The Harbour of Napoli—Tricoupi and Mavrocordato, Otho’s Cabinet
Councillors—Colonel Gordon—King Otho—The Misses
Armanspergs—Prince of Saxe—Miaulis, the Greek
Admiral—Excursion to Argos, the Ancient Terynthus.
NAPOLI DI ROMANIA.—Anchored in the harbour of Napoli after dark. An
English frigate lies a little in, a French and Russian brig-of-war
astern, and two Greek steamboats, King Otho’s yacht, and a quantity of
caïques, fill the inner port. The fort stands a hundred feet over our
heads on a bold promontory, and the rocky Palamidi soars a hundred feet
still higher, on a crag that thrusts its head sharply into the clouds,
as if it would lift the little fortress out of eyesight. The town lies
at the base of the mountain, an irregular looking heap of new houses;
and here, at present, resides the boy-king of Greece, Otho the first.
His predecessors were Agamemnon and Perseus, who, some three thousand
years ago (more or less, I am not certain of my chronology), reigned at
Argos and Mycenæ, within sight of his present capital.
* * * * *
Went ashore with the commodore, to call on Tricoupi and Mavrocordato,
the king’s cabinet councillors. We found the former in a new stone
house, slenderly furnished, and badly painted, but with an entry full of
servants, in handsome Greek costumes. He received the commodore with the
greatest friendliness. He had dined on board the “Constitution” six
years before, when his prospects were less promising than now. He is a
short, stout man, of dark complexion, and very bright black eyes, and
looks very honest and very vulgar. He speaks English perfectly. He
shrugged his shoulders when the commodore alluded to having left him
fighting for a republic, and said anything was better than anarchy. He
spoke in the highest terms of my friend, Dr. Howe (who was at Napoli
with the American provisions, when Grivas held the Palamidi). Greece, he
said, had never a better friend. Madame Tricoupi (the sister of Prince
Mavrocordato) came in presently with two very pretty children. She spoke
French fluently, and seemed an accomplished woman. Her family had long
furnished the Prince Hospodars of Wallachia, and though not a beautiful
woman, she has every mark of the gentle blood of the east. Colonel
Gordon, the famous Philhellene, entered, while we were there. He was an
intimate friend of Lord Byron’s, and has expended the best part of a
large fortune in the Greek cause. He is a plain man, of perhaps fifty,
with red hair and freckled face, and features and accent very Scotch. I
liked his manners. He had lately written a book upon Greece, which is
well spoken of in some review that has fallen in my way.
Went thence to Prince Mavrocordato’s. He occupies the third story of a
very indifferent house, furnished with the mere necessaries of life. A
shabby sofa, a table, two chairs, and a broken tumbler, holding ink and
two pens, is the inventory of his drawing-room. He received us with
elegance and courtesy, and presented us to his wife, a pretty and lively
little Constantinopolitan, who chattered French like a magpie. She gave
the uncertainty of their residence until the seat of government was
decided on, as the apology for their lodgings, and seemed immediately to
forget that she was not in a palace. Mavrocordato is a strikingly
handsome man, with long, curling, black hair, and most luxuriant
moustaches. His mouth is bland, and his teeth uncommonly beautiful; but
without being able to say where it lies, there is an expression of guile
in his face, that shut my heart to him. He is getting fat, and there is
a shade of red in the clear olive of his cheek, which is very uncommon
in this country. The commodore remarked that he was very thin when he
was here six years before. The settlement of affairs in Greece has
probably relieved him from a great deal of care.
Presented, with the commodore, to King Otho. Tricoupi officiated as
chamberlain, dressed in a court suit of light blue, wrought with silver.
The royal residence is a comfortable house, built by Capo d’Istria, in
the principal street of Napoli. The king’s aide, a son of Marco
Bozzaris, a very fine, resolute-looking young man of eighteen, received
us in the antechamber, and in a few minutes the door of the inner room
was thrown open. His majesty stood at the foot of the throne (a gorgeous
red velvet arm-chair, raised on a platform, and covered with a splendid
canopy of velvet), and with a low bow to each of us as we entered, he
addressed his conversation immediately, and without embarrassment, to
the commodore. I had leisure to observe him closely for a few minutes.
He appears about eighteen. He was dressed in an exceedingly well cut,
swallow-tailed coat, of very light blue, with a red standing collar,
wrought with silver. The same work upon a red ground, was set between
the buttons of the waist, and upon the edges of the skirts. White
pantaloons, and the ordinary straight court-sword completed his dress.
He is rather tall, and his figure is extremely light and elegant. A very
flat nose, and high cheekbones, are the most marked features of his
face; his hair is straight, and of a light brown, and with no claim to
beauty; the expression of his countenance is manly, open, and
prepossessing. He spoke French fluently, though with a German accent,
and went through the usual topics of a royal presentation (very much the
same all over the world) with grace and ease. In the few remarks which
he addressed to me, he said that he promised himself great pleasure in
the search for antiquities in Greece. He bowed us out after an audience
of about ten minutes, no doubt extremely happy to exchange his
court-coat and our company for a riding-frock and saddle. His horse and
a guard of twelve lancers were in waiting at the door.
The king usually passes his evenings with the Misses Armanspergs, the
daughters of the president of the regency. They accompanied him from
Munich, and are the only ladies in his realm with whom he is acquainted.
They keep a carriage, which is a kind of wonder at Napoli; ride on
horseback in the English style, very much to the amusement of the
Greeks; and give _soirées_ once of twice a week, which are particularly
dull. One of the three is a beautiful girl, and if policy does not
interfere, is likely to be Queen of Greece. The Count Armansperg is a
small, shrewd-looking man, with a thin German countenance, and agreeable
manners. He is, of course, the real king of Greece.
The most agreeable man I found in Napoli, was the king’s uncle, the
prince of Saxe, at present in command of his army. He is a tall and
uncommonly handsome soldier, of perhaps thirty-six years, and, with all
the air of a man of high birth, has the open and frank manners of the
camp. He has been twice on board the ship, and seemed to consider his
acquaintance with the commodore’s family as a respite from exile. The
Bavarian officers in his suite spoke nothing but the native German, and
looked like mere beef-eaters. The prince returns in two years, and when
the king is of age, his Bavarian troops leave him, and he commits
himself to the country.
* * * * *
Hired the only two public vehicles in Napoli, and set off with the
commodore’s family, on an excursion to the ancient cities in the
neighbourhood. We left the gate built by the Venetians, and still
adorned with a bas-relief of a winged lion, at nine o’clock of a clear
Grecian summer’s day. Auguries were against us. Pyrrhus did the same
thing with his elephants and his army, one morning about two thousand
years ago, and was killed before noon; and our driver stopped his horses
a half mile out of the gate, and told us very gravely that _the evil
eye_ was upon him. He had dreamed that he had _found_ a dollar the night
before—a certain sign by the laws of witchcraft in Greece, that he
should _lose_ one. He concluded by adding another dollar to the price of
each carriage.
We passed the house of old Miaulis, the Greek admiral, a pretty cottage
a mile from the city, and immediately after came the ruins of the
ancient Terynthus, the city of Hercules, The walls, built of the largest
hewn stones in the world, still stand, and will till time ends. It would
puzzle modern mechanics to carry them away. We drove along the same road
upon which Autolycus taught the young hero to drive a chariot, and
passing ruins and fragments of columns strewn over the whole length of
the plain of Argos, stopped under a spreading aspen tree, the only shade
within reach of the eye. A dirty khan stood a few yards off, and our
horses were to remain here while we ascended the hills to Mycenæ.
It was a hot walk. The appearance of ladies, as we passed through a
small Greek village on our way, drew out all the inhabitants, and we
were accompanied by about fifty men, women, and children, resembling
very much in complexion and dress, the Indians of our country. A mile
from our carriages we arrived at a subterranean structure, built in the
side of the hill, with a door toward the east, surmounted by the hewn
stone so famous for its size among the antiquities of Greece. It shuts
the tomb of old Agamemnon. The interior is a hollow cone, with a small
chamber at the side, and would make “very eligible lodgings for a single
gentleman,” as the papers say.
We kept on up the hill, wondering that the “king of many islands and of
all Argos,” as Homer calls him, should have built his city so high in
this hot climate. We sat down at last, quite fagged, at the gate of a
city built _only_ eighteen hundred years before Christ. A descendant of
Perseus brought us some water in a wooden piggin, and somewhat
refreshed, we went on with our examination of the ruins. The mere weight
of the walls has kept them together three thousand six hundred years.
You can judge how immoveable they must be. The antiquarians call them
the “cyclopean walls of Mycenæ;” and nothing less than a giant, I should
suppose, would dream of heaving such enormous masses one upon the other.
“The gate of the Lions,” probably the principal entrance to the city, is
still perfect. The bas-relief from which it takes its name, is the
oldest sculptured stone in Europe. It is of green basalt, representing
two lions rampant, very finely executed, and was brought from Egypt. An
angle of the city wall is just below, and the ruins of a noble aqueduct
are still visible, following the curve of the opposite hill, and
descending to Mycenæ on the northern side. I might bore you now with a
long chapter on antiquities (for, however dry in the abstract, they are
exceedingly interesting on the spot), but I let you off. Those who like
them will find Spohn and Wheeler, Dodwell, Leake, and Gell, diffuse
enough for the most classic enthusiasm.
We descended by a rocky ravine, in the bosom of which lay a well with
six large fig-trees growing at its brink. A woman, burnt black with the
sun, was drawing water in a goat-skin, and we were too happy to get into
the shade, and in the name of Pan, sink delicately, and ask for a drink
of water. I have seen the time when nectar in a cup of gold would have
been less refreshing.
We arrived at the aspen about two o’clock, and made preparations for our
dinner. The sea-breeze had sprung up, and came freshly over the plain of
Argos. We put our claret in a goat-skin of water hung at one of the
wheels, the basket was produced, the ladies sat in the interior of the
carriage, and the commodore, and his son, and myself made tables of the
foot-boards; and thus we achieved a meal which, if meals are measured by
content, old King Danaus and his fifty daughters might have risen from
their graves to envy us.
A very handsome Greek woman had brought us water, and stood near while
we were eating, and making over to her the remnants of the ham, and its
condiments, and the empty bottles, with which she seemed made happy for
a day, we went on our way to Argos.
“Rivers die,” it is said, “as well as men and cities.” We drove through
the bed of “Father Inachus,” which was a respectable river in the time
of Homer, but which, in our day, would be puzzled to drown a much less
thing than a king. Men achieve immortality in a variety of ways. King
Inachus might have been forgotten as the first Argive; but by drowning
himself in the river which afterwards took his name, every
knowledge-hunter that travels is compelled to look up his history. So
St. Nepomuc became the guardian of bridges by breaking his neck over
one.
The modern Argos occupies the site of the ancient. It is tolerably
populous, but it is a town of most wretched hovels. We drove through
several long streets of mud houses with thatched roofs, completely open
in front, and the whole family huddled together on the clay floor, with
no furniture but a flock bed in the corner. The first settlement by
Deucalion and Pyrrha, on the sediment of the deluge, must have looked
like it. Mud, stones, and beggars, were all we saw. Old Pyrrhus was
killed here, after all his battles, by a tile from a house-top; but
modern Argos has scarce a roof high enough to overtop his helmet.
We left our carriages in the street, and walked to the ruins of the
amphitheatre. The brazen Thalamos in which Danae was confined when
Jupiter visited her in a shower of gold, was near this spot, the
supposed site of most of the thirty temples once famous in Argos.
Some solid brick walls, the seats of the amphitheatre cut into the solid
rock of the hill, the rocky Acropolis above, and twenty or thirty horses
tied together, and treading out grain on a thrashing-floor in the open
field, were all we found of ancient or picturesque in the capital of the
Argives. A hot, sultry afternoon, was no time to weave romance from such
materials.
We returned to our carriages, and while the Greek was getting his horses
into their harness, we entered a most unpromising café for shade and
water. A billiard-table stood in the centre; and the high, broad bench
on which the Turks seat themselves, with their legs crooked under them,
stretched around the wall. The proprietor was a Venetian woman, who
sighed, as she might well, for a gondola. The kingdom of Agamemnon was
not to her taste.
After waiting awhile here for the sun to get behind the hills of Sparta,
we received a message from our coachman, announcing that he was
arrested. The “evil eye” had not glanced upon him in vain. There was no
returning without him, and I walked over with the commodore to see what
could be done. A fine-looking man sat cross-legged on a bench, in the
upper room of a building adjoining a prison, and a man with a pen in his
hand was reading the indictment. The driver had struck a child who was
climbing on his wheel. I pleaded his case in “choice Italian,” and after
half an hour’s delay, they dismissed him, exacting a dollar as a
security for reappearance. It was a curious verification of his
morning’s omen.
We drove on over the plain, met the king, five camels, and the Misses
Armansperg, and were on board soon after sunset.
* * * * *
* * * * *