ATHENS
My first leave of absence from Crete had been for two months,
afterward extended indefinitely on account of the health of the
family, the extension being accompanied with the intimation that my
salary would be suspended after a date indicated, unless I returned to
Crete. The Cretan committee of Boston, to whom I had, according to
our agreement, sent my claim for the excess of expenses over my
income,--the excess amounting after the realization of all my private
resources, sale of my curiosities, etc., to about $1500, for which I
was indebted to Mr. Lockwood,--replied that the funds of the committee
were exhausted, and there was nothing to meet my claim. As I had given
my leisure in Crete to the practice of photography and was provided
with everything necessary to correct architectural work, I set about
photographing the ruins of Athens, which I found had never been
treated intelligently by the local photographers, and from the sale of
the photographs I realized what sufficed, with a sum of 1200 francs
accorded us by the Athens Cretan committee from the remainder of the
funds in hand when the insurrection collapsed, to meet immediate
contingencies. I was in hope that the new cabinet, in which I had a
warm personal friend in Judge Hoar, General Grant's attorney-general,
would assign me another post, knowing that the Turkish government was
so bitterly opposed to my remaining in Crete; but the new Secretary
of State, Hamilton Fish, was a friend of General King, my discomfited
superior at Rome, and he had persistently urged my dismissal as
demanded by the Sultan, though, owing to Hoar's opposition in the
cabinet this had not been accorded. But I was never forgiven by the
friends of King, and one day, when Judge Hoar was absent from a
cabinet meeting, Fish succeeded in getting my successor at Crete
appointed, and though the judge made an indignant remonstrance at the
next meeting, it was too late to help us, for Fish obstinately opposed
my having any other appointment, and, as he controlled all nominations
to consular posts, it was impossible for the judge to effect anything.
My troubles came to a crisis in the sudden death of my wife. The
anxiety and mental distress of our Cretan life, and her passionate
sympathy with the suffering Cretans, even more than our privations and
personal danger, had long been producing their effect on her mind,
and the weaning of the baby precipitated the change into a profound
melancholy, which became insanity accompanied by religious delusions
from which she sought refuge in a voluntary death. She was given a
public funeral, and the government sent a caisson to carry the coffin
to the grave, but the Cretans claimed the right to take charge of it,
and the coffin was carried to the cemetery on the shoulders of the
oldest chiefs. The Cretan women looked on her as their best friend,
and always spoke of her after her death as "the Blessed "--their form
of canonization, for even in Athens they had been her chief care. The
quiet but indomitable courage with which she faced danger in Crete,
lest they should be involved in the panic which prevailed all around
us, was as remarkable as the humility with which she repelled all
acknowledgment of any merit on her part. She indulged in no sentiment,
had no poetic prepossession concerning the people she protected and
worked for, but the dominant sense of duty carried her through all
difficulties. She never gave a thought to personal danger, and though
a fragile creature, not five feet high, she was capable of cowing the
most brutal of the barbarians who were gathered around us at Khalepa,
and, whether to keep the consulate for me while I was away, or to
navigate the yacht to meet me on my return from my visits to Greece,
nothing made her hesitate to do what she thought her duty. In the
three years of almost breaking strain of our residence in the midst
of the anarchy of the insurrection, she had only the few days' relief
from anxiety of her stay in Syra, while waiting the arrival of the
Kestrel, but in all that time I never saw her make the least display
of trepidation or anxiety, until the dispatch came from Secretary
Washburn to tell us that the salary would be stopped.
I was asked then, as the reader may ask now, why I did not take her
away when I found that she was failing. I had not the means to pay my
passage to any other country. I was myself nearly prostrated mentally
and physically, and unfit for anything but my photography. I was in
debt so deeply that I could not honestly borrow, and my brother was
dead. The American government pays no traveling expenses for its
consuls, and I had not an article that I could sell for a dollar, for
the furniture of the little house we lived in had been provided by the
Cretan committee. The Greek government was hostile to me until Laura's
death stirred the public feeling so profoundly, but even then the king
was bitterly opposed to me. I was physically and financially a wreck
on a foreign strand, with neither hope nor the prospect of relief.
I struggled along as best I could, Mrs. Dickson taking charge of my
children, and I made my home with the Dicksons.
In June I had to go back to Crete to make consignment of the consulate
to my successor. I found the island materially as I had left it, but
almost deserted and quite desolate, and the local administration in
the hands of the spies and the traitors of the insurrection; all the
brave men in exile and the gloom of death over everything; villages
still unrebuilt, and the only sign of activity the building in the
most accessible districts of military roads and blockhouses. As my
successor delayed, I, to pass the time, went to Omalos to carry out
the ancient plan which could no longer be postponed if it was to
be carried out, for I never intended to see Crete again. The new
governor-general--Mehmet Ali, the Prussian (in subsequent years
murdered in Albania)--was an amiable, just, and intelligent man, who
would have saved the position if he had been there in the beginning,
but now there was nothing to be done. When he learned that I intended
to go to Omalos he decided, with a more friendly impulse than any
governor of Crete had ever shown towards me, to join me there and make
the visit pleasant for me. He preceded me, in fact, and I found the
posts all warned to show me the customary honors, and when I reached
the plain I found his tent ready to entertain me. The most sumptuous
dinner his resources afforded was served in his audience tent; we had
a grand acrobatic and dramatic entertainment of the soldiers and a
torchlight _retraite_, and he gave me rugs to cover me, without which
I must have suffered severely, for, though in June, it was bitterly
cold at Omalos, and I had brought only one rug to sleep on. We
returned together next day after I had visited the great ravine of
Agios Rumeli, the most magnificent gorge I have ever seen, never taken
from the Cretans by an enemy until this betrayal; and, as we went
back, we discussed the condition of the island. I told him freely
what I thought of the situation, and he so far agreed with me that he
begged me to go to Constantinople and lay my ideas before A'ali Pasha,
promising to support them.
On my return to Athens I raised money enough to get a return ticket
to the Turkish capital, and had an immediate audience of the grand
vizier, to whom I stated frankly, and without in the least disguising
the faults committed by his government, the condition of the island
as I saw it, and the remedies necessary for the restoration of its
prosperity. He asked me to give him a written memorandum of my views,
which I did, and he then asked me to stay in Constantinople until he
could send a commission to Crete and get a report from it. I replied
that I had not the means to stay so long, the time he indicated being
several weeks, and he offered to pay my expenses liberally if I would
stay. I went to the office of the "Levant Herald" to ask for work.
They knew me well enough there, for I had been their correspondent
from Crete, and the journal had once been fined £100 for one of my
letters, and once confiscated for another. On what I earned I lived
for the time I had to wait for the report of the commission.
When the report came I was summoned to the grand vizier to receive my
reply. A'ali Pasha said that he had found that my statements of the
condition of things in the island were correct, and he approved the
remedies I proposed; would I go out to Crete with full powers to carry
out the measures I recommended, the chief of which was an amnesty for
such of the exiles as, knowing them personally, I could trust to carry
out my dispositions? He could not give me an official position under
the Turkish government, having been reputed so long as an enemy; but a
semi-official position for the definite purpose of the pacification he
was prepared to offer me with an adequate salary and appointments, and
_carte blanche_ for the pardon of whomever I saw fit to name. On one
condition, I replied, I would accept the appointment, this being that
the persons I pardoned and recalled to the island should also be
guaranteed from arrest and molestation on civil process for acts
committed in the course of the military operations, such as the
taking of cattle or sheep for the subsistence of the bands, but not
comprehending criminal acts. On this condition we came to a final
difference, as A'ali said that by the Turkish law the government
became pecuniarily responsible for all such damages by condoning the
acts of the offenders, and that they were not prepared to agree to.
But it was impossible for me to enter into an agreement to invite a
chief to the island with his pardon, under my full powers, and then
see him thrown into prison by civil process for acts which the war
had made necessary, as had already happened in several cases, as it
impugned my good faith and made the pardon null and void, as much as
if the offense charged were the rebellion. A'ali's confidence and the
prospect of doing good to my Cretan friends touched me profoundly, and
in my destitute condition the salary of a Turkish official was a heavy
inducement, but I had to insist on the condition which divided us, and
I withdrew.
A'ali asked me to come to the treasury and receive the compensation
for my time spent in waiting on his inquiries, but the messenger
carrying the money missed or evaded the appointment, or I mistook it;
for, after waiting some time, I had to go back empty-handed, and
after waiting two or three days longer to hear of the money, with an
unjustifiable suspicion of A'ali's good faith, I took boat again for
Athens, more destitute than I had come. I had the additional pain of
telling the chiefs, on whose behalf I had pleaded, that there was no
hope of an amnesty. I shall never forget the despair in the face of
old Costa Veloudaki, the chief of the Rhizo district, when I told him
of my failure. Tall and straight under his seventy odd years, sickened
with a terrible nostalgia away from his mountain home, he listened
mute and turned away without a word, bowed with grief and too much
moved to risk speaking lest tears should shame him. I had known the
old man from the beginning of the troubles, for he was the chief of
the mountain country above Canea, and had been the spokesman of the
committee when they came to see the consuls,--a noble, honest, and
truly patriotic man, and a hero of all the movements since 1827. In
one of the first battles, fought in view of my house, his son had
been killed, and, taking his hand as he lay on the ground they had
successfully defended, he thanked God his son had been worthy to die
for Crete. It was, for me, the hard ending of a tragedy in which I had
had my part, serious enough to identify myself with my island friends,
and I can remember this episode of my life with the consciousness that
those who suffered more than I did acknowledged that I had been a true
friend and a prudent counselor from the beginning.
On my return to Athens I found Russie limping from the effects of a
heavy fall he had had during my absence, and to which no attention had
been paid, though it gave him continual pain. I called in the leading
Greek physician, who, on examination, pronounced it rheumatism, and
prescribed exercise and walks. I took the child on all the excursions
I made, to Marathon and other of the local points of interest, for he
was a great reader, and interested in Greek history and archeology
already, passing most of his time with me in my work on the Acropolis.
He limped painfully over all the sites we visited, and presently we
accepted an invitation to Aegina, to the home of the Tricoupis, the
parents of the well-known premier of later years. We spent some days
there, fishing and exploring and photographing the ruins, but Mrs.
Tricoupi recognized in Russie's lameness the beginning of hip disease,
and, returning to Athens, I had a council on him, when it was placed
beyond doubt that that deadly disease was established, aided largely
by the false diagnosis that substituted severe exercise for the
absolute quiet which the malady required. He was at once put in
plaster bandages and we were ordered home. Home! But how? I had not
money enough to pay a single passage even to England, and had no
friends from whom I could ask the means to get home. In despair I went
to the Turkish minister--Photiades Pasha--and told him of the promise
of A'ali Pasha to pay me for my time and expenses while waiting at
Constantinople, asking him to remind the pasha that I had not been
paid, as he probably supposed, possibly through the dishonesty of the
messenger. A'ali made inquiry, and, finding it to be the case, sent
me, through Photiades, a hundred Turkish pounds, with which I was
enabled to pay all local debts and reach London, more grateful to the
Turkish sense of justice than to that of my own government.
It only wanted for the diversity of my career that I should have
served a term as a demi-official of the Turkish government I had
served to undermine. For A'ali Pasha I retain the respect due to the
most remarkable ability, honesty, and patriotism combined I have ever
known in a man in his position, a most difficult one, surrounded by
corruption, venality, and treason as probably the ruler of no other
state has been in our day. He was free from prejudice, fanaticism,
and political passion, and had he been seconded by his colleagues and
administrators, as he should have been, I am convinced that he might
have restored the prosperity of his country. But, so far as I know, he
stood alone in the government. He was a just and impartial minister
where ministers are notoriously unjust, corrupt, and partisan, and,
of my past failures, I regret none so much as that I was unable to
coöperate with him in restoring peace to Crete.
At Paris I had the advice of a specialist in hip disease for Russie,
and the plaster bandage was replaced by a wire envelope, which fitted
the entire body and which made his transfer from vehicle to vehicle
without any strain a matter of comparative ease. But the poor child
suffered the inevitable acute pains of active hip disease before
anchylosis takes place, and he wasted visibly from the incessant pain.
He had been, when stricken in his seventh year, a boy of precocious
strength and activity, a model of health and personal beauty, whom
passersby in the streets stopped to look at, so that from the common
people one often heard an exclamation of admiration, as from our
English fellow passengers between Calais and Dover, who gathered round
him as he lay in his wire cradle with murmurs of admiration, for the
pallor which had begun to set in only made his beauty more refined and
his color a more transparent rose and white. In London we were warmly
received by the Greeks who had been prominent in supporting the
insurrection in Crete, and a testimonial was proposed for me of a
piece of plate, for which £225 were subscribed, which as testimonial
I declined to accept, but did accept on account of the debt which the
Cretan committee of Boston owed me. Here I met with great kindness,
especially from the Greek consul-general, Mr. Spartali, and I then
made the acquaintance of his daughter, who, two years later, became
my wife. The Rossettis, especially Christina, who had known Laura and
Russie when the latter was a boy of two, were most thoughtful and
kind, and I had some wheels put to Russie's cage, so that his passion
for seeing, which the incessant pain he was in never abated, could
be indulged to a certain extent. Miss Rossetti went with us to the
Zoological Gardens to satisfy his passion for natural history, and
so far as kindness could compensate for his helplessness he lacked
nothing. We sailed for New York and were met at landing by my brother
Charles, who told me of the death of our mother, two weeks before. Her
last wish had been for my coming, and to be able to embrace our little
Lisa, her namesake. I had not seen her for seven years.
I had made preparations while in London, for the publication of a
volume of photographs of the Acropolis of Athens, and, when I had left
the children with their mother's parents, I returned to London for a
few weeks, to superintend the production of it. The American medical
man called in to treat Russie proved as great a quack as the Greek,
and his case grew worse. Finally he was sent to the hospital, from
which he was, after a long treatment, sent back as incurable, and I
was told that probably all I could do for him henceforward was to make
death as easy as it might be.
The Acropolis book, published privately, cleared for me about $1000.
Moreover, difficulties had arisen over the will of my brother, with
which none of the parties interested were contented, and so, by a
compromise, the family received a part, of which, after the deduction
of my drafts from Rome, accepted before his death, there came to me
$500. Hence I was, after my straits, at comparative ease for the
moment. One of the most generous friends my vagabond past had given
me, the late J.M. Forbes of Boston, gave me a commission for a
landscape, and I returned to my painting, living in a tent in the Glen
of the White Mountains near to the subject chosen. Here I received a
visit from Agassiz, and here we had our last meeting and conversation
on nature and art. But the long abstention from painting had left me
half paralyzed--the hand had always been too far behind the theory. I
now began to question if I had any vocation that way, and, with the
passing of the summer, I went back to literature and found a place on
the old "Scribner's Monthly," now "The Century," under Dr. Holland,
the most friendly of chiefs, and there I had as colleague Mr. Gilder,
the present editor of the magazine. The greatest mistake, from
the business point of view, I have ever made was in leaving the
collaboration with Dr. Holland.