The Life of Lord Byron

CHAPTER XX

Local Pleasures—Byron’s Grecian Poems—His Departure from Athens—Description of Evening in “The Corsair” —The Opening of “The Giaour” —State of Patriotic Feeling then in Greece—Smyrna—Change in Lord Byron’s Manners

The genii that preside over famous places have less influence on the imagination than on the memory. The pleasures enjoyed on the spot spring from the reminiscences of reading; and the subsequent enjoyment derived from having visited celebrated scenes, comes again from the remembrance of objects seen there, and the associations connected with them.

A residence at Athens, day after day, is but little more interesting than in a common country town: but afterwards, in reading either of the ancient or of the modern inhabitants, it is surprising to find how much local knowledge the memory had unconsciously acquired on the spot, arising from the variety of objects to which the attention had been directed.

The best of all Byron’s works, the most racy and original, are undoubtedly those which relate to Greece; but it is only travellers who have visited the scenes that can appreciate them properly. In them his peculiar style and faculty are most eminent; in all his other productions, imitation, even mere translation may be often traced, and though, without question, everything he touched became transmuted into something more beautiful and precious, yet he was never so masterly as in describing the scenery of Greece, and Albanian manners. In a general estimate of his works, it may be found that he has produced as fine or finer passages than any in his Grecian poems; but their excellence, either as respects his own, or the productions of others, is comparative. In the Grecian poems he is only truly original; in them the excellence is all his own, and they possess the rare and distinguished quality of being as true to fact and nature, as they are brilliant in poetical expression. Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage is the most faithful descriptive poem which has been written since the Odyssey; and the occasional scenes introduced into the other poems, when the action is laid in Greece, are equally vivid and glowing.

When I saw him at Athens, the spring was still shrinking in the bud. It was not until he returned from Constantinople in the following autumn, that he saw the climate and country with those delightful aspects which he has delineated with so much felicity in The Giaour and The Corsair. It may, however, be mentioned, that the fine description of a calm sunset, with which the third canto of The Corsair opens, has always reminded me of the evening before his departure from Athens, owing to the circumstance of my having, in the course of the day, visited the spot which probably suggested the scene described.

It was the 4th of March, 1810; the Pylades sloop of war came that morning into the Piræus, and landed Dr Darwin, a son of the poet, with his friend, Mr Galton, who had come out in her for a cruise. Captain Ferguson, her commander, was so kind as to offer the English then in Athens, viz., Lord Byron, Mr Hobhouse, and myself, a passage to Smyrna. As I had not received my luggage from Specia, I could not avail myself of the offer, but the other two did: I accompanied Captain Ferguson, however, and Dr Darwin, in a walk to the Straits of Salamis; the ship, in the meantime, after landing them, having been moored there.

It was one of those serene and cloudless days of the early spring, when the first indications of leaf and blossom may just be discerned. The islands slept, as it were, on their glassy couch, and a slight dun haze hung upon the mountains, as if they too were drowsy. After an easy walk of about two hours, passing through the olive groves, and along the bottom of the hill on which Xerxes sat to view the battle, we came opposite to a little cove near the ferry, and made a signal to the ship for a boat. Having gone on board and partaken of some refreshment, the boat then carried us back to the Piræus, where we landed, about an hour before sundown – all the wide landscape presenting at the time the calm and genial tranquillity which is almost experienced anew in reading these delicious lines:

The opening of The Giaour is a more general description, but the locality is distinctly marked by reference to the tomb above the rocks of the promontory, commonly said to be that of Themistocles; and yet the scene included in it certainly is rather the view from Cape Colonna, than from the heights of Munychia.

The environs of the Piræus were indeed, at that time, well calculated to inspire those mournful reflections with which the poet introduces the Infidel’s impassioned tale. The solitude, the relics, the decay, and sad uses to which the pirate and the slave-dealer had put the shores and waters so honoured by freedom, rendered a visit to the Piræus something near in feeling to a pilgrimage.

At that time Lord Byron, if he did pity the condition of the Greeks, evinced very little confidence in the resurrection of the nation, even although symptoms of change and reanimation were here and there perceptible, and could not have escaped his observation. Greece had indeed been so long ruined, that even her desolation was then in a state of decay. The new cycle in her fortunes had certainly not commenced, but it was manifest, by many a sign, that the course of the old was concluding, and that the whole country felt the assuring auguries of undivulged renovation. The influence of that period did not, however, penetrate the bosom of the poet; and when he first quitted Athens, assuredly he cared as little about the destinies of the Greeks, as he did for those of the Portuguese and Spaniards, when he arrived at Gibraltar.

About three weeks or a month after he had left Athens, I went by a circuitous route to Smyrna, where I found him waiting with Mr Hobhouse, to proceed with the Salsette frigate, then ordered to Constantinople, to bring away Mr Adair, the ambassador. He had, in the meantime, visited Ephesus, and acquired some knowledge of the environs of Smyrna; but he appeared to have been less interested by what he had seen there than by the adventures of his Albanian tour. Perhaps I did him injustice, but I thought he was also, in that short space, something changed, and not with improvement. Towards Mr Hobhouse, he seemed less cordial, and was altogether, I should say, having no better phrase to express what I would describe, more of a Captain Grand than improved in his manners, and more disposed to hold his own opinion than I had ever before observed in him. I was particularly struck with this at dinner, on the day after my arrival. We dined together with a large party at the consul’s, and he seemed inclined to exact a deference to his dogmas, that was more lordly than philosophical. One of the naval officers present, I think the captain of the Salsette, felt, as well as others, this overweening, and announced a contrary opinion on some question connected with the politics of the late Mr Pitt with so much firm good sense, that Lord Byron was perceptibly rebuked by it, and became reserved, as if he deemed that sullenness enhanced dignity. I never in the whole course of my acquaintance saw him kithe so unfavourably as he did on that occasion. In the course of the evening, however, he condescended to thaw, and before the party broke up, his austerity began to leaf, and hide its thorns under the influence of a relenting temperament. It was, however, too evident – at least it was so to me – that without intending wrong, or any offence, the unchecked humour of his temper was, by its caprices, calculated to prevent him from ever gaining that regard to which his talents and freer moods, independently of his rank, ought to have entitled him. Such men become objects of solicitude, but never of esteem.

I was also on this occasion struck with another new phase in his character; he seemed to be actuated by no purpose – he spoke no more of passing “beyond Aurora and the Ganges,” but seemed disposed to let the current of chances carry him as it might. If he had any specific object in view, it was something that made him hesitate between going home and returning to Athens when he should have reached Constantinople, now become the ultimate goal of his intended travels. To what cause this sudden and singular change, both in demeanour and design, was owing, I was on the point of saying, it would be fruitless to conjecture; but a letter to his mother, written a few days before my arrival at Smyrna, throws some light on the sources of his unsatisfied state. He appears by it to have been disappointed of letters and remittances from his agent, and says:

“When I arrive at Constantinople, I shall determine whether to proceed into Persia, or return – which latter I do not wish if I can avoid it. But I have no intelligence from Mr H., and but one letter from yourself. I shall stand in need of remittances, whether I proceed or return. I have written to him repeatedly, that he may not plead ignorance of my situation for neglect.”

Here is sufficient evidence that the cause of the undetermined state of his mind, which struck me so forcibly, was owing to the incertitude of his affairs at home; and it is easy to conceive that the false dignity he assumed, and which seemed so like arrogance, was the natural effect of the anxiety and embarrassment he suffered, and of the apprehension of a person of his rank being, on account of his remittances, exposed to require assistance among strangers. But as the scope of my task relates more to the history of his mind, than of his private affairs, I shall resume the narrative of his travels, in which the curiosity of the reader ought to be more legitimately interested.

CHAPTER XXI

Smyrna—The Sport of the Djerid—Journey to Ephesus—The dead City—The desolate Country—The Ruins and Obliteration of the Temple—The slight Impression of all on Byron

The passage in the Pylades from Athens to Smyrna was performed without accident or adventure.

At Smyrna Lord Byron remained several days, and saw for the first time the Turkish pastime of the Djerid, a species of tournament to which he more than once alludes. I shall therefore describe the amusement.

The Musselim or Governor, with the chief agas of the city, mounted on horses superbly caparisoned, and attended by slaves, meet, commonly on Sunday morning, on their playground. Each of the riders is furnished with one or two djerids, straight white sticks, a little thinner than an umbrella-stick, less at one end than at the other and about an ell in length, together with a thin cane crooked at the head. The horsemen, perhaps a hundred in number, gallop about in as narrow a space as possible, throwing the djerids at each other and shouting. Each man then selects an opponent who has darted his djerid or is for the moment without a weapon, and rushes furiously towards him, screaming “Olloh! Olloh!” The other flies, looking behind him, and the instant the dart is launched stoops downwards as low as possible, or wields his horse with inconceivable rapidity, and picking up a djerid with his cane, or taking one from a running slave, pursues in his turn the enemy, who wheels on the instant he darts his weapon. The greatest dexterity is requisite in these mimic battles to avoid the concurrence of the “javelin-darting crowd,” and to escape the random blows of the flying djerids.

Byron, having satisfied his curiosity with Smyrna, which is so like every other Turkish town as to excite but little interest, set out with Mr Hobhouse on the 13th of March, for Ephesus. As I soon after passed along the same road, I shall here describe what I met with myself in the course of the journey, it being probable that the incidents were in few respects different from those which they encountered.

On ascending the heights after leaving Smyrna, the road was remarkable in being formed of the broken relics of ancient edifices partly macadamised. On the brow of the hill I met a numerous caravan of camels coming from the interior of Asia. These ships of the desert, variously loaded, were moving slowly to their port, and it seemed to me as I rode past them, that the composed docile look of the animals possessed a sort of domesticated grace which lessened the effect of their deformity.

A caravan, owing to the oriental dresses of the passengers and attendants, with the numerous grotesque circumstances which it presents to the stranger, affords an amusing spectacle. On the back of one camel three or four children were squabbling in a basket; in another cooking utensils were clattering; and from a crib on a third a young camel looked forth inquiringly on the world: a long desultory train of foot-passengers and cattle brought up the rear.

On reaching the summit of the hills behind Smyrna the road lies through fields and cotton-grounds, well cultivated and interspersed with country houses. After an easy ride of three or four hours I passed through the ruins of a considerable Turkish town, containing four or five mosques, one of them, a handsome building, still entire; about twenty houses or so might be described as tenantable, but only a place of sepulchres could be more awful: it had been depopulated by the plague – all was silent, and the streets were matted with thick grass. In passing through an open space, which reminded me of a market-place, I heard the cuckoo with an indescribable sensation of pleasure mingled with solemnity. The sudden presence of a raven at a bridal banquet could scarcely have been a greater phantasma.

Proceeding briskly from this forsaken and dead city, I arrived in the course of about half an hour at a coffee-house on the banks of a small stream, where I partook of some refreshment in the shade of three or four trees, on which several storks were conjugally building their nests. While resting there, I became interested in their work, and observed, that when any of their acquaintances happened to fly past with a stick, they chattered a sort of How-d’ye-do to one another. This civility was so uniformly and reciprocally performed, that the politeness of the stork may be regarded as even less disputable than its piety.

The road from that coffee-house lies for a mile or two along the side of a marshy lake, the environs of which are equally dreary and barren; an extensive plain succeeds, on which I noticed several broken columns of marble, and the evident traces of an ancient causeway, which apparently led through the water. Near the extremity of the lake was another small coffee-house, with a burial-ground and a mosque near it; and about four or five miles beyond I passed a spot, to which several Turks brought a coffinless corpse, and laid it on the grass while they silently dug a grave to receive it.

The road then ascended the hills on the south side of the plain, of which the marshy lake was the centre, and passed through a tract of country calculated to inspire only apprehension and melancholy. Not a habitation nor vestige of living man was in sight, but several cemeteries, with their dull funereal cypresses and tombstones served to show that the country had once been inhabited.

Just as the earliest stars began to twinkle I arrived at a third coffee-house on the roadside, with a little mosque before it, a spreading beech tree for travellers to recline under in the spring, and a rude shed for them in showers or the more intense sunshine of summer. Here I rested for the night, and in the morning at daybreak resumed my journey.

After a short ride I reached the borders of the plain of Ephesus, across which I passed along a road rudely constructed, and raised above the marsh, consisting of broken pillars, entablatures, and inscriptions, at the end of which two other paths diverge; one strikes off to the left, and leads over the Cayster by a bridge above the castle of Aiasaluk – the other, leading to the right, or west, goes directly to Scala Nuova, the ancient Neapolis. By the latter Byron and his friend proceeded towards the ferry, which they crossed, and where they found the river about the size of the Cam at Cambridge, but more rapid and deeper. They then rode up the south bank, and about three o’clock in the afternoon arrived at Aiasaluk, the miserable village which now represents the city of Ephesus.

Having put up their beds in a mean khan, the only one in the town, they partook of some cold provisions which they had brought with them on a stone seat by the side of a fountain, on an open green near to a mosque, shaded with tall cypresses. During their repast a young Turk approached the fountain, and after washing his feet and hands, mounted a flat stone, placed evidently for the purpose on the top of the wall surrounding the mosque, and devoutly said his prayers, totally regardless of their appearance and operations.

The remainder of the afternoon was spent in exploring the ruins of Aiasaluk, and next morning they proceeded to examine those of the castle, and the mouldering magnificence of Ephesus. The remains of the celebrated temple of Diana, one of the wonders of the ancient world, could not be satisfactorily traced; fragments of walls and arches, which had been plated with marble, were all they could discover, with many broken columns that had once been mighty in their altitude and strength: several fragments were fifteen feet long, and of enormous circumference. Such is the condition of that superb edifice, which was, in its glory, four hundred and twenty feet long by two hundred and twenty feet broad, and adorned with more than a hundred and twenty columns sixty feet high.

When the travellers had satisfied their curiosity, if that can be called satisfaction which found no entire form, but saw only the rubbish of desolation and the fragments of destruction, they returned to Smyrna.

The investigation of the ruins of Ephesus was doubtless interesting at the time, but the visit produced no such impression on the mind of Byron as might have been expected. He never directly refers to it in his works: indeed, after Athens, the relics of Ephesus are things but of small import, especially to an imagination which, like that of the poet, required the action of living characters to awaken its dormant sympathies.

CHAPTER XXII

Embarks for Constantinople—Touches at Tenedos—Visits Alexandria—Trees—The Trojan Plain—Swims the Hellespont—Arrival at Constantinople

On the 11th of April Lord Byron embarked at Smyrna, in the Salsette frigate for Constantinople. The wind was fair during the night, and at half past six next morning, the ship was off the Sygean promontory, the north end of the ancient Lesbos or Mitylene. Having passed the headland, north of the little town of Baba, she came in sight of Tenedos, where she anchored, and the poet went on shore to view the island.

The port was full of small craft, which in their voyage to the Archipelago had put in to wait for a change of wind, and a crowd of Turks belonging to these vessels were lounging about on the shore. The town was then in ruins, having been burned to the ground by a Russian squadron in the year 1807.

Next morning, Byron, with a party of officers, left the ship to visit the ruins of Alexandria Troas, and landed at an open port, about six or seven miles to the south of where the Salsette was at anchor. The spot near to where they disembarked was marked by several large cannon-balls of granite; for the ruins of Alexandria have long supplied the fortresses of the Dardanelles with these gigantic missiles.