and those of the hypæthral temple of Zeus of which only a few have fallen, are alike miracles of size and perfection of moulding. The fragments of palaces reveal magnificence unparalleled. All these enormous edifices are wrought with such lavish luxuriance of imagination, such perfection of detail in harmony with the luscious Corinthian style which pervades the whole, that the idea of the Arabs that they are the work not of men but of Genii, seemed quite natural. I recalled what Vitruvius (who wrote about the time in which the best of these temples was erected), says of the methods by which, in his day, the largest stones were moved from quarries and lifted to their places, but I failed to comprehend how the colossal work was achieved here.
Passing out of the great ruined gateway I came to vast square and hexagonal courts with walls forming exedræ, loaded with profusion of ornaments; columns, entablatures, niches and seats overhung with carvings of garlands of flowers and the wings of fanciful creatures. Streets, gateways and palaces, hardly distinguishable in their ruin, follow on beyond the courts and portico. I climbed up a shattered stair to the summit of the Saracenic wall and felt a sort of shock to behold the living world below me; the glittering brook, the almond trees in blossom and Anti-Lebanon beyond. Here I caught sight of the well-known exquisite little circular temple with its colonnade of six Corinthian columns, of which the architraves are recurved inwards from column to column. If I am not mistaken a reproduction of this lovely little building was set up in Kew Gardens in the last century.
Last of all I returned to the Temple of Zeus—or of Baal as it is sometimes called—to spend there in secure solitude (except for Djinns!) the closing hours of that long, rich day. The large walls are almost perfect; the colonnades of enormous pillars are mostly still standing. From the inner portal with its magnificent lintel half fallen from its place, the view is probably the finest of any fane of the ancient world, and was to me impressive beyond description. Even the spot where the statue of the god has stood can easily be traced. A great stone lying overturned on the pavement was doubtless the pedestal. I remained for hours in this temple; sometimes feebly trying to sketch what I saw, sometimes lost in ponderings on the faiths and worships of the past and present. A hawk, which probably had never before found a human visitor at eventide in that weird place, came swooping over me; then gave a wild shriek and flew away. A little later the moon rose over the walls. The calm and silence and beauty of that scene can never be forgotten.
I was unable to pursue my journey to Damascus as I had designed. The muleteer, with all my baggage, contrived to miss us on the road among the hills in Anti-Lebanon; and, eventually, after another visit to the ruins and to the quarries from whence the vast stones were taken, I rode back to Zachly and thence (a two days’ ride) over Lebanon to Beyrout.
I remained a few days at the hotel which then existed a mile from the town, while I waited for the steamer to take me to Athens, and much enjoyed the lovely scene of rich mulberry and almond gardens beside the shell-strewn strand, with snowy Lebanon behind, towering over the fir-woods into the deep blue sky. The Syrian peasant women are sweet, courteous creatures. One day as I sat under a cactus-hedge reading Shelley, a pretty young mother came by, and after interchanging a “Peace be with you,” proceeded unhesitatingly, and without a word of explanation, to deposit her baby,—Mustapha by name,—in my lap. I was very willing to nurse Mustapha, and we made friends at once as easily as his mother had done; and my heart was the better for the encounter!
After I had paid off Hassan and settled my account at the hotel, I found my financial condition exceedingly bad! I had just enough cash remaining to carry me (omitting a few meals) by second-class passage to Athens: which was the nearest place where I had opened a credit from my bankers, or where I had any introductions. There was nothing for it but to take a second-class place on board the Austrian Lloyd’s steamer L’Impératrice; though it was not a pleasant arrangement, seeing that there was no other woman passenger and no stewardess on the ship at all. Nevertheless this was just one of the cases in which knocking about the world brought me favourable experience of human nature. The Captain of the Impératrice, an Italian gentleman, did his utmost, with extreme delicacy and good taste, to make my position comfortable. He ordered his own dinner to be served in the second cabin that he might preside at the table instead of one of his subordinates; and during the day he came often to see that I was well placed and shaded on deck, and to interchange a little pleasant talk, without intrusion.
It is truly one of the silliest of the many silly things in the education of women that we are taught little or nothing about the simplest matters of banking and stock-and-share buying and selling. I, who had always had money in abundance given me straight into my hand, knew absolutely nothing, when my father’s death left me to arrange my affairs, how such business is done, how shares are bought and sold, how credits are open at corresponding bankers; how, even, to draw a cheque! It all seemed to me a most perilous matter, and I feared that I might, in those remote regions, come to grief any day by the refusal of some local banker to honour my cheques or by the neglect of my London bankers to bespeak credit for me. My means were so narrow, and I had so little experience of the expenses of living and travelling, that I was greatly exercised as to my small concerns. I brought with me (generally tied by a string round my neck and concealed) a very valuable diamond ring to sell in case I came to real disaster; but it had been constantly worn by my mother; and I felt at Beyrout that, sooner than sell it, I would live on short commons for much more than a week!
One day of our voyage I spent at Cyprus where I admired the ancient church of San Lazzaro, half mosque, half church, and said to be the final grave of Lazarus. I had visited his, supposed, temporary one in Bethany. Another day I landed at Rhodes and was able to see the ruined street which bears over each house the arms of the Knight to whom it belonged. At the upper end of the way are still visible the arch and shattered relics of their church. Writing to Miss St. Leger March 28th, I described my environment thus:
“Behold me seated à la Turque close to a party of Moslem gentlemen who alternately smoke and say their prayers all day long. We are steaming up through the lovely “Isles of Greece,” having left Rhodes this morning and Cos an hour ago. As we pass each wild cape and green shore I take up a certain opera glass with ‘H. S.’ on the top of the box, and wish very much I could see through it the dear, kind eyes that used it once. They would be pleasanter to see than all these scenes, glorious as they are. The sun is going down into the calm blue sea and throwing purple lights already on the countless islands through which the vessel winds its way. White sea-gulls follow us and beautiful little quaint-sailed boats appear every now and then round the islands. The peculiar beauty of this famous passage is derived, however, from the bold and varied outline of the islands and adjoining coast of Asia Minor. From little rocks not larger than the ship itself, up to large provinces with extensive towns like Cos, there is an endless variety and boldness of form. Ireland’s Eye magnified to twice the height, is, I should say, the commonest type. In some almost inaccessible cliffs one sees hermitages; in others convents. I shall post this at Smyrna.”
As the Impératrice stopped two or three days in the magnificent harbour of Smyrna, I had good opportunity to land and make my way to the scene of Polycarp’s Martyrdom amid the colossal cypresses which outdo all those of Italy except the quincentenarians in the Giusti garden in Verona. It was Easter, and a ridiculous incident occurred on the Saturday. I was busy writing in the cabin of the Impératrice at mid-day, when, subito! there were explosions in our vessel and in a hundred other vessels in the harbour, again and again and again, as if a battle of Trafalgar were going on all round! I rushed on deck and found the steward standing calm and cheerful amid the terrific noise and smoke, “For God’s sake what has happened?” I cried breathless. “Nothing, Signora, nothing! It is the Royal Salute all the ships are firing, of 21 guns.”
“In honour of whom?” I asked, somewhat less alarmed.
“Iddio, Signora! Gesù Cristo, sicuro! È il momento della Resurrezione, si sà.”
“O, no!” I said, “Not on Saturday. It was on Sunday, you know!”
“Che, che! Dicono forse cosi i Protestanti! Sappiamo noi altri, che era il Sabato.”
I never got to the bottom of this mystery, but can testify that at Smyrna in 1858 there were many scores of these Royal Salutes (!) on Holy Saturday at noon in honour of the Resurrection.
It was one of the brightest hours of my happy life, that on which I stood on the deck of our ship at sunrise and passed under “Sunium’s marble steep” and knew that I was approaching Athens. As we steamed up the gulf, the red clouds flamed over Parnes and Hymettus and lighted up the hills of Peloponnesus. The bright blue waves were dancing under our prow, and I could see over them far away the “rocky brow which looks o’er sea-born Salamis,” where Xerxes sat on his silver-footed throne on such a morn as this. Above, to our right, over the olive woods with the rising sun behind it, like a crowned hill was the Acropolis of Athens and the Parthenon upon it.
Very soon I had landed at the Piræus and had engaged a carriage (there was no railway then) to take me to Athens. The drive was enchanting, between olive groves and vineyards, and with the Temple of Theseus and the buildings on the Acropolis coming into view as I approached Athens, till I was beside myself with delight and excitement. The first thing to do was to drive to the private house of the banker to whom I was recommended, to arouse the poor old gentleman (nothing loath apparently to do business even at seven o’clock) to draw fifty sovereigns, and then to go to the French Hotel, choose a room with a fine view of the Parthenon, and to say to the master: “Send me the very best déjeuner you can provide and a bottle of Samian wine, and let this letter be taken to Mr. Finlay.” That breakfast, with that view, was a feast of the gods after my many abstinencies, though I nearly “dashed down the cup of Samian wine,” not in patriotic despair for Greece, but because it was so abominably bad that no poetry could have been made out of it by Anacreon himself. Hardly had I finished my meal, when Mr. Finlay appeared at my door, having hurried with infinite kindness to welcome me, and do honour to the introduction of his cousin, my dear sister-in-law. “I put myself,” said he, “at your orders for the day. We will go wherever you please.”
It would be unfair to inflict on the reader a detailed account of all I saw at Athens under the admirable guidance of Mr. Finlay during a week of intensest enjoyment. Mr. Finlay (it can scarcely yet be forgotten) went out to Greece a few weeks or months before Byron and fought with him and after him, through the War of Independence. After this, having married a beautiful Armenian lady, he bought much land in Eubœa, built himself a handsome house in Athens and lived there for the rest of his life, writing his great History (in five volumes) of Greece under Foreign Domination; making a magnificent collection of coins; and acting for many years as the Times correspondent at Athens. He was not only a highly erudite archæologist, but an enthusiast for the land of his adoption and all its triumphs of art; in short, the best of all possible ciceroni. I was fortunately not wholly unprepared to profit by his learned expositions and delicate observation on the architecture of the glorious ruins, for I had made copies of prints of all at Athens and elsewhere in Greece with ground-plans and restorations and notes of everything I could learn about them, many years before when I was wont to amuse myself with drawing, while my mother read to me. I found that I knew beforehand nearly exactly what remained of the Parthenon and the Erechtheum and the Temple of Victory, the Propylæum on the Acropolis and the Theseium below; and it was of intensest interest to me to learn, under Mr. Finlay’s guidance, precisely where the Elgin Marbles had stood, and to note the extraordinary fact, on which he insisted much,—that there is not a single straight line in the whole Parthenon. Everything, down to single stones in the entablatures and friezes, is curved, in some cases, he felt assured, after they had been placed in situ. The extreme entasis of the columns and the great pyramidal inclination of the whole building, were most noticeable when attention was once drawn to them. As we approached the majestic ruins of Adrian’s Temple of Jupiter on the plains below, (that enormous temple which had double rows of columns surrounding it and quadruple rows in front and back, of ten columns each) I exclaimed “Why! there ought to be three columns standing at that far angle!” “Quite true,” said Mr. Finlay, “one of them fell just six weeks ago.”
Since this visit of mine to Athens a vast deal has been done to clear away the remains of the Turkish tower and other barbaric buildings which obstructed and desecrated the summit of the Acropolis; and the fortunate visitor may now see the whole Propylæum and all the spaces open and free, beside examining the very numerous statues and bas reliefs some quaintly archaic, some of the best age and splendidly beautiful, which have been dug out in recent years in Greece.
I envy every visitor to Athens now, but console myself by procuring photographs of all the finds from those excellent artists, Thomaïdes, Brothers.
Mr. Finlay spoke much of Byron in answer to my questions, and described him as a most singular combination of romance and astuteness. The Greeks imagined that a man capable of such enthusiasm as to go to war for their enfranchisement must have a rather soft head as well as warm heart; but they were much mistaken when they tried in their simplicity to exploiter him in matters of finance. There were self-devoted and disinterested patriots, but there were also (as was inevitable), among the insurgents many others who had a sharp eye to their own financial and political schemes Byron saw through these men (Mr. Finlay said), with astounding quickness, and never allowed them to guide or get the better of him in any negotiation. About money matters he considered he was inclined to be “close-fisted.” This was an opinion strongly confirmed to me some months later by Walter Savage Landor, who repeatedly remarked that Byron’s behaviour in several occurrences, while in Italy, was far from liberal and that, luxuriously as he chose to live, he was by no means ready to pay freely for his luxury. Shelley on the contrary, though he lived most simply and was always hard pressed for money by William Godwin (who Fanny Kemble delightfully described to me àpropos of Dowden’s Memoirs, as “one of those greatly gifted and greatly borrowing people!”), was punctilious to the last degree in paying his debts and even those of his friends. There was a story of a boat purchased by both Byron and Shelley which I cannot trust my memory to recall accurately as Mr. Landor told it to me, and which I do not exactly recognise in the Memoirs, but which certainly amounted to this,—that Byron left Shelley to pay for their joint purchase, and that Shelley did so, though at the time he was in extreme straits for money. All the impressions, I may here remark, which I gathered at that time in Greece and Italy (1858), where there were yet a few alive who personally knew both these great poets, was in favour of Shelley and against Byron. Talking over them many years afterwards with Mazzini I was startled by the vehemence with which he pronounced his preference for Byron, as the one who had tried to put his sympathy with a struggling nation into practice, and had died in the noble attempt. This was natural enough on the part of the Italian patriot; but I think the vanity and tendency to “pose,” which formed so large a part of Byron’s character had probably more to do with this last acted Canto of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, than Mazzini, (who had no such foibles) was likely to understand. The following curious glimpse of Byron at Venice before he went to Greece, occurs in an autograph letter in my possession, by Mrs. Hemans to the late Miss Margaret Lloyd. It seems worth quoting here.
“Your affection of Lord Byron will not be much increased by the description I am going to transcribe for you of his appearance and manners abroad. My sister, who is now at Venice, has sent me the following sketch of the Giaour:—‘We were presented at the Governor’s, after which we went to a conversazione at Madlle. Benzoni’s, where we saw Lord Byron; and now my curiosity is gratified, I have no wish ever to see him again. A more wretched, depraved-looking countenance it is impossible to imagine! His hair streaming almost down to his shoulders and his whole appearance slovenly and even dirty. Still there is a something which impels you to look at his face, although it inspires you with aversion, a something entirely different from any expression on any countenance I ever beheld before. His character, I hear, is worse than ever; dreadful it must be, since everyone says he is the most dissipated person in Italy, exceeding even the Italians themselves.’”
Shortly before my visit to Athens an article, or book, by Mr. Trelawney had been published in England, in which that writer asserted that Byron’s lame leg was a most portentous deformity, like the fleshless leg of a Satyr. I mentioned this to Mr. Finlay, who laughed, and said: “That reminds me of what Byron said of Trelawney; ‘If we could but make Trelawney wash his hands and speak the truth, we might make a gentleman of him!’ Of course,” continued Mr. Finlay, “I saw Byron’s legs scores of times, for we bathed together daily whenever we were near the sea or a river, and there was nothing wrong with the leg, only an ordinary and not very bad, club-foot.”
Among the interesting facts which Mr. Finlay gave me as the results of his historical researches in Greece was that a school of philosophy continued to be held in the Groves of the Academè (through which we were walking at the moment), for 900 years from the time of Plato. A fine collection of gold and silver coins which he had made, afforded, under his guidance, a sort of running commentary on the history of the Byzantine Empire. There were series of three and four reigns during which the coins became visibly worse and worse, till at last there was no silver in them at all, only base metal of some sort; and then, things having come to the worst, there was a revolution, a new dynasty, and a brand new and pure coinage.
The kindness of this very able man and of his charming wife was not limited to playing cicerone to me. Nothing could exceed their hospitality. The first day I dined at their house a party of agreeable and particularly fashionably dressed Greek ladies and gentlemen were assembled. As we waited for dinner the door opened and a magnificent figure appeared, whom I naturally took for, at least, an Albanian Chief, and prepared myself for an interesting presentation. He wore a short green velvet jacket covered with gold embroidery, a crimson sash, an enormous white muslin kilt (I afterwards learned it contained 60 yards of muslin, and that the washing thereof is a function of the highest responsibility), and leggings of green and gold to match the jacket. One moment this splendid vision stood six feet high in the doorway; the next he bowed profoundly and pronounced the consecrated formula:—
“Madame est servie!”
and we went to dinner, where he waited admirably.
Some year or two later, after I had published some records of my travels, and sent them to Mr. Finlay, I received from him the following letter:—
“Baron von Schmidthals sent me your letter of the 18th April with the Cities of the Past yesterday; his baggage having been detained at Syria. This post brought me Fraser with a ‘Day at Athens’ with due regularity, and now accept my sincere thanks for both. I am ashamed of my neglect in not thanking you sooner for Fraser, but I did not know your address. I felt grateful for it, having been very, very often tired of ‘Days at Athens!’ It was a treat to meet so pleasant a ‘day,’ and have another pleasant day recalled. Others to whom I lent Fraser, told me the ‘Day,’ was delightful. I had heard of your misfortune but I hoped you had entirely recovered, and I regret to hear that you use crutches still. I, too, am weak and can walk little, but my complaint is old age. The Saturday Review has told me that you have poured some valuable thoughts into the river that flows through ages.
Solomon tried to couch its cataracts in vain. If you lived at Athens you would hardly believe that man can grow wiser by being made to think. It only makes him more wicked here in Greece. But the river of thought must be intended to fertilize the future.
“I wish I could send you some news that would interest or amuse you, but you may recollect that I live like a hermit and come into contact with society chiefly in the matter of politics which I cannot expect to render interesting to you and which is anything but an amusing subject to me; I being one of the Greek landlords on whose head Kings and National Assemblies practise the art of shaving. Our revolution has done some good by clearing away old abuses, but the positive gain has been small. England sent us a boy-king, and Denmark with him a Count Sponneck, whom the Greeks, not inaccurately, call his ‘alter NEMO.’ Still, though we are all very much dissatisfied, I fancy sometimes that fate has served Greece better than England, Denmark, or the National Assembly. The evils of this country were augmented by the devotion of the people to power and pelf, but devotion to nullity or its alter ego is a weak sentiment, and an empty treasury turns the devotion to pelf into useful channels.
“I was rather amused yesterday by learning that loyalty to King George has extended the commercial relations of the Greeks with the Turks. Greece has imported some boatloads of myrtle branches to make triumphal arches at Syra where the King was expected yesterday. Queen Amalia disciplined King Otho’s subjects to welcome him in this way. The idea of Greeks being ‘green’ in anything, though it was only loyalty, amused her in those days. I suppose she knows now that they were not so ‘green’ as their myrtles made them look! It is odd, however, to find that their outrageous loyalty succeeded in exterminating myrtle plants in the islands of the Ægean, and that they must now import their emblems of loyalty from the Sultan’s dominions. If a new Venus rise out of the Grecian sea she will have to swim over to the Turkish coast to hide herself in myrtles. There is a new fact for Lord Strangford’s oriental Chaos!
“My wife desires to be most kindly remembered to you.
I left Athens and my kind friends with great regret and embarked at the Piræus for Constantinople, but not before I had managed to secure a luxurious swim in one of the exquisite rocky coves along the coast near the Tomb of Themistocles.
Stamboul was rather a disappointment to me. The weather was cold and cloudy and unfit to display the beauty of the Golden Horn; and I went about with a valet de place in rather a disheartened way to see the Dolma Batchi Palace and a few other things accessible to me. The Scutari Hospital across the Bosphorus where Miss Nightingale had worked only four years before, of course, greatly attracted my interest. How much do all women owe to that brave heart who led them on so far on the road to their public duties, and who has paid for her marvellous achievements by just forty years of invalidism! Those pages of Kinglake’s History in which he pays tribute to her power, and compares her great administrative triumph in bringing order out of chaos with the miserable failures of the male officials who had brought about the disastrous muddle, ought to be quoted again and again by all the friends of women, and never suffered to drop into oblivion.
Of course the reader will assume that I saw St. Sophia. But I did not do so, and to the last, I fear I shall owe a little grudge to the people whose extraordinary behaviour made me lose my sole opportunity of enjoying that most interesting sight. I told my valet de place to learn what parties of foreigners were going to obtain the needful firmaun for visiting the Mosque and to arrange for me in the usual way to join one of them, paying my share of the expense, which at that time amounted to £5. Some days were lost, and then I learned that there was only one party, consisting of American ladies and gentlemen, who were then intending to visit the place, and that for some reason their courier would not consent to my joining them. I thought it was some stupid imbroglio of servants wanting fees, and having the utmost confidence in American kindness and good manners, I called on the family in question at their hotel and begged they would do me the favour to allow me to pay part of the £5, and to enter the doors of St. Sophia with them accordingly; at such time as might suit them. To my amazement the gentleman and ladies looked at each other; and then the gentleman spoke, “O! I leave all that to my courier!” “In that case,” I said, “I wish you good morning.” It was a great bore for me, with my great love for architecture, to fail to see so unique a building, but I could not think of spending £5 on a firmaun myself, and had no choice but to relinquish the hope of entering, and merely walk round the Mosque and peep in where it was possible to do so. I was well cursed in doing this by the old Turks for my presumption!
Nemesis overtook these unmannerly people ere long, for they reached Florence a month after me and found I had naturally told my tale of disappointment to the Brownings, (whom they particularly desired to cultivate), the Somervilles, Trollopes and others who had become my friends; and I believe they heard a good deal of the matter. Mrs. Browning, I know, frankly expressed her astonishment at their behaviour; and Mrs. Somerville would have nothing to say to them. They sent me several messages of conciliation and apology, which of course I ignored. They had done a rude and unkind thing to an unknown and friendless woman. They were ready to make advances to one who had plenty of friends. It was the only case, in all my experience of Americans, in which I have found them wanting in either courtesy or kindness.
I had intended to go from Constantinople viâ the Black Sea and the Danube to Vienna and thence by the railway to Adelsberg and Trieste, but a cold, stormy March morning rendered that excursion far less tempting than a return to the sunny waters of Greece; and, as I had nobody to consult, I simply embarked on a different steamer from the one I had designed to take. At Syra (I think) I changed to the most luxurious and delightful vessel on which I have ever sailed—the Austrian Lloyd’s Neptune, Captain Braun. It was splendidly equipped, even to a camera obscura on deck; and every arrangement for luxurious baths and good food was perfect, and the old Captain’s attention and kindness to everyone extreme. I have still the picture of the Neptune, which he drew in my little sketch book for me. There were several very pleasant passengers on board, among others the Marquis of Headfort (nephew of our old neighbour at Newbridge, Mr. Taylor of Ardgillan) and Lady Headfort, who had gone through awful experiences in India, when married to her first husband, Sir William Macnaghten. It was said that when Sir William was cut to pieces, she offered large rewards for the poor relics and received them all, except his head. Months afterwards when she had returned to Calcutta and was expecting some ordinary box of clothes, or the like, she opened a parcel hastily, and was suddenly confronted with a frightful spectacle of her husband’s half-preserved head!
Whether this story be true I cannot say, but Lady Headfort made herself a most agreeable fellow passenger, and we sat up every night till the small hours telling ghost stories. At Corfu I paid a visit to my father’s cousin, Lady Emily Kozzaris (née Trench) whom I had known at Newbridge and who welcomed me as a bit of Ireland, fallen on her
I seemed to be en pays de connaissance once more. After two days in Trieste I went up by rail to Adelsberg through the extraordinary district (geologically speaking) of Carniola, where the whole superficial area of the ground is perfectly barren but honey-combed with circular holes of varying depths and size and of the shape of inverted truncated cones; the bottoms of each being highly fertile and cultivated like gardens.
The cavern of Adelsberg was to me one of the most fearsome places in the world. I cannot give any accurate description of it for the sense of awe which always seizes me in the darkness and foul air of caverns and tunnels and pyramids, renders me incapable of listening to details of heights and lengths. I wrote my recollections not long afterwards.
“There were long, long galleries, and chambers, and domes succeeding one another, as it seemed, for ever. Sometimes narrow and low, compelling the visitor to bend and climb; sometimes so wide and lofty that the eye vainly sought to pierce the expanse. And through all the endless labyrinth appeared vaguely in the gloom the forms taken by the stalactites, now white as salt, now yellow and stained as if with age,—representing to the fancy all conceivable objects of earth and sea, piled up in this cave as if in some vast lumberhouse of creation. It was Chaos, when yet all things slept in darkness waiting the fiat of existence. It was the final Ruin when all things shall return to everlasting night, and man and all his works grow into stone and lie buried beside the mammoth and the ichthyosaur. Here were temples and tombs, and vast dim faces, and giant forms lying prone and headless, and huge lions sleeping in dark dens, and white ghosts with phantom raiment flickering in the gloom. And through the caverns, amid all the forms of awe and wonder, rolled a river black as midnight; a deep and rapid river which broke here and there over the rocks as in mockery of the sunny waterfalls of the woods, and gleamed for a moment, white and ghastly, then plunged lower under the black arch into
“It is in this deadly river, which never reflects the light of day, that live those strange fleshy lizards without eyes, and seemingly without natural skin, hideous reptiles which have dwelt in darkness from unknown ages, till the organs of sight are effaced.[15]
“Over this dismal Styx the traveller passes on further and further into the cavern, through seemingly endless corridors and vast cathedral aisles and halls without number. One of these large spaces is so enormous that it seemed as if St. Peter’s whole church and dome could lie beneath it. The men who were with us scaled the walls, threw coloured lights around and rockets up to the roof and dimly revealed the stupendous expanse; an underground hall, where Eblis and all his peers might hold the councils of hell. Further, on yet, through more corridors, more chambers and aisles and domes, with the couchant lions and the altar-tombs and the ghosts and the great white faces all around; and then into a cavern, more lately found than the rest, where the white and yellow marble took forms of screens and organ pipes and richest Gothic tracery of windows,—the region where the Genius of the Cavern had made his royal Oratory. It was all a great, dim, uneasy dream. Things were, and were not. As in dreams we picture places and identify them with those of waking life in some strange unreal identity, while in every particular they vary from the actual place; and as also in dreams we think we have beheld the same objects over and over again, while we only dream we see them, and go on wandering further and further, seeking for some unknown thing, and finding, not that which we seek, but every other thing in existence, and pass through all manner of narrow doors and impenetrable screens, and men speak to us and we cannot hear them, and show us open graves holding dead corpses whose features we cannot discern, and all the world is dim and dark and full of doubt and dread—even so is the Cavern of Adelsberg.”
Returning to Trieste I passed on to Venice, the beauty of which I learned (rather slowly perhaps), to feel by degrees as I rowed in my gondola from church to church and from gallery to palace. The Austrians were then masters of the city, and it was no doubt German music which I heard for the first time at the church of the Scalzi, very finely performed. It was not seldom in the usual English style of sacred music; (I dare say it was not strictly sacred music at all, perhaps quite a profane opera!) but, in the mood I was in, it seemed to me to have a great sanctity of its own; to be a Week-day Song of Heaven. This was one of the rare occasions in my life in which music has reached the deeper springs in me, and it affected me very much. I suppose as the daffodils did Wordsworth.
Naturally being again in a town and at a good hotel, I resumed better clothes than I had worn in my rough rides, and they were, of course that year, deep mourning with much crape on them. I imagine it must have been this English mourning apparel which provoked among the colour-loving Venetians a strange display of Heteropathy,—that deep-seated animal instinct of hatred and anger against grief and suffering, the exact reverse of sympathy, which causes brutes and birds to gore and peck and slay their diseased and dying companions and brutal men to trample on their weeping, starving wives. I was walking alone rather sadly, bent down over the shells on the beach of the Lido, comparing them in my mind to the old venuses and pectens and beautiful pholases which I used to collect on my father’s long stretch of sandy shore in Ireland,—when suddenly I found myself assailed with a shower of stones. Looking up, I saw a little crowd of women and boys jeering at me and pelting me with whatever they could pick up. Of course they could not really hurt me, but after an effort or two at remonstrance, I was fain to give up my walk and return to my gondola and to Venice. Years afterwards, speaking of this incident to Gibson, he told me he had seen at Venice a much worse scene, for the victim was a poor helpless dog which had somehow got into a position from whence it could not escape, and the miserable, hooting, laughing crowd deliberately stoned it to death. The dog looked from one to another of its persecutors as if appealing for mercy and saying, “What have I done to deserve this?” But there was no mercy in those hard hearts.
Ever since I sat on the spot where St. Stephen was stoned, I have felt that that particular form of death must have been one of the most morally trying and dreadful to the sufferer, and the most utterly destructive of the finer instincts in those who inflicted it. If Jews be, as alleged, more prone to cruelty than other nations, the fact seems to me almost explained by the “set of the brains” of a race accustomed to account it a duty to join in stoning an offender to death and watching pitilessly his agonies when mangled, blinded, deafened and bleeding he lies crushed on the ground.
From Venice I travelled very pleasantly in a returning vettura which I was fortunate enough to engage, by Padua and Ferrara over the Apennines to Florence. One day I walked a long way in front during my vetturino’s dinner-hour, and made friends with some poor peasants who welcomed me to their house and to a share of their meal of Polenta and wine. The Polenta was much inferior to Irish oatmeal stirabout or Scotch porridge; and the black wine was like the coarsest vinegar. I tried in vain, out of good manners to drink it. The lives of these poor contadini are obviously in all ways cruelly hard.
Spending one night in a desolate “ramshackle” inn on the road high up on the Apennines, I sat up late writing a description of the place (as “creepy” as I could make it!) to amuse my mother’s dear old servant “Joney,” who possessed a volume of Washington Irving’s stories wherein that of the “Inn at Terracina” had served constantly to excite delightful awe in her breast and in my own as a child. I took my letter next day with me to post in Florence, but alas! found there waiting for me one from my brother announcing that our dear old servant was dead. She had never held up her head after I had left Newbridge, and had cease to drop into her cottage for tea.
At Florence I remained many months (or rather on the hill of Bellosguardo above the city) and made some of the most precious friendships of my life; Mrs. Somerville’s first of all, I also had the privilege to know at that time both Mr. and Mrs. Browning, Adolphus Trollope, Walter Savage Landor, Isa Blagden, Miss White (now Madame Villari), and many other very interesting men and women. I shall, however, write a separate chapter combining this and my subsequent visits to Italy.
Late in the summer I travelled with a party through Milan over St. Gothard to Lucerne, and thence to the Pays de Vaud, where I joined a very pleasant couple,—Rev. W. and Mrs. Biedermann,—in taking the Château du Grand Clos, in the Valley of the Rhone; a curious miniature French country house, built some years before by the man who called himself Louis XVII., or Duc de Normandie; and who had collected (as we found) a considerable library of books, all relating to the French Revolution.
From Switzerland I travelled back to England viâ the Rhine with my dear American friends, the Apthorps, who had joined me at Montreux. The perils and fatigues of my eleven months of solitary wanderings were over. I was stronger and more active in body than I had ever been, and so enriched in mind and heart by the things I had seen and the people I had known, that I could afford to smile at the depression and loneliness of my departure.
As we approached the Black Forest I had a fancy to quit my kind companions for a few days; and leaving them to explore Strasburg, and some other places, I went on to Heidelberg and thence made my way into the beautiful woods. The following lines were written there, September 23rd, 1858:—