Prospero's Cell: A Guide to the Landscape and Manners of the Island of Corfu (14 page)

Yet later in the alcove of “The Partridge” Zarian recovers his composure as he proceeds to give us an account of the Jewish Colony of Corcyra.

When Benjamin of Tudela visited the island in 1160 he found only one Jew there—a dyer.

In 1571 Venice expelled the Jews from her dominions; yet by some chance the Jews of Corcyra were left undisturbed. In 1760 they were a colony 1,171 strong, while when the first French warships arrived to claim the island fortress for France some 2,000 were recorded in the census figures. By 1860 the colony numbered some 6,000 souls according to British computations.

Yet where does the ceremony of casting out Judas originate? At eleven o’clock on Good Friday every year, the unwary visitor is suddenly terrified out of his wits by the discharge of masses of crockery into the streets, pots, pans, and cauldrons, while the air is made hideous by the banging of pistols. This is supposed to be a ceremony for the casting out of Judas; and the banging and yelling continue (with pauses for refreshment) throughout the day.

The Hebraica still guards its isolation and its language, and its members play little or no part in the
life of the island. Yet the age of persecutions is by no means over; Zarian has observed how during Easter Week you will never see a Jew outside the confines of their settlement. But the finest wedding embroideries come from the Hebraica, and the greatest range of pottery and the tinsmith’s wares are to be seen there.

On the 13th February 1386 Corfu was once more a Venetian possession.… On the 20th of May the people of Corfu, at a public meet ing to appoint five ambassadors to submit to the Venetian senate, for confirmation of the treaty already made, had included a Jew in the Embassy named David Somos.…

Howell in his
Travels
mentions the Venetian dialect which they speak even today.

11.10.37

“To Napoleon,” says Zarian, who rejoices in great names, “Corfu was the keystone to an Empire in the East. If he had been exiled here instead of in St. Helena there is no knowing but that his proud stony heart might have been softened.”

In his diary the French conqueror wrote: “Venice must fall to those to whom we give the Italian continent, but meanwhile we will take its vessels, strip its arsenal, destroy its bank, and keep Corfu and Ancona.…” “With Malta and Corfu we should soon be masters of the Mediterranean.” And later, in a letter
to Talleyrand he added: “I think that henceforth the chief maxim of the French Republic should be never to give up Corfu, Zante, etc.”

In 1815 the Ionian Islands were created a single, free and independent state under the sole protection of Britain; and the era of the larger lunacy began. For the curious, the hyperborean prose of Napier will provide an effective counterblast to any suggestion that British colonies are, in the nature of things, perfectly governed. Yet Adams brought the town water, and the remains of the solid and beautiful roads built by the British still remain. Solomos was accepted and even petted. The Earl of Guilford, surely one of the most remarkable eccentrics of the last century, was persuaded to relinquish Ithaca as a home for his Ionian Academy, and to found the University of Corfu in 1823. The relief of the elegant Jervis White-Jervis is exhaled in every line. “What would it have been,” he writes, “if Lord Guilford had succeeded in carrying out his object of establishing the University at Ithaca. Visionary ideas of academical groves and of the birthplace of Ulysses do not form men to be useful citizens; and from one student who would have been sent from there, a hundred men would have been turned out upon the world with their ideas confined to a barren rock and a few goats.”

11.16.37

Sitting in the shade of the olive trees overlooking the dazzle of Mouse Island set in its burnished
emerald sea, the Count discourses amiably upon the British occupation, with that quiet mordant turn of voice, while Zarian and Theodore feast upon green olives and white cheese. It is one of our many afternoons in search of lore; we have been scouring the lovely hill of Analypsis for traces of the Temple to Neptune, supposed to have been noted by British Naval officers towards the end of the last century. Now dropping down through the silver olive groves we have come to Canoni, where Lord Kitchener complete with side-whiskers and moustache keeps a small tavern; and where Edwardian ginger beer, made after an Edwardian recipe, is served in little stone bottles with a marble for a cork. This is known to the islanders as “Tsit-Tsin Beera” and provides a convenient point of departure for the Count, who has been supplementing Zarian’s store of anecdotes by an account of how Mr. Gladstone and the Bishop of Paxo, in an access of reciprocal politeness (in an attempt to kiss each others’ hands) banged their skulls together during a very solemn ceremony and were only restored by a bottle of ginger-beer such as we are now consuming.

People in search of the vanished Imperial culture of England would find very little in Corfu: and that little curious. I do not speak about prevailing attitudes of mind; we have, of course, a certain number of Greeks educated abroad, who ape the English. I have
inherited, for example, from my family—which once governed here under the British—a strong taste for good manners and fair dealing as a living part of my
amour-propre,
not as independent virtues of character. It is the great difference between French culture and British; the British have no character—they depend upon very highly developed principles. It is convenient because they do not have to think. But apart from this Britain’s legacy to Corcyra is an odd one; you have seen, have you not, in the dirty little alleys between the Hebraica and the port, a strange symbol chalked upon the walls? Wander into the alleys, and you will be suddenly surprised to see the wickets and bails of the slum cricketer everywhere; you will suddenly think you are in Stepney.

Cricket lives on as independently as the patron saint. It is a mysterious and satisfying ritual which the islanders have refused to relinquish; and every year in August when the British Fleet comes in, cricket enjoys her festival. A ripple of anticipation runs through the groups of dawdlers on the sunny esplanade; and the two cricket clubs of the town can be seen practising ferociously at the nets on the hard red earth, in the shadow of Schulemberg’s statue. Groups of peasants, mysteriously drawn by their anticipation, stand in the shadow of the trees talking and observing. Meanwhile the
British battleships ride squatly in the harbor and their fussy pinnaces throw up lines of ripples which, hours later, will disturb Father Nicholas at his lobster pots off St. Stephano and cause him mightily to curse “the cuckold British.” When the news comes that the challenge to a cricket match has been received, there is an audible sigh of relief and pleasure which runs the length of the town. At once a profound clamor of activity breaks out; a matting pitch is laid in the center of the esplanade; a marquee is hastily run up; the Ministry of Supply in Athens receives an incoherent telegram asking it to obtain from the British Legation the recipe for rock cakes, which has somehow been mislaid once again this year. The British Consul is to be seen in morning clothes. All British residents of the town gain face in a remarkable way. Some receive presents of fruit and poultry—for this is after all, not far short of a Saint’s Day. And when the teams, eleven aside, and clad in their ceremonial white, meet on the ground for the toss, excitement and admiration reach their height. Peasants come in to town and take the afternoon off to sit under the trees on those uncomfortable cafe chairs, gravely applauding whenever the specialists (who sit in the marquee among the naval representatives and the consuls, and whose role is that of officiating priests) think fit to give them the cue. The British chaplain, who looks like nothing so much as a half-drowned blackbeetle rescued from a water-butt, sits in the midst of the distinguished guests, confirming by his presence
the religious quality of the ritual. Everybody except St. Spiridion himself appears to be present. And in the evening, by time-honored custom, a British Band in brilliant coats, marches to the bandstand and delights the crowds by its martial flourishes until the last light dies away and the fireflies come flashing out in their thousands. For the benefit of Zarian I must add here that the terminology of cricketers in Corcyra has suffered with the passage of years. In some curious way the cry “How’s that?” has come to mean “Out” while “runs” are known as “ronia.” The bails on the wickets are known as “rollinia” and the drive is called “pallia.” A yoker and a leg glide are known respectively as a “Primo Salto” and a “Sotto Gamba”; there are a few other small anomalies but I forget them for the moment. But while we are on the question of words I recall two English words which have been baptized into modern Greek. One is the verb “to cost” which is used with a conventional verb-ending and pronounced very much as it is in English; the other is an English draper’s measure “the peak” which has become “pika.” When you add to all this the private manufacture of apple chutney you have, I think, exhausted the subject of British cultural traces in the Ionian.

11.26.37

Viscount Kirkwall, who has written what the Count calls “the most exasperatingly friendly and honest book” about the British occupation, captures the
Victorian atmosphere of sidewhiskers and sideboots in a disarming manner. He records the dislike of the Ionians for their bluff rulers—a dislike which has changed since their departure into a nostalgic love and admiration. Set in this
décor
of cypress grove and lake, his characters move creaking with gentility and imperial self-satisfaction. He records the paper-chases and the tea parties in this outlandish corner of the world; the splash of red coats moving under the fortress to the sound of bugles—beaten thin as gold by the winds across the straits. He records with complete fidelity the humors and trials of guardianship by an Empire which has never cared to condescend to its subjects by the exercise of understanding; but confirms them in its love through an exasperating solidity and shy humor.

On the 9th of May there was a sham siege and assault carried on in the island of Vido: where a good luncheon was laid out in the tents for the officers and visitors. The affair, tho’ well arranged, was on a small scale; as only part of the garrison of Corfu reinforced for the occasion the troops at Vido. But from the picturesque nature of the ground the attack and defence maneuvers formed a pleasing spectacle which even ladies could appreciate. The interest was increased by the fact that some degree of risk was incurred by the troops; as the scaling ladders employed in the attack did not quite reach to the top of the ditch. But as
regarded this difficulty no accident occurred. An artilleryman, however, was, by the hasty discharge of a gun, accidentally thrown into the ditch of the principal work.

11.29.37

When the Ionian Islands were ceded to Greece, and the evacuation began, the Ionians were horrified to learn that extensive demolitions were to be carried out on the forts. As they had contributed in taxation about two-thirds of the total cost of building the fortresses, they were naturally bitter. Kirkwall, who showed some considerable sympathy for the Greeks, and for the Corcyreans in particular, is indignant too. His detailed description of the demolition work being carried out during that rainy February of 1864 is a brilliant piece of work.

To the English colony it was as exciting as a prolonged firework display. “On the afternoon of Tuesday, 29th March, numbers of English ladies and gentlemen, in spite of wind, heavy rain, and rolling seas, crossed over to Vido in order to witness from the keep the destruction of the strong Lunette battery to the west of the island.”

To the Ionians, however, all this earnest blowing up of “notable ramps, earthworks, embrasures” only underlined the bitterness of the departure. One disgusted Ionian is recorded to have remarked to Kirkwall as a puff of smoke and a jet of falling clods marked
the blowing up of another “notable” rampart: “I wish Lord Roosel were on top of it.”

“The earlier mines,” writes Kirkwall, “were fired by long trains of powder laid on the ground in furrows and slow burning fuses. But after the arrival of a Voltaic Battery from England the affair was arranged in the Scientific Manner which suited better to this Age of Wonders.”

The discreet picnics among the olive groves, the memoranda, the protocols, the bustles, sidewhiskers, long top boots, tea cosies, mittens, rock cakes, chutney, bolus, dignity, incompetence, bookkeeping, virtue, church bazaars; you will find traces of all of them if you look deeply enough. The flash of red hunting coats through the olive groves as the officers galloped over the island on their dangerous paper chases; the declarations of love among the cypresses, the red-faced sportsmen setting out for Albania. Big Tom, Adams, Leech, and “Fusty” Andrews; Lockler, Jones, and Jervis White-Jervis. Dr. Anstead fussily visiting these “embayed seas” to record the lamentable venality of the islanders. Edward Lear’s gloomy pictures of Perama and the Hyallic Gulf. Caught once and for all and absorbed into the atmosphere and line of the landscape with its arbors, mountains, and Byronic moonlight; preserved in a style of moustache among the peasants, or in the top-hatted moments of the Karaghiozis pantheon, or in the fragmentary touching love of the small urchins who will run crying beside the antiquated horse carriages which no taxis can ever
oust, offering “flowers for the Englishman’s lady” in accents no German or Frenchman has ever heard. Nothing has been lost of England’s inner accent; yet the forts lie empty of ordnance and cannon-balls. The battleships come now as visitors. And Turnock’s Royal Hotel where Anstead met with “food, civility, and moderate prices” has left: no trace behind it.

12.1.37

The French burned the Golden Book in which the names of the Venetian families were inscribed, and the aristocracy died in the flames to be reborn, phoenix-like, in titles stiff and unreal as old brocade.

The British did their best to reinstate the aristocratic tradition—as the Count would say “by abstract principles.”

When Britain left the abrupt fierce history of the island seemed to cease, and the gradual decay of communications and facilities made it more than ever remote, mysterious, and hard to reach. The landscape reverted to its own prolix disordered pattern. The stout roads have remained to this day; and the water supply of the town, despite periodic hitches, still operates as smoothly as when Adams first devised and carried out its building. But there is one English eccentricity remarked by the natives which the Count has missed; the English demand for houses with lavatories. An “English” house in the island, has come to mean a house with a lavatory, and the landlord of such a house
will charge almost double the ordinary rent for so remarkable an innovation. Bathrooms are even rarer and are considered a dangerous and rather satanic contrivance. For the peasants a bath is something you are sometimes forced to take by the doctor as a medicinal measure; the idea of cleanliness does not enter into it. Theodore often quotes the old peasant who reverently crossed himself when shown the fine tiled bathroom at the Count’s country house and said: “Pray God, my Lord, that you will never need it.”