ABOUT ATHENS.
For the first time in my life, I realize the fact that the Mediterranean
is a lake—calm and blue as the eyes we love. What astonishes me is the
absence of life in these waters. All is barren as that dreary sail
across the Indian Ocean from Ceylon to West Australia. Really, if it
were not for the photographers, who are always at work on board, we
should be rather dull. It is really wonderful the number of amateur
photographers who have come out in the _Midnight Sun_, and are daily
having recourse to their art; and sometimes the consequences are
ludicrous. For instance, we have a considerable number of respectable
married people on board. Amongst them are a young couple whose
experience of matrimonial felicity has been, I suspect, somewhat of the
shortest. One morning they were ‘far from the madding crowd,’ indulging
in little familiarities, such as leaning on one another’s shoulders—quite
proper, as we must all admit, but rather suited for private than public
life. Well, a photographer had his eye on them, and straightway made
them his victims. There they were, large and fully recognisable. His
praiseworthy attempt was greeted with a roar of laughter, of which the
victims, far away (the artist was on the upper deck), had not the
remotest idea. Let me add the moral: let me beg the newly-married ones
to beware of the photographers. More numerous than the photographers are
the ladies and gentlemen who spend their mornings in writing their
diaries—if with a view to publication, a sad look-out.
In due time we reach Attica, and are landed at the Piræus, which is busy
now as when Themistocles planned the harbour and Pericles planted its
walls, five miles in length. The town has quite a modern look; nothing
of its ancient glory remains. Its modern history dates from 1834. A
modern lighthouse marks the site of the tomb of Themistocles. A railway,
made in 1869, now connects the Piræus with Athens, and it grows apace.
In old times there was rarely to be seen any boat in the harbour. In
1871 the population was only 11,000; in 1890 it had grown to 36,000,
About 6,000 vessels of over two and a half millions of tonnage, one half
of which is in Greek bottoms, enter the harbour annually. As a town, it
consists chiefly of commercial buildings and unpretending private
residences. It has, however, an arsenal, a military and naval school,
several handsome churches for the orthodox members of the Greek Church,
an interesting museum of antiquities, and a gymnasium. Trains run to
Athens through the whole day until midnight. We land in a homely quarter
of the town. ‘It is in the spring,’ writes Edmond About, ‘one sees
Attica in her glory, when the air is so clear and transparent that it
seems as if one had only to put forth one’s hand to touch the furthest
mountains; when it carries sounds so faithfully that one can hear the
bleating of flocks half a mile away, and the cries of great eagles, which
are lost to sight in the immensity of the skies.’
I find Athens hot and dusty—a fine white dust, which makes everything
look desolate. I get hold of a plan of Athens, showing me how to make
the most of six days, but as I have not that time to spare, one’s first
thoughts turn naturally to the Acropolis, a rocky plateau of crystallized
limestone, rising to about 200 feet. Romans, Goths, Byzantines, and
Turks have done their best to make Athens a heap of ruins. It was well
that Lord Elgin did so much to preserve some of the choicest relics of
Athens by bringing them to England and sending them to the British
Museum. Had he not done so, they would have been inevitably destroyed by
the unspeakable Turk, a fact deeply to be deplored.
One night we had an amusing illustration of the qualification of the fair
sex for the right to rule over man. There was a concert in the
smoking-room, the finest apartment in the ship. Amongst the performers
were some ladies, and a good many were auditors. Suddenly a large rat
made its appearance, when all the ladies, shrieking, fled. I may not be
equal to the New Woman—of course she is far above me—but, at any rate, I
am not afraid to face a rat. Fancy a rat appearing in the House of
Commons with a lady speaker on her legs, and a Government of ladies
seated gracefully and in the loveliest of toilettes! The result would be
appalling and disastrous.
The country through which we passed was quite dried up, and quite
prepared me for the tasteless beef and skinny fowl of which I was to
partake afterwards at the Hôtel Grand Bretagne, where they charged me two
francs for a cigar; and where, when I remonstrated, I was told that the
taxes were so high that they could not afford to let me have one for
less. There are a great many trees about, but they have all a dwarfed
and dried-up appearance. Far off rises the great Acropolis; you may see
it from the steps of the hotel, and the ruins on its top. The life of
the streets amuses me. It is incessant and ever varying. The soldier is
conspicuous, as he is everywhere on the Continent; priests in black robes
and peculiar black hats are plentiful, grave and black-bearded, though I
am told that in reality they have little hold on the people of Athens. I
have been in one of the churches, very dark, and with a lot of
ornamentation; and quite a number of people—very old ones—came and
crossed themselves, after the Greek fashion, before a picture just inside
the door. Ladies are to be seen, few of them with any particular
personal charm, but all in the latest fashions of Paris; and there come
the girls with pigtails. I see one of the French illustrated newspapers
everywhere. Among the daily papers published in Athens are the _Ora_
(Hour), the _Plinghensia_ (Regeneration), _Neai Ideai_ (New Idea), _Aion_
(Era), _Toia_ (Morning), and _Telegrafui_ (The Telegram). The most
curious people you see are the men from the country, with black
waistcoats, white petticoats—I can give them no other name—dark hose, and
antique-looking shoes turned up at the toes and decorated—why, I know
not—with enormous tufts. The living objects I most pity are the forlorn,
half-starved donkeys, loaded fore and aft with luggage, while in the
centre, on his saddle, is seated his hard-hearted proprietor. Some of
the shops are fine, but few of the houses are lofty—the most striking
being modern buildings, built on the plan to admit as much air as
possible, and to exclude the light. But you see no beggars in the
streets, and that is a good sign. Greece has, as you know, the most
democratic Government of any. The King, who is not very popular, reigns,
but does not govern. The real power is in the hands of the Legislative
Chamber—there is no Upper House—consisting of 150 members, all paid for
their services, and elected by means of universal suffrage and the ballot
every four years. The population of Athens is about 160,000, with the
addition of 3,000 Armenian refugees who have found there a city of
refuge. Education is free and compulsory, reaching from the lowest
strata to the University, so that every lad of talent has a chance. If
democracy can make a people happy and content and prosperous, the Greeks
ought to be content. There must be a good many wealthy men at Athens,
however, whom the democracy have wisely spared. It is not right to kill
the goose that lays the golden egg, as is desired by some of our
Socialists.
Modern Greece, with the exception of America, is the most republican
Government in existence; at any rate, it is ahead of England in this
respect. We want, or, rather, some people do, who do not know any
better, to agitate for payment of members. I object because I have seen
the mischief of paid members in all our colonies, and because when I part
with my scanty cash I like to have value for my money; and as I know the
average M.P., I think he is dear at any price. The men in office are
bitterly opposed by the men who languish in the cold shade of Opposition,
and that really seems the only line of cleavage. For instance, if a
Minister proposes that a certain work should be done by a certain number
of horses, the Opposition argue that oxen should be used, and so the
battle rages, for the modern Greek, degenerate though he is, is still as
fond of talk and windy declamation as any long-winded and ambitious M.P.
at home. Ministers, though appointed by the King, are amenable to the
Chamber, but under this system we do not hear of the great Parliament,
such as we have at home or in Italy or France.
For administrative purposes Greece is divided into sixteen monarchies,
governed by municipalities, who alone have the power to levy rates and
taxes. These monarchies are divided into eparchies and domarchies, the
later under the control of the mayor, elected by the people. Thus in
Greece alone, in the Old World, we have government of the people and for
the people. For purposes of justice there are local courts; five Courts
of Appeal, and a Supreme Court at Athens. In matters of education,
again, Greece is far ahead of us. We want to connect the people with the
Universities, so that the poorest lad may have his chance. In Greece
this result is obtained. Ample provision is made for the elementary
schools, leading from the lowest strata of society up to the
Universities, free and compulsory—not that the latter provision needs to
be enforced, as naturally there is a great desire for education all over
the land. The Greek Church is the established one, but any undue zeal on
the part of the priest is held in check both by law and the spirit of
religious toleration. Among her subjects Greece reckons as many as
25,000 Moslems.
[Picture: Temple Of Victory. (From a photograph by Fradelle and Young)]
Passing out of the Piræus, to our right we notice a monument to the
memory of one of the wild heroes of Grecian Independence, whose insolent
followers were a great trouble to our Lord Byron during his fatal sojourn
at Missolonghi. In due time we arrive within sight of the Temple of
Theseus and the other well known landmarks familiar to the cultivated
reader. Nevertheless, the approach to Athens is not very interesting, as
we enter through one of its most homely quarters. The principal modern
institutions are the Polytechnic School, divided into three branches—the
School of Fine Art, the Industrial School, and the Holiday School, where
on Sundays and feast-days instruction is given in writing, elementary
drawing, etc.; there is also a School of Telegraphy. In the same
neighbourhood is also to be found the Academy of Science; next to the
Academy is the University, adorned with statues of the famous men who
helped to make modern Greece. The classes at the University are
practically free, and the number of students attending is generally
between 3,000 and 4,000. The library in connection with the University
has 100,000 volumes.
It is impossible to do justice to the activity of the life in these
parts; there are many steamers in the harbour—I saw two steam away one
morning. Naples seems a very sleepy place compared to the Piræus.
Little white boats, with leg-of-mutton sails, skim the blue waters of the
harbour all day long, and the men are lean and dark, and wonderfully
active, a great contrast to our English sailors. Once upon a time,
coming from New York, we called off Portland Bill for a pilot. It was
midnight, and dark as Erebus, but we all sat up waiting for the pilot, to
hear the English news. Suddenly there climbed up the ship’s side, and
stood on the deck in the full glare of light, two awful living mountains
of flesh, as fat as beer and bacon could make them—a couple of English
pilots. We had some skinny American ladies on board, and when they saw
these men they uttered quite an appalling shriek. They had never seen
such specimens of humanity before. I own I felt really ashamed of my
fellow-countrymen, and asked myself why on earth men should make
themselves such guys. Happily, in Australia I lost a couple of stone,
and I have been mercifully preserved from laying on flesh ever since.
Flesh is the great source of human depravity. With Falstaff, I hold the
more of it the more frailty.
[Picture: The Parthenon. (From a photograph by Fradelle and Young)]
And now let me return to Athens, the Acropolis of which I see in all its
glory, and on which by night lights gleam that you can see in the
harbour, crowning the belt of bright lamps which by night glorify the
whole front of the town. They show you Mars’ Hill, where Paul preached
the unknown God; the porch of the Erechtheum, sacred to the olive-tree,
brought to Greece by Athene; and the Parthenon, which still attests the
genius of Phidias. Of Athens it may be said:
‘Her shores are those whence many a mighty bard
Caught inspiration glorious in their beams;
Her hills the same that heroes died to guard,
Her vales that fostered Art’s divinest dreams.’
Modern Athens is bright and cheerful, the shops gay and lofty, with
well-known Greek names. The latter remark also applies to the streets.
The hotels are magnificent. The Hôtel d’Angleterre is well spoken of,
and the dragoman Apostoles will be found an intelligent servant, who will
arrange for the traveller who is disposed to make an excursion in the
Morea for food, lodging, mules or horses at a reasonable rate. The Hôtel
Grand Bretagne, just opposite the palace—and a far finer building to look
at—is about as good a hotel as I was ever in. The rooms seem awfully
dark as you enter from the glare of the ever-shining sun, but the rooms
are lofty, well ventilated, and everywhere you have marble floors and
marble columns, and the feeding is good, considering what a parched-up
land Greece is, and how dried-up its beef and skinny its poultry. I have
seen cheaper hotels in Athens, such as the Hôtel des Iles Ionienic, the
proprietor of which, a Greek from Corfu, strongly recommended it to me;
but on the whole, in such a place as Athens, I should think it preferable
to pay a little more for the comfort of a first-class hotel, even though
it may make one indifferent to the ‘Laurels’ or the ‘Cedars’ of his own
native land.
How to live rationally is an art the majority of Englishmen have not yet
acquired. I leave Athens with regret; its people are all industrious.
At any rate, there are no beggars in its streets; and if this be the
result of its democratic Government, so much the better for the coming
democracy, which, whether we like it or not, is sure to rule at home.
Here the Government is popular, and the people are content. Manufactures
are almost unknown. They have a woollen factory at Athens, and a
cotton-mill in the Piræus, and there must be a busy agricultural
population, as a good deal of the land between the Piræus and the capital
is laid out in market-gardens. I am troubled as I think of our great
cities, with their vices and slums. I hold, with the poet, God made the
country and man the town.
It is a chequered history, that of Athens. Once it was occupied by the
Goths. The Romans fortified it; but the ancient walls, which had been
strengthened by Sylla, were unequal to its defence, and the barbarians
became masters of the noble seats of the Muses and the Arts. Zosimus
tells us that the walls of Athens were guarded by the goddess Minerva,
with her formidable ægis, and by the angry phantom of Achilles, and that
the conqueror was dismayed by the presence of the hostile gods of Greece.
Yet, nevertheless, Alaric a second time mastered the city by means of his
barbarian troops. It is wonderful that any remains of the Athens of its
prime exist. As it is, it requires a good deal of enthusiasm to ‘do’ its
ruins, with which photography has long made the world familiar. The
glory of the Parthenon, however, remains. Gibbon tells us in the sack of
Athens the Goths had collected all the libraries, and were about to set
fire to them, when one of the chiefs, of more refined policy than his
brethren, dissuaded them from the design by the profound observation that
as long as the Greeks were exercised in the study of books they would
never apply themselves to the exercise of arms. But, as Gibbon writes,
the Gothic arms were less fatal to the schools of Athens than the
establishment of a new religion, whose masters resolved every question
into an article of faith, and condemned the infidel to eternal flames.
For centuries Athens had flourished by means of her schools. After the
settlement of the Roman Empire, it was filled with scholars from every
part of the known world, even including students from Britain. In the
suburbs of the city tradition still lingered of the Academy of the
Platonists, the Lycæum of the Peripatetics, the Portico of the Stoics,
and the Garden of Epicurus. The Attic schools of rhetoric and philosophy
maintained their reputation from the Peloponnesian war to the reign of
Justinian. It was he who suppressed the school which had given so many
sages to mankind, and whose influences have quickened and invigorated the
human intellect ever since. The art of oratory may soon be held to be
almost a doubtful boon—at any rate, so far as senates and parliaments are
concerned. It was not so when the eloquence of Demosthenes
‘shook the arsenal,
And fulmined over Greece.’
Some of my fellow-passengers made their way to Eleusis, but they came
back disappointed, and covered with dust. It was enough for me to study
the life of the streets—full of soldiers and black-robed priests.
The traveller who, remembering the long period of Turkish sway, counts on
receiving an Oriental impression from the aspect of Athens is doomed to
disappointment. Even the national garb is fast disappearing. It may
still be worn by a few elderly Athenians. These, and a peasant here and
there selling milk or cheese, recall the day when their dress was the
national one. The wide blue trousers of the Ægean islanders are not less
rare, nor is there much chance of seeing them at the Piræus, among the
craft from the various islands moored along the quays. The uglier and
cheaper product of the slop-shop has replaced the picturesque drapery of
the olden time.
Sooner or later Athens is sure to become a winter resort not less
favoured than any on the Mediterranean, and the permanent home of many
foreigners. The opinion thus confidently expressed is strengthened by
the fact that few who have lived for some length of time within its gates
pass out of them without regret, or fail to re-enter them with pleasure.
At any rate, so writes a learned American.
A gentleman has written explaining that Greece is bankrupt because she is
so small. He says that out of 5,000,000 Greeks who rose in 1821 against
the Turk, less than 1,000,000 were allowed to form part of the Hellenic
kingdom. The obvious reply to this is, Why don’t they go and live in
Greece if they really want to? Nobody forces them to live elsewhere, and
they can hardly be waiting till Constantinople, Asia Minor and Cyprus are
added to King George’s kingdom. The truth is that in business Greek
would rather not meet Greek; there is more money in meeting somebody
else. The rich Greeks will always be found outside Greece.