Small Talk at Wreyland. First Series

by Cecil Torr

This notion struck me forcibly in the spring of 1888. I rode over a great part of Greece; and I did it comfortably, taking a dragoman and cook, with mules to carry the baggage, and muleteers to tend the mules. When my little cavalcade went through a village, the people all came out to have a look at it; and I had a look at them. Most of them were very plain indeed; but at every second or third village there would be one or two people who looked like ancient statues come to life. If I had brought home pictures of these people, and said nothing of the rest, I should have given quite a wrong impression of the modern Greeks.

We may have an equally wrong impression of the ancient Greeks. Zeuxis painted his Helen from five damsels whom he had chosen out of all the damsels in the city of Croton; and Anacreon suggests a similar plan for painting a Bathyllus. Pheidias modelled a statue from Pantarkes, and Praxiteles from Phryne. In the Hermes of Praxiteles the foot is copied from a model who used to go about on stony ground in sandals; yet Hermes was a god who travelled through the air. The statue represents an individual, not a type.

I went out from Orchomenos to see the Acidalian fountain, in which the Graces used to bathe. Instead of Graces bathing there, I found three old washerwomen scrubbing very dirty clothes, 13 April 1888. Washerwomen seem to have a fancy for such places. I have found them at Siloam, 17 March 1882, Fontebranda, 19 April 1892, and Vaucluse, 15 March 1891. They probably were there in Petrarch’s time, and Ezzelino’s also, and at an earlier time as well. I did not find them at Callichoros, where the women of Eleusis performed their mystic dance; but I found their washing spread out upon the beach to dry, 23 April 1880, and some of it puzzled me very much indeed—pieces of white material, less than a yard in width, but quite a dozen yards long.

These proved to be the petticoats of the Palikaris, old stalwarts of the War of Independence, who still wore the national costume—which really was Albanian, and not Greek at all. I found out afterwards how a Palikari put his petticoat on. He took one end, while another man held the other, and then he pirouetted towards the other man, winding the top edge round his waist.

Meanwhile my mother was observing other things, and in her diary I find:—“Some peasants at dinner at the little inn—one well dressed in Greek costume. They had a bowl of French beans, over which they poured a bottle of vinegar and sprinkled salt. Each man put in his fork, and helped himself to a mouthful, and then bit off a piece of raw onion and some black bread. They finished with honey on which they poured a bottle of oil, and ate the same way.” My father sometimes noted things like that. In his diary I find, Leukerbad, 27 August 1871:—“Sat by the cold spring in the broad walk towards the Ladders. Many came to drink it—with absinthe.”

My father and my mother were at the Certosa near Pavia on 21 August 1857. There were monks there then, and ladies were not admitted to the monastery or the aisles and choir of the church, but only to the nave. So my mother sat outside, while my father was seeing the interior. And then a bull came rushing along, with peasants in pursuit. She made a dash for the cloister gate; but the janitor was not going to have the place polluted by her presence: so he crossed himself, and slammed the door, leaving her to face the bull outside. Luckily the bull saw something else and turned aside, and she reached the church.

In 1891 I went to Kairouan, 27-29 March. There was no great difficulty in going then, and it is quite easy now; but until 1881 no Christians were allowed there. At the Mosques the people showed quite plainly that they did not want you there, and yet seemed pleased that you should see things, if you could appreciate their merits. But some French people came, who treated the whole thing as a show; and this displeased a very stalwart Dervish. So he went off, and rooted up a prickly-pear plant well covered with spikes, and then pranced in, whirling this huge thing round his head. And he personally conducted that party out of his Mosque and some way down the road.

Few people go to see the ruins of Utica, as the ruins are not worth seeing. But it struck me that some eminent writers had made a mess of the topography; and I went there, 24 March 1891, to see what I could make of it. And then I wrote a couple of articles in the Revue Archéologique, saying things about those writers. I apologised to the editor for my French of Stratford atte Bowe, but he said he thought it was the French of Billingsgatte.

I was sitting in the ruins of what clearly was the theatre: the lower parts were covered by a marsh; and presently a Chorus of Frogs came out, and gave me a lesson on Aristophanes. He makes his Chorus of Frogs say brekekekex koax koax; and I found that this should be taken as three syllables, answering to his oo-op-op and rhyp-pa-pai. The brekekekex stands for one long croak, not four; and the modern music of the play has got it wrong.

Just after this I was going down from Constantine to Biskra, and met the locusts coming up, 3 April 1891. There is a narrow gorge, not more than fifty yards in width, by which one passes from the Tell to the Sahara; and it was quite choked up with them from ground to sky. They seemed to be flying only eight or ten inches apart, and coming on interminably. They are pleasant-looking creatures, and would be as popular as grasshoppers, if only they would come in reasonable numbers. Coming in myriads, they have their uses too. Potted locust is not bad.