EGYPT. PALESTINE. GREECE.
Our great adventure lasted more than two years. I kept no diary, wrote
few letters. My mother’s journal for these months is briefer than usual;
we lived at such a pace that there was not time to record the
experiences of each day. What I remember are the unforgettable things.
Of Holland, the artists, Franz Hals and Rembrandt, the great organ at
Haarlem, the sturdy peasants, the round red cheeses that resemble them.
Belgium is clearer; besides the picture of Rubens and Van Dyck, I can
see Bruges with its fine belfry, Ghent with the lace makers, the smiling
countryside with straight white roads bordered by poplars. Of Normandy
and Brittany, I remember the mystery of the Druid stones, those strange
dolmens and menhirs, footsteps of a mighty race, the grave reserve of
the Bretons and the peasant costumes that vary with every town. We soon
learned to recognize them.
“That woman is from Quimperlé,” my mother would say, or, “That man wears
the dress of St. Pol de Léon.”
Was it at one of these towns or somewhere in Holland that J. found the
design for my mother’s cap?
In Brittany we traveled by carriage. One afternoon we stopped to gather
some fine high-bush blackberries that grew by the roadside.
“What?” exclaimed the driver, who had a little French, “You eat those
wild things? That is not well; they are only for birds and cattle.” He
was much concerned for us, my mother was equally concerned for him.
While I stood, as Emerson has it:
Caught among the blackberry vines,
Feeding on the Ethiops sweet.
_she_ tried to persuade him that blackberries were good food for human
beings to eat.
“This is such a poor country! What a pity they do not know the value of
their own fruits!” she exclaimed.
After Brittany came Switzerland; of this there remains the awe of the
Alps, the chill breath of the Jungfrau, the edelweiss at Chamonix, the
bear-pit at Berne. These were surface things, easily recalled; when it
comes to memory’s substratum, that’s a different story. My mind is like
a vast rubbish heap that covers some buried city; if I dig hard enough I
uncover priceless treasures, temples, statues, long colonnades leading
to forgotten altars where once the sacred fire burned.
My friend Giacomo Boni, who found the tomb of Romulus in the Roman
Forum, showed me his method of excavation. The dust of ages was
carefully skimmed off in layers. As each stratum represented a different
epoch, it was isolated and sifted, and every bit of marble, glass,
metal, or brick sorted and fitted together. I have helped him sort his
treasures in the little workroom over the Forum, watched his skillful,
nervous fingers put together the fragments of an exquisite vase three
thousand years old. By a like method I too can find bits of jeweled
glass and earthenware: can piece them together; the trouble is in
choosing where to dig!
Among the spoils of these months of wandering three objects survive,
treasured by my mother through all the years; a tiny clay statuette of
the goddess Pacht, ravished from an Egyptian tomb, a small Greek terra
cotta cup, and some pressed flowers in an envelope marked “Gethsemane.”
Out of that shining past that I alone remember, let me snatch something
worth preserving of the three countries which these, her little
keepsakes, recall,--Egypt, Greece, Palestine!
If you look at the map of Egypt you will see something like a lily with
a long curving stem, lying at the edge of the Mediterranean. The
graceful stem is the river Nile, the cup is the Nile Delta, the lotus of
Isis and Osiris.
We landed at Alexandria, November 27, 1878, and left the next day for
Cairo, where we stayed at Shepheard’s Hotel, then a primitive place,
where the turbaned fellaheen servants were summoned by clapping the
hands. As we sat on that famous terrace of Shepheard’s, looking out at
the motley crowd surging by, two figures with flowing white sleeves,
carrying light wands in their hands, ran side by side down the street,
before a victoria drawn by a pair of Arab horses. The flying figures
were the sais or running footmen, who go before the carriage of a
notable to clear away the crowd. At their low cry, “_O Wai Yer Geddeh! O
Wai Yer Geddeh!_” (“Out of the way, you clever fellow!”) the water
carriers, snake charmers, donkey boys, and camel drivers made way for
the carriage to draw up before the hotel.
“That,” said Sir George Elliott, a new acquaintance, “is Stone Pasha,
Chief of Staff to the Khedive. He has come to call on some one.”
He had come to call on us. Our cousin, Julia McAllister, who was
traveling with us, was an old friend; to her we owed the good offices of
this powerful friend at court. Stone Pasha was a handsome man with
white hair and mustache and strong regular features. In spite of his
Egyptian uniform and fez, he bore the stamp of West Point, and looked
the typical Civil War general he was. Our first meeting with Stone Pasha
was full of interest. Though he was most solicitous that we should
receive every attention, he was preoccupied and wore a harried look. How
should he not?
The curtain had rung up on the last act in the drama of Ismaïl Pasha’s
life as Khedive of Egypt. The four million pounds England had paid for
his interest in the Suez Canal were already spent, and Mr. Rivers Wilson
was in Cairo looking after British interests. Stone Pasha must have
known that the final catastrophe was near at hand, but he played the
game to the end.
He introduced to us several other Americans in the Khedive’s service,
General Loring who had lost an arm in the Civil War, Purdy Bey, and
Inman Barnard, whom I remembered in Boston. We had crossed on the
steamer with Consul General Farman; thanks to these friends we met many
interesting people, among others Sir Samuel and Lady Baker, with whom my
mother talked endlessly. In speaking of her native Egyptian servant,
Lady Baker said:
“I assure you he is the best human being I have ever known.”
The Bakers were very friendly; I remember Lady Baker showing me a
remarkable necklace of lions’ claws she wore. Mr. and Mrs. Rivers
Wilson, though we had some talk with both, were reserved and extremely
formal. A reception at Mr. Goschen’s house was one of the few private
festivities I recall. It may have been here that we met Mariette Bey,
the French Egyptologist, under whose guidance we made our first visit
to the Bulak Museum, of which he was founder and moving spirit.
Robert Irwin of Japan and his sister Maisie, who were at Shepheard’s,
added much to the pleasure of our stay. We made many excursions
together, among others the ascent of the great pyramid. To each of our
party the Sheikh of the desert Bedouins allotted two Arabs. My men,
Hassan and Osman, two superb bronze figures, each gripped me by an arm
and practically swung me up from tier to tier of the huge blocks. One of
our party seemed bent on making record time; he made no pause, and
seemed to fly up those awful steps. When the rest of us reached the top
this friend lay gasping flat on his back.
“Those Bedouins tried to kill me,” he murmured; “I kept calling
‘_yaller!_’ ‘_yaller!_’ and the more I ‘yallered’ the faster they ran.”
“You used the wrong word; you should have said ‘_shwaiyer!_’ ‘_Yaller_’
means faster!” Mahomet, the dragoman, explained.
We lunched luxuriously on the summit of the great pyramid, on roast
quail, fresh rolls, and _pâté de foie gras_! The wilted one was restored
with iced champagne.
“Do not let us hurry down,” said the eldest of the party. “I, for one,
shall never again get to the top of Cheops.”
So we lingered, watching the changing color of the Mokatten hills, the
yellow sands of the desert, the immutable face of the Sphinx till the
sky blazed with Egypt’s sublime sunset.
We came again to the Sphinx by starlight. Out there in the desert the
constellations seemed nearer than ever before; Venus hung low, as if
suspended by a thread from the heavens, her reflection in the Nile a
full golden orb. Last and best of all we came on the night of the full
moon to take farewell, and each of us tried to guess the ancient riddle.
The Sphinx is drowsy,
Her wings are furled:
Her ear is heavy,
She broods on the world.
Who’ll tell me my secret,
The ages have kept?
One morning, “dressed in our best”, we three, my mother, my cousin, and
I, drove in Stone Pasha’s carriage behind those flying _sais_ to Abdin
Palace, where the General had arranged an audience with the three
Princesses, the Khedive’s royal wives. Outside the entrance was a guard
of black eunuchs, dreadful creatures with animal faces, dull-eyed, and
gross. Inside, the lofty entrance hall was ablaze with color. We were
welcomed by a group of rainbow-clad girls.
“_Naharak said!_” they exclaimed, “May thy day be happy!”
“_Naharak leben!_” we answered, “May thy day be as white as milk!”
“Accept whatever is offered; to refuse is an insult.” This had been
Mahomet’s last advice, as he left us to fend for ourselves in the harem
of the Khedive.
A slender brown girl with almond eyes and henna-tipped fingers handed me
a jeweled cup.
“_Taffadali_,” she said, “I beg you to take.”
I tasted the delicious sherbet and was about to drain the cup when my
odalisque hastily took it from me and handed it to my cousin; it was
meant for all of us!
“May it agree with you!” said the girl, raising her hand to her head.
Having forgotten the proper response, I answered at random with that
useful word, “_Bismillah_.”
I was thankful for my few phrases of Arabic; they made the women laugh
and set us all at ease!
The girls examined our dresses and hats with childlike curiosity. They
asked about our husbands. When told we were unmarried, they were
scandalized. An embossed silver bowl filled with scented water was now
presented; we dipped our fingers and dried them on linen towels
embroidered in gold, fragrant with attar of roses, then they led us into
another room for our audience.
Here was a strange medley of East and West! The eldest Princess in
native costume of white satin, richly embroidered, sat on a low divan;
there were chairs for the rest of us. The second Princess wore, wrong
side before, a European frock meant to be fastened up the back. The
youngest Princess, the “favorite”, was dressed like a Parisian, in blue
silk, with many diamonds. She spoke a little French and acted as
interpreter.
When we were seated, chibouks were handed us. Julia McAllister and I,
who had rehearsed this part, managed our long pipes tolerably well; my
mother made dreadful work of hers, coughing horribly, and blowing into
her chibouk till she put it out. The elder Princess clapped her hands
for a slave to relight it with a perfumed coal held in a pair of silver
tongs.
“Do not trouble yourself to smoke, madam,” said the favorite. “It is
evident you have not the habit.”
They were interested in our travels and asked endless questions about
the places we had seen.
“What is the matter with those young women that at their age they are
unmarried?” the first Princess asked my mother.
The explanation that we had not yet met our fates did not seem to
satisfy her.
“Do you enjoy traveling?” one of us asked after a long pause.
“We should enjoy it,” the first Princess sighed, “but the custom of our
country forbids us!”
As conversation was not easy, my mother cut the visit rather short,
according to oriental ideas. We learned later from Mahomet that we had
not made a bad impression, but that we had been expected to stay much
longer.
Shortly after we received an invitation for the Khedive’s ball at the
Abdin Palace; full dress was _de rigueur_. Before leaving Paris there
had been a discussion as to what clothes we should take for our journey
to the East. I recalled Aunt Louisa’s advice:
“Never go anywhere without a ball dress!”
I made room in my modest trunk for my best ball dress, though I was a
good deal laughed at for my pains. When I stepped into Stone Pasha’s
carriage and drove to that fairy ball at the Abdin Palace, dressed in
the latest Parisian fashion, the laugh was on the other side!
We were presented to the Khedive and his son, Tewfik Pasha; both wore
European dress with a large star on the breast and the inevitable fez.
The Khedive made a deep bow and then turned to address my mother, to
whom he made quite a speech, leaving me to talk with Tewfik. The Khedive
was about fifty, rather stout, with grizzled hair and beard, a pleasant
smile, and a magnetic presence. Tewfik was not half so attractive as his
father; he had the smoldering eye and scornful gaze of the fanatical
Mohammedan. He spoke of his new steam yacht lately arrived in Cairo and
asked if we were going up the Nile.
“And where are the ladies we saw when we were last at the palace?” I
asked indiscreetly enough. Tewfik glanced indifferently at a sort of
trellised balcony at the end of the room, as he answered:
“It is not the custom of our country for our ladies to appear at a
ball.”
I seemed to feel the eyes of those women of the harem looking down upon
me from behind those screens.
No man of his time was more talked about than Ismaïl Pasha. Some people
said of him, “He has ruined Egypt.” Others maintained, “He has created a
new Egypt.”
Whatever place history may award him, these things remain to his credit.
He completed the Suez Canal. He built the road from Cairo to the
Pyramids. He protected the exploration of Sir Samuel Baker. He founded
girls’ schools all over Egypt; and he commissioned Giuseppe Verdi to
write “Aïda” for the opening of the Cairo Opera House. When I hear
Caruso’s voice in “Celeste Aïda”, I remember Ismaïl Pasha, for whom
Verdi’s masterpiece was written!
My mother’s journal notes that “Maud danced all night.” We did not get
home much before four in the morning. One partner, the son of a
prominent German banker, is recalled by a photograph of a handsome
oriental looking man, that has somehow survived. It bears the
inscription:
“Never forgetting the delicious hours I have spent in your company
charming. Hans Bleichroder. Cairo, December 12, 1878.”
Among the Orientals, I should say, my cousin Julia was the admired one
of our little party. Her tall, dignified figure and tendency to
_embonpoint_ filled them with delight.
Another of my partners, my old friend, Augustus Gurnee, writes me _à
propos_ of this ball of forty years ago:
“Indeed I was with you, and danced with you at the last ball Ismaïl
gave before he was deposed; and while we were circling, an awkward
Levantine couple caromed into us, so that my heel came down on the
foot of Tewfik, who was standing in a doorway. We stopped to crave
pardon, and he was smiling and courteous, so I never knew whether
he felt any pain. _Inshallah!_”
The company at the ball was of many nationalities,--French, English, and
German officers, the Americans of the Khedive’s staff, and
representatives of all the powers, great and small. The diplomats and
army officers knew the dreadful confusion of Ismaïl’s affairs. Though
all were guarded in their talk, one felt that Cairo society was an armed
camp, where France and England were engaged in a silent duel for the
control of the Suez Canal, Germany was “out for trade”, and only the
American Condottieri were for the Khedive!
The catastrophe came a few months later, when Ismaïl Pasha was deposed
and left Alexandria for Naples with his harem, his suite, and his two
sons, Hussein and Hassan, on the yacht _Mahroussahl_, leaving his uneasy
throne to my friend Tewfik Pasha. When she read of this my mother
exclaimed:
“Our friends the Princesses of the Abdin Palace have their wish at last;
they are now traveling to a new country!”
In Egypt my mother seemed much of the time to be living a life quite
apart from the sight-seeing and adventuring we shared. At the first
glimpse of the river Nile she seemed to enter a world where I could not
follow her. Moses, Joseph, the Pharaoh of the Exodus, all the figures in
Bible history with whom she had been familiar since earliest childhood,
stole between us like impalpable shadows, claiming her for their own. In
Palestine this absorption increased. If all the rest of our long
wandering was planned for my profit and pleasure, the trip to the Holy
Land was for herself the realization of a life’s dream. For the only
time in her life, so far as I know, she borrowed money to make what was
then a very expensive journey.
“Those are the mountains of Judea,” a returning missionary pointed out,
as we neared the coast. Soon the faint blue line grew stronger, we could
make out the yellow beach, olive groves, palm trees, and the flags of
many nationalities floating from the different consulates. We landed at
Jaffa, not an easy matter, as the steamer anchored half a mile from
shore, and we were compelled to clamber down to a small boat tossing
like a cockleshell on the rough sea.
We traveled chiefly on horseback, over precipitous mountain trails,
through the desert where we were told there was danger from the wild
tribesmen. My mother was obliged to pay a large sum for an escort of
Turkish soldiers to protect us from these wandering Bedouins. She made
her arrangements so well that while we were camping in the desert near
Jericho, Eugene Thayer, a rich young Bostonian, asked to join our party,
his own men having proved untrustworthy.
My cousin Julia was so much admired by one of the Bedouin chiefs that we
were advised not to linger in that locality lest he should attempt to
carry her off. Another American girl we met in Egypt was sought for an
exclusive harem.
“She is fairer than any Circassian!” her mother was told. After refusing
a large sum of money, this lady was urged to set her own price upon her
daughter.
By the river Jordan, on the banks of the Dead Sea, on the Plains of
Boaz, wherever we went, my mother was preoccupied and withdrawn. She
seemed to be living over the earthly life of her Master and those who
had known and walked with him in these places.
“Christ has been here!” she murmured to herself over and over again, and
seemed to think of little else.
One of the pictures of Jerusalem that rises before me is of the Via
Dolorosa, where a poor madman walked each day, dressed in white, crowned
with thorns, carrying a heavy wooden cross. She had some talk with this
man, who had been a sailor. His story was strange and disjointed. He
spoke of a terrible storm at sea when he was at the vessel’s helm. He
was smitten by the sword of the Lord that came out of the sky and
leveled him to the deck. After that his life work was clear; he must
walk the holy streets of Jerusalem, for “Where the carcass is, there
will the eagles be gathered together.”
We went to a church service in the little town of Bethlehem. Here my
mother made friends with a well-known archeologist whose name I have
forgotten, who told her he believed this to be the place where Jesus was
born. He said that the inn where Mary and Joseph rested was the khan of
the town, which in the natural order would remain unchanged for
centuries. He saw no reason for doubting that when the Empress Helena
came out to Palestine to find and preserve the holy places, this khan
was exactly as it had been at the time of the nativity.
My mother was distressed to find a guard of Mohammedan soldiers at the
Holy Sepulchre.
“These Moslems are here to keep you Christians from killing each other!”
an acquaintance said to her rather brutally. “Riots are frequent,
especially at Easter, when the church is crowded with pilgrims of every
nationality.”
On the afternoon when we visited the Garden of Gethsemane, she was more
silent than usual.
“Would you mind if I sang a hymn?” She raised her sweet voice and sang
the hymn beginning:
Go to dark Gethsemane.
We lingered under the garden’s immemorial olives and cedars. The
Franciscan who was our guide gave her a handful of flowers,--the flowers
I found the other day in the envelope marked “Gethsemane.”
From Jaffa we sailed for Beirut, skirting the storied African coast. A
fellow passenger, an old sea captain, electrified us one morning by
exclaiming, as carelessly as he might have said, “Yonder’s Nantucket
Light”, “Tyre’s thereabouts--place where the purple dye came from--not
much to see there now!”
Of Cyprus, I remember only the thrill of the great names,--Paphos,
birthplace and shrine of Aphrodite, and Salamis.
The steamer made some stay at Smyrna, where we were entertained by
Christy Evangelides, who could not do enough for my mother. As a boy he
had escaped from a Turkish massacre and been carried to New York on an
American vessel. Here my grandfather Ward had befriended him.
Christy was a vigorous intelligent man who seemed to hold a leading
position in Smyrna. While calling at his house we were offered a
delicious sweetmeat flavored with rose leaves, served in a crystal dish.
You took a spoonful; then a glass of water was handed you. If that
ambrosial conserve had a fault, it was a little oversweet; this made the
water doubly welcome. In speaking of Smyrna’s claim to fame Christy
said, “You doubtless know that this island was the birthplace of Homer?”
I thought of the old English round we used to sing:
Seven great towns of Greece, ’tis said,
Claimed Homer’s birth when he was dead,
Through which, alive, he begged his bread.
At Jerusalem the grave of Adam had been pointed out to us; after that
nothing surprised me. My mother however confirmed Christy’s statement.
Some of the saloon passengers were interested in a forlorn family in the
steerage. The mother, an Egyptian, was very ill, and the children needed
looking after. An Englishwoman who had lived long in Cairo gave this
warning:
“Do not notice that fine baby too much! If you were a native, you would
say to the mother, ‘What a poor, miserable little girl you have there!’”
“But why, when it is a boy, and the best of the lot?” was asked. The
Englishwoman smiled and shook her head.
“I can’t explain--you couldn’t understand--it is not well to praise a
child to these people; it brings bad luck.”
I understood! This was “the evil thing come out of Africa”, magic and
fear of magic. In Hayti they call it _voodoo_, in Italy, _jettatura_!
As we neared the Dardanelles the old captain gave us another sensation.
Pointing a blunt forefinger towards the faint blue coast, he said, “Troy
once stood there!”
“Then Helen passed this way with Paris, Agamemnon, Achilles, and all the
rest of them?” The captain nodded.
“So they say. There’s a deal more important happened since, though. My
father fought the bloody Algerine pirates in these waters before I was
born.--The Mediterranean wa’n’t exactly a tourist resort in those days!”
We made quite a stay at Constantinople. Much of what we did and saw on
this wonder journey is lost to me now, but I have never lost the
sympathy for the poetry and art of the Orient. “I heard the East a
callin’”--it calls me yet!
While in Syria we had some disagreeable encounters with Turkish
officialdom and formed a poor opinion of it. At the Constantinople
customhouse the officers were incredibly insolent. One snatched a
bouquet from my hand and threw it into the sea; another took from my
ulster pocket a photograph of a Greek officer. The photograph was handed
from one to another amid jeers and laughter.
We spent a delightful week at Constantinople as the guests of
Captain--now Admiral--and Mrs. Frank Higginson. Captain Higginson’s ship
was in the port and we met many of his officers, among others,
Lieutenant John Jacob Hunker. These good friends arranged endless
frolics and sight-seeing expeditions for us. Aside from our pleasure of
being with such hospitable compatriots, Constantinople did not please
me. I did not like the Turks or their capital. After the beautiful
bronze and ebony people of upper and lower Egypt, the Turks looked a
pale, ugly, washed-out race. I sighed for Hassan, our Bisharin guide at
Assuan, with a patina of richest chocolate; for Abbas, our Theban donkey
boy, whose color was like new-cast golden bronze. Hassan, who was
twelve years old, was offered to us by his father as a gift, it being
forbidden for a man to sell his son!
At that time Constantinople was infested by bands of mongrel scavenger
dogs. They were so thick in the street outside my window that they
looked like a moving yellow carpet. I have been told that shortly after
this these poor creatures became such a nuisance that the authorities
loaded them upon scows and transported them to a barren rocky islet
where there was literally nothing to support life and where the stronger
devoured the weaker, the survivors finally perishing from lack of food.
I have been familiar with stories of Turkish atrocities all my life, but
this has always lingered in my mind as one of the foulest.
It was at Constantinople that I discovered the secret of the mummy. My
mother, who always had a catholic taste in curios, had bought,
“unbeknownst” to me, a child mummy while we were at Luxor on the Nile.
Thinking I might not like the purchase, she had concealed it from me by
making each of her friends on the Nile steamer keep it for one night in
their staterooms. My cousin, Julia McAllister, writes me _à propos_ of
this incident:
“That was a delicious story. At Cyprus she bought two bottles of a
very rare wine for Uncle Sam. These were packed in the valise with
the mummy. One bottle broke; this did not improve the mummy, which
was not in a case, and by the time we reached Constantinople, no
one would go near the valise! In Athens we persuaded her to ship
the mummy home by sailing vessel.”
Why did my mother want that mummy? Perhaps, like Théophile Gautier, she
might have written a romance about it, had we not with youth’s cruelty
ridiculed it! To my knowledge she made no use of that queer little
bundle swathed in its ancient yellowed linen bands that lay for years in
a trunk in our attic! She thought my sister Laura, mother of many
children, might like it; but Laura refused the gift.
We reached Greece in the violet season, arriving at the Piraeus on the
afternoon of a day in early spring. The drive to Athens remains an
imperishable memory. We stopped at a half-way house to rest the horses
and refresh ourselves with “_loukoumia_” and “_resinata_.” Here I picked
my first Grecian violets. I remember that Mt. Hymettus was draped in a
deep hyacinthine veil that looked solid enough to touch.
My mother’s friend, Mr. Kalopothakis, came down from Athens to greet us
on board our steamer. During our three weeks’ stay in Athens he and my
mother’s other friends were tireless in their kindness and hospitality.
“You will find that you are no stranger here,” Mr. Kalopothakis told me.
“Your father’s daughter should feel at home in any Greek home. We have
long memories. The name of Howe, the American Hero of the Greek
Revolution, is known to every schoolboy.”
I remember two balls at the palace, when Queen Olga was very gracious,
and King George danced with me. He waltzed extremely well, and was much
interested in the dancing of the “Boston” by the Americans of our party,
among whom were the Higginsons, who had come with us from
Constantinople, and some of the officers from his ship that lay at the
Piraeus.
Of the many entertainments given in our honor, the banquet with the
Cretan chieftains was the most interesting. I lost it on account of
illness, but my mother has described the meeting with the veterans and
their expressions of gratitude to my father for his lifelong devotion
to the cause of Cretan liberty. The banquet had a certain Homeric
flavor. It was served in the open air on the seacoast. The _pièce de
résistance_ was a lamb roasted out of doors with fragrant herbs wrapped
about it.
“To Howe.” Each chieftain rose and offered the toast, pronouncing the
name as if it were Greek. One old fellow whom I afterwards met had
served with my father when he was a boy. He was past eighty and strong
as an ox. I remember his very words:
“It is my wish and I believe that it will be granted, to live long
enough to fight another campaign and to kill a few more Turks with these
hands!” This with a gesture as of choking an enemy.
We found Doctor and Mrs. Schliemann in Athens, and enjoyed much
foregathering with them. One afternoon, when we had gone to take tea
with Mrs. Schliemann, she brought in the baby to be admired. He was a
fine handsome child, with something of a temper. My mother took him up
and tried to coax him, “What’s wrong with poor little Agamemnon,” she
asked, as the boy, refusing to be comforted, only roared and raged in
her arms. Mrs. Schliemann turned upon him sternly:
“No, not _poor_ little Agamemnon, _nasty_ little Agamemnon!” she
exclaimed, and bore him away to the nursery in disgrace.
Mrs. Schliemann went with us to the Museum and showed us the treasures
from the royal tombs and the Treasure House of Mycenae which she had
helped her husband to excavate and explore. These excavations of the
Acropolis at Mycenae had thrilled the civilized world. Doctor Schliemann
did not hesitate to proclaim that he had found the sepulcher of Atreus,
of the “king of men”, Agamemnon, of his charioteer, and of Cassandra and
their companions. Mrs. Schliemann, who was a Greek, knew her Homer by
heart, so that when her husband wished to refer to some passage in the
“Iliad”, he merely turned to her, instead of carrying a volume of Homer
in his pocket.
My mother took every opportunity of talking with these interesting
people about their work and their amazing discoveries. She parted with
Mrs. Schliemann with real regret. At their last interview the famous
woman archeologist, the pioneer of her sex, put into my mother’s hands a
very small terra cotta cup, with the words:
“You will keep this, because it comes from the tomb of Agamemnon.”
As I write there lies beside me on my desk an album purchased in Athens.
On the flyleaf is written in my mother’s hand:
By Schliemann found, Troy’s treasures shine,
While we explore a deeper mine,
And crown the beauty of the Present
With fellowship sincere and pleasant.
Then in varying handwriting follow the signatures of the actors and the
parts they played in that three weeks’ comedy at Athens.
Minerva--Julia Ward Howe.
Juno--Julia G. McAllister.
Venus--Maud Howe.
Diana--Grace H. Higginson.
Neptune--F. J. Higginson, Commander U. S. Navy.
Mercury--Jacob J. Hunker, U. S. Navy.
A large photograph of the Erechtheum has survived with the above-named
personages standing or sitting upon the steps of that sublime temple,
second in glory only to the Parthenon, near which it stands upon the
Acropolis of Athens.
There was much of fun, frolic, and laughter in those days of wandering.
Minerva knew how to make what was really a time of intense mental
activity seem nothing but play. Froebel was outclassed, and her
traveling kindergarten afforded an opportunity for education I have
never known equaled.