Laura had recently been confined with our Bella, her third child, and our physician—a kindly and excellent Pole, attached to one of the hospitals—ordered us all out of the island as soon as she was able to travel, for, to use his expression, "he would not guarantee the life of one of us if we remained in the island two weeks longer." We had been living for over two years a life of the deprivations and discomfort of a state of siege. At one time I had been confined to the house for three months by a scorbutic malady which prevented my walking, my children had been suffering from ophthalmia brought by the Egyptians, and Laura was in a state of extreme mental depression from her sympathy with the Cretans, while the absolute apathy prevailing in the island made me useless to either side. It was most gratifying to me that A'ali Pasha recognized my good faith and comprehension of the position, for not only did he, before he left the island, give me distinctly to understand that he considered me a friend, but told the Turkish minister in Athens, Photiades Pasha, that the government of Constantinople had been greatly deceived regarding me, and that if they had taken my advice in the beginning they would have avoided their difficulties. I left for Athens in September of 1868, convinced, as were the intelligent chiefs of the Cretans, that the Greek government intended to abandon the insurrection. I left the consulate in the hands of a new vice-consul—an Englishman long resident in the island,—my Greek vice-consul having died during the insurrection, and I had decided not to return at the end of my leave of absence; but I did not resign, as I knew that both the Turkish and my own government wanted me to do so.
The agitation in America on behalf of the Cretans had been pushed too energetically and under bad management, and had been followed by indifference, and the government would willingly have recalled me, but had no pretext for doing so, as I had always obeyed my orders. Nothing was done, however, to make it more possible for me to remain in the island. I had, in the second year of the war, determined to resign on account of the pecuniary difficulties of my position. We were living in a besieged town, with all necessaries of life at famine prices, and, since my brother's death, I had no fund to draw on for my excessive expenses. The Cretan committee in Boston, considering my resignation probably fatal to the insurrection, had promised that they would be responsible for any expenses above my salary, and on that understanding a friend in New York—Mr. Le Grand Lockwood, a wealthy banker—had offered to advance me any necessary sums. In accordance with this offer I had drawn on him for what I needed, the amount reaching, at the end of my residence in Crete, nearly three thousand dollars. Arrived at Athens I took a tiny house under Lycabettus, which was simply furnished for us by the local and principal Cretan committee.
I found the committee convinced that the government of Bulgaris had decided to stifle the insurrection in pursuance of the Russian plan, and it had sent in its resignation, which the ministry had not accepted. The minister of foreign affairs came to me at once to beg me to persuade them to withdraw the resignation, assuring me that the ministry had no intention of abandoning the Cretans, but was even ready to increase the subsidy, and was preparing an expedition on a larger scale than any previous one to revive it, and that it would, to insure its efficiency, take direct charge of the organization of it. On these assurances, I prevailed on the committee to withdraw its resignation, which probably averted an insurrection in Athens. The provisional government in Crete meanwhile appealed to Coroneos to come back and take the general direction of the insurrection, and he consented on condition of being furnished the means required, which he estimated at £10,000. The ministry rejected the offer, alleging want of means, and immediately proceeded to organize an expedition which cost more than double the amount. This was put under the direction of the old Petropoulaki, a partisan of Bulgaris, and the chief who had refused to help Coroneos in the attack on Omar Pasha at Margaritas.
The volunteers were so openly enrolled and mustered, and all other preparations made with so little disguise, that I was convinced that the ministry intended by (what had hitherto been avoided) undisguised violation of international law to provoke the Turkish government to take action. The bands paraded the streets of Athens under the Cretan flag, passing under the windows of the Turkish legation; the government gave them two guns from the arsenal, and they were openly embarked in two steamers, and landed in Crete without molestation by any of the Turkish men-of-war. They sent the guns back, and, when attacked after debarkation, separated into two divisions, neither of which offered any resistance, the smaller being attacked and cut to pieces at once, the larger taking refuge in Askyphó, where, without waiting for an attack, they made immediate overtures of surrender, and did at last surrender unconditionally the island as well as their own force, without any communication with or authority from the recognized Cretan provisional government, but carrying with them the insurgents of the western provinces. There remained about five thousand insurgents in the eastern part of the island in good condition for resistance.
In compliance with what was evidently a preconcerted plan between the Turkish and Greek governments, the Englishman Hobart Pasha, the admiral in command of the blockading fleet, who had not offered to interfere with the expedition of Petropoulaki, the place of debarkation of which was publicly known, waylaid in Greek waters the Ennosis, the blockade runner of the committee, which had replaced the Arkadi, captured by the Turkish ironclads, and chased her into the port of Syra, which he then proceeded to close by anchoring across the entrance to the harbor. On the news of this reaching Athens, the Cretan committee sent to Syra a blockade runner, lying as a reserve at Peiraeus, with orders to torpedo the admiral, torpedoes having been prepared for other contingencies at the arsenal of Syra, and I accompanied the bearers of the order. A spy in the committee gave immediate information to the Turkish minister, and, as our steamer went out of Peiraeus, we saw the smoke arise from the chimneys of a French corvette, lying off the arsenal, and two or three hours after we had entered, the corvette arrived and sent off a boat to Hobart Pasha, who immediately weighed anchor, and went to sea. The Greek government took no action and made no protest against this violation of international law, first by attacking the Ennosis in Greek waters, and then by blocking the entrance to the port. Its conduct left no question as to its complicity with the action of Admiral Hobart.
CHAPTER XXIII
ATHENS
My first leave of absence from Crete had been for two months, afterward extended indefinitely on account of the health of the family, the extension being accompanied with the intimation that my salary would be suspended after a date indicated, unless I returned to Crete. The Cretan committee of Boston, to whom I had, according to our agreement, sent my claim for the excess of expenses over my income,—the excess amounting after the realization of all my private resources, sale of my curiosities, etc., to about $1500, for which I was indebted to Mr. Lockwood,—replied that the funds of the committee were exhausted, and there was nothing to meet my claim. As I had given my leisure in Crete to the practice of photography and was provided with everything necessary to correct architectural work, I set about photographing the ruins of Athens, which I found had never been treated intelligently by the local photographers, and from the sale of the photographs I realized what sufficed, with a sum of 1200 francs accorded us by the Athens Cretan committee from the remainder of the funds in hand when the insurrection collapsed, to meet immediate contingencies. I was in hope that the new cabinet, in which I had a warm personal friend in Judge Hoar, General Grant's attorney-general, would assign me another post, knowing that the Turkish government was so bitterly opposed to my remaining in Crete; but the new Secretary of State, Hamilton Fish, was a friend of General King, my discomfited superior at Rome, and he had persistently urged my dismissal as demanded by the Sultan, though, owing to Hoar's opposition in the cabinet this had not been accorded. But I was never forgiven by the friends of King, and one day, when Judge Hoar was absent from a cabinet meeting, Fish succeeded in getting my successor at Crete appointed, and though the judge made an indignant remonstrance at the next meeting, it was too late to help us, for Fish obstinately opposed my having any other appointment, and, as he controlled all nominations to consular posts, it was impossible for the judge to effect anything.
My troubles came to a crisis in the sudden death of my wife. The anxiety and mental distress of our Cretan life, and her passionate sympathy with the suffering Cretans, even more than our privations and personal danger, had long been producing their effect on her mind, and the weaning of the baby precipitated the change into a profound melancholy, which became insanity accompanied by religious delusions from which she sought refuge in a voluntary death. She was given a public funeral, and the government sent a caisson to carry the coffin to the grave, but the Cretans claimed the right to take charge of it, and the coffin was carried to the cemetery on the shoulders of the oldest chiefs. The Cretan women looked on her as their best friend, and always spoke of her after her death as "the Blessed "—their form of canonization, for even in Athens they had been her chief care. The quiet but indomitable courage with which she faced danger in Crete, lest they should be involved in the panic which prevailed all around us, was as remarkable as the humility with which she repelled all acknowledgment of any merit on her part. She indulged in no sentiment, had no poetic prepossession concerning the people she protected and worked for, but the dominant sense of duty carried her through all difficulties. She never gave a thought to personal danger, and though a fragile creature, not five feet high, she was capable of cowing the most brutal of the barbarians who were gathered around us at Khalepa, and, whether to keep the consulate for me while I was away, or to navigate the yacht to meet me on my return from my visits to Greece, nothing made her hesitate to do what she thought her duty. In the three years of almost breaking strain of our residence in the midst of the anarchy of the insurrection, she had only the few days' relief from anxiety of her stay in Syra, while waiting the arrival of the Kestrel, but in all that time I never saw her make the least display of trepidation or anxiety, until the dispatch came from Secretary Washburn to tell us that the salary would be stopped.
I was asked then, as the reader may ask now, why I did not take her away when I found that she was failing. I had not the means to pay my passage to any other country. I was myself nearly prostrated mentally and physically, and unfit for anything but my photography. I was in debt so deeply that I could not honestly borrow, and my brother was dead. The American government pays no traveling expenses for its consuls, and I had not an article that I could sell for a dollar, for the furniture of the little house we lived in had been provided by the Cretan committee. The Greek government was hostile to me until Laura's death stirred the public feeling so profoundly, but even then the king was bitterly opposed to me. I was physically and financially a wreck on a foreign strand, with neither hope nor the prospect of relief. I struggled along as best I could, Mrs. Dickson taking charge of my children, and I made my home with the Dicksons.