by Dilys Powell
And fortune rewarded him. A few weeks later a wire came from Knossos. It was unsigned and headed ‘strictly confidential’, and it invited him, should Mackenzie retire in the autumn, to carry on ‘at a slightly reduced salary and slightly shorter period of residence’. He paused for a moment, not to reflect on what cataclysm could have shaken society at the Villa but to wonder if the request came from Evans or from Humfry, the Director-Elect. Then with decent caution but presuming the former he wired to Evans ‘Received wire unsigned answer affirmative.’
‘It seems’, he commented when he wrote to his father, ‘a pretty good show.’ And so it was. His first book, the catalogue of Egyptian finds which he called Aegyptiaca, was nearly complete. His first job was in prospect. He had a Studentship to keep him going. There were hopes of digging – and in Crete. One more thing. The young archaeologists were taking over in Greece. When Humfry in the autumn of that year went out to Athens as Director he was twenty-eight, only three years older than the newly appointed Curator of Knossos. It was lucky for them both. Whatever the difficulties in the administration of the Knossos estate Humfry had a contemporary to work with, and a contemporary who shared his approach to the business of field archaeology. For John the relationship was especially important. He knew that he had as Director someone who would not only support him in practical affairs but would understand his attitude to the pompous and the bureaucratic, someone who enjoyed the same encounters and the same vast excursions, someone, in short, who saw the same jokes. I will not say that Humfry and John Pendlebury were always united in their tastes and their reactions. But they were friends.
John was due to take over the Curatorship in the spring of 1930. There was plenty to do in the interval. The Pendleburys went to Sicily, saw the Greek sites, very properly liked best the huge tumble of stone which is Selinus and thought Taormina ‘beautiful but filled with a portentous collection of English and Americans’. In south Italy they found the museum at Taranto half-shut (all archaeologists and their wives know the terror of the innumerable feast days and other museum-closing occasions which can make some desperate journey pointless); and there also they had ‘an annoying encounter with a plain clothes spy at the station’ who, John said in his description of this enigmatic meeting, disliked the look of the visitors and strongly suspected them. At the School in Athens there were athletic activities – a hockey match against a British Navy team and a stupendous walk to Thebes over the mountain barrier which separates Attica from Boeotia, starting by moonlight in the middle of the night and arriving about six in the evening in time to catch the train back. There was even fencing – John bought masks and foils and was, he said, teaching Hilda and one or two of the students.
And for the first time he was learning about in-fighting in the academic world. An article he had written for a learned journal was attacked, and by such an established figure as H. R. Hall, then Keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities at the British Museum. John was outraged. Was he expected, after piling up evidence, to refrain from drawing conclusions? Was it impermissible to scrutinise data (the subject concerned the golden shadows of Theseus and Agamemnon and the siege of Troy) which had long been assumed and to see if they would fit into history? He was suddenly and violently conscious of injustice – the injustice often felt by a young man making an early foray into fields appropriated and jealously guarded by his elders. ‘My theory is not fantastic. Every remark made I … have quoted chapter and verse for.’ And his next letter goes on, ‘Everyone here is furious and says it is Hall who doesn’t like new things.’ In his angry defence there is the sense, familiar to those who have been observers of erudite society, that any minute world war will break out over the debated theory. ‘I stand to it,’ he cries. A fortnight goes by before he is ready to write to his father about much else.
There is, however, an interpolation. In the midst of the fray he breaks off. ‘What happened’, he asks, ‘in Pembroke’s final of the athletics?’
But presently there were other matters to think about. In March he formally took over the Knossos curatorship, and he and Hilda moved to the Villa Ariadne. He now had responsibility outside his personal interests, and his life entered on a new stage.
iii
The novice in a job is the natural prey of attack, and John Pendlebury was soon entangled in another squabble, this time an Anglo-Greek one. British explorers have been generously treated in Greece. But an occasional outburst of nationalist irritation is understandable; in England a team of foreigners digging up Stonehenge might well get some sidelong looks. In the interval between the wars, too, a good many Greek archaeologists had their training in Germany, and there were instances of anti-British sentiment, possibly aggravated in Crete by Evans’s moments of high-handedness. I remember one archaeologist in particular who was quick to resent what he interpreted as the arrogance of the British. ‘Because we are a poor and oppressed nation,’ he once wrote to Humfry, a Philhellene if ever there was one, ‘you know you can trample on us.’ John had recently had a first experience of academic warfare. Now came a first experience of official sniping.
While he was settling into the job at Knossos he heard of some early Greek vases in a house in Herakleion, and Humfry, who was in Crete at the time, joined him in going to look at them; a British School student who was doing research on the Protocorinthian period to which they belonged then proceeded to take photographs. While she was thus innocently employed the police burst in. The vases were seized; the owners were arrested together with the chauffeur who had taken the British party from the Villa to the house; John received a furious letter from the Director of the Herakleion Museum, Professor Marinatos; and the local paper published an article accusing the British School not only of trying to buy the vases in question but of being involved in large-scale antique-dealing.
Anybody who has spent any time in provincial Greece will be familiar with the rumours, the scandals, the delighted perusal of appalling news. Probably the situation is not so different from that in any other Western country, but it manages to seem more dramatic; if a potentially hostile Power is concerned everyone will be ready to believe that it is parachuting radio transmitters into every vineyard. As a rule one can rely on the brevity of human memory; by next day everything will be forgotten. Antique-dealing, however, is rightly a grave matter in Greece. The finds of an archaeological excavation remain in the country. The law says also that all ancient objects found by an individual must be taken to the authorities. Small thefts from a dig are not unknown, and most travellers, pausing in some village or other, have been privily invited to value what is described, usually erroneously, as an antique. But the excavator has to be doubly careful, and a foreign School privileged to operate in Greece must have clean hands. The accusations in the Cretan newspaper could not be ignored. John flew into a rage. He immediately called on the local police to put it on record that the intention was merely to photograph, not to buy. Then he wrote to Humfry, who was back in Athens when the storm broke, and called for action. ‘I am out for my pound of flesh and blood.’
The accused protested their innocence: the vases had been found years earlier and at once taken to the relevant archaeological official, who had pronounced them valueless and returned them to the finders. Humfry complained to the Ministry of Archaeology and the Ministry delivered appropriate censure. John demanded an apology and an apology was given. The incident is a pinprick; none of it matters now, nobody cares. Indeed most of the people concerned are dead. Only Professor Marinatos has survived the years and the war; today he is internationally famous. The story is an absurdity recalled because it illustrates the kind of trifle which could complicate the life of a young archaeologist. It illustrates also a hot temper in John Pendlebury. He would never ignore an offence.
Curator of Knossos: the title suggests a placid scholarly career concerned with little beyond keeping the lustral areas free from insect life and occasionally putting up a prayer for a respite from earthquakes. Far from it. A busy
season was ahead. To begin with, the interregnum between the departure of the old and the arrival of the new Curator had combined with a rainy season to leave the Palace choked with weeds. In his latter years Mackenzie, perhaps beset, as Hilda sometimes suggested, by the loneliness of his job, had been increasingly losing grip. By now, John records, he was for the moment too ill to be moved from Athens by the relatives who had undertaken to look after him. The estate had to be reorganised. The land which Evans had handed over to the School included valuable tracts of vines and olives, and the new Curator had to attend to the disposal of superfluous material and the letting of agricultural property to local tenants. At the Palace not only was the Throne Room in need of re-roofing, the whole site was in disarray.
Some of the people round have been allowing their animals to stray into the palace, where they break down walls and make a mess. I have given orders that any animal found there shall either be taken up to the Villa where I shall demand money for its return (if I do not eat it for dinner) or else turned away and tethered in a fine field of corn near the palace, so that the owner can have a bit of trouble with the farmer!
Meanwhile the visitors who had been a feature of the open season during Evans’s majestic years continued to pour in. Venizelos makes a special visit. A party of Swiss arrive and depart leaving ‘orange peel all over the palace’. Among the parties a couple of dozen Hellenic travellers on their cruise are given lunch at the Villa (the School and its Cretan subsidiary preserved the tradition of hospitality); Anthony Hope, Gilbert Murray, H. A. L. Fisher, Liddell Hart ‘who wrote that book on Scipio’, Ronald Knox – the list includes also Evans’s stepmother who, as John remarked, was two years younger than her stepson.
Presently ‘in great form’ Evans himself arrived. It was an event which not only raised the level of activity but greatly contributed to the general refurbishment of the place. Among the first decisions John had made at Knossos was to start a proper archaeological library at the Villa. ‘Sir Arthur’, he writes, ‘has just very generously given £50 for me to do what I like with for the library here.’ Again, ‘Sir Arthur has been extravagantly buying hard for the Taverna … Cretan embroideries, rugs, a sofa, a desk and curtains to make it a self-contained place.’ Meanwhile John had started work on the mass of pottery which from long years of excavation had been stored in boxes and ranged on shelves in the Palace itself where space was available. He planned to catalogue it.
A very long job and difficult considering that all I have to go on are the labels (written in pencil on worm-eaten wood in 1901 by a Greek foreman who can’t spell and who called the places by quite different names!).
Evans’s arrival brought other demands. There was digging to be done – in the ‘Theatral Area’ and outside the West Court. The results were considerable.
If you imagine a room 20 feet long, 15 feet broad and 15 feet high filled with pottery you can imagine how much came from one walled pit!
Piet, who worked intermittently at Knossos, had left for Perachora, where Humfry was making his first finds, and though Hilda always shared in the job there really was more to do than even John could manage.
I am having a fairly strenuous time 6 a.m. – 6 p.m. solid on the dig trying to do three people’s work. My own, de Jong’s … and Mackenzie’s left over from many years.
It is not surprising that the inspiration of Evans’s presence should have begun to pall. For the moment there was even a cooling in John’s enthusiasm for Crete.
I really often feel that it would be better to go definitely over to Egypt, keeping say 3 months of the year free to keep up with what’s happening in Greece. However I shall wait and see. Evans is obviously itching to get my time here extended. That I will not have. Three and a half months is enough for anyone, cut off from society, besides when one’s work is definitely on Eg. Gr. connections it’s a mug’s game giving up one of them.
Evans’s delight in finding a young man with the Pendlebury qualities of knowledge, energy and efficiency is understandable. The Curator’s private cry of relief at the end of the season is understandable too. ‘We have got rid of Evans thank the Lord and can now concentrate on finishing up without his interference.’ Really the two, Evans in his late seventies, John in his middle twenties, were matched in pertinacity. Neither would ever give in to a job.
A fortnight later the Pendleburys were on their way home (‘Don’t forget to get me some cricket if possible in late July’). In spite of his momentary disenchantment John had a special reason for persevering in Crete. In the midst of his three-men’s job he had started on a guide to Knossos. ‘Have decided to say “You” throughout. “One” is so lonely while “we” gives the impression that he is not alone and may move him to turn his head uneasily “as though a fearful fiend doth close behind him tread”.’ He must have felt his joke was too good to waste, for he used it again when he came to write his Guide.
One (if it is permissible to use the lonely pronoun) can see that he had changed during the three years since his first visit. He had not grown older. The activities and the enthusiasms and the satisfied vanity in bringing off a joke were the same; John never grew older. But the qualities of self-confidence and independence discernible at the start were developing. He had acquired authority. And he was going to need it.
After the 1929 season in Egypt Hans Frankfort had been invited to conduct an excavation in Iraq. This left the job at Amarna vacant, and John was asked to take over. He had worked as field assistant with Frankfort for only one season. He was still only twenty-six. Nevertheless he now held a responsible position in Egypt as well as at Knossos. The two jobs complemented one another, since his interest, as he had pointed out in exasperation with Evans’s demands on him, was in the relation between Egypt and Greece. In the matter of time they were conveniently dovetailed. Winter was the season for digging in Egypt; by February the Pendleburys could be in Greece, ready to move to Crete and the Villa in March. In 1930, then, after the summer break in England which most Aegean archaeologists allowed themselves, John and Hilda took up work at Amarna.
It was a full-scale operation. The British party numbered six, the labour force of experienced workers and local boys and girls over one hundred. But his assistants could detect in John none of the apprehension which might have been expected in a Director comparatively green. He knew the site, he knew the people, he had made it his business to learn Arabic (he had already taken lessons in the summer of 1928); and Hilda, who modestly said only that she picked up what she could of the language from the servants, was there to run the household, to attend to the daily demands of workmen and their children for first-aid and elementary medical attention, and to join, as she always joined, in his work.
He did, an observer said, a prodigious amount; as well as directing and supervising the dig he handled all the photography and all the developing, a job generally undertaken by a specialist. One of the party at Amarna, Mary Chubb, later wrote an account of the season. In the picture she draws of John one sees a young man with a secret vision of himself as a T. E. Lawrence figure; and perhaps he had something of the complexity (though none of the self-torment) of Lawrence. On the first morning, she says, he appeared for work on the dig wearing ‘a bright pink, open-necked shirt and navy shorts, with a many-coloured belt of twisted leather’. Those were the days of the sub-fusc. It was not done to wear bright pink shirts, even on an excavation, and Humfry and John Pendlebury were the only men I knew who broke the rule. Mary Chubb has an interesting observation to make. The bright-coloured shirts, she says, were a gesture.
When he doodled, as he frequently did when thinking out a dig problem, his doodles were nearly always of knights in armour, or crested helmets, or fine fifteenth-century gallants with wonderful lillypipe hats trailing to the ground.
She was not the first to see the romantic in him. ‘In these formative years,’ Pierson Dixon wrote, ‘Pendlebury came to see the past through the spectacles of the romantic, or rather the chivalrous …’ Mary Ch
ubb recognised something more – the desire to introduce the romantic element into everyday life. That early photograph of the young man in the grey suit had indeed a touch of the mutinous in it. ‘Behind his normal facade of conventional Public School and University man was someone pining for a slashed doublet instead of a neat grey pin-stripe.’
For the time being, though, the longing was nebulous; nothing much more, perhaps, than a fancy to cut a romantic figure. And even then Crete gave him the chance to do that. In the first summer of his Curatorship he wrote from the Villa Ariadne to his father: ‘Have just got a Cretan costume – perfectly gorgeous, a great show.’ Cretan Sunday best for a man consisted of a white shirt with turn-down collar worn under a waistcoat; enormously baggy dark breeches; a wide repeatedly wound cummerbund; a black silk kerchief twisted round the head; high boots, preferably white; and a cloak of fine, blue, smooth French cloth, braided and lined. John’s cloak was ‘a soft darkish blue on the outside, embroidered in black braid with a hood folded back, and all lined with scarlet’. He indulged his romantic fancy by wearing it at Amarna as a form of evening dress.
The Amarna season was a success, and he was able to number among the finds ‘A Mycenaean house. Gold and silver. The Princess’s head’ (a small sculptured head, possibly a portrait of one of Akhenaten’s daughters). ‘A splendid house belonging to an already known official with a magnificent painted lintel. Excellent small finds …’
He came back from Egypt with the offer of a job as well. One of the Englishmen who in the days of British influence held important positions at the Cairo Museum was leaving for America and John was unofficially invited to succeed him – ‘viz practically 2nd in command of the Museum beginning at £E.900 a year!’ – an offer which he knew would not have been made if he had not been able to claim some published work (Aegyptiaca had appeared in 1930). From the early letters it is clear that his father had been persistent in urging him not to delay in both writing and publishing. ‘I can’t ever’, John now wrote, ‘be grateful enough to you for spurring me on …’ All the same he turned the offer down. ‘I told them I was bound up in the Aegean for some time and refrained from saying that I wouldn’t consider a stationary job for another 5 years at least.’ Freedom to change, to travel, to explore was still essential.