And make their grand saloons a general mart
For all the mutilated blocks of art.
Hobhouse had rather feebly argued that British artists, architects and sculptors would benefit by having these illustrious pieces close to hand. Byron would have none of it: ‘I oppose, and ever will oppose, the robbery of ruins from Athens, to instruct the English in sculpture, who are as capable of sculpture as the Egyptians are of skating.’
In one of the notes to Childe Harold ‘s Pilgrimage Byron wrote:
’When they carry away three or four ship loads of the most valuable and massy relics that time and barbarism have left to the most injured and most celebrated of cities; when they destroy, in a vain attempt to tear down, those works which have been the admiration of ages, I know no motive which can excuse, no name which can designate, the perpetration of this dastardly devastation.’ By now he had finished the first two cantos of Childe Harold ‘s Pilgrimage and was working on The Giaour, Hints from Horace and The Curse of Minerva, the latter aimed squarely at Lord Elgin.
But, for better or worse, the Elgin Marbles are now in the British Museum and not in the Louvre, and the Elgin Marbles have been PC’d into the Parthenon Sculptures. Nevertheless Fauvel had been sending pieces back to Paris since before the French Revolution, and the ‘Plaque of the Ergastines’ frieze from the interior and the tenth metope from the exterior are among the treasures in Paris. I am curious to see why the French collection is not on the repatriation radar whereas the British collection is seldom off it. I am also curious to meet the current version of Louis Fauvel and so make an appointment to have lunch with the French cultural attaché to Greece.
Well, I could not have preconceived my preconceptions more incorrectly. Sitting at the restaurant I am expecting a musty old bullfrog, a petit fonctionnaire masquerading as a grand fromage, instead of which in breezes the fabulously glamorous Caroline Fourgeaud- Laville. She is wearing, one could almost say modelling, a printed silk summer dress; reddish light gold is the overall impression, and, although I didn’t like to look too closely, the scenes are like an Hermès print of Andalusian folklore. She wears a necklace of gold rings and pearls and emerald earrings alongside emerald eyes; scarlet lipstick and an easy suntan with matching blonde hair. Various bangles jangle around her wrists. Byron approves immediately, in fact I can feel him giving me a nudge as we sit down.
I explain that Fauvel, at fifty-seven and a man prone to flushes, could hardly be less similar to his successor, and ask how someone just over half his age could represent France in such a culturally important city as Athens.
’I took a doctorate at La Sorbonne, and then taught there.’
’What did you study?’
’My doctorate was about Victor Segalen, who was a traveller-writer in the beginning of the twentieth century. The subject was about the boundaries he had inside him and also in his relationships with other people. It was quite surprising looking at him like that because he is considered a great traveller, a great captain - just like you, I am sure - who did everything and met everyone during his short life: he died when he was thirty-eight... young like your Byron.’
’And why the change from academia to diplomacy?’
’I needed to take a turning point - is that correct? - leaving culture for diplomacy, because I really love living abroad, discovering people, people like you! But the French system is far different from the British. Much more bureaucratic.’
’We have the British Council doing what you do.’
’Yes, we are much more centralised, so here at the Institut Français we run French courses and directly promote French artists. The British Council is even separate from the embassy, a different structure entirely.’
’And your perfect English?’
’It has to be these days,’ she giggles with wide open enthusiasm.’And my best friend here is Irish, the writer Lauren O’Hara.’ She has been here three years, normally a full tour of duty, but has been asked to stay for an extra year, because ‘my ambassador loves me.’Funny that. ‘But on the other hand I love Paris, bookshops, artists and writers... they are necessary to my life at least like oxygen!’
We chat about Elgin and Fauvel. At one point I suggest that if Melina Mercouri had plonked herself for three hours gazing at stolen treasures and dreaming of Athens in the Louvre instead of the British Museum all those years ago Caroline’s job here might be more diplomatic than cultural.
’But we only have a few little pieces,’ she pouts.
This is not exactly how I remember a visit there, and anyway the Plaque of the Ergastines is hardly just a little piece, let alone the others. But I can quite see a Greek minister melting at the mere suggestion of their return: ‘Oh, my dear Attaché,’ he would say kissing her hand,’by all means, you just keep your little pieces.’
Next I find myself regaling her with stories of my heroic struggle for the workers and students of the world during Les Événements of 1968. I was a student at Grenoble University, and we skied all week and rioted at the weekends. Cobblestones flew. Windows shattered. Placards jostled. Red was everywhere. Les flics (a particularly virulent form called the CRS) charged. We regrouped. Daniel Cohn-Bendit,ha! Then I notice a culturally dettachéd look in her eyes and realises he has not the foggiest idea of what I am talking about, hardly surprising as she was not yet with us then. Reluctantly I conclude there’s probably not much point in telling her my Aretha Franklin story either.
Unfortunately even an Athenian lunch with a French diplomat eventually has to end, and we exchange cards and kisses and promise to stay in touch - which we have. It was charming, but at the end I am no clearer about how the French have managed to hide their marbles under a bushel. Luckily Andreas had arranged for me to meet the leader of the repatriation movement, none other the very same Melina Mercouri’s brother and taker-up of the Marbles baton, Spyros Mercouri.
It’s funny how événements turn out, because on our way to meet Spyros, Andreas and I stumble across a riot. Andreas works in the Parliament building in Syntagma, the central square of Athens. I take off my crash helmet to hear the thud-thud of tear gas guns, and phone Andreas ‘there’s a riot going on.’ He replies he knows, he is looking at it from his desk. We arrange to meet in the subway, hoping for peace underground.
’What’s happening?’ I ask.
’It’s Allah Akbar time,’ he replies. Turns out there are tens of thousands of Muslim asylum seekers in Athens. Most Greeks think they’re phonies but the EU won’t have them sent home. The government puts them in blocks. There’s no work, and even if there was no one would employ them. Some steal, and last night, during a police raid, a policeman opened a Koran to shake it out. Hence the riot.
You smell tear gas before your eyes feel it. We smell it. The wind has changed direction and is now swirling the gas down a level into the subway. ‘You’re a journalist, should be no problem,’ says Andreas as we break into a mild trot. Outside, above, we hear sirens and more thuds. ‘It’s getting serious,’ says Andreas. It is. Then we get hit by the pepper gas. There’s no way of knowing where it’s coming from and commuters in the subway are scared and somewhere way beyond distressed. We take an escalator to the level below. I tell Andreas his is a double or quits strategy. It’s quits, but the horrible pepper taste and smell and itch and sting remain for the next half hour.
I know my way round tear gas but this is the first acquaintance with the pepper variety. I’m sure the police love it as much as the dysfunctional rioters hate it. Andreas tells me that in the previous winter riots outside the Parliament Building the wind changed direction and pepper gas got into the office vents. It was so unpleasant that the police were told to use tear gas first in future, and only pepper gas if things were turning ugly. Andreas suggests that was why we had tear first and pepper later.
Since Melina died Spyros has taken up the cause of having the Mar
bles returned to the Parthenon. It takes someone like Byron or Melina to bring a cause the attention it needs, and we swiftly agree that one of the main reasons the Greeks adore Byron is his disgust at what Elgin and others were doing. Spyros was sure Byron would certainly be on the committee. I was too polite to say: no, he wouldn’t, the one body he would not embrace was a committee. And the point from that exchange is that Byron’s and Melina’s campaign was all about charisma and not committees. Spyros is a lovely chap, a real gentleman still best loved for his playboy past, but his proudest claim on the behalf of the Marbles was that there are now seventeen committees worldwide ‘including a very fine one in Sweden.’ At which point Byron would have drawn a swift sword.
I delicately point out that the committee in the UK is useless and he defends them by saying that they have no money. ‘We’ll soon sort that out!’ Byron and Melina cry in unison as they hurry off to doorstep a hapless Minister-of-Something-or-Other.
But Spyros says he is optimistic on two fronts. ‘Firstly you know we are opening the new Acropolis Museum next month and on Melina’s instructions we have left a large space empty for the Elgin Marbles.’
’Is anyone from London coming?’ I ask
’I’m not sure,’ he replies, ‘the London committee will be there and they may bring some guests.’
’And secondly?’
’Secondly the London Olympics might shame the British Museum into returning them. Do you follow the Olympics?’ he asks.
’Not too much. I like the women’s volleyball though.’
’And does Britain have a good team?’
’I don’t know, I tend to support the Scandinavian teams.’
’And do you support the return of our marbles.’
’Yes, but I don’t agree with Byron and Melina that they should never have been taken in the first place. They had already been terribly vandalised over the centuries. The Turks were crushing them for their houses and mosques, the Greeks didn’t even know what they were,and the French... by the way, is there a committee for returning the pieces in the Louvre?’
’No, Melina never claimed them. Are there any?’
We say our goodbyes, and good lucks with his museum and my book. Methinks it’s time to follow Byron to the Turkish baths.
***
In between bouts of flirting in the monastery, and flirting in company, Byron flirted ‘thrice weekly’ in the Turkish baths. These have been beautifully restored by The Museum of Greek Folk Art, and renamed ’The Bath House of the Winds’ - they are next to the Temple of the Winds - with the enticing tag line of ‘Museum of Personal Hygiene and Toilet.’ In spite of its name the institution remains largely unvisited, but luckily, as it transpires, is managed by an enthusiastic Byronist and careful English speaker Sylvia Michelis.
In Byron’s day it was a one-storey building, and men and women used it on alternate days. It was then expanded upwards and used by men and women accordingly. I ask Sylvia to show me the part Byron would have used.
’You know Ottoman baths were far more than just bathing rooms.’ I tell her about Hobhouse calling them ‘the coffee houses of the East.’’That’s right, especially for the women who were only allowed out alone to come here. Now, here is the men’s changing room.
’We are in a square room about ten metres across with a marble floor and wooden benches. The light comes from small round skylights in the domed ceiling.
’When was it last used?’ I ask.
’In 1965. It’s just not a Greek pastime. You like Turkish baths?’
’Yes, I was hoping this one was working too. I loafed around the one in Bayswater in London when I lived there, but that was more Eastern European Jewish than Turkish. Men and women have different days there too, but I went to one in Munich and they all piled in together. Why is it not a Greek pastime?’
’We are too active. Have you heard the expression “to live like a pasha”?’ I haven’t. ‘It is to be passive, sitting in the shade, fat belly, smoking the pipe, slaves around to bring this and that.’
I tell Sylvia that I had noticed in the drawings that all the bath attendants were black, and ask how that came about. ‘They were slaves, there was a slave market every month near the Stadium until Independence when the Christians banned it. The baths would buy black slaves and train them as attendants and masseurs.’
’And the Turks, they had slaves here too?’
’Of course,’ she replies, ‘but they would have Christian slaves, white ones, the paler the more prestigious.’
I tell her the story about Fletcher and the bastinadoed Spaniard.Byron or Hobhouse had been insulted on their way for a swim at Piraeus (imagine that now!) and complained. It turned out that the transgressor was a Spanish slave, and the slave was given fifty whacks across his feet, all witnessed by Fletcher who reported back gleefully that the unfortunate man had ‘shit his breeches’. The slave’s owner found out and wanted him killed - presumably he wouldn’t be able to stand for a week or two. The authorities refused the owner permission and the slave lived to serve another day. But the extraordinary point was that there should be a Spanish slave in Athens in 1810. The traders were the pirates of the Barbary Coast, the city-states of Tunis and Algiers, which were just about still part of the Ottoman Empire, albeit run with a loose rein. When they stole a ship they would take the crew as slaves and sell them in one of the markets of the Ottoman Empire. If shipping had been light they would raid the coastal towns of Spain or Italy, a tactic which had the additional advantage of procuring female slaves. Fletcher’s bastinadoed Spaniard was either a merchant seaman or town dweller who had been taken by Barbary pirates.
Back in the Tepidarium Sylvia conjures up an image. ‘The Turks would have two or three white slaves in attendance, bringing them fresh water, tea, coffee, new clothes, pipes, whatever they desired. They would spend an hour or so here, then go next door,’ we walk through an archway, ‘into here, the Caldarium, the hot room.’
’This is where the action was.’
’Yes, the steam would roll off the walls. Those marble slabs there are where they were massaged. This is a common room, and off here were private rooms.’
’For special services?’
’I imagine so. Maybe you have Byron in mind?’
’I wouldn’t put it past him,’ I say, and an image of him and a young black slave behind closed doors flashes across the mind. ‘But he did not have slaves himself, and there is no record of his Albanian guards accompanying him. He was probably the only Christian to visit here.’
’He would use the baths’ slaves. Not a big problem,’ she says as we walk back through the changing room. Our tour is over. Sylvia showers me with gifts: brochures and a video, and the Museum pen from the Visitors’ Book. I promise to send her a copy of this book,which I will. Sylvia, if you are reading this sentence now, thank you again.
But by now, the spring of 1811, Byron’s thoughts were turning home. He had perhaps just run out of steam as he was running out of money. He had already sent Fletcher back to England with letters and papers to prepare the ground. He was pleased to be rid of his valet for a while: ‘the perpetual lamentations after beef and beer, the stupid bigoted contempt for anything foreign, the insurmountable incapacity of acquiring even a few words of any language.’
Above all he left Athens committed to the Greek cause, a cause that the Greeks did not yet know they had, and of course a cause for which he was to die. He wrote that ‘at present they suffer all the moral and physical ills that can afflict humanity. Their life is a struggle against truth; they are vicious in their own defence. Now in the name of Nemesis! For what are they to be grateful? To the Turks for their fetters, and to the Franks for their broken promises and lying councils? They are to be grateful to the artist who engraves their ruins, and to the antiquary who carries them away; to the traveller whose janissary
flogs them, and to the scribbler whose journal abuses them? This is the amount of their obligation to foreigners.’
A month later, with a heavy heart, he boarded the packet for Malta, unaware of the fresh horror of incarceration that awaited him there. His second last deed in Athens was to pay-off his Albanian guards, Vassily and Dervish Tahiri, the latter taking it especially badly, refusing payment and crying continuously. Byron would always remember their fierce loyalty, and was moved by this last display of emotion ‘which contrasted with his native ferocity, and improved my opinion of the human heart.’ His last deed before leaving Athens was to take on two new Greek servants, who he felt would be more suited to the restrained atmosphere of London society.
Chapter Sixteen
MALTA, HEADING HOME
30 APRIL - 2 JUNE 1811 | 30 SEP TEMBER 2008 - MARCH 2009
Byron and his pet Nicolo Giraud, together with his new Greek servants Demetrius Zogroffo and Spiridion Sarakis,disembarked from the Hydra in Malta’s Marsamxett Harbour on 30 April after an eight-day voyage from Piraeus. In his portmanteaux were ‘four Athenian skulls - a phial of Attick hemlock - four live tortoises - and a greyhound.’ Ironically, in view of Byron’s detestation of Elgin and all he stood for, the cargo on board the Hydra contained more ‘Elgin Marbles’, in this case a capital and drum from the Parthenon, a Doric capital and an Ionic column from the monastery at Daphne, as well as a colossal sepulchral cippus. A further cargo was to be found in one of Byron’s portmanteaux, the manuscript of The Curse of Minerva, his savage j’accuse to Elgin for the theft of Greece’s monumental heritage, in which Byron explains to the Greeks that Elgin came not from England but ‘from Caledonia, land of meanness, sophistry and mist.’ His entourage’s arrival was duly noted by the Port Officer in Malta:’30th April 1811. English ship Hydra. Captain William Waggood, 44 members of crew. 9 passengers. Among them a certain Lord Byron and servants. From Athens in 18 days with a cargo of marbles for England without a license because Consul unavailable. Awaiting permission to perform quarantine.’
Joy Unconfined Page 24