countries government becomes a fine art if not a humane one.
CHAPTER x.x.xVI
GREEK BROILS--TRICOUPI--FLORENCE
The troubles initiated at Gortyna increased until the eastern end of the island was drawn into them, and, as the Greek government at the same time began to agitate for the execution of those clauses in the Treaty of Berlin which compensated it for the advantages gained by the princ.i.p.alities through the war, I received orders to go to Athens and resume my correspondence with the "Times." Athens was in a ferment, and the discontent with the government for its inefficiency was universal; the ministry, as was perhaps not altogether unjustifiable under the circ.u.mstances past, allowed the King to bear his part of the responsibility, and discontent with him was even greater than that with Comoundouros, the prime minister, whose position became very difficult, for the King and his _entourage_ opposed all energetic measures, and the people demanded the most energetic. Excitement ran very high, and the ministry was carried along with the populace, which demanded war and the military occupation of the territory a.s.signed to Greece.
Comoundouros was, on the whole, the most competent prime minister for Greece whom the country has had in my time. Tricoupi, who was the chief of the opposition at the time, was an abler man, and a statesman of wider views,--on the whole, the greatest statesman of modern Greece, _me judice_; but in intrigue and Odyssean craft, which is necessary in the Levant, Comoundouros was his master. In 1868, when they were both in the ministry, they formed the most competent government Greece has known in her const.i.tutional days, but it was betrayed by the King, who paid now in part for his defection, for no one placed the least confidence in him. The diplomatic corps pressed for peace, and the nation demanded war, for which it was not in the least prepared. The animosity towards the King was extreme. I saw people who happened to be sitting in front of the cafes rise and turn their backs to him when he walked past, as he used to do without any attendant. Comoundouros ran with the diplomats and hunted with the populace,--I think he really meant to continue running and avoid hunting at any risk, but he talked on the other side. I knew him well, and used continually to go to his house when he received all the world in the evening, in perfectly republican simplicity, as is the way in Athens, and he said to me one evening that the King prevented action, and impeded all steps to render the army efficient.
This was evidently the feeling of the populace, and public demonstrations took place which menaced revolution, and on one occasion shots were fired, and the demonstrators were dispersed by the cavalry. I asked him on that occasion why the ministry did not let the revolution loose, and drive the King away. "Ah! they think now that we have no stability,--what would they think then? and what could we get better?" I find in a file of my letters of the time one which says: "I am not surprised at Mrs. ----"s opinion of the King,--there are few people of either s.e.x here who are not of the same opinion, and the conviction is getting very general that no progress or reform is to be hoped for until he is expelled the country." Another, a little later, says: "It looks very much as if there were a revolution preparing, and that the King would have to go. He is so detested that I don"t think any one wants to save him." To complicate matters, there came some scandals to light concerning the frauds and peculations in the furnishing of supplies for the army, which was being prepared for a campaign in extravagant haste, and rumor involved persons in the closest intimacy with the prime minister. I do not believe that Comoundouros was personally complicated, but I find in one of my letters the following, under date, "Athens, June 10:"--
"Things here are in a horrible state. The latest disclosures of the great defalcations seem to involve so many officials and non-officials, and break out in so many new directions, that one does not know whom to exonerate. The King and most of the ministers--quant.i.ties of officials, persons in high social positions and unblemished reputation--seem to have been carried away by the fever; Comoundouros himself is accused of partic.i.p.ation; ---- and ---- are clearly guilty, and I think the ministry must resign. So far we have no accusation against Tricoupi or any of his friends. That is the only comfort we can draw out of the affair. I am holding back from exposing the affair in the "Times" from the double motive that the scandal will affect all Greece, and because the affair is not yet fully disclosed and we don"t know what it may lead to in the way of exposures. The government is doing everything it can to prevent the investigation extending, and this I mean to stop by exposing the whole matter in the "Times," but until it succeeds in arresting the disclosures I shall let them go. Comoundouros is buying up all the correspondents he can, and one of his emissaries told me two or three days ago that if I would help him out I could pocket 20,000 francs."
To this offer I replied by a letter to the "Times" attacking the ministry savagely, and when it was printed and reached Athens, and I saw the minister again, he remarked with his imperturbable good-humor, which indeed never failed him, "How you did give it to us to-day!" As I recall the old man, running over the twenty odd years during which I had known him more or less with long interruptions, I retain my impression of his genuine patriotism and personal integrity; but he was surrounded by people who did profit by their relation to him. He was singularly like Depretis in manner and character; and of Depretis it was said that he would not steal himself, but he did not care how much his friends stole; but I think that the Greek was the abler man by much. Comoundouros mitigated the rancors usual in the politics of Greece (as in those of Italy of to-day) by his unvarying good-nature, never permitting his antagonisms to degenerate to animosities. In the years when I first knew him, during the Cretan insurrection of 1866, he was at his best in power and in patriotism; but during the years which followed, full of the base intrigues which had their birth in the influences surrounding the court, he got more or less demoralized, for patriotism and honesty were no pa.s.sports to power, and he was ambitious before all things. Not to be in office or near coming to office is in Greece to have no political standing whatever, and the King"s defection and betrayal of the interests of Greece in 1868 convinced Comoundouros and many others that with the King there was nothing to be done for a purely h.e.l.lenic and consistent policy. All my study of Levantine politics since that day convinces me that in sacrificing the interests of Greece to the demands of the Russian ministry in 1868, the King threw away the only opportunity which Greece has ever had of attaining the position her people and her friends believed her destined to,--that of the heir of the Ottoman empire. The case is now hopeless, for the adverse influences have gained the upper hand, and the demoralization of Greece has progressed with the years. The st.u.r.dy independence of Comoundouros in 1868 was wasted, and I can imagine that the old man understood that, though the forms of independence and the semblance of progress must be kept up, there was really no hope of a truly h.e.l.lenic revival, and with his hopes and his courage he lost all his patriotic ambitions. In this juncture he was satisfied with the husks which the diplomats threw to Greece, and bl.u.s.tered and threatened war to attain a compromise which should keep him in office and in peace with the King, whom he would gladly have rid Greece of if it had been practicable.
In the struggle with diplomacy he so far gained his point that there was an adjustment of the frontiers in accordance with the treaty. The commission for the delimitation, at the head of which was General Hamley, met at Athens with the intention of beginning the trace from the Epirote side, and I had made all my preparations for accompanying it, when there happened one of those curious mischances which are possible only in the East. The summer was hot and dry, and the mayor of Athens, foreseeing a drought, had decided to turn the stream known as the "washerwoman"s brook," one of the few perennial sources in the vicinity, into the aqueduct which supplied the city with drinking water. As all the dirty clothes of Athens, comprising those of the military hospital, in which there were grave cases of typhoid, were washed in that stream, the consequences were soon evident in a great outbreak of the malady in the city, the victims being estimated at 10,000 persons; and, two days before that on which the commission was to start on its work, I was taken ill. I sent for a doctor and he declared the illness to be fever, and probably typhoid. I went to bed, and took for three days in succession forty grains of quinine a day, getting up on the fourth, to find the commission gone and myself in no condition to follow it; and so I missed the most interesting journey which had ever offered itself in my journalistic career. My exasperation at the imbecility of the mayor can be easily imagined, and it was vented in a proper castigation in my correspondence. In the burning weeks that followed, the state of Athens reminded one of Boccaccio"s description of Florence in the plague. There were not physicians enough in the city to attend the sick, or undertakers to bury the dead. The funeral processions to the great cemetery beyond the Ilissus seemed in constant motion, and the water-sellers drove a brisk trade in the water of a n.o.ble spring under Hymettus.
At the next munic.i.p.al election the mayor was reelected triumphantly!
The ministry was less fortunate, a dissolution resulting in a majority for the opposition, and Tricoupi came into power. As the most competent and eminent of the rulers of Greece in the following years (for Comoundouros died not long after), and cut off prematurely in the midst of his services to the land he always served with an honest, patriotic devotion, he deserves the commemoration which, as his intimate friend for many years, I am better qualified, perhaps, to render him than any other foreigner. Our friendship began in the period when he held the portfolio of Foreign Affairs in 1867-8 and continued till his death. He was educated and, I think, born in London, where his father held for many years the legation of Greece.
The elder Tricoupi and his wife were two of the most sympathetic and admirable people of their race I have ever known, and the elder Tricoupi"s history of his country in its later fortunes is recognized as the standard, both in its history and in its use of the modern Greek, purely vernacular, which we have. The son, head of the government or leader of the opposition from an age at which in few countries a man can lead in politics, was, _rara avis_ in those lands, an absolutely devoted patriot and honest man; but his country has never been in a state of political education or patriotic devotion such as to enable it to profit by his ability or his honesty. I well remember that during his first premiership I said to him that I hoped he was in for a long term of office, which might establish some solidity in Greek politics, and he replied, "They will support me until I am obliged to tax them, and then they will turn me out." And so it happened.
The general elections, which were stormy, brought Tricoupi into power; but the violence to the freedom of election of which the government was guilty made them very exciting. One of Tricoupi"s chief supporters was standing for Cephalonia, I think, and we heard that there were great preparations to defeat him by the common device of overawing his supporters and driving them from the polls, and I decided to go at once to the locality and watch the method of the elections. The presence of the correspondent at the polling booths, all of which I visited in rapid succession through the day, completely deranged all the plans, and only at one place was there an attempt at illegal pressure, on which occasion one man was shot. The chief of police at the place came to me from time to time, saying, "Have you seen anything illegal?" as if he were under orders to convince me that the law had been obeyed. The result was that the Tricoupist candidate was elected, and he admitted to me that his election was due to my presence. He had only had one man shot, the general plan of carrying the elections by violence having been abandoned in deference to public opinion in England, represented by the correspondent of the "Times."
I decided to go to Volo as soon as the annexation was accomplished, and took letters of introduction to several leading citizens, amongst them one from Tricoupi. The Christian portion of the town was, of course, in exultation, but an attempt at inspection of the Turkish quarter had to be abandoned precipitately before a demonstration of the Mussulman juvenility. My visit had to be abbreviated, for the filthy khan which was the only place of entertainment for man and beast swarmed with bugs and mosquitoes; and, though the five letters I had were to the wealthiest persons in Volo, amongst them being the mayor, not one offered me hospitality when I told them the next day that I must return by the steamer that brought me, in default of a decent bed and eatable food; and, though they expressed polite regrets, they saw no alternative, and I took a return pa.s.sage.
Hospitality in continental Greece has no traditions; and even in Athens, except from Greeks who had lived in England, I have never been asked to accept bed or bread, while in Crete and in the Peloponnesus there was always a more or less active compet.i.tion as to who should give me both. The stranger, who was in the cla.s.sical days the messenger of the G.o.ds and received welcome as such, has degenerated to the position of the modern tramp. The difference is, no doubt, due to the centuries of oppression and isolation in which the fragments of the race have lived, and in which they have suffered the intrusion of unwelcome elements amongst them, always overborne and finding no protector except their own cunning, and no friend save in their own religion.
A thought that comes up very often while one deals with the Greek in h.e.l.lenic lands, is the wonder at the tenacity of the religion of the Greek, surviving the hostility not only of the Turk, but of his fellow Christian of the rival creed. No other nation has ever endured the hostile pressure on its religious fidelity which the Greeks have had to submit to since the fall of Constantinople. The Venetians were even more cruel with the Greeks under their rule than the Turks have ever been, and the influence of the Papal See has always been exerted with the most inflexible persistence for the suppression of what in Rome is called the Greek schism, to which it has shown an animosity greater even than that displayed toward the Protestant Church. And yet I have always found the Orthodox Church in all its ramifications the most charitable and liberal of all the forms of Christianity with which I have come in contact. No stranger is turned from the doors of a Greek convent or refused such succor as is in the power of its inmates, be he Protestant, atheist, or even of their bitterest enemies, the Roman Catholics. No questions are ever asked, and it has twice happened to me that I have lodged at a Greek convent during the most rigid fasts of the Church, when the inmates sat down to a dinner of herbs and dry bread, while to me was given the best their resources could compa.s.s--a roast lamb or kid, generally. The _kalogeros_ in attendance, when I was dining on one occasion with the prior of a convent on Good Friday, and ate flesh when the prior himself had nothing but herbs and bread, turned to his superior with a perplexed smile, saying, "Why! he is not even a Christian!" but was none the less cordial afterward--he evidently had no other feeling than that of pity that a man who had been their protector (it was in Crete during the insurrection) should not enjoy the privileges of the Church. This liberal hospitality on the part of the ecclesiastics makes the want of it on the part of the people all the more conspicuous and inexplicable.
In the event Comoundouros found his game of bluff a safe one, for his claims were just, and diplomacy was derelict, or there would have been no utility in the demonstration. But the futility of the Greek threats was most conspicuously shown, for not a battalion got to the frontier in a condition to fight, and two batteries sent off from Athens in great pomp broke down so completely that not a gun was fit to go into action when they reached the frontier. The (for them and for the moment) fortunate issue of the contention by the cession of the territory in dispute seemed to the Greeks in general due to their good military measures, and so confirmed them in the dangerous conviction that the powers were afraid that they might beat the Turks and open the question of Constantinople, etc., which the powers had determined should not be opened. Tricoupi alone of all those who had a policy was of the opinion that the powers should not have interfered, but should have let the Greeks have their way and learn their lesson. It was his opinion that the political education of the Greeks was thwarted by this continual intermeddling of the powers, which made their independence a fiction. Subsequent events showed that he did not nourish that blind confidence in the military capacity of his countrymen which they had, but he said until they were allowed to test their abilities they would never know on what that confidence reposed.
The common opinion was that one Greek was worth ten Turks, even in the state of the Greek training. This was not Tricoupi"s opinion, which was that it was impossible under the tutelage which the powers exercised for them to know the truth, and he had, from 1867, persistently urged the let-alone policy, which would at least enable them to find their level.
Time has shown that Tricoupi was the only party leader in Greece who saw affairs justly. Had his counsel prevailed, the nation would have found in 1881 what they discovered only in 1897, that they needed training and concentration to hold their own, and that the path of conquest of their ancient estate was set with obstacles which only Spartan discipline and endurance could clear away. As it has happened, the lesson has been learned only after all the competing elements have had theirs and are on the way to the primacy in the Balkans which the Greeks thought the heritage of their race, but of which they can now hold no hope. The protection of the powers has been fatal, for the future of the Levant belongs to the Slav in spite of all the intelligence, activity, and personal morality in which the Greeks excel all their rivals. An English statesman who had to deal with Tricoupi in regard to official matters said to me once that he found him apparently open and business-like, but that when they came to the transaction of matters at issue he proved to be as slippery and dishonest as any of his countrymen. But Tricoupi was a Greek, and evasion, diplomatic duplicity, and the usual devices of the weak brought to terms by the strong, are ingrained with the race. He felt the truth, viz., that all the powers, while professing to protect them, were really oppressing them by their protection, and that the negotiations in which they posed as friends were really hostile measures which he was, in duty to his nation, bound to fight by all the means in his reach; and in this case the means were those of the weak, deprived of liberty of action as much as if they were held down by the troops of the powers.
In all these considerations Tricoupi stands as much the type and impersonation of the modern Greek in his best phase, and the h.e.l.lenic cause lost in his early death the largest exponent of the characteristics of the race I have ever known, but, as fate had it, lost him only when his abilities could only serve to mitigate disaster and accentuate failure. Had he been alive, I am convinced that the disaster of 1897 would not have taken place, and, if a conflict was, through the ignorant impetuosity of the ma.s.ses, unavoidable, it would have resulted more creditably to the Greek army, not in victory indeed, for this was under the circ.u.mstances not to be hoped for, but in a defeat which was not irretrievable.
The campaign finished, I returned to Florence, where, during the lull in Eastern matters, I found my only public occupation in the contest with regard to the restoration of ancient buildings in Italy. Those who can remember the aspect of the Ducal Palace and St. Mark"s in those years, sh.o.r.ed up to prevent large portions of them from falling in crumbling ruin into the Piazza, and can see that now at least the general aspect of the perfect building is preserved, and in the case of the Ducal Palace even the details of the most important decorative elements restored with a fidelity which defies examination, will hardly be inclined to resent the restorations which have abolished the hideous balks of timber and bulkheads of most of the southern and western facades. The southwest angle of the Palace was prevented only by ma.s.sive shoring from falling bodily into the Piazzetta. The anti-restoration society in England had raised a great outcry over the works, which had, however, been going on without criticism during the Austrian occupation since 1840; and, after a thorough examination of the state of the two precious buildings, and the plans and appliances for their restoration, I undertook the defense of the restorers, and the hot controversy in the "Times" and other journals on the subject resulted in the confirmation of the authorities in their resolution to continue the works which have left the Ducal Palace at least in a condition to be seen for a few hundred years to come, and relieved the church of the scaffolds and bulkheads which disfigured it up to 1890.
The works in St. Mark"s reestablished in more than its original solidity the south flank, which was in such a state of ruin that only the abundant shoring had prevented the facade from top to bottom from falling bodily into the Piazza.
On the other hand, I found at Florence that the authorities, in antic.i.p.ation of the completion of the present splendid facade of the Duomo, had decided to refresh the entire surface of the flanks to put them in keeping with the new sculpture of the front, and had actually inaugurated the system of removing with acids, followed by the chisel, of all the toned surface of the sculptured parts so that the Duomo should, when the facade was revealed, present the aspect of a bride-cake in the brilliant whiteness of its marble, but without a touch remaining of the workmanship of its original architects and sculptors. At this juncture the editor of the "Cornhill Magazine"
asked me for an article on the restorations in Italy, and I profited by the invitation to write a scathing article on the cleaning up of the Duomo, which, falling under the attention of the government at Rome, provoked a telegram ordering peremptorily the cessation of all restoration on the church. I received the thanks of the Italian ministry and the formal request to inform it of any other similar operations which should fall under my attention, and when a few weeks later I saw the scaffold raised around the beautiful pulpit of Donatello at Prato, a note to the ministry had the effect of telegraphically stopping operations. The indignation of the good people of Florence at the cessation of the house-cleaning brought me a request from a high quarter to undertake the defense of the city against the insolent Englishman of the "Cornhill!"
The subsequent years of my residence in Florence were on the whole the most tranquil and the happiest of my mature life. We all enjoyed it without serious drawback, the routine becoming a visit in early summer to Venice, then visits to the Venetian Tyrol, Cadore, Cortina, and Landro, and the return to Florence in the autumn. I found in Florence an intellectual life and serenity of which there was no evidence elsewhere, with surroundings of the n.o.blest art of the Renaissance, and an intellectual atmosphere hardly, I think, to be found in any other Italian city. Amongst our dearest friends were the Villaris, with whom we still remain in cordial sympathy. I can wish Italy no greater good than the possession of many children like Pasquale Villari. Our great diplomat George P. Marsh had an unbounded admiration for him--he used to say, "Villari is an angel;" and he certainly stands at the head of the list of n.o.ble Italians I have known for the personal and intellectual virtues and subtlety of appreciation, not rare amongst Italians, but unfortunately to be sought for in their politics in vain. In Italy as in America men of that type are pushed to the wall and crowded out of the conflicts of political life.
I was finally, after five years of residence, obliged to abandon our home at Florence by the constant recurrence of fevers, which gave us perpetual anxiety as well as perplexity, for there is no malaria in that part of Tuscany. After an attack which nearly proved fatal to one of the children, my courage gave out, and we broke up housekeeping, and the family, with the exception of myself and my eldest daughter, went back to England. It was only subsequently that I discovered that the secret of the fevers was in the water drawn from the wells of Florence. These are sunk in a stratum of gravel in which are countless cesspools, the filtration of which extends through the entire stratum and poisons every well within the limits of their influence. On my accession in later years to the service of the "Times" as Rome correspondent, I attacked the system of drainage and water supply of Florence in a series of letters, and brought down on my head the most furious abuse which my journalistic life has known, but which ended in the reformation, not yet complete, however, of the water supply of the city, and the admission by the Florentines that if they had attended to my warnings earlier they would have been saved great losses, chief of which was the abandonment of a projected return to Florence by Queen Victoria, on account of a serious epidemic of typhoid which broke out after her first visit. Like most reformers, I was threatened with violence if I returned to the scene of my labors, to be hailed as a friend when I had been found to be right and my warnings salutary.
But at the moment, the effect of the fevers was to drive me out of Florence, where residence had on many accounts proved most delightful, and send me off again on adventure.
I pa.s.sed the next year at New York on the staff of the "Evening Post,"
sending occasional correspondence to the "Times," and during this absence my father-in-law became involved in financial embarra.s.sments which ultimately cost my wife her allowance, after we had again established our residence for the family in London. With a widened literary experience and connection I could see my way to a better situation than that of the past years, but in 1886 the death of the Rome correspondent of the "Times," and the definite retirement of Mr.
Gallenga, the Italian correspondent _par excellence_, brought me into a regular and permanent employment by the paper as its representative for Greece and Italy, with residence at Rome.
CHAPTER x.x.xVII
THE BLOCKADE OF GREECE
I took possession of my double charge of the (to me) most interesting of all foreign lands, Greece and Italy, at a moment when affairs were quickening for new troubles in the former, where demagoguery had again taken the upper hand. Comoundouros was dead, and Tricoupi, who had succeeded, as I had long before antic.i.p.ated that he would, to the lead in Greek politics, had fallen, as he had foretold, on the question of taxation. The new successor to the bad qualities of old Comoundouros, Deliyanni, in his electoral programme had promised to relieve the people of all taxation, and had, of course, been elected, and I found Tricoupi still at the head of the opposition. I had stayed at Rome only long enough to take possession of my place and have a conversation with the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, General Robilant, as to the course which Italy would follow if there were troubles in Greece, and received his a.s.surance that Italy would stand with England, whatever might happen.
Robilant was one of the ablest ministers of foreign affairs Italy has had in my time, and, if not the most conspicuous occupant of that position in intellectual qualities, he certainly was so, with one exception--that of Baron Blanc--in sound common sense and a large and comprehensive perception of the situation of Italy amongst the powers, and her true affiliations. To him, more than to any other individual Italian, was due the entry of Italy into the Triple Alliance, a measure which has probably been very largely instrumental in keeping the peace between the European powers ever since it was formed. Simple and reserved in his manner to a correspondent, he was entirely frank and courteous in communicating what could be communicated, and quietly silent beyond. Always the b.u.t.t of the most savage hostility of the Italian radicals, he resigned the year after, though supported by the majority in the Chamber, rather than expose himself longer to the vulgar and brutal partisan insolence of Cavallotti and his allies in the Chamber. As individual, as soldier, and as minister, Robilant was the type of the Italian at his best. Very few of the extreme Left in the Italian Chamber made any pretensions to a comprehension of the nature of a gentleman, and the vulgarity of the outbreak which provoked his resignation--it was on the occasion of the disaster of Dogali--was of a nature which only a hardened politician could adapt himself to. It was my first experience of the indecencies of Italian parliamentarism, and, when he left the Chamber under the unendurable insults poured on him in language adapted only to street broils, I said to a colleague that he would never appear again in the Chamber. I was right, for, though the ministry obtained a vote of confidence, and he was urged to withdraw his resignation, he refused. In his charge the foreign policy of Italy was at its best.
I found affairs at Athens in a critical condition. Deliyanni was trying the game of bluff which had succeeded in the hands of Comoundouros, but with quite a different measure of competence. With Deliyanni it was an evident sham. He had promised war without the least intention of preparing for it, in the childish expectation that Europe would oblige the Sultan to make some concession which would save his credit in the country and enable him to continue in office.
But circ.u.mstances were different; Greece had on the former occasion a valid claim, admitted by the powers, while on this there was only the pretension that Greece should receive a compensation for betterments acquired by Bulgaria. In the former, the Treaty of Berlin had sanctioned the cession; in the latter, there was only the bare impudence of Mr. Deliyanni to move the powers. The ministry called out cla.s.s after cla.s.s of the reserves and sent them northward, but made no effective preparation for war; the men were ill-clad, worse provided, and everything was lacking to make them ready for a campaign. The casual observer could see that war was not intended, and that Deliyanni was silly enough to believe that the agents of the powers did not see through his sham, and thought that he could frighten them.
The men on the frontier finally amounted to about 45,000 men, kept there as a scarecrow to the powers at an expense, ascertained from the safest authorities, of 1000 deaths per month. The powers insisted on demobilization. Deliyanni replied by waving his torch and threatening to set fire to Europe if they did not give him a province; and meanwhile the Turkish government was gathering a solid force of about 40,000 men on the menaced frontier, and preparing silently to march on Athens.
The common people of the city, ignorant of everything connected with war, and inflamed by the jingo official press, conceived that nothing was needed but to set the Greek army in motion to insure a triumphant march on Constantinople, and were shouting for the troops to cross the frontier. Deliyanni had never had the least intention of making war, but he dared not withdraw for fear of his own people and the war fever he had inoculated them with. The worst feature in the position was that he had armed and provided with large quant.i.ties of ammunition the entire population of the Greek frontier, and the irregulars so formed had no discipline and obeyed no orders, but began each on his own account to hara.s.s the Turkish outposts. The Turks, obedient to their orders, contented themselves with repelling these minute stings, keeping their own side of the frontier, and waiting till the attack developed to take up a solid and thoroughly prepared offensive. The summons came from the powers to demobilize, or the Greek coast would be blockaded. This was Deliyanni"s only escape from a terrible disaster to the country, or the personal humiliation of withdrawal he would not submit to, with the added risk of violence on the part of the mob of the city, fired to a safe and flaming enthusiasm by the reports continually coming in of new victories on the frontier, each little skirmish with a picket being invariably followed by the withdrawal of the Turks to a position well within their own territory, according to the general order to accept no combat under actual conditions, so that the least skirmish was magnified at Athens to a new victory. The summons to demobilize was met by a point-blank refusal, when the fleets of the powers--Russia and France excepted--entered on the scene, and the blockade of the Greek coast was declared. This saved the credit of the ministry with the country; and Deliyanni, protesting against intervention as a measure on behalf of the Sultan, and hostile to Greece, resigned, but gave no orders to his commandants on the frontier to withdraw, and the skirmishing went on. The King in this crisis behaved well, and put Deliyanni in the alternative of demobilizing or resigning; and, when he chose the latter course, the King called Tricoupi to form a ministry.
Tricoupi"s position was difficult. He protested against the blockade as an unwarrantable interference with the freedom of action of Greece, as he considered that the government should have been allowed on its own responsibility to make war and take the consequences, as the only method of teaching the Greeks how to fulfill their international obligation. But the withdrawal of the diplomatic representatives of the great powers, whose fleets were blockading the coast, had left him without any channel of communicating with the powers, either for protesting or for yielding, and the fighting was increasing in extent if not in intensity. On the day, too, on which Tricoupi accepted the charge, the Turkish commander had received his orders to cross the frontier on the next day and march on Athens if the annoyance were not stopped. A great extent of the frontier was not provided with the telegraph, and the chosen partisans of Deliyanni were in command, and determined to force a conflict. The blockade prevented Tricoupi from sending officers by sea to take over the command, and there was not time to send them by land. General Sapunzaki was the only general officer on whom the minister could depend to obey orders, and he could reach only a part of the line on which the fighting was going on.
There was no subordination and no general plan in the offensive; but each detachment of troops on the frontier made war on its own responsibility, and the Turks contented themselves with repelling attacks.
I went to the telegraph office to get the late advices in the afternoon of the last day of the fighting, when it had become very general all along the frontier. Tricoupi had sent imperative orders to cease hostilities, but the telegraph had been cut, probably by some one who wanted the war to ensue, and when I found Tricoupi at the telegraph in the afternoon in conversation with Sapunzaki over the wire, he turned to me with an expression of intense distress, exclaiming, "They are fighting again all along the line, and if it cannot be stopped at once we are lost." "Can I do anything?" I asked.
He replied, "I should be glad if you would go to Baring" (who had been sent to take charge of the legation, but with no diplomatic powers or relation with the Greek government) "and tell him the position, and ask him to telegraph to his government to urge Constantinople to send word to Eyoub Pasha that the Greek government had given stringent orders to stop the fighting, and ask him to cooperate."
It was an intensely hot day in the end of May, and the streets of Athens, deserted by the population, were an oven; not a cab was to be found on the square or in the streets. I ran to the British legation, fortunately found Baring there, and explained the position, saying that Tricoupi, in the absence of any diplomatic relation between them, had begged me to present myself personally to urge intervention.