GREEK BROILS--TRICOUPI--FLORENCE
The troubles initiated at Gortyna increased until the eastern end of
the island was drawn into them, and, as the Greek government at the
same time began to agitate for the execution of those clauses in the
Treaty of Berlin which compensated it for the advantages gained by the
principalities through the war, I received orders to go to Athens and
resume my correspondence with the "Times." Athens was in a ferment,
and the discontent with the government for its inefficiency was
universal; the ministry, as was perhaps not altogether unjustifiable
under the circumstances past, allowed the King to bear his part of the
responsibility, and discontent with him was even greater than that
with Comoundouros, the prime minister, whose position became very
difficult, for the King and his _entourage_ opposed all energetic
measures, and the people demanded the most energetic. Excitement ran
very high, and the ministry was carried along with the populace, which
demanded war and the military occupation of the territory assigned to
Greece.
Comoundouros was, on the whole, the most competent prime minister for
Greece whom the country has had in my time. Tricoupi, who was the
chief of the opposition at the time, was an abler man, and a statesman
of wider views,--on the whole, the greatest statesman of modern
Greece, _me judice_; but in intrigue and Odyssean craft, which is
necessary in the Levant, Comoundouros was his master. In 1868, when
they were both in the ministry, they formed the most competent
government Greece has known in her constitutional days, but it was
betrayed by the King, who paid now in part for his defection, for no
one placed the least confidence in him. The diplomatic corps pressed
for peace, and the nation demanded war, for which it was not in the
least prepared. The animosity towards the King was extreme. I saw
people who happened to be sitting in front of the cafés rise and turn
their backs to him when he walked past, as he used to do without any
attendant. Comoundouros ran with the diplomats and hunted with the
populace,--I think he really meant to continue running and avoid
hunting at any risk, but he talked on the other side. I knew him well,
and used continually to go to his house when he received all the world
in the evening, in perfectly republican simplicity, as is the way in
Athens, and he said to me one evening that the King prevented action,
and impeded all steps to render the army efficient.
This was evidently the feeling of the populace, and public
demonstrations took place which menaced revolution, and on one
occasion shots were fired, and the demonstrators were dispersed by the
cavalry. I asked him on that occasion why the ministry did not let the
revolution loose, and drive the King away. "Ah! they think now that we
have no stability,--what would they think then? and what could we get
better?" I find in a file of my letters of the time one which says: "I
am not surprised at Mrs. ----'s opinion of the King,--there are few
people of either sex here who are not of the same opinion, and the
conviction is getting very general that no progress or reform is to be
hoped for until he is expelled the country." Another, a little later,
says: "It looks very much as if there were a revolution preparing, and
that the King would have to go. He is so detested that I don't think
any one wants to save him." To complicate matters, there came some
scandals to light concerning the frauds and peculations in the
furnishing of supplies for the army, which was being prepared for
a campaign in extravagant haste, and rumor involved persons in the
closest intimacy with the prime minister. I do not believe that
Comoundouros was personally complicated, but I find in one of my
letters the following, under date, "Athens, June 10:"--
"Things here are in a horrible state. The latest disclosures of
the great defalcations seem to involve so many officials and
non-officials, and break out in so many new directions, that one
does not know whom to exonerate. The King and most of the
ministers--quantities of officials, persons in high social positions
and unblemished reputation--seem to have been carried away by the
fever; Comoundouros himself is accused of participation; ---- and ----
are clearly guilty, and I think the ministry must resign. So far we
have no accusation against Tricoupi or any of his friends. That is the
only comfort we can draw out of the affair. I am holding back from
exposing the affair in the 'Times' from the double motive that the
scandal will affect all Greece, and because the affair is not yet
fully disclosed and we don't know what it may lead to in the way of
exposures. The government is doing everything it can to prevent the
investigation extending, and this I mean to stop by exposing the
whole matter in the 'Times,' but until it succeeds in arresting the
disclosures I shall let them go. Comoundouros is buying up all the
correspondents he can, and one of his emissaries told me two or three
days ago that if I would help him out I could pocket 20,000 francs."
To this offer I replied by a letter to the "Times" attacking the
ministry savagely, and when it was printed and reached Athens, and I
saw the minister again, he remarked with his imperturbable good-humor,
which indeed never failed him, "How you did give it to us to-day!" As
I recall the old man, running over the twenty odd years during which
I had known him more or less with long interruptions, I retain my
impression of his genuine patriotism and personal integrity; but he
was surrounded by people who did profit by their relation to him. He
was singularly like Depretis in manner and character; and of Depretis
it was said that he would not steal himself, but he did not care how
much his friends stole; but I think that the Greek was the abler man
by much. Comoundouros mitigated the rancors usual in the politics of
Greece (as in those of Italy of to-day) by his unvarying good-nature,
never permitting his antagonisms to degenerate to animosities. In the
years when I first knew him, during the Cretan insurrection of 1866,
he was at his best in power and in patriotism; but during the years
which followed, full of the base intrigues which had their birth in
the influences surrounding the court, he got more or less demoralized,
for patriotism and honesty were no passports to power, and he was
ambitious before all things. Not to be in office or near coming to
office is in Greece to have no political standing whatever, and the
King's defection and betrayal of the interests of Greece in 1868
convinced Comoundouros and many others that with the King there was
nothing to be done for a purely Hellenic and consistent policy. All
my study of Levantine politics since that day convinces me that in
sacrificing the interests of Greece to the demands of the Russian
ministry in 1868, the King threw away the only opportunity which
Greece has ever had of attaining the position her people and her
friends believed her destined to,--that of the heir of the Ottoman
empire. The case is now hopeless, for the adverse influences have
gained the upper hand, and the demoralization of Greece has progressed
with the years. The sturdy independence of Comoundouros in 1868 was
wasted, and I can imagine that the old man understood that, though the
forms of independence and the semblance of progress must be kept up,
there was really no hope of a truly Hellenic revival, and with his
hopes and his courage he lost all his patriotic ambitions. In this
juncture he was satisfied with the husks which the diplomats threw to
Greece, and blustered and threatened war to attain a compromise which
should keep him in office and in peace with the King, whom he would
gladly have rid Greece of if it had been practicable.
In the struggle with diplomacy he so far gained his point that there
was an adjustment of the frontiers in accordance with the treaty. The
commission for the delimitation, at the head of which was General
Hamley, met at Athens with the intention of beginning the trace from
the Epirote side, and I had made all my preparations for accompanying
it, when there happened one of those curious mischances which are
possible only in the East. The summer was hot and dry, and the mayor
of Athens, foreseeing a drought, had decided to turn the stream known
as the "washerwoman's brook," one of the few perennial sources in the
vicinity, into the aqueduct which supplied the city with drinking
water. As all the dirty clothes of Athens, comprising those of the
military hospital, in which there were grave cases of typhoid, were
washed in that stream, the consequences were soon evident in a great
outbreak of the malady in the city, the victims being estimated at
10,000 persons; and, two days before that on which the commission was
to start on its work, I was taken ill. I sent for a doctor and he
declared the illness to be fever, and probably typhoid. I went to bed,
and took for three days in succession forty grains of quinine a day,
getting up on the fourth, to find the commission gone and myself in no
condition to follow it; and so I missed the most interesting
journey which had ever offered itself in my journalistic career. My
exasperation at the imbecility of the mayor can be easily imagined,
and it was vented in a proper castigation in my correspondence. In
the burning weeks that followed, the state of Athens reminded one of
Boccaccio's description of Florence in the plague. There were not
physicians enough in the city to attend the sick, or undertakers to
bury the dead. The funeral processions to the great cemetery beyond
the Ilissus seemed in constant motion, and the water-sellers drove a
brisk trade in the water of a noble spring under Hymettus.
At the next municipal election the mayor was reëlected triumphantly!
The ministry was less fortunate, a dissolution resulting in a majority
for the opposition, and Tricoupi came into power. As the most
competent and eminent of the rulers of Greece in the following years
(for Comoundouros died not long after), and cut off prematurely in the
midst of his services to the land he always served with an honest,
patriotic devotion, he deserves the commemoration which, as his
intimate friend for many years, I am better qualified, perhaps, to
render him than any other foreigner. Our friendship began in the
period when he held the portfolio of Foreign Affairs in 1867-8 and
continued till his death. He was educated and, I think, born in
London, where his father held for many years the legation of Greece.
The elder Tricoupi and his wife were two of the most sympathetic
and admirable people of their race I have ever known, and the elder
Tricoupi's history of his country in its later fortunes is recognized
as the standard, both in its history and in its use of the modern
Greek, purely vernacular, which we have. The son, head of the
government or leader of the opposition from an age at which in few
countries a man can lead in politics, was, _rara avis_ in those lands,
an absolutely devoted patriot and honest man; but his country has
never been in a state of political education or patriotic devotion
such as to enable it to profit by his ability or his honesty. I well
remember that during his first premiership I said to him that I hoped
he was in for a long term of office, which might establish some
solidity in Greek politics, and he replied, "They will support me
until I am obliged to tax them, and then they will turn me out." And
so it happened.
The general elections, which were stormy, brought Tricoupi into power;
but the violence to the freedom of election of which the government
was guilty made them very exciting. One of Tricoupi's chief supporters
was standing for Cephalonia, I think, and we heard that there were
great preparations to defeat him by the common device of overawing his
supporters and driving them from the polls, and I decided to go at
once to the locality and watch the method of the elections. The
presence of the correspondent at the polling booths, all of which I
visited in rapid succession through the day, completely deranged all
the plans, and only at one place was there an attempt at illegal
pressure, on which occasion one man was shot. The chief of police
at the place came to me from time to time, saying, "Have you seen
anything illegal?" as if he were under orders to convince me that the
law had been obeyed. The result was that the Tricoupist candidate
was elected, and he admitted to me that his election was due to my
presence. He had only had one man shot, the general plan of carrying
the elections by violence having been abandoned in deference to public
opinion in England, represented by the correspondent of the "Times."
I decided to go to Volo as soon as the annexation was accomplished,
and took letters of introduction to several leading citizens, amongst
them one from Tricoupi. The Christian portion of the town was, of
course, in exultation, but an attempt at inspection of the Turkish
quarter had to be abandoned precipitately before a demonstration of
the Mussulman juvenility. My visit had to be abbreviated, for the
filthy khan which was the only place of entertainment for man and
beast swarmed with bugs and mosquitoes; and, though the five letters
I had were to the wealthiest persons in Volo, amongst them being the
mayor, not one offered me hospitality when I told them the next day
that I must return by the steamer that brought me, in default of
a decent bed and eatable food; and, though they expressed polite
regrets, they saw no alternative, and I took a return passage.
Hospitality in continental Greece has no traditions; and even in
Athens, except from Greeks who had lived in England, I have never been
asked to accept bed or bread, while in Crete and in the Peloponnesus
there was always a more or less active competition as to who should
give me both. The stranger, who was in the classical days the
messenger of the gods and received welcome as such, has degenerated to
the position of the modern tramp. The difference is, no doubt, due to
the centuries of oppression and isolation in which the fragments of
the race have lived, and in which they have suffered the intrusion
of unwelcome elements amongst them, always overborne and finding no
protector except their own cunning, and no friend save in their own
religion.
A thought that comes up very often while one deals with the Greek in
Hellenic lands, is the wonder at the tenacity of the religion of the
Greek, surviving the hostility not only of the Turk, but of his fellow
Christian of the rival creed. No other nation has ever endured the
hostile pressure on its religious fidelity which the Greeks have had
to submit to since the fall of Constantinople. The Venetians were even
more cruel with the Greeks under their rule than the Turks have ever
been, and the influence of the Papal See has always been exerted with
the most inflexible persistence for the suppression of what in Rome is
called the Greek schism, to which it has shown an animosity greater
even than that displayed toward the Protestant Church. And yet I have
always found the Orthodox Church in all its ramifications the most
charitable and liberal of all the forms of Christianity with which I
have come in contact. No stranger is turned from the doors of a Greek
convent or refused such succor as is in the power of its inmates, be
he Protestant, atheist, or even of their bitterest enemies, the Roman
Catholics. No questions are ever asked, and it has twice happened to
me that I have lodged at a Greek convent during the most rigid fasts
of the Church, when the inmates sat down to a dinner of herbs and dry
bread, while to me was given the best their resources could compass--a
roast lamb or kid, generally. The _kalogeros_ in attendance, when I
was dining on one occasion with the prior of a convent on Good Friday,
and ate flesh when the prior himself had nothing but herbs and bread,
turned to his superior with a perplexed smile, saying, "Why! he is
not even a Christian!" but was none the less cordial afterward--he
evidently had no other feeling than that of pity that a man who had
been their protector (it was in Crete during the insurrection) should
not enjoy the privileges of the Church. This liberal hospitality on
the part of the ecclesiastics makes the want of it on the part of the
people all the more conspicuous and inexplicable.
In the event Comoundouros found his game of bluff a safe one, for his
claims were just, and diplomacy was derelict, or there would have been
no utility in the demonstration. But the futility of the Greek threats
was most conspicuously shown, for not a battalion got to the frontier
in a condition to fight, and two batteries sent off from Athens in
great pomp broke down so completely that not a gun was fit to go into
action when they reached the frontier. The (for them and for the
moment) fortunate issue of the contention by the cession of the
territory in dispute seemed to the Greeks in general due to their good
military measures, and so confirmed them in the dangerous conviction
that the powers were afraid that they might beat the Turks and open
the question of Constantinople, etc., which the powers had determined
should not be opened. Tricoupi alone of all those who had a policy was
of the opinion that the powers should not have interfered, but should
have let the Greeks have their way and learn their lesson. It was his
opinion that the political education of the Greeks was thwarted
by this continual intermeddling of the powers, which made their
independence a fiction. Subsequent events showed that he did not
nourish that blind confidence in the military capacity of his
countrymen which they had, but he said until they were allowed to test
their abilities they would never know on what that confidence reposed.
The common opinion was that one Greek was worth ten Turks, even in the
state of the Greek training. This was not Tricoupi's opinion, which
was that it was impossible under the tutelage which the powers
exercised for them to know the truth, and he had, from 1867,
persistently urged the let-alone policy, which would at least enable
them to find their level.
Time has shown that Tricoupi was the only party leader in Greece who
saw affairs justly. Had his counsel prevailed, the nation would have
found in 1881 what they discovered only in 1897, that they needed
training and concentration to hold their own, and that the path of
conquest of their ancient estate was set with obstacles which only
Spartan discipline and endurance could clear away. As it has happened,
the lesson has been learned only after all the competing elements have
had theirs and are on the way to the primacy in the Balkans which the
Greeks thought the heritage of their race, but of which they can now
hold no hope. The protection of the powers has been fatal, for
the future of the Levant belongs to the Slav in spite of all the
intelligence, activity, and personal morality in which the Greeks
excel all their rivals. An English statesman who had to deal with
Tricoupi in regard to official matters said to me once that he found
him apparently open and business-like, but that when they came to
the transaction of matters at issue he proved to be as slippery and
dishonest as any of his countrymen. But Tricoupi was a Greek, and
evasion, diplomatic duplicity, and the usual devices of the weak
brought to terms by the strong, are ingrained with the race. He felt
the truth, viz., that all the powers, while professing to protect
them, were really oppressing them by their protection, and that the
negotiations in which they posed as friends were really hostile
measures which he was, in duty to his nation, bound to fight by all
the means in his reach; and in this case the means were those of the
weak, deprived of liberty of action as much as if they were held down
by the troops of the powers.
In all these considerations Tricoupi stands as much the type and
impersonation of the modern Greek in his best phase, and the
Hellenic cause lost in his early death the largest exponent of the
characteristics of the race I have ever known, but, as fate had it,
lost him only when his abilities could only serve to mitigate disaster
and accentuate failure. Had he been alive, I am convinced that the
disaster of 1897 would not have taken place, and, if a conflict was,
through the ignorant impetuosity of the masses, unavoidable, it would
have resulted more creditably to the Greek army, not in victory
indeed, for this was under the circumstances not to be hoped for, but
in a defeat which was not irretrievable.
The campaign finished, I returned to Florence, where, during the lull
in Eastern matters, I found my only public occupation in the contest
with regard to the restoration of ancient buildings in Italy. Those
who can remember the aspect of the Ducal Palace and St. Mark's in
those years, shored up to prevent large portions of them from falling
in crumbling ruin into the Piazza, and can see that now at least the
general aspect of the perfect building is preserved, and in the case
of the Ducal Palace even the details of the most important decorative
elements restored with a fidelity which defies examination, will
hardly be inclined to resent the restorations which have abolished
the hideous balks of timber and bulkheads of most of the southern and
western façades. The southwest angle of the Palace was prevented
only by massive shoring from falling bodily into the Piazzetta. The
anti-restoration society in England had raised a great outcry over the
works, which had, however, been going on without criticism during the
Austrian occupation since 1840; and, after a thorough examination of
the state of the two precious buildings, and the plans and appliances
for their restoration, I undertook the defense of the restorers, and
the hot controversy in the "Times" and other journals on the subject
resulted in the confirmation of the authorities in their resolution
to continue the works which have left the Ducal Palace at least in a
condition to be seen for a few hundred years to come, and relieved the
church of the scaffolds and bulkheads which disfigured it up to 1890.
The works in St. Mark's reëstablished in more than its original
solidity the south flank, which was in such a state of ruin that only
the abundant shoring had prevented the façade from top to bottom from
falling bodily into the Piazza.
On the other hand, I found at Florence that the authorities, in
anticipation of the completion of the present splendid façade of the
Duomo, had decided to refresh the entire surface of the flanks to put
them in keeping with the new sculpture of the front, and had actually
inaugurated the system of removing with acids, followed by the chisel,
of all the toned surface of the sculptured parts so that the Duomo
should, when the façade was revealed, present the aspect of a
bride-cake in the brilliant whiteness of its marble, but without a
touch remaining of the workmanship of its original architects and
sculptors. At this juncture the editor of the "Cornhill Magazine"
asked me for an article on the restorations in Italy, and I profited
by the invitation to write a scathing article on the cleaning up of
the Duomo, which, falling under the attention of the government at
Rome, provoked a telegram ordering peremptorily the cessation of
all restoration on the church. I received the thanks of the Italian
ministry and the formal request to inform it of any other similar
operations which should fall under my attention, and when a few
weeks later I saw the scaffold raised around the beautiful pulpit
of Donatello at Prato, a note to the ministry had the effect of
telegraphically stopping operations. The indignation of the good
people of Florence at the cessation of the house-cleaning brought me
a request from a high quarter to undertake the defense of the city
against the insolent Englishman of the "Cornhill!"
The subsequent years of my residence in Florence were on the whole the
most tranquil and the happiest of my mature life. We all enjoyed it
without serious drawback, the routine becoming a visit in early summer
to Venice, then visits to the Venetian Tyrol, Cadore, Cortina, and
Landro, and the return to Florence in the autumn. I found in Florence
an intellectual life and serenity of which there was no evidence
elsewhere, with surroundings of the noblest art of the Renaissance,
and an intellectual atmosphere hardly, I think, to be found in any
other Italian city. Amongst our dearest friends were the Villaris,
with whom we still remain in cordial sympathy. I can wish Italy no
greater good than the possession of many children like Pasquale
Villari. Our great diplomat George P. Marsh had an unbounded
admiration for him--he used to say, "Villari is an angel;" and he
certainly stands at the head of the list of noble Italians I have
known for the personal and intellectual virtues and subtlety of
appreciation, not rare amongst Italians, but unfortunately to be
sought for in their politics in vain. In Italy as in America men of
that type are pushed to the wall and crowded out of the conflicts of
political life.
I was finally, after five years of residence, obliged to abandon our
home at Florence by the constant recurrence of fevers, which gave us
perpetual anxiety as well as perplexity, for there is no malaria in
that part of Tuscany. After an attack which nearly proved fatal to one
of the children, my courage gave out, and we broke up housekeeping,
and the family, with the exception of myself and my eldest daughter,
went back to England. It was only subsequently that I discovered that
the secret of the fevers was in the water drawn from the wells of
Florence. These are sunk in a stratum of gravel in which are countless
cesspools, the filtration of which extends through the entire stratum
and poisons every well within the limits of their influence. On
my accession in later years to the service of the "Times" as Rome
correspondent, I attacked the system of drainage and water supply of
Florence in a series of letters, and brought down on my head the most
furious abuse which my journalistic life has known, but which ended in
the reformation, not yet complete, however, of the water supply of the
city, and the admission by the Florentines that if they had attended
to my warnings earlier they would have been saved great losses, chief
of which was the abandonment of a projected return to Florence by
Queen Victoria, on account of a serious epidemic of typhoid which
broke out after her first visit. Like most reformers, I was threatened
with violence if I returned to the scene of my labors, to be hailed as
a friend when I had been found to be right and my warnings salutary.
But at the moment, the effect of the fevers was to drive me out of
Florence, where residence had on many accounts proved most delightful,
and send me off again on adventure.
I passed the next year at New York on the staff of the "Evening Post,"
sending occasional correspondence to the "Times," and during this
absence my father-in-law became involved in financial embarrassments
which ultimately cost my wife her allowance, after we had again
established our residence for the family in London. With a widened
literary experience and connection I could see my way to a better
situation than that of the past years, but in 1886 the death of the
Rome correspondent of the "Times," and the definite retirement of Mr.
Gallenga, the Italian correspondent _par excellence_, brought me into
a regular and permanent employment by the paper as its representative
for Greece and Italy, with residence at Rome.