‘Fare forward, you who think that you are voyaging / You are not those who saw the harbour / Receding, or those who will disembark. / Here between the hither and the farther shore / While time is withdrawn, consider the future / And the past with an equal mind.’ (T.S. Eliot)
Former Samos resident, influential travel writer on Greece, and elsewhere, Marc Dubin (1956-2026) died in Sofia on 23 July following complications from brain tumour surgery. A lengthy bibliography is available online; his Trekking in Greece (1993, Lonely Planet) in particular reveals the man. It was Marc’s inclusion of Theodore Bent’s Cyclades in one of his 1980s’ Rough Guides that led to our 25 years of research on celebrity explorers Theodore and Mabel Bent.
Detail from Bent’s own 1885 map of the Greek islands (photo: Bent Archive).
“I have been writing about the Greek islands since 1981, and the Bents have accompanied me from the start. After graduating from UC Berkeley in 1977, I stayed around town for some years; I was fortunate in having a part-time job at the university library which was piecework based and allowed me to work full-time for three months and then take equal time off to travel. It also gave me complete, unchallenged run of the book stacks, where I furthered my education through omnivorous reading. There was no security whatsoever at the employees’ entrance, so books could be ‘borrowed’ indefinitely.
The pre-computerisation card catalogue listed no less than four copies of J. Theodore Bent’s Aegean Islands: The Cyclades, or Life Among the Insular Greeks, published as a 1966 reprint by Argonaut in Chicago. I had just signed my first contract to write a guidebook on Greece. Why should the library keep four copies of this title, when my research needs were greater? Home it went, to stay, in 1980.
The church of the Panayía Portaïtissa, within the Kástro of Hóra, Astypálea (photo: Marc Dubin).
James Theodore and Mabel spent nearly a year travelling around the Aegean on their first trip, back when it took a year to visit all the islands given the vagaries of the wind – as he writes in the volume you are holding, ‘those who go to Astypalæa must be people of a patient disposition’. They more (or less) cheerfully tolerated ferocious winter weather, leaking quarters, foul-smelling wooden boats, monotonous food (‘pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold, pease porridge in the pot nine days old’ was literally and repeatedly enacted), rapacious boatmen and voracious vermin. They took shelter in bare churches when necessary, something sadly unlikely now when so many rural chapels are locked against theft or desecration. It all puts today’s island-traveller whinges about cancelled sailings, greasy food and wonky water heaters in stark perspective. To their immense credit, the Bents were keenly interested in the contemporary Greek islanders, not just in antiquities, unlike 18th-century Grand Tourists who disparaged the supposedly degenerated medieval Greeks and modern tourists who are only after sun, sea and sex.
Title-page to the 1st edition of Bent’s ‘The Cyclades’ (London, 1885)(from an archive.org online e-version).
The Cyclades, or Life Among the Insular Greeks, also available through Archaeopress, has the dubious honour of being the most plagiarized book ever written on the Greek islands – almost every 1960s to 1980s writer on the Aegean helped themselves to entire pages worth of Bent, verbatim. It was legally if not ethically okay to do so, since the text (as the Argonaut publisher told me when I asked him) had long since been in the public domain; the Bents had died without issue or any other heirs to extend the copyright. Copyright aside, it’s easy to see why this happened: the intrepid Bents had been there, and done that, long before there were any t-shirts, and what they had observed and documented was far more compelling than anything actually visible on the islands from the 1960s onwards. Bent had also described their sojourns in brisk, to-the-point prose; it’s hard not to warm to someone who could write ‘on my remarking that I should prefer an inside place [on a raised communal family bed] for fear of a fall, they laughed and told stories of a sponge fisherman who dreamt that he was going to take a dive into the sea, and found himself on the floor instead; and of a priest, who rolled out of bed when drunk and broke his neck…in inferior establishments the space beneath the bed is used as a storeroom for all imaginable filth’.
On my extended 1981 trips to Greece, I had to quell lurking disappointment that the islanders were no longer as Bent described them. Or not quite anyway; on Sífnos my young hostess told me that there was still an old woman alive locally who could ‘draw out the sun’ from those afflicted with sunstroke-headache by sleight of handkerchief and incantations, exactly as described in Bent’s Kímolos account from 1883. Later a much older friend told me how, serving as a British delegate to the United Nations Special Commission on the Balkans (UNSCOB), monitoring border violations during the Greek civil war, he had – despite his total disbelief in the rite – the effects of the Evil Eye exorcised, again through spells and fabric manipulations, by an old Sifnian man, Nikos, in 1948, in Macedonia.
Olymbos, Karpathos (photo: Bent Archive).
But one can hardly expect such customs and costumes to have survived decades of emigration, electrification, radio and gramophones, public schooling whether Italian or Greek, meddling foreigners and government policy. Bent himself took a dim view of his own countrymen abroad: ‘It is the Union Jack which scatters [quaint costumes and still quainter customs] to the winds: great though our love is for antiquity, we English have dealt more harshly than any other people with the fashions of the old world.’ During the mid-1960s, even before the culturally destructive colonels’ junta, Kevin Andrews observed how local police felt it necessary to ban the playing of bagpipes at Mykonos port lest ‘foreigners…think us Mau-Mau’. You wonder what the Bents would make of today’s mercenary anthropological zoo centred on the village of Ólymbos in northern Kárpathos, which I first decried in my own 1996 guide to the Dodecanese and North Aegean. Research for that first edition involved criss-crossing the archipelago for several consecutive seasons in just about every month of the year (barring February and March) and every conceivable seagoing conveyance. Perhaps my most Bent-ian experience was in that self-same Ólymbos, when a nistísima meal (compliant with the Lenten fast) turned out to be simply limpets and myrouátana, a delicious seaweed which I have never been served again despite asking repeatedly.
During the late 1980s, in Moe’s – that Berkeley shrine of used books on Telegraph Avenue – I found another copy of the Argonaut Press edition of Aegean Islands, in mint condition, for the paltry price of $7 US: a fair measure of the scant esteem then in the USA for the Bents and their writings. The same copy in Britain at that time fetched at least thirty quid. Even now, antiquarian bookselling websites do not much value this handsome original reprint.
Shortly afterwards – I had not yet left the US to settle in Britain and Greece – I retrieved the purloined copy from my own shelves and headed for my old haunt, the UC Berkeley library. Back then (and probably still now) you could return a book in perfect anonymity, which I did eight years after its initial ‘check-out’, using the large-mouthed chutes near the main doors. It is not a small book in any sense, especially the old cloth-cover edition which is by my desk as I write, and made a satisfying clunk as it hit the bottom. So there should be once again four copies of Aegean Islands in the library’s holdings.
Robert McCabe, ‘Aegean Memories‘ (Athens, Patakis Publishers, 2025).
Greek memories, like its time, defy.
Legendary philhellene photographer Robert McCabe, when in touch (June 2026) on the subject of the Bents on Patmos, made mention that his recent book Aegean Memories was in part inspired by the Bents’ travels in the Cyclades (1882-4): “For example, when we arrived on Folegandros in 1971 we asked for ‘Mr Matzas’ who in 1885 was the Mayor. The answer was ‘You mean the Mayor?’ We met him and he invited us for dinner at his home.”
Bent in his Cyclades(London 1885, p. 270) refers to a mayor of that name (on Andros), visiting from Tinos in early March 1884: “Our letter was to the eparch of Andros, a gentlemanly old man, of a Pariote family… [Eparch Matzi] inhabits a large house provided for him by Government and furnished with as few comforts as possible, for he is a bird of passage… To his wife Kyria Matzi we shall be for ever grateful, for immediately on our arrival she introduced us to the great Andriote luxury limonakki, tiny green lemons made into a jam, so deliciously soft, and so deliciously sweet, that we longed for a potful and some bread and butter. If you get a treat in the way of jam in Greece it is truly aggravating only to be able to take one teaspoonful, and to have to wash that down with raki and water.”
Mabel Bent in her Chronicle (early March 1884) endorses her husband, equally pleased with the accommodation: “We had a letter to the Eparch Matzas and we were very kindly taken in and had a very comfortable room…” (The Travel Chronicles of Mabel Bent, Vol. 1, 2006, Oxford, p. 48).
43 Great Cumberland Place, the Bents’ first London home in the early 1880s (Wikipedia).
By 1878, after their extended honeymoon in Italy (they wed in August 1877), Theodore and Mabel Bent acquired the lease of a modest but fine townhouse at No. 43 Great Cumberland Place, owned by the Portman Estate.
To further his career as explorer and would-be anthropologist, Bent needed a London base and where better than the area around Marble Arch (just a brisk walk to and from the Reform Club, where Phileas Fogg – a role Theodore Bent might easily have played – hurriedly embarked on his journey around the world on 2 October 1872. By the end of 1884 the couple had moved up the road, nearer the iconic Arch, to a larger property at No. 13, on the corner of Great Cumberland Place and Bryanston Street. Bent died there in 1897 and Mabel in 1929.
At the time of her marriage, London’s finer districts were very familiar to Mabel Bent (née Hall-Dare), her wealthy parents (Essex gentry on her father’s side) having occupied various properties in Victoria’s capital in the mid 19th century. The nation’s capital was rather less familiar to her husband, Theodore Bent, born in Liverpool (1852) and raised near Bradford. (The Bents kept a country property 320 km or so north-west of London, just outside of Macclesfield, at Sutton Hall, now an enjoyable hostelry.)
The Bents and the Portman Estate’s properties in Great Cumberland Place
Thanks to the kind researches of Georgina Rowley, Archivist and Records Manager at the Portman Estate, we can share more information on the Bents’ two homes in Great Cumberland Place – Nos 43 and 13. (It takes little imagination to see our celebrity explorers leaving from and returning to their front door together over a period of some 20 years. After May 1897, Mabel would come and go alone. She retained the lease on No. 13 until her death in July 1929.)
43 Great Cumberland Place
43 Great Cumberland Place used to be called 24 Great Cumberland Street, until it was renamed and renumbered in 1868. The mews street to the rear of 43 Great Cumberland Place is called Wythburn Place (previously known as Wythburn Mews, and before that, Cumberland Mews North). 2-4 Wythburn Place was included in the lease for 43 Great Cumberland Place on several occasions. In the 1830s, on the other side of this set of streets was a paper manufactory, bounded by Adams Street and Upper George Street (see P/E 1/11/6 p. 25); by 1888 this factory space was being used as a coach and harness manufactory. This property is quite unusual, because part of it was an overhanging floor that makes up the entrance to Wythburn Place, which is still there today.
Ground floor plan (1868) of 43 Great Cumberland Place (P/E 1/11/7/2 p. 171 Reproduced by kind permission of the Portman Estate Trustees).Block plan for 43 Great Cumberland Place (P/E1/11/6, p. 25) (Reproduced by kind permission of the Portman Estate Trustees).Detail of an 1888 street map, the arrow showing 43 Great Cumberland Place (Reproduced by kind permission of the Portman Estate Trustees).Detail from a bomb damage plan of the area of 43 Great Cumberland Place after WW2. The yellow shading indicating minor blast damage. Fortunately, the property survives today very much as the Bents would recognize it (Reproduced by kind permission of the Portman Estate Trustees).
13 Great Cumberland Place
13 Great Cumberland Place used to be called 13 Great Cumberland Street, until it was renamed and renumbered in 1868. The same London bomb map referred to above shows that by 1941 it had suffered minor blast damage, but most likely later on in the war the property was badly damaged further.
Page 54 of The Portman Estate’s ‘Red Book South’ showing (underlined in yellow) Mabel Bent’s 23-year lease of 13 Great Cumberland Place at an annual rate of £150 (c. £25,000 in 2026), expiring, traditionally, ‘Lady Day’ 1921 (reproduced by kind permission of the Portman Estate Trustees).The huge building erected on the extensive plot that previously included the Bents’ former townhouse (on the corner of Bryanston St) at 13 Great Cumberland Place which was destroyed in WW2. The photo is dated c. 1957 (Reproduced by kind permission of the Portman Estate Trustees).Plan of 13 Great Cumberland Place to accompany the lease dated 29 December 1897 on behalf of Mabel Bent/executors of Theodore Bent who died in May of that year (P/E 1/11/7/6, p.30; Reproduced by kind permission of the Portman Estate Trustees).Detail from a pre-1880 map when Great Cumberland Place was still a ‘street’. No. 13 is arrowed (Reproduced by kind permission of the Portman Estate Trustees).Initial plan showing minor bomb damage to 13 Great Cumberland Place. Further raids destroyed it completely (Reproduced by kind permission of the Portman Estate Trustees).
Damage to Great Cumberland Place during the WW2 air raids on London
London’s Marble Arch, a symbol of Empire and permanence in the minds of the Bents as they travelled, a feature they would have seen every day when in the capital, made a prime target for the bombing raids over London in WW2. Ironically, it survived, although the Bents’ museum-home at 13 Great Cumberland Place, just 200m or so from the monument, was destroyed. Arguably the most severe damage to the area occurred during the so-called ‘Longest Night‘ of 10-11 May 1941, when hundreds of German planes dropped their explosives on the capital. Mabel Bent, at least, was spared that trauma, having died at 13 Great Cumberland Place on 3 July 1929.
WW2 Bomb damage in the area of Great Cumberland Place (Reproduced by kind permission of the Portman Estate Trustees).WW2 Bomb damage in the area of Great Cumberland Place (Reproduced by kind permission of the Portman Estate Trustees).
The Bents’ dining room, 13 Great Cumberland Place, London, a unique, if grainy, image illustrated in ‘The Gentlewoman’, No. 175, Vol. VII, 11 November 1893.
Interested in some original 19th-century books and articles (not modern digital reprints) published by the Bents? The following are currently available from the Bent Archive.
Contact us for prices and details/photos: info@thebentarchive.com
Original articles (not modern copies)
J. Theodore Bent, ‘The City of the Creed’. The Fortnightly Review, Vol. 53 (47) (Feb, 1890), 220-300. Bound original article, no illustrations, no map. (Link is to an alternative edition.)
J. Theodore Bent, ‘Explorations in Cilicia Tracheia’. Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society and Monthly Record of Geography, Vol. 12 (8) (Aug,1890), 445-463. Original article in paper sleeve, illustrations, and fold-out map. Map has a slight tear to the margin. (Link is to an alternative edition.)
J. Theodore Bent, ‘The Ruins of Mashonaland, and Explorations in the Country’. Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society and Monthly Record of Geography, Vol. 14 (5) (May, 1892), 273-298. Bound original article, illustrations, and 2 fold-out maps. (Link is to an alternative edition.)
J. Theodore Bent, ‘The Ancient Trade Route across Ethiopia’. The Geographical Journal, Vol. 2 (2) (Aug, 1893), 140-146. Bound original article, with map on page 141.
J. Theodore Bent, ‘The Hadramut: A Journey in Southern Arabia’. The Nineteenth Century, Vol. 36 (211) (Sept, 1894), 419-437. Bound original article, no illustrations, no map. (Link is to an alternative edition.)
J. Theodore Bent, ‘Expedition to the Hadramut’. The Geographical Journal, Vol. 4 (4) (Oct, 1894), 315-331. Bound original article, with illustration and loose, fold-out map.
J. Theodore Bent, ‘The Island of Socotra’. The Nineteenth Century, Vol. 41 (244) (June, 1897), 975-992. Bound original article, no illustrations, no map (published posthumously). (Link is to an alternative edition.)
Mrs J. Theodore Bent, ‘Exploration in the Yafei and Fadhli Countries’. The Geographical Journal, Vol. 12 (1) (July, 1898), 41-63. Bound original article, with illustrations and loose, fold-out map. The map has a slight tear.
Books (nb the links may take you to other versions of these titles and are for information only)
Aegean Islands. The Cyclades or Life Among the Insular Greeks, Theodore Bent, introduction by A.N. Oikonimides, his well-regarded 1996 version of Bent’s classic 1885 account. Published by Argonaut, Chicago. This was the first modern reprint.
The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland, Theodore Bent, 1902 reprint for Boots Library, Longman’s Green & Co., London (condition fair). First edition 1892.
Southern Arabia, Theodore and Mabel Bent, 1994 reprint published by Garnet Publishing, edited by Robin Bidwell. Reprint of the Bents’ original 1900 publication by Smith, Elder & Co.
Jerusalem. The Garden Tomb Golgatha and The Garden of the Resurrection, revised by Mabel Bent and Caroline Hussey, no date (1920s) (First published in 1892 by Arthur William Crawley-Boevey and the Committee of the Garden Tomb Maintenance fund).
Slaughter as high art. The Pylos Combat Agate, c. 1450-1500 BCE, length: 3.6 cm, Pylos Archaeological Museum (Wikipedia).
Celebrity-explorers Theodore and Mabel Bent didn’t excavate in the Greek Peloponnese in the 1880s – they would never have been given permits.
The recent state-of-the-art excavations and discoveries at the ‘Griffin Warrior’ tomb, Pylos, Peloponnese, and the present (June 2026) exhibition of its spectacular finds in Athens, give a chance to reflect on the methods employed elsewhere in the Aegean by the Bents in the 1880s: the island of Karpathos (Dodecanese), for instance (and professional archaeologists might like to look away at this point).
The Aegean: Vroukountas, Karpathos, indicated (ToposText).
The Bents were on Karpathos after 5 March until before 21 April 1885, some seven weeks, arriving from Tilos (where they found little, camping, ironically, in the old monastery that now acts as bulwark to the new museum, on whose information panels they, inexplicably, go unmentioned).
The couple ride far and wide over Karpathos, before reaching the distant north-western tip and the once notable city of Vrykous (modern Vroukountas (various spellings) [35.80167678950954, 27.16483337973251]). A site busy with people from neolithic times to the 19th century CE, it was one of the island’s important centres in antiquity (see, e.g., Nigel McGilchrist’s imaginative treatment, in McGilchrist’s Greek Islands #16: Southern Dodecanese: Astypalaia, Tilos, Karpathos, Kasos, Kastellorizo (London, 2011).
Βρυκο͂ς – Brykous, polis near Ag. Marina, north of Avlona, Karpathos, Dodecanese (ToposText).
Arriving from Olympos, via today’s Avlona, the Bent party camped at Vroukountas between 30 March and 2 April 1885, pitching a tent, typically topped with a ‘Union Jack’ it seems, in the level area directly in front of what is now referred to as the cave-church of St John – a strange sight for modern August festival-goers to contemplate no doubt: the Bents washed themselves in the cave’s stone basins and struggled with an unruly tent; their long-suffering dragoman, Mathew Simos from Anafi (in the Cyclades, not very far away to the west) slept outside…
Unaware of these campers, McGilchrist (see above) describes the setting: “At the northern extremity of the promontory, steps lead down into a spacious natural cave deep within the headland… To the left was the spring which served the settlement in antiquity; it is possible that the sanctuary of the Nymphs was here, from which a relief showing Hermes and the Nymphs, formerly immured in the forecourt of the Church of the Koimisis in Olympos, once came. The cave is now organised as the shrine of Aghios Ioannis Theologos, whose screen, font and altar are all composed of various ancient spolia.”
“Proceeding along the cliff we found tombs of every possible description, single chambers, double chambers, tombs one over the other, tombs with steps above them cut in the rock, as if for ornamentation, but the most frequent and those which we found the least disturbed were those constructed like this plan…” (Bent, J.T. 1885: 237. Bent would have sketched the plan in his site log, now lost).
Forty-two years after Ludwig Ross (Ross 1845) had visited the island, without reaching Vroukountas due to bad weather, Bent wrote a lengthy article on his researches for The Journal of Hellenic Studies (1885, Vol. VI: 233-242) and sets the scene: “Brykountios was apparently the most considerable town during both the earlier and later occupations, and as it was situated at the extreme north of Karpathos, about two hours distant from the Elympos, and several days’ journey from the Konak, we were able to pitch our tent there and excavate unmolested… The chief interest connected with the pottery I brought back is that it is the first to come from Karpathos and from these rock-cut tombs. But the tombs themselves were extremely interesting, and the great variety of periods of pottery found in close juxtaposition would suggest that the graves had been used again and again, just as the graves of the Karpathiotes [are] now…” (Bent, J.T. 1885: 236, 237) (Bent kept notebooks of his researches but unfortunately they all seem to have been lost apart from those of his final journey to Socotra and Aden in 1897.)
(Two further interesting characters besides Ross can be introduced here: the swashbuckling Charles Thomas Newton (see later below), who never visited but acquired important Roman antiquities from Karpathos now in the British Museum; and the aristocratic William Roger Paton, Bent’s friend, who did explore the island’s southern region a year or so after the Bents and acquired fine Mycenaean wares there, also now in the BM (Paton 1887; 1889)
Mabel Bent’s account of their stay at Vroukountas, before Easter 1885
Mabel Bent devotes several pages in her ‘Chronicles’ to what was clearly a happy stay at this campsite, which included Theodore’s 33rd birthday, some notable finds, a few memorable meals, and the arrival of family letters (with belated news of the death of General Charles Gordon at Khartoum on 26 January 1885).
Mabel begins her account:
“You must excuse these smudges as I am sitting cross-legged on Theodore’s bed in our tent and was just interrupted by a man who came for two candles Theodore had sent for that he may explore a cave.
We are encamped for four days at Vourgounda. We came here yesterday [30 March 1885] with two mules and two workmen to make excavations on the site of an ancient city. We only took our medicines, without which we never move, necessaries of clothing, and books for four days, food and bedding; but I had so much to sit on that I had to hold with both hands all the way. As I did not fall off I was pronounced an excellent rider by the men.
There is a long rocky point jutting into the sea on the west of Karpathos, far north, near Tristomo and covered with ruins. Here everyone lunched at noon and then Theodore set the men to work and I went to the end of the point and had the tent pitched by a high rock, which shelters us from south winds. As Sunday night was the only rainless one we have had this long time, the ground was dry and by great good luck we have a level, gravelly floor.
“’We always travel with green fly tents with double flaps, the whole made of Willesden canvas, which does not get mouldy when folded up wet.’ – Theodore Bent, Esq., in the ‘Album’. Beware of imitations. Samples and prices from Willesden Paper and Canvas Works, Willesden Junction, N.W.” (‘Field’, Saturday, 10 April 1897). Twenty years after Karpathos, Mathew Simos (standing right) at camp on Socotra, by then fully familiar with tents (Bent, M.V.A. 1900: 365; archive.org).
Neither Mathew nor the other two men had ever seen a tent before, so beginning with turning right side out I had to lead by example and prompt and instruct them in everything; all in Greek too. Do not think I had only to cause the pegs to be driven into the ground and put the eyes or guys, or whatever you call the ropes, over, no, only one peg is done like that. No two ropes are the same, either as to length or the angle from the tent: some are under rocks, some are round rocks, some are over rocks, and one had to be strung through a hole in a rock… I was tired enough in my tongue and limbs when, after hoisting the Union Jack, I sat down to survey the tent, and, really, the ropes all dancing have a very funny effect. The sun was hot outside but it was hotter still setting up the beds inside, ‘tromero sesti’ as they said.
After that I went to the workmen, who had discovered the pavement of a Byzantine church. We turn up our noses at anything ‘tis Vizantines epoches’, so Theodore took them elsewhere.
Soon after our arrival, a messenger came and brought us two letters, the first we have had for more than five weeks and our first news of poor General Gordon’s death. As soon as we had joyfully read them we began to lament the many more that had been lost, but two or three hours later another man came with 23, and two newspapers, February 7 being the latest, and March 9 the latest letter.
“A very steep path leads to the small round entrance and several flights of steps lead down into a large cave. The holy place is shut in by a low wall and some pillars which do not touch the roof. Holy water drips into two little stone troughs and thither we hie with our sponges and towels to wash…” The cave-church of St John, Vroukountas, scene of a three-day festival over 29 August (St John the Baptist/Agios Ioannis Prodromos) (karpathostravel.com).
When the sun set we scrambled home. Next to our tent is a little hut built against the wall as a kitchen for pilgrims who come to a little chapel in the cave beneath. A very steep path leads to the small round entrance and several flights of steps lead down into a large cave. The holy place is shut in by a low wall and some pillars which do not touch the roof. Holy water drips into two little stone troughs and thither we hie with our sponges and towels to wash. The workmen sleep among the rocks; there are plenty of caves about. When it got dark we went to the kitchen to dine. It was Theodore’s birthday.
The sacks of my bed and the tent were laid as a tablecloth on the soft wet earthen floor. We sat on two stones. Theodore leaning against the middle post supporting a lambskin full of water, and I, as I found afterwards, very few inches from the lamb of the period. Mathew built a table and seats next day. All the rocks and stones around were full of food and pots and a candle stuck by its own wax to one of them shed a dim light, except once when it tumbled down and went out.
We had a soup of lamb’s head and a lot of herbs picked by the wayside, onions, and a handful of peas someone had given to Theodore to eat raw. Then the brains and tongue boiled. Then the liver fried; a bowl of sheep’s cream and sugar. Some wine from Samos and coffee. We then strolled on the rocks by moonlight and complained to each other that we did not feel at all excited at the idea of our first night in a tent – indeed, I think all we felt was satisfaction at the idea of a clean, dry shelter.
Mathew spread his bed on brushwood in the kitchen. I undressed outside that I might bring in no fleas. As I had spread all our bedding in the sun, for once it was dry and our clothes in the morning were quite dry too. It rained in the night and Theodore had to go out about two to loosen the guys, and the north wind came on in the morning, so they had to be tightened again.
It is a cold dark day and the sea wild and black. We breakfasted outside. Theodore has gone to dig graves today and I am remaining at home enjoying great peace, nooked in where no one can stare. I am just going to have another read of the letters.
In the afternoon, or rather about 10, I went and with difficulty found the diggers, as they were in catacombs whose openings were quite invisible from above. They had already begun to find things, though many of the graves had evidently been opened in the Byzantine times. Most things were broken but still there were many whole and during the whole time we became possessed of many earthen plates (20 in one grave), the remains of copper mirrors and boxes, some glass things broken, and some broken but very pretty vases, etc. But the best thing is quite perfect – a bowl shaped like a pineapple about 4 or 5 inches across. Besides this, three round boxes and two lids made of lead, we think, a sort of button with a hanging ring, but we know not what metal, and some little twisted bits that seem to be gold. The prettiest lamp, quite perfect, has a word on the bottom and Theodore copied some inscriptions painted on the stucco of the vaults. We are altogether very much pleased with our success, and if we do not find things on Saría may return…
On Thursday morning (March 31st, I mean April 2nd), I did not go at all to the digging. To get there one must climb up, down, or over 17 walls, and as I did this three times the day before, besides wandering in search of tombs, I am sure I had a good deal of climbing. I was not much use as the men preferred grouping themselves round me when Theodore’s back was turned, talking to me, looking at my eyeglass, scissors, gloves, never before seen in Karpathos I am sure, and asking innumerable questions. In vain I suggest they should work but when the ‘aphentiko’, as they address Theodore, comes it is different.
“Besides this, three round boxes and two lids made of lead, we think, a sort of button with a hanging ring, but we know not what metal, and some little twisted bits that seem to be gold…” (From Mabel Bent’s notebook “her chronicle in the Sporades &c., 1885”, p. 78, archive of The Hellenic Society, London, CC).
Besides there was much to do in cleaning out the earth from the pots with very little water. I had to mind the camp while Mathew went to seek a meal in the sea. I had a visit from five women and girls who, without any ceremony, called me nothing but Verghinía. This is the first time I have not been called Kyria Verghinía, but I suppose these people really never have seen anyone superior to themselves and their only idea of a ‘Kyria’ must be the Blessed Virgin. They said ‘come with us Verghinía and we’ll give you cream’, but they terrified me by playing with the pots and I gave them no encouragement to remain and was glad when they left.
I packed our personal possessions and the more delicate ‘finds’ and after luncheon Theodore went off again and I broke up the camp with Mathew, though Theodore had sent me a man, which I told him was quite unnecessary. The man was busy all the time turning a lamb into food, which I fortunately did not find out till he was dead. By the by, Mathew had not slept a 2nd night in the kitchen, which was really as airtight as a nutmeg grater, but taken refuge in a cave about 30 feet above our heads.
We had three mules as we had two huge baskets of pots and seaweeds. About 4 pm, Theodore and his men came and everything was carried about three-quarters of a mile and they and I were loaded on the mules and we reached Elymbo by dark. Sunny day.
Good Friday was a fine sunny day and we unpacked the panniers, for we were quite too tired to look at anything on our arrival. It is very exciting work digging – first finding something, then is it whole? Then have we all the pieces? The men grind the edges trying to fit them, and any metal they cut with their knife. Fortunately they never saw the little boxes. Theodore found and pocketed them.
We cleaned as much as our limited means would allow (a milk jug and a Russian wooden bowl such as grocers have with 2 lbs of tea). We packed the pots into three boxes, all except a very large earthenware jug, two of which were found whole and one of which Theodore gave away. It is to be carried loose all the way home and now we empty our bowl into it. These two days before Easter are employed making bread and cakes with red eggs stuck into them and every oven is smoking…” (Bent, M.V.A. 2006: 99-125)
(We leave the Bents here; they now return to Olympos for the Easter celebrations…)
Restrictions on the unauthorised removal of antiquities from Greece were already in force when the Bents were active in the Aegean (1880s). The position for Turkish areas was arguably more fluid, but from Mabel Bent’s notes in her diaries it is clear that had their ‘finds’ from Vourgounda been inspected on the waterfront, contemporary warehouses can still be seen at Pigadia, they would have been confiscated immediately. Just a few years later, the couple had considerable difficulties along the Turkish littoral, exiling them to distant regions (Africa, Arabia) under ‘British Protection’ where they could excavate freely.
The many crates, cartons and sacks containing the Bents’ acquisitions from Karpathos (including some very important village embroideries) left with the couple on the steamer Roúmeli on 21 April 1885. Mabel records in her diary: “The next excitement was getting the things at Pegadhia. I decided to remain on board and became a perfect queen-bee. I gave up moving at last for I was always followed. I eagerly watched the proceedings on shore. Mathew set off to run to the house where was a very hideous statue, more than the size of a baby, half a mile off. Theodore and the Turks sat down at the café… We mean to deposit it in bond at the customhouse of Syra with all the cases and things we do not want.”
Fierce storms forced the Roúmeli to seek shelter (as St Paul is said to have done) at Kali Limenes, southern Crete, before continuing via Kythera to Syra: “At Kythera a ‘manifesto’ was made and signed by the captain, saying he had picked us, and our cases, up in Turkey, and by the Kythera customs people to say we had not started from there… And now Thursday [23 April 1885] we are at Syra, all the things are in the customhouse, the great jars tied up to the wall.”
With, according to Mabel, all their acquisitions and paraphernalia (via Messina and Malta): “We reached home via Millwall Dock in safety with our 24 pieces of the most varied luggage, and I am more convinced than ever that there is no place like it.” Unfortunately she does not add a date, but it will have been around the middle of May 1885 – too late for them to attend the Hellenic Society meeting of 7 May, but Theodore did speak about the Karpathos finds at the Annual Meeting on 25 June (Bent, J.T. 1885: xlv). (For all Mabel Bent’s diary entries, see Bent, M.V.A. 2006: 99-125)
From Syra, Bent wrote a candid letter dated 24 April 1885 to Sir Charles Newton (see an earlier reference to him above), at that time Keeper of the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum. The use of the word ‘plunder’ is jarring : ‘We returned from Karpathos yesterday and had hoped to catch a steamer which would have brought us and our things straight to England. Unfortunately we shall have to wait a week at least, and as we have so much plunder we cannot take the Marseilles route… We were fairly successful in Karpathos, finding a large number of rock cut graves unopened which have produced pottery, etc., which, if not of the highest order, offer a good deal which I believe to be of a new character. I have likewise got a good-sized statue of one of those quaint figures which I got at Antiparos last year; it is of stone and nearly a yard long. It is decidedly uglier than any which have yet come to hand. Of quaint manners and customs I have got a fine collection, also of old Karpathiote dresses and jewelry… We had rather a rough time of it, Karpathos being very far behind the world in comforts, and decidedly we enjoyed ourselves best when living in our own tent. Mrs. Bent survives and is well and begs her kind regards. Yours very truly, J. Theodore Bent” (Archive of the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, British Museum)
Items from Vroukountas purchased by the British Museum from Theodore Bent in 1886 (* = on display at the BM as of June 2026)
(The Bents returned to London from Karpathos in May 1885, i.e. suggesting a period of deliberation and negotiation by both parties. Many finds referred to by Mabel in her diaries, and Theodore in his article for the Hellenic Society, i.e. the mysterious ’20 plates’, the large pithoi, etc., did not go to the BM and are presumably in various other collections today, unprovenanced. Over the centuries, how many other adventurers have come and gone among such islands, removing similar artefacts?)
Items from Vroukountas donated by Mabel Bent to the British Museum in 1926
Mabel Bent’s sister, Ethel Bagenal (1848-1930), to whom she left her estate on her death in July 1929, in turn, Ethel’s daughters were responsible for their aunt’s collections (The Bent Archive).
The Bents leased a fine townhouse near Marble Arch, London, at 13 Great Cumberland Place; Mabel continued to live there until her death in 1929. It was a veritable museum, if not a treasure chest, of decades of collecting and inherited items and clearly she wanted to hold on to certain souvenirs of her travels with Theodore, or items that were particularly decorative – including some discoveries from Vroukountas made during that obviously happy spring of 1885. Towards the end of her life she was inevitably thinking of what was to happen to her collections (alas, creating some sort of permanent home for them does not seem to have been considered). In her will, everything was left to her surviving sister, Ethel Bagenal (or effectively her two daughters, i.e. Mabel’s nieces). However in 1926 Mabel presented to the British Museum a large number of artefacts from all the regions they had travelled to, including the following Vroukountas pieces (they lack specific grave numbers):
1926,0410.42: kantharos, black-glazed ware. Attic, ca. 4th BCE. No grave specified, donated 1926 by MVAB.
1926,0410.41: kantharos, black-glazed ware. Attic, ca. 4th BCE. No grave specified, donated 1926 by MVAB.
1926,0410.40: salt-cellar, black-glazed ware. Hellenistic, ca. 3rd c. BCE. No grave specified, donated 1926 by MVAB.
(For an overview of the Bents’ collections see this summary)
“[At] Pegadia or ‘wells’ … there are evidences of pre-historic inhabitants, the graves of whom I was unfortunately unable to open owing to the presence of the Turkish authorities, but I was able to obtain a large stone figure of a female idol, similar to the smaller ones I found at Antiparos…” (Bent, J.T. 1885: 235)
This is the most bizarre of all the Bents’ acquisitions from any of their travels – an enigmatic stone figurine, still without a known parallel. The British Museum’s data record its findspot as Vroukountas, but the Bents purchased it from the Pigadia area; it left Karpathos whole, clandestinely in a blanket, but now is shown mended (in two parts).
Not currently exhibited (June 2026), it is a much travelled object, having featured in loan exhibitions to the Far East. (How Bent can think it resembled one of the marble figurines he recovered from Antiparos in 1884 is hard to explain.)
Theodore Bent as artist: recent acquisitions by the Bent Archive (June 2026)
Two watercolours by Theodore Bent. Left: A view inside the Old Town, the Island of Rhodes, 1885 (46 x 30 cm); Right: The Çandarlı Halil Pasha Tower, Rumelihisarı (Boğazkesen Fortress), Bosphorus, Istanbul, 1886 (46 x 30 cm) (the Bent Archive collection).
Left: Facing eastwards, a view inside the Old Town, the Island of Rhodes, 1885 (46 x 30 cm)
Theodore and Mabel Bent were on Rhodes from 6 – 20 February 1885, arriving from Alexandria, before moving on to the islands of Nisyros, Tilos, and Karpathos to look for antiquities and traditional artefacts, including embroideries and ceramics. As ‘Franks’ they were not permitted to stay overnight in the famous walled Old Town and took a pension in ‘Niochori’ (the new district) not far from where the casino is today. Mabel clearly feels she cannot do justice to the wonders of the Old Town; leaving descriptions for the guidebooks, she writes in her diary: “It is quite a little walk to the town where no one but Jew or Turk may remain after sunset. The town is very interesting and full of coats of arms and bits of carving and other traces of the Knights, but see Murray” (The Travel Chronicles of Mrs J. Theodore Bent, Vol. 1, 2006, p. 69). Theodore Bent publishes later an account of the social dimensions of their fortnight on the island (‘Rhodian Society’, Macmillan’s Magazine, Vol. 52, 1885 May/Oct, pp. 297-303) – he finds the Old Town’s famous hammam open: “Another easy method of studying this conglomerate society is afforded by the bath. Every Rhodian, of whatever nationality, indulges in the Turkish bath on some day or another in the week, from the lowest menial to the exiled pashas, and everyone pays according to his rank”.
Theodore Bent’s watercolour (1885) of a view inside the Old Town, the Island of Rhodes (46 x 30 cm) (Bent Archive Collection).
A keen watercolourist and sketcher ever since his schooldays, Bent illustrated most of his 20 years of travel with his wife (E. Med, Africa, Arabia), of course he couldn’t resist the multi-period charms of Rhodes’ Old Town. His scene, facing eastwards, from an elevated position, at first difficult to locate, is explained for us by a resident historian of today: “I think the sea on the horizon is the key detail here. Bent is clearly looking from an elevated point across the city towards the sea, not inland ‘uphill’. The perspective actually fits the topography of Rhodes quite well: the line of today’s Sokratous Street descending on the right side helps orient the scene, and the two principal mosques can be identified fairly convincingly – [firstly] the tall minaret of the Süleymaniye Mosque and, further back/right, the Ibrahim Pasha Mosque. That makes the composition much less imaginary than it first appears.
Detail from Fr. Bedford’s 1862 panoramic photo of Rhodes taken from the (now demolished) Naillac Tower. The eastwards-pointing arrow gives an idea of Bent’s line of view for his 1885 watercolour, from above and behind the Süleymaniye Mosque (public domain).
The windmill also makes more sense in that context: rather than the Omirou/Pythagora mill, it is probably one of the mills associated with the commercial harbour area, visible beyond the Ottoman skyline. In fact, excavations carried out around 2000 in the commercial harbour uncovered the foundations of several mills, showing that there was once a whole cluster of them there. Today only the first mill survives, restored, while the others have disappeared. So Bent was likely recording a real feature of the late Ottoman harbour landscape. Overall, the painting seems to represent a genuine seaward panorama of Ottoman Rhodes” (personal communication, Apostolos Papageorgiou, May 2026).
Detail of Theodore Bent’s watercolour (1885) of a view inside the Old Town, the Island of Rhodes (46 x 30 cm). The muezzin can just be seen on the minaret of the Süleymaniye Mosque (Bent Archive Collection).
The line, colouring, foliage, and detail of his watercolour are typical of Bent’s naïve ‘style’, influenced, inter alia, by the work of Edward Lear (who was aware of Bent and owned a copy of his popular book on the Cyclades). One of Bent’s characteristic figures is represented by the muezzin seen calling the faithful to prayer, perched high on the Süleymaniye Mosque’s minaret. Rhodes remained in Ottoman hands until the Italian invasion of 1912. For more on the Old Town’s mosques, see Giorgos Ntellas & Katerina Manousou-Ntella, ‘The Ottoman Mosques of the Medieval City of Rhodes’, in The Ottoman Monuments In Greece Revisited: A Tribute In The Memory Of Machiel Kiel, Athens, 2025, pp. 467 ff.
Right: The Çandarlı Halil Pasha Tower, Rumelihisarı (Boğazkesen Fortress), Bosphorus, Istanbul, 1886 (46 x 30 cm) (the Bent Archive collection)
Theodore Bent, the Çandarlı Halil Pasha Tower, Rumelihisarı (Boğazkesen Fortress), Bosphorus, Istanbul, 1886 (46 x 30 cm) (the Bent Archive collection).
The Bents’ first stay of any length in Constantinople, based at the Hôtel de Byzance, was from 23 January until 17 February 1886. Although they did visit the region in the spring of 1883, disembarking at Smyrna, Mabel makes no reference to sailing into the Bosporus then; later business took them to Constantinople several times during the months they spent in Turkey in 1888. In 1886 the couple were en route for various islands off the Turkish coast, including Chios, Samos, and Patmos, looking for antiquities.
Mabel’s diary does not give the actual date of their excursion to the Roumeli Hissar Fortress on the Bosphorus, but she refers to it: “We went to Roumeli Hissar and to Bouyoukder and got to know that part of the Bosphoros pretty well and really on the whole we had very fine weather, but the inhabitants were desiring snow” (The Travel Chronicles of Mrs J. Theodore Bent, Vol. 1, 2006, p. 135).
Rumelihisarı (Boğazkesen Fortress), Bosphorus, Istanbul (Wikipedia).
Skilful engineers designed the fortress complex to roll up and down over the hilly contours of the landward Bosphorus here. Linked by its walls, the great features of the defences are its three massive bastions: the cylindrical Saruca Pasha tower to the north; the Zaganos Pasha tower (also cylindrical); and the Halil Pasha tower on the waterfront, with its 12 sides – originally bristling with guns to help control the strait. It is this latter tower that attracts Theodore Bent on their day out, taking a position that enables him to include the eastern (Asian) shores of this historic waterway in the distance. The tower, seeming to tilt slightly, is the obvious eye-catcher, Bent emphasising its power by the bulk and width; pleasingly, the structure is echoed by one on the far bank, two finger-pines adding elevation. Most of the tower’s adjacent structures visible to Bent have been removed and the area is undergoing extensive restoration (2026). (Mabel also mentions going to see the ‘Bouyoukder’ (Büyükdere) area, the smart quarter with fine Turkish mansions, then much favoured by diplomats and other elites.)
Bent’s articles on the immediate vicinity include:
“Embroidered tunic and skirt of linen crepe with square sleeves, embroidered in tent and long cross stitches with various repeating patterns of debased floral and other forms arranged geometrically.” Now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (no: 346-1886; from Karpathos in the Dodecanese, acquired from the Bents (in 1886) after their visit to the island in early 1885). Similar ‘frocks’ purchased by the Bents on Karpathos are now in the Benaki Museum, Athens (Victoria and Albert Museum, London).
In the early twentieth century, a group of BSA students put together significant collections of Greek domestic embroidery. Many of which are now in museum collections across the UK, in particular the V&A and National Museums Liverpool. The primary collectors were R.M. Dawkins and A.J.B. Wace. As the granddaughter of Wace and as a textile conservator, Ann French has been researching how these collections were compiled, studied, exhibited and promoted by them and their colleagues and friends. During her talk (at mins 33-35) we are introduced to some ‘frocks’ bought by the Bents while on Karpathos in 1885, and their slow, circular journey back to Greece (Athens) in the early 1930s. (The tale is also brilliantly told in the scholarly journal of the Benaki Museum, 2015-2016-2017, pp. 75-90. French includes very rare photographs, essential bibliography and notes.)
2) “Greek Dress at the Hellenic Centre, London – 4 February until 2 March 2014” – The Bents’ acquisitions and their stories!
Although Theodore and Mabel Bent lived not so far away, Marylebone, in Central London, might seem an unlikely place for an exhibition of Greek costume, but it is the home of the Hellenic Centre, a focus for philhellenes and London’s Greek community. From 4 February until 2 March 2014, there was a rare opportunity to see an impressive range of Greek dress outside its native land. As part of the event (on Friday 28 February, 7.15 pm), Ann French, Textile Conservator at the Whitworth Art Gallery, the University of Manchester, used selected embroideries from the 1914 pioneering embroidery exhibition (click for the online catalogue) at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in London, to trace their individual collecting histories and reveal the different contexts, interpretations and values placed on them within UK based collections and museums. This exhibition, which drew on the leading collections of the day, primarily from the collection of Theodore and Mabel Bent and the archaeologists R M Dawkins & A J B Wace, of Greek Embroideries displayed, for the first time in the UK, historic Greek Embroideries as an art form. There is a short, but wonderful, promotional video on YouTube (April 2021).
The exhibition features several of the Bent’s finest costumes and pieces, and Ann refers to them in the last five minutes or so of her talk in a fascinating account of how, on Mabel’s death, one of her Karpathos frocks found its way back to Greece! (One other is in store at the V & A, and two more from Nisyros are untraced – if you have them, let us know!)
Another of the dresses acquired by the Bents on Karpathos in 1885. After a long journey, this exquisite cotton costume of the 18th century returned to Greece and is now in the Benaki Museum, Athens (EE 923).
Click here also for the small collection of ‘Turkish’ embroideries once owned by the Bents and now in the Harris Museum and Gallery, Preston, UK, and here for dresses from Anafi in the Cyclades.
(For the Bents in Greece and Turkey, see Mabel Bent’s Chronicles, published by Archaeopress, Oxford, in 3 volumes)
‘Chemise’ from Karpathos(?) acquired by the Bents in 1885. MFA/Boston No. 43.398 from the Elizabeth Day McCormick Collection (public domain).
Roderick Taylor in his Embroidery of the Greek Islands (New York, 1998) has several references and photographs of Greek costumes from the collections of the Bents now dispersed far and wide. It is not clear from the several references Mabel Bent made in her Karpathos diary to buying dresses on this island (and others in the Dodecanese) from which village this comes. Taylor includes island dresses/chemises from the displays of such collectors as Helen Stathatos (1887-1982) and Elizabeth Day McCormick (1873-1957) (pp. 46, 80-2, 175; see also Susan L. MacMillan Greek Islands Embroideries, MFA Boston, 1974).
The costume worn by Ekaterina Lorenziades of Ios in the Cyclades to impress the Bents during their stay, now in the National Historical Museum, Athens (photo = Alan King).
See also the blog ‘Folk Costume and Embroidery‘ and Alan King’s post elsewhere on the costume worn by Ekaterina Lorenziades to impress the Bents during their stay on Ios, now in the National Historical Museum, Athens.
After Vanessa Gordon, author of The Naxos Mysteries, kindly contributed to our Reading “The Cyclades” series, we asked if she would like to write us a short piece about her erstwhile Cycladic encounters with Theodore and Mabel Bent, and were delighted when she agreed.
Beginning her article on the island of Antiparos, where the Bents spent some happy weeks in early 1884, making their own mysterious discoveries, Vanessa writes…
Antiparos collage (Wikipedia).
We eventually reached Antiparos, having made several visits to its larger neighbour, Paros, on other trips without managing to include Antiparos in our itinerary.
By the time I stood on the southern shore of Antiparos, looking out over the islet of Despotiko, I already knew something about Theodore and Mabel Bent. Their activities here had made an impression on me when I first read Theodore’s book The Cyclades, or Life among the Insular Greeks (1885), which I had discovered on the bookcase of a good friend in Athens who, being a classicist and archaeologist, had many interesting books that I scanned and subsequently acquired.
Imagine my disappointment, then, when we were told that there would be no more ferry crossings to Despotiko that day. My husband and I consoled ourselves with a superb fish lunch, and resolved to return the following summer.
Bent’s map of the Cyclades from the first edition of his 1885 book. The arrow points to Despotiko (archive.org).
And so we did, and were much better prepared that time. Schedules had been consulted and hours put aside for exploring on Despotiko. In fact, we arrived too early, and ordered a coffee at a taverna close to the jetty. There we met another English couple, Steve and Diana, and a conversation began. They, too, were waiting for the ferry to Despotiko, and we ended up spending the whole day together. We first visited the ruined Sanctuary of Apollo, where the Bents had been long before us, and then re-boarded the ferry which took us round the coast to a swimming bay at the far side of the islet. It was there, as we walked into the warm water to have our swim, that our companions informed us they were once members of the British Olympic swimming team. We have remained friends ever since.
It was a serendipitous first encounter with the indomitable Bents, although with our new friends, and the inevitable feast afterwards at the local taverna, I’m not sure just how much I thought about them after we left the sanctuary. By the end of the day, though, I regarded them in a different way from how I had thought of them on reading Life Among the Insular Greeks. I had picked up even then that Theodore’s approach to antiquity was, in a sense, rather cavalier. I had formed an impression that some things might have been damaged in his search for other antiquities. That was understandable: these were early days, and the principles of archaeology, especially concerning the protection, conservation and sensitive excavation of finds, had barely been established at the time – and not established at all in the mind of Theodore. What else was to be expected from an enthusiastic explorer in a science that was barely past its adolescence? The bond I had formed with Theodore, therefore, was a fellow-feeling between two come-lately but passionate amateurs. I also admired him, of course, for having done so much in the pursuit of his passion, undeterred by hardships, adversity and ill-health.
Mabel V.A. Hall-Dare, later Mrs J Theodore Bent, as a young woman. She, famously, had long, red hair (courtesy Turtle Bunbury).
Then there was Mabel, his wife. Photographer and diarist, older than her husband, vivacious Irish woman, desperate to escape the confines of Victorian Ireland, she had accepted Theodore as her husband and his proposal to travel to foreign lands. They had set off soon after their wedding (1877) and were to explore together for many years; even after Theodore’s early death, Mabel continued this journeying. I was reminded of Joan Leigh-Fermor, partner and wife of Paddy, who crossed Greece with him in an era when it was almost as difficult to do so as for the Bents. Also of Agatha Christie, whose late marriage to Max Mallowan had taken her to remote archaeological sites in Egypt, where, with her trusty typewriter in her luggage, she had written some of her mysteries in makeshift accommodation in the desert. These were women whose husbands – archaeologists and explorers, writers and travellers – had opened up for them the possibility of a life which most women of the time had no chance to experience.
So it was that, inevitably perhaps, I introduced small references to the Bents in my own writing. The Naxos Mysteries pivot on archaeology and history, and my hero Martin Day gives long and enthusiastic explanations on his beloved subject to anyone who will listen. This gives me the perfect platform for introducing all sorts of interesting historical anecdotes into my books, and this includes the Bents.
It is not Martin Day, however, who first introduces the Bents to my readers: it is an elderly retired academic called Edward Childe, a character who quickly became one of my favourites. Edward persuades Day to create a documentary series on the subject of Greek marble, a series which is to be structured using Edward’s eclectic collection of historical memorabilia which, he explains, includes some unusual letters:
Kouros of Apollonas, Naxos. Mabel Bent writes in her diary: “We had a great deal of difficulty in the morning about starting to go and see an unfinished colossal statue said to be of Apollo, 1½ hour off near the sea… We had to leave the mules and climb with hands as well as feet to the quarry and on to the statue, which is enormous and very rough and weather worn” (Wikipedia).
“There will be a major focus on Naxos, not only as a historic centre for Greek marble but also because I have some letters written by Mrs Mabel Bent to a friend in London, in which she describes how she and her more renowned husband Theodore were exploring Naxos in the late nineteenth century. I also have a couple of her photographs. One of them shows the Kouros of Apollo.”
“How on earth did you get hold of the Bent material, Edward?” interrupted Day.
“The letters were left to me when I was a student by an Oxford classicist I very much admired. His name was Augustus Bent Middleton. I don’t know if there’s a family connection with the famous Bents – perhaps you’d like to look into it, Martin?” (The Search for Artemis, 2021)
How did Edward acquire such material, you may ask? Mabel’s diaries, which formed the basis of her husband’s famous books, are in safe keeping now, not to mention being digitally accessible; but this is fiction, and there is always the chance of personal letters showing up decades later, don’t you agree?
The Bents are mentioned again later in the same book, when Day talks about them to his friend (later wife) Helen, in his usual, informative way:
Theodore Bent, an image used in his obituary in ‘St. James’s Budget’, 14 May 1897 (Bent died on 5 May 1897) (from the British Library Collection, shelfmark MFM.MLD32, 14/05/1897, page 15, reproduced with permission).
“Edward said he had original letters from the wife of Theodore Bent. Do you know about him?”
“No, who was he?”
“He was a young Englishman from Yorkshire who lived at the same time as the giants of archaeology, like Arthur Evans and Heinrich Schliemann. note 1 He was completely self-taught, very young and inexperienced. Undeterred, he committed his short life to travel and archaeology, and his equally young wife Mabel went with him. They travelled through the Cyclades, writing about what they saw, not only about the ancient remains they found but also the lives of the local people. I’ll lend you the book, it makes good reading. It’s called something like Life among the Insular Greeks, I have a copy here in the house. Theodore was an Oxford graduate with no experience of excavation, yet when he had an opportunity to excavate on Antiparos, off Paros, it made his reputation. He died tragically young, in his mid-forties. His wife wrote travel notebooks, which are in library collections in London. Edward told me that he had some letters she wrote to a friend describing her time on Naxos with Theodore. I’ve seen her notebooks; I’d love to see those letters. note 2 ”
“I’d like to read the book.” (The Search for Artemis, 2021)
Another Naxos Mystery in which the Bents are specifically mentioned is The House in Apíranthos. The book is structured around a series of filming sessions, already referred to in The Search for Artemis, that take place at locations in the Cyclades. Day is presenting episodes based on current excavation sites, one of which is the exciting sanctuary on Despotiko, which I had visited years earlier with our new Olympian friends (see above). Here he is speaking into the camera:
The Sanctuary of Apollo on Despotiko, off Antiparos. The Bents were the first modern travellers to record its ruins in 1884 (Wikipedia).
“Welcome to the Sanctuary of Apollo on the island of Despotiko. This is one of the most important excavations currently being undertaken in Greece, yet it is also one of the least well-known. Despotiko has been uninhabited for some time, protected by law both for its unspoilt natural habitat and its archaeological significance. Its long history, since first being mentioned by Pliny the Elder, has involved Venetians, Ottomans, and even pirates, and the English traveller Theodore Bent was here in the second half of the nineteenth century. Christos Tsountas, the brilliant Greek archaeologist, began excavating here at the end of that century, and more discoveries were made in the 1950s when an early Cycladic settlement was found.”
Day paused slightly to allow Ben to change to a different angle for the next line.
“Then, in 1997, the current excavation here began.”
He put on his sunglasses and turned away from the camera. note 3 (The House in Apíranthos, 2024)
And with that brief reference I abandon Theodore and Mabel to their bravely-earned place in the history of early archaeological exploration and travel, but with a great deal of respect and fondness. There is just one more memory to share with you.
I was giving a talk on Naxos in 2025 to an audience of readers, archaeologists and locals about The House in Apíranthos. During the Q&A session I was surprised and delighted when one of the archaeologists expressed her pleasure that I knew about the Bents. I wondered fleetingly whether my introducing them had seemed rather presumptuous to readers not familiar with them, but the thought faded quickly. The Bents deserve their place and they are welcome in my books, not least because of the special bond I made with them, long gone though they are, on the island of Despotiko.
The Secrets of Stelida, Vanessa’s 7th book in ‘The Naxos Mysteries’ series has just been published (Spring 2026).
Footnotes
Note 1: Indeed, the Bents were acquaintances of Arthur Evans and the Schliemanns, lunching with the latter in Athens in January 1890 (Travel Chronicles, Vol. 1, 2006, p.271). Return from Note 1
Note 2: Mabel’s travel diaries (her Chronicles as she calls them) are kept in the archives of the Hellenic Society, Senate House, London. They have recently been digitised. Her letters do occasionally surface. There are several (to her family in Ireland) in the archive of the Royal Geographical Society, London. Return from Note 2
Note 3: The Bents’ documentary series (The Eastern Mediterranean; Africa; Arabia) still awaits its producer. Return from Note 3
Celebrity explorer Theodore Bent’s expedition to Great Zimbabwe in 1891 removed eight soapstone birds (six large and two small) from its enigmatic ruins (Bent 1892: 180). They came to London it seems with the rest of his acquisitions and were exhibited in the Bents’ townhouse, near Marble Arch, before Cecil Rhodes (the couple’s great sponsor) had them returned to Cape Town – he had previously bought a specimen from the ranger Willi Posselt and put it on display at his Groote Schuur estate. This item from Rhodes’s mansion (and the others, over the last decades) has recently (April 2026) been rightfully handed back to Zimbabwe with much celebration (including Bent on the BBC!).
What is often overlooked, however, is that these large birds were originally carved on long, soapstone beams (pillars/pedestals/plinths) that decorated a construction Bent referred to as an acropolis/sacred enclosure. Happily, his wife, Mabel Bent, kept one of these for her own collection long after Theodore’s death in 1897, only donating it to the British Museum (Af1926,0410.1), before she, too, died in 1929. This beam has survived, although it is not on display – a perch without a bird.
Examples of the iconic soapstone birds the Bents removed from Great Zimbabwe in 1891. From Cape Town they have now been transferred to Zimbabwe (Mabel Bent’s photos reproduced in ‘The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland’ by Theodore Bent, 1892, p.181).
Theodore Bent (1892: 158-161) records that this ‘…tall decorated soapstone pillar 11 feet 6 inches in height, which stood on the platform already alluded to… acted as a centre to a group of monoliths; the base of this pillar we found, the rest had been broken off… It was worked with bands of geometric patterns around it, each different from the other and divided into compartments by circular patterns, one of which is the chevron pattern found on the circular ruin below; it only runs round a portion of the pillar; and may possibly have been used to orient it towards the setting sun.’ (It appears that the remaining portion of the ‘pillar’ found its way to the Cape Town museum.)
Top right, Mabel Bent’s beam from Great Zimbabwe illustrated in May Crommelin’s (1901), ‘Lesser Lares’ (From the Collection of Mrs. Theodore Bent). ‘The Connoisseur: an illustrated magazine for collectors’. pp. 161-4.
In 1930, Mabel’s beam – which had broken in two parts and was taped up (see the illustration from The Connoisseur) – was exhibited at the British Museum as part of the ‘Loan Exhibition of Antiquities from Zimbabwe and other Ancient Sites in Rhodesia’, organised for the British Association for the Advancement of Science and relevant African institutions (The South African Museum, Cape Town; The Rhodesian Museum, Bulawayo; and the Queen Victoria Memorial, Salisbury). A cast was subsequently made and sent to South Africa, Mabel Bent’s original remaining in London. After the event, it seems that the beam was separated into two parts – the base part going to Cape Town, and the top part remaining in the British Museum (No. Af1926,0410.1, see illustration). The base part, we believe, is now (April 2026) also in the process of being repatriated to Zimbabwe from the South Africa Museum (Iziko) Museums. Should not the two parts be rejoined?
The British Museum also commissioned a replica cast of a beam (c. 175 cm high) with bird attached, giving an idea of what a complete object would have looked like; it is described as: ‘Cast; sculpture, made of plaster. In form of a bird sitting on top of a pedestal. Set into square base. Painted grey throughout to match original soapstone object. Distinguished by short panel of chevrons at front of chest. Plumage indicated by parallel oblique lines.’
Bent’s African watercolours
The collection of Bent’s contemporary watercolours in the Zimbabwe National Archives (Harare) is still under lock and key and virtually impossible it seems to access, despite several enquiries and approaches by eminent local academics. Although we do not know what condition they are in after so long, hopefully one day this unique and highly important resource can be made available to international researchers.
Bent’s watercolours reproduced in his 1892 book on Great Zimbabwe, now in the the National Archives, Harare (the Bent Archive).
Into the Persian Gulf with the Bents, via the Strait of Hormuz, 1889 (Glyn Griffiths/Bent Archive).
On 27 January 1889, celebrity explorers Theodore and Mabel Bent safely navigated the Strait of Hormuz to enter the Persian Gulf. Some weeks later, incredibly, they began their way home to London with a ride, south-north, through Persia – Bushehr to Jolfar. Mabel Bent’s personal diaries (Chronicles she called them) of this great ride are in the archives of the Hellenic Society, London. Scanned and freely accessible, their significance – among the largish corpus of late 19th-century ‘European’ and colonialist-tinted travelogues – of course, is thrown into stark relief at the time of this present disastrous crisis (April 2026).
Theodore Bent’s interests were primarily archaeological and we can follow the couple as they ride via Shiraz, Persepolis, Esfahan, Qom, Tehran, Takht-e Soleiman, Lake Orumiyeh, and Tabriz – sites all at potential risk from aerial attacks (what would Alexander have made of all this as he embarked on his sack of Xerxes’ capital in 330 BCE?).
Bent had written in advance to the Shah’s representative for permission to excavate in the area of Persepolis; his request is granted, but he changes his mind (see below) and the couple instead head north in search of fabled Ecbatana (Hamadan), an objective they don’t achieve. “Our great desire now”, writes Mabel, “is to inform ourselves where Ecbatana was; no one knows and some think Isfahan, some Hamadan, and we hope it may be Takht i Sulieman.”)
Mabel Bent’s account of their extraordinary journey is told in her three Persian notebooks, readable online via the Hellenic Society/London University (the pdf files are quite large, allow time for downloading; for annotated transcriptions, see The Travel Chronicles of Mrs. J. Theodore Bent, Vol. 3, 2010, Oxford, pp. 26-127).
Mabel Bent’s ‘6th Chronicle’ 1889 (vol.1) (The Hellenic Society, London).
Notebook 1begins with the Bents making for Bahrain (late January 1889) via Karachi, Theodore intending to investigate the curious burial mounds of ’Ali there. This done, the couple decide on a whim to return to London overland, on horseback, through Persia. Notebook 1 ends (c. 18 March 1889) at Abadeh in the Central District of Abadeh County, Fars province, Iran, famed for its carpets and carved fruitwood (Mabel acquires a set of wooden sherbet spoons there).
Mabel Bent’s ‘6th Chronicle’ 1889 (vol.2) (The Hellenic Society, London).
Notebook 2 continues the ride as far as Tabriz, northern Iran, which they reach c. 16 May 1889, having indefatigably toured, inter alia, Esfahan, Qom, Tehran, the Takht-e Soleiman area, and the shores of Lake Orumiyeh. The Bents’ dreams of finding and excavating Ecbatana somewhere near the bizarre mountain site of Takht-e Soleiman (c. 4 May 1889) come to nothing (they return to England with just a fragment of tile they removed). The stand-out moment of this leg was an audience with Shah Naser al-Din Shah Qajar, near Zanjan, c. 27 April 1889: “… then he beckoned to us… and when we reached H.M. we made another bow and curtsey and Theodore took care not to expose his naked head.” Notebook 2 ends at Tabriz, where Mabel is obliged to purchase a journal of inferior quality for the completion of her Chronicle (“…I am sorry to have to write in such a nasty book, but as it was never bought for me I must be thankful we have it…”).
Mabel Bent’s ‘6th Chronicle’ 1889 (vol.3) (The Hellenic Society, London).
Notebook 3concludes Mabel’s Persian memoires, the ‘nasty book’ recording the short distance from Tabriz to the Aras River (c. 25 May 1889) at the Jolfa crossing, and then the long return (rail) journey to England, via Kiev, Warsaw, and Berlin. The Bents reach their comfortable London townhouse near Marble Arch on 11 June 1889 – the grey-greens of the English Channel not featuring on any palette prepared for the Strait of Hormuz…
Gallery
Naser al-Din Shah Qajar, Shah of Persia (1831-1896). The Bents meet him near Zanjan, c. 27 April 1889 (Wikipedia).The set of fruitwood sherbet spoons acquired (March 1889) at Abadeh (“The Connoisseur”, 1901, pp. 161-4 (archive.org).The 13th-century tile fragment the Bents removed (c. 4 May 1889) from the site of Takht-e Soleiman (private collection).A small section of the remains of ancient Ecbatana (Hamadan), Iran (Wikipedia).
Ram’s-head rhyton (Reza Abbasi Museum); lion rhyton (National Museum of Iran) (Wikipedia)
There is scant coverage in the main media (April 2026) of possible damage to Iran’s archaeology in the current conflict; searches online, however, reveal indications that Theodore and Mabel Bent will read with dismay. In early 1889, our celebrity explorers had permission from the offices of the Shah to dig near Persepolis (they didn’t); then they thought they would contribute to the search for fabled Ecbatana. Mabel Bent writes in her diary (c. 21 April 1889): “Our first intention was to go and dig at Hamadan, S.W. of Teheran, and Theodore wrote to Sir H. Drummond Wolff [H.M. Ambassador] beforehand to obtain permission to dig… T got a good map from the chancery, brought it up, and we found we should prefer to go to a place much more north… Sir H.D.W. most kindly asked Amin es Sultan and got leave for ‘anywhere’, to the fear of the French minister, M. de Balloy, who dreaded that we should wish to poach on the Dieulafoy preserve at Susa. He was assured we should not think of anything so mean. Let as many people dig in as many places as they can that we may all be the wiser. Our great desire now is to inform ourselves where Ecbatana was; no one knows and some think Isfahan, some Hamadan, and we hope it may be Takht i Sulieman.” (‘Travel Chronicles of Mabel Bent’, Vol.3, 2010, Oxford, pp.78-9). And off the Bents arduously rode up into the mountains to the latter and found nothing. They really should have tried Hamadan, where archaeologists (e.g. Charles Fossey, as late as 1913) made astonishing discoveries associated with Ecbatana. Had the Bents made the right choice, the gleaming golden rhyta and other finds from this erstwhile capital of the Medes (overlooked it seems in 330 BCE when Alexander looted the treasury) might now be in the British Museum. There’s a thought as the missiles fly…
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