Europe in the Looking Glass (17 page)

IT IS A CURIOUS THING
that while the name of Athens, in her capacity as the custodian of the Parthenon, has spread to the farthest corners of the civilized world, in her position as a modern European capital she has seldom received even the most perfunctory tittle of recognition. The improving tourist, gaze riveted upon the Acropolis, averts his eyes from the body of the town beneath, as though confronted by an Aphrodite with a goitred neck. Yet panegyrics upon the physical beauties and atmospheric charms of the other lesser capitals of Europe have never been wanting. Who has not read of the glories of Vienna, that huge peeling Bloomsbury, or the splendours of Hungarian Budapest, a kind of Bradford-on-Danube overhung by a palace like the Piccadilly Hotel? From earliest childhood we have known of the
Times
correspondent in Sofia and the single hot-water tap in Belgrade. Madrid is full of pictures, Copenhagen of bicycles. Even Christiana has changed her name. Meanwhile the Athens of today remains as unfamiliar as Lhasa. Yet in respects other than her deficiency in Byzantine works of art, she does not lack distinctive features.

One cannot but suspect that the recent attempts of General Pangalos to emulate the petty puritanism of Fascismo by legally limiting the brevity of women’s skirts, must have fallen on not altogether fruitful ground. Even during our short sojourn, a leading daily clamoured to be informed whether the Bank of Athens was a bank or an unmentionable resort. Similarly, the fashionable barber’s of the town was not without its embarrassments. Fortunately the fattest of the female staff had fallen deeply in love with David only the day before I had
found my way thither. Smothered beneath a striped towel, with the scissorman puffing cigarette smoke in my ears – preferable indeed to his breath – I must needs answer unending French questions concerning the health of my friend and the probability of his paying another visit to the establishment – a cosy little place, decorated like a maisonette lounge-hall in the modern French
intime
manner. Personally, when I have my hair cut, half the enjoyment consists in sinking into that delicious coma which the application of the scissors always induces. Here was no such peace. Fair succeeded dark in bewildering confusion, until I was thankful to escape unshampooed into the nearest café, demanding beer with such fluency as had survived from the ancient struggles of the School Certificate.

Cafés in Greece, as well as barber’s shops, are unlike those of other countries. With each drink is brought a small meal of radishes, cheese on brown bread, slices of sausage, or bits of egg – each portion harpooned on a toothpick, ready to pop into the mouth. Disturbance is incessant. Innumerable vendors, usually children covered with sores, twist among the tables, dispensing prawns, almonds, evening papers, shoe polish, lives of saints and improper novels. The crowd wanders aimlessly along, as many as not dangling Kompoloios, tasselled strings of beads which are sometimes of old and valuable amber. These are Levantine rosaries, and have the same sedative effect upon the populace as chewing-gum in the United States. We tried hard to acquire the habit with a view to introducing it into England. Unfortunately our two-and-sixpenny strings of green beads were lost almost as soon as we had bought them.

The horses in Athens also wear beads – two or three circlets, of a coarse, light blue, strung upon the neck to ward off bad luck. And, as a result of the inexorable logic of superstition, the radiator-caps of most of the cars are adorned in a like manner, with tight little strings of the same charms fastened on the forefronts of their bonnets. During the last two years the cars in Athens have trebled their number, there being now as many as eleven thousand. For the moment, in fact, their import
was forbidden, owing to the enormous sums of money that had been leaving the country in consequence of it. They are nearly all American. The population has increased in the same way. Including Piraeus and the refugee settlement, Athens now possesses nearly a million residents. At the close of the war, the number was only 300,000.

Athens calls herself the Paris of the Near East, and she seems in a fair way to fulfil such a destiny. Once the harbour of Piraeus is ridded of the anachronistic monopoly of lighterage, which, as we had been made so painfully aware at Patras, prevents ships disembarking cargo direct on to the quay, she may become, after Marseilles, the busiest port in the Mediterranean. Certain municipal disadvantages are being remedied. The electric lighting system has been placed under the control of an English firm; and the water supply, at present identically the same in quantity and method of transport as that originated by Hadrian, is undergoing adequate alterations. Yet Greek and foreigner alike cannot but regret the passing of the old order. It is said that in five years’ time, with the introduction of modern comforts and good roads, tourists will have ravaged the place of much of its charm; and after the capital the country. Proposals had even been brought forward to erect a large, modern hotel on the top of Lykabettus, in place of the little monastery of St George; though the scheme was quashed by the government a few days after our arrival. It was the great advantage of our late summer visit, which made even 105˚ in the shade worthwhile, that we were free of tourists.

The most entertaining time of the day was usually after sunset, which took place about half-past six. We dined, as a rule, on the Zappeion. This is a large garden in the middle of the city, composed of groves of short, closely-planted trees converging on a hill, on which lies an extensive exhibition building, constructed in the modern Greek style. There are two restaurants – the ‘Oasis’ and the ‘Aigli’. The food at each, if indeed there is any left, is equally nasty, cold and ill-served. One dines out of doors, either on the ground, deep in inches of
dust, or upon the roof of a square white building, electrically blazoned with the letters ΟΑΣΙΣ.

One evening we collected a large party and motored to Castri, some fifteen miles outside the town. Here an enterprising proprietor had lately opened a building like a Swiss
châlet
. Dinner was served on the balcony, while inside the best
jazz-band
that we had heard since leaving England played invitingly to a floor of shiny, white tiles. ‘We’ consisted of David, Simon and myself, Fleischmann and Schwert, Michael, Howe and three Greeks named André, Angelos and Socrates, the last of whom was a native of Missolonghi. Several tables were joined together and we all seated ourselves with the determination to indulge proverbial English hospitality. As dinner progressed, the English colony and smart Athens, arriving by taxi-loads in mauve tulle, became conscious of an addition to the regular clientèle. The climax was reached when David rose with one foot on the table (and the remains of several wine glasses) to propose the health of King Constantine. Four cabinet ministers in a neighbouring corner asked hurriedly for the bill, scenting another revolution. Had not Michael promptly drowned the confusion by proposing the first toast that came into his mind, the government might have fallen. As it was, every lip was wetted in honour of the Irish Republic. Simon, to whom national rites are dear, crashed his glass to the ground behind him; and everyone followed suit; Michael blushed, and as soon as might be, hurried us off to a less-frequented spot on the coast.

At length, when it was past midnight, we decided to bathe – to the pained surprise of the Greeks and Germans. Had English lunacy no bounds? We rushed into the sea, waving greetings to the moon and pretending to be Rhine maidens. The Germans saw nothing funny in it. After drying on a single handkerchief, we all filed into the cars and motored back to Athens to spend an hour or two at the ‘Griffon’ before going to bed. This was one of many such evenings.

The ‘Griffon’ is the night club of Athens. It boasts a cabaret show, which contorts itself
aux Folies
Bergères
from
one till three. Thenceforth, and in between the items of the programme, the assembled company dances. It has frequently been suggested, owing to the halo of fictitious turpitude that surrounds the word, that a book dealing with the many hundred ‘Night Clubs’ that flourish in the capitals of Europe might afford amusement to the public. Yet abroad, with no licensing restrictions, with liberty to imbibe any quantity of the sweetest of bad champagnes the whole night long, any spice of excitement that is to be found in the expensive and respectable ‘hells’ with which London is infested, disappears. In any case the atmosphere of all of them is much the same.

One evening a Russian lady of figure came up to Michael and said:

‘Have your parents gone yet?’

Michael’s parents had visited him in the spring.

‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘they have. How did you know that they were here?’

‘Aha!’ she said, ‘I remember your bringing them into the Petits Champs at Constantinople four years ago’ – Michael having been in the Army of Occupation. ‘Then I saw them in the street here. Your father is such a handsome man. I wish your mother had not been here. I would have made love to him.’

The ‘Griffon’ was the ideal night club. Entrance was free; champagne was not compulsory. We passed many evenings there.

Down at Phaleron was a restaurant kept by a gigantic Cretan, and known as ‘Cretikos’, which was situated on an earthen promontory lapped by the waves. It was lit by one gas-flare. Each table stood in a cubicle formed by banks of earth. Fish in Athens is so scarce that restaurants are only allowed to serve it every other day, in order that the private consumer may occasionally have a chance of obtaining some. At ‘Cretikos’ it was always available. We ordered dish after dish and helped cook it ourselves over a grid.

Seated in the weird half-light of the gas, with the white edges of the waves lapping the sun-baked, earthen platform at our feet and the lights of Piraeus twinkling from beyond the
blackness of the bay, we talked of Almae Matres, as we picked the spines of the last remaining red mullets. Michael told how a house-master named Parratt was once sitting quietly with his pupils, when it was suddenly announced that the
kitchen-maid
had been found murdered. Commotion ensued, until Parratt, who had momentarily left the room in order to view the body, closed the incident with the following words: ‘After this somewhat vulgar interruption, we will now resume the ordinary course of our studies.’

A story supremely illustrative of mentality of the militant pedagogue, was that of Simon, whose tutor was named Macveagh. A certain distinguished member of the school staff who had climbed to success on a mixture of bad aesthetics and Christianity – ‘Faith is such a jolly thing,’ he once told a batch of confirmation candidates – found reason, on one occasion, to complain of the unorthodox in Simon’s scriptural studies. That evening Macveagh stalked into the room, gave a sniff like a witch-doctor scenting a heresy, and with an air of enraged triumph, solemnly confiscated the large collection of the works of Shaw and Wells, which Simon, even at the age of seventeen, was already beginning to find sadly conventional. It is thus that Youth must contend with Age, and is driven to exaggerate its follies in revenge.

THERE IS AN ANCIENT JOKE,
originally evolved by du Maurier out of ‘Drawing-room Theatricals’, which consists of the following dialogue:

‘May I enquire, madam, whether you believe that the rights of men and women should be equal?’

‘Certainly, sir, I do.’

‘In that case, I do not feel called upon to relinquish my seat.’ Nor does he do so.

Though there is still something rather shocking in such an attitude, it must be admitted that the twentieth century has witnessed a certain tendency towards the decline of chivalric relationships. And in the case of the hardened traveller, this is largely due to the manner in which young American girls, with an independence of manner that is the reverse of appealing, make a habit of ordering casual males to attend their needs on boats and trains without even vouchsafing them either a ‘please’ or a ‘thank you’. Unless, of course, the time is propitious to further the acquaintanceship. Then we begin to relent towards what appears to be on the surface merely a weaker sex trading on its weakness.

The reports that arrive from the United States themselves are so conflicting that one is sometimes left in doubt as to how far the accepted doctrines of modern civilization with regard to female emancipation have taken root in that country. And it came as a pleasant surprise to us during our tour, to view from personal observation the progress that at any rate a section of American womanhood has made toward moral equality with man.

The reader may have noticed that it was one of our amusements to make a comparative study of ‘nightlife’ – if an expression so distorted can convey the pallor of the usual continental, after-dinner entertainments. In Berlin, Salzburg, Rome and Athens, in connection with Panama, Calcutta and Atlantic liners, and finally
á propos even of Paris
, came always the same response to our ever-repeated enquiry for the local cabaret or dance-hall.

‘No need to bother about that sort of thing here; the place is full of American girls. I can easily fix you up…’ Or, if the speaker were indulging in a reminiscence, his reply was in the past tense. And thus: with characteristic efficiency, does our American cousin compensate the Universe for her lack of manners.

But the anecdote of du Maurier’s old gentleman was intended originally to introduce the particular satisfaction of David, Michael and myself at learning of the successful assassination of one of the more mature transatlantic feminists – a Mrs Cook. We had planned one Friday to visit Sunium; and while waiting amid a crowd of iced lemon squashes for the motor to arrive, we chanced on this item of news in the pages of the
Christian Science Monitor
– the only journal which the management of the hotel appeared to consider suitable for the perusal of its English-speaking visitors. Mrs Cook, it appeared, had been the leader of her local prohibition movement; and was sitting one day at her window, when a party of bootleggers, with whose living she had been interfering, walked round the corner and shot her dead. We remember, at the moment of Nurse Cavell’s demise, being deeply stirred; as indeed have been the most confirmed misogynists since her reincarnation from the hand of Sir George Frampton. On the other hand, we were and still are in the seventh heaven of felicity at the fate of Mrs Cook. The reason perhaps is that whereas the action of the Germans was no doubt technically correct, that of the bootleggers had no justification of any kind. Undaunted by legal forms they unostentatiously effected the removal of a
busybody, trading, like her globe-trotting sisters, on the alleged weakness of her sex.

It must not, however, be lost sight of that Athens also offers possibilities in this direction. A certain Dutch resident had only a few months before our arrival purchased an expensive Greek head that proved to be a forgery. His servant, an intimate of the underworld of Constantinople, immediately placed at his disposal a number of hired assassins. And the dealer who had sold the head was very soon blackmailed by violence into returning practically the whole sum that he had originally been paid for it. To put it in commercial terms, a cleanly executed murder, involving no risk of detection to the instigator, costs in the neighbourhood of £25. Shall American bootleggers put us Britishers to shame? When, therefore, the newspapers announce that Viscountess Astor for example, has mysteriously disappeared, after being last seen on the Acropolis in a smart, navy blue costume, the restricted public that has read this book will feel no surprise. Precautions have been taken to prevent the above paragraph’s reaching the eyes of our intended victim.

The drive to Sunium, some thirty miles in length, presented, for Greece, a utilitarian appearance. I was suffering from a cold at the time, which, in the intense heat, made me feel as though my head were a live bomb, about to explode. After driving twenty miles we reached a manufacturing town named Lavrion. It seemed odd to see the chimneys and mining paraphernalia of a Yorkshire slagheap, standing out of the seared brown hills against the unmistakeably Greek blue of the Aegean. In the central square of the place, which was no larger than a small English county town, the mines being for the most part disused, we lunched. At least we entered a small room on the pavement, already tenanted by three other groups of men and women. After half-an-hour’s patience, we were favoured with a few small wedges of toughened flesh, together with a bottle of Mavrodaphne and three soup-plates of pink grapes. A dog – the only sociable dog in Europe of uncertain
genus – enlivened the meal by his friendliness. On the wall hung some oil-paintings of oranges. The cutlery was coated with that sinister slime that results from too little washing-up water. We sat on drinking, loath to face the heat, and watching a group of local notables, who, in the company of their priest, were doing the same.

At length, about three o’clock, we re-entered the motor. The road skirted along the coast. Every now and then a small stucco villa would appear, usually of one storey, probably pink in colour. These were varied with mere sheds, and sometimes only shelters of boughs, in which families might be seen enjoying their summer holiday in the traditional manner. Outside some stood cars, momentarily providing additional accommodation.

Eventually we turned off to the left up a track which led us out upon a headland of rock and heather and little, scrubby ground-bushes. At the top of a long slope, on a levelled platform of rock, stood the temple that we had come to see. Unlike the Acropolis, the marble was gleaming pure liquid white with such intensity that its background of sky seemed to lose all colour, and function simply as a tone. The ruin is old, even for Greece, and very worn. The position is magnificent: sheer below on the further side is the sea, two hundred feet down. Unfortunately the surrounding country is being spoilt – at least the coast. It is the favourite resort of Athenians; and visible from the temple was a hotel already in the building. I concealed the fact from Michael, who loves the place, but I felt not altogether happy. Perhaps it was my cold.

At close quarters the most noticeable feature of the noble skeleton is the profusion of carved names with which it is adorned. At some obscure date a party of English
blue-jackets
had even borne hither a pot of tar whereby to convey themselves to posterity; in which object they have succeeded, as it is impossible to rid the marble of the stain. It is pleasant, too, to think how Mr Wilson, of Hull, must have enjoyed his visit here in 1875; and how Mr Schofield, of Burton-on- Trent,
followed in his footsteps fourteen years later. One may laugh – one may deplore them. Yet in reality, despite the vandalism and irreverence of which they seem symbolic, there is often something strangely touching about the names that are to be found on ancient monuments. It is a primitive rather than a vulgar instinct that impels the cutting of them. They imply not self-advertisement but a deep-felt appreciation of the spot itself and an honest pride in having visited it. Untrained to such rare emotions, the mind of the Hull shipping magnate bursts to express them; spontaneously he writes:

Excitement, too, is always especially visible in the pencil scrawls that invariably decorate the masonry towards the tops of towers. How vividly can one picture the spectacle of Florence and Sydney Pike on their honeymoon in 1908, giggling and screeching to one another in the pitchy darkness of the winding stairs; bumping from wall to wall; squealing, panting, sobbing; Florence treading on Sydney’s fingers, Sydney pinching Florence’s calves; then suddenly both confronted by the view – eighty miles to a mountainous horizon.

‘Ah, you should see Dartmoor, where Auntie went last year–’

‘Give us your pencil, Flossie, there’s a good girl.’

Nevertheless it is bad taste; we make no attempt to deny it; and it was, we think, a little cruel of the Greek Government in 1924 to hold a state function at Sunium in commemoration of Byron’s having left the furrows of his clasp knife upon the venerable temple. For a man who saw fit to have such a motto as he had inherited – ‘Crede Byron’ – emblazoned on his travelling bed, it can have been but a little thing. All the same, it was unnecessary to emphasise it.

Nobody whom we had consulted in Athens had been able to recall the whereabouts of the name, and we had almost given up hope of finding it, when, while creeping along a narrow ledge by hugging each successive pillar, I suddenly noticed the five neat little italics within a few inches of my nose. In a fever of excitement we searched for the name of the best known of Byron’s modern biographers who, rumour tells, has thought fit to add to the lustre of the poet’s name by placing his own in close proximity to it. Our search proved in vain. Instead, immediately below the
BYRON
, appeared in meticulously careful print the youthful indiscretion of a man who is at present the principal of a famous Oxford College. As he can have but a few more years to live, we have decided to refrain from publishing his name.

Forsaking these uncouth relics, we descended by a long slope to a secluded bay, David and Michael to bathe, while I basked on a rock, nursing my cold. The others undressed on a sheltered spit of sand, and were swimming about, pink streaks in the limpid blue water of the tiny inlet; when suddenly from round behind a rocky promontory, in the same unexpected manner in which these things slide on to the stage at Covent Garden, glided the very quintessence of ancient Greece as visualised by modern painters – a boat, of almost mythical grace, tapering to a high curving prow and propelled by six long slender oars, the rowers of which were seated in two lines, three on one side and three on the other. It might have been the home-coming of Ulysses.

But the lovely barque had no sooner come to a standstill, than pandemonium was let loose upon the bathers’ idyll. A swarm of barefooted fishermen, of all ages, with skins like crocodiles, grew from the rocks to meet their disembarking fellows. And the whole crowd of about twenty or thirty, divided into two groups, each of which seized on a hitherto invisible wire hawser, which they proceeded to haul in from the depths of the sea. They performed the most elaborate evolutions; one group was perched high up on the cliff,
swaying as though to an inaudible hornpipe, while the other tugged and heaved below upon the sand. Then both lunged down twenty yards to the right and the wires swept me off my rock and threatened to lift David and Michael bodily out of the sea. Ten minutes’ comparative regularity were followed by a re-formation to the left but down at the water’s edge, so that the bathers were now irrevocably separated from their clothes. At length, far out upon the skyline, a row of floats could be seen hurrying in from Asia Minor. The efforts of the fishermen redoubled, and leaving David and Michael in peace, they formed up in two parallel lines upon the shore near me, and pulled for forty minutes. Gradually the floats, small, red barrels, drew near in two long diverging lines joining in a curve, like a magnet with its ends inwards. Here was a net a quarter of a mile in length, that must have swept a hundred acres of the sea. Slowly the barrels were hauled up. I craned eagerly forward; the men heaved; the net emerged in dense masses; not a winkle was to be seen. At last, with one superhuman wrench, the day’s catch slithered over the side into the bottom of the boat. There were perhaps four bushel baskets of sprats, and one small grey octopus, which a man cleaned and laid upon the beach. As the tide immediately washed it away, we rescued it, but he exhibited no gratitude. This, then, was the living of twenty fishermen. David and Michael being now dressed, we clambered up the hill and into the car.

On the way home I felt that suicide would be a welcome relief from the irritation of my cold. But some
rezina
, the
vin ordinaire
of this country, which, being preserved with resin, tastes like the smell of a chemist’s shop, succeeded in clearing my head. Its medicinal properties are not merely imaginary, and most English residents drink it for their health. We reached the Grande Bretagne in time for dinner, to find Simon very fresh, having just arisen. I took my bed that evening and stayed there the following day reading the Reminiscences of Lady Dorothy Nevill, which I had purchased in a bookshop round the corner. One sentence, written with all admiration in relation to the late
Lord Ellenborough, has remained in my mind as supremely typical of the Victorian female mentality:

‘He used to say to me: “War and Women, these are in reality the only fit interests for a man!”’

It is a curious reflection on the late Victorian era – a reflection forcibly corroborated by the popular songs of the day – that the sole interests, if not occupations, of most of our grandparents, were immorality and slaughter.