I should have been badly off indeed if it had not been for Madame Masson. She had been a second mother to me, and more attentive in this and in all my other illnesses than any attendants I could have hired. As soon as I was a little better she was so good as to accompany me to a monastery in the Sacred Way, some little distance from Athens, to which I had been advised to go for change of air. There was only one old woman there to take care of the keys, and in the big deserted place we were like two owls in a barn. I cannot say it was gay. I passed most of my time in sleeping, for that has been the chief effect of my weakness, and what little was left in reading. Occasionally we were favoured with a visit by some of our Athenian friends, who brought their provisions with them, as their custom is. The monastery stands in a beautiful dell or pass through the mountains. On one side is a beautiful view of the bay and mountains of Eleusis, and on the other, of the Plain of Athens, with the long forest of olive trees between us and the Acropolis, which dominates the plain and is backed by Hymettus. On the right is the Piræus, at no great distance. I could not enjoy this lovely scene. Alas! one can enjoy nothing with a low fever. And now, after a stay of a fortnight, we are just returned, and I am not much the better for it.
But one of the last days I was there I was tempted by my friend Linckh to ride to Piræus, to join in celebrating the anniversary of the victory of Salamis—the 25th October—by a fête on the island of Psytalia, where the thickest of the fight was waged. He had assembled a large party of Athenians, who, to tell the truth, were more intent on the feast than on the occasion of it. We embarked from Piræus in a large boat, accompanied by music—to wit, fiddles and tambourines—as is the Athenian fashion, and a great cargo of provisions which were to be prepared while the modern Athenians contemplated the interesting scene before us, and were to weep over the fall of their country since those glorious days, &c. &c. All set out in the greatest glee. Beyond the port, in the open sea, some countenances began to change; though we had almost a calm, some began to feel the effects of the 'gentle motion' and hung their heads over the side, while several pinched each other with fear and anxiety at our distance from terra firma. Gradually all became silence. Then some murmurs began to arise, together with advice and recommendation to the sailors to row gently and hold fast. A council of war sat, and agreed nem. con. that it would be best to return to the nearest land. A small bay was found and all leapt ashore, crossing themselves and thanking their stars for their deliverance. A fire was lighted, the lamb roasted in no time, a cloth laid on the ground, and all set to. The Greeks of old could not have attacked the Persians with more ardour than these moderns did the turkeys and lamb before us. The bottle went round apace, and all soon began to glorify themselves, the demoiselles also playing their part; and when at length, and not until at length, the desire of eating and drinking was accomplished, each one filched the remaining sweets off the table as she found her opportunity. Music's soft enchantment then arose, and the most active began a dance, truly bacchanalian, while the rest lingered over the joys of the table. Punch crowned the feast. All was rapture; moderation was no longer observed, and the day closed with a pelting of each other with the bones of the slain, amidst dancing, singing, and roars of laughter or applause. I venture to assert most positively that not one thought was given to the scene before us, or the occasion, by any one member of the party except my friend Linckh and the διδἁσκαλος [Greek: didaskalos], the schoolmaster of Athens, who, having brought tools for the purpose, carved on the rock an inscription which will one day be interesting to those who may chance to light upon it a thousand years hence—'Invitation [or repast] in memory of the immortal Salaminian combat.' Our party embarked not till after sunset; and though the sea was twice as high and the wind as contrary as it was coming, such are the powers of nectar and ambrosia that all conducted themselves with uncommon courage and resolution. Choruses, Dutch and Athenian, beguiled the way, and all was harmony except the music. So one might have hoped the day might have concluded; but no! the Greek fire, once lighted, is not so easily quenched. I, as an invalid, and exceedingly tired with so much pleasure, retired to my cell in a monastery where we were all to pass the night, and some of my friends kindly gave me a coverlet and a sort of bed, on which I threw myself; but not until long after midnight did the music or the dancing cease, or I or any sober person get a chance of sleep. We got away next day, but not without difficulty; for the Athenians are like our journeymen: when once they are out on the spree they must carry it on for a week.
We are now in Athens again, and I have just returned to my work-table covered with the dust of so many lost days. This waste of time is terrible. Altogether, out of twenty-four months spent in Athens, seven have been passed in illness. If ever I get away from this country in health and safety, how I shall thank my stars!"
It was in these last days of his stay in Athens that he became possessed of a portion of the Panathenaic frieze of the Parthenon in the following strange manner. The disdar or commandant of the castle on the Acropolis was by now an old friend of Cockerell's, and had ended by becoming exceedingly attached to him. When he understood from the latter, who came to pay him a farewell visit, that he was leaving for good, he told him that he would make him a present. He said he knew that Cockerell was very fond of old sculptured stones, so if he liked to bring a cart to the base of the Acropolis at a certain hour at night (it could not be done in the daytime for fear of giving offence to the Greeks) he would give him something. Cockerell kept the appointment with the cart. As they drew near there was a shout from above to look out, and without further warning the block which forms the right-hand portion of Slab I. of the South Frieze now in the British Museum was bowled down the cliff. Such a treatment of it had not been anticipated, but it was too late for regrets. The block was put on to the cart, taken down to the Piræus, and shipped at once. Cockerell presented it to the British Museum, and its mutilated appearance bears eloquent testimony to its rough passage down the precipices of the Acropolis.
"My fever continued to harass me until I took a trip to Ægina, which I made for the purpose of change of air, as well as of correcting and revising our drawings of the Temple of Jupiter Panhellenius. In both respects I have succeeded beyond my hopes. I am now in perfect health, and have made some improvements and additions to our observations which will be of importance to our work. Taking ladders from here, I have also succeeded in measuring the columns of a temple supposed to have been that of Venus—I think Hecate—which are of universally admired proportion, and so high that hitherto no travellers have been able to manage them. Only two columns still exist. They belong, I found, to the posticum between the antæ. In digging at their base to prove this, I came upon a very beautiful foot in a sandal, life-size, of Parian marble, of precisely the same school and style as those of our Panhellenian discovery.[48] You may imagine I counted on nothing less than finding a collection as interesting and extensive as the other. I procured, with some difficulty, authority from the archons of the island, and struck a bargain by which they were to have one half of the produce of the excavation, which was to be made at my expense, and I the other, with a first refusal of purchasing their portion. I dug for three days without finding the smallest fragment, and, what was worse, satisfied myself that it had been dug over and re-dug a hundred times, the foundations of the temple having served time out of mind as a quarry for the Æginetans. The money spent was not very great, the time wasted was all to the good of my health, and I was able to make a curious observation on the foundations of the building. Greek temples are commonly on rock. This was not; and the foundations were no less than 14 to 15 feet deep, the first three courses of well-cut stone, the last set in mortar on a wall of small stones in mortar, at the sides of which is a rubble-work of largish stones beaten down with sea sand and charcoal and bones of sacrifices. Underneath, again, are other courses of well-cut stones which form a solid mass under the whole temple.
I have also with great difficulty, since there are no carpenters in this country, ascertained what I spoke of before as a matter of conjecture—viz. the entasis or swelling of the Greek columns. A straight line stretched from the capital to the base showed the swelling at about a third of the height to be in the Temple of Minerva an inch, in that of Ægina half an inch, which is the same proportion in both. The ruined state of the columns of the Theseum makes it less easy to ascertain the exact swelling. Those of Minerva Polias and the Erechtheum are also swelled. I have no doubt that it was a general rule with the Greek architects, though it has hitherto escaped the eyes of Stuart and our most accurate observers."
Cockerell had long been anxious to get into Italy. There alone could he see and study an architecture in some measure applicable to modern needs, if he was ever to become a practical architect. For four years he had been studying abstract beauty, practising his hand in landscape painting, interesting himself in archæology, and generally, except for his vigour and perseverance, behaving as many a gentleman at large might have done whose place in the English world was already made for him. But he had a position to win, and in one of the most arduous of professions, for which all this unsettling life was not merely not preparing him but actually making him unfit.
Since his first startling success at Ægina, he had been led on from one expedition to another, losing sight for months together, in the easy life and simple conditions which surrounded him, of the keen competition in the crush of London for which he ought to be girding himself. He had been forming a taste, but a taste in the externals and details of building only. Of composition and of planning he had seen as yet no fine example and had learnt nothing. There was nothing left for him to do in Greece. He had traversed it in all directions, seen every place of interest, and whenever there appeared a prospect of finding anything with the moderate means at his disposal, he had tried digging.
Under Napoleon's continental system Italy of course was closed to Englishmen, but to Bavarians it was accessible, and Cockerell had often talked with Haller of the possibility of smuggling himself as his servant into the country under cover of his (Haller's) passport. Fortunately this was never attempted. Even if they had succeeded in passing the frontiers under Governments where every foreigner was subjected to continual espionage, the delusion would soon have been discovered. It was a boy's scheme. He had also tried to engage the good offices of Louis of Bavaria to obtain him admission as an artist, but nothing had come of it; and finally, when he heard that Lady Hester Stanhope had got leave to travel in Italy, he had applied to Lord Melville for a similar indulgence. But with the abdication of Napoleon, which took place in April 1814, the whole prospect changed. France was at once thrown open to Englishmen, and the rest of the Continent by degrees. It is not easy to discover at what precise date the kingdom of Naples and Rome became accessible, but it must have been during the summer. Western news took time to percolate into Greece, but as soon as he learnt that there was a possibility of penetrating into Italy, he had begun making preparations for doing so. And now that there was nothing left to detain him, he arranged to start with Linckh for Rome on the 15th of January, 1815. When the appointed day came, Madame Masson saw him off at the Piræus, and shed floods of tears. She was very fond of him. Two years after she writes: "Non si sa cosa è Carnovale dopo la vostra partenza."
A curious fact about the journey is that they brought away with them a German of Darmstadt of the name of Carl Rester, who appears to have been a fugitive slave, of whom more hereafter.