Some Glimpses into the Past
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Early Writers on the Cyclades
Greece is now a popular holiday destination, especially the thirty or so islands of the Cyclades. many of the new guide books and travel books about the area refer to The Cyclades or Life Among the Insular Greeks by J. Theodore Bent (1885).
this remains the best account of island customs and folklore; it's also a highly readable, droll account of a year's Aegean travel, including a particularly violent Cycladic winter. (Greek Islands. The Rough Guide. 1995).
Bent and his works will be the subject of a later article. Here I am looking at other writers on the Cyclades, both before and after Bent. The schedules of the large modern ferries sailing to the Greek islands today are often disrupted by storms. Travellers in the past had not only storms to contend with, but also pirates, quarantine requirements and lack of food and accommodation. At the time the earlier writers were travelling, the Cyclades were ruled by the Ottomans. The Cyclades had been under venetian control from 1207 until 1566, and from then until the Greek War of Independence in the 1820s were under Ottoman control.
De Thevenot (1633- 1667), a Frenchman interested in geography, botany and mathematics, started his journey in 1655, although his Travels (published in 1686 in French, 1687 in English) was not published until after his death. Kea is the only island in the Cyclades mentioned by de Thevenot that he was able to visit personally. He was unable to land elsewhere as he had been in Malta where there was an outbreak of plague. He includes accounts of the other islands from a 'memoire' (the source of which is not mentioned). On Kea he found that the inhabitants paid an annual Caradge or Tribute to the Turks and Venetians. The cost of this, and the extortions and robberies they suffered left the islanders ruined and oppressed. Many moved elsewhere. This is a pattern many of the early writers comment on throughout the Cyclades.
Not all travellers to Greece visited the Cyclades. In A Journey into Greece (1682), Sir George Wheler (1650-1723) only mentions the Cyclades in passing:
a most furious North-Wind, that drove the Waters into such Heaps, as made them seem as if the Rocky Islands of those Seas had broke loose.
Bernard Randolph (1643-1690?), who wrote The Present State of the Islands in the Archipelago (1687) and also The Present State of the Morea (1686), spent many years in commerce in the Levant (the eastern part of the Mediterranean, both islands and mainland). On most islands Randolph mentions pirates. On Amorgos:
The Ground is very good, and will bring forth any thing that is planted; But the Privateers are so continuously plaguing them, that poor souls, they have not sufficient to pay their tribute.
Many of the early writers comment on the plundering of the remains on Delos. Randolph says:
The Ruins are carried away by all ships who come to anchor there, so as part are in England, France and Holland, but most at Venice.
The interest of Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (1656 - 1708) in botany is very apparent from A Voyage into the Levant (published in 1717 in French, 1718 in English). In 1699 the Count de Pontchartrain, Secretary of State and in charge of the French Academy, suggested to Louis XIV, that he send people abroad to observe not only natural history, but also geography, commerce, religion, and manners of the people. The result was that the King ordered Tournefort, who had also studied theology and medicine, to visit Greece in 1700, and write as often as he could to Count de Pontchartrain. Those letters make up the text of the two volumes of A Voyage into the Levant. The translation into English was made by that prolific translator, John Ozell (died 1743), and reads well, particularly the use of 'em for them.
Today the Cyclades are not difficult to reach, with direct flights in the summer months from London to Santorini or Mykonos. Tournefort's journey to Greece, as well as his travels in Greece, gives some idea of the problems facing travellers of his day. He set out from Paris on 9th March 1700 in the 'Flying-Coach' and reached Lyons in 7½ days. He then set off down the Rhone, and reached Avignon on 18th March, and Marseilles on 27th March (he obviously did some sightseeing on the way and the travelling time could have been cut down a little). His party left Marseilles on 23 April, and had to wait for a north-west wind to carry them to Crete, where they landed on 3 May. Despite this he says:
So quick a Voyage happens but rarely. We run 1600 Miles in nine days.
Once in Greece there were the hazards of internal travel to face. The local boats were under fifteen feet long, and liable to be overturned in a storm. Tournefort therefore waited for a French boat. Many times he changed his planned route because of the weather (a problem not unknown to modern travellers in the Cyclades).
Pigs are not a prominent feature of the Cyclades today, unlike in the days before the import of frozen pork and plastic-wrapped bacon. Many of the early writers mention pigs and pig-sties. Bent says:
the villages of Siphnos, if it were not for the quantity of coarse-looking pigs with short bristles which swarm in them, would be bright and pleasant enough. But these pigs are abominable creatures; they saunter in and out of houses at will. The Siphniotes cut their bristles for sewing shoes and making brushes with; hence a pig with a strong crop of these ready to be shorn presents a particularly forbidding appearance.
Tournefort says of Milos town, that it was
prettily built, but abominable nasty; for when they make an Erection of a House, they begin with the Hogsty, beneath an Arch even with the ground, or a little lower, and always fronting the Street; in a word, it is the Jakes of the whole House.
Giaros is today a military assault course, innaccessible to tourists. There, as on many islands, accommodation was a problem:
We lay in a ruinated Chappell, where we durst not sleep for fear the Field-Mice should come and gnaw our Ears.
Some islands grew little, others produced abundant produce. This could be accounted for by the availability of water, and not necessarily by the industriousness of the islanders. On Donoussa
Bad weather detaining us..... longer than we expected, and our Provisions beginning to fail, we were reduced to make Pottage with Sea-Snails, and we had leisure enough to dissect them; they are far better than the Goats-eye Shell-fish, if eaten raw; and preferable to Land-Snail, if boil'd.
On Kimolos all the olive trees had been cut down by the Venetians, and Tournefort says:
this Island is become wretchedly poor ever since the King put down the French Corsairs in the Levant,
and
the Women have no other Employment but making Love and Cotton Stockings.
By contrast on Siphnos
The Ladies ..... to preserve their Beauty, when they're in the Country, cover their Face with Linen Bandages; which they roll so artfully, that you can see nothing but their Mouth, Nose, and White of their Eyes. You may be sure they have no very conquering Air in such a Disguise, but rather look like so many walking mummies: and accordingly, they are more careful to avoid Strangers, than those of Milo and Argentiere [Kimolos] are eager to meet them.
Mention must be made, to avoid too insular an approach, to some works that have not been translated into English. The first is by the Comte de Choiseul-Gouffier (1752-1817) who was French ambassador in Constantinople. His Voyage Pittoresque de la Grèce was published between 1782 and 1809.
William Martin Leake (1777-1860), a classical topographer and numismatist, travelled extensively in Greece and Asia Minor. His account of his journey through the Cyclades in 1806, was published in Travels in Northern Greece (1835).
The scene of the death of Mr Cayenne in John Galt's Annals of the Parish (1821) is according to an unnamed "competent authority" quoted in The Oxford Companion to English Literature, "one of the greatest things in all literature." John Galt (1779-1839), a friend of Byron, was the author of many other works, including Letters from the Levant (1813). At one time John Galt had a house on Mykonos, and intended exporting English goods to the Cyclades. John Galt's great-great-grandson George Galt wrote Trailing Pythagoras (1982, Canada, published in Great Britain as A Journey Through the Aegean Islands, 1988). George Galt relates an incident involving the Elgin marbles, showing how nearly the marbles became the Galt marbles. The incident was suppressed by John Galt from his letters, but included in his Autobiography (1833). Lord Elgin's agent, Lusieri, did not have funds to ship the marbles from Greece, and John Galt agreed to arrange for the shipping, on the understanding that if his costs were not paid, the marbles would become his.
Here was a chance of the most exquisite relics of art in the world becoming mine......but...the agent for the Earl paid the bills, and my patriotic cupidity was frustrated.
George Galt adds
I'm not sorry the marbles bear Elgin's rather than my own name. It would be no advantage to have those stones hung around one's neck while travelling through this country.
Edward Daniel Clarke (1769-1822), an antiquary and mineralogist, travelled widely. His last tour, to Greece, ended in 1802. He later became professor of mineralogy at Cambridge, and, in 1817, university librarian. Clarke's Travels were published between 1810 and 1823. On his trip to Greece, as on other trips, Clarke acted as tutor/companion to a younger man - on this occasion John Marten Cripps. At the end of the trip Clarke had collected 76 cases of antiquities, and Cripps over 80. In his travels Clarke also collected manuscripts. On Naxos
A Greek priest, in answer to our inquiry for manuscripts, produced from beneath an altar, lying upon the damp pavement of one of the sanctuaries, a quarto Codex of selections from the Gospels, written upon vellum for the use of the Greek Church; this, as usual, had been condemned as soon as a printed copy had supplied its place. We easily contrived to purchase it; and afterwards obtained, for a small sum, by means of the same priest, a similar Manuscript, apparently of the same age, from one of the Greek families in the place. In this manner ancient copies of the Gospels may be procured in the Archipelago, by persons who will be at pains to seek for them; as, in our own country, the rarest English editions of the scriptures may be found in counties at a distance from the metropolis, where they have either been banished from the churches to make way for more modern Bibles, or laid up in store-rooms as waste paper in private families, being too antiquated and inelegant in their appearance for the taste of the owners.
In a footnote Clarke adds
The author has seen old black-letter Bibles discarded in the chests of country churches; and once found a copy of Miles Coverdale's revised translation of the Scriptures in the hands of a Welch housekeeper who was preparing to use it in covering preserves.
Once bought, the manuscripts had of course to be transported by sea. During a storm on the trip from Patmos to Naxos, Clarke was
not without many an anxious thought for the antient Manuscripts we had on board.
Storms were not the only problem Clarke faced:
some rats, the athletæ of their kind..... actually carried off, not only the author's book of plants, filled with specimens, but also a weighty Turkish poignard, tied up within it, used for the double purpose of digging roots, and as a weapon of defence.
Of Delos, Clarke noted,
this island, since the visit paid to it by the Russians, has been stripped of all its valuable antiquities.
The Venus de Milo was found in 1820 and brought Milos and the other islands of the Cyclades into the public eye. Ottoman rule ended, and the Greek kingdom was established in 1830 after the Greek war of independence. The more settled conditions encouraged more travellers to come to Greece, and guide books were published to meet their needs.
Some of James Emerson's prose in Letters from the Aegean (1829) would not look amiss in a modern holiday brochure:
It is seldom that the view of the Aegean presents anything but a picture of calm repose; its blue unruffled waters sleeping undisturbed beneath the equally unvaried sky, or gently curling their rippling surface to catch the dancing sunbeams, and flash them back in mimic splendour.....Shoals of dolphins were sporting on every side, pursuing the flocks of flying fish.
By this time there was less piracy, but memories remained. On Anaphi, Emerson's party stopped at a cottage and was given the provisions they sought with readiness and civility,
and though they refused to take any remuneration, we could readily perceive that their wish was rather to get rid of, than to oblige us. This feeling towards strangers is universal throughout the islands, and arises from the barbarities inflicted by the pirates and corsairs on the inhabitants of those exposed and defenceless spots, and though this state of affairs has been of late in great degree ameliorated, the impression of suspicion still lurks in the minds of the islanders.
A biblical scholar, Richard Burgess (1796-1881) wrote about his travels with his "youthful companions and pupils" in Greece and the Levant; or, Diary of a Summer's Excursion in 1834 (1835):
...a few years ago, few would have attempted such a tour without contemplating a long absence from home, and, perhaps, the incurring of some danger in the enterprise......this may be accomplished in "a summer's excursion," with very little more risk of health and safety than a tour on the Continent would include.
Christopher Wordsworth (1807-1885), nephew of William Wordsworth, later became Bishop of Lincoln and wrote numerous theological works. In 1832-3 he travelled in Greece and wrote Greece: Pictorial, Descriptive, and Historical (1839), which went through many editions. However, he gives the Cyclades only a cursory mention. H. F. Tozer, who first visited the Cyclades in 1874 and was to write The Islands of the Aegean (1890), hardly mentions the Cyclades in his 1882 revision of Wordsworth's book.
Travel to Greece was increasing but there was a lack of books containing practical advice. New Guide to the Levant by T. H. Usborne was published in 1840. The lack of the type of practical advice that Usborne gives had caused him to spend both time and money unprofitably. Usborne certainly did not travel light. His suggestions as to luggage including:
portable wash hand-stand, with the basin, jug, &c., made of pewter.
iron bedstead, bedding,
a writing-table, made to unscrew and take to pieces, as also should the bedstead
a double barrelled gun, and a brace of pistols, powder, shot, ball, &c.
pocket compass, measuring line, sextant, quadrant, telescope
a travelling reading lamp
a camp stool with a back to it
a small library of the best voyages and travels descriptive of the countries the traveller purposes to visit
Taxi drivers in Athens are today notoriously dishonest. Usborne found a different peril:
Be careful, however, in your selection of a voiture, many of them being in a ruinous condition. The last time I left Athens, in the spring, the one I had engaged literally came to pieces, the two front wheels making each a separate excursion to the right and left of us, while the carriage and horses came to the ground at the same time; fortunately for me, my two companions, M. M. Mousset and Kaulli, were both of them tolerably fat, which in all probability saved me from several bruises. How we extricated ourselves I know not, but certainly no thanks were due to the driver, for instead of coming to our assistance, he sat down on the road side and began to weep bitterly.
A couple of other works have not been published in English.
Reisen auf den griechischen Inseln des ägäischen Meeres (1840-45), by Ludwig Ross (1806-1859), an archaeologist whose work is often mentioned by Bent; and the Reise (1841) of Karl Gustav Fiedler (1791-1853).
Godfrey Levinge must have been a very patient man, printing The Traveller in the East himself and taking seven years to do so. Levinge had lived in the Levant between 1831 and 1834. He started writing The Traveller in the East in 1834, after being asked by friends to recommend a guide book to Greece and the Levant, and finding none available. Levinge gave copies of his manuscript to his friends. Eventually he printed The Traveller in the East for private distribution.
In the Summer of 1839 my labours as author having ended, I was in London without occupation, and accidentally seeing at Mr. Holtzopffel's establishment Cooper's parlour printing press, I determined on learning the art of printing; I purchased one of them, had a printer to instruct me, and my first typografical [sic] production is the introduction to this volume; as I acquired knowledge of my new trade I became dissatisfied with my type, and changed it twice before I got the font which I work at present; this will account for three different kinds of printing appearing in the following pages.
Soon after Levinge started to print his book, John Murray announced his intention of publishing a handbook for travellers in Greece and the East. Levinge placed his manuscript (that he was still laboriously printing) at Murray's disposal. Levinge's contribution is acknowledged Murray's Hand-Book:
much aid has been furnished by the valuable and carefully prepared note of Mr. Levinge.
Levinge had only printed part of his book when Murray's book was published. Over half the information in Murray's Hand-Book is from Levinge, but Levinge continued to print his own book so his friends could read his text in full. Levinge took nearly seven years to print the book because of his other commitments. His 200 acres of land in Ireland, and the public duties that went with it left
little time for printing, except on rainy days and long winter nights so that the printing of this volume has extended over a period of nearly seven years.
Although the title page (printed first) is dated 1839, the preface (printed last) is dated 1846.
Levinge's practical advice includes pirates:
I was detained a fortnight at Syra, first by contrary winds, and secondly by the dread of pirates, who had become so daring that universal terror prevailed in the Archipelago. At this time an Austrian sloop of war at anchor in the bay of St. George of Skyros was attacked by them at night, on which a sharp contest ensued; a dozen Pirates were killed and thirty wounded; the Austrians escaped with some wounded. They put into Syra while I
was there, and the officers were my companions in the Locanda all the time.
and quarantine:
The quarantine laws were introduced into Greece during the administration of Capo d'Istrias, who built Lazarettos at Syra, Hydra, and Egina soon after the cessation of hostilities between the Greeks and the Turks....when no cause of apprehension exists, the quarantine is ----private yachts, government packets and passengers arriving by them from any port of Levant - 8 days.
An anonymous author writing in Pleasant Pages (1851) wanted to go from Syros to Athens (then probably a ten hour journey), but the ship had come from Constantinople which was infected with some contagious disease.
To avoid the quarantine we hired a fishing boat for ourselves, stocked it with our own provisions, and requested the Captain of the steamer to take us in tow, which he did.
Many people today explore the Greek islands by yacht. An early example of a yacht trip is described in An Autumn Cruise in the Aegean (1886) by T. Fitz-Patrick. Somewhat larger than most modern yachts, the Linda even had hen-coops. Like many earlier travellers, on Syros:
we had frequently to dispute the passage with huge unwieldy pigs which lay sprawling in our path and only faintly responded to the admonitions of their owners to get out of the way.
Henry Fanshawe Tozer (1829-1916), whose revised edition of Christopher Wordsworth's Greece was published in 1882, was a traveller, geographer and classical scholar. In The Islands of the Aegean (1890) he writes about his travels in the Aegean in 1874, 1886 and 1889. Although Tozer's book was published after Bent's, Tozer visited the Cyclades in 1874, long before Bent.
Many of the early travellers in Greece used the services of a dragoman, or guide and interpreter. Tozer employed as dragoman Alexandros Anemoyannes, who had previously accompanied John Stuart Mill:
Our servant informed me that J. S. Mill, when he travelled with him in the Peloponnese, besides drying flowers, had an extra baggage mule in his train for carrying plants and roots.
Tozer, like tourists today, was struck by the huge number of terraces in the islands. About Tinos, Tozer comments:
I was more than ever struck by the sight of the whole island, almost to the mountain-tops, carved into terraces, which gave evidence of vast labour employed in their construction.
Widespread piracy was by now a thing of the past, but Tozer experienced not only quarantine and storms, but also confiscation of books: in Crete,
When we landed, all our books, to our great indignation, were confiscated, and carried off for inspection to the residence of the pasha, including Bradshaw's Railway Guide, which, no doubt, was regarded as a highly cabalistic volume.
A problem for present day visitors to Greece is the lack of accurate maps (apparently regarded as a security risk), a problem not unknown to Tozer who spent the best part of a day on Sikinos trying to find a temple
the position of which was incorrectly shown on maps.
At Santorini, where the volcano had erupted in 1866, there was another hazard
persons are not unfrequently killed at the landing-place by stones that fall from above.
My copy of Tozer's book, although dated 1890 on the title page, has bound in a list of works from the Clarendon Press, Oxford including A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, that by 1905 had reached Reactively-Ree/.
The author of Aegean Days (1913), J. Irving Manatt, had lived in Athens as American consul from 1889 to 1893, and had subsequently revisited Greece in 1899, 1905 and 1913.
Most Greek islands today have harbours at which the largest of ferries can dock. Until a few years ago when landing at the smaller islands it was necessary to transfer to and from the ferry by means of a small pass-boat, no mean achievement in a rough sea. Manatt says that
Even at Piraeus there are no docks - every passenger must be rowed out and in.
Today, ferries still offer a microcosm of Greek life albeit in summer leavened with a large number of tourists. Manatt states:
The very boat, though built on modern lines by a Scotch firm at Piraeus, is a floating spectacle - a promiscuous huddle of humanity with their motley gear, all deck passengers, for the cabin is neither spacious nor sweet. A dressed pig in a poke swinging astern serves as a wave-vane; and to the fore ruminates a black cow with crumpled horns. barring locomotion, pig and cow enjoy all the privileges of first-class passengers along with the silk-robed abbot from his island monastery, the jaunty midshipman from the naval academy, the Athenian grande dame with the Court air, the fustanellaed gentleman of the old school, and picturesque islanders of every age, sex, and condition.
Accommodation was a problem. On Naxos,
the Xenodocheion, to which my porter pilots me up the wynds, is little more than a stable flagged with rough stones, but for the kitchen boxed off in one corner. From this ground floor rude stairs lead up to a big loft with several beds and openings all around into tight little cells, like the sleeping galleries of the White Hart in Pickwick. Outlook, there is none, and, for ventilation, that is
purely internal, barring chance chinks in the rubble wall.
In Naxos, Manatt renewed his acquaintance with Michael Damirales. Damirales (1857-1917), who is now commemorated by a monument in Naxos town bearing his own portrait and that of Shakespeare, translated Shakespeare's works into Greek.
Manatt mentions the country roads of Naxos as "innocent of carriage or cart."
Many islanders served in the army and by the 1920s the effect of travel is apparent. There are far more foreign influences mentioned. George Horton (1859-1942) was the American consul at Athens on various dates between 1893 and 1910. He wrote Home of Nymphs and Vampires. The Isles of Greece (1929). Horton heard American music played on even the smallest islands.
Strange as it may seem, the youth of Greece come to these romantic and remote places with the sole purpose of dancing the latest American monstrosities till five or six in the morning.
Horton chose Tinos as his base in the Cyclades as it had two good hotels. On many of the other islands there were too few visitors to justify the building of a hotel.
At Tinos
small rowboats were coming out toward us, to take off such of the passengers as wished to land. We wondered at the temerity of the boatmen, as their cockleshells balanced for one moment on a wave crest, and sank out of sight the next into yawning gulfs. We felt considerable anxiety as to our ability to get to land by such means. This is the usual way of embarking and disembarking in the Greek islands, however, and we soon found ourselves and baggage safely on the wharf.
And at Santorini
A ladder was let down, and after considerable skilful maneuvering, one of the rowboats was got up beside it. Great care was exercised by the boatmen to keep his skiff near enough to the ladder for jumping purposes, yet far enough away to avoid being smashed.
And now a remarkable thing happened; an old gray-haired woman scuttled bravely down the ladder, waited till the exact moment when the boat arrived at the crest of the wave, stepped quietly in and sat down. Her valise was pitched in after her. Like most of the islanders, she probably had in her veins the blood of Byzantine pirates and Venetian sea dogs.
Then there was the problem of catching the right ship - no easy matter when you have to catch a small boat before the ship itself is in sight.
You must know the name of the right ship, or island, and proclaim it loudly and vigorously, for you will be immediately pounced upon by a gang of piratical-looking boatmen, one of whom will yank the valise from your hand and disappear in the crowd. It makes no difference to him what ship he puts you on, his only
interest being to row you somewhere and collect a fare.
Boundary squabbles between Greece and Turkey are still going on today. Under the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, after defeat in the Greek-Turkish war of 1921-23, Greece lost some of her mainland and islands (not the Cyclades) to Turkey, Italy and Albania; and in a population exchange 400,000 Turks went from Greece to Turkey, and over a million Greeks moved from Turkey into the reduced area of Greece. The effect of this exodus is apparent in the Isles of the Aegean by Vincent Clarence Scott O'Connor, published in 1929. Scott O'Connor, who died in 1945, had a career in the Indian Civil Service and travelled extensively elsewhere.
On Scott O'Connor's first visit to a Greek island 25 years earlier he was in quarantine and not allowed to land. Scott O'Connor is less tolerant of the hardships of travel than Bent had been.
At Mykonos ....there is accommodation so bad that I will not describe it. It was so soiled and filthy and uncared for that I was tempted to go no further, but to leave the island at once.
And on Naxos,
as I sit here in the shade of the tamarisks before a dirty kapheion, waiting amidst all kinds of common people loafing about, and soiled Inns, and neglected houses, I feel discouraged, almost inclined to cancel my programme of further travel in Greece. But once more the freshness of the morning and the beauty of the sea console me.
Whilst haggling over the hire of a mule on Naxos, Scott O'Connor was offered a ride in a car. There was a
car as well as a road upon which it can travel!...an ancient Ford long subjected to ill-usage; but the road is tolerable. Half a dozen passengers mixed up with sacks of flour complete the freight.
When Scott O'Connor returned later in the year the driver had three cars, and the road was completed as far as the village of Chalki in the centre of the island. Scott O'Connor met the demarchos, or mayor of Chalki, Marco Vallindras, the inventor of the citron liqueur that is still made on Naxos.
Scott O'Connor mentions Greeks who had crossed the Atlantic to earn a living, perhaps to return one day to their native islands. On Paros he stayed with an islander who had worked as a waiter in the United States:
He was eager to improve the life of his neighbours, to introduce cleaner and better ways, and to help them to see things as he had learnt to see them. He was full of zeal, but was feeling already the opposition of those who do not wish to be improved, of old folk who have their own prejudices and ways, and even see a little further than the young.
Sometimes the former waiter thought of returning to the United States, but
his father and his mother were old, his wife was happy here, and this pleasant little house was his; the climate was indulgent, living was cheap, and though he saw most of the old home things now in the flaming glare of the dollar, an instinct older than himself told him that these were things he could not buy.
The Cyclades have been used as a place of exile since Roman times. On some of the islands Scott O'Connor came across political exiles. Politicians were also exiled to the Cyclades during the Colonels' regime (1967-1974).
On his travels Bent had at first used a dragoman,
but, on better acquaintance with the language, I learnt to despise his services, and took as servant a native of one of the islanders, who became invaluable in assisting me to discover points of folklore which without him it would have been impossible to arrive at.
This islander was a native of Anafi, and had accompanied Bent on many of his travels in Greece and the Near East. Forty four years after Bent's travels, Scott O'Connor met Bent's old servant on Anafi.
He brought with him two faded English photographs of Bent and his wife, and as he sat...with a stick in his hand and the lantern he had brought with him beside his chair, recounted some of those ancient adventures in his native Greek; for he had forgotten all the foreign languages he had ever acquired. In his own eyes, as was fitting, it was he and not Bent who was the central figure in all those wanderings.
On Ios, Bent had received hospitality from the Lorenziades family. Bent said
never in all our wanderings did we meet with a family so genial and gay as the Lorenziades. One brother was demarch, another ex-demarch, and a third the schoolmaster; and the ex-demarch had three charming daughters - Marousa, Ekaterina, and Callirhoë - who administered tenderly to our wants, and saw to the fitting up of an empty house where we were to sleep during our stay, whilst meals were provided for us at the ex-demarch's house.
Scott O'Connor met the girls' brother, Stefano, who had also met Bent. Stefano, who lived in Egypt and spent the summer months in Greece, told Scott O'Connor what had become of the three sisters.
Ekaterina died at twenty-two; Marousa became blind from an explosion of dynamite, and took to playing the violin for a living; Callirhoë is old and lives in Athens, but she has a son at Andros whom you may see if you are going there.
In recent years there have been many books written about Greece. A few written by authors who have spent some time in Greece are worth mentioning. In The Children of Thetis (1949) Christopher Kininmonth describes life on Syros, Santorini, Ios, Naxos and Anafi.
Robert Liddell (1908-1992) was not only a novelist, critic and biographer, but also a travel writer. He lived for over 40 years in Greece, and his travel books include Aegean Greece (1954). By then more tourists were coming to Greece: Mykonos
is the one Cycladic island that has become anything of a tourist resort
and
should be avoided from mid-July to mid-September, when Athenian ladies from Kolonaki litter its beaches.
Americans were also fond of Mykonos:
an ugly and luxurious hotel, now building, is the unhappy fruit of their affection.
Smaller islands such as Amorgos, which still had no electricity, received fewer visitors:
the few summer visitors usually stay in villas here, or in 'The Nereid', the small inn. Visitors are usually connected in some way with the island, whether they are Athenians or "Egyptians" i.e. Greeks from Alexandria or Mansura.
In The Mad Pomegranate Tree (1968), Carola Matthews describes living in various parts of Greece including Mykonos and Amorgos. She was still able to say,
I am glad that Greece is, except to the airborne minority, not too accessible.
Ios had begun
the upwards and downwards course of islands that the foreigners have discovered.
Electricity had reached some islands. On Ios Carolina Matthews had lived on
corned beef omelettes and potatoes - there was nothing very romantic about that....let the missionary romantic who resents, say, the installation of electricity because it spoils the landscape, take a cure by spending a fortnight on one of the more infertile islands when fruit and vegetables are out of season; he may find something commendable about refrigeration.
In 1971, in At the Top of the Muletrack Carola Matthews described Amorgos as like two separate islands, the two chief areas linked by mule track, the walk
two hours long for record-breaking fitness, three for continuous hard walking, four for sore feet, and five for unsureness of the way...I doubt whether foreigners crossing this part of the island in the last decade have averaged more than one a year.
In 1996 the new road linking the two ends of the island, blasted out of the mountainside over twelve years ago, is being surfaced.
Island life was changing, mainly because the young people, better educated than their parents, sought an easier life elsewhere in Greece or abroad, and those that remained were increasingly catering to the needs of tourists.
Lawrence Durrell, whose early years on Corfu have been well documented by his younger brother Gerald, has written The Greek Islands (1978).
In In the bee-loud glade (1980), Christopher Connell describes his study between 1976 and 1979 of the traditional way of life on Amorgos and nearby islands. Electricity only reached the islands during his stay and the islands had preserved the older methods of ploughing, harvesting, threshing, olive pressing, spinning and winemaking.
The absence of electricity has also had the advantage that it acted as a barrier to the great tourist invasion - with neither running water nor constant entertainment available, the lotus-eater does not go to Amorgos.
Today tourism, along with electricity, water and entertainment, has reached all the inhabited islands of the Cyclades, and has probably saved many of the islands from complete depopulation. In the peak summer months many of the islands are dominated by tourism. Out of season, it is still possible to get a taste of the Greece of yester-year, complete with storms, but without pirates or quarantine
restrictions.© Susan Watkin