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

by Julia Ward Howe

The first night we made acquaintance only with various screaming babies, the torment of young mothers who did not know how to take care of them, their nurses having been left at home. The night was sufficiently disturbed up to the period of departure, and these little ones vented their displeasure in tones which argued well for their lungs. The next morning showed us a rough sea, the vessel pitching and tossing, the ladies mostly sea sick—we ourselves well and about, but much incommoded by heat and want of room. A tall member of the pacha's suite came into our little round house, dressed principally in a short, quilted sack of bright red calico. He carried in his arms a teething baby, very dirty and ill-dressed, and tried to nurse and soothe it on his knee, the mother being totally incapacitated by seasickness. This man was tall and fair. I thought he might be an Albanian. I made some incautious remarks in French concerning his dress, which he obviously understood, for he disappeared, and then reappeared dressed in a handsome European suit, with a bran-new fez on his head, but carrying no baby. Another of the suite, unmistakably a Turk, pestered the round-house. This individual wore white cotton drawers under a long calico night shirt of a faded lilac pattern, which was bound about his waist with a strip of yellow calico. The articles of this toilet were far from clean. Glasses and a fez completed it. The wearer we learned to be a fanatical Turk, who came among us in this disorderly dress to show his contempt for Christians in general. His motive was held to be, in his creed, a religious one. It further caused him to take his meals separately from us—a circumstance which we scarcely regretted. He was much amazed at the worsted work in the hands of one of the neophytes, and went so far as to take it up, and to ask a bystander who spoke his language whether the young girl spun the wools herself before she began her tapestry. He then asked the price of the wools, and on hearing the reply exclaimed, "What land on earth equals Turkey, where you can buy the finest wool for twelve píastres an ok!"

Besides these not very appetizing figures, we had on board some Fanariote Greeks, of aristocratic pretensions and Turkish principles; some Hellenes of the true Greek stamp; a Dalmatian sea captain, his wife and daughters, who spoke Italian and looked German; an Armenian lady and young daughter from Constantinople, bound to Paris; several Greeks resident in Transylvania, speaking Greek and German with equal facility; two Armenian priests returning from an Eastern mission, and en route for Vienna; the Austro-Italian before spoken of; a Bohemian glass merchant; and an array of deck passengers as varied and motley as those already enumerated as belonging to the first cabin. With all of the latter we made acquaintance; but although we moved among them with cordiality and good-will, the equilibrium of sympathy was difficult to find. The Fanariotes were no Philhellenes, the Armenian ladies were frequenters of the sultan's palace; the Italian was thoroughly German in his inclinations, and spoke in utter dispraise of his own country when his feeble condition allowed him to speak. Of the Armenian priests, one was quite a man of the world, and somewhat reserved and suspicious. The other showed something of the infirmity of advanced age in the prolixity of his speech, as well as in its matter. In this Noah's ark e megale moved about, mindful of the bull in the china shop, and tried not to upset this one's mustard-pot and that one's vase of perfume. And as all were whole when she parted from them, she has reason to hope that her efforts were tolerably successful.

In the human variety shop just described, I must not forget to speak of my sisters, the Turkish women, imprisoned in a small portion of the deck, protected by a curtain from all intrusion or inspection. As this sacred precinct lay along the outside partition of the ladies' cabin, I became aware of a remote window, through which a practicable breach might be made in their fortress. Thither, on the first day, I repaired, and paid my compliments. They were, I think, five in number, and lay along on mattresses, disconsolately enough. With the help of the stewardess, I inquired after their health, and learned that seasickness held them prostrate and helpless. Nothing ate they, nothing drank they. Two of them were young and pretty. Of these, one was the wife of the bey who accompanied the pacha. She had a delicate cast of features, melancholy dark eyes, and dark hair bound up with a lilac crape handkerchief. The other was the mother of the teething child spoken of above, and the wife of the tall parent who nursed it. By noon on the second day the sea had sunk to almost glassy smoothness. All of the patients were up and about; the children were freshly washed and dressed, and became coaxable. One of the Armenian ladies now volunteered to go with me to look in upon our Turkish friends. We found them up and stirring, making themselves ready to land at Corfu. And to my companion they told what good messes they had brought from Constantinople, and thrown into the blue Ægean; for the heat of the vessel spoiled their victuals much faster than they, being seasick, could keep them from spoiling. And they laughed over their past sufferings much after the fashion of other women. The pretty mother now appeared in a loose gown of yellow calico, holding up her baby. I made a hasty sketch of the pair as they showed themselves at the cabin window; but the flat, glaring light did not allow me to do even as well as usual, which is saying little. The oval face, smooth, black brows, and long, liquid eyes, were beautiful, and her smile was touchingly child-like and innocent. The bey's wife wore a lilac calico; another wore pale green. These dresses consisted of loose gowns, with under-trousers of the same material; they were utterly unneat and tasteless. I presently saw them put on their yashmacs, and draw over their calicoes a sort of cloak of black stuff, not unlike alpaca. They now looked very decently, and, being covered, were allowed to sit on deck until the time of the arrival in Corfu. The pretty one whom I sketched begged to look at my work. On seeing it she exclaimed, "Let no man ever behold this!" Nor could I blame her, for it maligned her sadly. Concerning the landing in Corfu, the meagre diary shows this passage:—

"Went on shore at Corfu at 5.45 P. M., returning at 6.50. Expenses in all, ten francs, including boat, ices, and valet de place. The steamer was so hot that this short visit on shore was a great relief, Corfu being at this hour very breezy and shady. Every one says that the Ionian Islands are going to ruin since the departure of the English. This is from the want of capital and of enterprise. So it would seem as if people who have no enterprise of their own must be content to thrive secondarily upon that of other people. The whole type of Greek life, however, is opposed to the Occidental type. Its luxury is to be in health, and to be satisfied with little. We Westerns illustrate the multiplication of wants with that of resources, or vice versa. [The diary, prudently, does not attempt to decide the question of antecedence and consequence between these two.] The Greeks seem, so far, to illustrate the converse. Whether this opposition can endure in the present day, I cannot foresee. But this I can see—that Greece will not have more luxury without more poverty. The circle of wealth, enlarging, will more and more crowd those who are unfitted to attain it, and who must be content with the minimum even of food and raiment."

So far the pitiful, sea-addled diary. It does not recount how mercifully the captain of our steamer found a valet de place for us, and told him to take care of us, and bring us back at a given moment. Nor how our payment of ten francs for three persons, instead of Heaven knows what exorbitation, was owing to this circumstance. For it may not be known to the inexperienced that the boatmen of Corfu are wont to make a very moderate charge for setting people ashore on the island. This is done in order to disarm suspicion: facile descensus Averni—sed revocare gradum! But when you wish to return to your vessel, the need being pressing, and the time admitting of no delay, the same boatmen are wont to demand fifteen or twenty francs per capita, and the more you swear the more they laugh. Among the arrearages of justice adjourned to that supreme chancery term, the Day of Judgment, I fear there must be many of English et al. vs. boatmen. But under the captain's happy administration, I made bold, when the boatman insisted on being paid for the return trip in mid-sea, to refuse a single copper. Now, the gift of unknown tongues sometimes resides in the person who hears them. And I received it as a decided advantage that I understood no phrase of the boatmen's low muttering and grumbling. So they were forced to carry us to the gangway of the steamer, where the captain stood to receive us. And I paid the men and the valet under the captain's supervision, and when the former demanded a bottiglia, the captain cried out, in energetic tones, "Get off of my ship at once, you scoundrels; you have been well paid already;" the which indeed befell.

Neither does the diary recount how the drivers of public carriages followed us up and down the streets, insisting upon our engaging them, first at their price, and then at ours, for a trip which we had neither time nor mind to make, desisting after half an hour's annoyance; nor how a money changer, given a napoleon, contrived to make up one of its francs by slipping in two miserable Turkish paras, not worth half a franc; nor how the whistle of the steamer made our return very anxious and hurried, the passengers accusing us of having delayed the departure, while the captain confided to us that he had assumed this air of extreme hurry, in order to stimulate the disembarkation of the Turks, whose theory of taking one's own time was somewhat loosely applied in the present instance. Well, this is all I know of Corfu. It is little enough, and yet, perhaps, too much.

FARTHER.

Corfu was the last of Greece to us. A tightening at our heartstrings told us so. We consented to depart, but conquered the agony of making farewell verses, dear at any price, in the then state of the thermometer. Our feelings, such as they were, were mutely exchanged with the bronze statue of that late governor, who brought the water into the town. Unless he should prove as frisky as the Commendatore in Don Giovanni, they will never be divulged.

We now set our faces, in conjunction with the tide of conquest, westward. We all suffered heat, ennui, and baby-yell. The Italian invalid languished in his hot state-room, or in our cabin, his weak condition increasing the dangerous discomfort of perspiration—a grave matter when a chill would be death. Worsted work progressed, the hungry sketch-book got a nibble or two, and the mild good-wills of the voyage ripened, never, we fear, to bear future harvests of profit and intercourse. Not the less were we beholden to them for the time. And we will even praise thee here, Armenian Anna, with thy young graces, thy Eastern beauty, thy charming English, and thoroughly genial behavior. Mother and daughter had distinction, in the French sense of the word. From the former I had many aperçus of Eastern life. She was married at the early age of fourteen, and wore on that occasion the traditional veiling of threads of gold, bound on her brow and falling to her feet. "How glad I was to remove it," she said, "it was so heavy!" "What did you do with it?" I asked. "I divided it into several portions, and endowed with them the marriage of poorer girls, who could not afford it for themselves." But madame informed me that this cumbrous ornament has now passed out of fashion, the tulle veil and orange flowers of French usage having generally taken its place. This lady was supposed by most people to be the elder sister of her pretty daughter. In her soberer beauty one seemed to see the dancing eyes and pouting cheeks of the other carried only a little farther on. And both were among the chief comforts of the voyage.

Of the two Armenian priests, the younger held himself aloof, as if he understood full well the inconveniences of sympathy—a dry, steely, well-balanced man, without enthusiasm, but fine in temperament, well bred, and with at least the culture of a man of the present world. But Père Michel, the elder, was more willing to impart his mental gifts and experiences to such as would hear them. And he was a man of another age, with obsolete opinions, which he produced like the unconscious bearer of uncurrent coin.