Life of Frances Power Cobbe, as told by herself / with additions by the author, and introduction by Blanche Atkinson

by Frances Power Cobbe

Some year or two later, after I had published some records of my travels, and sent them to Mr. Finlay, I received from him the following letter:—

“Athens, 26th May.

“My dear Miss Cobbe,

“Baron von Schmidthals sent me your letter of the 18th April with the Cities of the Past yesterday; his baggage having been detained at Syria. This post brought me Fraser with a ‘Day at Athens’ with due regularity, and now accept my sincere thanks for both. I am ashamed of my neglect in not thanking you sooner for Fraser, but I did not know your address. I felt grateful for it, having been very, very often tired of ‘Days at Athens!’ It was a treat to meet so pleasant a ‘day,’ and have another pleasant day recalled. Others to whom I lent Fraser, told me the ‘Day,’ was delightful. I had heard of your misfortune but I hoped you had entirely recovered, and I regret to hear that you use crutches still. I, too, am weak and can walk little, but my complaint is old age. The Saturday Review has told me that you have poured some valuable thoughts into the river that flows through ages.

‘Rè degli altri; superbo, altero fiume!’

Solomon tried to couch its cataracts in vain. If you lived at Athens you would hardly believe that man can grow wiser by being made to think. It only makes him more wicked here in Greece. But the river of thought must be intended to fertilize the future.

“I wish I could send you some news that would interest or amuse you, but you may recollect that I live like a hermit and come into contact with society chiefly in the matter of politics which I cannot expect to render interesting to you and which is anything but an amusing subject to me; I being one of the Greek landlords on whose head Kings and National Assemblies practise the art of shaving. Our revolution has done some good by clearing away old abuses, but the positive gain has been small. England sent us a boy-king, and Denmark with him a Count Sponneck, whom the Greeks, not inaccurately, call his ‘alter NEMO.’ Still, though we are all very much dissatisfied, I fancy sometimes that fate has served Greece better than England, Denmark, or the National Assembly. The evils of this country were augmented by the devotion of the people to power and pelf, but devotion to nullity or its alter ego is a weak sentiment, and an empty treasury turns the devotion to pelf into useful channels.

“I was rather amused yesterday by learning that loyalty to King George has extended the commercial relations of the Greeks with the Turks. Greece has imported some boatloads of myrtle branches to make triumphal arches at Syra where the King was expected yesterday. Queen Amalia disciplined King Otho’s subjects to welcome him in this way. The idea of Greeks being ‘green’ in anything, though it was only loyalty, amused her in those days. I suppose she knows now that they were not so ‘green’ as their myrtles made them look! It is odd, however, to find that their outrageous loyalty succeeded in exterminating myrtle plants in the islands of the Ægean, and that they must now import their emblems of loyalty from the Sultan’s dominions. If a new Venus rise out of the Grecian sea she will have to swim over to the Turkish coast to hide herself in myrtles. There is a new fact for Lord Strangford’s oriental Chaos!

“My wife desires to be most kindly remembered to you.

“Believe me, my dear Miss Cobbe,