University of Virginia Library

79. LETTER LXXIX.

This is proper dream-land. The “Isle of Calypso,”
[17] folded in a drapery of blue air, lies behind,
fading in the distance, “the Acroceraunian mountains
of old name,” which caught Byron's eye as he entered
Greece, are piled up before us on the Albanian shore,
and the Ionian sea is rippling under our bow, breathing,
from every wave, of Homer, and Sappho, and
“sad Penelope.” Once more upon Childe Harold's
footsteps. I closed the book at Rome, after following
him for a summer through Italy, confessing, by many
pleasant recollections, that

I resume it here, with the feeling of Thalaba when he
caught sight of the green bird that led him through
the desert. It lies open on my knee at the second
canto, describing our position, even to the hour:
We shall lie off-and-on to-night, and go in to Corfu
in the morning. Two Turkish vessels-of-war, with
the crescent flag flying, lie in a small cove a mile off,
on the Albanian shore, and by the discharge of musketry
our pilot presumes that they have accompanied
the sultan's tax-gatherer, who gets nothing from these
wild people without fighting for it.

The entrance of 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 Corfiate 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 Bazar, 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, “Honor the representation of the
immortal deeds of your hero Macro 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.

There was a small party in the evening at the house
of the gentleman who had driven me out, and among
other foreigners present were the count Dionisio Salomos,
of Zante, and the Cavaliere Andrea Mustoxidi,
both men of whom I had often heard. The first is
almost the only modern Greek poet, and his “hymns,”
principally patriotic, arc in the common dialect of the
country, and said to be full of fire. He is an excessively
handsome man, with large, dark eyes, almost effeminate
in its softness. His features are of the clearest
Greek chiselling as faultless as a statue, and are
stamped with nature's most attractive marks of refinement
and feeling. I can imagine Anacreon to have
resembled him.

Mustoxidi has been a conspicuous man in the late
chapter of Grecian history. He was much trusted by
Capo d'Istria, and among other things had the whole
charge of his school at Egina. An Italian exile (a
Modenese, and a very pleasant fellow), took me aside
when I asked something of his history, and told me a
story of him, which proves either that he was a dishonest
man, or (no new truth) that conspicuous men
are liable to be abused. A valuable donation of books
was given by some one to the school library. They
stood on the upper shelves, quite out of reach, and
Mustoxidi was particular in forbidding all approach to
them. Some time after his departure from the island,
the library was committed to the charge of another
person, and the treasures of the upper shelves were
found to be—painted boards! His physiognomy
would rather persuade me of the truth of the story.
He is a small man, with a downcast look, and a sly,
gray eye, almost hidden by his projecting eyebrows.
His features are watched in vain for an open expression.

The ladies of the party were principally Greeks.
None of them were beautiful, but they had the melancholy,
retired expression of face which one looks
for, knowing the history of their nation. They are
unwise enough to abandon their picturesque national
costume, and dress badly in the European style. The
servant-girls, with their hair braided into the folds of
their turbans, and their open-laced bodices and sleeves
are much more attractive to the stranger's eye. The
liveliest of the party, a little Zantiote girl of eighteen,
with eyes and eyelashes that contradicted the merry
laugh on her lips, sang us an Albanian song to the
guitar, very sweetly.

Dined to-day with the artillery-mess, in company
with the commodore and some of his officers. In a
place like this, the dinner naturally is the great circumstance
of the day. The inhabitants do not take
kindly to their masters, and there is next to no society
for the English. They sit down to their soup after
the evening drive, and seldom rise till midnight. It
was a gay dinner, as dinners will always be where the
whole remainder of what the “day may bring forth”
is abandoned to them, and we parted from our hospitable
entertainers, after four or five hours “measured
with sands of gold.” We must do the English the
justice of confessing the manners of their best bred
men to be the best in the world. It is inevitable that
one should bear the remainder of the nation little
love. Neither the one class nor the other, doubtless,
will ever seek it at our hands. But mutual hospitality
may soften so much of our intercourse as happens in
the traveller's way, and without loving John Bull better,
all in all, one soon finds out in Europe that the
dog and the lion are not more unlike, than the race
of bagmen and runners with which our country is
overrun, and the cultivated gentlemen of England.

On my right sat a captain of the corps, who had
spent the last summer at the Saratoga Springs. We
found any number of mutual acquaintances, of course,
and I was amused with the impressions which some
of the fairest of my friends had made upon a man who
had passed years in the most cultivated society of Europe.
He liked America, with reservations. He preferred
our ladies to those of any other country except
England, and he had found more dandies in
one hour in Broadway than he should have met in a
week in Regent-street. He gave me a racy scene or
two from the City Hotel, in New York, but he doubted
if the frequenters of a public table in any country
in the world were, on the whole, so well-mannered. If
Americans were peculiar for anything, he thought it
was for confidence in themselves and tobacco-chewing.