ancient town of Ialysos; and Phorbas of Ialysos had killed a dragon
there about two thousand years before. The old Greek legend was put into
a mediæval dress; and another of those legends has been put into a dress
that is completely modern. There are elevated beds of sea-shells in
various parts of Rhodes, showing that the island has risen from the sea;
and the story of its rising from the sea is told by Pindar in his ode in
honour of Diagoras of Ialysos, _Olympia_, vii. 54-71. Either Thomson or
Mallet copied this from Pindar into _Rule Britannia_, and now it is
Britain that at Heaven’s command arose from out the azure main.
Many years ago I wrote a couple of volumes on the history of the island
of Rhodes: they were published in 1885 and 1887, and now are obsolete.
At first I only thought of writing about the Rhodian colonies in Sicily,
but the subject led me on to Rhodes itself, and then to the adventures
of the Knights after they had quitted Rhodes; but these were not
included in the book.
The Knights were the Hospitallers, or Order of Saint John of Jerusalem;
and their first home was at Jerusalem. But the Saracens drove them out
of Palestine in 1291, the Turks drove them out of Rhodes in 1522, and
the French drove them out of Malta in 1798. Malta was taken by the
English in 1800; and by the tenth article of the Treaty of Amiens, 1802,
England undertook to give up Malta to the Knights within three months.
It is ancient history now that England held on to Malta, and thereby
made a precedent for dealing with an inconvenient treaty as a scrap of
paper.
In 1814 some of the French members of the Order formed a committee at
Paris to see what could be done. But there were scamps among them, and
these men admitted new members to the Order and made appointments in
it--neither of which things had they any right to do--and pocketed the
money that they took for entrance-fees, etc. The climax came in 1823
with an attempt of theirs to borrow money in the name of the Order. The
office of Grand Master was vacant then, but the Lieutenant of the
Mastery sent them a peremptory letter, 27 March 1824, saying that the
committee was merely a self-appointed body without authority, and must
forthwith be dissolved. The French Minister for Foreign Affairs also
wrote a letter, 29 April 1825, saying that the admissions and
appointments made by the committee were altogether illegal and could not
in any way be recognized. And when the committee proposed to meet again
in May 1826, the meeting was stopped by the Prefect of the Police.
France was now too hot for them, but the rogues found dupes in England.
They began admitting new members to the Order and making appointments in
it over here; and they appointed the Rev. Dr Peat as Prior. That was the
foundation of the present Order of Saint John of Jerusalem in England.
All the English and Irish estates of the Order were confiscated by Act
of Parliament in 1540, and the incorporation of the Order was dissolved
in England and in Ireland, 32 Henry VIII, cap. 24. There was an attempt,
2 April 1557, to circumvent this Act by Letters Patent under a later
Act, 4 & 5 Philip & Mary, cap. 1, but this was defeated by another Act
next year, 1 Elizabeth, cap. 24. Of course, these proceedings had no
effect outside the realm, and therefore did not touch the Order itself,
as that was an international body with headquarters then at Malta. But
they cut off revenue and practically closed a good recruiting ground;
and there were few Englishmen or Irishmen among the Knights in after
years. For administrative purposes the Order had been divided into
Languages or Nations, one of which was English and included Ireland. But
the members of the Order were simply Knights Hospitallers or Knights of
Malta or of Rhodes, not Knights of any separate Nation or Language.
In 1834 Peat took an oath of office as “Prior of the Sixth Language of
the Sovereign Order of Saint John of Jerusalem in London,” swearing “to
keep and obey the ancient statutes of the said Sovereign Order,” and “to
govern the said Sixth Language as Prior thereof under the provision of
the statute of the 4th and 5th of Philip and Mary in the case made and
provided.” By the statutes of the Order (which he promised to keep and
obey) he was neither qualified for appointment nor appointed by the
proper authority, and there could not be a Prior of a Language--the
Languages were governed by Bailiffs, with Priors as their subordinates
in the various priories. There is no statute of 4 & 5 Philip & Mary
relating to the Order, only Letters Patent; and these make no provision
for the government of the Language or the Priory. So he only bound
himself to discharge the duties of an impossible office under an
imaginary statute.
These people could not even make out mediæval Latin. If a candidate for
admission proved his ancestry, he was admitted a knight by right, _de
justitia_. If he could not prove his ancestry, he might be admitted a
knight by favour, _de gratia_. Out of this they have made Knights of
Justice and Knights of Grace. The _hospitale_ at Jerusalem was a place
of hospitality where pilgrims were entertained. They mistook it for a
hospital, and then went in for ambulance-work, first-aid, etc., on the
strength of their mistake. No doubt, they have done much useful work,
especially in this War. But you can very well do useful work without
pretending to be something that you aren’t. And these non-combatants are
posing as successors of the greatest clan of warriors in the age of
Chivalry.
They were silly enough to apply for a Charter of Incorporation, and this
brought them up against some lawyers with no love for false pretences.
Instead of getting a charter as a branch of the real Order, or in some
way connected with it, they only got a charter (14 May 1888) as a
charitable society of fifty years’ standing.
Charity may cover a multitude of sins, but I doubt its covering lies as
well; and their lies were multitudinous. They had a statement
printed--“The English, or Sixth, Language of the Order of the Hospital
of Saint John of Jerusalem: a brief sketch of its history and present
position, compiled by a committee appointed for that purpose by the
Chapter of the Language.” It can hardly be surpassed in puerility. It
talks of proceedings at the Congress of Vienna in 1814 and at Paris in
1816, as if there were no such things as the _Acten des Wiener
Congresses_ and the _Archives Parlementaires_ to show that its
statements are untrue in all essential points. It cites the Letters
Patent of 2 May 1557 as saying one thing, when they say another, as
anyone can see by looking at Dugdale’s _Monasticon_, where the document
is printed. (I had Dugdale collated with the Patent Roll, and there is
no mistake.) It says Peat’s oath of office was sworn in the King’s
Bench, 24 February 1834, and is on the record. It would certainly be on
the record, if it was sworn in the King’s Bench, as 9 George IV, cap.
17, was then in force. I had the record searched: it was not there.
Not long after I was called to the Bar, an old Queen’s Counsel said to
me as we were coming out of court--“I can’t understand that fellow
telling those transparent lies. The whole object of telling a lie is to
deceive. If you don’t do that, you don’t attain your object, and you
have the bad taste in your mouth the same.”
When the Knights left Malta in 1798, they took their greatest relic with
them--the right hand of their patron saint, John Baptist. Having chosen
the Czar Paul as Grand Master, they delivered this relic to him at
Gatchina on 12 October 1799; and it has remained in Russia ever since.
The anniversary is kept, and there is a service for the Translation of
the Right Hand in imitation of the old service at Constantinople on the
anniversary of its translation there from Antioch. It goes from
Petersburg to Gatchina on 11 October and is carried to Saint Paul’s
church there on 12 October, returning to Petersburg on 22 October. I saw
it in the Winter Palace at Petersburg in 1889, and made some notes about
it then--“The Right Hand is sadly dilapidated. The fourth and fifth
fingers are gone, so that it can no longer gesticulate in response to
inquiries about the harvest. There is a very large hole in the thumb,
far too large for the little morsel of the thumb that choked the
man-eating dragon at Antioch. And it is all very black indeed. The
remaining fingers are long and slender, and the nails are delicately
formed. It is the hand of an Egyptian, and a mummy.” It was at
Constantinople when Sultan Mohammed took the city in 1453, and Sultan
Bajazet gave it to the Knights in 1484.
Rhodes was besieged by Sultan Solyman in 1522, and at the great assault
upon the city, 24 September, the garrison believed they saw John Baptist
himself standing on the roof of his own church, waving a banner and
encouraging them. It really was the prior’s French cook; and when they
found this out, they accused him of making signals to the enemy, and
nearly murdered him.
At the siege of Rhodes by Mithridates in 88 B.C. the garrison saw the
goddess Isis standing on her temple and hurling down a mass of flame on
the attacking force. And such apparitions have been common, from Castor
and Pollux at Lake Regillus down to Saint George at Mons. Saint George,
however, had no business there. He suffered martyrdom at Diospolis,
twelve miles from Jaffa, where Perseus delivered Andromeda; and the old
legend was transferred to him. It must have been a whale that Perseus
killed, according to Pliny’s description of the bones; and, if Saint
George had known his business, he would have abandoned Mons and gone out
spearing submarines.
There is a treatise by Artemidoros on the interpretation of dreams,
_Oneirocritica_, which (I believe) is not much read now, yet really is
worth reading, as it shows what people used to dream about in the second
century A.D. We do not dream now of being beheaded or crucified or
becoming gladiators or fighting with wild beasts or being sold as
slaves. But apparently these people dreamt oftener of such calamities
than of the minor ills of life. Judging by what they dreamt, I should
say their minds were not so complex as our own.
In interpreting their dreams Artemidoros tried induction, noting down
the things they dreamt and what happened to them afterwards. Thus (iv.
31) Stratonicos dreamt he kicked the Roman Emperor: on going out he trod
on something, and found it was a gold coin with the Emperor’s image on
it. There were two kinds of dreams. If people dreamt of doing anything
that they did habitually, it was nothing but a dream and needed no
interpreting; but it became a vision, if they dreamt of doing things
they seldom did, or could not do. Thus, it was only a dream, when they
dreamt of lighting a lamp from the fire on the hearth; but it was a
vision, when they dreamt they lit it from the Moon--after dreaming this
a man went blind, v. 11, 34. Most people would be content with saying
that the thing could not be done, because the Moon was too far off; but
Artemidoros goes on to explain that nothing can be lighted from the
Moon, as the Moon itself is not alight and shines only by reflexion.
They often dreamt odd things. Thus (i. 4) somebody dreamt he saw a man
playing draughts with Charon, and he helped him to win the game: Charon
did not like losing it, and went for him: he bolted off, with Charon
after him, and got as far as an inn called the Camel; and he slipped
into a shed there and closed the door, and thus dodged Charon, who ran
past.--It is an uncomfortable sort of dream that might occur to anybody
now, only the setting would not be the same. Instead of Charon, it would
be the Devil; and instead of draughts, it would very likely be King
Arthur and the Devil playing quoits. They played a game of quoits with
Haytor Rocks about three miles from here--the Devil missed King Arthur
with one rock, and then King Arthur got the Devil with the other, and
sent him down below.
In dreams I have imagined myself in Rhodes, walking up the hill at
Ialysos and finding Laon cathedral on the top. Laon stands on the same
sort of hill: so this came from mixed memories. I have also imagined
myself in Paris, driving to the Opéra and finding Milan cathedral there
instead. They are both great staring buildings of about three acres each
on similar sites: so this came from mixed memories also. But then I
found the Louvre and Tuileries turned right round, with the east front
of the Louvre looking westward down the Tuileries gardens; and I cannot
think what mental twist did that. When I dream of being in those
gardens, I usually see the west front of the Tuileries as it was before
the war of 1870, not the ruin afterwards nor the vacant space there now.
I dream almost every night that I am travelling, sometimes on a ship but
usually by train. In former years I travelled a good deal, and could
ascribe the dreams to that; but since 1914 I have not travelled at all,
and yet I dream of travelling just the same. As a rule, some little
thing goes wrong--a few mornings ago I woke up very cross at finding
that the Penzance dining-car did not go through to Brindisi, whereas the
time-bill said it did. And these things usually happen at a station that
could not possibly exist, being partly a big terminus and partly a
junction and partly a wayside station with one signal-post. I can see a
great deal of this station with my mind’s eye when I am awake, only
there are misty bits just where the wayside station merges in the
junction and where the junction merges in the terminus. But I do not see
these misty bits in dreams, as my mind is occupied with one thing at a
time and jumps from thing to thing like pictures on a film. This station
has remained unaltered in my mind for twenty years at least, as I
remember talking of it to a man who died in 1899.
As a rule, I see things with my mind’s eye almost as distinctly as if I
were looking at the things themselves; and I thought that everyone could
do the same till I read Galton’s _Inquiries into Human Faculty_ and
found how greatly people varied as to this. I also see some things with
my mind’s eye as symbols for other things that cannot be seen at all,
e.g. boot-trees for arguments. They are trees for shoes, without
handles, and made of polished wood; and they are on a grey felt floor
with an open doorway at the further end. When two arguments lead up to
a third, the corresponding boot-trees turn their toes in towards the
other’s heel; and I have seen as many as eight or ten boot-trees
pointing like this to half the number in a line beyond them, these also
pointing to others further on, and finally a boot-tree going through the
doorway. I find it very convenient--I see more at a single glance than I
could put into a page of print.
Galton speaks of numbers being personified, and gives several instances
of children doing this. The son of an old friend of mine--an
undergraduate now--tells me he did it when a child and sometimes does it
still. His views are--“1 and 0 do not count, being inactive. 2,
good-natured, always doing its best to please. 3, sometimes kind and
condescending, hated by 8 when added, but not when multiplied to make
24: great friend of 9. 4, not very noticeable, but means well: great
friend of 8 and 6. 5, much the same as 4, but no special friend except
2: rather meek. 6, inclined to be selfish: no great friend of 3, pals
with 4 and 8. 7, unlucky and despised, bad luck in making such numbers
as 49 and 63 when multiplied. 8, fat and good-natured, but inclined to
be selfish: likes being made up to good round numbers such as 12, 24,
48, &c. 9, friend of 3, disagreeable and a bully, despised for making
brutish numbers such as 27, 63, 81, &c.”
I now suspect Pythagoras of having done this as a child and then,
instead of putting away childish things, making it a basis for much of
his philosophy. Thus, amongst other things, he says that 8 is Justice
itself, being _isacis isos_ or _bis bina bis_--in other words, it is
composed of 4 and 4, and each 4 is composed of 2 and 2, so that there is
even balance throughout. This reasoning must surely be an afterthought
to justify some childish fancy.
Usually, when people think of numbers, they see the Arabic figures with
their mind’s eye; and some people can see these figures manœuvring at
each stage of a calculation. (I heard this from George Bidder, who was
famous as The Calculating Boy a hundred years ago.) Within narrow limits
I see this manœuvring myself; but, although they are mere figures, I
feel that they are moving like soldiers on parade. And that comes very
near personifying them.
I imagine that the people who see things very clearly with their mind’s
eye, are the most likely people to see visions when their intellect has
lost its balance through hunger or fatigue. In dreams the outward eye is
closed, and the mind’s eye must rely on memories that are often mixed.
But in visions both sights are at work, though the outward eye is
working listlessly for want of physical strength; and I suspect that
every vision is based on what the outward eye is seeing at the time.
There is a clump of trees upon the summit of a hill about three miles
from here, and it stands out against the sky-line, when one looks up
along the valley of the Wrey. It looked like any ordinary clump of trees
until the undergrowth was cut a little while ago; but now one sees the
sky between the tree-tops and the hill, and the line of tree-tops looks
just like a prehistoric monster of the lizard type. I notice that it
looks more life-like, when I am tired out; and with want of sleep and
food as well, I might have visions of a dragon there.
Some years ago a woman said that she had seen the Devil, when she had
only seen the Rural Dean. She lived in a lonely cottage; and, when the
Devil went to Widdicombe on 21 October 1638, he called there to inquire
the way, and he asked for water--which betrayed him by going off in
steam. Now the Rural Dean was dressed in black and mounted on a big
black horse; and it was a foggy day, so that he loomed up large. Not
knowing the story, he called there to inquire the way to Widdicombe, and
asked for water also, but did not get it, as the woman fled. I think she
had a vision, merely based on what she saw, and going far beyond that.
She said she saw his horns.
People who have seen the Devil, all say he is just like the pictures of
him: so I suppose they carry these pictures in their mind, and see them
with the mind’s eye, when they are in a fright. Pictures may also be the
basis of many of our outlandish dreams. After a long look at a picture
of some centaurs, a man here said to me--“Pity there bain’t such
critters now: they’d be proper vitty on a farm.” I quite agreed with
him, they would. A week afterwards he said to me--“I dreamed as I were
one o’ they, and, my word, I did slap in.”
I have not heard of the Devil being seen about here very lately, nor of
many witches. Seven or eight years ago two elderly people were
complaining that someone had ill-wished them; but their misfortunes
could be explained by their own want of foresight, without the
intervention of an evil eye. They came from Cornwall. An old friend of
mine tells me that his grandmother practised witch-craft there. She
could bring down rain or bring in shoals of fish, but would seldom
perform the rites until she had been asked repeatedly. In fact, she
waited till the weather showed her what was coming.
My grandfather was called an atheist by several people here, because he
scoffed at witch-craft, “a thing attested by the Word of God.” If you
denied the Witch of Endor, you might as well deny John Baptist or Saint
Paul. Witch-craft was as well attested as the miracles. But then they
said that miracles had ceased, yet said the Bible showed that there was
witch-craft still.
In very early life I felt certain that a woman here must be a witch,
because she looked it. She lived in a cottage that had a great big open
fireplace, and she sat there cowering over the fire on the hearth, with
her walking-stick leant up across her knees. I had no doubts about her
flying up the chimney on that stick, and always hoped she would while I
was there.
We have substitutes for most things now, even substitutes for witches.
My father noted in his diary on 7 April 1844, “Witch-craft a common
belief to this day in Lustleigh, and prevalent even among the
better-informed classes.” And now I note that alien-espionage has been
just as common a belief from 1914 onwards, and especially among those
classes. They scent spies and aliens as keenly as the old folk scented
witches; but the mania is more expensive now.--Two young men had bought
a lonely cottage in a wood, and were living their own life up there.
Until the War nobody ever suggested that they were anything but English.
Then people said that they were German, and would as readily have said
that they were Japanese or Russian, if we had been at war with Russia or
Japan. And then a more inventive person said they had a gun-platform of
concrete underneath their lawn. In a careless moment the editor of a
local paper put that in. It was a costly blunder, and the lawyers
profited.
There are people everywhere just now with such a comprehensive hate of
Germany that they tell us to abjure all German things for evermore; but
I notice that the men who talk like this, are almost always wearing
German hats. Instead of saying that the hat is Tyrolese or Homburg or
whatever German type it really is, they say it is of English make and
call it Trilby or some other name like that. Yet these same men are
always preaching that a German is a German always, although he has been
naturalized or born here and has assumed an English name.
In speaking of the politicians who governed France in 1871, Bismarck
said that some of them had Jewish names but several more had Jewish
noses. People here think only of the alien name, forgetting that the
alien blood is just as active in descendants in the female line, though
the name has lapsed on marriage. There is the progeny of a Dutchman who
settled at Exeter in the reign of William the Third. Nobody bothered
about the female line; but descendants in male line were hunted out as
Germans by a pack of people who knew too little of language or of
history to recognize the name as Dutch.
There is probably more alien blood in England than these people think.
They say that so-and-so is tainted by having an alien ancestor some
generations back. But in nine cases out of ten they cannot give a
complete list of their own great-great-grandparents, or even their
great-grandparents; and the completest lists may not be quite
conclusive. There was a wonderful old lady on a Dartmoor farm,
ostensibly of English ancestry, but born about the time when French
prisoners-of-war were out on parole there. I have seen her towering
form, with eagle eye and outstretched hand, directing geese into their
pond; and I have fancied that I saw a Marshal in Napoleon’s army
launching a charge of cuirassiers.
I have heard her say Bo to a goose. Few people say it now, and they
never say it properly. If it is said in the right way, the goose turns
round and waddles off at once, however much it may have hissed before.
It is like Ahi with a horse in Italy. When the driver has flogged and
progged in vain, as a last resort he says Ahi, and then the brute moves
on.
In my early days my grandfather would often talk of the French
prisoners-of-war whom he remembered here a century ago; and I never
imagined then that I was going to have prisoners-of-war working for me
here, and that these prisoners would be German. They were quartered at
Newton Abbot in the workhouse, and came out each day to work, returning
for the night. I had nineteen here in the summer of 1918, though never
more than six at once. There were six from Bavaria, three from Baden,
two from Wurtemberg and one from Saxony; and seven were reckoned as
Prussians, but two of these were from the Rhineland, two from Hannover,
two from Hamburg and the other one from Silesia. They were the same kind
of people that I have always met in rural parts of
Germany--good-tempered and good-natured countryfolk, exceedingly unlike
the Huns depicted by our Propaganda.