The Autobiography of a Journalist Volume II Part 2

Omar Pasha arrived on the ninth of April, and, two days after, 2000 insurgents attacked the guard of the aqueduct which supplied Canea with water, and were repelled, the plan of attack having been betrayed by a miller of the vicinity; but the main object of the Cretans had been to show a sign of virility to the new commander-in-chief, and the object was attained with the loss of three killed. Omar landed with great ostentation, having brought a magnificent outfit, cavalry, staff, horse artillery, etc., etc., all in new and brilliant uniforms; but the astute Cretans rejoiced in the change, for the cunning of Mustapha Kiritly was more dangerous to them than Omar Pasha and his European tactics.

I went to pay my respects and renew my offers of good services if conciliation were to be attempted, expecting to see a civilized general, but I found only a conceited and bombastic old man who had not the least idea of what he had undertaken. He pooh-poohed conciliation, and a.s.sured me that his plans were so perfect that within two weeks after his setting out for the conquest of the island all would be over and the insurrection at his mercy. I ventured to suggest that he would find the country more difficult than he supposed, and that the total want of roads would be a grave obstacle to such rapid success. He replied that it could not be more difficult than Montenegro, and he had conquered that, etc., and I left him greatly relieved as to the probability of success in his operations.

He employed two weeks in his preparations, and then set out for the conquest of Sphakia, moving in two columns, with a total force of 15,000 men, his own division taking the pa.s.s of Kallikrati, giving access to Sphakia from the east, and held by Coroneos, and that of Mehmet Pasha moving against Krapi, the pa.s.s on the north held by Zimbrakaki and the Greek bands. Both divisions were driven back to the plains. The savage excesses which followed this double defeat far surpa.s.sed anything we had known. Villages which had long been at peace and within the Turkish lines were put to sack, and the last outrages of war inflicted on the unfortunate inhabitants. The cruelties which, under Mustapha, were the occasional deeds of subordinate commanders or the consequence of partial defeats, became, under Omar, the rule by order to all the detachments, and Omar himself took his share of the booty and the pick of the captive girls for his own harem.

As I had the testimony of European officers in the Turkish service given me freely, in disgust at the proceedings of the sirdar, I did not depend on insurgent reports of these things. While the Egyptian troops remained I had constant and detailed information from their European officers. A German officer, by the name of Geissler,--Omar's chief of artillery,--died of dysentery at Canea during the campaign, and, his effects being sent in to the consulate of France for transmission to his family, I had the chance to see his diary, in which were noted the incidents of the campaign. One entry which I copied was this: "O. Pasha ordered the division to ravage and rape,"

the village being one where the inhabitants had never taken part in the insurrection. "All villages were burned," wrote Geissler, and all prisoners murdered or worse. The chiefs of four villages, who came in voluntarily to make their submission, were beheaded on the spot, and the population soon abandoned all villages in the route of the army, which, not being able to make any impression on the insurgent force, avenged itself on the inoffensive Christians whenever any fell into their hands. Nothing more savage and needlessly cruel has taken place in the history of the Ottoman empire than the deeds of the Sirdar Croat.

Two changes in the position now took place in favor of the Cretan non-combatants. The influence of Russia at Alexandria induced the viceroy to withdraw his troops in spite of the opposition of Omar, and after the disastrous end of that campaign the remainder were embarked for Egypt, 10,000 surviving out of the 24,000 who had landed under Schahin Pasha. The other change was the removal of Derche, whose uselessness even to his own government had finally become evident. His successor--Tricou, a quick-witted Parisian, of a character entirely opposed to the Turcophile Derche--asked permission to follow the army in the next movement, which was intended to be for the subjugation of the central provinces, and Omar bluntly refused. As Tricou had orders from his own government to accompany the army, this impolitic refusal threw him at once into the opposition with us.

Omar marched by Retimo towards Candia, watched by Coroneos, and, when the army reached the valley of Margaritas, it was surrounded and furiously attacked by Coroneos and all the bands of the immediately surrounding country, and completely bottled up. One of the European officers with Omar a.s.sured me that they had given up all hope of rescue. The fire of the Cretans penetrated to their tents, and that of Omar was several times pierced. Omar had, before setting out, sent orders to Reschid Effendi, who commanded at Candia, to come and meet him, and Reschid, a more competent commander, with a strong body of irregulars, fighting day and night, succeeded in effecting a junction and opening the way. In this affair, again, the jealousy of the Greeks lost a most brilliant opportunity for a victory which would have undoubtedly finished the war. Petropoulaki, a Mainote _palikari_ of the great insurrection of 1827-30, sent over from Greece to direct affairs about Ida, was called on by Coroneos to reinforce the resistance to the pa.s.sage of Rescind, but refused to move or even send Coroneos a much-needed supply of ammunition, so that the latter was obliged to retire. On this march there was a repet.i.tion of the incident of the great insurrection, in the stifling of all the families who had taken refuge in one of the caves which abound in Crete, by making a huge fire in the entrance. My informant was an Italian colonel under Omar, who was an eye-witness of the event.

Omar next announced a comprehensive movement which was to sweep the insurgents from east to west, and surround them in Sphakia, when he would finish with them. He began by an attack on the position of Lasithe, where were gathered about 5000 insurgents,--sufficient if they had had one commander; having many, they were, after temporary successes, scattered and dispersed east and west, Omar following those who went westward. I ran down to Candia, in the Kestrel, to get the earliest news. Harried, and with several partial defeats, the army was finally concentrated at Dibaki, on the south coast; but, instead of sweeping the country as Omar had proposed doing, it was embarked on the fleet and transported to the eastern foothills of Sphakia, and debarked at Franco Castelli, the scene of the debarkation of Mustapha in his Askypho campaign. With much hard fighting, but greatly aided by the want of cooperation amongst the insurgents and their allies, one division penetrated to Askypho, but was unable to get further, and, being cut off from all communication with its base of supplies, was obliged to retreat to Vrysis, Omar always remaining on his ironclad, while Reschid, who was by far the most competent soldier in the Turkish army in Crete, was obliged to retreat towards Candia, followed by Coroneos, and, reaching that place mortally wounded in a parting fight with the Greek chief near Melambos, died at Candia a few weeks later. While at Candia I received most of my information from the son of Reschid Pasha.

Omar, having ravaged and murdered along the southern coast, was obliged to take s.h.i.+p and sail round with the entire army to the point from which he had started. He landed at Canea, having lost, mostly by disease, from 20,000 to 25,000 men in a three months' campaign, and effected nothing except the destruction of six hundred villages and the murder of hundreds of Cretans. The reports of Tricou had made it necessary for the French government to recognize the real condition of affairs, for he had set his agents in the island to collecting the authentic cases of Turkish barbarity, a ghastly roll. His irritation against the sirdar, on account of the discourteous manner of refusal of the permission to accompany the army, was intensified by an insulting remark which Omar made to Captain Murray, concerning Tricou, and which Murray repeated to me and I to Tricou; and the war was thereafter to the knife. Tricou crushed the Croat in the end, and the Russian and French governments came to an accord for the transportation of the non-combatants to Greece. In consequence, four French s.h.i.+ps, three Russian, two Italian, and, not to be left alone, three Austrian and one Prussian, rapidly carried to Greece all who wished to escape from the island. It was unnecessary, as there was no longer any danger from the Turkish army; but it was, I suppose, in pursuance of some political scheme which had brought France and Russia together. The Turkish army was nowhere in force or spirit to penetrate into the interior, and the demoralization was such that soldiers deserted from battalions ordered for Crete. The military hospitals in Crete were full, and the troops so mutinous that operations had become impracticable beyond holding and keeping up communication with the blockhouses and posts within easy reach.

Omar Pasha having failed to make any impression, A'ali Pasha, the grand vizier, came out in October, 1867, to try conciliation. He offered all that the Cretans could desire, short of annexation to Greece,--an a.s.sembly of their own, freedom from taxation for a term of years, a prince of their own election without reserve, and the half of the customs receipts. I waited on him, as I had on the former envoys of the Sultan, as a matter of etiquette, and was surprised by the just and reasonable tone and substance of his propositions. They seemed even better for the Cretans than annexation to Greece, and I so represented them to Mr. Morris. But I received from him the orders of General Ignatieff to urge the Cretans to reject them, as the certain alternative was their independence and annexation to Greece. I obeyed my orders without concealing my own sentiments in favor of the acceptance of the offers of the grand vizier.

A'ali made on me an impression of honesty and justice such as I had never seen in any Turkish official. He dissembled none of his difficulties, and discussed the questions arising out of the position without reserve. For the first time since the affair began I felt my sympathies drawn to the Turkish aspect of the political question involved. I had long seen that Crete could not be governed from Athens without a course of such preparation as the Ionian Islands had had; they would never submit to prefects from continental Greece; they felt themselves, as they really are, a superior race, superior in intelligence and in courage; but the men from Athens had persuaded them that the only alternative to submission to the Sultan was annexation, and, meanwhile, the s.h.i.+ps of Europe were carrying their families to Greece, where they were to remain practically as hostages for the fulfillment of the Greek plans. The Russian influence was now strengthened by the service rendered in the deportation of the women and children, and the Greek influence by the maintenance of them in Greece.

The offers of A'ali Pasha were rejected without being weighed. A'ali used no arts; he offered bribes to no one; he showed what the Sultan was ready to offer and guarantee, and listened patiently to all that the consuls or the friends of the Cretans said, but it was too late.

Meanwhile fighting had ceased, for the Turks dared not go into the interior, and the Christians, having neither artillery nor organization, could not attack the fortified posts or the walled cities. The fighting men in the mountains were provided with food from Greece, and had lost the habits of industry which would have made peace profitable. Dissensions arose amongst the chiefs, and the best of them went back to Greece to urge the carrying of the war into the continental provinces of Turkey. The conclusion of the war by the proffered autonomy of Crete was utterly ignored by all who had any influence in bringing about a solution.

The Russian government now concluded to take the direction of matters.

Its minister at Athens required Comoundouros to fall in with a plan for a general movement in all the Balkan provinces under Russian direction, Russia beginning to fear a pan-h.e.l.lenic rising. To this Comoundouros gave a peremptory refusal; it was a Greek movement and should remain under Greek direction. The king of Greece had married a Russian princess, and during his stay at St. Petersburg had given himself up to the influence of the court. He was a weak, incapable young man, and the absolutist atmosphere suited his temperament perfectly, and the independence of Comoundouros did not. Under the requisition of the Russian minister, the king dismissed the ministry of Comoundouros. The Chamber refused its confidence to the new ministry, and the Russian minister then made the formal proposal to Comoundouros that if he would accept the programme of St. Petersburg he should come back to power. This proposal was also rejected, and the Chamber was dissolved, and in the new elections, by the most outrageous exercise of all the expedients that could be applied, Comoundouros and all his princ.i.p.al adherents were excluded, and a subservient Chamber elected, under the shadow of a ministry of affairs composed of men of no party and no capacity. The popular feeling ran so high that an insurrection was imminent, and was averted only by the formal promises of the ministry to carry on the war in Crete with renewed energy; but, at the same time, the means were withdrawn from the Cretan committee, who were the most capable and honest, as well as patriotic, people to be found in Athens. Never had the condition of affairs been so favorable for the realization of a thorough Greek policy. The Greeks on the Continent were ready and all the Turkish empire was in a ferment. Joseph Karam, prince of the Lebanon, was waiting at Athens on the plans of the Greek government to give the word for a rising in his country. The election having given the ministry the majority it desired, it gave place to Bulgaris, the Russian partisan, and colleagues nominated by the Russian minister for the distinct purpose of suppressing the Cretan insurrection.

Omar Pasha went home in disgrace in November, and left in charge Hussein Avni, who had a plan of paralyzing the insurrection by building lines of blockhouses across the island and isolating the bands. With much pain and expense a number of blockhouses were built and roads made in the western provinces; but, with the exception of another fruitless attack on Zurba, nothing really serious was attempted on either side in the island. The Turkish hospitals were full of fever and dysentery patients, and the insurgents harried all the country round about with perfect impunity. Most of the houses around us at Kalepa were occupied as hospitals, and the very air seemed infected by the number of sick; there were 3000 in and around Canea.

In this condition the year 1867 went out and the third year of the insurrection began. The Greek government sent supplies enough to keep the men under arms from starving, and the Turkish could send no more troops, so that there were only, after garrisoning the fortresses, about 5000 troops available for any operations. One of the European officers told me that the total force remaining out of eighty-two battalions, of which most had come to Crete full, was 17,000 men effective. A party of the consuls and officers of the men-of-war in the port made a picnic at Meskla in August, and witnessed a fight between the Cretans and Zurba and the Turks at Lakus, in the course of watching which I had a shot fired at me from the Turkish trenches, which came so near that the lead of the bullet striking a rock at my side spattered me from head to foot, and as we returned to Canea we were surrounded by the insurgents at Theriso, having lost our road in the dark, and most of the party taken prisoners. I and my veteran cava.s.s, Hadji Houssein, broke through with a guest,--Colonel Borthwick, an English officer in the Turkish service,--escaping down a breakneck hillside in the dark to save him and his two orderlies from capture by the insurgents, a trifling thing for us who were known as the friends of the Cretans, but a serious matter possibly for Turkish soldiers in fez and uniform. We made a reckless race down the mountain, leaving our horses and my photographic apparatus under the care of d.i.c.kson, and just succeeded in reaching the Turkish outpost in advance of a party of Cretans who followed the road down to cut us off. The post which we reached was under the command of a major, and Borthwick, who outranked him, ordered out a relieving party to go up the road and rescue the consuls, but the frightened major went up the road, out of sight, and waited there till we were gone, and then came back. He complained to Borthwick on receiving the order, "But you know that is dangerous,"--a fair expression of the feeling of the army as to their service at that time. They were too demoralized to make any impression on the insurgents.

Laura had recently been confined with our Bella, her third child, and our physician--a kindly and excellent Pole, attached to one of the hospitals--ordered us all out of the island as soon as she was able to travel, for, to use his expression, "he would not guarantee the life of one of us if we remained in the island two weeks longer." We had been living for over two years a life of the deprivations and discomfort of a state of siege. At one time I had been confined to the house for three months by a s...o...b..tic malady which prevented my walking, my children had been suffering from ophthalmia brought by the Egyptians, and Laura was in a state of extreme mental depression from her sympathy with the Cretans, while the absolute apathy prevailing in the island made me useless to either side. It was most gratifying to me that A'ali Pasha recognized my good faith and comprehension of the position, for not only did he, before he left the island, give me distinctly to understand that he considered me a friend, but told the Turkish minister in Athens, Photiades Pasha, that the government of Constantinople had been greatly deceived regarding me, and that if they had taken my advice in the beginning they would have avoided their difficulties. I left for Athens in September of 1868, convinced, as were the intelligent chiefs of the Cretans, that the Greek government intended to abandon the insurrection. I left the consulate in the hands of a new vice-consul--an Englishman long resident in the island,--my Greek vice-consul having died during the insurrection, and I had decided not to return at the end of my leave of absence; but I did not resign, as I knew that both the Turkish and my own government wanted me to do so.

The agitation in America on behalf of the Cretans had been pushed too energetically and under bad management, and had been followed by indifference, and the government would willingly have recalled me, but had no pretext for doing so, as I had always obeyed my orders. Nothing was done, however, to make it more possible for me to remain in the island. I had, in the second year of the war, determined to resign on account of the pecuniary difficulties of my position. We were living in a besieged town, with all necessaries of life at famine prices, and, since my brother's death, I had no fund to draw on for my excessive expenses. The Cretan committee in Boston, considering my resignation probably fatal to the insurrection, had promised that they would be responsible for any expenses above my salary, and on that understanding a friend in New York--Mr. Le Grand Lockwood, a wealthy banker--had offered to advance me any necessary sums. In accordance with this offer I had drawn on him for what I needed, the amount reaching, at the end of my residence in Crete, nearly three thousand dollars. Arrived at Athens I took a tiny house under Lycabettus, which was simply furnished for us by the local and princ.i.p.al Cretan committee.

I found the committee convinced that the government of Bulgaris had decided to stifle the insurrection in pursuance of the Russian plan, and it had sent in its resignation, which the ministry had not accepted. The minister of foreign affairs came to me at once to beg me to persuade them to withdraw the resignation, a.s.suring me that the ministry had no intention of abandoning the Cretans, but was even ready to increase the subsidy, and was preparing an expedition on a larger scale than any previous one to revive it, and that it would, to insure its efficiency, take direct charge of the organization of it.

On these a.s.surances, I prevailed on the committee to withdraw its resignation, which probably averted an insurrection in Athens. The provisional government in Crete meanwhile appealed to Coroneos to come back and take the general direction of the insurrection, and he consented on condition of being furnished the means required, which he estimated at 10,000. The ministry rejected the offer, alleging want of means, and immediately proceeded to organize an expedition which cost more than double the amount. This was put under the direction of the old Petropoulaki, a partisan of Bulgaris, and the chief who had refused to help Coroneos in the attack on Omar Pasha at Margaritas.

The volunteers were so openly enrolled and mustered, and all other preparations made with so little disguise, that I was convinced that the ministry intended by (what had hitherto been avoided) undisguised violation of international law to provoke the Turkish government to take action. The bands paraded the streets of Athens under the Cretan flag, pa.s.sing under the windows of the Turkish legation; the government gave them two guns from the a.r.s.enal, and they were openly embarked in two steamers, and landed in Crete without molestation by any of the Turkish men-of-war. They sent the guns back, and, when attacked after debarkation, separated into two divisions, neither of which offered any resistance, the smaller being attacked and cut to pieces at once, the larger taking refuge in Askypho, where, without waiting for an attack, they made immediate overtures of surrender, and did at last surrender unconditionally the island as well as their own force, without any communication with or authority from the recognized Cretan provisional government, but carrying with them the insurgents of the western provinces. There remained about five thousand insurgents in the eastern part of the island in good condition for resistance.

In compliance with what was evidently a preconcerted plan between the Turkish and Greek governments, the Englishman Hobart Pasha, the admiral in command of the blockading fleet, who had not offered to interfere with the expedition of Petropoulaki, the place of debarkation of which was publicly known, waylaid in Greek waters the Ennosis, the blockade runner of the committee, which had replaced the Arkadi, captured by the Turkish ironclads, and chased her into the port of Syra, which he then proceeded to close by anchoring across the entrance to the harbor. On the news of this reaching Athens, the Cretan committee sent to Syra a blockade runner, lying as a reserve at Peiraeus, with orders to torpedo the admiral, torpedoes having been prepared for other contingencies at the a.r.s.enal of Syra, and I accompanied the bearers of the order. A spy in the committee gave immediate information to the Turkish minister, and, as our steamer went out of Peiraeus, we saw the smoke arise from the chimneys of a French corvette, lying off the a.r.s.enal, and two or three hours after we had entered, the corvette arrived and sent off a boat to Hobart Pasha, who immediately weighed anchor, and went to sea. The Greek government took no action and made no protest against this violation of international law, first by attacking the Ennosis in Greek waters, and then by blocking the entrance to the port. Its conduct left no question as to its complicity with the action of Admiral Hobart.

CHAPTER XXIII

ATHENS

My first leave of absence from Crete had been for two months, afterward extended indefinitely on account of the health of the family, the extension being accompanied with the intimation that my salary would be suspended after a date indicated, unless I returned to Crete. The Cretan committee of Boston, to whom I had, according to our agreement, sent my claim for the excess of expenses over my income,--the excess amounting after the realization of all my private resources, sale of my curiosities, etc., to about $1500, for which I was indebted to Mr. Lockwood,--replied that the funds of the committee were exhausted, and there was nothing to meet my claim. As I had given my leisure in Crete to the practice of photography and was provided with everything necessary to correct architectural work, I set about photographing the ruins of Athens, which I found had never been treated intelligently by the local photographers, and from the sale of the photographs I realized what sufficed, with a sum of 1200 francs accorded us by the Athens Cretan committee from the remainder of the funds in hand when the insurrection collapsed, to meet immediate contingencies. I was in hope that the new cabinet, in which I had a warm personal friend in Judge h.o.a.r, General Grant's attorney-general, would a.s.sign me another post, knowing that the Turkish government was so bitterly opposed to my remaining in Crete; but the new Secretary of State, Hamilton Fish, was a friend of General King, my discomfited superior at Rome, and he had persistently urged my dismissal as demanded by the Sultan, though, owing to h.o.a.r's opposition in the cabinet this had not been accorded. But I was never forgiven by the friends of King, and one day, when Judge h.o.a.r was absent from a cabinet meeting, Fish succeeded in getting my successor at Crete appointed, and though the judge made an indignant remonstrance at the next meeting, it was too late to help us, for Fish obstinately opposed my having any other appointment, and, as he controlled all nominations to consular posts, it was impossible for the judge to effect anything.

My troubles came to a crisis in the sudden death of my wife. The anxiety and mental distress of our Cretan life, and her pa.s.sionate sympathy with the suffering Cretans, even more than our privations and personal danger, had long been producing their effect on her mind, and the weaning of the baby precipitated the change into a profound melancholy, which became insanity accompanied by religious delusions from which she sought refuge in a voluntary death. She was given a public funeral, and the government sent a caisson to carry the coffin to the grave, but the Cretans claimed the right to take charge of it, and the coffin was carried to the cemetery on the shoulders of the oldest chiefs. The Cretan women looked on her as their best friend, and always spoke of her after her death as "the Blessed "--their form of canonization, for even in Athens they had been her chief care. The quiet but indomitable courage with which she faced danger in Crete, lest they should be involved in the panic which prevailed all around us, was as remarkable as the humility with which she repelled all acknowledgment of any merit on her part. She indulged in no sentiment, had no poetic prepossession concerning the people she protected and worked for, but the dominant sense of duty carried her through all difficulties. She never gave a thought to personal danger, and though a fragile creature, not five feet high, she was capable of cowing the most brutal of the barbarians who were gathered around us at Khalepa, and, whether to keep the consulate for me while I was away, or to navigate the yacht to meet me on my return from my visits to Greece, nothing made her hesitate to do what she thought her duty. In the three years of almost breaking strain of our residence in the midst of the anarchy of the insurrection, she had only the few days' relief from anxiety of her stay in Syra, while waiting the arrival of the Kestrel, but in all that time I never saw her make the least display of trepidation or anxiety, until the dispatch came from Secretary Washburn to tell us that the salary would be stopped.

I was asked then, as the reader may ask now, why I did not take her away when I found that she was failing. I had not the means to pay my pa.s.sage to any other country. I was myself nearly prostrated mentally and physically, and unfit for anything but my photography. I was in debt so deeply that I could not honestly borrow, and my brother was dead. The American government pays no traveling expenses for its consuls, and I had not an article that I could sell for a dollar, for the furniture of the little house we lived in had been provided by the Cretan committee. The Greek government was hostile to me until Laura's death stirred the public feeling so profoundly, but even then the king was bitterly opposed to me. I was physically and financially a wreck on a foreign strand, with neither hope nor the prospect of relief.

I struggled along as best I could, Mrs. d.i.c.kson taking charge of my children, and I made my home with the d.i.c.ksons.

In June I had to go back to Crete to make consignment of the consulate to my successor. I found the island materially as I had left it, but almost deserted and quite desolate, and the local administration in the hands of the spies and the traitors of the insurrection; all the brave men in exile and the gloom of death over everything; villages still unrebuilt, and the only sign of activity the building in the most accessible districts of military roads and blockhouses. As my successor delayed, I, to pa.s.s the time, went to Omalos to carry out the ancient plan which could no longer be postponed if it was to be carried out, for I never intended to see Crete again. The new governor-general--Mehmet Ali, the Prussian (in subsequent years murdered in Albania)--was an amiable, just, and intelligent man, who would have saved the position if he had been there in the beginning, but now there was nothing to be done. When he learned that I intended to go to Omalos he decided, with a more friendly impulse than any governor of Crete had ever shown towards me, to join me there and make the visit pleasant for me. He preceded me, in fact, and I found the posts all warned to show me the customary honors, and when I reached the plain I found his tent ready to entertain me. The most sumptuous dinner his resources afforded was served in his audience tent; we had a grand acrobatic and dramatic entertainment of the soldiers and a torchlight _retraite_, and he gave me rugs to cover me, without which I must have suffered severely, for, though in June, it was bitterly cold at Omalos, and I had brought only one rug to sleep on. We returned together next day after I had visited the great ravine of Agios Rumeli, the most magnificent gorge I have ever seen, never taken from the Cretans by an enemy until this betrayal; and, as we went back, we discussed the condition of the island. I told him freely what I thought of the situation, and he so far agreed with me that he begged me to go to Constantinople and lay my ideas before A'ali Pasha, promising to support them.

On my return to Athens I raised money enough to get a return ticket to the Turkish capital, and had an immediate audience of the grand vizier, to whom I stated frankly, and without in the least disguising the faults committed by his government, the condition of the island as I saw it, and the remedies necessary for the restoration of its prosperity. He asked me to give him a written memorandum of my views, which I did, and he then asked me to stay in Constantinople until he could send a commission to Crete and get a report from it. I replied that I had not the means to stay so long, the time he indicated being several weeks, and he offered to pay my expenses liberally if I would stay. I went to the office of the "Levant Herald" to ask for work.

They knew me well enough there, for I had been their correspondent from Crete, and the journal had once been fined 100 for one of my letters, and once confiscated for another. On what I earned I lived for the time I had to wait for the report of the commission.

When the report came I was summoned to the grand vizier to receive my reply. A'ali Pasha said that he had found that my statements of the condition of things in the island were correct, and he approved the remedies I proposed; would I go out to Crete with full powers to carry out the measures I recommended, the chief of which was an amnesty for such of the exiles as, knowing them personally, I could trust to carry out my dispositions? He could not give me an official position under the Turkish government, having been reputed so long as an enemy; but a semi-official position for the definite purpose of the pacification he was prepared to offer me with an adequate salary and appointments, and _carte blanche_ for the pardon of whomever I saw fit to name. On one condition, I replied, I would accept the appointment, this being that the persons I pardoned and recalled to the island should also be guaranteed from arrest and molestation on civil process for acts committed in the course of the military operations, such as the taking of cattle or sheep for the subsistence of the bands, but not comprehending criminal acts. On this condition we came to a final difference, as A'ali said that by the Turkish law the government became pecuniarily responsible for all such damages by condoning the acts of the offenders, and that they were not prepared to agree to.

But it was impossible for me to enter into an agreement to invite a chief to the island with his pardon, under my full powers, and then see him thrown into prison by civil process for acts which the war had made necessary, as had already happened in several cases, as it impugned my good faith and made the pardon null and void, as much as if the offense charged were the rebellion. A'ali's confidence and the prospect of doing good to my Cretan friends touched me profoundly, and in my dest.i.tute condition the salary of a Turkish official was a heavy inducement, but I had to insist on the condition which divided us, and I withdrew.

A'ali asked me to come to the treasury and receive the compensation for my time spent in waiting on his inquiries, but the messenger carrying the money missed or evaded the appointment, or I mistook it; for, after waiting some time, I had to go back empty-handed, and after waiting two or three days longer to hear of the money, with an unjustifiable suspicion of A'ali's good faith, I took boat again for Athens, more dest.i.tute than I had come. I had the additional pain of telling the chiefs, on whose behalf I had pleaded, that there was no hope of an amnesty. I shall never forget the despair in the face of old Costa Veloudaki, the chief of the Rhizo district, when I told him of my failure. Tall and straight under his seventy odd years, sickened with a terrible nostalgia away from his mountain home, he listened mute and turned away without a word, bowed with grief and too much moved to risk speaking lest tears should shame him. I had known the old man from the beginning of the troubles, for he was the chief of the mountain country above Canea, and had been the spokesman of the committee when they came to see the consuls,--a n.o.ble, honest, and truly patriotic man, and a hero of all the movements since 1827. In one of the first battles, fought in view of my house, his son had been killed, and, taking his hand as he lay on the ground they had successfully defended, he thanked G.o.d his son had been worthy to die for Crete. It was, for me, the hard ending of a tragedy in which I had had my part, serious enough to identify myself with my island friends, and I can remember this episode of my life with the consciousness that those who suffered more than I did acknowledged that I had been a true friend and a prudent counselor from the beginning.

On my return to Athens I found Russie limping from the effects of a heavy fall he had had during my absence, and to which no attention had been paid, though it gave him continual pain. I called in the leading Greek physician, who, on examination, p.r.o.nounced it rheumatism, and prescribed exercise and walks. I took the child on all the excursions I made, to Marathon and other of the local points of interest, for he was a great reader, and interested in Greek history and archeology already, pa.s.sing most of his time with me in my work on the Acropolis.

He limped painfully over all the sites we visited, and presently we accepted an invitation to Aegina, to the home of the Tricoupis, the parents of the well-known premier of later years. We spent some days there, fis.h.i.+ng and exploring and photographing the ruins, but Mrs.

Tricoupi recognized in Russie's lameness the beginning of hip disease, and, returning to Athens, I had a council on him, when it was placed beyond doubt that that deadly disease was established, aided largely by the false diagnosis that subst.i.tuted severe exercise for the absolute quiet which the malady required. He was at once put in plaster bandages and we were ordered home. Home! But how? I had not money enough to pay a single pa.s.sage even to England, and had no friends from whom I could ask the means to get home. In despair I went to the Turkish minister--Photiades Pasha--and told him of the promise of A'ali Pasha to pay me for my time and expenses while waiting at Constantinople, asking him to remind the pasha that I had not been paid, as he probably supposed, possibly through the dishonesty of the messenger. A'ali made inquiry, and, finding it to be the case, sent me, through Photiades, a hundred Turkish pounds, with which I was enabled to pay all local debts and reach London, more grateful to the Turkish sense of justice than to that of my own government.

It only wanted for the diversity of my career that I should have served a term as a demi-official of the Turkish government I had served to undermine. For A'ali Pasha I retain the respect due to the most remarkable ability, honesty, and patriotism combined I have ever known in a man in his position, a most difficult one, surrounded by corruption, venality, and treason as probably the ruler of no other state has been in our day. He was free from prejudice, fanaticism, and political pa.s.sion, and had he been seconded by his colleagues and administrators, as he should have been, I am convinced that he might have restored the prosperity of his country. But, so far as I know, he stood alone in the government. He was a just and impartial minister where ministers are notoriously unjust, corrupt, and partisan, and, of my past failures, I regret none so much as that I was unable to cooperate with him in restoring peace to Crete.

At Paris I had the advice of a specialist in hip disease for Russie, and the plaster bandage was replaced by a wire envelope, which fitted the entire body and which made his transfer from vehicle to vehicle without any strain a matter of comparative ease. But the poor child suffered the inevitable acute pains of active hip disease before anchylosis takes place, and he wasted visibly from the incessant pain.

He had been, when stricken in his seventh year, a boy of precocious strength and activity, a model of health and personal beauty, whom pa.s.sersby in the streets stopped to look at, so that from the common people one often heard an exclamation of admiration, as from our English fellow pa.s.sengers between Calais and Dover, who gathered round him as he lay in his wire cradle with murmurs of admiration, for the pallor which had begun to set in only made his beauty more refined and his color a more transparent rose and white. In London we were warmly received by the Greeks who had been prominent in supporting the insurrection in Crete, and a testimonial was proposed for me of a piece of plate, for which 225 were subscribed, which as testimonial I declined to accept, but did accept on account of the debt which the Cretan committee of Boston owed me. Here I met with great kindness, especially from the Greek consul-general, Mr. Spartali, and I then made the acquaintance of his daughter, who, two years later, became my wife. The Rossettis, especially Christina, who had known Laura and Russie when the latter was a boy of two, were most thoughtful and kind, and I had some wheels put to Russie's cage, so that his pa.s.sion for seeing, which the incessant pain he was in never abated, could be indulged to a certain extent. Miss Rossetti went with us to the Zoological Gardens to satisfy his pa.s.sion for natural history, and so far as kindness could compensate for his helplessness he lacked nothing. We sailed for New York and were met at landing by my brother Charles, who told me of the death of our mother, two weeks before. Her last wish had been for my coming, and to be able to embrace our little Lisa, her namesake. I had not seen her for seven years.

I had made preparations while in London, for the publication of a volume of photographs of the Acropolis of Athens, and, when I had left the children with their mother's parents, I returned to London for a few weeks, to superintend the production of it. The American medical man called in to treat Russie proved as great a quack as the Greek, and his case grew worse. Finally he was sent to the hospital, from which he was, after a long treatment, sent back as incurable, and I was told that probably all I could do for him henceforward was to make death as easy as it might be.

The Acropolis book, published privately, cleared for me about $1000.

Moreover, difficulties had arisen over the will of my brother, with which none of the parties interested were contented, and so, by a compromise, the family received a part, of which, after the deduction of my drafts from Rome, accepted before his death, there came to me $500. Hence I was, after my straits, at comparative ease for the moment. One of the most generous friends my vagabond past had given me, the late J.M. Forbes of Boston, gave me a commission for a landscape, and I returned to my painting, living in a tent in the Glen of the White Mountains near to the subject chosen. Here I received a visit from Aga.s.siz, and here we had our last meeting and conversation on nature and art. But the long abstention from painting had left me half paralyzed--the hand had always been too far behind the theory. I now began to question if I had any vocation that way, and, with the pa.s.sing of the summer, I went back to literature and found a place on the old "Scribner's Monthly," now "The Century," under Dr. Holland, the most friendly of chiefs, and there I had as colleague Mr. Gilder, the present editor of the magazine. The greatest mistake, from the business point of view, I have ever made was in leaving the collaboration with Dr. Holland.

CHAPTER XXIV

ROSSETTI AND HIS FRIENDS

Of a life so desultory, fragmentary rather, it is useless to keep the chronology. At no period of it have I been able to direct it with primary reference to pecuniary considerations, nor have I ever succeeded in anything I undertook with primary reference to pecuniary return. My impulses, erratic or otherwise, have always been too strong for a coherent and well subordinated career, and the aimlessness of my early life, favored by the indulgence of my brother and the fondness of my mother, might well account for a life without a practical aim or gain. It is too near its end for regrets or reparation--so that if it ends well it will be well, but it is hardly fitted for systematic record.

During the two years between my leaving Crete and Athens and my second marriage I spent the larger part of my life in London, engaged in literary pursuits and in fugitive work. I prepared the history of the Cretan insurrection, but the dissolution of the publis.h.i.+ng company which undertook it left the actual publication to Henry Holt & Co. in 1874. All interest in the subject having long lapsed, it was hardly noticed, and was as a publication a complete failure, but I sent copies of it to some English friends who were interested in Greek affairs, and amongst others to Professor Max Muller, who made an extended review of it for the "Times," which had on my subsequent career an important influence. During the time I spent in England I naturally saw a great deal of the Rossettis, especially of Dante, with whom I became intimate. He lived in Cheyne Walk, and I in Percy Street near by, so that there were few days of which a part was not spent with him. I had made in America, about 1856 or 1857, the acquaintance of Mme. Bodichon, an Englishwoman married to a French physician, who is equally well known by her maiden name, Barbara Leigh-Smith, a landscape painter of remarkable force, and one of the most delightful and remarkable Englishwomen I have ever been privileged to know. When I knew her in America, she had taken an interest in my painting, which she regarded as promising a successful career, and when I came to England, I renewed the acquaintance. As the spring came on, she offered me for a few weeks her house at Robertsbridge, a charming cottage in the midst of woodland, and with her consent I asked Rossetti to share it with me.

Rossetti was then in the beginning of the morbid attacks which some time later destroyed his health completely. He was sleepless, excitable, and possessed by the monomania of persecution. His family had tried to induce him to go away for a change, but the morbid condition made him unwilling to do so, and he never left his house until late in the evening, under the prepossession of being watched by enemies. I recommended him to try chloral, then a nearly new remedy which I had used by prescription with excellent effect for my own sleeplessness, and which I always carried with me. I gave him twenty grains dissolved in water to be taken at three doses, but, as he forgot it on the first two nights, he took the whole on the third, and complained to me the next day that it made him sleep stupidly for a few hours, and then made him so wakeful that he was worse than without it, so that he refused to make any further experiment with it, nor did he at that time, and as long as we remained in touch with each other, venture another trial of it. At a subsequent time, taking it on the prescription of a physician, he fell into the habit of using it to his great injury, from the want of self-control in the employment of it.

At the time I am writing of, I succeeded in getting him away from London to stay for a long visit at Robertsbridge, where the quiet and long daily walks in the woodland, a simple life and freedom from all causes of excitement, rapidly brought him back to his natural condition, and he resumed work, doing some of his best drawings there, and completing his poems for publication. Indeed, several of the poems in his first volume were written there. Sleep returned, and health, with cessation of all the morbid symptoms, the result of overwork and night work, for he used at Cheyne Walk to begin painting in the afternoon, and, lighting a huge gasalier on a standard near his easel, keep at his drawing far into the night, sleeping late the next day. At Robertsbridge he returned to natural habits, having no gas and falling in with my hours perforce, as otherwise he had no company.

And Rossetti was one of the men most dependent on companions.h.i.+p I have ever known. When not at work he needed some one to talk with, and in our long walks he unfolded his life to me as he probably never did to any other man, for he had a frank egotism which made him see everything and everybody purely in their relation to him. And in these circ.u.mstances he and I were, after a manner, the only people in our world. As he himself said, "In this Suss.e.x desert one tells all his secrets," and I doubt if even in his own family he ever threw off reserve so completely as with me in the solitude of Robertsbridge, where he was very happy and very well.

Rossetti's was one of the most fascinating characters I ever knew, open and expansive, and, when well, he had a vein of most delightful talk of the things which interested him, mostly those which pertained to art and poetry, the circle of his friends and his and their poetry and painting. To him, art was the dominant interest of existence, not only of his own, but of existence _per se_, and he tolerated nothing that sacrificed it to material or purely intellectual subjects. I remember his indignation at the death of Mrs. Wells, the wife of the Royal Academician, herself a talented painter, who died in childbed, "a great artist sacrificed to bringing more kids into the world, as if there were not other women just fit for that!" he exclaimed; and when Regnault was killed in the sortie from Paris, he burst out in an angry protest at this throwing away valuable lives like Regnault's in a stupid war. The artist was to him the _ultima ratio_ of humanity, and he used to say frankly that artists had nothing to do with morality, and practically, but in a gentle and benevolent way, he made that the guiding principle of his conduct. Whatever was to his hand was made for his use, and when we went into the house at Robertsbridge he at once took the place of master of the house, as if he had invited me, rather than the converse, going through the rooms to select, and saying, "I will take this," of those which suited him best, and "You may have that" of those he had no fancy for.