At that time Constantinople was infested by bands of mongrel scavenger dogs. They were so thick in the street outside my window that they looked like a moving yellow carpet. I have been told that shortly after this these poor creatures became such a nuisance that the authorities loaded them upon scows and transported them to a barren rocky islet where there was literally nothing to support life and where the stronger devoured the weaker, the survivors finally perishing from lack of food. I have been familiar with stories of Turkish atrocities all my life, but this has always lingered in my mind as one of the foulest.
It was at Constantinople that I discovered the secret of the mummy. My mother, who always had a catholic taste in curios, had bought, “unbeknownst” to me, a child mummy while we were at Luxor on the Nile. Thinking I might not like the purchase, she had concealed it from me by making each of her friends on the Nile steamer keep it for one night in their staterooms. My cousin, Julia McAllister, writes me à propos of this incident:
“That was a delicious story. At Cyprus she bought two bottles of a very rare wine for Uncle Sam. These were packed in the valise with the mummy. One bottle broke; this did not improve the mummy, which was not in a case, and by the time we reached Constantinople, no one would go near the valise! In Athens we persuaded her to ship the mummy home by sailing vessel.”
Why did my mother want that mummy? Perhaps, like Théophile Gautier, she might have written a romance about it, had we not with youth’s cruelty ridiculed it! To my knowledge she made no use of that queer little bundle swathed in its ancient yellowed linen bands that lay for years in a trunk in our attic! She thought my sister Laura, mother of many children, might like it; but Laura refused the gift.
We reached Greece in the violet season, arriving at the Piraeus on the afternoon of a day in early spring. The drive to Athens remains an imperishable memory. We stopped at a half-way house to rest the horses and refresh ourselves with “loukoumia” and “resinata.” Here I picked my first Grecian violets. I remember that Mt. Hymettus was draped in a deep hyacinthine veil that looked solid enough to touch.
My mother’s friend, Mr. Kalopothakis, came down from Athens to greet us on board our steamer. During our three weeks’ stay in Athens he and my mother’s other friends were tireless in their kindness and hospitality.
“You will find that you are no stranger here,” Mr. Kalopothakis told me. “Your father’s daughter should feel at home in any Greek home. We have long memories. The name of Howe, the American Hero of the Greek Revolution, is known to every schoolboy.”
I remember two balls at the palace, when Queen Olga was very gracious, and King George danced with me. He waltzed extremely well, and was much interested in the dancing of the “Boston” by the Americans of our party, among whom were the Higginsons, who had come with us from Constantinople, and some of the officers from his ship that lay at the Piraeus.
Of the many entertainments given in our honor, the banquet with the Cretan chieftains was the most interesting. I lost it on account of illness, but my mother has described the meeting with the veterans and their expressions of gratitude to my father for his lifelong devotion to the cause of Cretan liberty. The banquet had a certain Homeric flavor. It was served in the open air on the seacoast. The pièce de résistance was a lamb roasted out of doors with fragrant herbs wrapped about it.
“To Howe.” Each chieftain rose and offered the toast, pronouncing the name as if it were Greek. One old fellow whom I afterwards met had served with my father when he was a boy. He was past eighty and strong as an ox. I remember his very words: