Theodore Bent as artist: recent acquisitions by the Bent Archive (June 2026)
Two watercolours by Theodore Bent. Left: A view inside the Old Town, the island of Rhodes, 1885 (46 x 30 cm); Right: The Çandarlı Halil Pasha Tower, Rumelihisarı (Boğazkesen Fortress), Bosphorus, Istanbul, 1886 (46 x 30 cm) (the Bent Archive collection).
(Further information will be added in due course)
Leave a comment or contact us about this article1) “Embroideries and Archives: A Research Journey”, The Annual Bader Archive Lecture at the British School at Athens, 11 May 2026.
In the early twentieth century, a group of BSA students put together significant collections of Greek domestic embroidery. Many of which are now in museum collections across the UK, in particular the V&A and National Museums Liverpool. The primary collectors were R.M. Dawkins and A.J.B. Wace. As the granddaughter of Wace and as a textile conservator, Ann French has been researching how these collections were compiled, studied, exhibited and promoted by them and their colleagues and friends. During her talk (at mins 33-35) we are introduced to some ‘frocks’ bought by the Bents while on Karpathos in 1885, and their slow, circular journey back to Greece (Athens) in the early 1930s. (The tale is also brilliantly told in the scholarly journal of the Benaki Museum, 2015-2016-2017, pp. 75-90.)
2) “Greek Dress at the Hellenic Centre, London – 4 February until 2 March 2014” – The Bents’ acquisitions and their stories!
Although Theodore and Mabel Bent lived not so far away, Marylebone, in Central London, might seem an unlikely place for an exhibition of Greek costume, but it is the home of the Hellenic Centre, a focus for philhellenes and London’s Greek community. From 4 February until 2 March 2014, there was a rare opportunity to see an impressive range of Greek dress outside its native land. As part of the event (on Friday 28 February, 7.15 pm), Ann French, Textile Conservator at the Whitworth Art Gallery, the University of Manchester, used selected embroideries from the 1914 pioneering embroidery exhibition (click for the online catalogue) at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in London, to trace their individual collecting histories and reveal the different contexts, interpretations and values placed on them within UK based collections and museums. This exhibition, which drew on the leading collections of the day, primarily from the collection of Theodore and Mabel Bent and the archaeologists R M Dawkins & A J B Wace, of Greek Embroideries displayed, for the first time in the UK, historic Greek Embroideries as an art form. There is a short, but wonderful, promotional video on YouTube (April 2021).
The exhibition features several of the Bent’s finest costumes and pieces, and Ann refers to them in the last five minutes or so of her talk in a fascinating account of how, on Mabel’s death, one of her Karpathos frocks found its way back to Greece! (One other is in store at the V & A, and two more from Nisyros are untraced – if you have them, let us know!)
Click here also for the small collection of ‘Turkish’ embroideries once owned by the Bents and now in the Harris Museum and Gallery, Preston, UK, and here for dresses from Anafi in the Cyclades.
(For the Bents in Greece and Turkey, see Mabel Bent’s Chronicles, published by Archaeopress, Oxford, in 3 volumes)
For a 19th-century collection of East Mediterranean costumes, see Les Costumes Populaires…
See also the blog ‘Folk Costume and Embroidery‘ and Alan King’s post elsewhere on the costume worn by Ekaterina Lorenziades to impress the Bents during their stay on Ios, now in the National Historical Museum, Athens.
After Vanessa Gordon, author of The Naxos Mysteries, kindly contributed to our Reading “The Cyclades” series, we asked if she would like to write us a short piece about her erstwhile Cycladic encounters with Theodore and Mabel Bent, and were delighted when she agreed.
Beginning her article on the island of Antiparos, where the Bents spent some happy weeks in early 1884, making their own mysterious discoveries, Vanessa writes…
We eventually reached Antiparos, having made several visits to its larger neighbour, Paros, on other trips without managing to include Antiparos in our itinerary.
By the time I stood on the southern shore of Antiparos, looking out over the islet of Despotiko, I already knew something about Theodore and Mabel Bent. Their activities here had made an impression on me when I first read Theodore’s book The Cyclades, or Life among the Insular Greeks (1885), which I had discovered on the bookcase of a good friend in Athens who, being a classicist and archaeologist, had many interesting books that I scanned and subsequently acquired.
Imagine my disappointment, then, when we were told that there would be no more ferry crossings to Despotiko that day. My husband and I consoled ourselves with a superb fish lunch, and resolved to return the following summer.
And so we did, and were much better prepared that time. Schedules had been consulted and hours put aside for exploring on Despotiko. In fact, we arrived too early, and ordered a coffee at a taverna close to the jetty. There we met another English couple, Steve and Diana, and a conversation began. They, too, were waiting for the ferry to Despotiko, and we ended up spending the whole day together. We first visited the ruined Sanctuary of Apollo, where the Bents had been long before us, and then re-boarded the ferry which took us round the coast to a swimming bay at the far side of the islet. It was there, as we walked into the warm water to have our swim, that our companions informed us they were once members of the British Olympic swimming team. We have remained friends ever since.
It was a serendipitous first encounter with the indomitable Bents, although with our new friends, and the inevitable feast afterwards at the local taverna, I’m not sure just how much I thought about them after we left the sanctuary. By the end of the day, though, I regarded them in a different way from how I had thought of them on reading Life Among the Insular Greeks. I had picked up even then that Theodore’s approach to antiquity was, in a sense, rather cavalier. I had formed an impression that some things might have been damaged in his search for other antiquities. That was understandable: these were early days, and the principles of archaeology, especially concerning the protection, conservation and sensitive excavation of finds, had barely been established at the time – and not established at all in the mind of Theodore. What else was to be expected from an enthusiastic explorer in a science that was barely past its adolescence? The bond I had formed with Theodore, therefore, was a fellow-feeling between two come-lately but passionate amateurs. I also admired him, of course, for having done so much in the pursuit of his passion, undeterred by hardships, adversity and ill-health.
Then there was Mabel, his wife. Photographer and diarist, older than her husband, vivacious Irish woman, desperate to escape the confines of Victorian Ireland, she had accepted Theodore as her husband and his proposal to travel to foreign lands. They had set off soon after their wedding (1877) and were to explore together for many years; even after Theodore’s early death, Mabel continued this journeying. I was reminded of Joan Leigh-Fermor, partner and wife of Paddy, who crossed Greece with him in an era when it was almost as difficult to do so as for the Bents. Also of Agatha Christie, whose late marriage to Max Mallowan had taken her to remote archaeological sites in Egypt, where, with her trusty typewriter in her luggage, she had written some of her mysteries in makeshift accommodation in the desert. These were women whose husbands – archaeologists and explorers, writers and travellers – had opened up for them the possibility of a life which most women of the time had no chance to experience.
So it was that, inevitably perhaps, I introduced small references to the Bents in my own writing. The Naxos Mysteries pivot on archaeology and history, and my hero Martin Day gives long and enthusiastic explanations on his beloved subject to anyone who will listen. This gives me the perfect platform for introducing all sorts of interesting historical anecdotes into my books, and this includes the Bents.
It is not Martin Day, however, who first introduces the Bents to my readers: it is an elderly retired academic called Edward Childe, a character who quickly became one of my favourites. Edward persuades Day to create a documentary series on the subject of Greek marble, a series which is to be structured using Edward’s eclectic collection of historical memorabilia which, he explains, includes some unusual letters:
“There will be a major focus on Naxos, not only as a historic centre for Greek marble but also because I have some letters written by Mrs Mabel Bent to a friend in London, in which she describes how she and her more renowned husband Theodore were exploring Naxos in the late nineteenth century. I also have a couple of her photographs. One of them shows the Kouros of Apollo.”
“How on earth did you get hold of the Bent material, Edward?” interrupted Day.
“The letters were left to me when I was a student by an Oxford classicist I very much admired. His name was Augustus Bent Middleton. I don’t know if there’s a family connection with the famous Bents – perhaps you’d like to look into it, Martin?” (The Search for Artemis, 2021)
How did Edward acquire such material, you may ask? Mabel’s diaries, which formed the basis of her husband’s famous books, are in safe keeping now, not to mention being digitally accessible; but this is fiction, and there is always the chance of personal letters showing up decades later, don’t you agree?
The Bents are mentioned again later in the same book, when Day talks about them to his friend (later wife) Helen, in his usual, informative way:
“Edward said he had original letters from the wife of Theodore Bent. Do you know about him?”
“No, who was he?”
“He was a young Englishman from Yorkshire who lived at the same time as the giants of archaeology, like Arthur Evans and Heinrich Schliemann. note 1 He was completely self-taught, very young and inexperienced. Undeterred, he committed his short life to travel and archaeology, and his equally young wife Mabel went with him. They travelled through the Cyclades, writing about what they saw, not only about the ancient remains they found but also the lives of the local people. I’ll lend you the book, it makes good reading. It’s called something like Life among the Insular Greeks, I have a copy here in the house. Theodore was an Oxford graduate with no experience of excavation, yet when he had an opportunity to excavate on Antiparos, off Paros, it made his reputation. He died tragically young, in his mid-forties. His wife wrote travel notebooks, which are in library collections in London. Edward told me that he had some letters she wrote to a friend describing her time on Naxos with Theodore. I’ve seen her notebooks; I’d love to see those letters. note 2 ”
“I’d like to read the book.” (The Search for Artemis, 2021)
Another Naxos Mystery in which the Bents are specifically mentioned is The House in Apíranthos. The book is structured around a series of filming sessions, already referred to in The Search for Artemis, that take place at locations in the Cyclades. Day is presenting episodes based on current excavation sites, one of which is the exciting sanctuary on Despotiko, which I had visited years earlier with our new Olympian friends (see above). Here he is speaking into the camera:
“Welcome to the Sanctuary of Apollo on the island of Despotiko. This is one of the most important excavations currently being undertaken in Greece, yet it is also one of the least well-known. Despotiko has been uninhabited for some time, protected by law both for its unspoilt natural habitat and its archaeological significance. Its long history, since first being mentioned by Pliny the Elder, has involved Venetians, Ottomans, and even pirates, and the English traveller Theodore Bent was here in the second half of the nineteenth century. Christos Tsountas, the brilliant Greek archaeologist, began excavating here at the end of that century, and more discoveries were made in the 1950s when an early Cycladic settlement was found.”
Day paused slightly to allow Ben to change to a different angle for the next line.
“Then, in 1997, the current excavation here began.”
He put on his sunglasses and turned away from the camera. note 3 (The House in Apíranthos, 2024)
And with that brief reference I abandon Theodore and Mabel to their bravely-earned place in the history of early archaeological exploration and travel, but with a great deal of respect and fondness. There is just one more memory to share with you.
I was giving a talk on Naxos in 2025 to an audience of readers, archaeologists and locals about The House in Apíranthos. During the Q&A session I was surprised and delighted when one of the archaeologists expressed her pleasure that I knew about the Bents. I wondered fleetingly whether my introducing them had seemed rather presumptuous to readers not familiar with them, but the thought faded quickly. The Bents deserve their place and they are welcome in my books, not least because of the special bond I made with them, long gone though they are, on the island of Despotiko.
The Secrets of Stelida, Vanessa’s 7th book in ‘The Naxos Mysteries’ series has just been published (Spring 2026).
Footnotes
Some further reading:
J. Theodore Bent, The Cyclades, or Life Among the Insular Greeks (an edited reprint, Oxford, 2002)
The Travel Chronicles of Mrs J. Theodore Bent, Vol. 1: Greece and the Levantine Littoral (Oxford, 2006)
A selection of Theodore Bent’s articles on Greece
Scanned versions of Mabel Bent’s ‘Chronicles’ from the Hellenic Society’s archive
‘Of Crows and Swans and Calamine – the Archaeology Theatre of Antiparos’
‘The skeletal material excavated on Antiparos in 1883/4 by Theodore Bent’
In exalted female company – Mabel Bent, other women travellers, and the RGS women Fellows scandal of 1893
“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.)
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)
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-)
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]
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]
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]
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 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]
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.
Sikinos [Bent’s Ch. 8: Sunday, 27 January 1884 – Friday, 1 February 1884]
Bent’s ‘storm-stayed’ chapter on Sikinos is read by Prof. Rebecca Sweetman, who very kindly takes some time off from her busy job as Director of the British School at Athens to make this contribution. We are particularly grateful to her (coincidentally, she tells us she went to school near Mabel Bent’s birthplace, Beauparc, Co. Meath). Rebecca’s interests have long led her to the islands – having begun by writing on Roman and Late Antique Crete, she is currently working on the Cyclades, with a monograph (The Archaeology of the Cyclades in the Roman and Late Antique Periods – Globalization, Christianization and Resilience) due later in 2025 from Cambridge University Press.
The Bents had a happy relationship with the British School (founded in 1886) and were frequent guests at 52 Souedias Street (in April 1896 Theodore was asked to take charge of a small dig near the Athens Olympieion). Rebecca’s reading ends with the Bents’ ride to Sikinos’ atmospheric Episkopi monument, very recently restored to great acclaim. (By the way, Mabel has her 38th birthday on this remote Cycladic island.)
Delos [from Bent’s Ch. 10, Mykonos (as ‘Note II – The Excavations at Delos’): Saturday, 1 March 1884]
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 1 & 2 [Bent’s Ch. 14: Sunday, 23 December 1883 – Monday, 7 January 1884]
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.
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.)
Naxos 3 [Bent’s Ch. 14: Sunday, 23 December 1883 – Monday, 7 January 1884]
For our third reading from Bent’s extended Naxos chapter in his classic 1885 Cyclades travelogue, who better to ask than Vanessa Gordon, author of The Naxos Mysteries – her choice being Theodore and Mabel’s ride up into the north-east quarter of the island to see if the reputation of the villagers of Apiranthos can be as bad as it was made out, and then to scramble down to the coast to admire the famous unfinished statue at Apollonas.
Vanessa’s six books in her series The Naxos Mysteries are all to do with ‘archaeology, mystery and murder on the beautiful Greek island of Naxos’, involving her lead character, the archaeologist Martin Day; all themes, not totally disconnected from Theodore Bent’s narrative.
We should not be surprised, therefore, to find Theodore and Mabel making cameo appearances in two of Vanessa’s books – The Search for Artemis (2021, pp. 39-49, 129-30) and The House in Apíranthos (2024, p. 142) – this latter village featuring prominently in her reading here.
In this extract, Bent makes one of the earliest descriptions in English of the gigantic statue of ‘Apollo’ at Apollonas, and listen out, too, for references to the village of Komiaki (Koronida), where the Bents first encountered their mercurial dragoman Manthaios Simos, from neighbouring Anafi. As faithful as mercurial, Simos was instrumental in the rescue of the desperately ill Bents, east of Aden, in early 1897.
The Secrets of Stelida, Vanessa’s seventh title in her series will be released on 25 February 2026. She writes: ‘I love the mystery genre, which enables me to explore the magic of Greek antiquity, the wonderful landscape and the cuisine of Greece, and the rich complexities of human nature. In The Naxos Mysteries I try to appeal to both the mind and the heart of my reader, engaging them in the passions and tragedies of the characters in a context of discovery and exploration.’
Bonus Material
By way of ‘bonus material’, here is a modified reading of the Preface written by well-known travel-writer Marc Dubin for the Archaeopress edition of the Bents’ collected writings on the Dodecanese, in which he makes several references to Bent’s The Cyclades. We owe a huge debt of gratitude to Marc, for it was his listing of Bent in a bibliography decades ago that indirectly gave rise to the Bent Archive some 40 years later. The reading is by Marc’s friend and Rhodes resident, Constance Rivemale.
Notes
Wonderful to hear (3 Jan. 2026) that a team of volunteers has cleared up the charming but neglected Westerners’ Cemetery on Syros (Greek Cyclades), a small area that leads to the immaculately tended Commonwealth War Graves/Syra New British Cemetery, below Ano Syros. The original Westerners’ Cemetery site, including the memorial to William Pryor Binney, has been so badly maintained that the Commonwealth War Graves Commission even has a warning on its webpage, imploring those who want to visit to take great care: “Please remain within the pathway while accessing the CWGC plot due to danger of tripping on debris and being hit by falling stone from the damaged walls.” See the end of this article for photos.
People come and go; everyone travels; everyone leaves traces of their travels. You will find such a trace on a memorial in the rarely visited Westerners’ cemetery in Ermoupoli, on Cycladic Syros, near the junction of Taxiarchon and Katramadou, on the way to Ano Syros. The cross and monument of some grandeur is of fine Tinos marble; the inscription testifies to the trickiness of English lettering for Greek masons; it was expensive, and the deceased’s family wished to honour a significant man. There is no space for the word ‘kind’:
“To the Memory of William Pryor Binney, H.B.M. Consul, Divisional Manager Eastern Telegraph Company. Born in Halifax Nova Scotia, Canada, the 21th [sic] July 1839, died at Syra the 12th March 1888. The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Job 1, 21.”
The year of Binney’s birth, however, is given as 1840 in an arcane ‘Genealogy of the Binney family in the United States’, published by Charles James Fox Binney in 1886 (Albany, N.Y., J. Munsell’s Sons):
“William Pryor Binney, son of Stephen and Emily (Pryor) Binney, of Moncton, N[ew] B[runswick], was born July 21, 1840; married Polexine [Polyxena/Πολυξένη] Pateraki, daughter of the late George Pateraki[s], of Constantinople. Mr. Binney is the general manager of the submarine telegraph cable in the kingdom of Greece and Turkey, has held the office for twenty-five years past, and in 1884, lived at Syra, Greece. He is H.B.M. consul at Syra. Had no children in 1873. He had the title of Chevalier from the King of Greece and decoration of the order of the Saviour and order of the Iron Cross, from the Emperor of Austria.”
The first Binney to surface, one captain John, of Nottinghamshire, set sail with his wife Mercy in 1678 or 1679, for Hull, Massachusetts. There, with John now a ‘fisherman’ and ‘gentleman’, the couple (with their six children) became the ‘ancestors of almost all of the name’. In the 19th century one of their descendants, Stephen Binney (1805–1872), a merchant of Halifax, and later first mayor, married Emily Pryor (1808 and still living in 1884); the couple had seven children, one of whom was our William Pryor Binney and Mabel remembers him for posterity as ‘kind’. As Halifax mayor, in early 1842 Stephen made the long Atlantic crossing to London with a message of congratulations on behalf of the city to Queen Victoria on the birth of her son (later King Edward VII). During his extended absence his business affairs at home suffered and he sought new opportunities, buying property near Moncton (New Brunswick). From his new base, Stephen Binney set up a successful wharf and shipyard, making a new start as a wholesaler, trading in timber and agricultural produce. With its access to the Bay of Fundy, and William’s father thrived as a merchant ship-owner, with a vessel that bore his own name, the ‘Stephen Binney’.
It was Stephen’s father (William’s grandfather), Hibbert Newton Binney, who forged links initially with the Pryors, when the two families cooperated on the building of a fine house in Halifax in 1831, and which H.N. Binney then bought outright in 1834. The ‘Pryor-Binney House’ still stands at 5178 Morris Street, Halifax.
One of William’s brothers was Moncton’s head of Customs, Irwine Whitty Binney (b. 1841). It was probably Irwine, as prosperous clan head, who supervised in some way William’s funeral in 1888, in the quiet Westerners’ cemetery on Syros. William’s widow, Πολυξένη, being Orthodox, probably rests in the Greek cemetery a few 100 metres away. We don’t know when the couple married (1860s?); Polyxena’s father, George Paterakis, was from Constantinople, and probably of some standing. The Binneys had had no children by 1873.
And of William’s career? And how he came to Syros? Follow the money. William, as part of a very well-to-do and successful extended family who made their livings from commerce, merchant-shipping and the sea, was clearly ambitious to compete and strike out on his own; and quite prepared to travel and leave traces of his own. By the mid 1880s maritime nations were being linked by the invention of undersea cable-telegraphy, and the needs of the British Empire provided a booming market for companies in this sector. One of these was the Eastern Telegraph Company, a consolidation, in 1872, of a dynamic group of telegraphy businesses, involving some 23,000 miles of cabling by the late 1880s. This enterprise, of course, morphed eventually into today’s Cable and Wireless plc. A pivotal routing and operations hub for the Eastern Mediterranean, and British interests East, was based on Syros, and its capital, Ermoupoli, the main ‘port’ for all (‘new’) Greece before the growth of Pireaus around 1900. It was plain commercial sense that the Eastern Telegraph Company’s regional cable station and depot should be built on a (then) disconnected rock (Νησάκι), a hop from Ermoupoli’s seafront. The solid building (which probably housed Binney’s consular office too) still stands and now houses the island’s Merchant Marine Academy.
William Binney held the important post of general manager for ETC’s Syros hub by 1883 at least, if not earlier; it is recorded that he had already been an employee for 25 years by around that date. His skillset obviously included diplomacy, and in 1874 we learn that “the Queen has been graciously pleased to appoint William Pryor Binney, Esq., to be Her Majesty’s Consul in the Islands in the Greek Archipelago, to reside in the Island of Syra [Foreign Office, September 5, 1874. The London Gazette, 24145/5113, Tuesday, October 27, 1874, and ‘The Morning Post’ of Wednesday, October 28, 1874].
Presumably this appointment helped Binney acquire his gongs, i.e. “the title of Chevalier from the King of Greece and decoration of the order of the Saviour and order of the Iron Cross, from the Emperor of Austria.” His duties would have included looking after his country’s interests and personnel in the region and reporting on the activities of potential rivals. Copies of communications between William and the UK Foreign Office can be found in the FO Volumes of the British Consuls in Greece, in the National Archive, Kew (i.e. 1881 FO 32/534; 1882 FO 32/546; 1892 FO 32/644; 1893 FO 32/653).
And as well as all this, Mabel Bent refers to William as not only fastidious, but ‘kind’ (she adds ‘so’ and underlines it). Theodore Bent met Binney first in Athens, in late November 1883. He became a friend it seems as well as Consul, providing the Bents with information and letters of introduction to contacts in the Cyclades generally. Theodore at this time was not particularly influential and it seems that Binney was being helpful to a British citizen as part of his consular duties. One of the contact names he slipped into Theodore’s pocket was Robert M.W. Swan, a Scottish miner on Antiparos. Swan was later to be central to Bent’s expedition to ‘Great Zimbabwe’ for Cecil Rhodes in 1891. But by then Binney was dead.
Let’s leave the last paragraphs on kind William Pryor Binney to Mabel Bent, as recorded in the pages of her Greek ‘Chronicles’. The final reference to his fatal illness comes as a shock:
“[Saturday, 1 December 1883] We had a quick but very rough passage, starting at 7 and getting [to Syros] about 3.30 a.m. Wednesday [28 November]. The ‘Pelops’ was quite new and very clean and I should have slept well but for the fleas. We landed at Ermoupolis at 6.30 and sat on the balcony overlooking the port for 2 hours as there was no bedroom vacant, nor did we get one till 5 o’clock. Mr. John Quintana, H.B.M. Vice Consul on whom Theodore called, came and fetched us and we spent 2 hours at the Consulate in Mr. Binney, the Consul’s room, very large and nice and so tidy. Mr. Binney must be a most orderly man for everything was ticketed and docketed. Theodore called on him in Athens, says he is like a slight Greek, foreign accent and Greek wife.” [Mabel Bent’s Greek ‘Chronicles’, pages 7–8]
“[Tuesday, 18(?) December 1883]. Rode 1½ hour to the nearest point to Antiparos carrying only our night things and a card of introduction from Mr. Binney for Mr. R. Swan who has a calamine mine on this island.” [Mabel Bent’s Greek ‘Chronicles’, page 21]
“[Saturday, 22 March 1884] We fortunately got a room at the Hôtel d’Angleterre [Syros] and thoroughly enjoy ‘taking mine ease in mine inn’. We packed a box of our spoils for England and this afternoon I rode and the others walked to Ano or Upper Syra, a hideous place with a view over this barren island. We got very tired of Syra by Friday and as we found a kaïke of Kythnos or Thermiá we packed and prepared to start. But the strong Boreas would not permit ships to leave the port so after constant expectations up to Sunday morning the 23rd we gave up and went to church, a very poor little place and very ‘low’, according to the wishes of Mr. Binney the Consul. Afterwards we lunched with Mr. Binney, Mr. Quinney the parson, being there also. N.B. Mr. Binney’s clerk is Mr. Finney.” [Mabel Bent’s Greek ‘Chronicles’, page 54]
“[Thursday, 26 January 1888] We only got to Syra on Thursday. We landed
and found to our sorrow that our kind consul Mr. Binney was dreadfully ill.” [Mabel Bent’s Greek ‘Chronicles’, page 228]
“[Saturday, 25 February 1888] On Thursday… about 4 we left ‘The Town’ [Constantinople] in the ‘Alphée’ for Syra, picking up letters at the post on the way. We had no remarkable fellow passengers and reached Syra on Saturday morning about 4… We went to church on Sunday to a tidy little chapel, which they say will be closed if Mr. Binney is no longer there to keep it up.” [Mabel Bent’s Greek ‘Chronicles’, page 234]
Kind William Pryor Binney died 16 days after Mabel’s last reference to him, on 12 March 1888, of what she doesn’t say. (Appropriately, the new British Cemetery behind where he lies takes in the scattered Commonwealth war burials from the islands of the Cyclades.) He was not yet 50. Another William took over from him as Consul at Syros, W.H. Cottrell. People come and go; everyone travels; everyone leaves traces of their travels.
[The extracts from Mabel Bent’s diaries are taken from ‘The Travel Chronicles of Mrs J Theodore Bent‘, Vol. 1. Archaeopress, Oxford, 2006, and see also Theodore Bent’s ‘The Cyclades‘]See also Alan King’s article on Binney and the Syra cemetery here.
[If you enjoyed reading about the likeable William Binney, you might enjoy a recent (2020) online article on him by Panagiotis Kouloumbis of Syros Today.]The following three photographs (Jan. 2025) show the results of volunteers’ recent efforts “to clear the weeds, cut the bushes, throw the rubble and sweep”. The final resting place of Mabel Bent’s particular friend, William Pryor Binney (1839-1888), and the others buried there, is once again respected. Many thanks to all involved.
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]
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.
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 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:
The Isles of Greece*
“Though Mr. Bent is an Oxford man, he knows some Greek, and has managed somehow to retain or acquire a profound interest in things Hellenic. That is always something, for Greece is a country towards which, in spite of our education, we all possess somewhat of a filial affection: but Mr. Bent does more than this – he takes an active interest in the living Greeks, his ways and modes of thinking, largely tempered by the modern anthropological and sociological point of view, too often wholly wanting or absolutely repellent to the confirmed Hellenist. If there is one form of savant left on earth upon whose ears the echo of the sociological revolution falls dull and muffled, it is your old-fashioned classical scholar, hermetically sealed in his own sturdy with his grammar and his lexicon, his editions and manuscripts. For him, Lubbock and Tylor are not: the Folk-lore Society sings to him like a siren, all in vain: no savage myth rises vague upon his narrow horizon: no dim memory of forgotten barbarism shines faintly on him from the storied pages of Plato or Pausanias. His world begins with the First Olympiad: his history finishes with the death of Odoacer. Not of such as these is Mr. Bent. A folk-lorist to the backbone, eager to discover and compare while yet they survive the lingering relics of native Hellenic popular mythology, he has spent two winters hard at work among the almost unbroken ground of the Cyclades, and has finally recorded his net results for us in this pleasant, amusing, and instructive volume.
“[Bernhard] Schmidt had been beforehand with him, it is true, on the Greek mainland; but then, the Greek mainland is largely Albanian, and its folk-lore is largely tinctured with alien elements. The islands, on the other hand, have been always Greek, and, practically speaking, always free. So hither Mr. Bent went with his wife, in search of habits and manners, and dwelling among the people in their own hamlets, collected a goodly store of facts and fancies, which he knows how to detail for us with a cunning pen. At first he studied his human subjects with the aid of a dragoman; but as time went on, and as he began to acquire fluency in the language which we are all supposed to have learned at school, he went direct to the fountain head, and extorted from the not unwilling lips of demarchs and priests and hostesses and pretty Greek maidens innumerable tales of Fates and Nereids, of Boreas and St. Demetrius, of ancient god and Christian martyr, in the picturesque confusion of medieval Europe. The nymphs of the fountain take the place, among the Cyclades, of our northern fairies; Dionysus has got himself thinly Christianized as St. Dionysius; and Charon, properly baptised no doubt for the occasion, still ferries over orthodox Greeks to their last resting-place, as he used to do rightminded Pagans of old to the realms of Hades. Nowhere does the thin veneer of the new religion lie more lightly over the solid and enduring substructure of the old than among the Greek Islands. Essentially pagan still in all his underlying mythological conceptions, the insular Hellene remains a living relic of ages far earlier than even those of the Attic dramatists – he goes back in part to the most primitive stratum of European belief and philosophy. We could have wished that Mr. Bent had given us a little more of actual description of these beautiful and barren islands, but we recognize at the same time how much his book gains from its unique devotion to a difficult, elusive, and fascinating pursuit.
“Sometimes, indeed, as in the episode of the ardent collector waiting patiently at Myconos till somebody should die, and inquiring with sinister anxiety after the health of the various failing invalids, in order that he might be present at one of the death-wails which form the staple product and pride of the island – the eagerness of the folk-lorist becomes positively weird and gruesome in its intensity. A modern story-teller might improve upon the position by making the single-hearted inquirer poison his host so as to provide a victim for the wailing women in the interests of science. We present the hint gratuitously as a valuable property to Mr. Wilkie Collins. If we have repeated none of Mr. Bent’s own good stories, it is only in order that we may send our readers direct to his amusing pages in search of them at first hand. There is matter enough in this little volume to stock half a dozen ordinary bookmakers’ fat notebooks.”
* “The Cyclades.” By J. Theodore Bent. 12s. 6d. (London: Longmans.)
……………………..
Anonymous review of Bent’s The Cyclades; or Life Among the Insular Greeks, from the Pall Mall Budget – 17 April 1885, page 28.
Bent’s book was published on 28 February 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. Who better to read from Bent’s Anafi chapter than Professor Emerita Margaret Kenna who carried out her fieldwork there for a doctorate in 1966-1967.
Click here for other readings!
Anafi [Bent’s Ch. 5: Wednesday, 9 January 1884 – Friday, January 11 1884 or Saturday, 12 January 1884]
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).
Ready soon! Some ‘Cycladist’ friends reading their favourite extracts from Bent’s 1885 classic to celebrate its 140th anniversary in 2025!
Many contributions are already in and if you would like to take part, contact us: info[at]tambent.com
