LETTER XVIII.
The Ionian Isles—Lord and Lady Nugent—Corfu—Greek and English Soldiers—Cockneyism—The Gardens of Alcinous—English Officers—Albanians—Dionisio Salomos, the Greek Poet—Greek Ladies—Dinner with the Artillery Mess.
This is proper dream-land. The “Isle of Calypso,”[[7]] folded in a drapery of blue air, lies behind, fading in the distance, “the Acroceraunian mountains of old name,” which caught Byron’s eye as he entered Greece, are piled up before us on the Albanian shore, and the Ionian sea is rippling under our bow, breathing, from every wave, of Homer, and Sappho, and “sad Penelope.” Once more upon Childe Harold’s footsteps. I closed the book at Rome, after following him for a summer through Italy, confessing, by many pleasant recollections, that
“Not in vain
He wore his sandal shoon, and scallop shell.”
I resume it here with the feeling of Thalaba when he caught sight of the green bird that led him through the desert. It lies open on my knee at the second canto, describing our position even to the hour:
“‘Twas on a Grecian autumn’s gentle eve
Childe Harold hailed Leucadia’s cape afar;
A spot he longed to see, nor cared to leave.”
We shall lie off-and-on to-night, and go in to Corfu in the morning. Two Turkish vessels-of-war, with the crescent flag flying, lie in a small cove a mile off, on the Albanian shore, and by the discharge of musketry, our pilot presumes that they have accompanied the Sultan’s tax-gatherer, who gets nothing from these wild people without fighting for it.
The entrance to Corfu is considered pretty, but the English flag flying over the forts, divested ancient Corcyra of its poetical associations. It looked to me a commonplace seaport, glaring in the sun. The “gardens of Alcinous” were here, but who could imagine them, with a red-coated sentry posted on every corner of the island.
The Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Isles, Lord Nugent, came off to the ship this morning in a kind of Corfiote boat, called a “scampavia,” a greyhound-looking craft, carrying sail enough for a schooner. She cut the water like the wing of a swallow. His lordship was playing sailor, and was dressed like the mate of one of our coasters, and his manners were as bluff. He has a fine person, however, and is said to be a very elegant man when he chooses it. He is the author of the “Life and Times of John Hampden,” and Whig, of course. Southey has lately reviewed him rather bitterly in the “Quarterly.” Lady N. is literary, too, and they have written between them a book of tales called (I think) “Legends of the Lilies,” of which her ladyship’s half is said to be the better.
Went on shore for a walk. Greeks and English soldiers mix oddly together. The streets are narrow, and crowded with them in about equal proportions. John Bull retains his red face, and learns no Greek. We passed through the Bazaar, and bad English was the universal language. There is but one square in the town, and round its wooden fence, enclosing a dusty area, without a blade of grass, were riding the English officers, while the regimental band played in the centre. A more arid and cheerless spot never pained the eye. The appearance of the officers, retaining all their Bond-street elegance and mounted upon English hunters, was in singular contrast with the general shabbiness of the houses and people. I went into a shop at a corner to inquire for the residence of a gentleman to whom I had a letter. “It’s werry ‘ot, sir,” said a little red-faced woman behind the counter, as I went out, “perhaps you’d like a glass of vater.” It was odd to hear the Wapping dialect in the “isles of Greece.” She sold green groceries, and wished me to recommend her to the hofficers. Mrs. Mary Flack’s “grocery” in the gardens of Alcinous.
“The wild Albanian, kirtled to the knee,” walks through the streets of Corfu, looking unlike and superior to everything about him. I met several in returning to the boat. Their gait is very lofty, and the snow-white juktanilla, or kirtle, with its thousand folds, sways from side to side, as they walk, with a most showy effect. Lord Byron was very much captivated with these people, whose capital (just across the strait from Corfu) he visited once or twice in his travels through Greece. Those I have seen are all very tall, and have their prominent features, with keen eyes and limbs of the most muscular proportions. The common English soldiers look like brutes beside them.
The placard of a theatre hung on the walls of a church. A rude picture of a battle between the Greeks and Turks hung above it, and beneath was written, in Italian, “Honour the representation of the immortal deeds of your hero Marco Bozzaris.” It is singular that even a pack of slaves can find pleasure in a remembrance that reproaches every breath they draw.
Called on Lord Nugent with the commodore. The governor, sailor, author, antiquary, nobleman (for he is all these, and a jockey to boot), received us in a calico morning frock, with his breast and neck bare, in a large library lumbered with half-packed antiquities and strewn with straw. Books, miniatures of his family (a lovely one of Lady Nugent among them), Whig pamphlets, riding-whips, spurs, minerals, hammer and nails, half-eaten cakes, plans of fortifications, printed invitations to his own balls and dinners, military reports, Turkish pistols, and, lastly, his own just printed answer to Mr. Southey’s review of his book, occupied the table. He was reading his own production when we entered. His lordship mentioned, with great apparent satisfaction, a cruise he had taken some years ago with Commodore Chauncey. The conversation was rather monologue than dialogue; his excellency seeming to think, with Lord Bacon, that “the honorablest part of talk was to give the occasion, and then to moderate and pass to something else.” He started a topic, exhausted and changed it with the same facility and rapidity with which he sailed his scampavia. An engagement with the artillery-mess prevented my acceptance of an invitation to dine with him to-morrow—a circumstance I rather regret, as he is said to be, at his own table, one of the most polished and agreeable men of his time.
Thank Heaven, revolutions do not affect the climate! The isle that gave a shelter to the storm-driven Ulysses is an English barrack, but the same balmy air that fanned the blind eyes of old Homer blows over it still. “The breezes,” says Landor, beautifully, “are the children of eternity.” I never had the hair lifted so pleasantly from my temples as to-night, driving into the interior of the island. The gardening of Alcinous seems to have been followed up by nature. The rhododendron, the tamarisk, the almond, cypress, olive, and fig, luxuriate in the sweetest beauty everywhere.
There was a small party in the evening at the house of the gentleman who had driven me out, and among other foreigners present were the Count Dionisio Salomos, of Zante, and the Cavaliere Andrea Mustoxidi, both men of whom I had often heard. The first is almost the only modern Greek poet, and his hymns, principally patriotic, are in the common dialect of the country, and said to be full of fire. He is an excessively handsome man, with large dark eyes, almost effeminate in their softness. His features are of the clearest Greek chiselling, as faultless as a statue, and are stamped with nature’s most attractive marks of refinement and feeling. I can imagine Anacreon to have resembled him.
Mustoxidi has been a conspicuous man in the late chapter of Grecian history. He was much trusted by Capo d’Istria, and among other things had the whole charge of his school at Ægina. An Italian exile (a Modenese, and a very pleasant fellow), took me aside when I asked something of his history, and told me a story of him, which proves either that he was a dishonest man, or (no new truth) that conspicuous men are liable to be abused. A valuable donation of books was given by some one to the school library. They stood on the upper shelves, quite out of reach, and Mustoxidi was particular in forbidding all approach to them. Some time after his departure from the island, the library was committed to the charge of another person, and the treasures of the upper shelves were found to be—painted boards! His physiognomy would rather persuade me of the truth of the story. He is a small man, with a downcast look, and a sly, gray eye, almost hidden by his projecting eyebrows. His features are watched in vain for an open expression.
The ladies of the party were principally Greeks. None of them were beautiful, but they had the melancholy, retired expression of face which one looks for, knowing the history of their nation. They are unwise enough to abandon their picturesque national costume, and dress badly in the European style. The servant girls, with their hair braided into the folds of their turbans, and their open-laced bodices and sleeves, are much more attractive to the stranger’s eye. The liveliest of the party, a little Zantiote girl of eighteen, with eyes and eye-lashes that contradicted the merry laugh on her lips, sang us an Albanian song to the guitar very sweetly.
Dined to-day with the artillery mess, in company with the commodore and some of his officers. In a place like this, the dinner is naturally the great circumstance of the day. The inhabitants do not take kindly to their masters, and there is next to no society for the English. They sit down to their soup after the evening drive, and seldom rise till midnight. It was a gay dinner, as dinners will always be where the whole remainder of what the “day may bring forth” is abandoned to them, and we parted from our hospitable entertainers, after four or five hours “measured with sands of gold.” We must do the English the justice of confessing the manners of their best bred men to be the best in the world. It is inevitable that one should bear the remainder of the nation little love. Neither the one class nor the other, doubtless, will ever seek it at our hands. But mutual hospitality may soften so much of our intercourse as happens in the traveller’s way, and without loving John Bull better, all in all, one soon finds out in Europe that the dog and the lion are not more unlike, than the race of bagmen and runners with which our country is overrun, and the cultivated gentlemen of England.
On my right sat a captain of the corps, who had spent the last summer at the Saratoga Springs. We found any number of mutual acquaintances, of course, and I was amused with the impressions which some of the fairest of my friends had made upon a man who had passed years in the most cultivated society of Europe. He liked America with reservations. He preferred our ladies to those of any other country except England, and he had found more dandies in one hour in Broadway than he should have met in a week in Regent-street. He gave me a racy scene or two from the City Hotel, in New York, but he doubted if the frequenters of a public table in any country in the world were, on the whole, so well-mannered. If Americans were peculiar for anything, he thought it was for confidence in themselves and tobacco-chewing.
| [7] | Fano, which disputes it with Gozo, near Malta. |