ATHENS
Not feeling any enthusiasm myself about Athens, my bounden duty of
course is clear, to sneer and laugh heartily at all who have. In fact,
what business has a lawyer, who was in Pump Court this day three weeks,
and whose common reading is law reports or the newspaper, to pretend to
fall in love for the long vacation with mere poetry, of which I swear a
great deal is very doubtful, and to get up an enthusiasm quite foreign
to his nature and usual calling in life? What call have ladies to
consider Greece “romantic,” they who get their notions of mythology
from the well-known pages of “Tooke’s Pantheon”? What is the reason
that blundering Yorkshire squires, young dandies from Corfu regiments,
jolly sailors from ships in the harbour, and yellow old Indians
returning from Bundelcund, should think proper to be enthusiastic about
a country of which they know nothing; the mere physical beauty of which
they cannot, for the most part, comprehend; and because certain
characters lived in it two thousand four hundred years ago? What have
these people in common with Pericles, what have these ladies in common
with Aspasia (O fie)? Of the race of Englishmen who come wandering
about the tomb of Socrates, do you think the majority would not have
voted to hemlock him? Yes: for the very same superstition which leads
men by the nose now, drove them onward in the days when the lowly
husband of Xantippe died for daring to think simply and to speak the
truth. I know of no quality more magnificent in fools than their faith:
that perfect consciousness they have, that they are doing virtuous and
meritorious actions, when they are performing acts of folly, murdering
Socrates, or pelting Aristides with holy oyster-shells—all for Virtue’s
sake; and a “History of Dulness in all Ages of the World,” is a book
which a philosopher would surely be hanged, but as certainly blessed,
for writing.
If papa and mamma (honour be to them!) had not followed the faith of
their fathers, and thought proper to send away their only beloved son
(afterwards to be celebrated under the name of Titmarsh) into ten
years’ banishment of infernal misery, tyranny, annoyance; to give over
the fresh feelings of the heart of the little Michael Angelo to the
discipline of vulgar bullies, who, in order to lead tender young
children to the Temple of Learning (as they do in the spelling-books),
drive them on with clenched fists and low abuse; if they fainted,
revive them with a thump, or assailed them with a curse; if they were
miserable, consoled them with a brutal jeer—if, I say, my dear parents,
instead of giving me the inestimable benefit of a ten years’ classical
education, had kept me at home with my dear thirteen sisters, it is
probable I should have liked this country of Attica, in sight of the
blue shores of which the present pathetic letter is written; but I was
made so miserable in youth by a classical education, that all connected
with it is disagreeable in my eyes; and I have the same recollection of
Greek in youth that I have of castor-oil.
So in coming in sight of the promontory of Sunium, where the Greek
Muse, in an awful vision, came to me, and said in a patronising way,
“Why, my dear” (she always, the old spinster, adopts this high and
mighty tone)—“Why, my dear, are you not charmed to be in this famous
neighbourhood, in this land of poets and heroes, of whose history your
classical education ought to have made you a master? if it did not, you
have wofully neglected your opportunities, and your dear parents have
wasted their money in sending you to school.” I replied, “Madam, your
company in youth was made so laboriously disagreeable to me, that I
can’t at present reconcile myself to you in age. I read your poets, but
it was in fear and trembling; and a cold sweat is but an ill
accompaniment to poetry. I blundered through your histories; but
history is so dull (saving your presence) of herself, that when the
brutal dulness of a schoolmaster is superadded to her own slow
conversation, the union becomes intolerable: hence I have not the
slightest pleasure in renewing my acquaintance with a lady who has been
the source of so much bodily and mental discomfort to me.” To make a
long story short, I am anxious to apologise for a want of enthusiasm in
the classical line, and to excuse an ignorance which is of the most
undeniable sort.
This is an improper frame of mind for a person visiting the land of
AEschylus and Euripides; add to which, we have been abominably
overcharged at the inn: and what are the blue hills of Attica, the
silver calm basin of Piraeus, the heathery heights of Pentelicus, and
yonder rocks crowned by the Doric columns of the Parthenon, and the
thin Ionic shafts of the Erechtheum, to a man who has had little rest,
and is bitten all over by bugs? Was Alcibiades bitten by bugs, I
wonder; and did the brutes crawl over him as he lay in the rosy arms of
Phryne? I wished all night for Socrates’s hammock or basket, as it is
described in the “Clouds;” in which resting- place, no doubt, the
abominable animals kept perforce clear of him.
A French man-of-war, lying in the silvery little harbour, sternly
eyeing out of its stern portholes a saucy little English corvette
beside, began playing sounding marches as a crowd of boats came
paddling up to the steamer’s side to convey us travellers to shore.
There were Russian schooners and Greek brigs lying in this little bay;
dumpy little windmills whirling round on the sunburnt heights round
about it; an improvised town of quays and marine taverns has sprung up
on the shore; a host of jingling barouches, more miserable than any to
be seen even in Germany, were collected at the landing-place; and the
Greek drivers (how queer they looked in skull-caps, shabby jackets with
profuse embroidery of worsted, and endless petticoats of dirty calico!)
began, in a generous ardour for securing passengers, to abuse each
other’s horses and carriages in the regular London fashion. Satire
could certainly hardly caricature the vehicle in which we were made to
journey to Athens; and it was only by thinking that, bad as they were,
these coaches were much more comfortable contrivances than any
Alcibiades or Cimon ever had, that we consoled ourselves along the
road. It was flat for six miles along the plain to the city: and you
see for the greater part of the way the purple mount on which the
Acropolis rises, and the gleaming houses of the town spread beneath.
Round this wide, yellow, barren plain,—a stunted district of
olive-trees is almost the only vegetation visible—there rises, as it
were, a sort of chorus of the most beautiful mountains; the most
elegant, gracious, and noble the eye ever looked on. These hills did
not appear at all lofty or terrible, but superbly rich and
aristocratic. The clouds were dancing round about them; you could see
their rosy purple shadows sweeping round the clear serene summits of
the hill. To call a hill aristocratic seems affected or absurd; but the
difference between these hills and the others, is the difference
between Newgate Prison and the Travellers’ Club, for instance: both are
buildings; but the one stern, dark, and coarse; the other rich,
elegant, and festive. At least, so I thought. With such a stately
palace as munificent Nature had built for these people, what could they
be themselves but lordly, beautiful, brilliant, brave, and wise? We saw
four Greeks on donkeys on the road (which is a dust-whirlwind where it
is not a puddle); and other four were playing with a dirty pack of
cards, at a barrack that English poets have christened the “Half-way
House.” Does external nature and beauty influence the soul to good? You
go about Warwickshire, and fancy that from merely being born and
wandering in those sweet sunny plains and fresh woodlands Shakspeare
must have drunk in a portion of that frank artless sense of beauty
which lies about his works like a bloom or dew; but a Coventry
ribbon-maker, or a slang Leamington squire, are looking on those very
same landscapes too, and what do they profit? You theorise about the
influence which the climate and appearance of Attica must have had in
ennobling those who were born there: yonder dirty, swindling, ragged
blackguards, lolling over greasy cards three hours before noon,
quarrelling and shrieking, armed to the teeth and afraid to fight, are
bred out of the same land which begot the philosophers and heroes. But
the “Half-way House” is passed by this time, and behold! we are in the
capital of King Otho.
I swear solemnly that I would rather have two hundred a year in Fleet
Street, than be King of the Greeks, with Basileus written before my
name round their beggarly coin; with the bother of perpetual
revolutions in my huge plaster-of-Paris palace, with no amusement but a
drive in the afternoon over a wretched arid country, where roads are
not made, with ambassadors (the deuce knows why, for what good can the
English, or the French, or the Russian party get out of such a bankrupt
alliance as this?) perpetually pulling and tugging at me, away from
honest Germany, where there is beer and aesthetic conversation, and
operas at a small cost. The shabbiness of this place actually beats
Ireland, and that is a strong word. The palace of the Basileus is an
enormous edifice of plaster, in a square containing six houses, three
donkeys, no roads, no fountains (except in the picture of the inn);
backwards it seems to look straight to the mountain—on one side is a
beggarly garden—the King goes out to drive (revolutions permitting) at
five—some four-and-twenty blackguards saunter up to the huge sandhill
of a terrace, as His Majesty passes by in a gilt barouche and an absurd
fancy dress; the gilt barouche goes plunging down the sandhills; the
two dozen soldiers, who have been presenting arms, slouch off to their
quarters; the vast barrack of a palace remains entirely white, ghastly,
and lonely; and, save the braying of a donkey now and then (which
long-eared minstrels are more active and sonorous in Athens than in any
place I know), all is entirely silent round Basileus’s palace. How
could people who knew Leopold fancy he would be so “jolly green” as to
take such a berth? It was only a gobemouche of a Bavarian that could
ever have been induced to accept it.
I beseech you to believe that it was not the bill and the bugs at the
inn which induced the writer hereof to speak so slightingly of the
residence of Basileus. These evils are now cured and forgotten. This is
written off the leaden flats and mounds which they call the Troad. It
is stern justice alone which pronounces this excruciating sentence. It
was a farce to make this place into a kingly capital; and I make no
manner of doubt that King Otho, the very day he can get away
unperceived, and get together the passage- money, will be off for dear
old Deutschland, Fatherland, Beerland!
I have never seen a town in England which may be compared to this; for
though Herne Bay is a ruin now, money was once spent upon it and houses
built; here, beyond a few score of mansions comfortably laid out, the
town is little better than a rickety agglomeration of larger and
smaller huts, tricked out here and there with the most absurd cracked
ornaments and cheap attempts at elegance. But neatness is the elegance
of poverty, and these people despise such a homely ornament. I have got
a map with squares, fountains, theatres, public gardens, and Places
d’Othon marked out; but they only exist in the paper capital—the
wretched tumble-down wooden one boasts of none.
One is obliged to come back to the old disagreeable comparison of
Ireland. Athens may be about as wealthy a place as Carlow or
Killarney—the streets swarm with idle crowds, the innumerable little
lanes flow over with dirty little children, they are playing and
puddling about in the dirt everywhere, with great big eyes, yellow
faces, and the queerest little gowns and skull-caps. But in the outer
man, the Greek has far the advantage of the Irishman: most of them are
well and decently dressed (if five-and-twenty yards of petticoat may
not be called decent, what may?), they swagger to and fro with huge
knives in their girdles. Almost all the men are handsome, but live
hard, it is said, in order to decorate their backs with those fine
clothes of theirs. I have seen but two or three handsome women, and
these had the great drawback which is common to the race—I mean, a
sallow, greasy, coarse complexion, at which it was not advisable to
look too closely.
And on this score I think we English may pride ourselves on possessing
an advantage (by WE, I mean the lovely ladies to whom this is addressed
with the most respectful compliments) over the most classical country
in the world. I don’t care for beauty which will only bear to be looked
at from a distance, like a scene in a theatre. What is the most
beautiful nose in the world, if it be covered with a skin of the
texture and colour of coarse whitey- brown paper; and if Nature has
made it as slippery and shining as though it had been anointed with
pomatum? They may talk about beauty, but would you wear a flower that
had been dipped in a grease-pot? No; give me a fresh, dewy, healthy
rose out of Somersetshire; not one of those superb, tawdry, unwholesome
exotics, which are only good to make poems about. Lord Byron wrote more
cant of this sort than any poet I know of. Think of “the peasant girls
with dark blue eyes” of the Rhine—the brown-faced, flat-nosed,
thick-lipped, dirty wenches! Think of “filling high a cup of Samian
wine;” small beer is nectar compared to it, and Byron himself always
drank gin. That man never wrote from his heart. He got up rapture and
enthusiasm with an eye to the public; but this is dangerous ground,
even more dangerous than to look Athens full in the face, and say that
your eyes are not dazzled by its beauty. The Great Public admires
Greece and Byron: the public knows best. Murray’s “Guide-book” calls
the latter “our native bard.” Our native bard! Mon Dieu! HE
Shakspeare’s, Milton’s, Keats’s, Scott’s native bard! Well, woe be to
the man who denies the public gods!
The truth is, then, that Athens is a disappointment; and I am angry
that it should be so. To a skilled antiquarian, or an enthusiastic
Greek scholar, the feelings created by a sight of the place of course
will be different; but you who would be inspired by it must undergo a
long preparation of reading, and possess, too, a particular feeling;
both of which, I suspect, are uncommon in our busy commercial
newspaper-reading country. Men only say they are enthusiastic about the
Greek and Roman authors and history, because it is considered proper
and respectable. And we know how gentlemen in Baker Street have
editions of the classics handsomely bound in the library, and how they
use them. Of course they don’t retire to read the newspaper; it is to
look over a favourite ode of Pindar, or to discuss an obscure passage
in Athenaeus! Of course country magistrates and Members of Parliament
are always studying Demosthenes and Cicero; we know it from their
continual habit of quoting the Latin grammar in Parliament. But it is
agreed that the classics are respectable; therefore we are to be
enthusiastic about them. Also let us admit that Byron is to be held up
as “our native bard.”
I am not so entire a heathen as to be insensible to the beauty of those
relics of Greek art, of which men much more learned and enthusiastic
have written such piles of descriptions. I thought I could recognise
the towering beauty of the prodigious columns of the Temple of Jupiter;
and admire the astonishing grace, severity, elegance, completeness of
the Parthenon. The little Temple of Victory, with its fluted Corinthian
shafts, blazed under the sun almost as fresh as it must have appeared
to the eyes of its founders; I saw nothing more charming and brilliant,
more graceful, festive, and aristocratic than this sumptuous little
building. The Roman remains which lie in the town below look like the
works of barbarians beside these perfect structures. They jar strangely
on the eye, after it has been accustoming itself to perfect harmony and
proportions. If, as the schoolmaster tells us, the Greek writing is as
complete as the Greek art; if an ode of Pindar is as glittering and
pure as the Temple of Victory; or a discourse of Plato as polished and
calm as yonder mystical portico of the Erechtheum: what treasures of
the senses and delights of the imagination have those lost to whom the
Greek books are as good as sealed!
And yet one meets with very dull first-class men. Genius won’t
transplant from one brain to another, or is ruined in the carriage,
like fine Burgundy. Sir Robert Peel and Sir John Hobhouse are both good
scholars; but their poetry in Parliament does not strike one as fine.
Muzzle, the schoolmaster, who is bullying poor trembling little boys,
was a fine scholar when he was a sizar, and a ruffian then and ever
since. Where is the great poet, since the days of Milton, who has
improved the natural offshoots of his brain by grafting it from the
Athenian tree?
I had a volume of Tennyson in my pocket, which somehow settled that
question, and ended the querulous dispute between me and Conscience,
under the shape of the neglected and irritated Greek muse, which had
been going on ever since I had commenced my walk about Athens. The old
spinster saw me wince at the idea of the author of Dora and Ulysses,
and tried to follow up her advantage by farther hints of time lost, and
precious opportunities thrown away. “You might have written poems like
them,” said she; “or, no, not like them perhaps, but you might have
done a neat prize poem, and pleased your papa and mamma. You might have
translated Jack and Jill into Greek iambics, and been a credit to your
college.” I turned testily away from her. “Madam,” says I, “because an
eagle houses on a mountain, or soars to the sun, don’t you be angry
with a sparrow that perches on a garret window, or twitters on a twig.
Leave me to myself: look, my beak is not aquiline by any means.”
And so, my dear friend, you who have been reading this last page in
wonder, and who, instead of a description of Athens, have been
accommodated with a lament on the part of the writer, that he was idle
at school, and does not know Greek, excuse this momentary outbreak of
egotistic despondency. To say truth, dear Jones, when one walks among
the nests of the eagles, and sees the prodigious eggs they laid, a
certain feeling of discomfiture must come over us smaller birds. You
and I could not invent—it even stretches our minds painfully to try and
comprehend part of the beauty of the Parthenon—ever so little of
it,—the beauty of a single column,—a fragment of a broken shaft lying
under the astonishing blue sky there, in the midst of that unrivalled
landscape. There may be grander aspects of nature, but none more
deliciously beautiful. The hills rise in perfect harmony, and fall in
the most exquisite cadences—the sea seems brighter, the islands more
purple, the clouds more light and rosy than elsewhere. As you look up
through the open roof, you are almost oppressed by the serene depth of
the blue overhead. Look even at the fragments of the marble, how soft
and pure it is, glittering and white like fresh snow! “I was all
beautiful,” it seems to say: “even the hidden parts of me were
spotless, precious, and fair”—and so, musing over this wonderful scene,
perhaps I get some feeble glimpse or idea of that ancient Greek spirit
which peopled it with sublime races of heroes and gods; {1} and which I
never could get out of a Greek book,—no, not though Muzzle flung it at
my head.