Articles with the theme: General

The Real “King Solomon’s Mines”, by H. Rider Haggard (1907)

Transcribed from the American periodical  The Youth’s Companion, v. 81, No. 26, June 27, 1907: pp. 307-8.

Bent’s friend, celebrated novelist Sir Henry Rider Haggard KBE (1856-1925) (Wikipedia).

This extraordinary, in so many ways, piece, with its reference to Rider Haggard’s friend Theodore Bent, celebrity explorer of Great Zimbabwe in 1891, appeared in June 1907. The article is balanced exactly on the tipping point of the start of the shattering of the myth of Great Zimbabwe, so much based on Bent’s erroneous interpretation of the famous ruins, which, in turn, had not a little to do with Cecil Rhodes – indirectly one of the sponsors of the Bent expedition to the site in 1891.

This shattering began, it can be argued, with the head-on clash of two great studies – David Randall-MacIver’s Mediaeval Rhodesia (1906), in the vanguard of the ‘Africans-built-the-ruins’ movement, and R.N. Hall’s Great Zimbabwe (1905), fighting the rearguard ‘It-was-the-Phoenicians-or similar’ brigade, on whose side Haggard, as was to be expected, arrayed himself. note 1 

In the UK, Haggard’s article was published in Cassell’s Magazine note 2  (1907, June-Nov, pp. 144-51) a month later, July 1907, than the American version, but we cannot be certain when Haggard submitted these articles or on what terms. The Cassell version varies in several sections and layout, i.e. in it Haggard (p. 144) inserts a moaning paragraph or two complaining that in America his King Solomon’s Mines has been ‘pirated by the million’.  Understandably this pique has vanished from the American article.  Also, The Youth’s Companion version is dramatically illustrated with lithographs of Great Zimbabwe (including the famous soapstone bird illustrated below), which were circulating at the time and resembling Mabel Bent’s photographs in Bent’s Ruined Cities of Mashonaland (1892), whereas the Cassell version has fictional illustrations by Russell Flint. Cassell’s first published Haggard’s bestseller in late 1885, the same year that Bent’s great travelogue ‘The Cyclades‘ appeared.

‘The Real “King Solomon’s Mines”, by H. Rider Haggard’

Over twenty years ago the spirit moved me to attempt a story of African adventure, and as a result I wrote a book called “King Soloman’s Mines”. Now one of those old Romans who had such an extraordinary art of summing up gathered wisdom in a single sentence has informed us that books, like men, have their appointed destinies. Certainly this is so. Thus for “King Solomon’s Mines” I never expected any particular success. It was only a tale of adventure, and there seemed to be no reason why I should feel especially hopeful.

Indeed, if I remember right, this pessimistic attitude was shared by sundry publishers, who turned up their experienced noses at what has proved to be a sound investment in the way of fiction, until by chance it fell into the hands of the late Mr. W.E. Henley, who recommended it to Messrs. Cassell. Even when the manuscript found a publisher, I recollect, so small was my faith that I nearly disposed of the work outright for a small sum of money.

Yet “King Solomon’s Mines” has proved curiously successful. Twenty years have gone by, and it still flourishes. Old ladies still buy it under the impression that it is a religious tale, and other people, young and old, because it amuses them. During my recent journey through America I met scarcely any one who did not take the opportunity of informing me that he [sic] had read “King Solomon’s Mines”.

When I was a lad and a public servant in Africa I met many men who have now long passed away – the pioneers of settlement and exploration, or those who had first become acquainted with certain of the great savage races of the interior, or who had helped to shape history when at last these races and the white man found themselves face to face. Being of an inquiring character, I collected from them information which afterward enabled me to produce such books as “Nada the Lily” or that which I am discussing.

Thus, although I think that Mr. Baines, one of the first wanderers in much of the country which is now Rhodesia died shortly after I reached Natal, and I do not recall ever having spoken to him, I knew his family, and doubtless heard something of the country from them and others, with the result that the idea must have become implanted in my mind that it had once been occupied by an ancient people.

The Things I Did Not Know

How I came to conclude that this people was Phoenician I have now no idea. Nor, to the best of my memory, did I ever at any time hear of the great ruin of Zimbabwe, or that the ancients has carried on a vast gold-mining enterprise in the part of Africa where it stands. Still less did I know that diamonds existed elsewhere than Kimberley; indeed, that fact has only been discovered within the last few years. I introduced them only because they were more picturesque and easier to handle than gold would have been.

When I wrote of King Solomon’s Road I never guessed that the old-world Road of God, as I think it is called, would be discovered in the Matoppos; when I imagined Sheba’s Breasts I was ignorant that so named and shaped they stand – vide the latest maps – not far from the Tokwe River, guarding the gate to Great Zimbabwe, near to which, in truth, or so I believe, Solomon had the mines that poured the gold of Ophir into his coffers.

I never knew of the ancient workings, whereof so many have since been found, or of the treasury with the swinging doors of stone which now is said to have an actual existence. All of these, so far as this and other books are concerned, were the fruit of imagination, conceived, I suppose, from chance words spoken long ago that lay dormant in the mind.

But of the Matabele, who in the tale are named the Kukuanas, I did know something even in those days. Indeed, I went very near to knowing too much, for when, in 1877, my dead friends, Captain Patterson and Mr. J. Sergeaunt, were sent by Sir Bartle Frere on an embassy to their king, Lobengula, I begged the government of the Transvaal, whose servant I was at that time, for leave to accompany them.

If I Had Gone On!

That was refused, as I could not be spared from my office. So I rode with them a few miles, and returned. Had I gone on, my fate doubtless would have been their fate, for Lobengula murdered them both very cruelly, also my two servants, whom I had lent them, and poor young Thomas, the missionary’s son. The names of those two servants, Khiva, the bastard Zulu, and Ventvogel, the Hottentot, I have tried to preserve in the pages of “King Solomon’s Mines”. In life they were such men as are there described.

So much for legends and romance. Now let us come to the facts.

If any reader will take the trouble to consult a modern map of central South Africa, he [sic] may see a vast block of territory bounded, roughly speaking, by the Zambezi on the north and the Transvaal on the south, by Barotseland and Bechuanaland on the west, and by Portuguese East Africa on the east, measuring perhaps six hundred miles square.

From page 431 of ‘Black & White’, April 2, 1892, engravings based on Bent’s watercolours of four views of Great Zimbabwe (1891). The main caption reads ‘Pre-Mahomedan Relics in South Africa – Excavations at the Great Zimbabwe. From sketches by J. Theodore Bent’ (© The Bent Archive 2025).

Scattered over all this huge expanse are found ancient ruins, whereof about five hundred are known to exist, while doubtless many more remain to be discovered. These ruins, in spite of certain late theories to the contrary, it would seem almost certain – or so, at least, my late friend, Theodore Bent, and other learned persons have concluded – were built by people of Semitic race, perhaps Phoenicians, or, to be more accurate, South Arabian Himyarites, a people rendered somewhat obscure by age. At any rate, they worshiped the sun, the moon, the planets, and took observations of the more distant stars. Also, in the intervals of these pious occupations, they were exceedingly keen business men. Business took them to South Africa, where they were not native, and business kept them there, until at last, while still engaged on business, or so it seems most probable, they were all of them slain.

Their occupation was gold-mining, perhaps with a little trading in “ivory, almug-trees, apes and peacocks – or ostriches – thrown in. They opened up hundreds of gold reefs, from which it is estimated that they extracted at least seventy-five million pounds’ worth of gold, and probably a great deal more. They built scores of forts to protect their line of communication with the coast. They erected vast stronghold temples, of which the Great Zimbabwe, that is situated practically in the center of the block of territory delimited above, is the largest yet discovered. They worshiped the sun and the moon, as I have said. They enslaved the local population by tens of thousands to labor in the mines and other public works, for gold-seeking was evidently their state monopoly.

They came, they dwelt, they vanished. That is all we know about them. What they were like, what were there domestic habits, what land they took ship from, to what land returned, how they spent their leisure, in what dwellings they abode, whither they carried their dead for burial – of all these things and many others we are utterly ignorant.

The thing is strange, almost terrifying to think of. We modern folk are very vain of ourselves. We can hardly conceive a state of affairs on this little planet in which we shall not fill a large part, except for some obscure traces of blood, our particular race, the Anglo-Saxon, the Teutonic, the Gallic, whatever it may be, has passed away and been forgotten. Imagine London, Paris, Berlin, Chicago, and those who built them, forgotten! Yet such things may well come about; indeed, there are forces at work in the world, although few folk give a thought to them, which seem likely to bring them about a great deal sooner than we anticipate.

As we think to-day, so doubtless these Phoenicians, or Himyarites, or whoever they may have been, thought in their day. Remember, it must have been a great people that without the aid of steam or firearms could have penetrated, not peacefully, we may be sure, into the dark heart of Africa, and there have established their dominion over its teeming millions of population.

Under the Conquerors

‘To and fro swayed the mass of struggling warriors.’ One of Flint’s illustrations in Chapter 8 of Cassell’s 1907 edition of ‘King Solomon’s Mines’ (Project Gutenberg).

Probably the struggle was long and fierce – how fierce their fortifications show, for evidently they lived the overlords, the taskmasters of hostile multitudes; yes, multitudes and multitudes, for there are great districts in Rhodesia where, for league after league, even the mountainsides are terraced by the patient, laborious toil of man, that every inch of soil might be made available for the growth of food. Yet these fierce Semitic traders broke their spirit and brought them under the yoke; forced them to dig in the dark mines for gold, to pound the quartz with stone hammers and bake it in crucibles; forced them to quarry the hard granite and ironstone to the shape and size of the bricks they were accustomed in their land of origin, and, generation by generation, to build up the mighty, immemorial mass of temple fortresses.

When did they do it? No one knows, but from the orientation of the ruins to the winter or summer solstice, or to the northern stars, scholars think that the earliest of them were built somewhere about two thousand years before Christ . And when did they cease from their labors, leaving nothing behind them but these dry-built walls – for, although they were proficient in the manufacture of cement, they used no mortar – and the hollow pits whence they had dug the gold, and the instruments with which they treated it? That no scholar can tell us, although many scholars have theories on the matter. They vanished, that is all. Probably the subject tribes, having learned their masters’ wisdom, rose up and massacred them to the last man; and in those days there was no historian to record it and no novelist to make a story of the thing.

Solemn, awe-inspiring, the great elliptical building of Zimbabwe still stands beneath the moon, which once doubtless was worshiped from its courts. In it are the altars and the sacred cone where once the priests made prayer, or perchance offered sacrifice of children to Baal and to Ashtaroth.

On the hill above, amidst the granite boulders, frowns the fortress, and all round stretch the foundation blocks of a dead city. Here the Makalanga, that is, the People of the Sun, descendants without doubt of the Semitic conquerors and the native races, still make offerings of black oxen to the spirits of their ancestors – or did so till within a few years gone. The temple, too, or so they hold, is still haunted by those spirits; none will enter it at night. But out of the beginning of it all these folk know nothing. If questioned, they say only that the place was built by white men “when stones were soft”; that is, countless ages ago.

Haggard’s ‘carven vultures’. Mabel Bent’s (presumably) photo of the famous soapstone birds the Bents removed from Great Zimbabwe in 1891 but which were reclaimed by Cecil Rhodes later. No originals remain in the UK , only a replica cast in the British Museum (not on display) (from “The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland”, 1892, p. 181).

What a place it must have been when the monoliths and the carven vultures, each upon its soapstone pillar, stood in their places upon the broad, flat tops of the walls, when the goldsmiths were at work and the merchants trafficked in the courts, when the processions wound their way through the narrow passages and the white-robed, tall-capped priests did sacrifice in the shrines!

Where did they bury their dead one wonders. For of these, as yet, no cemetery has been found. Perhaps they cremated them and cast their ashes to the winds. Perhaps they embalmed them, if they were individuals of consequences, and sent them back to Arabia or to Tyre, as the Chinese send their dead to-day, while humbler folk were cast out to the beasts and birds. Or perhaps they still lie in deep and hidden kloofs among the mountains.

This, at least, is evident, that during their long centuries of occupation, for all these ruins reveal various periods of building that must have been separated by great stretches of time, the dead were many. Indeed, a few have been found – not at the Great Zimbabwe, but at Mundie, at Chum and at Dhlo-dhlo. These were interred beneath the granite cement of the floors, perhaps under the dwelling of the deceased, who was laid on his side, with his head resting upon a stone or wooden pillow of the ancient Egyptian pattern, eathernware pots standing about him, his gold ornaments still upon his person, and cakes of gold within his pouch to pay the expenses of his last long journey. If he were a high official also, his gold-headed and gold-ferruled rod of office was laid in the tomb with him.

One of these departed, who dwelt, or, at any rate, was buried at Chum, was a giant. Messrs. Hall and Neal say that he was over seven feet high, his shin-bone being more than two feet in length. As much as seventy-two ounces of gold have been found buried with a single ancient, and at Dhlo-dhlo my friend, Major Burnham, D.S.O., found more than six hundred ounces of that metal, nearly all of it, I think, manufactured. Also he found skeletons, and within them barbed arrowheads, showing how they met their deaths, some of which arrowheads I still have, although whether these date from ancient or from medieval times I cannot say.

‘Golden Rhinoceros of Mapungubwe’, c. 11th century CE, gold foil, Monomotapa-Zimbabwe Culture, University of Pretoria Museums (Sian Tiley-Nel, Wikipedia).

Ages and ages after the ancients had been destroyed or left the country, there was another empire here, that of Monomotapa, and semi-savage kings, of whom Mr. Wilmot tells us in his book, held their courts in the Zimbabwes, The Portuguese used to fight with these people, and to send missionaries to make Christians of those who survived.

Thus from documents preserved in the Vatican it appears that in 1628 one Brother Louis, having defeated the emperor and his army of a hundred thousand men, went on to the Great Zimbabwe, “the court of the king, and there”, he says, “I built a little church and put up a crucifix I had brought with me and a statue of the Blessed Virgin of the Rosary.”

Sixty or seventy years before this, also, Father Gonsalvo Silvera was murdered by the Emperor of Monomotapa under circumstances which would be well worth relating if I had the space. Two generations later Father Alphonsus, travelling up the Zambezi, into a tributary of which the body was thrown, alleges that he was shown a place where it still lay uncorrupted. He could not visit it, however, because – as the report went – it was carefully guarded by tigers!

But of these Zimbabwes, ancient and medieval, the legends are endless. Now they are the heritage of the Anglo-Saxon race:  and new dead, Maj. Allan Wilson and his companions, who fell fighting overwhelming odds on the banks of the Shangani, lie within the shadow of their walls, which still wrap the secrets of those who built them in time-worn stone and impenetrable silence.

An undated, cryptic letter from Bent to Rider Haggard, addressed from Sutton Hall the Bents’ country residence, outside Macclesfield, north-western England (Bent Archive).

Bent and Haggard were acquaintances, then friends, from the 1880s. In any list of likely candidates for the famous story-teller’s Alan Quartermain, Bent would be near the top.

In 1896, Theodore went on a bicycle tour with his friend Nigel Gresley to some English eastern counties and spent a day with Haggard and his wife. Gresley later published an account of the tour:

“From Beccles we hastened on [c. 8 miles], reaching Ditchingham about dusk. We had the pleasure of staying at Ditchingham House, where we were most kindly and agreeably entertained by Mr. Rider Haggard, the well-known and talented author of many leading Works of Fiction, notably, perhaps, the novels ‘She’, ‘King Solomon’s Mines’, and ‘Jess’. Mr. and Mrs. Rider Haggard are surrounded in their home by innumerable objects of art, carved oak, statuary, paintings illustrating scenes from his works, and many rare and valuable Curios picked up during their travels in Mexico, South Africa, and other parts of the world. We greatly enjoyed our 24 hours stay under their hospitable roof.”  (A Week on Wheels in East Anglia… Touring in Norfolk and Suffolk with Theodore Bent… [1896, Witmore & Son, Dursley]).

Note 1: For a well-illustrated unpicking of the Ancient/Semitic v. Modern/African dispute that raged for decades, see ZimFieldGuide.com’s online post (undated).
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Note 2: Only accessible within the US.
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Reading “The Cyclades” – Ios

Delighted to add P.M. Iannetta’s choice of Ios for our ‘Reading The Cyclades’ project, marking the 140th (1885-2025) anniversary of Theodore Bent’s classic The Cyclades, or Life Among the Insular Greeks. If you want to join in, just Messenger us! (photo credits: see link)

Click here for other readings!

Ios [Bent’s Ch. 7: Wednesday 23 January 1884 – Sunday 27 January 1884]

P.M. Iannetta; Ios harbour in the 1930s (after Liddell 1954); Ekaterina Lorenziadis’ costume (National Historical Museum, Athens); Ios, the Chora today (Joshua Doubek: Wikipedia).

English language teacher and island-hopper P.M. Iannetta narrates the Bents’ landing on Ios – ‘Little Malta’ – and their first impressions of the main town. We meet mayor Lorenziadis and his family and are treated to a fashion show by his daughter Ekaterina – the dress she is modelling is now on display at the National Historical Museum, Athens.

Reading “The Cyclades” – Marking the 140th anniversary (1885-2025) of a classic travelogue

Map and title page of Bent’s bestseller on the Cyclades (1885) (archive.org).

“The Islands of the Aegean Sea offer plenty of scope for the study of Hellenic archaeology, but they are more particularly rich in the preservation of manners and customs which have survived the lapse of years, and the result of a special study of both these points, made during two winters passed by my wife and myself amongst the islanders, in their distant hamlets, and in their towns by the sea-coast, I here place before the public.” (From Bent’s Preface, page v) note 1 

“… Mr. Theodore Bent’s excellent book on the ‘Cyclades’, the only recent book which is really serviceable to teach ordinary readers the details of the subject.” (Prof. Sir John Pentland Mahaffy, Irish classicist, in Good Words, 1888: Vol. 29, 305 ff.)

(Jump to the Readings)

Detail from a raised-relief map of Greece (Glyn Griffiths 2024).

Theodore Bent’s evergreen (ever-blue perhaps?) account of two winters happily spent island-hopping in the Greek Cyclades was published on 28 February 1885 in London by Longman, Green and Co. The Cyclades, or Life Among the Insular Greeks was the first such travelogue to appear in English and to this day features regularly in the bibliographies of those writing about these iconic islands.

Reviews spanning the century:

“Mr. Bent’s book deserves all success, for it is the result of researches pursued in the most laudable manner. When an educated man selects for his field of observation an interesting and little-explored area of country, and, after learning the language, spends a considerable part of two winters there, living among all classes of people so as to familiarise himself with the details of their life, and to become intimately acquainted with their ideas and modes of thought, he deserves the title of an enthusiastic investigator.” Academy 27, Jan/June 1885, p. 322.

“It is the classic of Aegean travel in English and will never be superseded, for one good reason that Bent was lucky enough to visit the islands when they were still, as it were, intact and only just waking out of the sleep of centuries.”  Ernle Bradford,  The Companion Guide to the Greek Islands (1983, Collins, London, p. 156).

“James Theodore Bent (1852-1897), author of The Cyclades (London, 1885), much the most valuable book on the Aegean.” (Robert Liddell, Aegean Greece, London, 1954, p.107, n.1)

“Seriphos and Siphnos sound like Heavenly Twins, and are very similar in size and scope. Kimolos and Sikinos are hard to visit, and harder to escape from… frankly it is not worth the trouble to do so, unless you are as determined and thorough about your Aegean as old Theodore Bent – who wrote the real classic on the area.” (Lawrence Durrell, The Greek Islands, London, 1980, p.254)

Reading The Cyclades

As an audiobook of The Cyclades has yet to appear, to mark its 140th anniversary (2025) we have asked ‘Cycladists’, those with affinities to the islands, to read memorable extracts from Bent’s guide for us.

The order of appearance is in accordance with how Bent sequenced them, not as the couple actually visited them – for this you need to see the diary of his wife, Mabel, for the winter of 1883/4. The dates given, where possible, of when they made their visits are from this diary – and not always reliable. The Bents’ first winter in the area, 1882/3, is unchronicled by Mabel, seeming to have been limited to a few Easter weeks, taking in Tinos and Amorgos. The diarist notes on their return to London in the Spring of 1884 that “though we like good food and beds and ease and comfort as well as others, we think the pleasure we have had quite pays for all the pains”. (The Travel Chronicles of Mrs J. Theodore Bent, Vol. 1, Oxford, 2006, p. 61)

The  tsabouna played by Yannis Pantazis of Santorini.

Most readings begin with a short melody on the island bagpipes (tsabouna) played by Yannis Pantazis of Santorini. The Bents would have been very familiar with this sound, even acquiring their own instrument (now in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford).

So, πάμε, click on an audio file below to transport yourself to the Bents’ Cyclades as they found them in 1883/4 (zoom out on the map below to slowly reveal the islands). Further reader contributions will be added, of course, as they sail in, σιγά-σιγά! note 2 

(All rights remain with the individual readers, 2025-)

The Readings

Introduction and Bent’s Preface (pp. v-viii), dated November 1884

An introduction to ‘Reading “The Cyclades”‘, followed by Bent’s Preface to the first edition, providing a little background and his main objectives in visiting the islands over the course of two winters…

 

 

Serifos [Bent’s Ch. 1: Saturday 1st December – Tuesday 4th December 1883]

“The Church of St. Athanasius was worth seeing, being round with two little apses. It has a lovely iconostasis… carved in wood, with vine tendrils, and festoons, and niches for twenty eikons…” Metropolitan Church of Agios Athanasios, Ano Chora, Serifos (C. Messier, Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0).

After a short stay on Syros, Siphnos was the first island the couple visited on their second winter tour, with Bent also choosing to begin his travelogue here. This ‘very pretty island’, as Mabel calls it, still makes the perfect overture to Bent’s Cycladic idyll, introducing us to all the themes that reappear throughout his work – ‘Zorba’-like characters, myths and legends, food and drink, custom and costume, antiquities, the ups and downs of travel, everyday life ‘among insular Greeks’ indeed… Our first reader is Elizabeth Boleman-Herring, author, inter alia, of The Aegean Islands Insight Pocket Guide: Mykonos and Santorini, publishing-editor of Weekly Hubris, and Cycladophile.

Melos [Bent’s Ch. 4: Saturday 15th December – Friday 21 December 1883]

View of the ancient theatre of Melos (330 x 558 mm, graphite, pen and ink, and watercolour) by James Skene, c. 1841 (CC Trustees of the British Museum (asset number 1280633001)).

Bent’s ‘Note on the Antiquities of Melos’ read by Ina Berg, Senior Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Manchester. Ina has a long-term association with the Cyclades generally, her articles including ‘Island Attractions? Travel Writing on the Cyclades from the Middle Ages Until the Modern Day‘, in Mediterranean Studies (2012, 71-87), and (with J.R. Edelheim) ‘The Attraction of Islands: Travellers and tourists in the Cyclades (Greece) in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries‘, in Journal of Tourism and Culture Change 2012 (10:1, 84-98).

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).

Santorini [Bent’s Ch. 6: Monday 7th 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 agreed to sail a little west from Tilos into the Cyclades to read a few of her favourite extracts from Bent’s visit to 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…

(Now click for a slideshow of Jen’s reading!)

Ios [Bent’s Ch. 7: Wednesday 23 January – Sunday 27 January 1884]

P.M. Iannetta; Ios harbour in the 1930s (after Liddell 1954); Ekaterina Lorenziadis’ costume (National Historical Museum, Athens); Ios, the Chora today (Joshua Doubek: Wikipedia).

English language teacher and island-hopper P.M. Iannetta narrates the Bents’ landing on Ios – ‘Little Malta’ – and their first impressions of the main town. We meet mayor Lorenziadis and his family and are treated to a fashion show by his daughter Ekaterina – the dress she is modelling is now on display at the National Historical Museum, Athens.

 

 

 

Delos [from Bent’s Ch. 10, Mykonos (as ‘Note II – The Excavations at Delos’): Saturday, 1 March 1884]

Delos – bases and monuments north of Theophrastos’ Agora, the ‘Hypostyle Hall’, photographed in 1908, i.e. 25 years or so only after the Bents’ visit. The photographer is unknown (CC Archimage).

Rather like today’s tourists, the Bents spent a day on Delos, legendary birthplace of Apollo and Artemis, at the end of their visit to Mykonos. Then as now, excavations on this island, the heart of the Cyclades, are under the aegis of L’École Française D’Athènes in coordination with the Greek State. Bent, of course, finds the remains tantalising. His archaeological thoughts are read by Catherine Bouras, Secrétaire de rédaction pour La Chronique des fouilles en ligne, l’EFA.

Naxos [Bent’s Ch. 14: Sunday, 23 December 1883 – Monday, 7 January 1884]

Portara, the large portal of the Sanctuary of Delian Apollo, Naxos (C. Messier, Wikipedia).

An early extract from Bent’s chapter on Naxos (‘The Town of Naxia’), where the couple spend Christmas, 1883. The passage – referencing the famous islet off the main town and its trademark temple remains that still salute every arrival by sea – is read by our friend the cartographer Glyn Griffiths, who has kindly provided many maps for our website and publications over the last twenty years, and for whose work we are most happy to thank here.

Revis Cruttenden, “Island Chapel” (detail, 2010, oil on board, 35.5 x 20.5).

A second extract from Bent’s Naxos chapter (‘In the Mountains of Naxos’) takes us inland and up into the mountains by paths still traceable among the picture-book villages of the interior region of Potamia. It is read by garden-designer/artist Revis Cruttenden, Cycladic traveller and erstwhile Mani resident. (Mabel’s diary gives the date of the rainy mule ride as 29 December 1883.)

notes

Note 1:  In terms of contemporary English visitors (tourists) to the region, Bent would have found little in the way of popular literature. There exists a superficial, anonymous, article that he most probably would have read, written by a young male(?) traveller who decided to make a short sail from Athens in February 1880, ‘to woo the sea breezes among the Cyclades’. His tour takes in Syros, Tinos, Delos, Naxos, Paros, and Antiparos. On Tinos he makes reference to the famous annual pilgrimage – an event that draws Bent there in the spring of 1883. The article, barely recommendable, is A Cruise in Greek Waters (The St. James’s Magazine and United Empire Review, v.39 (12) JY-D (1880), pp.39-46). Curiously, its title is identical to the earlier (1870) travelogue by the affable maverick Frederick Trench Townshend. This is well worth the trouble of finding, although the Cyclades are not included.
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Note 2: More readings will be added as and when they appear. For details of how to participate, contact info[at]thebentarchive[dot]com
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A Bent Miscellany

The expeditions
Map showing the expeditions of Theodore & Mabel Bent, 1883-1897 (drawn by Glyn Griffiths. (c) The Bent Archive)

Researches throw up Bent bits all the time – some don’t make it into articles or into our main pages. Nevertheless they are interesting (we think) and might perhaps be useful to some in their studies of mid-19th century travellers and their times.

After all, Theodore and Mabel were partial to the odd sidetrack (look at the map) and this Bent Miscellany might well lead you down some…

Snippets are added regularly, latest first, so return as often as you like. We include references and links wherever possible and if you want to cite www.tambent.com that would be appreciated.

Added September 2025

The Paddington Times, Friday 2 August 1895: “Yet women are under a sex disqualification when a poor little squabble among men arises, whether or not one of them, like Mrs. Theodore Bent, the wife of the distinguished traveller of Mashonaland, who has done the work of a dozen explorers, has friends who expect that her additions to the scientific knowledge of the day will be acknowledged as they would be if she were of the other sex.”

The Paddington Times, Friday 16 September 1898: “The British Association this year met at Bristol for the third time, and has just concluded its business… In every section room last week ladies formed the majority of the audience. They were not of the butterfly class, rushing from place to place in search of novelty, but serious students from college classrooms and laboratories, who had travelled long distances to see and hear the great authorities of the scientific world. Many of the girls were themselves teachers, and keenly interested in scientific research. The papers by ladies were few in number, but noteworthy. The three great lady travellers of our time came to the front, modest, self-contained, accurate, and enthusiastic, each in her own domain – Mrs. Bishop, Mrs. Bent, and Miss Kingsley.”

Mid-Surrey Times, Saturday 15 May 1897: “Mr. Bent was always accompanied by his wife, one of whose functions was to look after the commissariat. Mr. Bent was a thorough believer in tea on his travels, and did not advise anyone to explore on spirits. The larder of the travellers usually included desiccated soups, corned beef and beef essence, potted meats, condensed milk, and, last but not least, some sackfuls of dry bread, for long experience taught Mr. and Mrs. Bent both what to avoid and what to add to there travelling impediments.”

From The Youth’s Companion, v. 81, no. 26, June 27, 1907, pages 307-308

In the article ‘The Real “King Solomon’s Mines”, by H. Rider Haggard’: ‘These ruins [Great Zimbabwe], in spite of certain late theories to the contrary, it would seem almost certain, – or so, at lease, my late friend, Theodore Bent, and other learned persons have concluded,- were built by people of Semitic race, perhaps Phoenicians, or, to be more accurate, South Arabian Himyarites, a people rendered somewhat obscure by age. At any rate, they worshiped the sun, the moon, the planets, and took observations of the more distant stars.’

From The Youth’s Companion, v. 82, no. 20, 14 May 1908, page 235

‘Afraid of safety-pins. It is not easy to realize the bondage to fear under which barbarous people live on account of their superstitious ignorance. Mrs. Theodore Bent tells in her book, “Southern Arabia”, how she tried to make a present of a safety-pin to a native woman, and what a storm of indignation was occasioned by her act. On our arrival at our camping-ground and while we were waiting for our tents to be ready, I was surrounded by women all masked. They seemed highly astonished at a safety-pin which I was taking out, so I gave, or rather offered it, to an old woman near me. She wanted to take the pin, but several men rushed between us and roared at us both, and prevented my giving it to her. I stood there holding it out and she stretching out her hand, and one or two men then asked me for it for her. I put it down on a stone, and she took it away and seemed pleased; but a man soon brought it back to me on the end of a stick, saying they did know these things and were afraid of them.’ (credit: Digital Library@Villanova University)

From The Youth’s Companion, v. 98, no. 52, December 25, 1924, page 852

in ‘Fireflies by J. Renwick Metheny’. ‘It does not pay robbers to get themselves or their horses shot. Like men of other occupations, they want to lose nothing. It is not from cowardice but from prudence that they resort to stratagem. Osman Oghlu, of whom Theodore Bent wrote so fascinatingly, fought with reckless courage against an overwhelming force of armed men; and at that he had no chance of escape… (credit: Digital Library@Villanova University)

From The Youth’s Companion,  v. 71, no. 41, October 14, 1897, page 477

In ‘The Breath of Allah in Six Chapters, Chapter 1’ by Charles Asbury Stephens (1844-1931). ‘”The English at Aden call it the Valley of the Hadramut”, replied the young engineer. “It lies eighty or a hundred miles inland from the barren south coast of Arabia, which stretches easterly from the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb to the Persian Gulf. In the days of King Solomon in the long centuries of the Roman Empire, the Vale of Hadramut was known as the country from which frankincense was brought, but since the era of Mohammed little has been heard of it. The fanaticism of the Moslem seyyids shut it up from the world till the year 1893, when an English traveler and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Bent, succeeded in so far winning the confidence of the sultans, or Arab princes, as to be permitted to enter the vale and reside there for a time.”‘ (credit: Digital Library@Villanova University)

Santorini: Jen Barclay reads from Theodore Bent’s ‘The Cyclades’ (1885)

While we wait for an audiobook of Theodore Bent’s “The Cyclades, or Life Among the Insular Greeks“, to mark its 140th anniversary (2025) we are asking ‘Cycladists’, those with affinities to the islands, to read memorable extracts for us.

Click here for other readings!

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:

 

An Excavator’s Camp, by J.T. Bent, in the ‘Pall Mall Budget’, 15 December 1892

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.
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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.)
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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.
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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).
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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.
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Note 6: Mabel records this visit as 3 August 1891 (The Travel Chronicles of Mabel Bent, Vol. 2, 2012: p. 105).
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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).
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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:

 1891: My Eighth chronicle: to Zimbabye in Mashonaland (Vol. 1)

1891: My Eighth chronicle: to Zimbabye in Mashonaland (Vol. 2)

 

Mabel Bent, Isabella Bird, and Hadji Abdullah the dragoman – Persia, 1889/90

The Bents’ route through Persia, March–May 1889. Drawn by Glyn Griffiths. © The Bent Archive.
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

A compilation of the Bents’ Persian tales will appear in 2026.

“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)

‘Why Old Basil Became a Monk’, by J. Theodore Bent (Karpathos, 1887)

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.

Scenery around Kyra Panagia today (photo: Jennifer Barclay)

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:

See also our article by Alan King: “The legend of Kyra Panagia and the tragic story of the hermit monk Vasilis”

Many happy returns Theodore – born 30 March 1852

No photo description available.

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.

Map of the Bents’ great ride through Persia in 1889 (© Glyn Griffiths).

“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.