Part 16

The town of Corfu has 26,000 inhabitants. Among the population are Dalmatians, Maltese, Levantines, and others; but the Greeks are the dominant race. There is a Jews' quarter, and Jews abound, or did abound at the time of my visit. Since then fanaticism has raised its head again, and there have been wild scenes at Corfu. Face to face with the revival of persecution for religious opinions which is now visible in Russia, and not in Russia alone, are we forced to acknowledge that our century is not so enlightened as we have hoped that it was. I remember when I believed that in no civilized country to-day could there be found, among the educated, a single person who would wish to persecute or coerce his fellow-beings solely on account of their religious opinions; but I am obliged to confess that, without going to Russia or Corfu, I have encountered within the last dozen years individuals not a few whose flashing eyes and crimson cheeks, when they spoke of a mental attitude in such matters which differed from their own, made me realize with a thrill that if it were still the day of the stake and the torch they would come bringing fagots to the pile with their own hands.

In spite of these survivals, ceremonial martyrdom for so-called religion's sake is, we may hope, at an end among the civilized nations; we have only its relics left. Corfu has one of these relics, a martyr who is sincerely honored--St. Spiridion, or, as he is called in loving diminutive, Spiro. Spiro, who died fifteen hundred years ago, was bishop of a see in Cyprus, I believe. He was tortured during the persecution of the Christians under Diocletian. His embalmed body was taken to Constantinople, and afterwards, in 1489, it was brought to Corfu by a man named George Colochieretry. Some authorities say that Colochieretry was a monk; in any case, what is certain is that the heirs of this man still own the saint--surely a strange piece of property--and derive large revenues from him. St. Spiro reposes in a small dim chapel of the church which is called by his name; his superb silver coffin is lighted by the rays from a hanging lamp which is suspended above it. When we paid our visit, people in an unbroken stream were pressing into this chapel, and kissing the sarcophagus repeatedly with passionate fervor. The nave, too, was thronged; families were seated on the pavement in groups, with an air of having been there all day: probably Christmas is one of the seasons set apart for an especial pilgrimage to the martyr. Three times a year the body is taken from its coffin and borne round the esplanade, followed by a long train of Greek clergy, and by the public officers of the town; upon these occasions the sick are brought forth and laid where the shadow of the saint can pass over them. "Yes, he's out to-day, I believe," said a resident, to whom we had mentioned this procession. He spoke in a matter-of-fact tone. After seeing it three times a year for twenty years, the issuing forth of the old bishop into the brilliant sunshine to make a solemn circuit round the esplanade did not, I suppose, seem so remarkable to him as it seemed to us. There is another saint, a woman (her name I have forgotten), who also reposes in a silver coffin in one of the Corfu churches. At first we supposed that this was Spiro. But the absence of worshippers showed us our mistake. This lonely witness to the faith was also a martyr; she suffered decapitation. "They don't think much of _her_," said the same resident. Then, explanatorily, "You see--she has no head." This practically minded critic, however, was not a native of Corfu. The true Corfiotes are very reverent, and no doubt they honor their second martyr upon her appointed day. But Spiro is the one they love. The country people believe that he visits their fields once a year to bless their olives and grain, and the Corfu sailors are sure that he comes to them, walking on the water in the darkness, when a storm is approaching. Mr. Tuckerman, in his delightful volume, _The Greeks of To-Day_, says, in connection with this last legend, that it is believed by the devout that seaweed is often found about the legs of the good bishop in his silver coffin, after his return from these marine promenades. There is something charming in this story, and I shall have to hold back my hand to keep myself from alluding (and yet I do allude) to a shrine I know at Venice; it is far out on the lagoon, and its name is Our Lady of the Seaweed. The last time my gondola passed it I saw that by a happy chance the high tide had left seaweed twined about it in long, floating wreaths, like an offering.

The name of the national religion of Greece is the Orthodox Church of the East, or, more briefly, the Orthodox Church. Western nations call it the Greek Church, but they have invented that name themselves. The Orthodox Church has rites and ceremonies which are striking and sometimes magnificent. I have many memories of the churches of Corfu. The temples are so numerous that they seem innumerable; one was always coming upon a fresh one; sometimes there is only a facade visible, and occasionally nothing but a door, the church being behind, masked by other buildings. My impressions are of a series of magnified jewel-boxes. There was not much daylight; no matter how radiant the sunshine outside, within all was richly dim, owing to the dark tints of the stained glass. The ornamentation was never paltry or tawdry. The soft light from the wax candles drew dull gleams from the singular metal-incrusted pictures. These pictures, or icons, are placed in large numbers along the walls and upon the screen which divides the nave from the apse. They are generally representations of the Madonna and Child in repousse-work of silver, silvered copper, or gilt. Often the face and hands of the Madonna are painted on panel; in that case the portrait rises from metal shoulders, and the head is surrounded by metal hair. The painting is always of the stiff Byzantine school, following an ancient model, for any other style would be considered irreverent, and nothing can exceed the strange effect produced by these long-eyed, small-mouthed, rigid, sourly sweet virgin faces coming out from their silver-gilt necks, while below, painted taper fingers of unearthly length encircle a silver Child, who in His turn has a countenance of panel, often all out of drawing, but hauntingly sweet. These curious pictures have great dignity. The churches have no seats. I generally took my stand in one of the pew-like stalls which project from the wall, and here, unobserved, I could watch the people coming in and kissing the icons. This adoration, commemoration, reverence, or whatever the proper word for it may be, is much more conspicuous in the Greek places of worship than it is in Roman Catholic churches. Those who come in make the round of the walls, kissing every picture, and they do it fervently, not formally. The service is chanted by the priests very rapidly in a peculiar kind of intoning. The Corfu priests did not look as if they were learned men, but their faces have a natural and humane expression which is agreeable. In the street, with their flowing robes, long hair and beards, and high black caps, they are striking figures. The parish priest must be a married man, and he does not live apart from his people, but closely mingles with them upon all occasions. He is the papas, or pope, as it is translated, and a lover of Tourguenieff who meets a pope for the first time at Corfu is haunted anew by those masterpieces of the great Russian--the village tales across whose pages the pope and the popess come and go, and seem, to American readers, such strange figures.

In the suburb of Castrades is the oldest church of the island. It is dedicated to St. Jason, the kinsman of St. Paul. St. Jason's appeared to be deserted. Here, as elsewhere, it is not the church most interesting from the historical point of view which is the favorite of the people, or which they find, apparently, the most friendly. But when I paid my visit, there were so many vines and flowers outside, and such a blue sky above, that the little Byzantine temple had a cheerful, irresponsible air, as if it were saying: "It's not my fault that people won't come here. But if they won't, I'm not unhappy about it; the sunshine, the vines, and I--we do very well together." The interior was bare, flooded also with white daylight--so white that one blinked. And in this whiteness my mind suddenly returned to Hellas. For Hellas had been forgotten for the moment, owing to the haunting icons in the dark churches of the town. Those silver-incrusted images had brought up a vision of the uncounted millions to-day in Turkey, Greece, and Russia who bow before them, the Christians of whom we know and think comparatively so little. But now all these Eastern people vanished as silently as they had come, and the past returned--the past, whose spell summons us to Greece. For conspicuous in the white daylight of St. Jason's were three antique columns, which, with other sculptured fragments set in the walls, had been taken from an earlier pagan temple to build this later church. And the spell does not break again in this part of the island. Not far from St. Jason's is the tomb of Menekrates. This monument was discovered in 1843, when one of the Venetian forts was demolished. Beneath the foundations the workmen came upon funeral vases, and upon digging deeper an ancient Greek cemetery was uncovered, with many graves, various relics, and this tomb. It is circular, formed of large blocks of stone closely joined without cement, and at present one stands and looks down upon it, as though it were in a roofless cellar. It bears round its low dome a metrical inscription in Greek, to the effect that Menekrates, who was the representative at Corcyra (the old name for Corfu) of his native town Eanthus, lost his life accidentally by drowning; that this was a great sorrow to the community, for he was a friend of the people; that his brother came from Eanthus, and, with the aid of the Corcyreans, erected the monument. There is something impressive to us in this simple memorial of grief set up before the days of AEschylus, before the battle of Marathon--the commemoration of a family sorrow in Corfu two thousand five hundred years ago. The following is a Latin translation of the inscription:

"Tlasiadis memor ecce Menecrates hoc monumentum, Ortum OEantheus, populus statuebat at illi, Quippe benignus erat populo patronus, in alto Sed periit ponto, totam et dolor obruit urbem. Praximenes autem patriis huc venit ab oris Cum populo et fratris monumentum hoc struxit adempti."

Two thousand five hundred years ago! That is far back. But it is not the oldest date "in the world." Americans are accused of cherishing an inordinate love for the superlative--the longest river, the highest mountain, the deepest mine in the world, the largest diamond in the world; there must always be that tag "in the world" to interest us. When ancient objects are in question we are said to rush from one to the next, applying our sole test; and we drop at any time a tomb or a temple, no matter how beautiful, if there comes a rumor that another has been discovered a little farther on which is thought to be a trifle more venerable. Thus they chaff us--pilgrims from a land where Nature herself works in superlatives, and where there is no antiquity at all. In Italy our mania, exercising itself upon smaller objects than temples, brings us nearer the comprehension (or non-comprehension) of the contemptuous natives. "What hideous" (she called it hee-dee us) "things you _do_ buy!" I heard an Italian lady exclaim with conviction some years ago, as she happened to meet three of her American acquaintances returning from a hunt through the antiquity-shops of Naples, loaded with a battered lamp, a square of moth-eaten tapestry with an indecipherable inscription, and a nondescript broken animal in bronze, without head, tail, or legs, who might have been intended for a dragon, or possibly for a cow. After a while we pass this stage of antiquity-shops. But we never pass the Etruscans, or, rather, I should speak for myself, and say that I never passed them; I was perpetually haunted by them. There was one road in particular, a lonely track which led from Bellosguardo (at Florence) up a steep hill, and I was forever climbing this stony ascent because, forsooth, it was set down on an Italian map as "the old Etruscan way between Fiesole and Volterra," two strongholds of this mysterious people. I was sure that there were tombs with strangely painted walls close at hand, and when there was no one in sight I made furtive archaeological pokes with my parasol. In Italy an Etruscan tomb seems the oldest thing "in the world." And at Corfu the unearthed Greek cemetery became doubly interesting when I learned that among the relics discovered there was a lioness couchant, concerning which the highest authorities have said, "After the lions of the gates of Mycenae, there is no Greek sculpture older than this." (The lioness is now in the vestibule of the palace in the esplanade.) This was exciting, for Mycenae is a name to conjure with still, in spite of the refusal of the learned to accept, in all their extent, Dr. Schliemann's splendidly romantic theories and dreams. But when one goes on to Egypt, to have searched at all for that enticing "oldest" in Greece appears to have been a mistake. For what is B.C. 1000, which the German authorities say is an approximate date for the Mycenae relics--what is that compared with King Menes of the Nile, with his B.C. 4400 according to Brugsch-Bey, and B.C. 5000 according to Mariette? And there are rumors of civilized times far older. But if we can bring ourselves to cease our chase after age and turn to beauty, then it is not in the sands of Egypt that we must dig. For beauty we must come to the clear light country of the gods.

But leaving history, some of us suffer greatly nowadays from mental dislocations of another sort. The Mycenae lions and the grim lioness of Corfu are ascribed with a calmness which seems brutal to "pre-Homeric times." Surely there were no pre-Homeric times except chaos. Surely those were the first days of the world when all the men were sure-footed, and all the women white-armed; when the sea was hollow (it has remained that to this day), and when the heavenly powers interested themselves in human affairs upon the slightest occasion. Leave us our faith in them. It can be preserved, if you like, in the purely poetical compartment of the mind. For there are all sorts of compartments: I have met a learned geologist who turned pale when a mirror was broken by accident in his house; I know a disciple of Darwin who always deprecates instantly any reference to his good health, lest in some mysterious way it should attract ill-luck. It seems to me, therefore, that the dear belief that Homer's heroes began the world may coexist even with the bicycle. (Not that I myself have much knowledge of this excellent vehicle. But, its tandem wheels, swift and business-like, personify the spirit of the age.)

At Corfu one is over one's head in the Odyssey. "The island is not what it has been," said the English lady of the Indian Mail. It is not, indeed! She referred to the days of the Lords High. But the rest of us refer to Nausicaa; for Corfu is the Scheria of the Odyssey, the home of King Alcinous. Not far beyond the tomb of Menekrates, at the point called Canone, we have a view of a deep bay. On the opposite shore of this bay enters the stream upon whose bank Ulysses first met the delightful little maiden--"the beautiful stream of the river, where were the pools unfailing, and clear and abundant water." And also (but this is a work of supererogation, like feminine testimony in a court of justice) we have a view of the Phaeacian ship which was turned into stone by Neptune: "Neptune s'en approcha, et, le frappant du plat de la main, le changea en un rocher qu'il enracina dans le sol," as my copy of the Odyssey, which happens rather absurdly to be a French one, translates the passage. The ship, therefore, is now an island; its deck is a chapel; its masts are trees. Of late the belief that Corfu is the Scheria of the Odyssey has been attacked. Appended to the musical translation of the episode of Nausicaa, which was published in 1890, there is the following note: "It will be seen that the writer declines to accept the identification of Corcyra, the modern Corfu, with Scheria. In this skepticism he is emboldened by the protecting shield of the Ajax among English-speaking Hellenists. See Jebb's Homer." It is not possible to contest a point with Ajax. But any one who has seen the gardens and groves of this lovely isle, who has watched the crystalline water dash against the rocks at Palaeokastrizza, who has strolled down the hill-side at Pelleka, or floated in a skiff off the coast at Ipso--any such person will say that Corfu is at least an ideal home for the charming girl who played ball and washed the clothes on the shore, king's daughter though she was. To quote the translation:

"Father dear, would you make ready for me a wagon, a high one, Strong in the wheels, that I may carry our beautiful garments ... to be washed in the river?"

One wishes that this primitive princess could have had another name. Nausicaa; no matter how one pronounces the syllables, they are not melodious. Why could she not have been Aglaia, Daphne, or Artemidora? Standing at Canone and looking across at her shore, one is vexed anew that she should have given her heart, or even her fancy, to Ulysses--a man who was always eating. Instead of Ulysses, we should say Odysseus, no doubt. That may pass. But the sentimental, inaccurate persons who read Homer in English (or French) will not so easily consent to Alkinoos. No; Alcinous (which reminds them vaguely of halcyon) will remain in their minds as the name of the king who lived "far removed from the trafficking nations," among his blossoming gardens in the billowy sea; and to this faith will they cling. The clinging evidently exists at Corfu. One of the most comical sights there is a modern "detached villa," of course English, which might have come from Cheltenham; it is planted close to the glaring road, and over its dusty gate is inscribed imperturbably, "Alcinous Lodge."

One wonders whether the princesses of to-day (who no longer dry clothes upon the shore) amuse their leisure hours with Homer's recitals concerning their predecessors? One of them, at any rate, has chosen Corfu as a place of sojourn; the Empress of Austria, after paying many visits to the island, has now built for herself a country residence, or villino, at a distance from the town, not far from Nausicaa's stream. The house is surrounded by gardens, and from the terrace there is a magnificent view in all directions; here she enjoys the solitude which she is said to love, and the Corfiotes see only the coming and going of her yacht. I don't know why there should be something so delightful, to one mind at least, in the selection of this distant Greek island as the resting-place of a queen, who takes the long journey down the Adriatic year after year to reach her retreat. The preference is perhaps due simply to fondness for a sea-voyage, and to the fact that a yacht lying at Trieste lies practically at Vienna's door. Lovers of Corfu, however, will not be turned aside by any of these reasons; they will continue to believe that the choice is made for beauty's sake; they will extol this perfect appreciation; they will praise this modern Nausicaa; they will purchase her portrait in photographed copies. When they have one of these representations, they can note with satisfaction the accordance between its outlines and a taste in islands which is surely the best in the world.