While we wait for an audiobook of Theodore Bent’s “The Cyclades, or Life Among the InsularGreeks“, to mark its 140th anniversary (2025) we are asking ‘Cycladists’, those with affinities to the islands, to read memorable extracts for us.
Santorini [Bent’s Ch. 6: Monday 7 January – Wednesday 23 January 1884]
Travel writer Jennifer Barclay reads the Bents on Santorini (photo = Ian smith).
Travel writer and Tilos resident Jennifer Barclay first got to know the Bents a few years back when they went with her some of the way on her breezy Dodecanese travelogue Wild Abandon (Bradt Guides 2020); she wrote an article for us about the adventure too (In the Footsteps of Theodore and Mabel). Needless to say, we’re now very happy she has sailed a little west for us, from Tilos, into the Cyclades to read a few of her favourite extracts from Bent’s visit to awe-inspiring Santorini (no introduction required there, of course), where she spent a summer in the early 1990s. And if you think you can hear cicadas in the background now and then, you can; Jennifer has her window open as she reads…
For an accompanying slideshow, click the start ikon below:
PLEASE be aware that the following article by Theodore Bent transcribed here contains references and descriptions from the start reflecting the attitudes and language of the time that we find offensive and unacceptable today. The article, nevertheless, is a little-known and important addition to Bent’s bibliography, as much as possible of which we aim to make available to those interested in 19th-century travel and exploration.
Bent’s article “An Excavator’s Camp” [Great Zimbabwe] appeared in the Pall Mall Budget (Christmas Edition, No. 1264), of Thursday, 15 December 1892. The periodical was an illustrated, up-scale, general-interest weekly mainly for the British establishment, and well reflecting this milieu; its cover price was 6d, c. £7.50 today. The Bents, as celebrity-explorers, often featured on its pages.
The excavator’s theories on the Great Zimbabwe ruins were, of course, controversial and now generally disproved. Bent himself was unsure at first as to what date to put on the monuments but by 1892, the time of this article, for various reasons and pressures, he was publishing that they were very early, perhaps even dating from his perception of ‘Phoenician’ times, and were not built by local populations. His interpretation led to 100 years of controversy over the ruins – it also made Theodore and Mabel Bent the celebrity explorers of the decade.
§ § §
WHEN MY WIFE AND I started on our excavating trip to the Zimbabwe ruins in the centre of Mashonaland we thought we were about to enter upon the most hazardous undertaking of our lives; we had dug in Persia, Arabia, Asia Minor, and Greece; we had braved the dangers of Kourdish brigands and Turkish officials; but we had never as yet encountered naked black men, about whom scarcely anybody knew anything. When we made our preparatory wills the thought of Matabele impis, war dances, deadly fevers, snakes, lions, and tsetse flies flitted before our eyes, but now that it is all over, and we are safe home again with our treasure trove, we smile at our former fears, wonder where the lions came from which seem to have molested other people’s journeys who never left the beaten track, and recommend a trip to Mashonaland to all our friends. note 1
Our camp at Zimbabwe was in the heart of the wilderness, some fifteen miles from the up-country road; on all the neighbouring peaks were Mashona villages, where the timid inhabitants had built their huts to be out of the way of Matabele raids; every day crowds of them came to see us and sell us food, and Umgabe, the great, fat naked chief who rules over this district, professed to love us dearly. This was all very different to what we had expected; hunters and traders had told us of the superstitious awe with which the natives guarded the massive ruins, of the hairbreadth escapes they had had in viewing them and in carrying off a few stones, but fat old Umgabe grinned at us complacently, and gave us permission to do exactly what we liked with them, on one condition, and that was that we should leave his women alone. These dusky daughters of Africa have evidently, like many of their fairer sisters, a tendency to over-rate their charms; they avoided us at first, deputing the withered hags to bring their commodities to exchange for beads and cloth; but by degrees we inspired confidence, and daily we were invaded by the naked ladies with stomachs decorated with lines or cicatures like furrows, beads and bangles round their legs and arms, and a simple loin cloth round their waists, their personal attractions being very much on a par with those of the female monkeys at the Zoo.
Umgabe had a younger brother called Ikomo, who governs the small village on the hill amongst the ruins, and from his close proximity to our camp we saw a good deal more of him than we wanted; if he could, he prevented our work. On more than one occasion he succeeded in frightening our Mashona workmen from other villages away. He was always begging for something – generally for salt, the rarest and most prized commodity in these parts, large lumps of which he would put into his mouth, and suck as complacently as we might a chocolate cream. He would instantly introduce his unsavoury body into our tent, and surreptitiously insert his unsavoury fingers into our honey-pot, thereby obliging us to throw away what he left; he was undoubtedly the thorn in our existence at Zimbabwe, and one day he nearly succeeded in bringing about an open rupture between us and our natives.
This occurred when we were engaged in excavating on the hill, and our work led us to prosecute a trench beneath a certain boulder rock, on the top of which was erected one of the mud granaries in which they store their grain. Suddenly the boulder slipped, to the infinite peril of the men who were engaged beneath it; down came the granary with its contents of grain and “monkey” nuts, and we had hardly recovered from the shock, and were congratulating ourselves on our escape, when up rushed Ikomo in a towering rage, followed by all the villagers; women shrieked, men brandished assegais, and the affair looked as it it would become serious.
I called together all our men from outlying posts. I seized an assegai myself, which chanced to be lying near: each man stuck tight to his spade, his pick, or his crowbar, and quietly we awaited events. It was in vain that we attempted a parley, and gave Ikomo to understand that what damage had been done should be made good. The screams of fury grew louder and louder, until one of Ikomo’s men gave the signal of battle by suddenly falling on one of our black workmen from a neighbouring village, knocking him to the ground. Consequently in self-defence we had to retaliate, for had we maintained our quiet demeanour our turn to be knocked down would doubtless have come next, so we rushed as hard as we could on the black mass of humanity opposed to us, belabouring them with our weapons to the right and to the left. Never was a British victory more easily won. Almost before we touched them the enemy fled, and an odd flight it was, and no mistake. They clambered like cats up the granite boulders, keeping up a perpetual jabber all the time, just as monkeys do in their cage when more than usually perturbed in their shallow minds. Ikomo himself retired sullenly to his hut, and that evening was summoned to our camp for a palaver, where, before an officer of the Chartered Company, he was solemnly told that is such a event occurred again his village would be burnt, his cattle confiscated, and Zimbabwe Hill would know him no more, and, under the circumstances, nothing would be paid for the damage we had done. Thus ended our one and only conflict with the natives. note 2
Living as we did for two months near this village during our work, we naturally became familiar with all its features. Whenever there was a beer-drink, a dance, or a funeral, we had special facilities for witnessing the same; and on all these occasions the Mashonas do dance with a vengeance: for hours together they will revolve in a monotonous circle to the tune of the everlasting tomtom and their metal-keyed piano; now and again they indulge in the more energetic war-dance, when assegais and spears are brandished, scouts will be sent out to reconnoitre imaginary enemies, and so fierce do they look on these occasions that had it not been for our previous knowledge of their cowardice we might almost have quaked for our own safety.
Women dance, too, by themselves; they occasionally enjoy a frenzied war-dance immensely, but they are apt to get too excited, and either end in hurting themselves or going into hysterics, and these Amazonian orgies generally come to an untimely conclusion. The women are best at a peaceful, rather sensuous dance of their own, in which they smack their furrowed stomachs and long hanging breasts with their hands in measured cadence with their feet: the noise they manage to make in so doing is most surprising.
Zimbabwe village is a lovely spot, high above the swampy, feverish plain. The views from it are simply exquisite over the rich blue granite mountains and wooded, park-like, undulating country. The daub huts are hidden, like birds’ nests in a tree, among the rugged granite boulders; festoons of bignonia were rich with flowers when we were there; fiery-coloured aloes appeared in splendid masses on the rocks, and from the trees in the village hung long pendants, like magnified sausages, in which the natives kept their stores, tying them up tightly with grass until required for consumption: in these they store sweet potatoes, ground nuts, caterpillars, and other dainties in which they rejoice; on either side are the great storejars for grain, made of mud; in the centre is the fire, and around in the smoky rafters they hang their wooden pillows, their assegais, their bows and arrows, their musical instruments, and their pipes, having no other form of cupboard known to them, and rats career around.
Our camp was unfortunately on the plain below, for it was impossible to drag our waggons up the hill, and in our waggons we slept and kept all our things. On either side of us were swamps, consequently during our stay at Zimbabwe our most formidable enemy was fever. We had fourteen cases in all, and every morning, when well enough myself I had to trot round with the quinine bottle and examine my patients’ tongues. When these were not to my liking I administered a simple emetic consisting of salt and mustard mixed in warm water into the consistency of a thick soup. This was generally effective; but on one memorable occasion the horrible concoction stayed down, and, agreeing capitally, settled the patient’s stomach, and no more was heard of it. Our cook’s favourite remedy was an onion porridge, a dish so loathsome in its consistency that the sick dreaded it more than the fever. Whenever there was a wet day – and we had nine drizzling days of Scotch mist during our stay at Zimbabwe – new cases of fever were sure to present themselves, so that in the end only two of our whites escaped scot-free – one was a burly Englishman, the other was my wife. note 3
Around our camp was huge, wavy grass, towering high above our heads, in many places twelve or thirteen feet. This, it proved, was dangerous, for when ripe the rain and the sun combined in rotting it. It was not till we had been five weeks encamped there that it was dry enough to burn, and in a rash moment we set fire to it not far from our camp, with the result that for an hour or two we were in mortal dread that we and everything that belonged to us would be consumed in the flames. On they came, roaring, hissing, crackling; in vain we arranged an army of beaters to try and ward off the enemy, more formidable than any force Ikomo or Umgabe himself could muster. Soon all the grass huts which our native workmen had erected for themselves were ablaze; our grass hedge or “skerm”, which we had erected around our camp, was torn down in hot haste, and we discussed in hurried tones what we should save and what we should abandon. Luckily this terrible sacrifice in the midst of a wilderness was not required of us. The enemy was vanquished just in time. Our poor Mashonas had to shiver in a cave that night, and we had to do without our hedge. This was all the material damage we suffered, and for the rest of our stay at Zimbabwe we had much less fever, though instead of a picturesque cornfield around us our camp might have been pitched on the edge of a coal pit.
Our camp was very picturesque in its way; and “Indian terrace”, as our men called it, was constructed of grass and served as a dining-room. Our waggons were our bedrooms and our tents our drawing-rooms; and our white men built apartments for themselves within the hedge. Every morning at eight o’clock an improvised gong, consisting of a hammer and a waggon wheel-tire, assembled our men. Every evening at sunset we returned home to our well-earned dinner. Around the camp fires nearly every night our men sang all the latest music-hall ditties, which came fast and furious when a consignment of “dop” (as that rank poison Cape Brandy is called up country) came from Fort Victoria. Luckily, as yet, the Mashonas know not the potency of fire-water; they only get mildly muddled with their own porridge-like beer. May they long remain thus innocent! We ourselves generally passed the evening in discussing our work, speculating on our finds, and building up castles in the air for the morrow. note 4
I can hardly conceive of a more exciting life than that of an excavator’s, especially when he is brought face to face with a prehistoric mystery like Zimbabwe. Searching after gold and hunting after wild beasts seems sordid and tame to my mind in comparison to the intense delight of relics of a bygone and utterly forgotten race of mankind; and when that race lived in the centre of the dark, mysterious continent, themselves a gold-searching race, long centuries ago, no element is wanting to add to the keenness of the sport.
When the time for our departure drew nigh, we packed our curios in the waggons for their long journey to the Cape note 5 , and, bidding adieu to comforts – that is to say, of a comparative nature – we mounted our horses and loaded a donkey with our necessaries, and set off for an independent trip among the neighbouring villages or kraals, for we wished to acquaint ourselves with the life of the Mashonas at home, and thought that a few nights in their huts and in the centre of their villages would be the most satisfactory way of attaining this object. A Mashona sleeps naked on a grass mat, with his head resting on a carved wooden pillow, so we could hardly depend on them for bed-clothes. A Mashona lives chiefly on millet meal porridge, caterpillars, mice, and other vermin, so we could hardly depend on them for food. Consequently our requirements were such that our donkey had to be supplemented with two or three native bearers.
We honoured Umgabe first with a visit. note 6 His kraal lies in a valley, a perfect paradise of verdure, about six miles from Zimbabwe; the potentate himself had been indulging freely in beer before we arrived, and looked fatter and more sodden than ever; still, he managed to gather himself together, and received us graciously enough in his round mud palace.
Umgabe at home is a curious sight; he sat on the floor at one end of his almost stifling hut, his indunas sat on either side of him. After the customary hand-clapping had been gone through, a ceremony indulged in at every meeting amongst them, the inevitable bowl of beer was brought in. The chief’s wives make it, and the head wife brings it in on bended knee, first tasting it herself, to prove that she had introduced no poison therein. Then Umgabe drank, then each induna had a sip, and by the time our turn came it was almost impossible to find a clean corner from which to drink. These are the occasions on which it is absolutely fatal to think; if once we had allowed ourselves to dwell on the dirty hands which had stirred it, and the revolting ingredients which gave it a flavour, I fear me we should rarely have been polite; for it is a great breach of savage etiquette to refuse to drink on these festive occasions.
We wanted very much to see a celebrated cave near Umgabe’s kraal, where the natives take refuge in time of danger. This cave had been formed by the stream, which runs down the valley, eating its way through a mass of granite boulders. The approach to it is difficult to find, and the labyrinthine intricacies of the interior are most remarkable. Umgabe flatly refused to show us the way, neither would he allow any of his men to do so, and was exceedingly angry with us for wishing to explore his tribal secret. Nothing daunted, we wandered about till we found it, and penetrated into its recesses with the aid of candles. Inside, it is full of granaries, where they store their grain and broken pots, and when the Matabele threaten them they somehow manage to drive their cattle in too, and so intricate are its passages that no enemy could ever approach them, and beneath them they have the boiling stream with an ever-flowing supply of water.
Poor Umgabe has often been raided by the Matabele, for his village is low and very fertile. We annexed here an admirable servant called Mashah, who stayed with us on our journeyings for some weeks. He had been captured, together with his father, his mother, and his wife, who was a sister of Umgabe’s, by the Matabele, and had been a slave for many years; his father and his mother died in captivity, but he and his wife had contrived to escape. He is an excellent fellow, perfectly indefatigable; he effects European costume – that is to say, a hat with an ostrich feather in it, and an old shirt, but nothing more. We gave him an old pair of trousers, but after he and all his friends tried them on and found them uncomfortable he tied them as a mantle round his neck. We gave another man an old pair of boots, but he only annexed the brass tags to make himself a necklace of, and threw the leather away.
Umgabe gave us for our night’s lodging what looked externally an ideal residence beneath a shady cork-tree but oh ! the horrors of those rats which careered over us during those nights in the native huts, and the persistency of those cocks and hens; which never would take any hint to absent themselves. We did not live long enough in native huts to get accustomed to these intruders. For the rest of our journeyings in Mashonaland, we, like the children of Israel, got us to our tents. note 7
Notes
Note 1: For the Bents’ expeditions click here. Bent exaggerates rather in terms of ‘Persia’. They did arrange certain licences to excavate and were even thinking of some spadework at Persepolis. In the end they spent just a few hours digging superficially at Takht-e Soleymān. Before embarking for Africa on 29/30 January 1891, Theodore did indeed make a will (dated 21 January 1891). The couple were home in London by 1 February 1892. For details of their journeys, see The Travel Chronicles of Mabel Bent, Vol. 2, 2012: pp. 46ff. Cecil Rhodes, Bent’s major sponsor, would welcome the author’s concluding remark, being hungry for settlers. Return from Note 1
Note 2: Mabel’s diary reveals that, although there was something to this incident, Theodores’ braggadocio is fictitious, merely some sensationalist froth for the benefit of his readers. Mabel writes “On Monday last, the 22nd [June 1891], we came in for a very amusing scene. We all went up to begin work on the ruins of the fort where the village is situated. Before we got up we heard loud shouts and screams from [Ikomo] who strongly objected to our digging in his cattle kraal, which was the place fixed on. Our workmen (the blacks) ran away saying they were afraid they would be poisoned if they dug. We presented a bold front and laughed at him. He rushed to his round cottage, [fetched?] shield, iron, sceptre, and brandished them, but at last was induced by our laughter to lay them down and sink into a sitting posture to listen to reason from… our interpreter, while the barricade was quietly demolished behind his back by our men.” (The Travel Chronicles of Mabel Bent, Vol. 2, 2012: p. 91.) Return from Note 2
Note 3: There is always the sound of muffled bells when Bent speaks of fever. He first fell victim to it (as recorded in Mabel’s diaries at least) in the Cyclades in 1883/4, and ultimately succumbed to its complications in May 1897, aged 45, just five years or so after the expedition to Great Zimbabwe Bent writes about above. Mabel’s fortitude was legendary. Return from Note 3
Note 4: The ‘morning gong’ is not recorded by Mabel. Her husband probably includes it to impress his readers by suggesting the disciplined, military nature of his camp and his leadership. His friendship with Rider Haggard dates from around this time. One of the three illustrations (not by Bent) accompanying the original article shows a rousing fireside scene and Bent’s book on Mashonaland does refer to the entertainment: “Most of our white men were musical, and beguiled the monotony of the evening hours by a series of camp concerts, which made us intimately acquainted with all the latest music-hall ditties” (The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland, 1892: p. 65). Return from Note 4
Note 5: Bent’s ‘curios’ amounted to hundreds of artefacts, now mostly in the British Museum, click for his collection there. Some of the famous soapstone birds from the Great Zimbabwe ‘Acropolis’ were among this ‘treasure trove’ Bent mentions in his opening paragraph – Rhodes coveted them and they soon flew back to Cape Town, though a cast of one remains in the BM. Return from Note 5
Note 7: “’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). Return from Note 7
By way of Bibliography
Bent’s own watercolour of their camp at Great Zimbabwe below the ‘Acropolis’. His signature is just visible lower left. The original is in the National Archives, Harare.
Bent published many articles on the couple’s epic adventures in Southern Africa – they are available via our Bibliography (starting from 1891). See especially:
J. Theodore Bent, The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland (Longmans, London, 1892) – Bent’s bestseller by far, containing maps, plans, his sketches, Mabel Bent’s photographs, etc.
Mabel Bent, The Travel Chronicles of Mrs. J. Theodore Bent, Vol. 2, The African Journeys (Archaeopress, Oxford, 2012, pp. 17ff.) – an edition of Mabel Bent’s diaries recording Great Zimbabwe, from the Archive of the Hellenic Society (kept at Univ. London, Senate House). Facsimiles of Mabel Bent’s originals are available at:
Title page from the first edition (1885) of Bent’s “The Cyclades; or Life Among the Insular Greeks”.
“Though Mr. Bent is an Oxford man, he knows some Greek, and has managed somehow to retain or acquire a profound interest in things Hellenic. That is always something, for Greece is a country towards which, in spite of our education, we all possess somewhat of a filial affection: but Mr. Bent does more than this – he takes an active interest in the living Greeks, his ways and modes of thinking, largely tempered by the modern anthropological and sociological point of view, too often wholly wanting or absolutely repellent to the confirmed Hellenist. If there is one form of savant left on earth upon whose ears the echo of the sociological revolution falls dull and muffled, it is your old-fashioned classical scholar, hermetically sealed in his own sturdy with his grammar and his lexicon, his editions and manuscripts. For him, Lubbock and Tylor are not: the Folk-lore Society sings to him like a siren, all in vain: no savage myth rises vague upon his narrow horizon: no dim memory of forgotten barbarism shines faintly on him from the storied pages of Plato or Pausanias. His world begins with the First Olympiad: his history finishes with the death of Odoacer. Not of such as these is Mr. Bent. A folk-lorist to the backbone, eager to discover and compare while yet they survive the lingering relics of native Hellenic popular mythology, he has spent two winters hard at work among the almost unbroken ground of the Cyclades, and has finally recorded his net results for us in this pleasant, amusing, and instructive volume.
A detail from Bent’s map of the Cyclades from his 1885 edition.
“[Bernhard] Schmidt had been beforehand with him, it is true, on the Greek mainland; but then, the Greek mainland is largely Albanian, and its folk-lore is largely tinctured with alien elements. The islands, on the other hand, have been always Greek, and, practically speaking, always free. So hither Mr. Bent went with his wife, in search of habits and manners, and dwelling among the people in their own hamlets, collected a goodly store of facts and fancies, which he knows how to detail for us with a cunning pen. At first he studied his human subjects with the aid of a dragoman; but as time went on, and as he began to acquire fluency in the language which we are all supposed to have learned at school, he went direct to the fountain head, and extorted from the not unwilling lips of demarchs and priests and hostesses and pretty Greek maidens innumerable tales of Fates and Nereids, of Boreas and St. Demetrius, of ancient god and Christian martyr, in the picturesque confusion of medieval Europe. The nymphs of the fountain take the place, among the Cyclades, of our northern fairies; Dionysus has got himself thinly Christianized as St. Dionysius; and Charon, properly baptised no doubt for the occasion, still ferries over orthodox Greeks to their last resting-place, as he used to do rightminded Pagans of old to the realms of Hades. Nowhere does the thin veneer of the new religion lie more lightly over the solid and enduring substructure of the old than among the Greek Islands. Essentially pagan still in all his underlying mythological conceptions, the insular Hellene remains a living relic of ages far earlier than even those of the Attic dramatists – he goes back in part to the most primitive stratum of European belief and philosophy. We could have wished that Mr. Bent had given us a little more of actual description of these beautiful and barren islands, but we recognize at the same time how much his book gains from its unique devotion to a difficult, elusive, and fascinating pursuit.
Detail from the front page of the “Pall Mall Budget” for 17 April 1885.
“Sometimes, indeed, as in the episode of the ardent collector waiting patiently at Myconos till somebody should die, and inquiring with sinister anxiety after the health of the various failing invalids, in order that he might be present at one of the death-wails which form the staple product and pride of the island – the eagerness of the folk-lorist becomes positively weird and gruesome in its intensity. A modern story-teller might improve upon the position by making the single-hearted inquirer poison his host so as to provide a victim for the wailing women in the interests of science. We present the hint gratuitously as a valuable property to Mr. Wilkie Collins. If we have repeated none of Mr. Bent’s own good stories, it is only in order that we may send our readers direct to his amusing pages in search of them at first hand. There is matter enough in this little volume to stock half a dozen ordinary bookmakers’ fat notebooks.”
* “The Cyclades.” By J. Theodore Bent. 12s. 6d. (London: Longmans.)
……………………..
Anonymous review of Bent’s The Cyclades; or Life Among the Insular Greeks, from the Pall Mall Budget – 17 April 1885, page 28.
While we wait for an audiobook of Theodore Bent’s “The Cyclades, or Life Among the InsularGreeks“, to mark its 140th anniversary (2025) we are asking ‘Cycladists’, those with affinities to the islands, to read memorable extracts for us. Who better to read from Bent’s Anafi chapter than Professor Emerita Margaret Kenna who carried out her fieldwork there for a doctorate in 1966-1967.
Anafi [Bent’s Ch. 5: Wednesday, 9 January 1884 – Friday, January 11 1884 or Saturday, 12 January 1884]
A photo from the early 1940s giving some idea of what Anafi’s harbour jetty might have looked like 100 years after the Bents sailed from the island (Margaret Kenna).
Bent’s entire chapter read by social anthropologist and Anafi specialist Margaret Kenna (Professor Emerita, Swansea University), who has spent 50 years researching in Greece, most of it focussed on the islanders and migrants of Anafi, spending a year on the island doing fieldwork for her doctorate in 1966 (Greek Island Life: Fieldwork on Anafi, Sean Kingston Publishing, 2017).
The very short-lived Eastern and Western Review launched itself into highly competitive waters and sank without much trace – a lifebuoy or two – after a few issues, in 1892/3.
Theodore Bent published a long article with them, divided over two issues, in 1892. For availability, see at the end of this page.
Here is the journal’s initial editorial puff:
“The Eastern and Western Review. The Best Sixpenny Monthly. Diversified–Interesting–Amusing–Instructive”
“The Eastern and Western Review, whilst supplying high-class matter, endeavours to present it in a popular style: it is, in short, instructive, but not dictatorial; interesting, but not heavy; amusing, but not vulgar.
“It contains articles of national and international importance by well-known writers; History of the Churches, Eastern Affairs and Western Reviewers, History of the Nineteenth Century, Sketches of Travel, Political Events and Continental Opinions, Serial Fiction, Short Stories, Reviews, Jottings, Notes of the Month, and Religious, Literary, Scientific, Military, Naval, and Financial Notes. In fact, the public will find in the REVIEW all they expect in any other monthly, with the addition of special and novel features. One of its objects is to make the East and Eastern Affairs more widely and better known in this country. An intelligent view of Foreign Politics, of which Eastern Affairs really form the keystone, is of vital importance to every inhabitant of Great and Greater Britain.
“To British Manufacturers and other large Advertisers the REVIEW offers exceptional advantages, inasmuch as it will enable them to bring their goods under the notice of an influential class of readers in India, Egypt, Syria, and other Oriental countries, who cannot be reached through the medium of ordinary publications.”
“Born at Beyrout, Sep. 1, 1860 : son of a naturalized British subject and distinguished scholar : member of the R.A.S., 1884 : wrote On the Importance to Great Britain of the Study of Arabic : Lecturer on Arabic at University College, London : published, 1890, an Arabic-English lexicon, Honorary Professor of Arabic at King’s College : travelled through Turkey, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Syria, Persia, India, 1891–2 : founded in 1892 the Eastern and Western Review, in Arabic and English, of Oriental and Imperial affairs, but it came to an end in 2 years : engaged in journalism : brought out The Imperial Souvenir, a metrical translation of part of the National Anthem into 50 of the languages spoken in the British Empire : died Oct. 1904.” (Wikipedia)
The British Library offers a little more:
“Habib Anthony Salmoné published what was described by A.G. Ellis (who catalogued the Arabic books now at the British Library in his Catalogue of Arabic books in the British Museum) as ‘a monthly magazine of politics, literature, and science’. Salmoné chose at first to publish two editions simultaneously; one in Arabic called Ḍiyāʾ al-khāfiqayn, and one in English called ‘The Eastern and Western Review.’ According to Ellis, however, the Arabic edition appeared to stop after the second number.” (From the ‘Early Arabic Printed Books from the British Library’, a digital archive, via Gale)
Bent’s lengthy article for the journal was published in two parts:
E.J. Davis’ sketch of the fortress at Sis, from Life in Asiatic Turkey, 1979, London (Wikipedia).
‘The Two Capitals of Armenia: I – The Patriarch of Sis’. The Eastern and Western Review, Vol. 1(4), May 1892, pp. 137-140.
Etchmiadzin Cathedral, the administrative headquarters of the Armenian Apostolic Church (Wikipedia).
‘The Two Capitals of Armenia: II – The Patriarchate of Etchmiazin’. The Eastern and Western Review, Vol. 2(1), June 1892, pp. 6-13.
His text was based on two tours to the region, north, via the Turkish port of Mersin in 1890; and during the last leg of the couple’s remarkable ride, south–north, through Persia in 1889.
Theodore Bent referenced some of the material from the two parts of the article in three other papers:
Contact us for more information on the content of Bent’s article. It is not currently available online, only in the UK from the British Library or, presumably, the six legal deposit libraries.
The Bents’ route through Persia, March–May 1889. Many of the sites were also visited by Isabella Bird the following year (Map: Glyn Griffiths, the Bent Archive).
19th-century explorers in Persia, or anywhere else come to that, needed someone local – part Sancho Panza, part Passepartout – to ease things along: a translator, fixer, door-opener, guard, chaperone, cook, medic, accommodation officer, transport manager, therapist, whatever was required. The best could expect generous remuneration, the worst, summary dismissal!
Good or bad, these men (women dragomans please make yourselves known), would base themselves around ports of entry, where they might expect foreigners (themselves, of course, good or bad) in need of their services.
The British Residency at Bushire at the turn of the 19th century, a hotel for the Bents in 1889 when they stayed with the Ross family (Wikipedia).
One such port at the time of interest to us was Bushire, Persia (Iran, eastern shores of the Persian Gulf), administered by British officials – and let’s single out in particular (until 1891) the affable and highly respected Resident, Irishman Edward Charles Ross (1836-1913), who would open the Residency (with its tennis court, billiard room, and other facilities) to explorers (he was a keen antiquarian himself), arrange sight-seeing, lend his private yacht, and generally, with his wife and family, entertain.
Naturally enough, when celebrity explorers Theodore and Mabel Bent, after excavating the ‘Mounds of Ali‘ in Bahrain in early 1889, decided ‘then and there‘ to ride south-north through Persia as the first leg of their return to London, they promptly crossed the Gulf to Bushire and the ‘hospitable roof’ of the Ross family, arriving early February 1889. Mabel, as ever, surprised her hosts: “They were all amazed indeed when they heard of our resolution to ride those 1300 miles or more ‘with a lady’, for not more than 3 ladies have done this before, and 2, Mme. Dieulafoy and Mrs. Phelps, a very fat American, in man’s attire, and as the days go on they are still more amazed at seeing me sitting serenely wondering what saddle I shall have.” (Travel Chronicles of Mrs Theodore Bent, Vol. 3, 2010, pp.28-9) note 1
Ross was also able to provide a dragoman, of sorts, for the Bents: “We had as our personal servant and interpreter combined … Hadji Abdullah, half Persian, half Arab. He was the best to be obtained, and his English was decidedly faulty… He had been a great deal on our men-of-war; he also took a present of horses from the Sultan of Maskat to the Queen [Victoria, in 1886], so that he could boast ‘I been to Home,’ and alluded to his stay in England as ‘when I was in Home’.” (Mabel Bent, Southern Arabia, 1900, p.2)
Isabella Bird-Bishop (Wikipedia).
Serendipitously, this dragoman, Hadji Abdullah, whom the Bents employed to guide them on their way through Persia, leaving him over 1000 km away in Tabriz, was also hired (almost exactly a year later, early 1890) by that other great lady explorer Isabella Bishop (née Bird, 1831-1904), whom the Bents will have met frequently at the Royal Geographical Society and other gatherings of worthies. (Isabella was famously elected a Fellow in the first pick of lady travellers; Mabel was put forward for the second pick in 1893/4, just when the RGS voted to accept no more.)
The celebrated painter of horses, John Charlton (1849-1917) was on the scene to record the presentation of the Sultan of Muscat’s five Arab horses to Queen Victoria at Windsor in December 1886. It is possible that the dragoman Hadji Abdullah, employed by the Bents in 1889 and Isabella Bird in 1890, is represented in one of the faces we see. (‘The Graphic’, 18 December, 1886 (detail)).
The formidable Isabella Bird writes: “I lost no time in interviewing Hadji, — a Gulf Arab, who has served various travellers, has been ten times to Mecca, went to Windsor with the horses presented to the Queen by the Sultan of Muscat, speaks more or less of six languages, knows English fairly, has some recommendations, and professes that he is ‘up to’ all the requirements of camp life. The next morning I engaged him as ‘man of all work’, and though a big, wild-looking Arab in a rough abba and a big turban, with a long knife and a revolver in his girdle, scarcely looks like a lady’s servant, I hope he may suit me, though with these antecedents he is more likely to be a scamp than a treasure.” (Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan, Vol. 1, 1891, p. 5)
Bird, it seems, dispensed with Hadji’s services near Hamadan (August 1890), 200 km south of Tabriz, so his journey home to Bushire, assuming that was where he was based, was a good deal shorter than his trip back the previous year after his ride with the Bents! Interestingly, Bird makes no reference to the Bents in the letters home she eventually turned into her Persian book. It seems unlikely that Hadji made no mention at all of the British husband and wife explorers.
Jane Dieulafoy (1851-1916) French archaeologist, of whom Mabel Bent was, perhaps, a little envious (Wikipedia).
Note 1: Jane Dieulafoy (1851-1916) brilliant French archaeologist, excavator of Susa, had visited some of the Persian sites enjoyed by the Bents a few years earlier and had written several bestsellers about her travels in the region overall. Mabel was always ready, keen even, to criticise her! Mrs. Phelps remains untraced and it would be very good to know more about her. See also the Bents devoted Greek dragoman from Anafi in the Cyclades, Mathew Simos. Return from Note 1
“DWELLERS IN TENTS – Every man, says a philosopher, is a wanderer at heart. Alas! I fear the axiom would be truer if he had confined himself to stating that every man loves to fancy himself a wanderer, for when it comes to the point there is not one in a thousand who can throw off the ties of civilized existence – the ties and the comforts of habits which have become easy to him by long use, of the life whose security is ample compensation for its monotony. Yet there are moments when the cabined spirit longs for liberty.” (Gertrude Bell, Safar Nameh. Persian Pictures – A Book of Travel, London, 1894, p. 83)
While travel for some in ‘Persia’ is still clearly so precarious, why not ride instead, south-north through Iran, with the Bents – on mules, ponies, camels, oxen, and in assorted carts and carriages?
Announcing: “‘Then and there’ – Theodore and Mabel Bent in Persia, 1889″ (forthcoming 2026)
Extracts will appear from time to time on this page
Mabel’s pond at Manzaria/Manzarieh, 30 km north of Qom, Iran (Google Maps).
Mabel writes in her Chronicle: Tuesday, 9 April 1889, Manzaria/ Manzarieh, 30 km north of Qom [34.89018460145364, 50.82060309976168]: “After this, let me say that we had a very pleasant afternoon of peace and contemplation of a round pond with a stone coping on which numerous travellers sat on their heels for hours and hours like so many big frogs just got out of the water…”
Bent’s imaginary sketch of ‘Old Basil’ (The Bent Archive).
“‘Why Old Basil Became a Monk’, by J. Theodore Bent, with illustrations drawn by E.H. Edwards, from Sketches by the Author, engraved by Del Orme and Butler” (being Bent’s fanciful story based on a picnic on Karpathos (1885), published in The Hour Glass, Vol. 1, March 1887, pp. 79-84).
The text and images here are from original 1887 material in the collection of the Bent Archive. The article has never appeared online before. You are free to reproduce the text here, which is our transcription, but are requested to acknowledge us – “Transcription: the Bent Archive, April 2025”.
(Some context: The celebrity explorers Theodore and Mabel Bent made a tour of some of what are now called the Greek Dodecanese islands in the Spring of 1885, inspired by the results of their travels in the Cyclades between 1882-1884. Their first stop was Rhodes, arriving from Alexandria, then there were short visits to Nisyros and Tilos before their extended stay on Karpathos. It will be Bent’s voice you hear next…)
Google map of Karpathos in the Greek Dodecanese. The arrow shows the general area of the Bents’ picnic in March 1885 (Google Maps).
HALFWAY BETWEEN CRETE AND RHODES lies a thin, attenuated island called Karpathos, unknown to travellers, unvisited; its inhabitants are semi-barbarous Greeks, rich only in their inheritance of superstitions; amongst them my wife and I spent three Spring months digging for antiquities and studying folk-lore. Nominally, Karpathos is governed by a Turkish official and a few soldiers; in reality each village governs itself, holds its own parliament in its own church, and the nominal rulers never interfere with this autonomy; for Karpathos is nigh unto Crete, and in consequence revolutionary.
It is a very lofty and lovely island, but the choicest spot of all is a gorge down by the sea called, from a church which is built therein, the gorge of Mrs. All-Holy, or of the Virgin Mary, as we call her in Western Christendom; this church is looked after by a monk called Basil, a very old tottering anchorite, whom we visited together with the Turks one day on muleback. The narrow gorge is clad with fir trees as it ascends the mountain, and with rank vegetation, myrtle, mastic, oleander, maidenhair, all closely interwoven as it approaches the sea; fantastic rocks peep out from amongst the verdure, and the rippling waves of the blue sea wash a narrow beach of silvery sand, just below the Virgin’s church. This church is Basil’s sole charge; at stated hours he rings the bell and chants the services with none to hear him; he takes care that the ever-burning lamps before the sacred pictures do not go out; three times a year he covers the edifice with whitewash; he lives on a few herbs, which he cultivates close around his cabin; he is a monk and hermit combined. Once a year the pious Karpathiotes come to this spot on a pilgrimage, and make merry on the shore; for the rest of the time old Basil lives there alone; for severe affliction has severed him for ever from the joys of this life; his only consolation now is the rigorous asceticism of solitary monastic life.
The church of Kyra Panagia, Karpathos (Alan King).
When we and our polyglot companions reached the gorge, old Basil was much bewildered; he stood at his cabin door, leaning on his staff, and silently inspected us as he crossed himself, then he stroked his long white beard and bade us welcome. His dress was that of a working monk, tattered and torn; his tall hat, which once was black, was now brown; his coat, which once was blue, had now much of the colour of earth about it; his pantaloons, which were tied round his knees, were of doubtful colour; his legs and feet were covered only by many sores. We entered his cabin, the furniture of which consisted of his bed of leaves, his basket of stale bread, his jug of water, a wooden stool, a few sacred pictures; beyond these he neither possessed nor wished for other worldly goods.
“We washed down our lamb with cream and generous wine ‘like the brigands of the mountains’…..” (Lamb ‘kleftiko’ from Wikipedia).
Despite the austere supervision of the monk, our al fresco meal was a great success. An Albanian soldier, whom the Turks had sent round by a mountain farm for a lamb, was our cook. We saw our victim slain and skinned; we watched it pierced with a new-cut wooden skewer, and with impatient eyes we looked on whilst it revolved before a smouldering fire of brushwood, for the process of basting with cream and salt produced such exquisite sensations on our nasal organs that our appetites became painfully keen. When ready, a table of sweet smelling herbs was spread, around which we squatted on our haunches, and no pressing was needed to induce us to take in our fingers the proferred [sic] joints; and I must candidly admit that the barbarous process of gnawing produced far more real enjoyment than the most exquisitely served repast of western civilization. We washed down our lamb with cream and generous wine “like the brigands of the mountains”, suggested our Albanian and we privately congratulated ourselves that it was unaccompanied by sensations which must spoil the repast of those who are compelled to eat thus against their will.
Old Basil, though at first affecting to despise our mundane appetites, was at length persuaded to drink from our gourd of wine; his eye grew brighter, the strings of his tongue were unloosed, and though we had heard his story from the villagers, we could not resist asking him to renew for us his tale of unutterable woe, and in acceding to our request he introduced us to many interesting glimpses into the inner life of these wild islanders.
Page 1 (p.79) of Bent’s 1887 ‘Old Basil’ article (The Bent Archive).
When young, Basil, like most men on Karpathos still do, had travelled far during the summer months in search of work, he had visited many of the coastal towns of Asia Minor, he had fought in several Cretan rebellions, and each winter had returned to his home. Being thrifty, and not without personal attractions, he was recognised as a desirable husband by the parents of one Penelope; he married, and in due course became the father of two sons and one daughter – Agape by name. Every summer he was absent, and every winter he spent with Penelope and his children, until the sons were old enough to go and earn their living abroad; and on Penelope’s death old Basil determined to stop at home and till his property, which he had got as a dower with his wife, and which was to be Agape’s portion when her turn came to marry. There is a curious, and very ancient, custom existing still in the remote Greek islands; the eldest daughter inherits everything, to the exclusion of her brothers and younger sisters. Agape would not only have her mother’s house and property, but her mother’s embroidered dresses, her mother’s grave in the churchyard, nay, even her mother’s slab in the church, on which she had inherited the exclusive right to kneel. This survival of a matriarchal system is productive of two evils, an enormous proportion of old maids, and an ambition to secure for the heiress a grand match; fathers and mothers to gain their object, will often leave themselves and the rest of their family in abject poverty, for the sole gratification of being able to speak amongst men of their daughter, the school-master’s wife, or of their son-in-law, the captain.
Page 2 (p.80) of Bent’s 1887 ‘Old Basil’ article. The illustration is based on a sketch by the author (The Bent Archive).
Basil shared with the other parents of Karpathos this keen ambition; by his private earnings he had greatly increased and improved his property; he was the owner of a farm on the mountains, and many flocks; all these, in addition to her mother’s portion, he carefully advertised would belong to Agape when the right man should come. As a natural consequence of this advertisement the right man was not long in coming, and what was more, he came from a rich neighbouring island called Chalki. He was a well-to-do sponge-fisher, “a man of substance, and the owner of a caique”, said old Basil, with the fire of his former ambition still lurking in him; his face was animated, and his gesture very unlike that of a monk anchorite, as he related to us the great triumph of his life, the marriage of his daughter.
Page 3 (p.81) of Bent’s 1887 ‘Old Basil’ article. The illustration is based on some sketches by the author (The Bent Archive).
He gave us a lively account of the wedding and its old-world semi-barbarous functions; nothing he had ever seen before exceeded the lavish waste of rice and comfits which the bystanders threw at the young people when the priests chanted the “Crown them in glory and honour” and the “Esaias dances”; and the gifts brought by the relatives, “the crowning gifts” as they call them, were exceedingly numerous, and doubtless by comparison costly, consisting, as is the custom there, of sheep, goats, honey, cheese, and other edibles for the wedding feasts; and for the space of eight days the village where Basil lived was the scene of continued dissipation.
Page 4 (p.82) of Bent’s 1887 ‘Old Basil’ article (The Bent Archive).
He entered very fully into the captain’s folly in not conforming to certain well-recognised superstitious customs, which brides and bridegrooms in Karpathos must attend to if they wish their married life to be a prosperous one. Before three days had elapsed, the captain actually dared to jump over a stream, and laughed at the old women who predicted that he would suffer from the baneful smile of the water nymphs, Nereids, as the Greeks still call them. Regardless of any warning, he insisted on pruning the vines and trees on his newly-acquired property before the lapse of the customary cessation from such labour for forty days after marriage, and furthermore by a promise of reward he had induced Basil’s two sons to assist him in this work.
“He was”, added Basil to extenuate his son-in-law’s folly, “a world-travelled man, and we world-travelled men are foolishly apt to scoff at ancestral traditions.”
The captain evidently cared but little for his wife’s relations; he must needs set off home with Agape to Chalki before the expiration of the mysterious forty days; the expostulations of the old women were in vain – even the wedding decorations were taken down hurriedly without a priestly blessing, and Basil told us how he parted from his daughter with a heavy heart, fearing misfortune, yet not liking to give expression to his fears.
After the lapse of a few months he visited his daughter in her new home; he told us much concerning the comparative grandeur of Agape’s house, almost anything would look grand after a Karpathiote hovel; she had glass in her windows; she had wooden floors, instead of pressed manure; she had in fact what old Basil generalised at the end of his catalogue by the one word “civilization”; and the summer passed at Chalki, whilst his sons were away, must have been to Basil the brightest speck in his long life ; and I imagine that, on his return to Karpathos, he must have been insupportably arrogant concerning his daughter’s magnificence, for even now, monk anchorite that he is, he cannot check his tongue when once loosened on this subject.
In the autumn the captain and his wife visited Karpathos, to gather in the vintage and other products of their property; and it was during this visit that the fatal compact was made between Basil’s two sons, Andrew and Paul, and their brother-in-law; they were to join him in his sponge-fishing expedition in the summer, instead of going to Smyrna in search of work; by this means both parties would be benefited, money would be kept in the family, and, as usual in Karpathos, the winter passed in revelry and idleness.
One day, early in May, news came that the captain’s caique was approaching Karpathos; so Basil and his two sons hurried down to the little harbour to greet their distinguished kinsfolk; a proud moment it was for the old man when the craft arrived, and his fellow-islanders with wondering eyes beheld the diving apparatus and improved fishing-tackle with which the captain’s caique was furnished; in poor benighted Karpathos there are no sponge-fishers, for they have no capital, hence these things were new to them; the captain was the hero of the hour, and much reflected glory fell on old Basil’s head.
After a few days of festivity and farewells, the three sponge-fishers started on their way, and Agape and her father went up to their home in the mountain village to pass the weary summer months, as best they could, and it was well on in the month of August before the blow came; old Basil was sitting basking in the sun, Agape was twirling her spindle and gossiping with her neighbours, when a messenger came to say that a Turkish steamer was in the harbour and that old Basil was wanted without delay.
Scenery around Kyra Panagia today. The path taken by the Bents would have led them through this wooded valley… (photo: Jennifer Barclay)
“I could not imagine”, said the old monk, “what the Turks could want with an old man like me; surely they did not intend to punish me for my participation in Cretan rebellions; and with terrible suspicions of some impending evil, I was rowed to the steamer and ushered into the captain’s cabin with an interpreter, who seemed to enjoy my anxiety, and to delay as much as possible arriving at the facts. ‘Is this the old man Basil?’ asked the captain, ‘the father of the young men?’ and from this I knew that it was about my sons I had been summoned, and my heart sank within me. Then they talked low and hurriedly for some time, and all I could gather with my slight knowledge of Turkish was that something terrible was going to be revealed to me. I could only pray to the All-Holy one for support.”
At this juncture the poor old monk’s voice grew shaky, and he wept a little; we felt rather sorry for having asked him to renew his grief, but then we could give him sympathy, a soothing antidote to woe, which must be rare in his dreary solitude. “How I was told I don’t remember”, continued he; “after some time I awoke as from a painful dream; I found myself lying on deck on a mattress, and on raising my head I saw that we were steaming past the northern promontory of Karpathos. I was alone, amongst the Turks, going I knew not whither. I had no means of asking if the horrible tale which forced itself on my recollection was true, yet I gradually felt sure that it was – that my three brave sons were dead – that my daughter was a widow, and that death had come upon them in a form which makes me shudder now every time I think of it, and every night I fancy to myself some new and horrible picture of the event which, though I never saw it, is more vividly before me than anything I have ever seen.”
Page 5 (p.83) of Bent’s 1887 ‘Old Basil’ article. The illustration is based on a sketch by the author (The Bent Archive).
Upon this Basil grew very rambling and very heart-broken, poor old man – so I will relate in fewer words than he did the events as they happened. The three fishermen had been very successful; they had sold, to merchants in Kalymnos, their sponges, and were starting again in quest of further gain, when a boat overtook them, manned by eight men from the island of Amorgos, one of the last strongholds of petty piracy in these seas; these men had learnt in Kalymnos that the three men had money with them, and looked upon them as a desirable prize. Basil’s son-in-law was shot dead whilst attempting to offer resistance; the pirates boarded his caique, and after transferring everything of value to their own, they tied Basil’s two sons to the mast, scuttled the boat, and left the two young men to be swallowed by the waves. Another fishing boat, which chanced to be near, having witnessed this wholesale murder and robbery, hurried back to Kalymnos and gave notice to the authorities; divers were sent to verify the account; the dead bodies of Basil’s two sons were recovered and conveyed to Kalymnos, whilst, with a promptitude unusual in Turkey, a government steamer was summoned by telegram from Chios, and the pirates were captured. Such was the story that old Basil learnt on the steamer which conveyed him to Kalymnos to identify the bodies of his sons; as for the captain, Agape’s husband, his remains were never found – he never received consecrated burial.
Page 6 (p.84) of Bent’s 1887 ‘Old Basil’ article. The bizarre illustration is possibly by the author from another source (The Bent Archive).
Sad and sick at heart, after burying his two sons at Kalymnos, old Basil returned to Karpathos, where scenes of lamentation and death wails served doubtless to render his grief more poignant; and there is something more especially melancholy in the wails that these islanders hold in honour of the dead who have died [away?] from home; though the corpse is not in their midst, as is usually the case, the hired mourning women and the relatives think it a duty incumbent on them on such occasions to indulge in more heartrending dirges, and to tear their hair and lacerate their faces and arms with the greater vehemence. These deathwails [sic], too, last for forty days; every day the mourners meet for an hour or so to give way to their extravagant grief; again and again are the virtues of the deceased recorded; again and again is the loneliness of the survivors pitied – and I feel sure that poor old Basil had many genuine sympathisers, for his bereavement was bitter indeed. The sentiment of having the remains of the departed reposing near is not much felt in Greece, for after the lapse of a year the coffinless body is always exhumed, and the bones, tied up in an embroidered bag, are consigned to the family charnel house. When we were in Karpathos, owing to heavy rains, many of these private bone-houses were in ruins, and never shall I forget the ghastly spectacle afforded by the deceased family of the chief priest – his parents, his cousins, his sisters, and his aunts were all rolling about in grim confusion around the ruins of the bone-house; this painful sight, at least, old Basil was spared.
The listing of Bent’s ‘Old Basil’ article in the March 1887 issue of ‘The Hour Glass’ (The Bent Archive).
By degrees, from Agape’s heart the grief soon fled, a grief which, perhaps, if the truth were known, had its alleviations. In twelve months after the loss of her husband and brethren, she listened to the wooings of another lover, from another island, who carried off his bride without festivities, and without her father’s blessing, but with the same ample dower that had won for her the captain from Chalki. On her departure old Basil’s cup of bitterness was full. Alone in the world and bereft, he sought the kindly solitude of the secluded gorge, where, shut off from the world by a screen of mountains, he could devote himself to asceticism for the brief period of life that still remained to him.
As evening was coming on, we quitted old Basil; we did not insult his feelings by offering him the remnants of our feast; we simply left them to his discretion, and we hope his comfort.
………………………………………………………………………………………
Vol. 1 of ‘The Hour Glass’, 1897, in which Bent’s article appears. In a competitive market, it lasted a year (The Bent Archive).
The above, obscure article by Theodore Bent appeared in The Hour Glass in March 1887. It is one of his more fictitious pieces, perhaps based on some tales and customs (including funeral rites) he heard in the islands: research in the media of the time might turn up an account of the murders related. Mabel makes no mention of the monk Basil/Vasili in her charming chronicle describing the picnic – which did take place in March 1885 and tallies with Theodore’s setting (and elaboration to include ‘Vasili’) in his later, extended, account of the couple’s stay on the island (‘On a far-off island’. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 139, Feb. 1886, pp.233-44). For Mabel’s first-hand account of Karpathos, see The Travel Chronicles of Mabel Bent, Vol. 1, 2006, Oxford, pp.85-6).
Bent was remunerated for his stories in the popular journals (e.g. Blackwood’s Magazine) for which he wrote, and this may explain why he decided to expand the ‘Old Basil’ idea. Perhaps he had had positive feedback on the episode from third parties. Perhaps over the summer of 1886 (or earlier) he was aware of the proposed new Hour Glass magazine and made his submission (including his sketches) in time to proofread it before leaving for the Eastern Mediterranean in the last week of January 1887. Given how busy he was with all his other ‘serious’ publications, lecturing, and preparing for the next expedition, he obviously took pleasure in giving his imagination free rein now and then, taking time off from his more academic pursuits. (Some of Bent’s other fanciful pieces are listed below.)
The final page (p.84) of the original article shows a bizarre engraving of a (Western) monk, perhaps by Bent (a monogram bottom right ‘JTB’ ?) or another artist (The Bent Archive).
The three illustrations in the piece are based on Bent’s Karpathos sketches – he was never without his sketchbook and there is no end of references to his art in Mabel’s notebooks. In the village of ‘Mesochorio’ (Mesochori) we know that Theodore drew a likeness of Papas Manolis (or Manoulas) and, who knows, perhaps he presented this to the Hour Glass as ‘Old Basil’ and it is his likeness we see at the top of this present article? Where the originals are is unknown, but unpublished albums of Bent’s sketches are hidden away in Ireland and Zimbabwe, hopefully to appear in public one day. The person responsible for interpreting Bent’s sketches was E.H. Edwards, who does not seem to appear online; the engravers, however, are the well-known partners Del Orme and Butler. The final page (p.84) in the original has a bizarre engraving of a (Western) monk perhaps by Bent (a monogram bottom right ‘JTB’ ?) or another artist.
The Hour Glass was gone in the time it took for the sand to run through it: it lasted 12 months. The new periodical was announced in December 1886: “Ready in a few days, ‘Hour Glass’; threepence monthly. The new illustrated magazine contains short articles by the best writers on topics of the Hour…” (The Globe, Friday, 10 December 1886). Bent’s issue (March 1887) was advertised, inter alia, on 28 February (Freeman’s Journal and The Globe) and again on 4 March (The Globe).
The publishers took pride in its low price, 3d, and it seems, ultimately, that the sums just didn’t add up.
Among Bent’s other Greek ‘fictional’ articles are:
Happy Birthday greetings to celebrity explorer Theodore Bent (30/3/1852, d. 1897), who just so happens to share the day with one Vincent Van Gogh (30/3/1853, d. 1890), who, of course, had a brother called Theo…
The trouble with travel … is that you miss your birthdays – just look where Theodore was on 30 March for these frantic years of the Bents’ travels together: 1884 = Kea (Cyclades); 1885 = Karpathos (Dodecanese); 1886 = Samos; 1887 = Thasos; 1888 = Patara (Antalya province, Turkey); 1889 = Kurd-i-Bala, Iran; 1890 = Mersin area, Turkey; 1891 = en route for ‘Great Zimbabwe’; 1892 = UK; 1893 = Aksum area, Ethiopia; 1894 = Aden, Yemen; 1895 = UK; 1896 = returning from Athens to UK; 1897 (his 45th and last) = Aden, Yemen.
As an example of what he was up to, we have this extract from his notes of 30 March 1889, written up and presented a couple of years later. Taken from Theodore and Mabel’s cavalcade through Iran, south-north, we have Persia with all her fascination; it is written in his best, jaunty style: illustrative, informative, energetic, engaged and engaging. Classic Bent.
“Certainly, Persia, off the main line of route, is as different as possible from the Persia that the ordinary traveller sees. For two days after leaving Nejifabad we passed through villages nestling in fertility. Each village is, or rather was, protected by its mud fort, built on a hill, around which the cottages cluster – cottages which dazzle the eye with their continuity of mud domes and brown walls. Wapusht looked like a nest of cottage beehives stuck together. Within, the houses were comfortable enough, and bore every appearance of prosperity, for here they are off the routes which soldiers and governors of provinces pass over, and when free from Government extortions Persia prospers.
“On ascending to higher ground we came across a cold and barren district; the howling wind from the snow mountains made us again love those furs which we had considered unnecessary burdens when leaving Ispahan. These sudden changes of temperature are the bane of the Persian traveller, and woe to those who are not provided with artificial warmth. On reaching Kurd-i-Bala [March 30, 1899. The settlement is near modern Varposht, n-w of Najafabad], the first of the manna villages, we found ourselves in Armenian society. Of late years the Armenians in Persia, by foreign intervention, have had their condition greatly ameliorated, and if this state of things is allowed to continue they are likely once more to become the most prosperous of the Shah’s subjects. I was glad enough to warm myself by taking a brisk walk on reaching our destination, and accepted gladly the offices of the Karapiet, the Reis or headman of the village, and our host, who volunteered to take me up the mountain side and show me the manna shrub.
“In the fields around the village the Armenian women were tilling the ground. On their heads they wore tall head-dresses, with flat crowns and silver chains dangling therefrom – very uncomfortable gear for purposes of husbandry – and beneath their bright red skirts peeped drawers with embroidered edges. Armenian women hide only the lower part of the face, deeming it unseemly that the mouth should be shown to members of the opposite sex.
Bala khana at Yezd-i-Khast. Etching by H. Gedan, based on a Persian photograph by Mabel Bent, in J. T. Bent’s article ‘New Year’s Day in a Persian Village’. ‘English Illustrated Magazine’, 1890, Vol. 76 (Jan), 326-31 (private collection).
“Kurd-i-Bala is a great village for manna, the ‘gez-angebeen’, as the Persians call it. About twenty minutes’ walk brought us to a gorge in the mountains where acres of the shrub grow. The ‘gez’ tree is a low and parasol-shaped plant of the Tamarisk tribe, never reaching more than 3ft. in height; its leaves are small and sombre in colour, and it has all over it long prickly thorns. On these leaves there comes a small insect, which is red at first, like a harvest bug; later on it turns into a sort of louse, and finally becomes a tiny moth, which, before it flies off, produces a thin white thread, about half an inch long, which hangs on the bushes. This is the manna collectors shake off on to trays, which are put below for the purpose, and the material thus collected they call ‘gez’. They say the insect appears fifteen days before the hot weather begins, and disappears fifteen days before the cold season sets in. Every third day during a term of forty days about August they collect this species of honey from the trees, which forms itself into a white gelatinous mass, and the leaves become covered again with surprising rapidity…”
(From: J. Theodore Bent, Village Life in Persia, ‘The New Review’, 5:29 (1891/Oct.): 355-359)
Happy birthday Theodore!
A review of Bent birthdays based on Mabel Bent’s Chronicles, 1884-1897
The accompanying interactive map below plots these birthdays: Mabel in green, Theodore in blue. (NB: London [13 Great Cumberland Place] stands in for unknown locations in Great Britain; the couple could have been away visiting family and friends in Ireland or England, including at their property ‘Sutton Hall’, outside of Macclesfield.)
There were 28 Bent birthday events (2 x 14) between 1884–1897 (the years covered by Mabel Bent’s diaries). Of these 28, only 5 (18%) were not spent in the field, and only 7 times (25%) does Mabel refer to a birthday in her notebooks directly. In the above Table, column 1 gives the year and ages of the Bents on their birthdays; columns 2 and 3 give their birthday locations. Events in red are when Mabel refers directly to their birthdays. ‘London’ is standing in for unknown locations in Great Britain. If not at their main residence (13 Great Cumberland Place), the couple could have been visiting family and friends in Ireland and England, including at their property Sutton Hall, outside of Macclesfield.
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