mortals in those days that the imaginative person who visits Athens will
find himself gazing as gratefully and as open-eyed at the rocks in which
the Centaur hid as at those from which Demosthenes delivered his
philippics, just as in London the room at the Charter House where
Colonel Newcome said "Adsum" for the last time is much more real than
that room in Edinburgh in which Rizzio was killed, or as the rock from
which Monte Cristo sprang, at the base of the Chateau d'If, is so much
more actual than the entire field of Waterloo. It is hard to know just
which was real and which a delightful myth; and yet there has been so
little change in Greece since then that you are brought nearer to
Alcibiades and to Pericles than you can ever come, in this world at
least, to Dr. Johnson and Dean Swift. You cannot recreate Grub Street
and the debtors' prison, but Euboea still "looks on Marathon, and
Marathon on the sea," and, if you are presumptuous, you can strut up and
down the rocky plateau from which Demosthenes spoke, or take your seat
in one of the marble chairs of the Theatre of Dionysus, and pretend you
are a worthy citizen of Athens listening to a satire of Sophocles.
[Illustration: GREEK PEASANT GIRL]
The quiet and fresh cleanliness of modern Athens comes to you after the
roar and dirt of Cairo's narrow lanes and dusty avenues like the touch
of damask table linen and silver after the greasy oil-cloth of a
Mediterranean coasting steamer. It is quiet, sunny, and well-bred. You
do not fight your way through legions of donkey-boys and dragomans, nor
are your footsteps echoed by swarms of guides and beggars. It is a
pretty city, with the look of a water-color. The houses are a light
yellow, and the shutters a watery green, and the tile roofs a delicate
red, and the sky above a blue seldom shown to ordinary mortals, but
reserved for the eyes of painters and poets, who have a sort of second
sight, and so are always seeing it and using it for a background. Athens
is a very new city, with new streets and new public buildings, and a new
King and Royal Palace. It is like a little miniature. There is a little
army, chiefly composed of officers, and a miniature cabinet, and a
beautiful miniature university, and everybody knows everybody else; and
when the King or Queen drives forth, the guard turns out and blows a
bugle, and so all Athens, which is always sitting at the cafes around
the square of the palace, nods its head and says, "The Queen is going
for a drive," or, "Her Majesty has returned early to-day," and then
continues to clank its sword and to twirl its mustache and to sip its
coffee. Modern Athens tends towards the Frank in dress and habit of
thought. The men have adopted his costume, and the women wear little
flat curls like the French ladies in _Le Figaro_, and peaked bonnets and
high heels.
[Illustration: THE UNIVERSITY OF ATHENS]
The national costume of the Greeks is taken from the Albanians, but it
is much more honored in the breach than in the observance. Like all
national costumes, it is only worn, except for political effect and
before a camera, by the lower classes, and also by three regiments of
the army. You see it in the streets, but it is not so universally
popular as one would suppose from the pictures of Athens in the
illustrated papers and by the photographs in the shop-windows. It is a
most remarkable costume, and as widely different from the flowing robe
and short skirt of the early Greeks as men in accordion petticoats and
heavy white tights and a Zouave jacket must evidently be. In the country
it still obtains, and it is the farmers and peasants and their wives and
the soldiers who supply the picturesque element of dress to the streets
of the city.
It is an inscrutable problem why, with all the national costumes in the
world to choose and pick from, the world should have decided upon the
dress of the Frank, that is, of the foreigner--ourselves. In Spain the
peasants have discarded their knickerbockers and short jackets, even in
the country, for the long trousers and ill-fitting ready-made clothing
of a French "sweater," and the Moors cover their robes with overcoats
from Manchester, and the Arabs and Chinese and Swiss and Turks are
giving up the picturesque garments that are comfortable and becoming to
them, and look exceedingly ugly and uncomfortable in our own modern
garb, which is the ugliest and most uncomfortable of national costumes
yet devised by men or tailors. If you judge by the uniforms of the army
of officers and by the dress of the women of Athens, you would think
you were in a French city and among French people. It seems a pity that
this should be so; that Athens, of all cities, should be built of
Italian villas, inhabited by people who ape the French, and governed by
a King from Denmark; still, they did not make a success of it when they
tried, fifty years ago, to govern themselves. It is perhaps hardly fair
to expect the Greeks, or even the Athenians, to live up to the great
rock and the monuments that crown it, and the people of Greece are no
doubt as fine as those of other little kingdoms or principalities
scattered about Europe; but then the other kingdoms and principalities
have not the history of early Greece to call their own nor the Acropolis
to look up to.
[Illustration: ALBANIAN PEASANT WOMAN]
[Illustration: ALBANIAN PEASANT WOMAN]
The rock of the Acropolis is hardly more a part of modern Greece than
the Rock of Gibraltar is a part of Spain. Geographically it is, but it
belongs as much to the visitor as to the native, so little inspiration
has he apparently drawn from it, and so little has it served to bring
out in him to-day those qualities that made demigods of his ancestors. I
think I represent the average intelligence, and yet at this moment I
cannot think of any Greek within the last hundred years who has gained
world-wide renown, either as a sculptor, an artist, a soldier, a writer
of comedies and satires, a statesman, nor even as an archaeologist; the
very historians of Greece and the exponents of its secrets and the most
distinguished of its excavators are of other countries. They have many
heroes of their own; you see their portraits or their photographs in
every shop-window; but they are not as familiar to you as the faces and
histories of those other Greeks who sighed because there were no more
worlds, and whose fame has lasted long after the other worlds were
discovered. One would think that some young Greek, on arising in the
morning and seeing the Acropolis against the sky, would say to himself,
"To-day I shall do something worthy of that." And were he to say that
often enough, and try to live up to the fortress and the temple above
him, he might help to make Greece in this known world what she was in
the smaller world of her day of glory. It is not because the world has
grown and given her more with which to compete that she has fallen into
lesser and lesser significance; for though the world has increased in
latitude and longitude, it has not yet carved another Hermes like that
of Praxiteles; and though it has added three continents since his day,
it has never equalled in marbles the fluttering draperies of the Flying
Victory, nor the carvings over the doorway of the Erechtheum.
[Illustration: GREEK PEASANT]
[Illustration: ALBANIAN PEASANT IN THE STREETS OF ATHENS]
But, as far as in him lies, the Greek has endeavored to copy the
traditions of his ancestors. He holds Olympic games in the ancient arena
which King George has had excavated, and if victorious receives a wreath
of wild olives from the hands of the King; and he builds the new market
where the old market stood, and the new military hospital as near as is
possible to the hospital of AEsculapius. But he cannot restore to the
market-place that very human citizen who cast in his shell against
Aristides because he was aweary of hearing him called the Just; nor can
either his games or his hospital bring back the perfect figure and
health of the men whose figures and profiles have set the model for all
time. He has, however, retained the Greek language, which is very
creditable to him, as it is a language one learns only after much
difficulty, and then forgets at once. He even goes so far as to put up
the names of the streets in Greek, which strikes the bewildered tourist
trying to find his way back to his hotel as a trifle pedantic, and he
prints his daily newspaper in this same tongue. This is, perhaps, going
a little too far, as it leaves you in some doubt as to whether you have
been reading of the Panama scandal or a reprint on the battle of
Marathon.
Baron Sina, a Greek banker, has shown the most public-spirited and
patriotic generosity, and taste as well, in erecting the buildings of
the university at his own expense and giving them to the city. They are
reproductions in many ways of different parts of the temples of the
Acropolis in miniature. The Polytechnic is almost an exact copy of the
front of the Parthenon. There is a picture of it from a photograph given
in this article, but it can supply no idea of the beauty of the modern
reproduction of this temple. The lines and measurements are the same in
degree; and the Polytechnic, besides, is colored and gilded as was the
original Parthenon, and for the first time makes you understand how
brilliant reds and beautiful blues and gold and black on marble can be
combined with the marble's purity and help rather than cheapen it. It is
a lesson in loveliness, and is as wonderful and brilliantly beautiful a
building as the marble and gold monument to the Prince Consort in Hyde
Park is vulgar and atrocious. If this copy in miniature, this working
model of the Parthenon, moves one as it does, it can be understood how
great must be the strength and purity of the Parthenon, even in
ruins, with its gilt washed to a dull brown and its colors and
bass-reliefs stripped from its pediment. I shall certainly not attempt
to describe it.
[Illustration: POLYTECHNIC SCHOOL]
There are very few tourists who visit Athens in proportion to those who
visit far less momentous ruins; thousands go to Rome and see the
Colosseum, to Egypt and view the storied walls of the great rude temples
along the Nile, and as many more make the tour of the English cathedral
towns; but in Athens it is almost difficult to find a guide. There are
not more than a half-dozen, I am sure, in the whole city, and the
Acropolis is yours if you wish, and you are often as much alone as
though you had been the first to climb its sides. I do not mean by this
that it is neglected, or that relic-hunters may chip at it or carry away
pieces of its handiwork, or broken bits of the Turkish shells that have
shattered it, but the guards are unobtrusive, and you are free to wander
in and out in this forest of marble and fallen trunks of columns as
though you were the ghost of some Athenian citizen revisiting the scenes
of his former life.
There is no question that half of the pleasure you receive in wandering
over the top of this great wind-blown rock, with the surrounding
snow-touched mountains on a level with your eye, and the great temples
rearing above you or lying broken at your feet, magnificent even there,
is due to your seeing them alone, to the fact that no guide's
parrot-like volubility harasses you, no guard's scornful gloom chills
your enthusiasm. The great bay of turquoise-blue and the green fields
and the bunches of cactus and groves of dark olive-trees below are
unspoiled by modern innovations, and the hills are still dotted with
sheep and shepherds, as they were in the days of Sappho.
[Illustration: AN OLD ATHENIAN OF THE PRESENT DAY]
Overhead is the blue sky, with the ivory columns between, far below you
is the steep naked rock, or, on the other hand, the two semicircles of
marble seats cushioned with velvet moss and carpeted with daisies and
violets, and beyond the limits of the yellow town and its red roofs and
dark green gardens stretches the green plain until it touches the sea,
or is blocked by Mount Hymettus or Mount Pentelicus, beyond which latter
lies the field of Marathon. Sitting on the edge of the rock, you can
imagine the actors strutting out into the theatre below, and the
acquiescent chorus chanting its surprise or horror, and almost see the
bent shoulders and heads of the people filling the half-circle and
leaning forward to catch each word of the play as it comes to them
through the actors' masks.
[Illustration: A GREEK SHEPHERD]
Sounds, no matter how far afield, drift to you drowsily, like the voice
of one reading aloud on a summer's day--the bleating of the sheep in the
valley where Plato argued, and the jangling of a goat's bell, or the
laughter of children flying kites on the Pnyx, a quarter of a mile away.
And beyond the reach of sound is the AEgean Sea weltering in the sun,
with little three-cornered sails, like tops, or a great vessel drawing a
chalk-line after it through the still surface of the water. All things
are possible at such a time in this place. You can almost hear the bees
on Mount Hymettus, and you would receive the advance of a Centaur as
calmly as Alice noted the approach of the White Rabbit. You believe in
nymphs and satyrs. They have their homes there in those caves, and in
the thick green, almost black, woods at the base of the Parnes range,
and you love the bravery of St. Paul, who dared to doubt such things
when he stood on the rock at your feet and told the men of Athens that
they were in many things too superstitious. It is something to have seen
the ribs cut in the rock on the top of the Acropolis which kept the
wheels of the chariots from slipping when the Panathenaic procession
moved along the Via Sacra to the Eleusinian mysteries, to have looked
upon the caryatides of the Erechtheum, and to have wanted back as a lost
part of your own self, for the time being, the Elgin marbles. When
Napoleon stole the Venus of Milo he placed her in the Louvre, where
every one will see her sooner or later; for if he is good he goes to
Paris when he dies, and if he is bad he is sure to go there in his
lifetime. But _who_ has ever been to the British Museum? One would as
soon think of visiting Pentonville prison. And how do the marbles look
under the soot-stained windows or the gray of London fog? Like the few
Lord Elgin did not want, and that stand out like ivory in their proper
height against the soft sky that knows and loves them? When the people
of Great Britain have returned the Elgin marbles to Greece, and the Rock
of Gibraltar to Spain, and the Koh-i-noor diamond to India, and Egypt to
the Egyptians, they will be a proud and haughty people, and will be able
to hold their heads as high as any one.
One cannot help feeling that the King of Greece has a much greater
responsibility than he knows. Other monarchs must look after their
boundaries; he must not only look after his boundaries, but his
sky-line. Another such affront to good taste as the observatory on the
Hill of the Nymphs, and the sky-line of Athens will be unrecognizable.
And the tall chimneys at the Piraeus are not half as attractive to the
view as the spars of the ships. It is much better not to have
manufactories that must have chimneys than to spoil a view which no
other kingdom can equal. Any king can put up a chimney; very few are
given the care of an Acropolis; and if the King and Queen of Greece wish
to be remembered as kindly by the rest of the world as they are loved
dearly by their adopted people, they will guard the treasure put in
their keeping, and sweep observatories from sacred hills, and continue
to limit the guides on the Acropolis, and so win the gratitude of a
civilized world.
VII
CONSTANTINOPLE
A little Italian steamer drew cautiously away from the Piraeus when the
waters of the bay were quite black and the quays looked like a row of
foot-lights in front of the dark curtain of the night. She grazed the
anchor chains of H. M. S. the _Colossus_, where that ship of war's broad
white deck lay level with the water, as heavy and solid as a stone pier.
She seemed to rise like an island of iron from the very bottom of the
bay. Her sailors, as broad and heavy and clean as the decks, raised
their heads from their pipes as we passed under the glare of the
man-of-war's electric lights, and a bugle call came faintly from
somewhere up in the bow. It sounded as though it were a quarter of a
mile away. Our lower deck was packed with Greeks and Albanians and
Turks, lying as closely together on the hard planks as cartridges in the
front of a Circassian's overcoat. They were very dirty and very
handsome, in rakish little black silk pill-box caps, with red and gold
tops, and the initials "H. I." worked in the embroidery; their canvas
breeches were as baggy and patched and muddy as those of a
football-player, and their sleeveless jackets and double waistcoats of
red and gold made them look like a uniformed soldiery that had seen very
hard service. Priests of the Greek Church, with long hair and black
formless robes, and hats like stovepipes with the brim around the upper
end, paraded the narrow confines of the second cabin, and German
tourists with red guide-books, and the Italian ship's officers with a
great many medals and very bad manners, stamped up and down the
main-deck and named the shadowy islands that rose from the sea and
dropped out of sight again as we steamed past them.
In the morning the islands had disappeared altogether, and we were
between high banks--higher than, but not so steep as the Palisades; rows
of little scrubby trees ran along their fronts in lateral lines, and at
their base mud forts with mud barracks and thatched roofs pointed little
cannon at us from every jutting rock. We were so near that one could
have hit the face of the high hills with a stone. These were the
Dardanelles, the banks that nature has set between the Sea of Marmora
and the Mediterranean to protect Constantinople from Mediterranean
squadrons. We pass between these banks for hours, or between the high
bank of Roumelia on one side and the low hilly country of Asia where
Troy once stood on the other, until, at sunset, we are halted in the
narrowest strait of the Dardanelles, between the Castle of Asia and the
Castle of Europe, "the Lock of the Sea"--that sea of which Gibraltar is
the key. That night we cross through the Sea of Marmora, and by sunrise
are at Constantinople.
Constantinople is such a long word, and so few of the people you know
have visited it in comparison with those who have wintered at Cairo or
at Rome, or who have spent a season at Vienna, or taken music-lessons in
Berlin, that you approach it with a mind prepared for surprises and with
the hope of the unexpected. I had expected that the heart of the Ottoman
Empire would be outwardly a brilliant and flashing city of gilded domes
and minarets, a cluster of colored house fronts rising from the dancing
waters of the Bosporus, and with the banks lined with great white
palaces among gardens of green trees. There are more gilded domes in New
York city and in Boston than in Constantinople. In New York there are
three, and in Boston there is the State House, which looks very fine
indeed from the new bridge across the Charles when the river is blocked
with gray ice, and a setting sun is throwing a light on the big yellow
globe. But Constantinople is all white and gray; the palaces that line
the Bosporus are of a brilliant white stucco, and the mosques like
monster turtles, which give the city its chief distinction, are a dull
white. In the Turkish quarter the houses are more sombre still, of a
peculiar black wood, and built like the old log forts in which our
great-great-grandfathers took refuge from the Indians--square
buildings with an overhanging story from which those inside could
fire down upon the enemy below. The jutting balcony on the Turkish
houses is for the less serious purpose of allowing the harem to look
down upon the passers-by.
[Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF CONSTANTINOPLE]
Constantinople is a fair-weather city, and needs the sun and the blue
sky and the life of the waters about it, which give to the city its real
individuality. It misses in winter the pleasure-yachts of the summer
months, the white uniforms of the thousands of boatmen, and the brighter
dressing of the awnings and flags of the ships and steamers. But the
waters about Constantinople are its best part, and are fuller and busier
and brighter than either those around the Battery or those below the
Thames Embankment, and by standing on its wide wooden bridge, over which
more people pass in a day than over any other (save London Bridge) in
the world, one can see a procession of all the nations of the East.
Constantinople is a much more primitive city than one would expect the
largest of all Eastern cities to be. It impresses you as a city without
any municipal control whatsoever, and you come upon a building with the
stamp of the municipal palace upon it with as much surprise as you would
feel in finding an underwriter's office at the north pole. In many ways
it is the most primitive city that I have ever been in. In all that
pertains to the Sultan, to the religion of the people, of which he is
the head, and to the army, the recognition due them is rigidly and
impressively observed. But in what regards the local life of the people
there seems to be absolutely no interest and no responsibility. There is
no such absolute power in Europe, not excepting that of the Czar or of
the young Emperor, as is that exercised by the Sultan; and the mosques
of the faithful are guarded and decorated and held more highly in
reverence than are many churches of a more civilized people; and the
army impresses you as one you would much prefer to lead than one from
which you would elect to run away. But the comfort of the inhabitants of
Constantinople is little considered. There is nothing that one can see
of what we call public spirit, unless building a mosque and calling it
after yourself, in a city already supplied with the most magnificent of
such temples, can be called public-spirited. Of course one does not go
to Constantinople to see electric lights and asphalt pavements, nor to
gather statistics on the poor-rate, but it is interesting to find people
so nearly in touch with the world in many things, and so far away from
it in others. As long as I do not have to live in Constantinople, I find
its lack of municipal spirit quite as interesting a feature of the city
as its mosques.
[Illustration: ONE OF THE SULTAN'S PALACES ON THE BOSPORUS]
Constantinople, for example, is a city with as large a population as has
Berlin or Vienna, and its fire department is what you see in the
illustration accompanying this chapter. They are very handsome men, as
you can note for yourself, and very smart-looking, but when they go to a
fire they make a bargain with the owner of the building before they
attempt to save his property. The great fire-tower in this capital of
the Ottoman Empire is in Galata, and from it watchmen survey the city
with glasses, and at the first sight of a blazing roof one of them runs
down the tower and races through the uneven streets, calling out the
fact that a house is burning, and where that house may be. Each watchman
he meets takes up the cry, and continues calling out that the house is
burning, even though the house is three miles away, until it burns down
or is built up again, or the watchman is retired for long service and
pensioned. Besides these amateur firemen there are two real fire
companies, but they can do little in a city of 880,000 people.
The police who guard Constantinople at night are an equally primitive
body of men. They carry a heavy club, about five feet long and as thick
as a man's wrist, and with this they beat the stones in the streets to
assure people that they are attending strictly to their work, and are
not sleeping in doorways. The result of this is that no one can get to
sleep, and all evil-minded persons can tell exactly where the
night-watchman is, and so keep out of his way. The watchman under my
window seemed to act on the idea of the gentleman who, on taking his
first trip on a sleeping-car, declared that if he couldn't sleep no one
else should, and acted accordingly.