Chapter X: Part 10

This morning I was called at ten minutes to four; got some café-au-lait and went down to Piræus, and embarked on a Greek steamer, which at six started for Kalamaki, a little landing-place on the Isthmus, whence the road runs over, four miles long, to New Corinth. As I started, on the road to Piræus, the light of sunrise (about 5.20) came over Lycabettus, the sun actually rising over Hymettus with the Parthenon between. People were then in the fields. Acrocorinthus was visible pretty nearly all the way, and latterly the mountains of Phocis, clouded, over the low Isthmus; Megara just beyond, and Salamis very noticeable. Old Corinth, or New Corinth the elder, nearly on the site of the antique, was wholly destroyed by earthquake in 1857. To New Corinth, which is on the sea-side of the Gulf of Corinth, the passengers are taken by omnibus and cart, and embark for Patras. At Kalamaki I mounted a horse with a Greek saddle, the most dreadful invention in the world, which made it hopeless to reach Corinth and return before the steamer returned to Athens; however, we went on as well as the saddle allowed, some way up towards Acrocorinthus, a wild country, with a great deal of low pine about, and with old quarries, and saw from the higher part[18] the Gulf of Corinth stretching away to the mountains of Phocis, heavily clouded, to the northern side of it. When we got back it was just beginning to rain, and it has rained hard ever since. I was fain to go into the cabin, where I found however a resource in a Greek army doctor (in full uniform, I only found out that he was a doctor afterwards). He spoke French well enough. This rain is said to be very unusual. The morning from five o’clock was delightful. Kalamaki is just at the north-east extremity of the low level of the Isthmus, out of which Acrocorinthus rises, almost by itself, and which is filled up, north and south, as the space widens, by high mountains.

May 2.

The town is full of people buying and selling for πάσχα, _e.g._ lambs; there are flocks all about, on the Areopagus, and also the outskirts. Wax candles also, beside the usual marketings.

May 4.

Yesterday was Friday, in Greek παρασκυή, and yesterday in particular, Good Friday, ἡ μεγάλη παρασκευή, a great fast, and everybody buying his lamb for the Pascha of Sunday.

On Thursday I went up Pentelicus; left this at eight, got up by twelve. The view was clouded to the west and north-west, but Eubœa and the Euripus and Marathon lay like a map below, also South Attica, with Andros, Tenos, Ceos, and over Eubœa, less distinct, Scyros. The upper slopes of the mountain are clad with arbutus chiefly, just going out of flower. There are marble quarries for a great part of the way up, and one with a great grotto or cave richly adorned with the common English maiden-hair, and with a little of the true Capillus veneris.

Coming down I stopped to lunch beside the monastery of the Pan-agia; bread and cheese and oranges, by a beautiful gushing water in a sort of cup out of a wall, tall white poplars overhead, olives, and also large dwarf oaks (fifteen feet high or more), the first I have seen. I looked into the monastery court, in the middle of which is a huge bay-tree. Mr. Psyllis, a Greek gentleman, a senator, whom Mr. Finlay had introduced me to, happened to be there; he was spending his holiday there with some of his family, so he talked to me, and presently gave me coffee, which Miss Victoria, his daughter, presented on a tray to us, retiring after so doing. Then he took me up a little outside staircase to a little set of rooms, and presented me to his relation, the abbot or ἡγούμενος, Cyrillus Δελγέριος, a fine-looking elderly man, who lives there in two small rooms; one a sort of reception-room, where sometimes the king and queen come, and therefore adorned with their pictures (two common engravings); the other his bedroom and sitting-room, where he had a little wood fire. He also asked me to take coffee, so presently his domestic made it at this fire, and presented it, with that well-known Turkish sweetmeat, but made at Syra, and much nicer, and with a glass of water. You take first sweetmeat; secondly, coffee; thirdly, water. The monastery is very rich.

Last night (May 3) was a great night. The people at eight crowd to the churches. In every church a bier is laid out with a great cloth over it, and a figure or representation (sometimes a little embroidered map) of the Crucifixion. The people all come in (in the chief church between files of soldiers) and kiss the figure, and then perhaps go out. About half-past nine the priests take up the bier and carry it out, and the people follow after with lighted candles (stéariques), and go all about the streets. The chief procession had a band of military music at the head, and lots of soldiers, then some banners and crosses, and then, a little way behind, the priests and the bier. All the streets are filled with the people carrying lighted stéariques, and blue and red lights were let off.

To-day is pretty quiet, only they are still buying lambs, which are all to be killed, poor things, this evening.

Sunday, May 5.

The paschal lambs were very generally sacrificed in the course of yesterday afternoon. About 4 P.M. I met their skins walking about on the backs of sundry collectors of lambskins here, as of hareskins with you, and on the doors of the houses one might see here and there in the byeways a skin ready for delivery.

In the afternoon I went up to the Parthenon; the effect of interval and depth in the columniation is far greater than in any picture or imitation; then out on a road towards Phalerum with very good views of the Parthenon. Coming back I met the lambskins on the backs of skin-collectors, and hanging at doors, in the byeways by the Lantern of Demosthenes.

I was tired and a little out of sorts at night, and so did not sit up to see the hullabaloo at 12 P.M., when the king and queen, after attending divine service, come out upon a platform and show themselves, in honour of the great event, and in token that ὁ Χριστὸς ἀνέστη. This morning I was disturbed by worse than heathen Greeks howling away under my window in a yard, and looking forth beheld four paschal lambs over the embers, stuck through with poles, and the heathen turning them, and singing strange words, among which I thought I could occasionally detect ‘Yesous.’

Wednesday, May 8.

The weather continues uncertain. Yesterday I went in a boat from Piræus out into Salamis Bay, past Psyttalea, and then back and round the whole headland of Piræus, to see the little harbour on the other side, and the walls, of which very nearly all the circuit can be traced by blocks still remaining. The two harbours, Munychia and Zea, are pretty little coves, both very small, Munychia extremely so, with jetties of stone closing its mouth; it is shallow and deserted. The rain came on, so I came up by omnibus to the ἄστι, where the dances that should have been, round the Temple of Theseus, were much interrupted.

Thursday, May 9.

In the afternoon, yesterday, I went to the Acropolis from three to six, and looked at the sculptures on the left hand as you go in. Note the minute comparative size of the Erechtheum, which is also a good deal lower in site than the Parthenon. I suppose the figures are perhaps seven feet high. This small size shows very well from the terrace under Lycabettus, where you see both.

I and two other gentlemen have agreed to go to Nauplia by steamer on the 12th, and to ride thence to Corinth, returning by steamer from the Isthmus on the 15th. The weather is now beautiful, and seems to promise favourably. New snow seems to have fallen on some of the hills near the Isthmus. We are to go with Spiro Adamopulos, a well-known trustworthy guide.

Pray can you guess what a φεσοπωλεῖον is, or a καπνοπωλεῖον or finally, a πνενματοπωλεῖον? there are a great many in Athens, but there are even more καφφενεῖα. You know of course a ὑποδηματάποιος, but what is a ῥαπτής? and should you know an omnibus as a λεωφορεῖον?

Saturday, May 11.

I dined yesterday at the Hills’, at three, meeting Miss Bremer, who has been living here three years. She is a little shrunk old lady, very quiet. In the evening I went to a mixed soirée, consisting chiefly of Greeks, from nine to near twelve; music, with two professionals, Italians. I talked a little to Miss Bremer, and to a Mr. and Mrs. and Miss Dragoumi. Mrs. and Miss Dragoumi had come with us in the boat: he conducts a Greek review. The music was good, I think; they get pianos from Vienna, and have some good masters. They say the Greek girls marry at seventeen; they learn French and music very well. Everybody learns French; a good many, English, to read; everybody, old Greek, to read a little.

Thursday, May 16.

I have got back, a little tired, but no worse. We had a beautiful sail by steamer to Nauplia on Sunday; it is a filthy place, and we left it gladly at six on Monday, on horseback; saw the ruins of Tiryns, Τίρυνθά τε τειχιόεσσαν, and stopped half an hour at Argos, after a ride of seven miles. It was by this time nine o’clock, and very hot; and we didn’t go up the Acropolis, but rode off, and in about an hour and a half reached our halting-place below Mycenæ, remains of walls on some bare rocky ground a mile above being visible as we rode up. We lunched under a tree, almost the only tree visible, and then went up, riding. The Tomb,[19] or Treasury, is _extremely_ remarkable, so also are the other ruins, the Gate and the Wall. Thence back by another course to the road, and shortly into a pass, the τρητός, which became wooded, with shrubs, and had a pleasant stream. So into a fine upland among hills, then down into an open valley, or plain among hills, where we saw the three columns of Nemea; then down to them, and back over the hill-side, lower down to our former line, and so down a water-course to another little plain, to four houses among some willows--one a small barrack for some ten soldiers; one a little cook and coffee shop; one, I suppose, a little farm, and a sort of granary place behind the shop, with a room fitted up over one part of the granary for strangers. Here we lodged, and next day went on to Corinth; but here rain came on, and we saw no view. We slept at Kalamaki on the east side of the Isthmus, and came on yesterday. I go to-day to Constantinople, and shall return on the 31st.

_To the same._

Constantinople: Sunday, May 19, 10 A.M.

We arrived here this morning at half-past four, and landed between six and seven; it was raining all the time, so that the far-famed first view was nil for us. But our voyage otherwise was prosperous, fair and fine all the way; the moon and stars bright over the isles of Marmora when we went to bed last night.

The steamer only left Piræus at 3 P.M. on Friday. We passed under Cape Colonna, and saw the temple very well about 5.30 P.M.; passed then through the strait between the southern point of Eubœa and the northern point of Andros: the former is known as Capo d’Oro, _i.e._ Caphareus, where Minerva drowned Ajax the Lesser. Night fell as we left Eubœa; and when I came on deck at 6.30 A.M. yesterday, we had Lesbos, a long range of mountains, on the immediate right; and the coast of Asia, south of the Troad, on the right bow. An aged modern Greek pointed out to me a small thing on the horizon, almost straight ahead, a little to the left of our course, which he said was Tenetho, ‘bello paese, buon vino, buon’ e forte.’ Some little after we passed it, and several French savans began to quote, ‘Est in conspectu,’ rather reminding one of ‘As in præsenti.’ We went in between Tenedos or Tenetho (a desert-looking island still, but with one little corner occupied by a little town, with a fort and three minarets) and the Troad, and at this crisis were summoned to breakfast, but recovered (most of us) the deck in time to see the actual plain of Troy, and the entrance of the Dardanelles. There should have appeared three tumuli at the turn, but I could not well make them out. The embouchure of the Simois, just above the town, lets you look up into the plain, backed, many miles off, by Mount Ida.

And so up the Dardanelles, which were crowded with vessels taking advantage of the south wind, and so to Dardanelles (the Turkish town so called), where we stop, to obtain permission to go on. Here are the castles and the consuls, and H.M.S. ‘Melpomene,’ having just, as I now learn, brought Lord Dufferin from Beyrout; and one hears that the Sultan is very ill and likely to die, which on arriving here one learns is all a lie. Then past Sestos and Abydos, and the strait gradually widens till at Gallipoli, where the French and English armies encamped, it opens into the Sea of Marmora. Lampsacus is on the right, a little before Gallipoli on the left. Ægospotami I couldn’t quite make out. The Sea of Marmora, also, was full of shipping, most in full sail for Constantinople, some also beating down, outward bound.

May 20.

Another wet day! Was there ever such a disaster? We are to have the firman to see St. Sophia on Wednesday; to-morrow we are to do the walls; Thursday, Scutari; Friday, Sweet-Waters; Saturday, the Bosphorus. But the place is one requiring blue sky and bright sun, and there is no promise of either. The hotel is costly, but comfortable in its way, if one only had not to stay in it altogether.

May 21, 6.30 P.M.

We waited because of heavy clouds this morning for more than an hour, and then mounted our horses, and set out just in time for a heavy shower, but before getting quite wet we were across the bridge of boats, and under shelter in the bazaar, through whose covered arcades we paced on horseback, between silks and shawls, &c., with great imperturbability. When we got to the end, the shower was over, and passing the Mosque of Sultan Bajazet, and under the Seraskierat tower, we went right ahead through strange Turkish lanes with pavements worse than execrable, and in about two hours from starting reached the ancient citadel of the Seven Towers, still all entire. There, under some trees, we dismounted, and with some trouble got admittance into the court, full of trees and shrubs of natural growth. The trees are here more northern than in Greece--ashes, a sort of lime, planes not abundant, wild figs, and the cypresses, which I suppose are almost all planted; the cemeteries, of course, are perfect forests of them. So up to the parapet, and up a tower for the view; the Sea of Marmora here, the city there--a very fine view; then out and along the outside of the ancient walls, for a long way, to a café at the Adrianople gate; then inside to Belisarius’s castle, and on foot through a house full of Jews (seven or eight girls pulling at us for baksheesh) to a parapet, for another view of the Golden Horn. Thence through a horrible Jews’ quarter, and a not much better Greek quarter, across to the Patriarchal Church, and so along the Golden Horn shore, but separated from it by houses, to our former bridge, and so across to Pera and home, 11 A.M. to 6 P.M.

May 23.

Yesterday, with some rain and some fatigue, we did the Seraglio (French engravings and French goût), Kiosk of Amurath II. (better), St. Irene, St. Sophia, the Mosque of Ahmed (all white, except some blue China tiles, beautiful courtyard and fountains), the Hippodrome, and a Tomb of Sultan Mahmoud--all this under the protection of the firman, and in a party of nearly twenty strangers. Sultan Mahmoud’s is a sort of conservatory tomb--large windows all round, with white curtains, light and airy, and high-domed roof. The Sultan is buried there, with his wife, sister, and four daughters.

The Seraglio was a good deal below one’s expectations; St. Sophia certainly beyond mine. The amplitude of the dome is very impressive; it is a sort of Pantheon exalted into a Monotheon. Michael Angelo ought to have seen it.

How many times in the course of the day’s work we had to pull off boots and shoes and put on slippers, I can’t dare to say. The weather is still unsettled. The Bithynian Olympus is one long range of snow-covered Alp. Till yesterday we had a fire in the sitting-room, and yesterday we missed it. I have found great solace from a terrace on the roof, which gives a tolerable view of the Strait, and the Seraglio point, and Scutari, and the hills across the end of the Sea of Marmora, and the snowy Olympus overtopping them.

May 24, 10 A.M.

This, you know, is the Mahometan Sunday, and the Sultan goes to mosque, and we are to go and stare at him on his way. Mosque is at twelve o’clock, and we start at eleven.

I dined yesterday with Dr. Beretta, who is a most amiable kind man, but first I went with him to see Elizabeth Kondaxaky, the Cretan sibyl, who prophesies, fortunately in English, as well as Greek, and other tongues, whereof she has the gift. I have not exactly summed up the result of her prophecies, but she seems to be for England and Turkey--the latter as ‘a necessary evil,’ and the former as the natural protector of necessary evils.

May 26.

On Friday we went to see the Sultan go to mosque, which he did in his caïque of twenty oars or more. We were received into the house of Halil Bey, a profane Frank-mannered Turk, with windows looking, some upon the Bosphorus, where the caïque passed by, and some upon the court of the mosque, where the Sultan disembarked, so we saw the poor creature admirably; he looks quite ‘the sick man.’ When he got on shore, a sort of chant was set up, interpreted to us, as ‘O Sultan! trust not in yourself; there is God above, who is greater than you,’ which was not saying very much.

Then I left my companions and went back to the hotel, and then over to Scutari with Dr. Pincoff, and saw all Scutari, Barrack and General Hospitals, and F. N.’s own tower, and rooms, and everything, of which you shall hear when I return.

We went by steamer up the Bosphorus, to Buyukdere, and up a hill to see the Black Sea.

Sunday, 5 P.M.

We have been to see the dancing dervishes, really not an unedifying spectacle in the way of a divine service. ‘O God, what a wonderful Creator Thou art! Thou hast made so many thousand human beings, black and white; and whom Thou pleasest, black or white, Thou canst raise to be distinguished.’ To such words and other such, chanted with musical instruments accompanying, twenty men, in presence of their chief, in solemn silence, go twirling about with extended arms and spinning long petticoats. ‘O God, what a wonderful Creator Thou art!’ &c., &c. Adieu.

_To C. E. Norton, Esq._

London: July 4, 1861.

On coming back from abroad ten days ago I received two letters from you, one of which I had received by copy from my wife at Athens. Many thanks for them; they were very interesting, and I hope you will not be discouraged by my brief acknowledgments from writing further. I am still invalided, and am to go abroad again the day after to-morrow. I have achieved a good deal already, having seen Athens and Constantinople. I was half tempted to come over to pay you the visit you so kindly proposed, but I should have had to return early in September, and I hope some year to spend a September on your side. I have just made a call on a former acquaintance in America, Miss E. H., of Concord, who brought me a letter from Emerson moreover. She tells me that in New England, she believes, people do not expect that the Southern States will ever be brought back into the Union, and that it is not the object simply to make them return; it being indeed hardly possible that the States, North and South, should ever again live together in union, but that the war is rather in vindication of the North and its rights, which have been trampled upon by the South. Is this true, in your judgment? Certainly it does seem hardly conceivable that South Carolina should ever return. On what terms then would the North be willing to make peace, and what conditions would it require _in limine_ before entering upon the question of separation?

As for the feeling here, you must always expect statesmen to be cold in their language, and the newspapers impertinent and often brutal. Beyond this, I think people here had been led to suppose at the outset that the Northern feeling was strong against civil war (and so it was, I suppose), and that the principle of separation was conceded; the indignation being merely at the mode adopted for obtaining it. And the attack on Fort Sumter, which caused so sudden a revulsion of feeling with you, was naturally attended with no such change here. But coexisting with all this, I believe there is a great amount of strong feeling in favour of the North.

Technically we are wrong, I suppose, and as a matter of feeling, we are guilty of an outrage in recognising the South as a belligerent power, but as a matter of convenience between your Government and ours, I suppose the thing is best as it is.

Miss H. will take to Emerson four photographs of Rowse’s picture of me; one for you: it may be better than nothing.

My nervous energy is pretty well spent for to-day, so I must come to a stop. I have leave till November, and by that time I hope I shall be strong again for another good spell of work.

Lord Campbell’s death is rather the characteristic death of the English political man. In the cabinet, on the bench, and at a dinner party, busy, animated, and full of effort to-day, and in the early morning a vessel has burst. It is a wonder they last so long. I shall resign if it proves much of a strain to me to go on at this official work. Farewell.

_To his Wife_

Mont Dore-les-Bains, Auvergne: July 16, 1861.

This is a queer place, a French watering-place, a village, scarcely even a village, metamorphosed by having a square of hotels on three sides and a bath establishment on one side, with a sort of terrace or esplanade stuck down into it. The place is some 3,000 feet above the sea, a green Swiss-like valley, right in the mountains, with fir-trees standing out from the green mountain sides, just as in Switzerland. There is a hot spring, or rather a quantity of hot springs, issuing from the volcanic rock, known and used by the Romans, and re-discovered or re-established for use under the first Napoleon, to whose time the buildings seem to belong. They are about sufficient for the 500 or 600 people who come. We were fifty, I think, at dinner yesterday, in one of the hotels.

The journey here in the diligence was agreeable, right over the chain of hills, of which Puy de Dôme is the highest, from the valley of the Allier (flowing to the Loire) to the valley here flowing to the Gironde. We mounted to about 3,300 or 3,400 feet above the sea, and descended 300 or 400 to this place; the high land was a green pastoral district with rounded hills mostly; no very distinct craters on the route; a lake a little way off was one, I suppose.

This is really an odd enough place to be in; déjeuner at ten, dinner at half-past five; two tables of about twenty-five people, all French; we also have a drawing-room where we meet before meals, and sit generally (only I don’t); gentlemen unbeknown to ladies give their arms to ladies aforesaid, to conduct them into dinner, and occasionally out from dinner. I sit near some pleasant people at dinner, a Parisian of the Parisians on one hand, and a Marseilles opulent-seeming seeming-merchant with a wife, a sister and some children, on the other. Last night, from eight to half-past nine, was a soirée magicale, things coming out of hats, &c., followed by a divertissement of a poet and improvisatore, who did _boutrimé_. The company supplied him for his last _épreuve_ with about fourteen or sixteen words, rhymes masculine and feminine, mitraille, canaille, volcan, encan, ending with baigneur and bonheur, which gave him the opportunity (the subject by the way being also given him after the rhymes, viz. vin de champagne) to wish in conclusion to _chaque aimable baigneur_ I don’t know how much _bonheur_, which of course drew the house. The poet’s face was a great round simple-looking piece of countenance, and he was fat but alert, and knew more tricks than one, I dare say.

July 19.

Went to Lac Guéry and the Plateau with Jean. Wages three francs a day, and for harvest three francs and victuals: the same as at Marseilles. The schoolmaster has 600 francs.

July 20.

Talked with M. Chabuy. He is percepteur of all taxes. They are impérial, départemental, communal. (There are three classes of percepteurs, the third, viz. of communes de canton, is named by the préfet.) He is bound within a certain time to pay all to the trésor. His accounts are verified by the préfecture, and inspectors come every now and then--one every year into each department--who have the right of looking into the accounts, examining the caisse communale. It would not do to leave it to the conseil and maire. There is very little malversation. The church payments for chaires, burials, &c., are regulated by the bishop. Government pays all the ministers--Catholic, Protestant, and Jews. If a place of worship of any kind is to be built, the commune pays, and everybody is _contribuable_, of whatever religion.

_To the same._

Mont Dore-les-Bains: July 21.

My plans are changed. This morning about 8.30, going across the place to the café, whom should I see but Tennyson. They are all here. They go to the Pyrenees, and I am to follow them. I want to come home in September, and see no sufficient reason yet for not returning to work in November. I don’t at all want to spend a winter abroad away from the children, and were I to be brought to do so, I should want to come home first. Coming home did me good. I now propose to go to some place in the Pyrenees and ride about. Bagnères de Luchon will be the first trial, as the Tennysons will be there.

_To the same._

Bagnères de Luchon, Pyrénées: July 30.

I came on here yesterday; a ten hours’ drive in the banquette of a diligence, but it was a fine day and not excessively hot. The place is exceedingly crowded, a sort of mountain Brighton. This Franco-Gallo-cockney-Chamouni is, however, not unbearable, if taken in the right way. It is in a rich valley, an almost perfect level here of corn, maize especially, and vegetables, running in like an estuary among the mountains. At the head of it, between sides of wooded mountains, you see the rocky peaks with snow in their clefts, filling up the gap. But there are no Alpine eternal-snowy peaks visible here.

August 4.

On Friday I went in a sort of public conveyance some six or eight miles up the valley to the Hospice, and thence walked with my fellow-passengers up the Port de Venasque into Spain. You see the whole Maladetta, and it’s the principal thing to do here. Yesterday I went up into the Vallée de Lys, full of waterfalls; and to-day I have been a longish ride, starting at 6 A.M., to the Lac d’Oo, really a very beautiful mountain lake, the lowest of four or five; the others are a good way higher up.

August 6.

I have been my ride, five hours over hills, looking out upon the glaciers of the main chain; these hills are called the Super Bagnères, and rise right above here. Then down about eleven o’clock to the châlet of the Vallée de Lys, where I stayed about three hours, breakfasting, going up to some waterfalls, and sheltering from a brief storm, and so home.

August 8.

Providence overruled my mind not to go out riding to-day as I had intended, so I got the letter telling of the new little daughter in good time. I think you must call the little girl Blanche Athena.

The Tennysons are at Bigorre. I am very glad to have the prospect of joining them, for it is rather too solitary work going about Pyreneeing with a horse and a guide, or even say _two_ horses and a guide. However, the two men I have had here have been good company in their way--two cousins, both having served as soldiers, one six years, the other eight or nine. One was in the Crimea, and all through the campaign in Italy, and means to be a soldier again. He had just finished his time when his brother was drawn in the conscription. His brother had just married, so he said he would serve two years for him, and when the two years were ended and he came home, somehow or other the brother was let off. Eighteen went from Luchon to the Crimea, ten or twelve of them cousins; thirteen came back, and they are, I think, all here as baigneurs, guides, &c. This fine young fellow was a hussar, and went out straight to Algiers, where he set to work and ate so many figs and oranges that he had a fever at once, and was in the hospital for three months. He was wounded just at the end of the Crimean war, a fortnight before the peace, and was in hospital at Constantinople for three months. He made great friends with the English, apparently. So much for Pierre Redonnet, with whom I rode on Tuesday over Super Bagnères to the Vallée de Lys. The day before I had his cousin Jean, who is a family man, and unambitious of military service.

I have seen here a certain Comte de ----, an Italian, a Tuscan, who knew some friends of yours at Rome. He is a Confederation man, and declaims against this premature attempt at a united Italy. I met him at the Lac d’Oo. He has just been here, and all but embraced me in his obscurantist arms, and has bidden me adieu, ‘God bless you.’ He talks English, which he mixes a little with German, and I mix my English with a little Italian. Who can he be? and why has he so nearly embraced me?

Luchon is a very Parisian place; people flaunt about, and wear strange Parisian mountain-costumes, ‘tours-de-tête’ of all kinds. The French upper classes seem to me to be strongly possessed with the feeling that the Italian kingdom is very much against French interests; and partly also with the feeling that the Emperor is driven into it by England, who knows it to be bad for France. Sardinia would pacify them, no doubt. But after Ricasoli’s declaration, can he, and after Lord John’s speech, can he, assent? All things perhaps are possible.

August 9.

To-day comes a note to say that the Tennysons are all coming here this evening, and I have already taken my place for Luz, _viâ_ Bigorre! Go I must, and start early to-morrow morning.

_To the same._

Luz, St. Sauveur: August 13.

This (Luz) is the place where all the Barèges things are made. The old women are all busy with distaff and spindle. The things are made not at Barèges, but here and at Bigorre. The old women go about in scarlet hoods; the men all wear light-blue caps: the younger women handkerchiefs, brown, with yellow stripes. I have nothing to relate, so I send you some verses made this morning, called ‘Currente Calamo.’[20]

August 17.

I have been laid up for some days, but am well again, and this morning walked up to Barèges, four miles up a high valley east of this. It is a regular pool of Bethesda, only the diseased and impotent people seem to have learnt to play at cards; a desolate place with a staring _établissement_ and a soldiers’ hospital, and everybody on crutches, and the only apparent enjoyment playing at cards in shabby cafés. A high road with electric telegraph leads up to it and ends with it.

August 18.

To-day, as soon as I got the letters, I set off for Gavarnie; the horses were waiting at the door for the postman. We got away at 7.20 A.M., and riding up the Gave, or riverside, reached Gavarnie village in two hours; here there is a hotel of a quiet kind. Soon after passing through this, you come in fair sight of the Cirque. The ground is mostly level, except a rise at the end, which brings you to the platform of the Cirque itself, and to the cottage which is the end of the riding. A little beyond it there is snow, forming a bridge over the stream, and you have the vast cascade in full sight, but far off. One waits till noon for the sun to get on the cascade and turn it into a white cloud. It is the finest thing, certainly, that I have seen in the Pyrenees.

August 19.

Yesterday was very hot, cloudless, though not without air. To-day there is a ‘brouillard sec’ all over the hill-tops, a north wind blowing, and no sunshine.

August 20.

To-day again is the blessed brouillard, keeping all the world cool, but preventing the ascent of hills.

August 23.

I have been to Cauterets by diligence two days ago. Yesterday at 6 A.M. went to Lac de Gaube, which is very good, returned to Cauterets and lounged about the rest of the day, and this morning at 6.30 came back on horseback over the hills and got here at eleven. Cauterets is certainly beautiful, more beautiful than this, only it is a busyish water-place, which this is not; the water-place here, St. Sauveur, being a mile off, and very little frequented. Cauterets is right in the real granite, and the stream is absolutely clear, which no other large stream yet seen by me in these parts is.

August 31.

I have been over to Luchon to see the Tennysons, whom I found very comfortably established in pleasant lodgings out of the town, in maize fields, not far from the river. These places are beginning to lose their beau monde. It was a two days’ journey. I rode on Saturday through Barèges, up to the Tourmalet Pass, and down to Grip, up again to Col d’Aspin, and so down to Arreau. Next day left Arreau at 6.30 A.M., and came up a long valley to the top of another col, and so down to Luchon before half-past eleven. It was agreeable enough to be worth doing twice, so I came back on horseback the same way, leaving Luchon on Tuesday. I rode to Arreau in the afternoon, then reascended the Col d’Aspin, when the view this time was complete and much finer; from Maladetta east to the Pic du Midi de Bigorre west; saw, with a slight haze in the air, Maladetta and Port de Venasque perfectly, the glaciers about the Vallée de Lys, the Lac d’Oo, the Pic du Midi, and the Barèges mountains, all quite clear. I reached Luz about six on Wednesday.

I did one new thing yesterday, and went up the Pic des Bergons, whence there is really a fine view of Pic du Midi on the one hand, and Mont Perdu and Brèche de Roland on the other. I send you another Pyrenean fragment:--

She fed her cows, the mountain-peaks between.[21]

September 1.

The Tennysons arrived at 6.30 yesterday. Tennyson was here, with Arthur Hallam, thirty-one years ago, and really finds great pleasure in the place; they stayed here and at Cauterets. ‘Ænone,’ he said, was written on the inspiration of the Pyrenees, which stood for Ida.

September 6.

Yesterday we went up the Pic du Midi, which proved fully equal to all expectations, though there was haze over the plain and over the remoter ends of the chain. It is a very complete view of the chain as we saw it, only from the Maladetta to the Pic du Midi d’Ossau; our Pic du Midi lying detached, or only tacked-to by the thin Col de Tourmalet, some way to the north.

Tennyson and ---- have walked on to Cauterets, and I and the family follow in a calèche at two.

Cauterets: September 7.

To-day is heavy brouillard down to the feet, or at any rate ankles, of the hills, and little to be done. I have been out for a walk with A. T. to a sort of island between two waterfalls, with pines on it, of which he retained a recollection from his visit of thirty-one years ago, and which, moreover, furnished a simile to ‘The Princess.’ He is very fond of this place, evidently, and it is more in the mountains than any other, and so far superior.

A CONSIDERATION OF OBJECTIONS

AGAINST THE

RETRENCHMENT ASSOCIATION AT OXFORD

DURING THE IRISH FAMINE IN 1847.

The first obvious, and, if sound, obviously fatal, objection to this Association, is directed not against the intention, but against the means employed. Why _associate_? Cannot we be temperate without joining a temperance society? cannot we give alms without printing our names?

To those who think and speak thus, may it not be said, If you think thus, and speak thus, then do thus? It is by no means the object to form a great joint-stock charity-doing monopoly: the more numerous and the more active those are whose names do not appear, the better satisfied, I am sure, will be those whose names do appear. If you do not like charity by association, see that private charity is energetic; and those you complain of will not complain of you.

But I think they will flatter themselves that at the same time your private efforts will be powerfully seconded by the organisation you dislike. Will it not be easier for you to retrench now that retrenchment is not likely to be mistaken? Breakfast parties, and wine parties, &c., &c., are as it were the currency of hospitality: you cannot alter this ‘coin of the realm’ of entertainments without coming to some common understanding. And to come to that common understanding some degree of undesirable publicity may surely be endured.

A second objection, of a different kind, rests upon the statement that a great number of undergraduates receive no fixed allowance from home: what they do not spend, they do not receive. Of course in those cases, where all that can be saved is welcome at home, nothing further can be said: no retrenchment can be urged, because it is presumed no retrenchment can be made. In all others may it not be asked, Is it true that you have not, in point of fact, what comes to the same thing as an allowance? a sum of money which you are expected to call for, beyond which you are expected not to go, and up to which you would think yourself justified in spending for your own gratification? The sum which last year the paternal purse would have freely given for ices, will it this year refuse for almsgiving? What with a safe conscience you would have asked for then, will not your conscience suffer you to petition for now? But be this as it may--for economy is a duty towards friends and parents sadly enough neglected in Oxford--one thing may and must be said. Do not, in the name of common sense, first refuse to give, because the money is not yours, and then go and spend on yourself, because it is your father’s.

You are not called upon, you think, to be your father’s almoner: he is his own almoner: let it be so. But may it not be at this season permitted you to strengthen his hands in this capacity? Will not the money which your economy here will leave at his disposal, find its way, think you, into the hands and mouths and hungry stomachs, if not of Irish, yet of English labourers? We shall find, I think, soon, some reason to believe that for the sake of all it is at this present time most incumbent on all, if not to give, at any rate not to consume. Why are operatives out of work in Yorkshire and Lancashire? Why are farm labourers receiving in these midland and southern counties wages at all times small, at this time and with these prices of corn, barely enough to keep soul and body together? why is not work, more and more than enough, provided, as was expected, by railways? _Pendent opera interrupta._ Why--why is it, or how? Not because there is no useful work to be done; no orders from abroad for cotton goods; no agricultural improvements possible; no lines of railway worth the making. No. Why indeed, or how, but because there is not money to pay the expenses of the working; to buy cotton for the operatives to turn into calicoes; to buy tiles for draining; or iron and bricks and mortar for railways. God, by a sudden visitation, has withdrawn from the income He yearly sends us in the fruits of His earth, sixteen millions sterling. Withdrawn it, and from whom? On whom falls the loss? Not on the rich and luxurious, but on those whose labour makes the rich man rich and gives the luxurious his luxury. Shall not we then, the affluent and indulgent, spare somewhat of our affluence, curtail somewhat of our indulgence, that these (for our wealth too and our indulgence in the end) may have food while they work, and have work to gain them food? He who at this moment saves money (I say not to send to Skibbereen, but) to lay out in some profitable investment, to lend to master manufacturers for buying cotton, or landlords for draining, or railway companies for excavating--yes, he who but buys into the funds, does more a great deal--yea, more, as something is more than nothing, as _plus_ is more than _minus_, than he who spends, albeit for the benefit of the trade, in wines, and ices, and waistcoats.

So is it, as a general rule, and must be; he who eats his cake cannot have it; he who saves it may change it for bread, and that bread may maintain men at work. So is it as a general rule: yet there are surely modifications. And here we come to the great objection, ‘the tradesman’s’ objection I may call it, which is the most important by far of all that have been urged against this system of retrenchment. You are taking the bread out of the mouths not of ‘wealthy tradesmen’ only, but ‘wealthy tradesmen’s’ far-from-wealthy work-people. Do you think all that tailoring, and man-millinery making, that cooking, and that horse-tending, that serving and waiting was done by nobody? Will nobody stand idle and hungry, because you have changed your mind? Had you not, as it were, rung your bell for them, and now when they wait your commands have you nothing to say? Had you not, in point of fact, engaged their service, and now do you, without warning, dismiss them? If they suffer by it, are you not in the wrong? If they starve, is not yours the guilt? Doubtless, indeed, if in this country any man in any place starve, a verdict of guilt, less or greater, must I fear be brought, not, as in Irish juries, against Lord John Russell, but against the wealthy and luxurious of this wealthy and luxurious land. ‘We are verily guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul when he besought us and we would not hear.’ Their suffering is on our heads. But the question is, Who had best suffer? those who are working to bring things right, or those whom we could not save from suffering without crippling our means for all? Which must be put on shortest allowance, the able soldier or the camp-follower? Which must be dismissed, in this household that must be reduced, the farm labourers or the valets and lady’s-maids?

Surely Irish newspapers long ere this should have made us see how reproductive labour differs from unreproductive. Most true it is that the indulgences of Members of this University are the means of providing a livelihood for a large staff of shopkeepers and shopkeepers’ work-people, tailors and confectioners, ostlers and waiters. Most true it is. Yet except for the mere enjoyment so received by us, the customers, our money is a mere waste. We are employing for our enjoyments men who might, by devoting their skill and their strength to the farm, the factory, the ship, and the railway, increase our stock of food, and our facilities for obtaining and transmitting it. Or, ultimately, if useful employment fail here, we should have money in our hands for removing superfluous labourers to a field where not labourers but land is superfluous.

At no time whatever, I believe, can our large expenditure upon objects of luxury be justified: at a time like this, when we know that wages paid to those who work in the farm and the factory will bring us corn, while wages paid to Oxford tradesmen will only increase our own useless consumption, I see not how any doubt can be felt.

The ship is stranded and short of provisions, but a port full of supplies is at hand; and they who control the matter will not victual the boat’s crew that should go to obtain them, because forsooth it would straiten the allowance of their cabin boys, and cooks, and waiters. And that these forsooth may earn their food, and their masters have an excuse for feeding them, these masters bid them continue their functions--consume precious flour in pies and pasties--precious meats in wasteful made dishes--for their own over-eating. Alas, that _mutato nomine de nobis fabula narratur_.

You will say, I am pleading the cause not of Irish peasants, but of English factory people and excavators. I am pleading the cause of both. Is it not English labour that has this year kept Ireland alive? What is to do the kind office in the next year? Mainly, I fear, English labour again. Yet may we not hope, too, that if we keep alive Irishmen in their wretched Skibbereens, we shall preserve not only hungry mouths, but also strong hands that in the end will do work? But it is true; I plead for both.

And for the tradesmen and the tradesmen’s work-people, what can be done? Surely it is idle to keep up an unnatural and vicious demand which finds no better means of feeding one set of men than wasting food on another. We are guilty, I think, in having brought this state of things upon ourselves, that many families depend for their present sustenance on the continuance of such a system. One thing however there is, which will relieve at any rate the tradesmen, and through them perhaps do something for their dependants: and that is, paying bills. I for my part urge no man to give alms at this time, till he has paid his debts. It is not, I think, due to the tradesmen to go on spending; but to pay for what has been received, I think is due.

Here then we come to another objection, the soundness of which I have at once admitted. It is said, If I save at all, I must save to pay my debts; we must be just before we are generous. It is said, and said most fairly. But is it never added (how fairly I will not ask), I will therefore not save at all? Why should I, this year more than last year? My savings will not go to the Irish; why need I have savings at all? And therefore while others starve I will surfeit; while others cry out for husks, and submit if they cannot have them, I, no less loudly, will clamour for a new pleasure, and be indignant if it is not found me. And therefore if this affliction should be, as in some degree it surely will be, continued into another year, or extended, no unlikely event, in some form or other into England itself, I shall still be helpless, still have the same ready plea for doing nothing, the same happy excuse for self-indulgence. Verily it is to be feared there are some who, with money in their pockets, will refuse to give to the Irish, because they owe sums to tradesmen; neglect to pay their tradesmen, because paying tradesmen is not giving to Ireland; and so in the end will do neither, will let their bills go on increasing, and spend their ready money on extra amusements not to be had without it. It is not impossible there are men who will say, What money I have I owe to Bennett, or Bickerstaff; however, as Bennett and Bickerstaff are not famishing, they may as well wait; and then I shall have my money to take me up to town, to carry me to the opera, to pay my way in my long vacation continental excursion.

What then! truly, indeed, if Bennett and Bickerstaff are not famishing and may as well wait, why you may as well not go to the opera, and pay your opera’s price to keep your countrymen alive. But do not suppose it is I who so advise. Pay your debts by all means. Surprise Bennett with bank-notes, and gratify Bickerstaff with gold. There is need, as we saw just now. I ask you not to be generous before you are just; I only bid you make haste and be just that you may be generous the sooner. I only beseech you not to say (they are indeed ‘vain words’) I cannot be generous, and as for being just, that will do a year hence. Pay if you can; if you cannot, why, cripple not at any rate your means for generosity alike and justice in years to come. In any case and every case, let not the sky which in Ireland looks upon famishment and fever, see us here at Oxford in the midst of health and strength over-eating, over-drinking, and over-enjoying. Let us not scoff at eternal justice with our champagne and our claret, our breakfasts and suppers, our club-dinners, and desserts, wasteful even to the worst taste, luxurious even to unwholesomeness--or yet again by our silly and fantastic frippery of dandyism, in the hazardous elaboration of which the hundred who fail are sneered at, and the one who succeeds is smiled at.

I know not if there be any who venture on the bold declaration, The money is mine, and I will have the good of it; I have got, and I will spend; the Irish have not, and they must do without. Something however too much approaching to this feeling undoubtedly does exist. In the ravelled and tangled skein, of which is constituted the content and quietness of conscience enjoyed by us, the purse-aristocracy of England, this thread, I think, may here and there be detected even by unskilful fingers. To these sticklers for the rights of property it is worth while putting one question. If you had been wrecked the other day in the ‘Tweed’ steamer, and had been successful in reaching the place of safety in the rocks, would you, if the articles of food secured there from the waters had happened to belong to your own peculiar private stores--would you, I ask, have entertained a thought that to you exclusively belonged the right to enjoy them? This barrel of biscuits is marked with my letters, and was always known to be mine; did I not pay for it? mine has come, all the better for me, yours has not, all the worse for you.