Joy Unconfined

by Ian Strathcarron

  They met in great luxury and splendour. One can sense Byron’s excitement from this letter to his mother:

  The next day I was introduced to Ali Pacha. I was dressed in a full suit of staff uniform, with a very magnificent sabre, etc. The vizier received me in a large room paved with marble; a fountain was playing in the centre; the apartment was surrounded by scarlet ottomans. He received me standing, a wonderful compliment from a Mussulman, and made me sit down on his right hand. I have a Greek interpreter for general use, but a physician of Ali’s named Femlario, who understands Latin, acted for me on this occasion. His first question was, why, at so early an age, I left my country? (the Turks have no idea of travelling for amusement). He then said, the English minister, Captain Leake, had told him I was of a great family, and desired his respects to my mother; which I now, in the name of Ali Pacha, present to you.

  He said he was certain I was a man of birth, because I had small ears, curling hair, and little white hands, and expressed himself pleased with my appearance and garb. He told me to consider him as a father whilst I was in Turkey, and said he looked on me as his son. Indeed, he treated me like a child, sending me almonds and sugared sherbet, fruit and sweetmeats, twenty times a day. He begged me to visit him often, and at night, when he was at leisure. I then, after coffee and pipes, retired for the first time. I saw him thrice afterwards. It is singular that the Turks, who have no hereditary dignities, and few great families, except the Sultans, pay so much respect to birth; for I found my pedigree more regarded than my title.

  His highness is sixty years old, very fat, and not tall, but with a fine face, light blue eyes, and a white beard; his manner is very kind, and at the same time he possesses that dignity which I find universal amongst the Turks. He has the appearance of anything but his real character, for he is a remorseless tyrant, guilty of the most horrible cruelties, very brave, and so good a general that they call him the Mahometan Buonaparte. Napoleon has twice offered to make him King of Epirus, but he prefers the English interest, and abhors the French, as he himself told me.

  He is of so much consequence, that he is much courted by both, the Albanians being the most warlike subjects of the Sultan, though Ali is only nominally dependent on the Porte; he has been a mighty warrior, but is as barbarous as he is successful, roasting rebels, etc., etc. Buonaparte sent him a snuff-box with his picture. He said the snuff-box was very well, but the picture he could excuse, as he neither liked it nor the original. His ideas of judging of a man’s birth from ears, hands, etc., were curious enough. To me he was, indeed, a father, giving me letters, guards, and every possible accommodation. Our next conversations were of war and travelling, politics and England.

  Hobhouse thought that Ali Pasha was behaving rather ‘leeringly’ towards Byron, and it is common currency in Albania that Byron and Ali Pasha had been sexual partners. Although both actively bisexual and quite capable of said romp, I think it unlikely: Byron at 21 was too old for Ali Pasha and Byron’s gaydar was alerted by beauty alone, not masculinity or femininity as such. In addition he knew he was there on business, diplomatic business he was taking seriously and had to perform correctly, and an impromptu liaison with his objective might open too many unexpected doors.

  From their respective letters and diaries one can see that Byron met Ali Pasha at least once without Hobhouse, and one presumes that Byron and Hobhouse had agreed that Byron on his own would be a better conduit for Spiridion Foresti’s message of diplomacy. Neither refers in any specific detail to Ali Pasha’s reaction, but as the latter had just heard, and had the pleasure of breaking the news to his visitors, the British had just taken the Ionian Islands, except for Corfu. If nothing else they must have hoped that Ali had appreciated the courtesy of a personal explanation and perhaps an unsaid apology from one of King George’s nephews for Perfidious Albion’s treachery.

  They spent two more days in the splendour of Ali Pasha’s court and castle at Tepelenë. The experience of his time there, of his mission and of the journey made an enormous impression on the 21-year-old Byron. Childe Harold ‘s Pilgrimage, for which he was by now nightly writing notes, fairly bristles with his experiences from his time in Albania, centred around the visit to and from Tepelenë.

  ***

  It only took them four days to return to Ioannina, and I don’t intend to follow them closely as the route back to Ioannina was the same inbound as outbound. The return journey only took four days instead of nine, the fine weather making the difference. But the writer still had his own mission to complete, also with an Albanian chieftain, but any similarity between Ali Pasha and King Leka I of the Albanians ends with this sentence.

  First I had to reach Tirana, a greater distance than the local hops already made to reach Tepelenë. Luckily you have to let someone else do the driving in Albania. Prices of taxis, in fact of everything, are half of those in Greece, and buses or minibuses are plentiful, very cheap and more atmospheric - the seats being better dressed than the passengers. Driving is not for the fainthearted; blind corners and roundabouts are particularly fraught. India without the horns comes mind, although that is a touch harsh on the Indians. There is no great compunction to take a driving test, and the multitude of road death shrines along the road warn one of the dangers. One junction had all the makings of a small cemetery. All along the roads are stalls selling replacement hubcaps, bumpers, and light clusters, but not mirrors, as one doesn’t miss what one doesn’t use. Maps were illegal until 1995, and no two agree with each other; printouts from Google Earth are the answer.

  Strangely enough although the roads are quite full there do not seem to be any car dealers, new or used. All the cars have been ’personally imported’ and most of them are middle-aged Mercedes; the later models with immobilisers aren’t so susceptible to this type of ‘personal import’. Whether by bus or taxi progress is slow as every few miles there is a police roadblock where the drivers help to top up the officers’ wages. Nevertheless six hours later the writer’s shaken bones were in Tirana.

  King Leka’s Old Palace is in the centre of Tirana, nestling among the embassies. In fact it is like another embassy, a kingdom within a republic, with its own grounds, wrought iron spiked railings, a fleet of long black Mercedes, armed guards and walkie-talkies. Once through a semblance of security, mostly being thoroughly sniffed at an awkward height by the most boisterous of the royal boxers, one is ushered by the chamberlain to a large square room with a long L-shaped sofa on one side and matching armchairs opposite. The man who would be king, all two metres and blue safari suit of him, bears more than a slight resemblance to another old Africa hand, Tiny Rowland. Scattered around the chairs are a pack of boxers, all apparently related, one hopes not too related. Behind the armchairs a gas heater is on full blast. Behind the sofa a hot air blower is also on full blast. The air is hot and dry and stale and decidedly doggy, made more palatable only by the smell of accumulated cigarette smoke. The king looks annoyingly chipper, and I regret my recent conversion to the ranks of the non-smokers.

  Apart from the chamberlain he is alone. His Australian wife Queen Susan died five years ago; in her obituary the Daily Telegraph noted that she and her king had a very close relationship and that ‘both shared a keen interest in smoking.’ I know what it meant; my wife and I both share a keen interest in wines from Burgundy.

  I had taken the precaution of swotting up on the protocol with an old Debrett’s Etiquette. Should you find yourself in similar circumstances you ‘shake his hand while bowing from the neck, not the waist, and with the weight on the front foot greet him with “Good day (etc.) Your Royal Highness.” ‘That was done, but then the king is clearly a man who believes in getting his retaliation in first.

  ’Do you know Jeremy Paxman?’ he growls.

  ’Aaargh...’ I parry.

  I know what this is about though. Five years previously the grand inquisitor had come to Albania to interview the king for his b
ook On Royalty. Although he didn’t actually sneer ‘Oh, come off it, king’ as he would have done to some hapless political lackey the questions were somewhat more rough and tumble, more Paxotic than those to which the king was used.

  To divert from this potential unpleasantness I reach into my bag and with some trepidation hand over my present. It’s not quite what I had in mind: due to the ‘snow event’ in southern England in early February I had not been able to do the usual last minute raid on the House of Lords gift shop and instead asked my wife to have a forage in Fortnum & Mason. She had chosen a tin box of Duchy Originals Organic Highland Shortbread, with view of the Highlands ’reproduced from a watercolour by HRH The Prince of Wales’ on the lid.

  The king huffs. ‘Do you know Prince Charles?’

  ’Better than I know Jeremy Paxman,’ I offer weakly.

  He puts out one Rothmans Imperial and lights up another. ‘Do you smoke?’ he asks. ‘I didn’t,’ I reply, taking one. ‘They are real,’ he confirms. I’m relieved: fake fags are confusing in Albania. The only discernible difference in a new pack is the price: 100 lek for a real pack of Marlboro and 50 lek for a fake one. There’s a factory up in Pogradeç, makes all the top brands. I had asked how one can tell which is real and which is fake. ‘The price, of course.’ Ah, yes, silly me.

  The king maintains a keen interest in Albanian politics, and is clearly popular with the run of Albanians. At the airport I had been searched by customs and they had asked about Prince Charles’s bickies. I explained it was a gift for the king. A gaunt young man with an unhappy face topped by a deeply concave and braided cap told me to ‘Vait’ and beetled off behind closed doors. A minute later a happier, chubbier man with even more braid had me repeat the story and then nodded approvingly and told me I was ‘Velcome, velcome in Tirana. King good.’ It was the same in the taxi: ‘King good, quiet man now, drink beer. We don’t like Greeks.’ The hotel receptionist agreed when I asked her to show me the Old Palace on the map: ‘Old Palace here. King Leka good Albanian man. I like, yes.’ And Greeks?’I don’t like.’

  The chamberlain coughs discreetly and looks at where a watch should be on his wrist. My time is up. He has agreed to help with Byron’s costume but before I go I have to ask two questions.

  ’Do you know what happened to the supercharged red Mercedes?’

  ’Only up to 1972. We gave it to the British Red Cross. There were three identical ones. Hitler’s own car, and then those he gave to my father and the King of Romania. I don’t know where it is now.’ Later I traced it to a private collection in California.

  ’And is the Gabon story true?’ I should explain: in every article about King Leka there is a reference to his refuelling stop in Gabon. After the Spanish had started asking too many questions about his arms cache he thought it best to fast forward and loaded up his plane and headed for Rhodesia/Zimbabwe. The Spanish found out just after he had taken off, saw from his flight plan he was refuelling in Gabon and asked the Gabonese to arrest him. The Gabonese army duly surrounded his plane at which point, the story goes, he appeared at the aircraft door with a bazooka and the Gabonese army scurried off back into the jungle.

  ’Of course it’s not true,’ he replies. ‘Bazookas! We had 40 mm grenade launchers. All sixteen of us on board had them, even my wife had one. We told the Gabonese that if we saw a single soldier again we would blow up the airport. What was our alternative? The Rhodesians were supposed to send a plane for us, but then changed their mind unless we gave them $250,000. We had to take the plane ourselves, what else could we do?’

  What indeed? One last question: ‘are you writing your memoirs, an autobiography?’ He isn’t, he says, ‘some stories are better left untold.’ I say it’s a shame and give him my card - in case he changes his mind.

  Like Byron I had come to like the hospitable and fierce, warlike and kind Albanians. Byron saw them in their prime, when their leader ruled as much of the world as any of them was likely to see. Of the Albanians he wrote a year later that they are:

  Brave, rigidly honest, and faithful; but they are cruel, though not treacherous, and have several vices but no meannesses. They are, perhaps, the most beautiful race, in point of countenance, in the world; their women are sometimes handsome also, but they are treated like slaves, beaten and, in short, complete beasts of burden; they plough, dig, and sow. I found them carrying wood, and actually repairing the highways. The men are all soldiers, and war and the chase their sole occupations. The women are the labourers.

  No nation are so detested and dreaded by their neighbours as the Albanese; the Greeks hardly regard them as Christians, or the Turks as Moslems, and in fact they are a mixture of both, and sometimes neither. Their habits are predatory; all are armed, and the red-shawled Arnaouts, the Montenegrins, Chimeriotes, and Gedges, are treacherous; the others differ somewhat in garb, and essentially in character. As far as my own experience goes I can speak favourably. I was attended by two, an Infidel and a Mussulman to Constantinople and every other part of Turkey which came within my observations, and more faithful in peril and indefatigable in service are no where to be found.

  The writer saw them soon after their nadir, and time had not yet had a chance to loosen the pain. Unfortunately he also did not persuade or cajole any Albanians to join his entourage, so will have to take Byron’s word for their suitability as servants. The women’s lot has certainly improved from Byron’s day, and although the country is nominally Muslim it seems to be so with no great enthusiasm and so one can see women out and about and dressed as women. Most of the men work abroad, and the economy is supported by their remittances.

  One cannot help being sympathetic for the Albanians’ plight, as though for a whole century the gods have unwrapped all the evils of the world, played with them in one land alone and called it Albania. Unfortunately it is going to take generations to unbreed the corruption, especially now the gangsters have taken over. In the meantime - and as a result - there are less interesting, and certainly less hospitable, places to visit.

  And so we all found our way back to Ioannina. Byron and Hobhouse were to spend a further week at Signor Niccolo’s house, doing nothing in particular, before retracing their steps to Preveza. The writer drove his no longer quite-so-smart-Smart back to the hire company, also in Preveza, and so we will resume the Grand Tour and re-Tour there.

  Chapter Ten

  FROM PREVEZA TO MESSOLONGHI

  7 -22 NOVEMBER 1809 | 26 FEBRUARY - 4 MARCH 2009

  When Byron and Hobhouse left Ioannina on 3 November 1809Ali Pasha had undertaken to give his guests safe passage as faras Patras, where they would be under the protection of his proxy, hisson Veli Pasha. Byron’s battalion was still recruiting new members: the first escort, which was to take them as far as Preveza, was formed of fifty Albanian soldiers, in addition to which Byron led his core entourage of Hobhouse, Fletcher, Georgiou, Vassily, a new Albanian dervish called Tahiri - who like Vassily was to stay with Byron throughout the Grand Tour - and now two unnamed Athenians and a Greek priest. The plan was to retrace their steps with the escort as far as Preveza, then sail from Preveza to Patras on one of Ali Pasha’s galliots. Unfortunately, as we shall see, they encountered foul weather in an ill found boat with ill trained crew and were nearly shipwrecked. They eventually arrived in Patras overland.

  We will pick them up in Preveza as the journey south from Ioannina to Preveza was much the same as the journey north, and they stayed in the same places in St. Demetre, Arta and Salaóra as they had on the journey upcountry. The journey south sped by; riding at escort speed, and with little new to see, they arrived in Preveza in only four days, and stayed there only for one night.

  They left Preveza on 8 November in one of Ali Pasha’s four-gun galliots. A galliot was, as it sounds, a small galley, usually single masted, built to be rowed as well as sailed. They were the standard lightly armed merchant ships of the time in the eastern Medi
terranean. The skipper was Albanian, a Captain Dulcigniote. The ship’s crew were twenty Turks and five Greeks and, although not specified, there would typically be about a dozen Christian slaves - captured enemy men, in that area probably Souliotes - for the oars. Hobhouse described the captain as ‘a mild mannered man’, seldom an encouraging sign with a mixed crew, and not all of them volunteers.

  The problems started as soon as the galliot tried to leave Preveza harbour. They nearly ran aground in a gust as they weighed anchor, whereupon the captain asked them if they would prefer to wait until later before setting off. Byron would have none of it: the winds are fair, let’s away. Instead of insisting on his captaincy, Dulcigniote concurred and at 1 p.m. off they set.

  All was well as they sailed past the site of the battle of Actium, the Roman name for Preveza. Apart from Mark Antony and Cleopatra’s sea battle with Octavian here, more recently, in 1538, at the battle of Preveza the Ottoman navy under High Admiral Barbarossa (like Drake the famous corsair had become a poacher turned gamekeeper) had defeated the allied fleet of Emperor Charles V under Admiral Doria. Doria, with a far superior fleet, had seen his stragglers harried and hounded by the ferocious Barbarossa’s galleys but rather than regroup and attack he posed up and down the Ionian coast with all colours flying to preserve intacta the papal flagship. As Admiral de la Gravière pointed out in his Doria et Barberousse: ‘For far less than this the English shot Admiral Byng in 1756.’ Doria remains an Italian national hero, Andrea Doria the most common name seen on Italian fishing boats.