rock, three hundred feet above the town. The oldest part of the present
fortress was erected in 1550; but the site has always been the
stronghold. Corinthians, Athenians, Spartans, Macedonians, and Romans
have in turn held the island, and this rock is the obvious keep. Later
came four hundred years of Venetian control, and I am ashamed to add
that the tokens of this last-named period were to me more delightful
than any of the other memorials. I say "ashamed," for why should one be
haunted by Venice in Greece? With the Parthenon to look forward to, why
should the lion of St. Mark, sculptured on Corfu facades, be a thing to
greet with joy? Many of us are familiar with the disconsolate figures of
some of our fellow-countrymen and countrywomen in the galleries of
Europe, tired and dejected tourists wandering from picture to picture,
but finding nothing half so interesting as the memory of No. 4699
Columbus Avenue at home. I am afraid it is equally narrow to be scanning
Corfu, Athens, Cairo, and the sands of the desert itself for something
that reminds one of another place, even though that place be the
enchanting pageant of a town at the head of the Adriatic. History,
however, as related by the esplanade, pays no attention to these
aberrations of the looker-on; its story goes steadily forward. The lions
of St. Mark on the facades, and another memento of the Doges--namely,
the statue of Count von der Schulenburg, who commanded the Venetian
forces in the great defence of Corfu in 1716--these memorials have as
companions various tokens of the English occupation, which, following
that of Venice, continued through forty-nine years--that is, from 1815
to 1863. Before this there had been a short period of French dominion;
but the esplanade, so far as I could discover, contains no memorial of
it, unless Napoleon's phrase can stand for one--and I think it can. The
souvenirs of the British rule are conspicuous. The first is the palace
built for the English Governor, a functionary who bore the sonorous
official name of Lord High Commissioner, a title which was soon
shortened to the odd abbreviation "the Lord High." This palace is an
uninteresting construction stretching stiffly across the water-side of
the esplanade, and cutting off the view of the harbor. It is now the
property of the King of Greece, but at present it is seldom occupied.
While we were at Corfu its ghostliness was enlivened for a while; Prince
Henry of Prussia was there with his wife. They had left their yacht (if
so large a vessel as the _Irene_ can be called a yacht), and were
spending a week at the palace. An hour after their departure entrance
was again permitted, and an old man, still trembling from the excitement
of the royal sojourn, conducted us from room to room. All was ugly.
Fading flowers in the vases showed that an attempt had been made to
brighten the place; but the visitors must have been endowed with a
strong natural cheerfulness to withstand with success such a mixture of
the commonplace and the dreary as the palace presents. They had the
magnificent view to look at, and there was always the graceful
silhouette of the _Irene_ out on the water. She could come up at any
time and take them away; it was this, probably, that kept them alive.
[Illustration: THE PALACE]
[Illustration: UNIVERSITY OF THE IONIAN ISLANDS]
If the palace is ordinary, what shall be said of another memento which
adorns the esplanade? This is a high, narrow building, so uncouth that
it causes a smile. It looks raw, bare, and so primitive that if it had a
pulley at the top it might be taken for a warehouse erected on the bank
of a canal in one of our Western towns; one sees in imagination
canal-boats lying beneath, and bulging sacks going up or down. Yet this
is nothing less than that University of the Ionian Islands which was
founded by the Earl of Guildford early in this century, the epoch of
English enthusiasm for Greece, the days of the Philhellenes. Lord
Guildford, who was one of the distinguished North family, gave largely
of his fortune and of his time to establish this university.
Contemporary records speak of him as "an amiable nobleman." But after
seeing his touchingly ugly academy and his bust (which is not ugly) in
the hall of the extinct Ionian Senate at the palace, one feels sure that
he was more than amiable--he must have been original also. The English
are called cold; but as individuals they are capable sometimes of
extraordinary enthusiasms for distant causes and distant people.
Adventurous travellers as they are, does the charm lie in the word
"distant"? The defunct academy now shelters a school where vigorous
young Greeks sit on benches, opposite each other, in narrow, doorless
compartments which resemble the interior of a large omnibus; this, at
least, was the arrangement of the ground-floor on the day of our visit.
Although it was December, the boys looked heated. The teachers, who
walked up and down, had a relentless aspect. Even the porter,
white-haired and bent, had a will untouched by the least decay; he would
not show us the remains of the university library, nor the Roman
antiquities which are said to be stored somewhere in a lumber-room,
among them "fifty-nine frames of mosaic representing a bustard in
various attitudes." He had not the power, apparently, to exhibit these
treasures while the school exercises were going on, and as soon as they
were ended--instantly, that very minute--he intended to eat his dinner,
and nothing could alter this determination; his face grew ferocious at
the mere suggestion. So we were obliged to depart without seeing the
souvenirs of Lord Guildford's enthusiasm; and owing to the glamour which
always hangs over the place one has failed to see, I have been sure ever
since that we should have found them the most fascinating objects in
Corfu.
At the present school the teaching is done, no doubt, in a tongue which
would have made the old university shudder. In a letter written by Sir
George Bowen in 1856, from one of the Ionian Islands, there is the
following anecdote: "Bishop Wilberforce told me that he recently had, as
a candidate at one of his ordinations, Mr. M., the son of an English
merchant settled in Greece. 'I examined him myself,' said the bishop,
'when he gave what was to me an unknown pronunciation.' 'Oh, Mr. M.,' I
said, 'where _did_ you learn Greek?' 'In Athens, my lord,' replied the
trembling man." Classical scholars who visit Greece to-day are not able
to ask the simplest questions; or, rather, they may ask, but no one will
understand them. Several of these gentlemen have announced to the world
that the modern speech of Athens is a barbarous decadence. It is not for
an American, I suppose, to pass judgment upon matters of this sort. But
when these authorities continue as follows: "And even in pronunciation
modern Greek is hopelessly fallen; the ancients never pronounced in this
way," may we not ask how they can be so sure? They are not, I take it,
inspired, and the phonograph is a modern invention. The voice of Robert
Browning is stored for coming generations; the people A.D. 3000 may hear
him recite "How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix." Possibly
the tones of Lord Salisbury and of Mr. Balfour are already garnered and
arranged in cylinders for the future orators of the South Seas. But we
cannot know how Pindar spoke any more than we can know the song the
Sirens sang; the most learned scholar cannot, alas! summon from the past
the articulation of Plato.
[Illustration: SMALL TEMPLE, MEMORIAL TO SIR THOMAS MAITLAND]
In the esplanade the period of English rule is further kept in mind by
monuments to the memory of three of the Lords High--a statue, an
obelisk, and (of all things in the world) an imitation of a Greek
temple. This temple--it is so small that they might call it a
templette--was erected in honor of Sir Thomas Maitland, a Governor whose
arbitrary rule gained for him the title of King Tom. The three memorials
are officially protected, an agreement to that effect having been made
between the governments of Great Britain and Greece. They were never in
danger, probably, as the English protection was a friendly one. In spite
of its friendliness, the Corfiotes voted as follows with enthusiasm
when an opportunity was offered to them: "The single and unanimous will
of the Ionian people has been and is for their reunion with the Kingdom
of Greece." England yielded to this wish and withdrew--a disinterested
act which ought to have gained for her universal applause. Since 1864
Corfu and her sister islands, happily freed at last from foreign
control, have filled with patriotic pride and contentment their proper
place as part of the Hellenic kingdom.
The esplanade also contains the one modern monument erected by the
Corfiotes themselves--a statue of Capo d'Istria. John Capo d'Istria, a
native of Corfu, was the political leader of Greece when she succeeded
in freeing herself from the Turkish yoke. The story of his life is a
part of the exciting tale of the Greek revolution. His measures, after
he had attained supreme power, were thought to be high-handed, and he
was accused also of looking too often towards that great empire in the
North whose boundaries are stretching slowly towards Constantinople; he
was resisted, disliked; finally he was assassinated. Time has softened
the remembrance of his faults, whatever they were, and brought his
services to the nation into the proper relief; hence this statue,
erected in 1887, fifty-six years after his death, by young Greece. It is
a sufficiently imposing figure of white marble, the face turned towards
the bay with a musing expression. Capo d'Istria--a name which might have
been invented for a Greek patriot! The Eastern question is a complicated
one, and I have no knowledge of its intricacies. But a personal
observation of the hatred of Turkey which exists in every Greek heart,
and a glance at the map of Europe, lead an American mind towards one
general idea or fancy--namely, that Capo d'Istria was merely in advance
of his time, and that an alliance between Russia and Greece is now one
of the probabilities of the near future. It is unexpected--at least, to
the non-political observer--that Hellas should be left to turn for help
and comfort to the Muscovites, a race to whom, probably, her ancient art
and literature appeal less strongly than they do to any other European
people. But she has so turned. "Wait till _Russia_ comes down here!" she
appears to be saying, with deferred menace, to Turkey to-day.
These various monuments of the esplanade do not, however, make Corfu in
the least modern. They are unimportant, they are inconspicuous, when
compared with the old streets which meander over the slopes behind them,
fringed with a net-work of stone lanes that lead down to the water's
edge. It has been said that the general aspect of the place is Italian.
It is true that there are arcades like those of Bologna and Padua; that
some of the byways have the look of a Venetian calle, without its canal;
and that the neighborhood of the gay little port resembles, on a small
scale, the streets which border the harbor of Genoa. In spite of this,
we have only to look up and see the sky, we have only to breathe and
note the quality of the air, to perceive that we are not in Italy. Corfu
is Greek, with a coating of Italian manners. And it has also caught a
strong tinge from Asia. Many of the houses have the low door and masked
entrance which are so characteristic of the East; at the top of the
neglected stairway, as far as possible from public view, there may be
handsome, richly furnished apartments; but if such rooms exist, the
jealous love of privacy keeps them hidden. This inconspicuous entrance
is as universal in the Orient as the high wall, shutting off all view of
the garden or park, is universal in England.
[Illustration: STATUE OF CAPO D'ISTRIA]
The town of Corfu has 26,000 inhabitants. Among the population are
Dalmatians, Maltese, Levantines, and others; but the Greeks are the
dominant race. There is a Jews' quarter, and Jews abound, or did
abound at the time of my visit. Since then fanaticism has raised its
head again, and there have been wild scenes at Corfu. Face to face with
the revival of persecution for religious opinions which is now visible
in Russia, and not in Russia alone, are we forced to acknowledge that
our century is not so enlightened as we have hoped that it was. I
remember when I believed that in no civilized country to-day could there
be found, among the educated, a single person who would wish to
persecute or coerce his fellow-beings solely on account of their
religious opinions; but I am obliged to confess that, without going to
Russia or Corfu, I have encountered within the last dozen years
individuals not a few whose flashing eyes and crimson cheeks, when they
spoke of a mental attitude in such matters which differed from their
own, made me realize with a thrill that if it were still the day of the
stake and the torch they would come bringing fagots to the pile with
their own hands.
In spite of these survivals, ceremonial martyrdom for so-called
religion's sake is, we may hope, at an end among the civilized nations;
we have only its relics left. Corfu has one of these relics, a martyr
who is sincerely honored--St. Spiridion, or, as he is called in loving
diminutive, Spiro. Spiro, who died fifteen hundred years ago, was bishop
of a see in Cyprus, I believe. He was tortured during the persecution of
the Christians under Diocletian. His embalmed body was taken to
Constantinople, and afterwards, in 1489, it was brought to Corfu by a
man named George Colochieretry. Some authorities say that Colochieretry
was a monk; in any case, what is certain is that the heirs of this man
still own the saint--surely a strange piece of property--and derive
large revenues from him. St. Spiro reposes in a small dim chapel of the
church which is called by his name; his superb silver coffin is lighted
by the rays from a hanging lamp which is suspended above it. When we
paid our visit, people in an unbroken stream were pressing into this
chapel, and kissing the sarcophagus repeatedly with passionate fervor.
The nave, too, was thronged; families were seated on the pavement in
groups, with an air of having been there all day: probably Christmas is
one of the seasons set apart for an especial pilgrimage to the martyr.
Three times a year the body is taken from its coffin and borne round the
esplanade, followed by a long train of Greek clergy, and by the public
officers of the town; upon these occasions the sick are brought forth
and laid where the shadow of the saint can pass over them. "Yes, he's
out to-day, I believe," said a resident, to whom we had mentioned this
procession. He spoke in a matter-of-fact tone. After seeing it three
times a year for twenty years, the issuing forth of the old bishop into
the brilliant sunshine to make a solemn circuit round the esplanade did
not, I suppose, seem so remarkable to him as it seemed to us. There is
another saint, a woman (her name I have forgotten), who also reposes in
a silver coffin in one of the Corfu churches. At first we supposed that
this was Spiro. But the absence of worshippers showed us our mistake.
This lonely witness to the faith was also a martyr; she suffered
decapitation. "They don't think much of _her_," said the same resident.
Then, explanatorily, "You see--she has no head." This practically minded
critic, however, was not a native of Corfu. The true Corfiotes are very
reverent, and no doubt they honor their second martyr upon her appointed
day. But Spiro is the one they love. The country people believe that he
visits their fields once a year to bless their olives and grain, and the
Corfu sailors are sure that he comes to them, walking on the water in
the darkness, when a storm is approaching. Mr. Tuckerman, in his
delightful volume, _The Greeks of To-Day_, says, in connection with this
last legend, that it is believed by the devout that seaweed is often
found about the legs of the good bishop in his silver coffin, after his
return from these marine promenades. There is something charming in this
story, and I shall have to hold back my hand to keep myself from
alluding (and yet I do allude) to a shrine I know at Venice; it is far
out on the lagoon, and its name is Our Lady of the Seaweed. The last
time my gondola passed it I saw that by a happy chance the high tide had
left seaweed twined about it in long, floating wreaths, like an
offering.
The name of the national religion of Greece is the Orthodox Church of
the East, or, more briefly, the Orthodox Church. Western nations call it
the Greek Church, but they have invented that name themselves. The
Orthodox Church has rites and ceremonies which are striking and
sometimes magnificent. I have many memories of the churches of Corfu.
The temples are so numerous that they seem innumerable; one was always
coming upon a fresh one; sometimes there is only a facade visible, and
occasionally nothing but a door, the church being behind, masked by
other buildings. My impressions are of a series of magnified
jewel-boxes. There was not much daylight; no matter how radiant the
sunshine outside, within all was richly dim, owing to the dark tints of
the stained glass. The ornamentation was never paltry or tawdry. The
soft light from the wax candles drew dull gleams from the singular
metal-incrusted pictures. These pictures, or icons, are placed in large
numbers along the walls and upon the screen which divides the nave from
the apse. They are generally representations of the Madonna and Child in
repousse-work of silver, silvered copper, or gilt. Often the face and
hands of the Madonna are painted on panel; in that case the portrait
rises from metal shoulders, and the head is surrounded by metal hair.
The painting is always of the stiff Byzantine school, following an
ancient model, for any other style would be considered irreverent, and
nothing can exceed the strange effect produced by these long-eyed,
small-mouthed, rigid, sourly sweet virgin faces coming out from their
silver-gilt necks, while below, painted taper fingers of unearthly
length encircle a silver Child, who in His turn has a countenance of
panel, often all out of drawing, but hauntingly sweet. These curious
pictures have great dignity. The churches have no seats. I generally
took my stand in one of the pew-like stalls which project from the wall,
and here, unobserved, I could watch the people coming in and kissing the
icons. This adoration, commemoration, reverence, or whatever the proper
word for it may be, is much more conspicuous in the Greek places of
worship than it is in Roman Catholic churches. Those who come in make
the round of the walls, kissing every picture, and they do it fervently,
not formally. The service is chanted by the priests very rapidly in a
peculiar kind of intoning. The Corfu priests did not look as if they
were learned men, but their faces have a natural and humane expression
which is agreeable. In the street, with their flowing robes, long hair
and beards, and high black caps, they are striking figures. The parish
priest must be a married man, and he does not live apart from his
people, but closely mingles with them upon all occasions. He is the
papas, or pope, as it is translated, and a lover of Tourguenieff who
meets a pope for the first time at Corfu is haunted anew by those
masterpieces of the great Russian--the village tales across whose pages
the pope and the popess come and go, and seem, to American readers, such
strange figures.
[Illustration: THE TOMB OF MENEKRATES]
In the suburb of Castrades is the oldest church of the island. It is
dedicated to St. Jason, the kinsman of St. Paul. St. Jason's appeared to
be deserted. Here, as elsewhere, it is not the church most interesting
from the historical point of view which is the favorite of the people,
or which they find, apparently, the most friendly. But when I paid my
visit, there were so many vines and flowers outside, and such a blue sky
above, that the little Byzantine temple had a cheerful, irresponsible
air, as if it were saying: "It's not my fault that people won't come
here. But if they won't, I'm not unhappy about it; the sunshine, the
vines, and I--we do very well together." The interior was bare, flooded
also with white daylight--so white that one blinked. And in this
whiteness my mind suddenly returned to Hellas. For Hellas had been
forgotten for the moment, owing to the haunting icons in the dark
churches of the town. Those silver-incrusted images had brought up a
vision of the uncounted millions to-day in Turkey, Greece, and Russia
who bow before them, the Christians of whom we know and think
comparatively so little. But now all these Eastern people vanished as
silently as they had come, and the past returned--the past, whose spell
summons us to Greece. For conspicuous in the white daylight of St.
Jason's were three antique columns, which, with other sculptured
fragments set in the walls, had been taken from an earlier pagan temple
to build this later church. And the spell does not break again in this
part of the island. Not far from St. Jason's is the tomb of Menekrates.
This monument was discovered in 1843, when one of the Venetian forts was
demolished. Beneath the foundations the workmen came upon funeral vases,
and upon digging deeper an ancient Greek cemetery was uncovered, with
many graves, various relics, and this tomb. It is circular, formed of
large blocks of stone closely joined without cement, and at present one
stands and looks down upon it, as though it were in a roofless cellar.
It bears round its low dome a metrical inscription in Greek, to the
effect that Menekrates, who was the representative at Corcyra (the old
name for Corfu) of his native town Eanthus, lost his life accidentally
by drowning; that this was a great sorrow to the community, for he was a
friend of the people; that his brother came from Eanthus, and, with the
aid of the Corcyreans, erected the monument. There is something
impressive to us in this simple memorial of grief set up before the days
of AEschylus, before the battle of Marathon--the commemoration of a
family sorrow in Corfu two thousand five hundred years ago. The
following is a Latin translation of the inscription:
"Tlasiadis memor ecce Menecrates hoc monumentum,
Ortum OEantheus, populus statuebat at illi,
Quippe benignus erat populo patronus, in alto
Sed periit ponto, totam et dolor obruit urbem.
Praximenes autem patriis huc venit ab oris
Cum populo et fratris monumentum hoc struxit adempti."