The Ionian Isles—Lord and Lady Nugent—Corfu—Greek and English
Soldiers—Cockneyism—The Gardens of Alcinous—English
Officers—Albanians—Dionisio Salomos, the Greek Poet—Greek
Ladies—Dinner with the Artillery Mess.
This is proper dream-land. The “Isle of Calypso,”[7] folded in a drapery
of blue air, lies behind, fading in the distance, “the Acroceraunian
mountains of old name,” which caught Byron’s eye as he entered Greece,
are piled up before us on the Albanian shore, and the Ionian sea is
rippling under our bow, breathing, from every wave, of Homer, and
Sappho, and “sad Penelope.” Once more upon Childe Harold’s footsteps. I
closed the book at Rome, after following him for a summer through Italy,
confessing, by many pleasant recollections, that
“Not in vain
He wore his sandal shoon, and scallop shell.”
I resume it here with the feeling of Thalaba when he caught sight of the
green bird that led him through the desert. It lies open on my knee at
the second canto, describing our position even to the hour:
“‘Twas on a Grecian autumn’s gentle eve
Childe Harold hailed Leucadia’s cape afar;
A spot he longed to see, nor cared to leave.”
We shall lie off-and-on to-night, and go in to Corfu in the morning. Two
Turkish vessels-of-war, with the crescent flag flying, lie in a small
cove a mile off, on the Albanian shore, and by the discharge of
musketry, our pilot presumes that they have accompanied the Sultan’s
tax-gatherer, who gets nothing from these wild people without fighting
for it.
* * * * *
The entrance to Corfu is considered pretty, but the English flag flying
over the forts, divested ancient Corcyra of its poetical associations.
It looked to me a commonplace seaport, glaring in the sun. The “gardens
of Alcinous” were here, but who could imagine them, with a red-coated
sentry posted on every corner of the island.
* * * * *
The Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Isles, Lord Nugent, came off to
the ship this morning in a kind of Corfiote boat, called a “scampavia,”
a greyhound-looking craft, carrying sail enough for a schooner. She cut
the water like the wing of a swallow. His lordship was playing sailor,
and was dressed like the mate of one of our coasters, and his manners
were as bluff. He has a fine person, however, and is said to be a very
elegant man when he chooses it. He is the author of the “Life and Times
of John Hampden,” and Whig, of course. Southey has lately reviewed him
rather bitterly in the “Quarterly.” Lady N. is literary, too, and they
have written between them a book of tales called (I think) “Legends of
the Lilies,” of which her ladyship’s half is said to be the better.
* * * * *
Went on shore for a walk. Greeks and English soldiers mix oddly
together. The streets are narrow, and crowded with them in about equal
proportions. John Bull retains his red face, and learns no Greek. We
passed through the Bazaar, and bad English was the universal language.
There is but one square in the town, and round its wooden fence,
enclosing a dusty area, without a blade of grass, were riding the
English officers, while the regimental band played in the centre. A more
arid and cheerless spot never pained the eye. The appearance of the
officers, retaining all their Bond-street elegance and mounted upon
English hunters, was in singular contrast with the general shabbiness of
the houses and people. I went into a shop at a corner to inquire for the
residence of a gentleman to whom I had a letter. “It’s _w_erry ‘ot,
sir,” said a little red-faced woman behind the counter, as I went out,
“perhaps you’d like a glass of _v_ater.” It was odd to hear the Wapping
dialect in the “isles of Greece.” She sold green groceries, and wished
me to recommend her to the _h_officers. Mrs. Mary Flack’s “grocery” in
the gardens of Alcinous.
“The wild Albanian, kirtled to the knee,” walks through the streets of
Corfu, looking unlike and superior to everything about him. I met
several in returning to the boat. Their gait is very lofty, and the
snow-white _juktanilla_, or kirtle, with its thousand folds, sways from
side to side, as they walk, with a most showy effect. Lord Byron was
very much captivated with these people, whose capital (just across the
strait from Corfu) he visited once or twice in his travels through
Greece. Those I have seen are all very tall, and have their prominent
features, with keen eyes and limbs of the most muscular proportions. The
common English soldiers look like brutes beside them.
The placard of a theatre hung on the walls of a church. A rude picture
of a battle between the Greeks and Turks hung above it, and beneath was
written, in Italian, “Honour the representation of the immortal deeds of
your hero Marco Bozzaris.” It is singular that even a pack of slaves can
find pleasure in a remembrance that reproaches every breath they draw.
Called on Lord Nugent with the commodore. The governor, sailor, author,
antiquary, nobleman (for he is all these, and a jockey to boot),
received us in a calico morning frock, with his breast and neck bare, in
a large library lumbered with half-packed antiquities and strewn with
straw. Books, miniatures of his family (a lovely one of Lady Nugent
among them), Whig pamphlets, riding-whips, spurs, minerals, hammer and
nails, half-eaten cakes, plans of fortifications, printed invitations to
his own balls and dinners, military reports, Turkish pistols, and,
lastly, his own just printed answer to Mr. Southey’s review of his book,
occupied the table. He was reading his own production when we entered.
His lordship mentioned, with great apparent satisfaction, a cruise he
had taken some years ago with Commodore Chauncey. The conversation was
rather monologue than dialogue; his excellency seeming to think, with
Lord Bacon, that “the honorablest part of talk was to give the occasion,
and then to moderate and pass to something else.” He started a topic,
exhausted and changed it with the same facility and rapidity with which
he sailed his scampavia. An engagement with the artillery-mess prevented
my acceptance of an invitation to dine with him to-morrow—a
circumstance I rather regret, as he is said to be, at his own table, one
of the most polished and agreeable men of his time.
Thank Heaven, revolutions do not affect the climate! The isle that gave
a shelter to the storm-driven Ulysses is an English barrack, but the
same balmy air that fanned the blind eyes of old Homer blows over it
still. “The breezes,” says Landor, beautifully, “are the children of
eternity.” I never had the hair lifted so pleasantly from my temples as
to-night, driving into the interior of the island. The gardening of
Alcinous seems to have been followed up by nature. The rhododendron, the
tamarisk, the almond, cypress, olive, and fig, luxuriate in the sweetest
beauty everywhere.
There was a small party in the evening at the house of the gentleman who
had driven me out, and among other foreigners present were the Count
Dionisio Salomos, of Zante, and the Cavaliere Andrea Mustoxidi, both men
of whom I had often heard. The first is almost the only modern Greek
poet, and his hymns, principally patriotic, are in the common dialect of
the country, and said to be full of fire. He is an excessively handsome
man, with large dark eyes, almost effeminate in their softness. His
features are of the clearest Greek chiselling, as faultless as a statue,
and are stamped with nature’s most attractive marks of refinement and
feeling. I can imagine Anacreon to have resembled him.
Mustoxidi has been a conspicuous man in the late chapter of Grecian
history. He was much trusted by Capo d’Istria, and among other things
had the whole charge of his school at Ægina. An Italian exile (a
Modenese, and a very pleasant fellow), took me aside when I asked
something of his history, and told me a story of him, which proves
either that he was a dishonest man, or (no new truth) that conspicuous
men are liable to be abused. A valuable donation of books was given by
some one to the school library. They stood on the upper shelves, quite
out of reach, and Mustoxidi was particular in forbidding all approach to
them. Some time after his departure from the island, the library was
committed to the charge of another person, and the treasures of the
upper shelves were found to be—painted boards! His physiognomy would
rather persuade me of the truth of the story. He is a small man, with a
downcast look, and a sly, gray eye, almost hidden by his projecting
eyebrows. His features are watched in vain for an open expression.
The ladies of the party were principally Greeks. None of them were
beautiful, but they had the melancholy, retired expression of face which
one looks for, knowing the history of their nation. They are unwise
enough to abandon their picturesque national costume, and dress badly in
the European style. The servant girls, with their hair braided into the
folds of their turbans, and their open-laced bodices and sleeves, are
much more attractive to the stranger’s eye. The liveliest of the party,
a little Zantiote girl of eighteen, with eyes and eye-lashes that
contradicted the merry laugh on her lips, sang us an Albanian song to
the guitar very sweetly.
* * * * *
Dined to-day with the artillery mess, in company with the commodore and
some of his officers. In a place like this, the dinner is naturally the
great circumstance of the day. The inhabitants do not take kindly to
their masters, and there is next to no society for the English. They sit
down to their soup after the evening drive, and seldom rise till
midnight. It was a gay dinner, as dinners will always be where the whole
remainder of what the “day may bring forth” is abandoned to them, and we
parted from our hospitable entertainers, after four or five hours
“measured with sands of gold.” We must do the English the justice of
confessing the manners of their best bred men to be the best in the
world. It is inevitable that one should bear the remainder of the nation
little love. Neither the one class nor the other, doubtless, will ever
seek it at our hands. But mutual hospitality may soften so much of our
intercourse as happens in the traveller’s way, and without loving John
Bull better, all in all, one soon finds out in Europe that the dog and
the lion are not more unlike, than the race of bagmen and runners with
which our country is overrun, and the cultivated gentlemen of England.
On my right sat a captain of the corps, who had spent the last summer at
the Saratoga Springs. We found any number of mutual acquaintances, of
course, and I was amused with the impressions which some of the fairest
of my friends had made upon a man who had passed years in the most
cultivated society of Europe. He liked America with reservations. He
preferred our ladies to those of any other country except England, and
he had found more dandies in one hour in Broadway than he should have
met in a week in Regent-street. He gave me a racy scene or two from the
City Hotel, in New York, but he doubted if the frequenters of a public
table in any country in the world were, on the whole, so well-mannered.
If Americans were peculiar for anything, he thought it was for
confidence in themselves and tobacco-chewing.
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[7] Fano, which disputes it with Gozo, near Malta.
* * * * *
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