Roumeli (25 page)

How surprised, how very surprised and mortified would Byron's detractors in England have been, could they have looked into the future! Ever since the Greek War of Independence, England has enjoyed a singular pre-eminence in Greek affections; a feeling unique in the flinty world of international relations. Solid reasons support this flattering image.
[9]
The enormous voluntary loan, privately subscribed to back the Greek struggle against the Turks; the participation of English phil-hellenes—though, to the credit of the rest of Europe and America, they were not alone—in the actual fighting; the destruction at the command of Codrington of the Turkish and Egyptian fleets at Navarino, which put an end to the long war; the policies of Canning and Gladstone; the handing back of the Ionian Islands and a consistent pro-Greek policy ever since. Recent reinforcements of these bonds, and manifestations of them, were Greece's alliance with Great Britain in two world wars. The record is impressive and honouring to both.

But if, during the last hundred years, anyone were to have asked any Greek at random why this feeling existed, the answer,
in tones of surprise at the naïveté of the question, would have been, and still would be: Lord Byron. His reputation in England has gone through many avatars. Things have been different here: the news of his death, as it spread through the dismal lanes of Missolonghi in that rainy and thundery dusk, scattered consternation; his name, famous already, soared like a skyrocket into the Greek firmament and lodged there as a fixed star whose radiance grows brighter as the years pass. “
O Vyron
,” “
Lordos Vyronos
,” or, more sophisticatedly, “
O Mpaïron
,” is Greek property now. Thousands of children are baptized by his name, and his face is as familiar as any hero's in ancient or modern Greece. Every English traveller, however humble or unimpressive, and whether he knows or deserves or wants it or not, is the beneficiary of some reflected fragment of this glory. I wonder if any other figure in history has achieved such a place in a country not his own?

Knowing voices sometimes question Byron's feelings towards Greece. He was a scorching critic of every country of which he wrote, with England at the head of his list, and he was no blinder to Greece's faults than were the Greeks themselves. But his resentment of shallow criticisms of the country was the reaction of a man whose affections and loyalties were deeply engaged. His life had reached a stage when death, perhaps, seemed its only logical solution. Even had this not been so, the Greek cause would have claimed him. They were the only people among whom he had been really happy. He meant to die for Greece; but he was determined to help her to the utmost of his powers. The instinctive Greek interpretation of his actions is a just verdict.

His last poem, written on this thirty-seventh birthday and shortly before he died, is surely a sincere picture of his feelings.

 

The tables by the statue of Tricoupis were emptying, and our cigarette smoke, as we talked, rose unwavering into a windless night. The neighbours who had sent us the wine and the three shaggy singers from the mountains were the only others left. One of the first group caught our eye.

“Did you find them?” he asked.

We were nonplussed for a moment. Our thoughts, lingering on Byron, had strayed from our search.

“The shoes? Did you get them in the end?”

We told them the whole story. The mountain men listened with interest.

“Eh!” said one of the wine donors. “He was a wonderful man. A true hero.”

“
O
Vyronos?
” one of the mountaineers said. “
Dikòs mas einai
. He's ours.”

“Of course he's ours,” said another, and lifted his glass of retsina solemnly. “May his memory rest eternal.
Aionia i mnémi tou
.”

“Amen,” the others assented. “Amen, amen.”

POSTSCRIPT

Poets have strange posthumous careers. My old friend Tanty Rodocanaki (alas, now dead) told me the following. When Rupert Brooke died in Mudros in 1915 his body was buried in the west of Skyros, an island where he had never set foot during his life. The Skyriots are proud of his presence and though little is known about him, his name is second in honour only to that of the island's patron, St. George. He is even mentioned in island songs. On a visit a few years ago, Rodocanaki was admiring the secluded olive-grove that shelters the poet's grave. As he read the inscription on the tomb, an old shepherd who was pasturing his flocks in the surrounding woods addressed him. “I see you are admiring the grave of
O Broukis
,” he said. “He was a great poet. We are glad to have him with us. He was a good man.”

Intrigued by the conviction of his tone and curious to discover how much he knew, Rodocanaki asked him what he thought of his poetry.

“I've never read any of it, I'm sorry to say,” the shepherd answered. “I'm not strong on letters and foreign languages. But you could tell he was a great man. You see that old olive over there? That was his tree.”

“How do you mean?”

“He used to sit under it every day and write poetry.”

Reluctant to contradict, Rodocanaki asked him if he was sure they were talking about the same person.

“Of course I am!
O Broukis
used to wander about the woods in silence, the very picture of an old-fashioned English gentleman.”

“What did he look like?”

“Magnificent, sir,” the shepherd answered. “Tall, dignified, flowing hair, burning eyes and a long white beard.”

 

[1]
Astakos
, the name of the town, is “Lobster” in Greek.

[2]
Byron's daughter Ada married Lord Lovelace and he begat Lady Anne King, who married Wilfred Scawen Blunt, who begat Judith (of whom we treat), who married Neville Lytton, the painter, and he begat the present Lord Lytton and his sisters. Through her mother, Judith Blunt was the fourteenth holder of the old barony of Wentworth.

[3]
I saw it next year.

[4]
They were the famous Lovelace papers, which only saw the light of day in 1957, and were put to such brilliant use by Mrs. Doris Langley Moore in
The Late Lord Byron
(John Murray, 1961).

[5]
This word—
synchoriménos
—together with
makarítes
, blessed, is a slightly more pious way of saying “the late.”

[6]
The answers, when they reached me in the fullness of time, were all I could have hoped for. There was nothing whatever, as far as size went, against the authenticity of the shoes, and the lameness had indeed been, as I thought I remembered, in the poet's right foot. Lady Wentworth was all understanding and good wishes.

[7]
Published by Constable & Co. Ltd (1924).

[8]
The Meeting of the Waters
?;
Those Endearing Young Charms
?
; Oft in the Stilly Night
?

[9]
An image, alas, which recent conflict in Cyprus has battered. The bitterness of Greek feelings during this disastrous interlude were made still more acute by the extremity of the favourable sentiments which had prevailed before. Premature to say whether things will revert in time to their previous happy state. There are hopeful signs. But lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

“
D
O NOT
blaspheme against God!
” The words, in bold calligraphy, was pasted on the windscreen above the driver's seat; “
Blasphemy is disrespectful and uncharitable. It is a stigma against civilization. Even the Barbarians and the demons themselves do not blaspheme
.”

Who were these non-blaspheming barbarians—let alone the demons? I was sitting beside the driver, so I asked him. He was a tall clean-shaven man in a cloth cap and horn-rimmed spectacles with a long, thoughtful and scholarly face. He turned with a smile and his hands left the wheel with a dismissive sweep. “
As ta daimónia!
” he said. “Don't worry about demons!” His hands regained the controls just in time to pull up. Wild as a descent of Afghan tribesmen, a herd of goats came tumbling down the mountainside and across the road and down the canyon the other side in a cataract of derision and clanking. A small avalanche followed them. “They don't exist. Not today. Unless they mean
those
hornwearers.” He pointed at the disappearing rumps, and, spreading all five fingers of his left hand, shoved it energetically palm outwards after the goats in the pan-hellenic gesture of commination. “
Na!
They block the roads, they eat the trees, they strip the land—just look all round!—and they stink. I deflower their All-Holy-One.” We twisted up the stony ravine.

“What about the Barbarians? Anyone who isn't Greek? Me, perhaps?”

I didn't say this seriously, but a look of concern crossed his face; his right hand sailed perilously from the wheel once more and alighted on my shoulder in a reassuring pat.

“The very idea! I don't know who they mean. The priests have been sticking these notices up all over the place. Perhaps the Bulgarians (bad year to them!) or the Turks.”

I told him I'd been to Bulgaria, ages ago, and that their oaths were frequent and profane; English ones, too, though they were less explicitly so than the Greek. (Greek insults invariably take the form which he had just used: “I sexually outrage your...!,” and a sacred being or object is appended. The language is brief and blunt. The victim of the outrage is very often the All-Holy-One—the Panayía, that is—or the Holy Name or the Cross, or, more abstractly, Easter.)

The driver was relieved to hear that the Greeks were not alone in blasphemy. “We're terrible,” he said. “You ought to hear them in Cephalonia!” He whistled in censure or admiration. “God protect us! And yet, you know, I have my private theory about our blasphemies. When we blaspheme, it isn't God and the saints we are insulting, only the man we are talking to.”

How did he mean?

“Listen,” he said, “I get cross with someone—those goats, for instance—and I shout ‘I...your All-Holy-One, your Christ, your Cross, your faith.' ‘I don't say I outrage
the
Cross,' or whatever it is, but
yours. Why?
Because I mean that the people I am cursing don't know what's wcirc; that the
osioi kai agioi
—the blessed and the sacred ones—of such people can't be real. Not
their
ones! You see? No profanity or blasphemy at all; the reverse really.” He smiled and touched his temple triumphantly with his forefinger to underline the point. “
Bíkis?
” (short for
bíkis sto théma?
, have you entered the theme?).

“
Bíka
.”

“All right! It's only my theory, mind you, and here's something that might disprove it. You've heard of people called
mángas
?”

I outlined all I knew about the
mángas
. They are a kind of proletarian freemasonry in the towns, especially in Athens and the Piraeus. (“And in Patras!” Andreas said, naming his own home town: “we're famous for them.”) They are independent and moody and they talk, in guarded and slightly jeering tones, a private jargon.
Bouzouki
music, and the geometric dances that accompany them, are their passion. A code of their own dictates their conduct and often leads them into trouble. Bohemianism and distrust of authority make them prone to lawless doings—smuggling, hashish smoking and so on; nothing very terrible. There is a studied melancholy in their manner and posture, a rarified plebeian dandyism in their dress. Was that right?

“That's it,” Andreas said. He dropped his voice to a drawling rasp in imitation of
mánga
speech. “
Ekonomizeís mavro, ré aderphaki?
” (“Do you economize any black stuff, little brother?,” i.e. Have you got any hashish?) We both laughed. “You should have seen them when I was young. Peg-top trousers they wore, and long, pointed boots with elastic sides; red sashes, narrow brimmed black
republikas
”—trilbies—“or caps, pushed back; oiled quiffs over their foreheads and heavy moustaches; and their jackets were slung across their shoulders with the sleeves loose. They walked with a roll, one hand behind the back flicking a string of amber beads with a tassel,
very small ones
, not like mine.” Andreas pointed to his own
komboloi
, swinging from the choke plug on the dashboard. “They also carried knives in their sashes, noses as they called them, and they weren't slow to use them. Talk about touchiness! Pride ate them hollow. At the slightest insult—even if somebody trod on the end of their sash or in their spit on the pavement—out came the noses! Their main hang-out in Athens was the
plateia Psirí
, beyond Monastiraki. Respectable citizens used to avoid it, even the police only went in couples. They had something! It was a sight to see two or three of them swaggering down the streets
with their sleeves and beads swinging and roses stuck between their teeth if they were in the mood.