college. It was necessary for me to be absent from his afternoon
recitation. In those distant days absences were regarded by Harvard law
as luxuries, and a small fixed quantity of them, a sort of sailor's
grog, was credited with little charge each half-year to every student. I
was already nearing the limit of the unenlargeable eight, and could not
well venture to add another to my score. It seemed safer to try to win
indulgence from my fierce-eyed instructor. Early one morning I went to
Sophocles's room. "Professor Sophocles," I said, "I want to be excused
from attending the Greek recitation this afternoon." "I have no power to
excuse," uttered in the gruffest of tones, while he looked the other
way. "But I cannot be here. I must be out of town at three o'clock." "I
have no power. You had better see the president." Finding the situation
desperate, I took a desperate leap. "But the president probably would
not allow my excuse. At the play of the Hasty Pudding Club to-night I am
to appear as leading lady. I must go to Brookline this afternoon and
have my sister dress me." No muscle of the stern face moved; but he
rose, walked to a table where his class lists lay, and, taking up a
pencil, calmly said: "You had better say nothing to the president. You
are here _now_. I will mark you so." He sniffed, he bowed, and, without
smile or word from either of us, I left the room. As I came to know
Sophocles afterwards, I found that in this trivial early interview I had
come upon some of the most distinctive traits of his character; here was
an epitome of his _brusquerie_, his dignity, his whimsical logic, and
his kind heart.
Outwardly he was always brusque and repellent. A certain savagery marked
his very face. He once observed that, in introducing a character, Homer
is apt to draw attention to the eye. Certainly in himself this was the
feature which first attracted notice; for his eye had uncommon alertness
and intelligence. Those who knew him well detected in it a hidden
sweetness; but against the stranger it burned and glared, and guarded
all avenues of approach. Startled it was, like the eye of a wild animal,
and penetrating, "peering through the portals of the brain like the
brass cannon." Over it crouched bushy brows, and all around the great
head bristled white hair, on forehead, cheeks, and lips, so that little
flesh remained visible, and the life was settled in two fiery spots.
This concentration of expression in the few elementary features of
shape, hair, and eyes made the head a magnificent subject for painting.
Rembrandt should have painted it. But he would never allow a portrait of
himself to be drawn. Into his personality strangers must not intrude.
Venturing once to try for memoranda of his face, I took an artist to his
room. The courtesy of Sophocles was too stately to allow him to turn my
friend away, but he seated himself in a shaded window, and kept his head
in constant motion. When my frustrated friend had departed, Sophocles
told me, though without direct reproach, of two sketches which had
before been surreptitiously made,--one by the pencil of a student in his
class, another in oils by a lady who had followed him on the street.
Toward photography his aversion was weaker; perhaps because in that art
a human being less openly meddled with him.
From this sense of personal dignity, which made him at all times
determined to keep out of the grasp of others, much of his brusqueness
sprang. On the morning after he returned from his visit to Greece a
fellow professor saw him on the opposite side of the street, and,
hastening across, greeted him warmly: "So you have been home, Mr.
Sophocles; and how did you find your mother?" "She was up an
apple-tree," said Sophocles, confining himself to the facts of the case.
A boy who snowballed him on the street he prosecuted relentlessly, and
he could not be appeased until a considerable fine was imposed; but he
paid the fine himself. Many a bold push was made to ascertain his age;
yet, however suddenly the question came, or however craftily one crept
from date to date, there was a uniform lack of success. "I see
Allibone's Dictionary says you were born in 1805," a gentleman remarked.
"Some statements have been nearer, and some have been farther from the
truth." One day, when a violent attack of illness fell on him, a
physician was called for diagnosis. He felt the pulse, he examined the
tongue, he heard the report of the symptoms, then suddenly asked, "How
old are you, Mr. Sophocles?" With as ready presence of mind and as
pretty ingenuity as if he were not lying at the point of death,
Sophocles answered: "The Arabs, Dr. W., estimate age by several
standards. The age of Hassan, the porter, is reckoned by his wrinkles;
that of Abdallah, the physician, by the lives he has saved; that of
Achmet, the sage, by his wisdom. I, all my life a scholar, am nearing my
hundredth year." To those who had once come close to Sophocles these
little reserves, never asserted with impatience, were characteristic and
endearing. I happen to know his age; hot irons shall not draw it from
me.
Closely connected with his repellent reserve was the stern independence
of his modes of life. In his scheme, little things were kept small and
great things large. What was the true reading in a passage of
Aristophanes, what the usage of a certain word in Byzantine
Greek,--these were matters on which a man might well reflect and labor.
But of what consequence was it if the breakfast was slight or the coat
worn? Accordingly, a single room, in which a light was seldom seen,
sufficed him during his forty years of life in the college yard. It was
totally bare of comforts. It contained no carpet, no stuffed furniture,
no bookcase. The college library furnished the volumes he was at any
time using, and these lay along the floor, beside his dictionary, his
shoes, and the box that contained the sick chicken. A single bare table
held the book he had just laid down, together with a Greek newspaper, a
silver watch, a cravat, a paper package or two, and some scraps of
bread. His simple meals were prepared by himself over a small open
stove, which served at once for heat and cookery. Eating, however, was
always treated as a subordinate and incidental business, deserving no
fixed time, no dishes, nor the setting of a table. The peasants of the
East, the monks of southern monasteries, live chiefly on bread and
fruit, relished with a little wine; and Sophocles, in spite of
Cambridge and America, was to the last a peasant and a monk. Such simple
nutriments best fitted his constitution, for "they found their
acquaintance there." The western world had come to him by accident, and
was ignored; the East was in his blood, and ordered all his goings. Yet,
as a grave man of the East might, he had his festivities, and could on
occasion be gay. Among a few friends he could tell a capital story and
enjoy a well-cooked dish. But his ordinary fare was meagre in the
extreme. For one of his heartier meals he would cut a piece of meat into
bits and roast it on a spit, as Homer's people roasted theirs. "Why not
use a gridiron?" I once asked. "It is not the same," he said. "The juice
then runs into the fire. But when I turn my spit it bastes itself." His
taste was more than usually sensitive, kept fine and discriminating by
the restraint in which he held it. Indeed, all his senses, except sight,
were acute.
The wine he drank was the delicate unresinated Greek wine,--Corinthian,
or Chian, or Cyprian; the amount of water to be mixed with each being
carefully debated and employed. Each winter a cask was sent him from a
special vineyard on the heights of Corinth, and occasioned something
like a general rejoicing in Cambridge, so widely were its flavorous
contents distributed. Whenever this cask arrived, or when there came a
box from Mt. Sinai filled with potato-like sweetmeats,--a paste of
figs, dates, and nuts, stuffed into sewed goatskins,--or when his hens
had been laying a goodly number of eggs, then under the blue cloak a
selection of bottles, or of sweetmeats, or of eggs would be borne to a
friend's house, where for an hour the old man sat in dignity and calm,
opening and closing his eyes and his jack-knife; uttering meanwhile
detached remarks, wise, gruff, biting, yet seldom lacking a kernel of
kindness, till bedtime came, nine o'clock, and he was gone, the
gifts--if thanks were feared--left in a chair by the door. There were
half a dozen houses and dinner tables in Cambridge to which he went with
pleasure, houses where he seemed to find a solace in the neighborhood of
his kind. But human beings were an exceptional luxury. He had never
learned to expect them. They never became necessities of his daily life,
and I doubt if he missed them when they were absent. As he slowly
recovered strength, after one of his later illnesses, I urged him to
spend a month with me. Refusing in a brief sentence, he added with
unusual gentleness: "To be alone is not the same for me and for you. I
have never known anything else."
Unquestionably much of his disposition to remain aloof and to resist the
on-coming intruder was bred by the experiences of his early youth. His
native place, Tsangarada, is a village of eastern Thessaly, far up
among the slopes of the Pindus. Thither, several centuries ago, an
ancestor led a migration from the west coast of Greece, and sought a
refuge from Turkish oppression. From generation to generation his
fathers continued to be shepherds of their people, the office of
Proestos, or governor, being hereditary in the house. Sturdy men those
ancestors must have been, and picturesque their times. In late winter
afternoons, at 3 Holworthy, when the dusk began to settle among the elms
about the yard, legends of these heroes and their far-off days would
loiter through the exile's mind. At such times bloody doings would be
narrated with all the coolness that appears in Caesar's Commentaries, and
over the listener would come a sense of a fantastic world as different
from our own as that of Bret Harte's Argonauts. "My great-grandfather
was not easily disturbed. He was a young man and Proestos. His stone
house stood apart from the others. He was sitting in its great room one
evening, and heard a noise. He looked around, and saw three men by the
farther door. 'What are you here for?' 'We have come to assassinate
you.' 'Who sent you?' 'Andreas.' It was a political enemy. 'How much did
Andreas promise you?' 'A dollar.' 'I will promise you two dollars if you
will go and assassinate Andreas.' So they turned, went, and assassinated
Andreas. My great-grandfather went to Scyros the next day, and remained
there five years. In five years these things are forgotten in Greece.
Then he came back, and brought a wife from Scyros, and was Proestos once
more."
Another evening: "People said my grandfather died of leprosy. Perhaps he
did. As Proestos he gave a decision against a woman, and she hated him.
One night she crept up behind the house, where his clothes lay on the
ground, and spread over his clothes the clothes of a leper. After that
he was not well. His hair fell off and he died. But perhaps it was not
leprosy; perhaps he died of fear. The Knights of Malta were worrying the
Turks. They sailed into the harbor of Volo, and threatened to bombard
the town. The Turks seized the leading Greeks and shut them up in the
mosque. When the first gun was fired by the frigate, the heads of the
Greeks were to come off. My grandfather went into the mosque a young
man. A quarter of an hour afterwards, the gun was heard, and my
grandfather waited for the headsman. But the shot toppled down the
minaret, and the Knights of Malta were so pleased that they sailed away,
satisfied. The Turks, watching them, forgot about the prisoners. But two
hours later, when my grandfather came out of the mosque, he was an old
man. He could not walk well. His hair fell off, and he died."
Sometimes I caught glimpses of Turkish oppression in times of peace. "I
remember the first time I saw the wedding gift given. No new-made bride
must leave the house she visits without a gift. My mother's sister
married, and came to see us. I was a boy. She stood at the door to go,
and my mother remembered she had not had the gift. There was not much to
give. The Turks had been worse than usual, and everything was buried.
But my mother could not let her go without the gift. She searched the
house, and found a saucer,--it was a beautiful saucer; and this she gave
her sister, who took it and went away."
"How did you get the name of Sophocles?" I asked, one evening. "Is your
family supposed to be connected with that of the poet?" "My name is not
Sophocles. I have no family name. In Greece, when a child is born, it is
carried to the grandfather to receive a name." (I thought how, in the
Odyssey, the nurse puts the infant Odysseus in the arms of his mother's
father, Autolycus, for naming.) "The grandfather gives him his own name.
The father's name, of course, is different; and this he too gives when
he becomes a grandfather. So in old Greek families two names alternate
through generations. My grandfather's name was Evangelinos. This he gave
to me; and I was distinguished from others of that name because I was
the son of Apostolos, Apostolides. But my best schoolmaster was fond of
the poet Sophocles, and he was fond of me. He used to call me his little
Sophocles. The other boys heard it, and they began to call me so. It was
a nickname. But when I left home people took it for my family name. They
thought I must have a family name. I did not contradict them. It makes
no difference. This is as good as any." One morning he received a
telegram of congratulation from the monks in Cairo. "It is my day," he
said. "How did the monks know it was your birthday?" I asked. "It is not
my birthday. Nobody thinks about that. It is forgotten. This is my
saint's day. Coming into the world is of no consequence; coming under
the charge of the saints is what we care for. My name puts me in the
Virgin's charge, and the feast of the Annunciation is my day. The monks
know my name."
To the Greek Church he was always loyal. Its faith had glorified his
youth, and to it he turned for strength throughout his solitary years.
Its conventual discipline was dear to him, and oftener than of his
birthplace at the foot of Mt. Olympus he dreamed of Mt. Sinai. On Mt.
Sinai the Emperor Justinian founded the most revered of all Greek
monasteries. Standing remote on its sacred mountain, the monastery
depends on Cairo for its supplies. In Cairo, accordingly, there is a
branch or agency which during the boyhood of Sophocles was presided over
by his Uncle Constantius. At twelve he joined this uncle in Cairo. In
the agency there, in the parent monastery on Sinai itself, and in
journeyings between the two, the happy years were spent which shaped his
intellectual and religious constitution. Though he never outwardly
became a monk, he largely became one within. His adored uncle
Constantius was his spiritual father. Through him his ideals had been
acquired,--his passion for learning, his hardihood in duty, his
imperturbable patience, his brief speech which allowed only so many
words as might scantily clothe his thought, his indifference to personal
comfort. He never spoke the name of Constantius without some sign of
reverence; and in his will, after making certain private bequests, and
leaving to Harvard College all his printed books and stereotype plates,
he adds this clause: "All the residue and remainder of my property and
estate I devise and bequeath to the said President and Fellows of
Harvard College in trust, to keep the same as a permanent fund, and to
apply the income thereof in two equal parts: one part to the purchase of
Greek and Latin books (meaning hereby the ancient classics) or of Arabic
books, or of books illustrating or explaining such Greek, Latin, or
Arabic books; and the other part to the Catalogue Department of the
General Library.... My will is that the entire income of the said fund
be expended in every year, and that the fund be kept forever unimpaired,
and be called and known as the Constantius Fund, in memory of my
paternal uncle, Constantius the Sinaite, Konstantios Sinaitnes."
This man, then, by birth, training, and temper a solitary; whose
heritage was Mt. Olympus, and the monastery of Justinian, and the Greek
quarter of Cairo, and the isles of Greece; whose intimates were Hesiod
and Pindar and Arrian and Basilides,--this man it was who, from 1842
onward, was deputed to interpret to American college boys the hallowed
writings of his race. Thirty years ago too, at the period when I sat on
the green bench in front of the long-legged desk, college boys were boys
indeed. They had no more knowledge than the high-school boy of to-day,
and they were kept in order by much the same methods. Thus it happened,
by some jocose perversity in the arrangement of human affairs, that
throughout our Sophomore and Junior years we sportive youngsters were
obliged to endure Sophocles, and Sophocles was obliged to endure us. No
wonder if he treated us with a good deal of contempt. No wonder that his
power of scorn, originally splendid, enriched itself from year to year.
We learned, it is true, something about everything except Greek; and the
best thing we learned was a new type of human nature. Who that was ever
his pupil will forget the calm bearing, the occasional pinch of snuff,
the averted eye, the murmur of the interior voice, and the stocky
little figure with the lion's head? There in the corner he stood, as
stranded and solitary as the Egyptian obelisk in the hurrying Place de
la Concorde. In a curious sort of fashion he was faithful to what he
must have felt an obnoxious duty. He was never absent from his post, nor
did he cut short the hours, but he gave us only such attention as was
nominated in the bond; he appeared to hurry past, as by set purpose, the
beauties of what we read, and he took pleasure in snubbing expectancy
and aspiration.
"When I entered college," says an eminent Greek scholar, "I was full of
the notion, which I probably could not have justified, that the Greeks
were the greatest people that had ever lived. My enthusiasm was fanned
into a warmer glow when I learned that my teacher was himself a Greek,
and that our first lesson was to be the story of Thermopylae. After the
passage of Herodotus had been duly read, Sophocles began: 'You must not
suppose these men stayed in the Pass because they were brave; they were
afraid to run away.' A shiver went down my back. Even if what he said
had been true, it ought never to have been told to a Freshman."
The universal custom of those days was the hearing of recitations, and
to this Sophocles conformed so far as to set a lesson and to call for
its translation bit by bit. But when a student had read his suitable
ten lines, he was stopped by the raised finger; and Sophocles, fixing
his eyes on vacancy and taking his start from some casual suggestion of
the passage, began a monologue,--a monologue not unlike one of
Browning's in its caprices, its involvement, its adaptation to the
speaker's mind rather than to the hearer's, and its ease in glancing
from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven. During these intervals the
sluggish slumbered, the industrious devoted themselves to books and
papers brought in the pocket for the purpose, the dreamy enjoyed the
opportunity of wondering what the strange words and their still stranger
utterer might mean. The monologue was sometimes long and sometimes
short, according as the theme which had been struck kindled the
rhapsodist and enabled him, with greater or less completeness, to forget
his class. When some subtlety was approached, a smile--the only smile
ever seen on his face by strangers--lifted for a moment the corner of
the mouth. The student who had been reciting stood meanwhile, but sat
when the voice stopped, the white head nodded, the pencil made a record,
and a new name was called.
There were perils, of course, in records of this sort. Reasons for the
figures which subsequently appeared on the college books were not
easy to find. Some of us accounted for our marks by the fact that we
had red hair or long noses; others preferred the explanation that
our professor's pencil happened to move more readily to the right
hand or to the left. For the most part we took good-naturedly whatever
was given us, though questionings would sometimes arise. A little
before my time there entered an ambitious young fellow, who cherished
large purposes in Greek. At the end of the first month under his queer
instructor he went to the regent and inquired for his mark in Plato.
It was three, the maximum being eight. Horror-stricken, he penetrated
Sophocles's room. "Professor Sophocles," he said. "I find my mark is
only three. There must be some mistake. There is another Jones in the
class, you know, J. S. Jones" (a lump of flesh), "and may it not be
that our marks have been confused?" An unmoved countenance, a little
wave of the hand, accompanied the answer: "You must take your
chance,--you must take your chance." In my own section, when anybody
was absent from a certain bench, poor Prindle was always obliged to go
forward and say, "I was here to-day, Professor Sophocles," or else the
gap on the bench where six men should sit was charged to Prindle's
account. In those easy-going days, when men were examined for entrance
to college orally and in squads, there was a good deal of eagerness
among the knowing ones to get into the squad of Sophocles; for it was
believed that he admitted everybody, on the ground that none of us
knew any Greek, and it was consequently unfair to discriminate.
Fantastic stories were attributed to him, for whose truth or error none
could vouch, and were handed on from class to class. "What does
Philadelphia mean?" "Brotherly love," the student answers. "Yes! It is
to remind us of Ptolemy Philadelphus, who killed his brother." A German
commentator had somewhere mentioned lions in connection with the
Peloponnesus, and Sophocles inquires of Brown if he knows the date when
lions first appeared in the Peloponnesus. He does not, nor does Smith
nor Robinson. At length Green, driven to bay, declares in desperation
that he doesn't believe there ever were lions in the Peloponnesus. To
whom Sophocles: "You are right. There were none." "Do you read your
examination books?" he once asked a fellow instructor. "If they are
better than you expect, the writers cheat; if they are no better, time
is wasted." "Is to-day story day or contradiction day?" he is reported
to have said to one who, in the war time, eagerly handed him a
newspaper, and asked if he had seen the morning's news.
How much of this cynicism of conduct and of speech was genuine perhaps
he knew as little as the rest of us; but certainly it imparted a
pessimistic tinge to all he did and said. To hear him talk, one would
suppose the world was ruled by accident or by an utterly irrational
fate; for in his mind the two conceptions seemed closely to coincide.
His words were never abusive; they were deliberate, peaceful even;
but they made it very plain that so long as one lived there was no use
in expecting anything. Paradoxes were a little more probable than
ordered calculations; but even paradoxes would fail. Human beings
were altogether impotent, though they fussed and strutted as if they
could accomplish great things. How silly was trust in men's goodness and
power, even in one's own! Most men were bad and stupid,--Germans
especially so. The Americans knew nothing, and never could know. A
wise man would not try to teach them. Yet some persons dreamed of
establishing a university in America! Did they expect scholarship where
there were politicians and business men? Evil influences were far too
strong. They always were. The good were made expressly to suffer, the
evil to succeed. Better leave the world alone, and keep one's self
true. "Put a drop of milk into a gallon of ink; it will make no
difference. Put a drop of ink into a gallon of milk; the whole is
spoiled."