Childish Loves (40 page)

He is a very amiable man; a good head shorter than his wife, whom he dotes on, and of a disposition generally to be pleased with what he has. But I could not help teasing him a little. The grotto behind us was little more than a cavern, and put me in mind of another. I said, ‘I was once in a cave in Derbyshire that a great deal resembled this one. It was known as the Devil's Peak, and when I was still a schoolboy, we made up a large party and travelled some distance to see it.'

‘I have not been to Derbyshire,' Captain Knox said. ‘I am sure it is very fine country.'

‘They make excellent cheese there,' I said, but he takes everything so agreeably, it is impossible to mock him. After a minute, I added, ‘I was then in love with one of the party, who was engaged to another. And we lay side by side at the bottom of a narrow boat, and were
pushed
through the dark together.'

‘And what has become of her?' It was Mrs Knox who asked.

‘She married, and subsequently unmarried herself. A few years later she began to write me letters. She wished to see me, but it could have done neither of us good, and I did not answer them.'

That night we dined at the Governor's House, where I met several more Englishmen. It is very gratifying, I have been welcomed everywhere by my own countrymen as if I had
not
been forced into exile a decade ago.

We passed a pleasant few days at Vathy, touring the north of the island as well and visiting the ‘School of Homer'. The beauties of nature, at least, have been nothing diminished by the passage of centuries. The arts and traditions I leave to the antiquaries, and so well have those gentlemen contrived to settle such questions, that – as the existence of Troy is disputed – so that of Ithaca (of
Homer's
Ithaca) is not yet admitted. But scholars will one day stand upon the ruins of Watier's and doubt that
London
was.

Man, it must be admitted, has suffered rather more from the effects of time. Particularly in these last few years. On the streets of Vathy, you may see (once you have left the square and strayed into the narrower alleyways) children hissing at dogs to claim for themselves the scraps thrown out by the cook. The beggars are mostly young men; a distressing sight. Women of fifty sit darkly in doorways and lift their skirts above the knee as you pass by. Captain Knox, whom I really begin to admire, offered to take me on a tour of this wretchedness – he has done what he can to relieve the worst of the suffering but has never deluded himself into thinking it enough. To refresh his sense of it, he says, he used to walk with a pocketful of coins among the destitute; but has lately suspended the habit, as the children of the poor swarm so quickly and thickly around him he cannot pass more than a hundred feet before turning back. But for my sake he renewed the practice; and as it was the heat of the day, we made our way relatively unmolested.

I was never more affected by anything in my life, and I have known a great deal of squalor. On our return, I was half inclined to retreat to my room and call for pen, ink etc.; but my appetite for this particular form of diversion … is not what it was. Mrs Knox, who takes a great interest in the situation of the women, has introduced me to one of the families – a widow of Patras, named Chalandritsanos (her husband was killed in the Morea); she is the mother of three daughters, all of them exceedingly pretty and the oldest not more than eleven. Her two sons are away fighting with Colocotroni. The girls reminded me of the widow Macri and her three daughters; and the house in Athens where we stayed, with the courtyard and its lemon-trees, and Hobhouse, almost fifteen years ago. I offered to have them removed to Argostoli at my expense, and cared for, also at my expense; all of which was gratefully accepted, and my last day in Vathy was partly occupied with these arrangements.

On the morning of our departure, Captain Knox, his wife and five of his children (the two youngest were still asleep) accompanied us to the harbour and remained standing against the walls of the jetty for as long as we stayed in sight. Mrs Knox said to me, as I took my leave, ‘They were all rather afraid of you when you came.' Knox has asked me to be god-father to his youngest son, but it will not do, and I refused. Whatever I care for dies; I have lost one child already.

We dined that night at St Euphemia and rode back to Argostoli a different way, climbing the hills of Samos and sleeping at a monastery there. I was told afterwards that I behaved very strangely in the evening – that when the Abbot, who had greeted us, attempted to give me the benediction, I began to shout at him and would not cease shouting until he had removed himself, which is apparently what I had (in the midst of my ravings) demanded of him. Then, calling Fletcher to me, I attempted to run away. But Fletcher resisted, and Dr Bruno at last persuaded me to accept one of his pills, which he had hastily prepared. I afterwards fell asleep and awoke the next morning, a little weak and head-achey, and with no recollection at all of the events of the preceding night. Trelawny (who takes a humorous view of the episode) tells me I called out repeatedly that I was in hell – a delusion which may be partly accounted for by the torches lining the walls of the monastery. But as I say I have no recollection, and we reached Argostoli the following afternoon, on much better roads than those we set out on.

*

Botsaris is dead. We had this news on our arrival. It was Napier who told me; he saw us marching down from the hills (as we always attract a considerable following) and walked out to greet us. The story spread quickly among the Suliotes, who had gathered around me. They began instantly to beat their breasts and pull their hair, which is a thing I had read about but never seen; and which in the event made a great impression on me. He died at Karpenisi, leading a troop of two hundred men against a force of some fifteen thousand. But there was nothing we could do, and we managed at last to escape into one of the boats and make our way out to the
Hercules
, where the first sight that greeted me, on my cabin-table, was a letter from Botsaris. It was sent two weeks before and urged me to come on to Missolonghi. ‘Your Excellency is exactly the person of whom we stand in need,' he wrote.

Blaquiere has not returned and I am still awaiting word from Hobhouse and the Committee. But I have written
to
him and explained myself, and my situation, which in fact is only gradually becoming clear to me. I have no intention of going to the mainland until I can avoid being considered a favourer of one party or another. As I did not come here to join a faction but a
nation
, and to deal with honest men and not with speculators or peculators (charges bandied about daily by the Greeks of each other), it will require much circumspection for me to avoid the character of a partisan. I have already received invitations from more than one of the contending parties, always under the pretext that they are the ‘real Simon Pure'.

It was my idea that by staying on board I would spare myself a certain amount of useless annoyance, but the rumour of Lord Byron's arrival (and his moneys) has spread very far, and the boats ply themselves like so many ducks around us. When once they have got their foot upon the ladder, we can hardly push back into the water the men we have come so far to liberate. The worst of them is that (to use a coarse expression, but the only one that will not fall short of the truth) they are such damned liars. Whoever goes into Greece at present should do it as Mrs Fry went into Newgate – not in the expectation of meeting with any special indication of existing probity, but in the hope that time and better treatment may rehabilitate its inmates. When the limbs of the Greeks are a little less stiff from the shackles of four centuries, they will not march so ‘as if they had gyves on their legs'.

I have come at least to one decision, which is to move ashore, to a small villa in Metaxata a few miles to the south of Argostoli. The Suliotes have really become impossible, and I have had the additional vexation of putting Trelawny in the right. Probably I should not have paid them in advance (which was at their own request) for this has had the consequence that the shopkeepers, who were in the habit of dealing with them on credit, have extorted from them the entirety at once. I have offered them another month's pay and the price of their passage to Acarnania (where they can easily go, as the Turkish blockade is over) just to be rid of them; and this a part of them have accepted. Though, after all, I am not sorry to see a few remaining, and we continue to ride out together when the roads permit – September has come and gone, but I am still here.

*

The house is very pretty, though small; set amidst vineyards and groves, with the castle of San Giorgio sitting on the hill above its shoulder. On the first floor there is a balcony, with a view (if you lean out of it) of the Morea. But our party is somewhat diminished. Aside from the servants, only Pietro and Dr Bruno remain. Captain Scott has taken the
Hercules
to England, freighted with currants; and Trelawny and Browne (they have lately become very thick) have proceeded to Tripolitza, where they intend to join the party of Ulysses, who commands a wild rabble of men in Eastern Greece. Trelawny is rather enamoured of him and calls him a ‘second Bolivar', though this was perhaps on my account, as he wished me to ‘bestir myself.

I am not sorry to see him gone, though I am a little grieved at the manner of our parting. It was already decided he should go, as there was no room for either of them at Metaxata, and he had no wish to join me on shore. ‘If you ever stop for six days in one place,' he said, ‘you cannot be made to shift for six months. This is your own maxim, and I have found it to be true.'

On the eve of his departure, he came for the first time to the villa, to take his leave. We had only removed that morning; there was still a great deal to be done. I led him around the rooms and showed him the view from the balcony: of the island of Zante, and the Morea. It was a clear late-summery day, not very warm, but bright and pale at once; and the house, which was cool and still very sparsely furnished, had a kind of ghostly calm. We could see Pietro and Tita some way below, pulling the mules up a track to the front door, each of them loaded with several cases. But we could not hear them; they looked no bigger than children.

I said to Trelawny, ‘The chief charm of the place is that it is out of the way. We were too exposed in the
Hercules
and could be seen from all sides, which was rather an invitation, to anyone and everyone, who wanted anything. But it is quieter here; perhaps it is even quiet enough for me to write.'

‘Have you not been writing?' he said.

‘You have seen for yourself how I have been occupied.'

He waited a minute, and then he said, ‘Excuse me, I have seen very clearly what you have
not
been doing.'

‘And what is that?'

‘Why, anything at all; anything to the purpose, that is. You have listened to a great deal of flattery, I grant you that. And written many letters. And gone out riding, with a troop of bandits to whom you gave so little occupation, as you call it, that they themselves had nothing to do but take your money. You have made a tour of Ithaca, and explored the hills above Argostoli, and swum in the bay in the heat of the sun, till your head ached and you were sick in the night; but to the best of my knowledge, you have not taken a single step towards the liberation of Greece.'

‘It is not my idea to do anything until I know what is to be done.'

‘It is not your idea, and never has been, to do anything at all.'

The balcony was not very large, and we stood not more than a few steps apart; he had squared himself to face me, with his somewhat foolish good looks (like a gallant cut-purse's), as if for all the world he meant to push me off it. I said, ‘I don't understand you.'

‘Forgive me, I believe I express myself plainly enough.'

‘No, I don't understand why you are angry at me.'

‘I am not at all angry. I have given you up.'

‘Oh,' I could not keep back a smile, ‘then at least you had hopes?'

‘Certainly I did, or I would not have come. I thought if I could once get you away from your
relations
in Genoa, you might begin to act the part you have always pretended to play. You are fond of saying that a man should have something better to do than write verses; well, you have found something better, but you are not doing it.'

‘I have not written a line of verse since coming to Greece. I write nothing but government letters.'

‘If that is true, then I am sorry for it, for at least you have a talent for writing verses.'

It is always left to Bruno, wherever we are (since he is a young man, and an Italian, and thinks of nothing but his stomach) to find us good things to eat; and we could see him leading several boys into the courtyard below us, where there was a table set out, and depositing on it what they carried in their arms, bread, cheese, olives, fish and wine. Meanwhile, Pietro and Tita had arrived, and got in everyone's way.

‘Where will you sleep tonight?' I said.

‘It does not much matter to me.' And then, ‘On board, I believe. Captain Scott has promised to carry us as far as Pyrgos, though we must make our own way ashore. But you are not even angry at me; I had hoped to make you angry.'

‘Then you have gone about it in the very worst way. Whenever anyone is angry at me, I wish only to placate them. I could never
keep
a grudge.'

‘Well, shall we go down to eat?' he said.

‘I don't like to part on these terms. I don't know if we shall see each other again. Whenever I take my leave, I feel it is for the last time; that everything is being taken from me.'

‘As for that,' he said, ‘I don't believe we were ever so fond of each other.'

We ate our lunch together, in the usual way; he, speaking very little and eating a great deal. Afterwards, he shook my hand, and I said, ‘Let me hear from you often. If things are farcical, they will do for
Don Juan;
if heroical, you shall have another canto of
Childe Harold
. Come back soon.'