From the Oak to the Olive: A Plain record of a Pleasant Journey

by Julia Ward Howe

Finally the day began to wane, and we to pack and embark. The bell of the little church now made itself heard, and, looking in, we saw the priest engaged in going through his service, while a very homespun assistant stood at the reading-desk, wearing spectacles upon his nose, and making responses through it. A circlet of tapers was burning before the altar. One old woman or so, a peasant mother with her child,—these were the congregation. The idea of the Greek as of the Catholic mass is, that it effects a propitiation of the Divine Being; so the priest performs his office, often with little or no following. As to those who should attend, I believe that one pays one's money and has one's choice; there is nothing absolute about it. And now e megale bestows a trifling largess upon the hag, who has also dined off the relics of our feast. The books and work are gathered, the carriages summoned. Item, our driver wore a Palicari dress, and took part, very lamely, in the dances we witnessed. Farewell, Hymettus! farewell, shady convent, clear and sparkling water! We kiss our hands to you, and cherish you in our remembrance.

On our homeward way we soon passed the Athenian party, riding ten or twelve in a one-horse cart, carrying with them for an ensign the pole on which their lamb had been spitted. They saluted us, and we shouted back, "Eleutheria tis Kritis!" Amen, simple souls! your instincts are wiser than the reasons of diplomatists.

ITEMS.

My remaining chronicles of Athens will be brief and simple—gleanings at large from the field of memory, whose harvests grow more uncertain as the memorizer grows older. In youth the die is new and sharp, and the impression distinct and clean cut. This sharpness of outline wears with age; all things observed give us more the common material of human life, less its individual features. In this point of view it may well be that I shall often speak of things trivial, and omit matters of greater importance. Yet even these trifles, sketched in surroundings so grandiose, may serve to shadow out the features of something greater than themselves, always inwardly felt, even when not especially depicted. It is in this hope that I bind together my few and precious reminiscences of Grecian life, and present them, inadequate as they are, as almost better than anything else I have.

THE PALACE.

Armed with a permit, and accompanied by a Greek friend, we walked, one bitter hot afternoon, to see the royal palace built by King Otho, it is said, out of his own appanage, or private income. As an investment even for his own ultimate benefit, he would have done much better in expending the money on some of the improvements so much needed in his capital. The salary of the King of Greece amounts to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars; and this sum is sufficiently disproportionate to the slender monetary resources of the kingdom, without the additional testimony of this palatial monument of a monarch who wished to live like a rich man in a poor country. The palace is a very large one. It not only encloses a hollow square, but divides that square by an extension running across it. The internal arrangements and adornments are mostly in good taste, and one can imagine that when the king and queen held their state there, the state apartments may have made a brave show. The rooms now appear rather scantily furnished; the hangings are faded; and one can make one's own reflections upon the vanity and folly of ambitious expense, unperverted by the witchery of present luxury, which always argues, "Yes, the peasants have no beds, but see—this arm-chair is so comfortable!" Now, luxury was for the time absent on leave, and we thought much of the peasant, and little of the prince. For the peasant is a fact, and the prince but a symbol, and a symbol of that which to-day can be represented without him; viz., the unity of will and action essential to the existence of the state. This unity to-day is accomplished by the coöperation of the multitude, not by its exclusion. The symbol remains useful, but no longer sublime. No need, therefore, to exaggerate the difference between the common symbol and the common man. Fortify your unity in the will and understanding of the people, not in their fear and imagination. And let the king be moderate in his following, and illustrious in his character and office. So shall he be a leader as well as a banner—a fact as well as a symbol.

While I thought these things, I admired Queen Amalia's blue, pink, and green rooms, the lustres of fine Bohemian glass, the suite of apartments for royal visitors, the ball-room and its marble columns, running through two stories in height, and altogether well-appointed. "The court balls were beautiful," said my companion, "and the hall is very brilliant when lighted and filled." "Is the queen regretted?" I asked. "Not much," was the moderate reply.

The theatre interested me more, with its scenes still standing. In the same hall, at the other end, is a frame and enclosure for "tableaux vivants," of which the court were very fond. The prettiest girls in Athens came here, and posed as Muses, Minervas, and what not. I have the photograph of one, with her white robe and lyre. And this brings to me the only good word I can say for Otho and Amalia, in the historic light in which I view them. They were not gross, nor cruel, nor sluttish. Their tastes and pleasures were of the refined, social order, and in so far their influence and example were softening and civilizing in tendency. The temporary prevalence of the German element has introduced a tendency towards German culture. And while the Greeks who seek commercial education very generally migrate to London or Liverpool, the men most accomplished in letters and philosophy have studied in Germany. All this may not have hindered the German patronage from becoming oppressive, nor the German rule from becoming intolerable to the people at large. But, with the examples of this and other ages before one, one thanks a monarch for not becoming either a beast or a butcher. Otho was neither. But neither was he, on the other hand, a Greek, nor a lover of Greeks. Nor could he and his queen present the people with a successor Greek in birth, if not in parentage. This absence of offspring, which is said to have sorely galled the queen, was really a weak point in their case before the people. To be ruled by a Greek is their natural and just desire.

Europe, which has so little charity for their divergence from her absolute standard, must remember that it is not at their request that this expensive and uncongenial condition of a foreign prince has been annexed to their system of government. The superstitions of the old world have here planted a seed of mischief in the gardens of the new. England finds it most convenient to be governed by a German; France, by an Italian; Russia, by a Tartar line. What more natural than that they should muffle new-born Greece in their own antiquated fashions? The Greeks assassinated Capo d'Istrias for acts of tyranny from which they knew no other escape. For, indeed, the head of their state was very clumsily adjusted to its body by the same powers who left out of their construction several of its most important members. An arbitrary president was no head for a nation which had just conquered its own liberty. A foreign absolute prince was only the same thing, with another name and a larger salary. By their last resolution the Greeks have attained a constitutional government. If their present king cannot administer such a one properly, he will make room for some one who can. To his political duties, meanwhile, military ones will be added. Greece for the Greeks,—Candia, Thessaly, and Epirus delivered from the Moslem yoke,—this will be the watchword, to which he must reply or vanish.

It is in the face of America that the new nations, Greece and Italy, must look for encouragement and recognition. The old diplomacy has no solution for their difficulties, no cure for their distresses. The experience of the present century has developed new political methods, new social combinations. In the domestic economy of France and England these new features are felt and acknowledged. But in the foreign policy of those nations the element of progress scarcely appears. In this, force still takes the place of reason; the right of conquest depends upon the power of him who undertakes it; and in the farthest regions visited by their flags, organized barbarism gets the better of disorganized barbarism. The English in India, the French in Algeria, were first brigands, then brokers. Of these two, we need not tell the civilized world that the broker plunders best.