When the Going Was Good Read online

  I will not be outdone in gratitude. If my appreciation is more temperately expressed it is none the less genuine. Let me state again, the Great Britain may be less suitably placed for golfers than Gleneagles; the gambling may be better from the Normandie; one can shop more conveniently from the Crillon, the Russie is set in a prettier square, one meets more amusing company at the Cavendish, one can dance better at the Berkeley and sleep better at Mena and eat better at the Ritz, but the Great Britain Hotel, Valletta, Malta, is the best on the island; further comparisons seem rather to confuse the issue.

  I spent too little time in Malta. Most of my days were spent in exploring Valletta, with the aid of a small book called Walks in Malta, by F. Weston, which I bought for two shillings at Critien’s, the big stationer’s shop. I found it a slightly confusing book at first until I got used to the author’s method; after that I became attached to it, not only for the variety of information it supplied, but for the amusing Boy-Scout game it made of sightseeing. ‘Turning sharply to your left you will notice …’ Mr Weston prefaces his comments, and there follows a minute record of detailed observation. On one occasion, when carrying his book, I landed at the Senglea quay, taking it for Vittoriosa, and walked on for some time in the wrong town, hotly following false clues and identifying ‘windows with fine old mouldings’, ‘partially defaced escutcheons’, ‘interesting ironwork balustrades’, etc., for nearly a mile, until a clearly non-existent cathedral brought me up sharp to the realization of my mistake.

  Presently I began making enquiries at the shipping offices for a berth from Malta in any direction, and was told that these could rarely be guaranteed. Preference was always given to passengers booking a long passage. One just had to take one’s chance. I was getting a little impatient with the proprietor of the Great Britain, who had, in the last two days, developed a habit of popping suddenly out of his office whenever I sat down to have a drink, and saying, ‘’Ullo, ’ullo. And ’ow’s that book getting along? You don’t seem to be seeing much of the island,’ adding encouragingly: ‘You couldn’t see a ‘alf of it, not if you was to spend a life-time ‘ere, you couldn’t.’ I became aware of a slight claustrophobic itch, and in this mood one day, less than a week after my arrival, I leant over the Cavalier of St James, looking down into the Grand Harbour. Then I saw below, among the fishing-boats and cargo ships and nondescript official launches and lighters, a very radiant new arrival; a large white motor vessel, built like a yacht with broad, clean decks and a single yellow funnel. I took the funicular down to the Custom House and looked at her from the quay. She was the Stella Polaris, on her second cruise from the one I had abandoned at Port Said. As I stood there the motor launch left her side and ran up to the quay, the Norwegian cross fluttering at her stern. Three or four passengers landed, carrying cameras and sunshades. With them was the purser. I greeted him. Was there a spare berth? He said there was. The Stella was not due to sail until next afternoon, but within an hour I had made my adieux at the Great Britain, assured the proprietor that he should have my warmest commendations to the British public, and moved my luggage down to the harbour. That afternoon I unpacked, sent a vast pile of clothes to the laundry, folded and hung up my suits, set in order the mass of papers I had accumulated, notes, photographs, letters, guide-books, circulars, sketches, caught and killed two fleas I had picked up in the Manderaggio, and went above, very contentedly, to renew my acquaintance with the deck bar steward.

  On our way east we stopped for the day at Crete. The little harbour of Candia was too small for the Stella, so we anchored outside in the bay, well sheltered by the headland of Cape Paragia and the island of Dia. Inside the fortified breakwater, with its finely carved Venetian lion, lay a jumble of ramshackle shipping – a small fishing fleet, two or three coastal sailing-boats, and some incredibly dissolute tramp steamers which ply between Piraeus and the islands. A cargo of wine was being loaded into one of these, bottled in goat-skins.

  There is one main street in the town and a labyrinth of divergent alleys. There is the façade of a ruined Venetian palace, and a battered Venetian fountain carved with lions and dolphins. There is also a mosque, built up in places with capitals and fragments of carved stone work from other Venetian buildings. The top has been knocked off the minaret and the building has been turned into a cinematograph, where, by an odd coincidence, a film was being exhibited named L’Ombre de Harem. The shops sold, mostly, hunks of very yellow and grey meat, old Turkish watches, comic German picture-postcards, and brightly patterned lengths of printed cotton.

  I accompanied a party of fellow passengers to the museum to admire the barbarities of Minoan culture.

  One cannot well judge the merits of Minoan painting, since only a few square inches of the vast area exposed to our consideration are earlier than the last twenty years, and their painters have tempered their zeal for reconstruction with a predilection for covers of Vogue.

  We chartered a Ford car and drove with a guide to Cnossos, where Sir Arthur Evans (our guide referred to him always as ‘Your English Lord Evans’) is rebuilding the palace. At present only a few rooms and galleries are complete, the rest being an open hillside scarred with excavations, but we were able to form some idea of the magnitude and intricacy of the operation from the plans which were posted up for our benefit on the chief platform. I think that if our English Lord Evans ever finishes even a part of his vast undertaking, it will be a place of oppressive wickedness. I do not think that it can be only imagination and the recollection of a bloodthirsty mythology which makes something fearful and malignant of the cramped galleries and stunted alleys, these colonnades of inverted, conical pillars, these rooms that are mere blind passages at the end of sunless staircases; this squat little throne, set on a landing where the paths of the palace intersect; it is not the seat of a lawgiver nor a divan for the recreation of a soldier; here an ageing despot might crouch and have borne to him, along the walls of a whispering gallery, barely audible intimations of his own murder.

  There was one pretty incident of my visit which I only discovered later. I took a camera with me to Cnossos and left it in the car when we went over the excavations. I remember being mildly surprised later in the day, when I came to photograph the harbour, to see by the number that I had exposed more of the film than I thought. When it came back from the ship’s photographic shop after being developed I was surprised to find a picture I had never taken; it was just recognizable as the Ford car in which we had driven to Cnossos, with the driver sitting very upright at the wheel. He must have induced one of his friends to take it while we were at the palace, and I thought it argued a nice nature in the man. He could not have hoped either to receive a print or even to see our surprise when the result of his little joke became visible. I like to think that he wished to add a more durable bond to our relationship than the fleeting obligation of two hours’ hire; he wanted to emphasize his individual existence as a separate thing from the innumerable, impersonal associations of the tourist. I am sure he was amused at the thought of the little surprise he had stored up for us, when we cursorily paid him his fare and went back to our ship. Perhaps he experienced something of the satisfaction which those eccentric (and regrettably rare) benefactors derive from sending bank-notes anonymously to total strangers. If only his technical ability had come up to his good nature, I would have reproduced his portrait in this book, but I am afraid that, in the only form I possess, it would do him no further credit.

  We spent the night at anchor and sailed early next morning so as to pass the Cyclades in daylight.

  We passed a new island, recently erupted from the sea – a heap of smoking volcanic matter, as yet quite devoid of life. Then past Naxos, Paros, and Mykonos into the Aegean, and so north to the Dardanelles, making fifteen knots through a calm sea. ‘Can’t you just see the quinqui-remes?’ said an American lady to me, as we leant on the rail, near each other. ‘From distant Ophir,’ she added, ‘with a cargo of ivory, sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.’ />
  We were in the Hellespont when we awoke next morning, and passed Suvla Bay and Gallipoli before noon. The sea was pale green and opaque with the ice water that was coming down from the Black Sea. The Sea of Marmora was choppy; we ran under cold winds and a grey sky, broken by fitful bursts of sunlight.

  It was getting dark by the time that we came to the mouth of the Golden Horn. A low sea mist was hanging about the town, drifting and mingling with the smoke from the chimneys. The domes and towers stood out indistinctly, but even in their obscurity formed a tremendous prospect; just as the sun was on the horizon it broke through the clouds, and, in the most dramatic way possible, threw out a great splash of golden light over the minarets of St Sophia. At least, I think it was St Sophia. It is one of the delights of one’s first arrival by sea at Constantinople to attempt to identify this great church from the photographs among which we have all been nurtured. As one approaches, dome after dome comes into view, and receives, each in its turn, little gasps of homage. Finally, when the whole immense perspective has been laid before us, two buildings contend for recognition. The more imposing one is the Mosque of Ahmed I. One can identify it by its distinction, unique except for the Kaaba at Mekka, of having six minarets. A more convincing way, however, of carrying one’s point, is to say, ‘That’ – pointing wherever you choose – ‘is Agia Sophia.’

  ‘Agia’ will always win the day for one. A more recondite snobbism is to say ‘Aya Sophia’, but except in a very sophisticated circle, who will probably not need guidance in the matter at all, this is liable to suspicion as a mere mispronunciation.

  Next day, with only about two hours to spare, we went to the Serai, the palace of the Sultans, now converted into a public museum; the attendants are mostly the survivors of the royal eunuchs. One was a dwarf; he had a funny little shrivelled-up, sexless face and a big black overcoat which brushed the ground and came very near to tripping him up once or twice. None of them were as big and fat as I had imagined. In the bad times before the secure establishment of the Kemalist régime, I am told that there was a big demonstration meeting held by the agitated eunuchs to protest against the abolition of polygamy.

  The most striking thing about the Serai is its astonishing discomfort. It somewhat resembles Earls Court Exhibition, consisting, not of a single building, but of a large enclosed area, laid out roughly with lawns and trees, and strewn fortuitously with kiosks and pavilions of varying date and design. It is simply a glorified nomad encampment. Constantinople is by no means warm. The site was chosen for its political and geographical importance rather than for the serenity of its climate. It is exposed to cold winds from the Steppes, and snow is not uncommon. Yet, in the five centuries of Turkish occupation, it seems never to have occurred to the sultans, with vast wealth and unlimited labour at their disposal, to provide any kind of covered corridor between the various rooms of their chief residence. Their highest aspirations towards physical luxury were confined to sprawling among gaudy silk cushions and munching sweetmeats while the icy wind whistled through the lattice-work over their heads. No wonder they took to drink. The treasures of the royal household, however, are staggering. Some idea of the economy of the Serai can be gained from the fact that the officials of the Kemalist party, when making a tour of the buildings in the first months of their occupation, came upon a room stacked from floor to ceiling with priceless sixteenth-century porcelain, still in the original wrappings in which it had arrived by caravan from China. It had been no one’s business to unpack it, and there it had lain through the centuries. Theft and embezzlement must have been continuous and unchecked in the household. The astonishing thing is the amount of treasure that has survived the years of imperial bankruptcy. There are huge uncut emeralds and diamonds, great shapeless drops full of flaws, like half-sucked sweets; there is a gold throne set with cabuchons of precious stone; a throne of inlaid mother-o’-pearl and tortoiseshell; there are cases of jewelled pipe mouthpieces, and of dagger-hilts, watches, cigar-holders, snuff boxes, hand-mirrors, brushes, combs – twenty or thirty of each, all supremely magnificent; there is a dressing-table presented by Catherine the Great, encrusted all over, every inch of it, with rose-coloured paste jewels; there is a dressing-table presented by Frederick the Great, covered with alabaster and amber; there is an exquisite Japanese garden and temple made of filigree gold and enamel; there is a model paddle steamer, made of red and white gold with diamond port-holes and ruby and emerald pennons; there is the right hand and the skull of St John the Baptist; there are jewels to be worn in turbans and jewels to be worn round the neck on chains and jewels to be worn by women and jewels to be played with and tumbled listlessly between the fingers from hand to hand. The guide made a round estimate of each object in turn as being worth ‘more than a million dollars’. One cannot help doubting, however, whether, in the prolonged period of Turkish insolvency, some depredations were not made upon this hoard. It would have been so easy to prize out a cabuchon emerald or so with the finger-nail and replace it with a jujube, that I feel it must have been done from time to time – who knows how often?

  Immediately in front of me in our tour of inspection there travelled a very stout, rich lady from America, some of whose conversation I was privileged to overhear. Whatever the guide showed her, china, gold, ivory, diamond or amber, silk or carpet, this fortunate lady was able casually to remark that she had one like that at home. ‘Why,’ she would say, ‘whoever would have thought that that was of any value. I’ve got three like that, that Cousin Sophy left me, bigger, of course, but just the same pattern, put away in one of the store-rooms. I must have them out when I get back. I never looked on them as being anything much.’

  But she had to admit herself beaten by the right hand and skull of St John the Baptist.

  We sailed next afternoon just before sunset.

  The chief subject of conversation on board that evening was an accident which had occurred in the harbour. The ferry steamer which travels between Galata and Scutari, on the other side of the Bosphorus, had run on to the rocks in the morning mist; the passengers had been removed without loss of life, but only just in time. There was a newcomer in the Stella – a very elegant Greek who wore an Old Etonian tie and exhibited an extensive acquaintance with the more accessible members of the English peerage. He had been on board the ferry boat at the time of the disaster, and he gave a very interesting account of his experience. The ship had been crowded with labourers going across to their work. At the first impact the Captain and his chief officer leaped into the only boat and made off. Later in the day the Captain resigned his command, on the grounds that this was the third time it had happened in eighteen months and his nerves were not what they had been. Left to themselves the passengers, who were a motley race of Turks, Jews, and Armenians, fell into a state of mad panic. The only helpful course would have been to sit absolutely firm and hope for rescue. Instead they trotted moaning from side to side, swaying the ship to and fro and shaking it off the rocks on which it was impaled. My informant sat, frozen with terror, on one of the seats, in expectation of almost immediate capsize. He was here met by a stout little man, strutting calmly along the deck with a pipe in his mouth and his hands plunged into the pockets of his ulster. They observed each other with mutual esteem as the frenzied workmen jostled and shouted round them.

  ‘I perceive, sir,’ said the man with the pipe, ‘that you, too, are an Englishman.’

  ‘No,’ answered the Greek, ‘only a damned foreigner.’

  ‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ said the Englishman, and walked to the side of the ship, to drown alone.

  Fortunately, however, there was no drowning. Boats came out from the shore and removed all the passengers before the ship foundered.

  The Greek was travelling only as far as Athens. I spent most of next day in his company. He asked me searching questions about ‘aestheticism’ at Oxford. He had been at the House, but remarked with a shade of regret that he had not found any ‘aestheticism’ in his day. Was it because
of ‘aestheticism’ that Oxford did so badly at athletics? I said, no, the evil was deeper than that. I didn’t mind telling another Oxford man, but the truth was, that there was a terrible outbreak of drug-taking at the University.

  ‘Cocaine?’

  ‘Cocaine,’ I said, ‘and worse.’

  ‘But do the dons do nothing to stop it?’

  ‘My dear man, the dons are the origin of the whole trouble.’

  He said that there had been practically no drug-taking at the House in his time.

  He renewed the attack later in the day. Would I come down to his cabin to have a drink?

  I said I would have a drink with him by all means, but in the deck bar.

  He said, ‘I can see you are Scottish because of your blue eyes. I had a very dear friend who was a Scotchman. You remind me a little of him.’

  Later, he said, would I come to his cabin to look at a silver Turkish inkpot. I said no, but I would love to see it on deck. It was very ugly.