The entrance to Corfu is considered pretty, but the English flag flying over the forts, divested ancient Corcyra of its poetical associations. It looked to me a commonplace seaport, glaring in the sun. The “gardens of Alcinous” were here, but who could imagine them, with a red-coated sentry posted on every corner of the island.
The Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Isles, Lord Nugent, came off to the ship this morning in a kind of Corfiote boat, called a “scampavia,” a greyhound-looking craft, carrying sail enough for a schooner. She cut the water like the wing of a swallow. His lordship was playing sailor, and was dressed like the mate of one of our coasters, and his manners were as bluff. He has a fine person, however, and is said to be a very elegant man when he chooses it. He is the author of the “Life and Times of John Hampden,” and Whig, of course. Southey has lately reviewed him rather bitterly in the “Quarterly.” Lady N. is literary, too, and they have written between them a book of tales called (I think) “Legends of the Lilies,” of which her ladyship’s half is said to be the better.
Went on shore for a walk. Greeks and English soldiers mix oddly together. The streets are narrow, and crowded with them in about equal proportions. John Bull retains his red face, and learns no Greek. We passed through the Bazaar, and bad English was the universal language. There is but one square in the town, and round its wooden fence, enclosing a dusty area, without a blade of grass, were riding the English officers, while the regimental band played in the centre. A more arid and cheerless spot never pained the eye. The appearance of the officers, retaining all their Bond-street elegance and mounted upon English hunters, was in singular contrast with the general shabbiness of the houses and people. I went into a shop at a corner to inquire for the residence of a gentleman to whom I had a letter. “It’s werry ‘ot, sir,” said a little red-faced woman behind the counter, as I went out, “perhaps you’d like a glass of vater.” It was odd to hear the Wapping dialect in the “isles of Greece.” She sold green groceries, and wished me to recommend her to the hofficers. Mrs. Mary Flack’s “grocery” in the gardens of Alcinous.
“The wild Albanian, kirtled to the knee,” walks through the streets of Corfu, looking unlike and superior to everything about him. I met several in returning to the boat. Their gait is very lofty, and the snow-white juktanilla, or kirtle, with its thousand folds, sways from side to side, as they walk, with a most showy effect. Lord Byron was very much captivated with these people, whose capital (just across the strait from Corfu) he visited once or twice in his travels through Greece. Those I have seen are all very tall, and have their prominent features, with keen eyes and limbs of the most muscular proportions. The common English soldiers look like brutes beside them.
The placard of a theatre hung on the walls of a church. A rude picture of a battle between the Greeks and Turks hung above it, and beneath was written, in Italian, “Honour the representation of the immortal deeds of your hero Marco Bozzaris.” It is singular that even a pack of slaves can find pleasure in a remembrance that reproaches every breath they draw.
Called on Lord Nugent with the commodore. The governor, sailor, author, antiquary, nobleman (for he is all these, and a jockey to boot), received us in a calico morning frock, with his breast and neck bare, in a large library lumbered with half-packed antiquities and strewn with straw. Books, miniatures of his family (a lovely one of Lady Nugent among them), Whig pamphlets, riding-whips, spurs, minerals, hammer and nails, half-eaten cakes, plans of fortifications, printed invitations to his own balls and dinners, military reports, Turkish pistols, and, lastly, his own just printed answer to Mr. Southey’s review of his book, occupied the table. He was reading his own production when we entered. His lordship mentioned, with great apparent satisfaction, a cruise he had taken some years ago with Commodore Chauncey. The conversation was rather monologue than dialogue; his excellency seeming to think, with Lord Bacon, that “the honorablest part of talk was to give the occasion, and then to moderate and pass to something else.” He started a topic, exhausted and changed it with the same facility and rapidity with which he sailed his scampavia. An engagement with the artillery-mess prevented my acceptance of an invitation to dine with him to-morrow—a circumstance I rather regret, as he is said to be, at his own table, one of the most polished and agreeable men of his time.
Thank Heaven, revolutions do not affect the climate! The isle that gave a shelter to the storm-driven Ulysses is an English barrack, but the same balmy air that fanned the blind eyes of old Homer blows over it still. “The breezes,” says Landor, beautifully, “are the children of eternity.” I never had the hair lifted so pleasantly from my temples as to-night, driving into the interior of the island. The gardening of Alcinous seems to have been followed up by nature. The rhododendron, the tamarisk, the almond, cypress, olive, and fig, luxuriate in the sweetest beauty everywhere.