“Our ship” The Bents anchor their sloop, “Evangelistria”, off the Turkish coast in 1888, not far from modern Fethiye. Bent has drawn in their ship on an Admiralty chart of the time.
The Bents’ first significant field of studies was the Turkish littoral and Aegean, beginning with a ‘tourist’ visit in early 1883, taking in such sites as Delphi and Mycenae. This trip inspired a decade-long passion for these celebrity explorers (with a tour more or less every year), generating an extensive corpus of popular and more ‘academic’ articles (historical, ‘archaeological’ and ‘ethnographic’ in content). Along the way they acquired artefacts, ancient and modern, that they would seek to sell or retain for their private London collection. The British Museum, for example, has a large collection of their material.
Bent’s writings on Turkey and Asia Minor (today’s boundaries) by year of publication:
Bent’s map from the first edition of his 1885 book, “The Cyclades, or Life Among the Insular Greeks” (archive.org)
The Bents’ first significant field of studies was the Aegean, beginning with a ‘tourist’ visit in early 1883, taking in such sites as Delphi and Mycenae. This trip inspired a decade-long passion for these celebrity explorers (with a tour more or less every year), generating Bent’s classic guide to the Cyclades (perhaps he is partly to blame for the islands’ current over-tourism in the summer months today), and a substantial corpus of popular and more ‘academic’ articles (historical, ‘archaeological’ and ‘ethnographic’ in content). Along the way they acquired artefacts, ancient and modern, that they would seek to sell or retain for their private London collection. The British Museum, for example, has a large collection of their material.
Bent’s writings on Greece (today’s boundaries) by year of publication:
Interior of the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford (wikipedia).
The Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford has over 50 artefacts acquired by Theodore and Mabel Bent on their 20 years of exploration, including 12 musical instruments (pipes [askomandoura] and flutes [floghera] in particular attracted them).
Some items from the Bent collection are regularly on display in the museum, including their musical instruments. In the early 1890s, the Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (Vol. 20, 1890-1891, 153 ff) included a paper by Henry Balfour on “The Old British ‘Pibcorn’ or ‘Hornpipe’ and its affinities”, which was part inspired by two ‘Greek’ instruments acquired at different times by the Pitt Rivers from the Bents, and “which seem to throw great light upon the true origin of the pibcorn” (see also A. Baines, Bagpipes, Oxford 1979, p.45).
Bent describes a musical episode on Tinos in 1884 (‘The Cyclades, or Life among the Insular Greeks’, 1885 – archive.org).
One instrument is a curious double-pipe (1903.130.21) from a small cluster of villages on Tinos (Tenos) in the Cyclades. Theodore Bent bought this pipe (on the couple’s second visit to the island in early March 1884), which he calls monosampilos, in the area of ‘Dio Choria’ (Δύο Χωριά), misread by Balfour or his editor as ‘Dio Maria’). The visit was a short one – just a few days (their first tour being in the spring of 1883). In her diary, Mabel recalls that the villagers “were dancing on the roofs and we went up to see them and bought a musical instrument” (The Travel Chronicles of Mabel Bent, Vol. 1, Oxford, 2006, p. 47); Theodore also describes the event – page 262 of his classic monograph on the Cyclades.
The sambouna and double-pipe from the Bent collection of musical instruments in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford (detail from a line-drawing in Henry Balfour’s paper on “The Old British ‘Pibcorn’ or ‘Hornpipe’ and its affinities”, in ‘The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland’, Vol. 20 (1890-1891, 153 ff; archive.org).
The second instrument that attracts Balfour’s interest is the famous bagpipe/sambouna (1903.130.23) that the Bents brought back from Karpathos (now in the Greek Dodecanese, then a Turkish possession) in 1885.
Both instruments appear in a rare line-drawing that accompanies Balfour’s paper.
The other instruments collected by the Bents and in the Pitt Rivers:
1888.37.5: End blown trumpet. From Karpathos, Dodecanese (1885). In his 1886 article,’ On a far-off island‘ for Blackwood’s Magazine (Vol. 139, Feb 1886, 240), Bent describes, perhaps, this very instrument, although his name for it is eccentric, perhaps dialect, a variant of the sourali (σουραύλι): “Amusements in Karpathos certainly are not numerous, and may be summed up as consisting of music and dancing in a variety of forms… sometimes… a man will come and play the lyre, — just one of those lyres which their ancestors played, a pretty little instrument about half a yard long, with silver beads which jangle attached to the bow. Besides this they have the syravlion, a sort of pan-pipe made of two reeds hollowed out, with blow-holes and straws up the middle, and placed side by side in a larger reed.”
1903.130.18: End-flute made from a crane’s wing bone. The flute has been etched with various details, including the Anglicised word ‘syravlion’ (which the PR reads as ‘Syralion’, see above, perhaps dialect, a variant of the sourali (σουραύλι)). From Samos island (1886).
1903.130.16: End-flute of reed. Labelled by the PR as ‘pinavlion’ (dialect perhaps, today pinavli/πιναύλι). From Paros island, Cyclades (1883/4). Bent does not seem to have referred to this flute type in connection with Paros in his Cyclades (p. 379), but he does name again the ‘syravlion’ (see above): “Once, says a legend, a young man challenged the Lady of the Hundred Gates to a playing contest on the syravlion, and went accordingly to the church to play; but the Madonna took no notice of his challenge. Just as he was getting up to go he accidentally knocked over the candlestick, and broke his flute; in this way did the Madonna prove her superiority and humbled the man…”
Bent’s map of the Cyclades from the first edition of his classic 1885 book (archive.org).
Bent’s classic book The Cyclades, or Life Among the Insular Greeks, has several references to the lyre and sambouna, examples of which he donated to the Pitt Rivers. Of interest too are the many mentions of the flute he calls ‘syravlion’, a word unexplained and not found elsewhere perhaps a local variant of the romantic sourali (σουραύλι) or syrinx (Σύριγξ). Bent writes from Naxos: “We came to a halt at a dirty house, where we had to sit for hours… They constantly plied us with coffee, raki, and sweets as we waited… they played persistently for our benefit on the syravlion, or panpipe, and the drum. When shepherds play the panpipe on the hillside it is romantic enough: the instrument is a simple one, just two reeds hollowed out and placed side by side…” (p. 347). There are also recollections of the instrument from the Bents’ time on the islands of Ios (p. 162) and Santorini (p. 134).
The major repository for artefacts brought back to England by the Bents between c. 1880 and 1900 is the British Museum, London. The collection is huge, but includes only a small number of musical instruments, not often on display; we list them below for reference. Some of the artefacts entered the Museum in 1926, just a few years before Mabel Bent’s death, indicating her fondness for them; perhaps the rooms of her London home would occasionally echo with sad notes from far away…
From Ethiopia(1893) (click (YouTube) for some of these instruments playing):
Flute (left) and trumpet (right) (archive.org).
(1) Two trumpets (Af1926,0410.63 & Af1893,0715.27). The inventory number for the former indicates that this object remained in Mabel Bent’s personal collection until 1926 – when she was putting her affairs in order in her final years; she died in 1929. We may assume that the object was of sentimental value, giving her happy memories of the couple’s (perilous) journey to Ethiopia in 1893. We should note however that the findspot was not mentioned by Mabel and Bent only refers to one trumpet in his monograph of this trip: “As Digsa was one of the last Abyssinian villages of importance which we should visit, we took care here to annex an Abyssinian umbrella and a malakat [elsewhere malaket] or trumpet…” (J.T. Bent, The Sacred City of the Ethiopians, London, 1893, p. 212).
Ethiopian lyre (archive.org).
(2) Lyre (Af1893,0715.25). In his Sacred City of the Ethiopians (1896 edn, p. 25), Bent writes in Asmara: “Here for the first time we saw the Abyssinian lyre or harp, a specimen of which I coveted for six long weeks afterwards, until I was able to acquire one at Aksum…”.
Ethiopian ‘fiddle’ (archive.org).
(3) Fiddle (Af1893,0715.24). In Bent’s Sacred City of the Ethiopians (1896 edn, p. 26), he writes “… another favourite Abyssinian instrument [is] called the chera masanko. This I also got. It is a sort of violin with a square sounding board, tightly made of skin, and played with a little bow. The asmari or wandering minstrels, also play it, and it is heard at every feast, whether religious or secular.”
4) Flute (Af1893,0715.26), made of cane and leather. In Bent’s Sacred City of the Ethiopians (1896 edn, pp. 28-9), we read: “As the trumpet has only one note, so has the Abyssinian flute, the imbilta. To make an Abyssinian band suitable to escort a great man or perform at a religious festival, you require four trumpets and three flutes, each player sounding a note in turn. The imbilta is nearly a yard long, and is as great a mark of personal distinction as the umbrella.” We may assume that Bent acquired one in Aksum, however, he says they are nearly 90 cm in length and the BM item is 58 cm.
The ‘sansa’ from Zimbabwe (J.T. Bent, The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland, 1892: 81-82; archive,org).
(1) A sansa/’Makalanga piano’ (Af1892A0714/Af1979,01.4538). Described by Bent as “… very interesting specimens of primitive musical art; they have thirty or more iron keys, arranged to scale, fixed on to a piece of wood about half a foot square, which is decorated with carving behind.
This instrument they generally put into a gourd, with pieces of bone round the edge to increase the sound, which is decidedly melodious and recalls a spinet.” (J.T. Bent, The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland, London, 1892, pp. 81-82).
[Also known as the mbira or ‘thumb-piano’, click (YouTube) to hear it play]
(2) A rattle (Af1892,0714.24). Such a rattle may be referred to in this extract from Bent’s Ruined Cities of Mashonaland(1892, p. 330): “Evidence of festivities was also present in the shape of drums and long chains of grass cases for beads, which they hang round their calves to rattle at the dances…”
(3) Musical bow (Af1892,0714.146). On page 20 of Bent’s Ruined Cities of Mashonaland (1892), such a bow is referenced: “A man stood near, playing on an instrument like a bow with one string, with a gourd attached to bring out the sound. He played it with a bit of wood, and the strains were plaintive, if not sweet…”
1) and 2) Two flutes (As1926,0410.56 and As1926,0410.55) from Bahrain (1889), when the Bents spent some time excavating at the so-called ‘Mounds of Ali’.
3) Flute (As1926,0410.61). Acquired on the Bents’ remarkable journey on horseback, south-north, through Persia in 1889 on their way home from Bahrain. “We saw a wedding at Savandi… The women in red, with gold ornaments and uncovered faces, looked highly picturesque, and each carried in her hand a red handkerchief, which she flourished as she went round to the music of the flute and drum.” (From J.T. Bent, ‘In the Mountains of Medea’, Littell’s Living Age, Vol. 189 (1891), p.51).
How does it sound? Click to hear the Persian ney (YouTube).
4) Flute (As1926,0410.48) from the Wadi Hadramaut (Yemen). Collected by the Bents on one of their trips into the Yemeni interior between 1894-1897. “The Bedouin are rather clever at impromptu verses, and when we were in Wadi Ser they made night hideous by dancing in our camp… Bedouin women also take part in these dances… it was very weird by the light of the moon and the camp-fire, but wearisome when we wanted to sleep, particularly as they kept it up till after we were all astir in the morning, yelling, bawling, singing, and screeching… The ground was shaken as if horses were galloping about. A Bedou was playing a flute made of two leg-bones of a crane bound together with iron.” (Mabel and Theodore Bent, Southern Arabia (1900), p.128-9)
How does it sound? Click to hear the mizmar, or Yemeni flute (YouTube).
From London to Oxford?
Flute players in the Wadi Koukout, Sudan (1896), heard by the Bents (‘Southern Arabia’, p.337).
It would make such sense for the Bents’ above-mentioned musical instruments, in store in the British Museum, to be loaned for display, on a long-term basis, to the Pitt Rivers in Oxford, Bent’s alma mater: after all, he read history at Wadham College (in the early 1870s), just a few hundred metres from the Pitt Rivers today, and how pleasant to think of the great traveller’s legacy freely visible to all there, a great collection from only 20 years or so of exploration, and always with his tireless wife – in the Levant, Africa, and Arabia.
[All websites accessed 02/02/2024]
Spring 2024. Here is a recent article (Καθαρά Δευτέρα του 1884 στα Δυο Χωριά με Τσαμπούνες) by Theodoros Chiou on the Bents’ visit to Cycladic Tinos in 1884, focusing on their fascination for traditional music and musical instruments. (The automatic English translation is of variable quality – αλλά δεν πειράζει !)
Title page to John Murray’s ‘Greece, etc.’ 1884 (archive.org)
At the end of the 19th century, between western ‘Christmas’ and the New Year, Mabel and Theodore Bent could be waved to embarking on their imminent winter/spring campaign, or putting last preparatory touches to its details; packing all their necessaries into dozens of bags and boxes, and trunks, mixed in with the travel books, and clothes; very important… the clothes, the books. One essential volume, for example and of course, would be a Murray: his Handbook for travellers in Greece…, the 1884 edition is referenced reverentially in Mabel’s travel diaries for 1885 (the Dodecanese).
And explorers (of all genders) into the Levant in 2023 should heed and endeavour to follow the dress code as stipulated by Murray; it was religiously adhered to by the Bents:
‘Let his dress at all times be obviously that of an Englishman…’ Travel poster boy Theodore Bent taken (pre 1895) in the studios of society-photographers, Russell & Sons. Three years later Mabel was to approve it for her husband’s obituary in the ‘Illustrated London News’ [May 15, 1897, page 669]“Clothes. — These should be such as will stand hard and rough work. They must not be too light, even in summer; for a day of intense heat is often followed by a storm, or by a cold night. As some indication of the requirements of the case, we may observe that the traveller is not likely to err greatly if he selects for travel in Greece and Turkey much the same outfit that he would take for shooting in the Highlands. Let his dress at all times be obviously that of an Englishman, which he will find the most respectable and respected travelling attire throughout the Levant… Carelessness about dress in travelling, even in remote districts, cannot be too severely reprobated, especially in towns, however small.” [Handbook for travellers in Greece… 1884, John Murray, London, p.24]
An uncaptioned studio portrait of Mabel Bent. Possibly Cape Town, 1891 (The Bent Archive)
A decade later, July 1895, the Bents gave an interview to The Album, and Mabel opens the Bent wardrobe doors for us: “And have you any views on the best travelling costume?” [The interviewer enquires]. “Yes, inasmuch that we do not alter or modify our travelling costumes, wearing the same kind of clothes in both Africa and Asia. [Theodore] finds a Norfolk jacket and breeches the most practical and pleasant form of dress for either riding or actual exploring work. My travelling dress consists of a tweed coat and skirt, a pith hat, with breeches and gaiters. The skirt is made in pleats, and is so arranged as to act as riding habit when I am on horseback. When actually in camp, that is to say, during the heat of the day – for early morning and evening are the only safe hours to travel – I put on a linen shirt or blouse and ordinary skirt.” [The Album: A Journal of Photographs of Men, Women, and Events of the Day (8th July, 1895, Vol. II, No. 23, pp.44-45)]
Part of the Bent Collection of diaries and notebooks in the archive of the Hellenic Society, London.
In the late 1920s, Mabel Bent’s niece, Violet Ethel ffolliott (1882-1932) transferred the care of her elderly aunt’s travel diaries, as well as some notebooks of her husband’s, Theodore Bent (1852-1897), archaeologist-explorer, to the Hellenic Society in London.
‘The Journal of Hellenic Studies’, Vol. 1, 1880 (public domain).
Both Theodore and Mabel had been associated with the Society since the 1880s. The institution had started in 1879, and by 1883 Theodore was a member, indicating his growing interest in archaeology (he read history at Oxford). In 1885 he joined its Council and remained on it until the year of his death (1897). Women members were welcomed and contributed greatly; Mabel became a member in 1885. The Society held three or four meetings a seasons, including a General Meeting in London in the summer (at 22 Albemarle Street). The Bents were rarely in the country in time for the winter and spring meetings but, apart from 1891, when they were in Africa, they would have attended the AGMs. The Society’s journal, The Journal of Hellenic Studies, is available online (with the early years as open access), and from 1883 to 1918 one will find references to either Mr or Mrs Theodore Bent within its pages.
However, this institution, having to do, broadly, with things Greek, might at first glance appear an odd choice as a long-term home for these memoirs of travel and exploration associated with remote corners far away from the Eastern Mediterranean; only about half the couple’s twenty years of adventures were primarily dedicated to Greece and Turkey, the other portion, more often than not, found them dusty and deep in parts of Africa and the Middle East.
The three boxes containing the Bent Collection of diaries and notebooks in the archive of the Hellenic Society, London.
And after all, Theodore was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, whose orbit was the whole world, and the latter often funded and supported Bent’s expeditions; in return, he wrote and lectured for them constantly until his early death. So why not leave the Bent notebook collection to the RGS Mabel? A possible answer might be linked to the infamous scandal involving women RGS Fellows in the early 1890s. Mabel was on the list for the second allocation of Fellowships to noteworthy women travellers just at the time the RGS Committee voted against the idea, and women were not readmitted until some twenty years later. Proud Mrs Theodore Bent might well have remembered this obvious slight and opted to lodge her travelogues in the archives of the sociable and patrician Hellenic Society instead.
Whatever the reason, the Bent Collection has remained in three stout boxes in a secure library room in Senate House, London, ever since, available for private research on request (although Mabel’s ‘Chronicles’, as she called them, have since been transcribed and published by Archaeopress, Oxford, in three volumes).
However, advances in scanning techniques, and associated software, not to mention generous support, very appropriately, from the AG Leventis Foundation in this case, now mean that the Bent notebooks can be reproduced digitally, facsimile, ink blots, doodles and all, without risk to the original delicate material.
To quote the specialist involved: “For the vast majority of the time I am using a Bookeye 4 Kiosk book scanner to capture the image data and BCS-2 imaging software to process and format the images once they have been transferred from the scanner… When digitising a volume each page is saved and formatted as a single 600DPI TIFF file, all these files are then collated and converted into a single, readable book format PDF.”
And, most importantly of all, they are available, open-access free, to anyone, anywhere in the world, with an interest in 19th-century travel into those regions that attracted Theodore and Mabel Bent – from Aksum to Zimbabwe.
Accordingly, these notebooks have now been scanned and a digital catalogue produced. All Theodore’s notebooks in the archive have been finished, and all Mabel’s too – n.b. her 1896/7 volume covering Sokotra and Aden, the setting for the couple’s final journey together, was scanned last and is available here. (It should be noted here too that the diaries covering the Bents’ expedition to Ethiopia in 1893 were apparently never given to the Hellenic Society for some reason, and, for now, assumed lost – always the hardest word for a traveller to utter.)
Mabel’s Chronicle cover for 1885 (The Hellenic Society, London).
So, what follows will take you to some very faraway places indeed – you only have to click to be transported (our pages and maps on the Bents’ explorations provide useful background information):
Mabel Bent died at her London townhouse, 13 Great Cumberland Place, on 5 July 1929 at the age of 82. Her Times obituary (6 July 1929) includes that, “as an experienced photographer and accurate observer, she was of enormous assistance to her husband and famous for the explorations in distant lands which she undertook with [him]. This was at a time when it was much more rare than it is now for a woman to venture forth on such journeys […] During her long widowhood [Theodore died a few weeks after scribbling in his final notebook above, in May 1897] of more than 30 years, Mrs. Bent was well known in literary and scientific London. She was a good talker, with an occasional sharpness of phrase which was much relished by her many friends.”
And would there be any ‘sharpness of phrase’ about seeing her ‘Chronicles’ now scanned and widely available? Did Mabel intend them for publication? Apart from the fact that Theodore relied on his wife’s notebooks for the provision of background details in his monographs, articles and lectures, the chronicler has left one or two clues within her pages.
First page of Mabel Bent’s 1886 ‘Chronicle’. The diarist was fond of an ornate entry (The Hellenic Society, London).
From ‘Room 2’ of the Hôtel de Byzance, Constantinople, in February 1886, Mabel confides, in one of her happiest diaries it seems: “I must begin my Chronicle somewhere if I am to write one at all and as in this matter I am selfish enough to consider myself of the first consideration because I write to remind myself in my old age of pleasant things (or the contrary) I will begin now.” Thus we know, at least, that they were for her to read later in life, and that she intended her aunts, sisters, and nieces to share her adventures. (There are several asides such as, “We have constant patients coming to us and I am sure you would all laugh to hear T’s medical lectures.” And “You must excuse these smudges as I am sitting cross-legged on T’s bed.”).
There is also certainly nothing in her millions of words that could be considered as indiscreet, let alone anything close to libel – or nuptial intimacy for that matter – although there is a little false modesty and coquetry here and there. (Only two or three pages have been removed from the entire series of notebooks.) What is omitted, invisible, becomes visible and striking, however. In all her diaries there is not one reference to the losses of her childhood – her poor mother, her difficult father, and her two dead brothers.
But the most obvious hint that Mabel, at the very least, might be aware of a potential wider interest in her ‘Chronicles’ is the letter still preserved (in the 1885 volume) from her friend, Harry Graham, who shared in some of their travel that year, complimenting her thus: “I carried off your Chronicle… and… I never enjoyed these hours more than when reading it in the train coming down here yesterday – as soon as I have finished it I will send it you back – but why oh why don’t you publish it? It simply bristles with epigrams and I am certain would be a great success! You ought to blend the 2 Chronicles into one and I am sure everyone would buy it.”
Well. Perhaps not everyone. Mabel’s Chronicles are not great travel literature. They are her on-the-spot recollections of long days spent trekking, exploring, digging, dealing with villagers, arguing with minor officials; they are snatches of gossip, snobbishness, likes and dislikes, barking dogs, vicissitudes, poverty and pain; they are delightful souvenirs of music, dancing, colourful costumes and wonderful meals.
“Perhaps it is water”. Fever stricken in the Goddam heights. One of the final pages in Bent’s last notebooks, April 1897 (The Hellenic Society, London).
And how few are the references to limb and life. Just hours from complete malarial collapse, east of Aden, in the alarmingly named heights of ‘Goddam’, Theodore scribbles, in his final notebook, only weeks from his death at 45, “… but feverstricken we were delighted to get away. Apparently this corner of Yemen is particularly feverish. All those who go in from Aden appear to be ill. Perhaps it is [the] water…”
There are certainly passages that reflect her times, too, and which are inappropriate today. Great travel literature? Clearly not. But great travel writing – accounts of wonderful endurance and reflections of courage, attitude, apogee of empire, and spirit – most certainly.
A preference for Fruit Syrup from Sainsbury’s. A jotting in one of Theodore Bent’s last notebooks (The Hellenic Society, London).
It’s also nice to know the couple apparently liked their fruit syrup from J. Sainsbury!
Lecturing with lantern-slides (Youtube: Victorian and Albert Museum)
There is no denying that Theodore Bent worked incredibly hard: if not travelling he would be planning the next expedition, fund-raising, researching, writing up, or lecturing. For the approximately twenty years of his travels (coming to style himself more and more as an ‘archaeologist’) he would return to London in the spring of each year (with the odd exception) and immediately begin to think of publishing and publicising his finds – he had always depended much on self-promotion and PR for the funding and support of his subsequent researches; he had good contacts with the press and would submit progress updates to them assiduously from far-flung outposts, via Reuters and other agencies.
An unscientific trawl through the press cuttings of the time shows how Theodore reached the peak of his ‘fame’ in 1893-4, after a trio of consecutive hits – Great Zimbabwe, Aksum, and Wadi Hadramaut. He and his wife were soon London celebrities and news and details of their adventures was syndicated widely at home and abroad.
Mabel was tasked with sorting out her photographs and ensuring that they were ready for transferal to lantern-slide or printer’s plate. There was also the constant process of unpacking and caring for case after case of acquisitions: archaeological, ethnographical, botanical, and zoological. The couple would quickly make decisions on what they wanted to keep for themselves, and exhibit in their London townhouse, and what they would offer to museums (for a remuneration if possible).
What is particularly striking is how quickly Theodore would settle to study and write up his monographs (frequently asking other specialists for contributions). His hard-pressed publishers (mostly Kegan Paul and Longmans) usually had them announced and on bookshop shelves within six to nine months of Bent’s return from the field.
Model of Bent’s ‘Elliptical Temple’, from R.N. Hall, ‘Great Zimbabwe, Mashonaland, Rhodesia’, 1905, opp. page xl.
And within short weeks of reaching home again – from the Levant, Africa, or Arabia – Theodore was ready to give talks and lectures, all over the UK, to the relevant grand institutions of the day, and before the great and the good (in the spring of 1892 even William Gladstone came along to hear). Mabel’s job was to have the lantern-slides ready, and any artifacts neatly labelled for display.
Other display aids might be needed – perhaps a 3D model (e.g. of his famous ‘Elliptical Temple’ at Great Zimbabwe), and then there was the commissioning of maps from the famous London cartographers Edward Stanford to be seen to.
Detail from a lantern-slide (1896) of Mabel Bent on her camel in the Sudan.
What follows here, taken from newspapers and journals, is a chronological list (with no claims to completeness) of Theodore’s talks and presentations, giving a very good sense of the explorer’s Yorkshire-bred proclivity for hard graft. An interesting additional discovery seems to suggest that there was even an attendance charge for his talks in the provinces! The Newcastle Daily Chronicle for 2 March 1892 records that to hear Theodore lecture in Tyneside would cost you the equivalent of c. £3 today for a seat in the main hall, or c. £1.50 in galleries – money well spent! At another event we hear that Theodore’s ‘remarks throughout were admirably illustrated with a large series of photographic and other views of the places which were visited on the tour. The photographs were the production of Mrs. Bent, and incidentally Mr. Bent mentioned, in apology for some of the views which were somewhat wanting in sharpness, that the technical difficulties of photography, on account of the intense heat and other causes in Arabia, were almost inconceivable.’ (Wharfedale & Airedale Observer, 19 October 1894). Complete sets of Mabel’s lantern-slides survived until the early 1950s, when they were discarded by the Royal Geographical Society, deemed too faded and damaged to merit keeping. A huge loss.
Bent lecturing locals at the the Mounds of Ali, Bahrain, in 1889 (opposite page 24, the Bents’ ‘Southern Arabia’, 1900)
It takes very little imagination today to see Theodore in front of the camera presenting a sequence of his own mini-series – The Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant, The Persian Gulf, Africa North & South, and Southern Arabia. Let’s hope one day they will appear – on National Geographic perhaps!
Theodore Bent’s Talks, Presentations, and Lectures (some dates are approx) note 1
1883 [The Bents make their first visit to Greece and Turkey in the spring]
8th May: ‘A general meeting of the Hellenic Society will be held at 22, Albermarle Street on Thursday next [8 May], at 5 p.m., when Mr. Theodore Bent will read a paper on a recent journey among the Cyclades.’ [The Athenaeum, No. 2949, May 3, 1884, p. 569]
14th September: ‘At the meeting of the British Association in Aberdeen… in the Anthropological Section, Mr J. Theodore Bent read a paper to show that the study of tombs in the Greek Islands was conducive to a knowledge of ancient and forgotten lines of commerce.’ [South Wales Daily Telegram, Friday, 18 September 1885]
11th September: ‘At the meeting of the British Association at Bath… in the Anthropology Section, Mr. J. Theodore Bent contributed a paper on sun-myths in modern Hellas.’ [St. James’s Gazette, 12 September 1888]
17th September: At the meeting of the British Association at Newcastle, ‘in the Geography Section Mr Theodore Bent read a paper on the Bahrien Islands, in the Persian Gulf, in which he dealt with the position and general features the two islands, character of the seas, and the pearl fisheries and other features.’ [Dundee Advertiser, 20 September 1889]
2nd December: ‘The meeting of the Geographical Society on Monday at Burlington House [London] was one of exceptional brilliancy, and was fully attended. Mr J. Theodore Bent… read an interesting and exhaustive paper on the Bahrein Islands in the Persian Gulf. This was rendered the more interesting by some realistic photographs, thrown on a white screen as dissolving views, and taken by Mrs Bent on the spot.’ [The Queen, 7 December 1889]
30th June: ‘Royal Geographical Society. Mr. J. Theodore Bent read a paper at the fortnightly meeting of of this society, held last night in the theatre of the London University, on explorations he had made in Cilicia Trachea.’ [Daily News (London), 1 July 1890]
22nd July: Theodore Bent reads his paper ‘Notes on the Armenians in Asia Minor’ to the Manchester Geographical Society [MGS, Vol. 6, 220-222]
5th September: At the meeting of the British Association at Leeds, in the Anthropology Section, Mr Theodore Bent read a paper on the Yourouks of Asia Minor, who, he said, were the least religious people he had ever heard of; but the religion honesty was deeply implanted their breasts. No more polygamous people existed anywhere, a Yourouk regarding himself as a disgrace unless he had six or seven wives. As a consequence womanhood bad sunk very low among them.’ [Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 6 September 1890]
1891 [The Bents are away all year exploring the remains at Great Zimbabwe for Cecil Rhodes]
February (uncertain date): Theodore Bent lectures on the Castle Line Garth Castle on his way to Cape Town. [As recorded in Mabel Bent’s diary, 10 March 1891. Mabel does not give the title of the lecture]
1892 [The Bents return early in the year from South Africa, leaving for Ethiopia at the end of it]
22nd February: ‘At a meeting of the Royal Geographical Society, held in the theatre of the University of London last night, Mr. J. Theodore Bent read a paper entitled “Journeys in Mashonaland, and Explorations among the Zimbabwe and other ruins”’. [London Evening Standard, 23 February 1892]
2nd March: ‘Although Lord Randolph Churchill declined the [Tyneside Geographical] society’s invitation to lecture on Mashonaland, Mr. Smithson was fortunate enough to secure the services of Mr. J. Theodore Bent, one of the Council of the Royal Geographical Society and of the British Association. Mr. Bent and his wife embarked on an adventurous journey into Mashonaland, and conducted excavations and explorations among the Zimbaybe [sic] ruins —the supposed “Land of Ophir”. Mr. Bent will deliver his lecture on the subject next week – on Wednesday, March 2nd.’ [Lovaine Hall; admission charged is to be 1 shilling (c. £3) in main hall, and sixpence (c. £1.50) in the galleries!] [Newcastle Daily Chronicle, 26 February 1892]
23rd March 1892: ‘At the meeting of the Anthropological Institute to be held to-morrow evening, Mr. Theodore Bent will read a paper on the archaeology of the Zimbabwe Ruins, illustrated by the optical lantern [i.e. Mabel’s photographs]. I hear that Mr. Gladstone has expressed his intention to be present, and that Mr. Bent will on this occasion make special reference to the manners and customs of the early inhabitants of these remote regions of South Africa.’ [Birmingham Daily Post, 22 March 1892] [Bent was elected member of the Anthropological Institute at its meeting on 21 June 1892 (but not Mabel), see, Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, v.22, 1893, p. 174]
Before 13 April: ‘Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Bent’s party was successful and interesting [at their London home]. Her sister, Mrs. Hobson, and few intimate friends assisted Mr. Bent and his fellow-traveller, Mr. Swan, in explaining the relics [of Great Zimbabwe] to the learned and unlearned, to the latter of whom the trophies… might otherwise have seemed just so many rudely carved old stones, instead of being silent witnesses of the ancient civilisation and worship traced out by Mr. Bent in the wonderful walled fortresses of Central Africa.’ [Taunton Courier, and Western Advertiser, 13 April 1892]
5th August: At the meeting of the British Association at Edinburgh, in the Anthropology Section, Mr Theodore Bent read a paper on ‘The Present Inhabitants of Mashonaland and Their Origin’. [St. James’s Gazette, 6 August 1892]
7th September: At the 9th International Congress of Orientalists (opened in the theatre of the London University, Burlington-gardens), ‘Mr. J. Theodore Bent [in the Council Room of the Royal Geographical Society] gave an account of the more recent discoveries among the ruins of Zimbabwe and its neighbourhood.’ [London and China Express, 9 September 1892]
19th October: At a gathering of the Manchester Geographical Society in the Cheetham Town Hall, Mr. J Theodore Bent gave a talk on the Zimbabwe Ruins in Mashonaland. [Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, 20 October 1892]
13th November: ‘Mr. Theodore Bent will deliver a lecture on “Mashonaland and the Ruins of Zimbabwe”, at the South Place Institute [Finsbury, London].’ [Colonies and India, 12 November 1892]
1st December: Mr. Bent lectured in Gloucester Guildhall, for the Literary and Scientific Association, on Mashonaland. [Gloucester Citizen, 7 December 1892]
7th December: ‘… at the Royal Spa Rooms, Harrogate. Mr. Theodore Bent, F.R.G.S., lectured on “The ruined cities of Mashonaland”, his interesting remarks being illustrated with excellent limelight views.” [Knaresborough Post, 10 December 1892]
1893 [The Bents in Ethiopia until early spring, leaving for the Yemen at year end]
19th June: At the annual meeting of the Hellenic Society, ‘Mr. Theodore Bent spoke of his researches in Abyssinia.’ [The Globe, 20 June 1893]
18th September: At the British Association meeting in Nottingham, Mr. J. Theodore Bent reported ‘to the Committee on the Exploration of Ancient Remains at Aksum.’ [Nottingham Journal, 19 September 1893]
20th October: ‘Mr. J. Theodore Bent, the African traveller, delivered an address before the members of the Balloon Society, at St. James’s Hall [London].’ [London Standard, 21 October 1893]
1894 [The Bents make their first foray into the Yemeni interior, being home in the spring. They return to the region (via Oman) at the year end]
21st May: ‘There was an overflowing meeting last night… at the Royal Geographical Society [London] to welcome back Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Bent from their journeys in Southern Arabia.’ [St. James’s Gazette, 22 May 1894]
10th July: ‘At the London Chamber of Commerce, in the Council-room, Botolph-house, Eastcheap… Mr. J. Theodore Bent delivered an address on the expedition which he and his wife made last winter to the Hadramut Valley, South Arabia.’ [Home News for India, China and the Colonies, 13 July 1894]
14th August: At the meeting of the British Association in Oxford, ‘Mr. Theodore Bent read a paper on the natives of the Hadramaut in South Arabia.’ [St. James’s Gazette, 15 August 1894]
2nd October: ‘Mr. J. Theodore Bent lectured at a meeting of the Balloon Society on the subject of the explorations which he and Mrs. Bent made a few months ago in South Arabia, and the occasion was taken advantage of to present Mr. Bent with the Society’s gold medal.’ [Civil & Military Gazette (Lahore), 25 October 1894]
11th October: ‘Mr. Theodore Bent, F.R.G.S., who formerly resided at The Rookery, Low Baildon (now the residence of Alderman Smith Feather), delivered a lecture… at the Bradford Mechanics’ Institute, before the members of the Bradford Philosophical Society, upon his recent travels in Arabia.’ [Wharfedale & Airedale Observer, 19 October 1894]
25th October: ‘There was a numerous attendance at a meeting [of the Liverpool Geographical Society] held in connection with this society, at the Royal Institution, in Colquitt-street, last evening, when Mr. J. Theodore Bent, F.S.A., F.R.G.S., gave an interesting lecture on “The Hadramaut: a journey in Southern Arabia,” which was illustrated by a series of photographic slides.’ [Liverpool Mercury, 26 October 1894]
1895 [The Bents return from the Hadramaut coast in the spring and leave for the Sudan at the year end]
6th June: ‘Mr. J. Theodore Bent read last night a paper on “Journeys in Southern Arabia” in the Lecture Hall the University of London.’ [St. James’s Gazette, 7 June 1895]
12th June: ‘Lord and Lady Kelvin received a brilliant and distinguished company last night in the rooms of the Royal Society in Burlington House’, when the Bents presented photographs and finds from Southern Arabia. [St James’s Gazette, 13 June 1895]
1st July: ‘Mr. J. Theodore Bent delivered a lecture at the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, at Hanover-square… The lecturer dealt with the Hadramaut, and Dhofar, the frankincense and myrrh countries.’ [Globe, 2 July 1895]
18th September: ‘At the close of the British Association meeting at Ipswich, Mr. Theodore Bent gave a paper on “The Peoples of Southern Arabia”.’ [St. James’s Gazette, 19 September 1895]
7th November: The Royal Scottish Geographical Society – Glasgow Branch. The Anniversary Address will be delivered in the Hall, 207 Bath St… at 8 o’clock , ‘by Mr. J. Theodore Bent, on “Southern Arabia”. Sir Renny Watson Chairman of the Branch will preside. Admission only by Ticket, two of which have been forwarded to each Member of the Branch.’ [Glasgow Herald, 6 November 1895]
8th November: ‘In connection with the Royal Geographical Society, a lecture was delivered… by Mr. Theodore Bent, in the National Portrait Gallery, Queen Street [Edinburgh]. The subject of the lecture was Arabia, and it was illustrated by lime-light views. There was a good attendance.’ [Edinburgh Evening News, 9 November 1895]
1896 [The Bents return from the Sudan in the spring and leave for their last trip together, to Sokotra and Aden, at the year end]
1st June: Mr. Bent read a paper on the Sudan to the Royal Geographical Society, London.
13th October: Mr. Bent lectures on Arabia at the Royal Victoria Hall, London. [South London Press, 17 October 1896]
The above, it seems, was Theodore Bent’s final lecture. The lantern flame flickers and disappears.
For some background, see also a reference to the Bents, in Emily Hayes, Geographical Projections: Lantern-Slides and the Making of Geographical Knowledge at the Royal Geographical Society C. 1885–1924. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Exeter, 2016, p. 342.
Matthias Nöth, a visit to the fortifications of Phoenix.
A short while ago (the summer of 2020), the Bent Archive received a most helpful communication from Matthias Nöth, pointing out anomalies in the Google map we had plotted showing the itinerary Theodore and Mabel Bent had taken in 1888 when exploring areas of the western coast of Turkey, as far down as the (now Greek) island of Kastellorizo.
Realizing Matthias had a much deeper knowledge of the region than we did, we asked him if he would care to write for us a short illustrated sketch, a Bent-tour if you like, just referring to some of the sites the couple visited, perhaps from a modern archaeological perspective, something that dedicated travellers to those, still unspoiled, spots would enjoy.
And so, without further ado, we hand you over to Matthias (who shares his Christian name, incidentally, with the Bents long-term assistant from Anafi, who was with the couple on their slow cruise down this delightful extent of the Outer Levant — Matthias, the floor is yours:-
Theodore Bent’s map of Ancient Loryma and its environs for E.L. Hicks’ paper in JHS 1889, Vol. 10, page 46 (The Internet Archive).
Between 1882 and 1898, Theodore and Mabel Bent made a total of seven trips that took them along the Greek and Turkish coasts. Mabel had kept diaries of all these trips. In these, the couple’s sixth voyage, or thereabouts, which took place in 1888 note 1 , we learn that the Bents – after a short stay on Symi – anchored in the bay of “Aplotheka” on the night of 10th March to the 11th.
They decided on this bay, which Mabel describes as having a “very deep, slope to the water in most places, but there are several little beaches of sand where landing is easy”, as there one may find “the ruins of ancient Loryma”. On one of these beaches there are “the remains of some large building and another a mandhra, or sheep fold. The wall of the yard runs along the shore and the family live in a little hut of rough stones, that one can see through, about 12ft. x 10ft. No window or chimney, fire on the earth in one corner, a few sticks stuck between the stones to hang things on and a shelf made with a pole across the end of the room and some branches on it. It is about 3 feet 6 inches wide and may be the bedroom, but we saw very few bedclothes or possessions of any kind, and yet the people seemed clean in their persons and certainly provide us with excellent cream and milk.”.
About her stay in the bay, we learn from Mabel that her husband Theodore undertook “a walk in the morning with Vassilis […] and Ioannis” on March 11th, while she stayed on board their ship. In the afternoon she roamed the bay with her husband and “choose a digging place for the morrow”. For March 12th, she reports that they were excavating “quite unmolested at large tombs, all with altars on them, but vainly”. Unfortunately, as with Theodore’s article in the Journal of Hellenic Studies (Vol. 9, 1888), Mabel’s chronicles are not very meaningful from an archaeological point of view. Presumably he does not elaborate on the ruins there as they were presented by O. Benndorf and G. Niemann four years earlier in their Reisen in Lykien und Karien (Vienna 1884) note 2 .
Fig. 1: View of Bozukkale, or Loryma Bay, from north-northwest, with the island of Rhodes in the distance (Matthias Nöth).
“Aplotheka” bay is known today as Bozukkale or Loryma Bay (Fig. 1), located on the southwestern edge of the Bozburun peninsula. This was known in antiquity as the Carian Chersonese and later belonged to the Rhodian Peraia. The bay itself can only be reached by boat or by taking a long walk overland. Despite, or perhaps because of, its remote location, it is a popular destination for sailing tourists, and since the opening of the Carian Trail also for hiking tourists. There are three seasonal restaurants in the bay and apart from these there are only two or three huts inhabited by shepherds.
Fig. 2: Loryma: View from the southeast over the Rhodian harbour fortress (Matthias Nöth).
Thus little has changed since the Bents stayed there. The “remains of some large building” mentioned by Mabel have also been preserved. These could be the remains of a large building, probably built from spolia in Byzantine times, which may be seen in connection with an Amalfi trading post [Αποθήκη = warehouse ?]. It was built on the site where there were five ship sheds in antiquity (Fig. 1, right of the rocks in the foreground). The “ruins of ancient Loryma” include the large Rhodian harbour fortress (Fig. 2), the scant remains of two temples, the Loryma settlement, numerous ancient farmsteads, and the extensive settlement necropolis in which Mabel and Theodore apparently carried out excavations. The “altars” on the graves mentioned by Mabel are the grave top parts typical of the Carian Chersonese, in the form of monolithic or composite stepped bases (in English also referred to as “stepped pyramids”) (Fig. 3).
Fig. 3: Examples of grave top parts, typical of the Carian Chersonese (Matthias Nöth).
On March 13th, the Bents, accompanied by a shepherd serving as a guide, went eastwards to “a little harbor called Sigás and then walked to the sea on the other side of the promontory called Sikies (fig tree)” (= north coast). However, the excursion was, in Mabel’s words “disappointing”, probably because they did not make the hoped-for discoveries.
Fig. 4: View from the north over the “hidden” port of Serçe Limanı and its small entrance (Matthias Nöth).
The port “Sigás”, which – according to the memoranda of Theodore published by E. L. Hicks (JHS 10, 1889) – was also called “Sersa” in Bent’s time, and is a bay now known as Serçe Limanı (Fig. 4). In ancient times it was called Κρήσα λιμήν or “portus Cressa”. Although the entrance to the “curiously hidden” bay is quite narrow – as Theodore wrote in his article – it was apparently a popular anchorage over the ages; this is shown by the five shipwrecks found there that date from the 3rd century BC to early 11th century AD.
In addition to Mabel’s chronicle entry, we learn from Theodore’s article that, after “about an hour’s walk”, there are extensive ruins in “a basin”. According to Theodore’s memoranda, he found there “covered by the ruins of a Byzantine church”, “a row of bases of columns (apparently in situ), as if a temple had stood here”, as well as numerous graves and a few inscriptions. According to one of these inscriptions, the temple was dedicated to Apollo. Three more inscriptions are featured in Hick’s article. In the north of the valley Theodore’s memoranda mentions “tombs composed of blocks of marble piled pyramid-wise upon each other”.
Fig. 5: The so-called Asardibi plain, seen from the north. At the edges are the remains of ancient agricultural terraces (Matthias Nöth).
The “basin” is the valley that adjoins Serçe Limanı to the north and is known today as Asardibi; ancient Kasara is also located there. Today only a few ruins have survived in this valley (Fig.5). The alleged temple remains were apparently not found in the recent survey, as they are not mentioned in the relevant publications. The ruins visible today are mainly graves with the grave top parts of the form known from Loryma, as well as some ancient farmsteads and the remains of associated agricultural terraces. In the far north of the valley, on a prominent hill, are the sparse remains of a small Byzantine settlement or fortress. However, between the Byzantine walls there are also remains of more ancient ones, so that one might possibly look for the acropolis of ancient Kasara on that hill. A few years ago, at the western foot of the hill, you could still see the graves discovered by the Bents; however, illegal construction work has taken place there, which has destroyed a large part of the historical substance.
Apparently Mabel and Theodore visited another ancient site on their trip to Kasara, i.e. locating Phoenix “about an hour’s walk [in an] eastward direction”. Since Theodore only mentions it briefly in his article (“… the modern village of Phoenike […] is built on the site of the old town …”), it will not be discussed further here. However, Phoenix and other ruins in the area are shown on the map created by Theodore for Hicks’ article. From an archaeological point of view, this map is also the most interesting result of the Bents’ stay on the Carian Chersonese, as some of the ancient ruins recorded there by Theodore are still almost unexplored.
About Matthias Nöth
After doing his Magister Artium in Classical Archaeology at the University of Würzburg, Matthias completed an archaeological traineeship at the Archäologisches Spessartprojekt (with a focus on Medieval archaeology). He then went on to read for a Doctorate in Classical Archaeology at the University of Marburg, graduating in 2015. His dissertation on the Fortifications of the Carian Chersonese is currently in press. For his bibliography, see here.
During his studies, and as a volunteer, Matthias took part in several excavations in Bavaria, before he participated in survey projects in Turkey: at “Loryma” (2000) and “Bybassos and Kastabos” (2006-2011, 2015), both of which are on the Carian Chersones, today the Marmaris/Muğla region. After several round trips and hikes in the area, Matthias now knows the Carian Chersonese very well.
Note 2: The ancient remains were examined between 1995 and 2001 by Dr. Winfried Held in a survey in which the author was also able to participate. Partial results of this survey were last published in: W. Held (ed.), Die Karische Chersones von Chalkolithikum bis in die byzantinische Zeit. Forschungen auf der Karischen Chersones Band 1 (Marburg 2019). Return from Note 2
Just before (Western) Easter 1888, the tireless British explorers Theodore and Mabel Bent, on an extended cruise down the Turkish coast, had reached the small, thriving island of Kastellorizo – one more location to add to their twenty-year gazetteer; not a lot of people know that…
Wikipedia (03/09/2020) has plenty by way of introduction to this, perhaps the remotest of Greek islands one can step on via scheduled services:
Kastellorizo harbour (wikipedia).
“Kastellorizo or Castellorizo (Greek: Καστελλόριζο, romanized: Kastellórizo), officially Meyisti (Μεγίστη Megísti), a Greek island and municipality of the Dodecanese in the Eastern Mediterranean. It lies roughly 2 kilometres (1 mile) off the south coast of Turkey, about 570 km (354 mi) southeast of Athens and 125 km (78 mi) east of Rhodes, almost halfway between Rhodes and Antalya, and 280 km (170 mi) northwest of Cyprus.”
The previous year (1887), our explorers, Theodore and Mabel Bent, had been excavating way up north on Thasos, finding some important marbles (including a fine statue they were not allowed to take home), which are now in the archaeological museum in Istanbul. Denied their rightful gains (as they saw them), and never a couple to give up easily, the pair spent a good deal of the summer and autumn of 1887 trying to drum up enough support to have these marbles rescued from the Turkish authorities and cased up for London. Letters exist from Bent to the British Museum requesting their kind interventions (it all sounds very familiar): “We have indeed been unfortunate about our treasure trove but I have hopes still. I sent to Mr. Murray [of the BM] a copy of two letters which recognize the fact that I had permission in Thasos both to dig and to remove. These I fancy had not reached Sir W[illiam] White [our man in the City, see below] when you passed through Constantinople. Seriously, the great point to me is prospective. Thasos is wonderfully rich and I have some excellent points for future work and … I am confident we could produce some excellent results.”
Osman Hamdi Bey (1842–1910) (wikipedia).
In January 1888, Theodore did receive a further grant of £50 from the Hellenic Society to return to Thasos to excavate, and the couple duly left for Istanbul. Unsurprisingly, the implacable, very capable Director of Antiquities in the Turkish capital, Hamdi Bey, refused Bent a firman to carry out further investigations, not only on Thasos, but also implying that the Englishman was not welcome to use unauthorized picks and shovels on Turkish lands in general.
A friend indeed. William Arthur White (1824–1891), HM Ambassador at the Sublime Porte, but politely not prepared to assist the Bents in their piratical activities (wikipedia).
Despite various appeals to canny career diplomat, the Ambassador, Sir William White, he and Mabel were forced to change their plans. Theodore may well have been expecting this. In the Classical Review of May 1889, his friend E.L. Hicks reveals that when Bent was first digging on Thasos in 1887 he had employed a local man to “to make some excavations in the neighbourhood of Syme” (far down the Turkish coast, north of Rhodes) on his behalf. Obviously satisfied with the results, the couple, after an excursion to Bursa to see the fabled Green Mosque, decided to return to Cycladic Syros, where they chartered for about fifty days the pretty yacht Evangelistria (the Bents refer to her as “the ‘Blue Ship’ from the gaudy colour with which her sides were painted”), with “Kapitan Nikólaos Lambros” and her crew, under Greek papers; and they embark (Wednesday, 29 February 1888) on this fall-back plan that will take them with the winds and currents as far south as Levantine, if not Oriental, Kastellorizo, frozen just off the Turkish coast, as a map will show you, like a mouse under a cat’s paw.
Meanwhile Mabel, on Syros before embarking, can be candid for her diary – they are to don pirate gear, “Theodore at once took to visiting ships to put into practice our plan of chartering a ship and becoming pirates and taking workmen to ‘ravage the coasts of Asia Minor’. Everyone says it is better to dig first and let them say Kismet after, than to ask leave of the Turks and have them spying there.” All, of course, reprehensible behaviour today. The couple also meet up here with their long-term dragoman, Manthaios Símos, who has sailed up from his home on Anafi , close to Santorini, to lend a hand.
‘Gulets’ off Bodrum (wikipedia).
Thus, on a sort of early tourist ‘gulet’ cruise (“There is a dog called Zouroukos, who was at first terrified… and the little tortoise, Thraki”), the couple’s investigations along the Asia Minor littoral (in particular the coastline opposite Rhodes) turned out fairly fruitful, and some of Theodore’s ‘finds’ from this expedition are now in London (see below). He briefly wrote up his discoveries of ancient Loryma, Lydae, and Myra for the Journal of Hellenic Studies (Vol. 9, 1888 – but a lengthier account was provided by E.L. Hicks (Vol. 10, 1889)), including transcriptions of over forty inscriptions and passages of text from Theodore’s own notebooks.
No doubt his notebooks were to come in handy when, a few years later, Bent is editing his well-known version of Thomas Dallam’s diary for the Hakluyt Society (1893), recounting the latter’s adventures in these same waters: ‘The 23rd [June, 1599] we sayled by Castle Rosee, which is in litle Asia.’ (Incidentally, musical-instrument maker Dallam’s Gulliver-like exploits below the gigantic walls of Rhodes, not so very far away northish, are highly recommended.)
But back to the Bents, a popular account of the their 50-day cruise in 1888 – well worth a read for those who get off on the rugged coastline from Symi to Kastellorizo – was written by Theodore for The Cornhill Magazine, (Vol. 58 (11), 620-35), and entitled ‘A Piratical F.S.A.‘ (Bent had recently been made a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, and was indulging in shameful hubris.)
The safe, not to say stunning, harbour of Kastellorizo with the Turkish coast 2km distant.
(For the rest of Bent’s articles on this coastal meander, see the year 1888 in his bibliography.)
After various adventures, the Bents reached the Kastellorizo offing on 30th March 1888. Theodore sets the scene: “Great preparations were made for the arrival of the ‘Blue Ship’ at the first civilised port she had visited since leaving Syra. One of the ‘boys’, it appeared, understood hair-cutting, and borrowed Mrs. F.S.A.’s scissors for that purpose; beards were shaved, and shaggy locks reduced with wonderful rapidity… Castellorizo was the port, and it is a unique specimen of modern Greek [sic] enterprise, being a flourishing maritime town, built on a barren islet off the south coast of Asia Minor, far from any other Greek centre – a sort of halfway halting place in the waves for vessels which trade between Alexandria and Levantine ports; it has a splendid harbour, and is a town of sailors and sponge divers.”
Half thinking of home, the Bents are in need of some fancy paperwork to ensure their acquisitions thus far are protected from the prying eyes of both Greek and Turkish customs officials. Mabel’s ‘Chronicle’ gives us a little more, beginning with a sketch of their plans:
The ‘red fort’, after which the island is named, so called from its appearance at sunset, proudly asserts its nationality to the Turkish town of Kaş, 2km across the strait.
“First to go to the island of Kasteloriso, where there is a Greek consul, and have a manifesto made that we came from Turkey so that the Greeks may not touch our things in Syra… Now all was preparation for this civilized place. Theodore assured himself that his collar and tie were at hand. I hung out my best Ulster coat and produced respectable gloves and shoes… We really made a very tidy party when we reached our goal… We had a calm voyage. An average time from Myra to Kasteloriso is 6 hours; we took about 26. We did not land in the regular harbour. The captain said questions would be asked as to why there were 18 people in such a boat. We landed about 8. It is a flourishing looking little town, divided by a point on which rise the ruins of a red castle. The name should be Castelrosso, but first the Greeks have made it ‘orso’ and then stuck in an ‘i’. The Genoese or Venetians made it. Kapitan Nikólaos was greeted wherever he went by friends. He did not seem anxious to be questioned much, and once when asked where he had come from gaily answered, ‘Apo to pelago!’ (from the open sea). I was delighted at this answer and so, when some women, sitting spinning on rocks, called out, ‘Welcome Kyria,’ to which I answered, ‘Well met!’ and then asked, ‘Whence have you troubled yourself?’ ‘Apo to pelago!’ I smilingly replied and swept on round a corner where we could laugh, and who more than Kapitan Nikólaos…”
The iconic ‘Lycian tomb’ on Kastellorizo (4th century BC) (from Kastellorizo.online).
There is nothing in Mabel’s diary to suggest the couple made any sort of tourist excursion around the island, not even to the famous blue caves, which is a shame. Surprisingly, too, Theodore makes no mention of perhaps the most iconic ‘snap’ on the island, the Lycian rock-cut tomb (4th century BC), unique on Greek soil.
Mission accomplished, the next we learn is that the Evangelistria has reached the ancient site of Patara on the mainland: “Yesterday morning, Good Friday [March 30th], we had a very quiet voyage hither…”
Within days, Theodore and Mabel will be casting off for Syros once more, but, after 50 days in their gulet, they have had enough of open waters and decide to return to London the long way, overland, via Smyrna – Istanbul – Scutari – Adrianople – Plovdiv – Istanbul – Nicea – Istanbul – Odessa – Berlin. All a far cry from ‘civilised’, Levantine Kastellorizo… and one wonders of their dreams.
“We stopped 2 nights in Berlin at the Central Hotel”, writes Mabel, “We had travelled from Saturday night to Monday night, the 14th, and nearly always through forests. We crossed from Flushing and on Thursday [17th May 1888] we safely reached home… All our marbles reached England soon after, and after spending some weeks here are housed in the British Museum.” (‘The Travel Chronicles of Mrs J. Theodore Bent’, Vol 1, Oxford, 2006, p. 260)
‘Here’ is the couple’s smart townhouse near Marble Arch, a vast magpies’ nest, with every tabletop, bookcase and cabinet showing off souvenirs from 20 years of travels in Arabia, Africa, and the Eastern Mediterranean, perhaps, too, some embroideries and large, distinctive chemise buttons (from the women Mabel chatted to on Kastellorizo), just arrived back in rough, pine crates, recently unloaded from the decks of the Evangelistria:
The distinctive chemise clips from the Kastellorizo region (from ‘An account of discoveries in Lycia, being a journal kept during a second excursion in Asia Minor’ by Sir Charles Fellows, 1841, London, J. Murray, p. 190).
“The women here all wear the dress of Kasteloriso: long full coloured cotton trousers, then the shirt fastened down the front with… large round silver buckles, and then married women wear a gown slit up to the waist at the side. The 2 front bits are often tied back as they become mere strings. Then a jacket with sleeves ending above the elbow and very long-waisted, and very low is wound a scarf. The girls do not wear the gown. They have a fez on the head and a turban round it or not…” (‘The Travel Chronicles of Mrs J. Theodore Bent’, Vol 1, Oxford, 2006, p. 246)
‘In the long term, the following areas of the collection have been identified as under-researched areas, but these would only be tackled in the context of potential for use and visitor engagement … […] Theodore Bent’s Turkish embroidery bequest.’
This casual aside makes the Harris Museum one of only three public collections in the world, to our knowledge, to hold a collection of textiles originally acquired by Theodore and Mabel Bent over the 20 years of their travels, the other two being the Benaki Museum, Athens, and London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. (We are not including here the few clothing and other items, some made of bark, that the Bents brought back from Great Zimbabwe that are now in the British Museum.)
‘Theodore Bent’s Turkish embroidery bequest’ at the Harris Museum consists of four items (we are assuming they represent the entire ‘bequest’), and, thanks to the kind assistance of curator Caroline Alexander, we believe that this is the first time they have been ‘published’.
Detail from PRSMG 1970.2 (Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston)
The museum’s Accession Book refers to the pieces as ‘Turkish Embroideries’. In the 1880s, the decade the Bents spent mainly in the Eastern Mediterranean, the islands off the Turkish west coast belonged to Turkey, taken and held by the Ottomans from early medieval times until the early 20th century. The Dodecanese islands were only returned to Greece in the 1940s. Thus the Bents’ acquisitions of fabrics and costumes (some with the intention of selling on to British collectors and institutions) reflect a wide blend of styles and influences – the distinctions between ‘Greek’ and ‘Turkish’ being generally moot points. Beautiful things, made painstakingly, to be given, worn, or displayed, remain beautiful things irrespective.
Detail from PRSMG 1970.4 (Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston)
The four items (1970.1; 1970.2; 1970.3; 1970.4) in the Harris Museum were donated in May 1970, rather mysteriously, by someone who introduced herself as ‘the great-niece’ of Theodore Bent. There seems to be no mention of the gift in the museum’s Donation Book, an interesting fact, nor does any name appear in the museum’s accession records unfortunately. The museum’s Accession Book includes the following handwritten note stapled to the relevant entries: ‘Query re T. Bent’s niece [sic]. No details of this donation in the donation book. Contact V & A to whom T. Bent donated embroidery.’
Enquiries are under way (December 2019) to try and find out who the donor may have been, and why the Harris should have been chosen as the recipient.
Theodore Bent had no siblings, but several cousins, who in turn had issue. There is a chance that one of these might be our donor, and there is a local connection. Theodore Bent himself had property just outside Macclesfield , and his uncle John was Lord Mayor of Liverpool in 1850. The family were influential local brewers, and, indeed, Theodore was born in Liverpool (1852). Bent’s Brewery Co. Ltd remained in business until the 1970s, as part of Bass Charrington. The Bents can be traced back to the Liverpool region in the 1600/1700s, and were potters and brewers – one, a medical man, was the famous surgeon who amputated Josiah Wedgwood’s leg!
Detail from PRSMG 1970.3 (Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston)
Thus perhaps it was a member of this energetic and successful family who donated the embroideries in 1970; but somehow we doubt it. The Bents were great collectors (and dealers) in embroideries, etc., on their travels in the Eastern Mediterranean and Turkey in the 1880s, the period, we assume, when the four pieces now in the Harris were acquired by the exploring couple. On Theodore’s death in 1897 all his estate went to his wife Mabel, and they had no children. Just over thirty years later, on Mabel’s death (1929) all her belongings, including her textiles, went to her surviving nieces – they, in turn, had daughters, who would thus have been the ‘great nieces of Mrs Theodore Bent’. Of these, it seems only Kathleen Prudence Eirene Bagenal (1886-1974) was alive in 1970. (For the Anglo-Irish Hall-Dare family click here.)
We may, therefore, tentatively, and for now, propose Kathleen Bagenal (or her agent) as the donor of the Bent textile bequest to the Harris. The mystery remains why the Harris? Kathleen’s family home was in Scotland (Arbigland, on the Solway Firth), and we know that she was actively selling off her great-aunt’s textiles from the 1930s. We will, of course, update this theory if more information comes our way.
Detail from PRSMG c1970.1 (Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston)
In her lifetime Mabel exhibited some of her fabric collection – we know of two events, but neither seem to have included any of the four items donated to the Harris in 1970.
A lecture Bent gave to the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland in 1886, during which his Mabel displayed a range of their textiles. These are published in ‘Insular Greek Customs’. The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 15 (1886), 391-403. [With an Appendix by ‘Mrs. Bent’].
At the 1914 embroidery exhibition at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in London, Mabel Bent showed a good part of her collection (see later in this contribution).
The Bent textiles in the Harris Museum, Preston
PRSMG c1970.1. ‘Fine linen cloth embroidered at both ends’ (Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston)
PRSMG: c1970.1 [Headed ‘Turkish Embroidery’ in the museum’s Accession Book]
Accession Book entry: ‘Embroidered with silk and gold plate thread, at both ends. Repeating pattern of formal plant motifs. Pink, blue, gold and brown on natural linen.’ Acquired from: ‘The great-niece of Theodore Bent’. Acquisition dated: ‘April May 1970′.
Digital catalogue entry: ‘Fine linen cloth [dimensions not provided] embroidered at both ends with intricate floral pattern of mainly peach and blue silk embellished with gold. Probably embroidered using a tambour. Possibly Turkish. Note: 2015, Asia from British Museum visited, said possibly Turkish with the use of flattened gold thread.’
PRSMG 1970.2. ‘Embroidered panel of fine linen’ (Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston)
PRSMG: 1970.2 [Headed ‘Turkish Embroidery’ in the museum’s Accession Book]
Accession Book entry: ‘Short strip embroidered at ends with formal design of cyprus tress and flowers in urns. Embroidered patch appliquéd on.’ Acquired from: ‘The great-niece of Theodore Bent’. Acquisition dated: ‘May 1970′.
Digital catalogue entry: ‘Embroidered panel [dimensions not provided] of fine linen. Embroidered both ends with motifs of pinecones and eight-petalled flowers in pots worked in blue, dark brown beige and cream threads. Probably machine worked as no evidence of starting or finishing. Machine worked down two edges. Also central panel later addition in pale blue, beige and cream floral motifs.’
PRSMG 1970.3. ‘Embroidered panel of fine linen’ (Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston)
PRSMG: 1970.3 [Headed ‘Turkish Embroidery’ in the museum’s Accession Book]
Accession Book entry: ‘Long strip embroidered with flower motif repeated seven times. Red, brown and blue silk embroidery with blue border on three sides.’ Acquired from: ‘The great-niece of Theodore Bent’. Acquisition dated: ‘May 1970′.
Digital catalogue entry: ‘Embroidered panel of fine linen [dimensions not provided]. Embroidered with floral motifs along length. Motif of red and blue flowers in repeated and alternating pattern. Appears to have been the edge of a larger panel. Believed Turkish c 19th century.’
PRSMG 1970.4. ‘Embroidered panel of floral motifs on fine linen’ (Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston)
PRSMG: 1970.4 [Headed ‘Turkish Embroidery’ in the museum’s Accession Book]
Accession Book entry: ‘Red silk cloth square extended at corners. Two embroidered panels joined to form centre piece, with blue silk strips on two sides. Floral design.’ Acquired from: ‘The great-niece of Theodore Bent’. Acquisition dated: ‘May 1970’. [This entry in a different hand]
Digital catalogue entry: ‘Embroidered panel [dimensions not provided] of floral motifs on fine linen comprising two pieces joined in the centre. Primarily terracotta red, blue, green and mustard thread working arabesque floral design. Panel has terracotta coloured narrow lace edging. Panel has been mounted on dark red silk backing panel with sleeves top and bottom for hanging. Possibly Turkish. c 19th century.’
The 1914 embroidery exhibition at the Burlington Fine Arts Club, London
“Embroidered tunic and skirt of linen crepe with square sleeves, embroidered in tent and long cross stitches with various repeating patterns of debased floral and other forms arranged geometrically.” Now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (no: 346-1886; from Karpathos in the Dodecanese, acquired from the Bents (in 1886) after their visit to the island in early 1885) (Victoria and Albert Museum, London).
As mentioned above, Mabel Bent showed a good part of her collection at the 1914 embroidery exhibition at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in London. There is an an online catalogue. The prize exhibits were a collection of fine dresses from the Dodecanese, now in the Benaki Museum, Athens, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. The exhibition cabinets displayed a wide range of Mabel’s other textiles, but none of the four items now held in the Harris Museum seem to have been shown to the public in 1914, but more research is needed to confirm this (i.e. future access to the exclusive photographs of the exhibits). Readers may be able to identify the Harris pieces in the catalogue (search ‘Bent’ in the online catalogue search box that appears on the page), and if so we would be delighted to hear from them. Similarly, if any Preston readers can provide information on the four Harris pieces before they entered the collection in 1970, we would also be most interested.
Mabel Bent’s diaries are, occasionally, a useful primary source for information on the thousands of artefacts the couple returned with to London during the twenty years of their travels in the Eastern Mediterranean, Africa, and Arabia. There are hundreds of references to dress, costume, embroideries, fabrics, etc. Unfortunately, Mabel does not always give precise details of gifts and acquisitions and it has not been possible to identify the four textiles in the Harris bequest in her notebooks.
“This afternoon we have been to the doctor Venier, of a Venetian family. Dr. Venier showed us the hangings of a bed, in which King Otho slept when he visited Pholégandros. All gold lace, silver lace and the most beautiful silk embroidery on linen. The curtains were striped silk gauze with gold lace insertion. The pillows gold edged real silk. We were also shown lace-edged sheets and gold embroidery. It was a really splendid sight and fit for a museum.” (February 1884, Folégandhros in the Greek Cyclades; ‘The Travel Chronicles of Mrs J Theodore Bent’, vol 1, page 44, 2006, Oxford)
In conclusion, the four textile pieces discussed, once in the collection of Theodore and Mabel Bent and donated to the Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston, represent an important revelation, and are published, it is thought, for the first time here. If you have any comments on any aspect of this content, including the origins, or technical/stylistic features of the four textiles, do please write in.
Love in the Levant – the true story of an aristocratic British archaeologist and his profound love for the goddess he encountered on a remote Greek island – and Mabel Bent’s account of meeting her.
Another in our Greek island series: “The Bents – great friends of… ”
William Roger Paton was born in Scotland on September 2nd 1857. He studied Classics at Oxford and London and moved on to law for a while in London. However, the legal world was clearly too staid for William, whose real interests lay further afield in literature and archaeology in the Eastern Mediterranean. One wonders whether Oscar Wilde had his friend William Paton in mind when he wrote “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
On one of his trips to the region in the late summer of 1885, his ship anchored off-shore near the village of Pothia on the Turkish-controlled Greek island of Kalymnos. Standing on the deck of the steamer, he could not have known that his life was about to take a turn which would see him married within just 3 months and a father before a year had passed.
Few large ships called at Kalymnos in those days; there was no dock and such ships had to anchor well out to sea. As soon as a ship was spotted, a scramble of small boats would go out to meet it to take off alighting passengers and maybe to make a few piastre from the ship’s passengers. The local boys would hope to come back with a coin or two by entertaining the passengers with their diving skills as they retrieved coins thrown from the deck.
Pothia harbour as Paton might have seen it. One of the small boats used to embark and disembark passengers. Photograph taken from the deck of a ship anchored in the harbour (photograph courtesy of Manoli Psarra)
Leaning on the rail, Paton’s eyes were intractably drawn to one of the small boats. In it sat the young girl who would become his wife and the mother of his four children. His fate was sealed at that very moment in time.
He instantly made up his mind. Quickly getting his baggage together, he disembarked into one of the small boats. To the surprise of the boatman, in perfect Greek, he asked where he could find accommodation on the island. The boatman agreed to take ‘O Lordos’ note 1 to the most important man on the island, the Demarchos, or Mayor. As he rowed toward the shore, singing the praises of the Demarchos, he added, with a nod of his head toward the boat which had so captivated Paton, “that young girl is his daughter.”
Emmanouil Olympitis – Demarchos of Kalymnos and Irini’s father (photograph courtesy of Emmanuel Olympitis)
Paton got on well with the Demarchos, Emmanouil Olympitis, who very much impressed the younger Paton. He was successful in the sponge fishing industry, for which Kalymnos has always been renowned, and the family was much respected by the people of Kalymnos for the defiance that Emmanouil’s grandfather had shown toward the occupying Turks.
However well the two men got on, it must have been a bolt out of the blue the very next day when Paton proposed marriage to his daughter, Irini. People were outraged and, on a more lawless island, this might have been the end of Paton’s amorous advances, and his life to boot! But wise Emmanouil Olympitis was far above all that and countered by trying to delay on the basis that a trousseau needed to be arranged. With dogged persistence, Paton told him he would arrange everything and that he wanted Irini just as she was.
And what of Irini’s feelings in all of this? Of course, Emmanouil Olympitis would not have allowed his daughter to enter into marriage against her will. We learn from the autobiography of Irini’s daughter, Augusta, from later conversations with her mother, that Paton’s emotions were mirrored in Irini’s own; she described him as a ‘fair, blue-eyed god’.
Paton stayed in Kalymnos for a month and he and Irini grew ever closer – but he had to return to Britain leaving Irini in Kalymnos. While in Britain, he wrote her long letters every single day.
On Paton’s return to Kalymnos, two months later, signalled by tender telegram messages to Irini from each port of call along the way, they married in November 1885 – he 28 and Irini 16 years of age.
Paton and Irini at Rattray, his cousin’s home north of Aberdeen (photograph courtesy of William Paton)
Shortly after their marriage and their honeymoon in Symi and Rhodes, they moved to Paton’s Scottish estate, but neither Paton nor Irini were happy in Scotland and both pined for Greece. From Mabel Bent’s diary entry, we know they were back in Kalymnos by March 1886. Later that year, in August, their first son George was born in Irini’s mother’s house on the Turkish coast at Gümüşlük near Bodrum.
Theodore and Mabel Bent visit Kalymnos
At the beginning of 1886, the British explorers Theodore and Mabel Bent were travelling around the islands of the eastern Aegean looking for likely sites to excavate, but they were constantly thwarted by the Turkish authorities to whom Bent was known.
Theodore and Paton were acquainted. It’s thought that they first met as a result of their connections with the British Museum or as members of the Hellenic Society. Their various papers on their respective archaeological excavations were published by the same journal, sometimes in the same issue. They each also had a close relationship with the classicist (and later Bishop of Lincoln) E. L. Hicks, who co-authored publications on ancient inscriptions from both Theodore and Paton. They would have been very well aware of each other’s work.
However, it seems that it was actually Mabel’s inquisitiveness which drove their decision to visit Kalymnos. She wrote in her diary:
“I am most curious to see a young lady of Kalymnos, aged I hear about 16 and just married to a Mr. William Paton of Granholme in Aberdeenshire. Her father’s name is Olympites, a sponge merchant and very rich. Everyone has heard of ‘O Ouiliermos’ note 2 in the neighbouring islands.”
They arrived in Kalymnos on Wednesday March 17th, 1886. The next day Mabel wrote:
“We were lucky enough to fall in with a clean little English steamer, lanthe, where we had a most comfortable flealess night and a very calm passage here. We started about 6 and arrived about ½ past 12 yesterday.
This is a very populous town of large houses filled with rich sponge fishers who have a reputation in these regions of being thieves, liars and cheats. We were sorry to hear that Mr. Paton had returned to England 2 days ago, leaving his wife at her father’s as she does not wish to undertake the long journey till the summer of next year.”
So Theodore missed meeting Paton in Kalymnos. Whether Theodore and Paton ever met on their overseas travels we don’t know – but they certainly trod in each other’s footsteps.
It would seem that Theodore and Paton had more than just a passing physical resemblance to each other. On Kalymnos, this created some confusion on the island:
“We were very much amused on landing to hear William has returned’. ‘No, it is his brother.’ ‘He is exactly the same.’ ‘How very like he is.’ ‘No, it is not him.’ And these sentences never cease to be buzzed round wherever Theodore goes. At the British Museum they have been taken for one another and a gentleman came and shook hands with him and said ‘When did you come’ and then ‘Oh! Excuse me. I thought you were the son-in-law of Olympidis’.”
Meeting Irini’s father Emmanouil Olympitis
But one man, at least, was not fooled by Theodore’s apparent likeness to Paton. He approached Theodore, saying in English:
‘This is the father-in-law of Mr. Paton and I am the brother-in-law of Mrs. Paton.’
Thus was Theodore introduced to Emmanouil Olympitis, the Demarchos of Kalymnos and the father of Irini, Paton’s wife. Mabel continues:
“So on invitation we entered the café and gave our history, in Greek, to the crowd. The brother asked us to come and take a walk in their garden, so we were removed to an orchard of young lemon and orange trees. Chairs were procured and we sat on ploughed beds, damp, so that one had never to forget to be always trying to sit on the highest leg of the chair for fear of overturning. He would talk English which we had constantly to help out with Greek so we sat silently for a long time till I shivered loudly and we were led silently home.”
Meeting Mrs Irini Paton
Mabel continues, but it should be stressed that she is writing her diary for herself and a small number of friends and family and, as such, her tone may at times seem to border on the insensitive and the rude:
“We announced that in an hour we would call on Mrs. Paton. Accordingly they prepared themselves. We entered a mud-floored hall littered with broken machinery; up dirty marble stairs with a rusty banister and reached a drawing room where some matting had been thrown down, but rolled up where it could not pass under the chest of drawers. A quantity of pieces of embroidery bought during the honeymoon to Simi and Rhodes were plastered round in an absurd way. The chest of drawers had a green table cover falling over the front of it, over that a large cotton antimacassar and on top a large pier glass smashed in 4 bits, some hanging out.
Mrs. Paton is a fine big girl who might pass for 20 but some say 14. She had a pretty new dress, quite out of keeping with the place, her wedding ring and a splendid diamond one on her middle finger and a pink coral one on the other middle finger. Her face is good looking but not very pretty. She was very quiet and very much more ladylike than her sister, a coarse rough girl with a dirty snuff-coloured handkerchief on her head, a loose black jacket and a green skirt, much too long in the front. She brought us coffee and jam and seemed very respectful to Mrs. Paton.”
Mabel’s comment that Irini was ‘a fine big girl’ was made without her being aware that, at the time, Irini was 15-16 weeks pregnant. How Mabel would have relished writing about that, had she known! This fact might partly explain why Irini was reluctant to travel back to Scotland with Paton in March 1886.
With Mabel’s inquisitiveness about Irini Paton sated, she and Theodore left Kalymnos for Astypalea on Saturday March 20th, 1886.
The Olympitis’ house where Paton and the family stayed while in Kalymnos (photograph courtesy of Emmanuel Olympitis)
The Olympitis’ ‘beautiful’ house on the quayside at Pothia where the family stayed while in Kalymnos and where Theodore and Mabel would have met Irini. Augusta wrote : ‘It was the biggest house with the best accommodation on the island and was situated on the quayside with only a large pavement between it and the sea, which, with its anchored coloured boats, full of sponges and brilliantly coloured fishing equipment, was a sight to gladden my heart.’
The house was demolished in the 1970s and the current Olympic Hotel was erected in its place – ‘the best accommodation on the island’. The hotel is still run by members of the Olympitis family.
Return to Scotland
Irini with George, Thetis and John in Aberdeen before 1900
We know from Theodore and Mabel, and from the birthplace of Paton’s first son George, that Irini did not go back to Scotland in 1886, however, Augusta’s autobiography records them being there for much of the time during the first four years of their marriage. Their daughter, Thetis, was born in November 1887 in Aberdeen followed by a son John, in 1890, born at the family seat of Grandhome.
Irini always called Paton ‘Willie’, the name used by Augusta in her wrtings.
George, Thetis and John taken in Aberdeen (photograph courtesy of Emmanuel Olympitis)
Irini was a devout Orthodox and was unhappy not to be able to worship in her faith, there being no Greek Orthodox church in Aberdeen. She was also uncomfortable that her children were not ‘properly’ Christened in ‘that austere Presbyterian cathedral’ which she went through the motions of attending each Sunday, listening to Willie reading the lesson in his ‘carrying sonorous voice’.
The couple were still deeply in love and there were happy times in Scotland. Paton’s family and friends had welcomed Irini as its own. However, neither of them could stand the climate and Paton was never happy running the affairs of the estate. As soon as the children were old enough, he accepted an assignment for a new excavation in Asia Minor.
The house by the Aegean sea
Irini and Paton from the same photo studio in Samos at around 1900 when the family were living in the house at Gümüşlük (photographs courtesy of Emmanuel Olympitis)
Irini’s mother, Palia, had a property on the Turkish coast at Gümüşlük near Bodrum, where Irini and Paton’s first son George had been born. Palia owned much of the land around and a simple house existed on the property, close to the sea. She’d built a small chapel on the hill for the few local Christians. The happiest years for all the Paton family were those spent at the house. Paton and Irini’s youngest child, Augusta, or Sevastie, was also born in the house and her first few years were spent there. For Paton it was perfect. He could take himself off, sometimes for many months, and immerse himself in his work while still being able to return home, at times, for Irini and the children. For the children, it was an idyllic adventure playground and Augusta writes evocatively of those ecstatic days.
Thetis – probably taken in Greece (photograph courtesy of Emmanuel Olympitis)
But Irini was doing other things while in Gümüşlük as well. Paton’s great-grandson, also William Paton, provides us with an insight from a publication by Paton, originally in French – “Myndos is a town which knows well how to hide its inscriptions. The inscriptions that I published in the ‘Bull. de corr. hell. (volume XIV)’ do not come from the town itself but from the surrounding area. The town and its cemeteries only provided two inscribed stones. The two that I added were found, in the final days, in the rubble of a church near the Halicarnassus Gate. We owe them to excavations carried out without my knowledge by Mrs. Paton.”
“Mama and Augusta” – Irini with Augusta around the time of their departure from Greece (photograph courtesy of William Paton)
As Paton’s work in Asia Minor came to an end, the spectre of leaving Gümüşlük weighed heavily on Irini. The boys were approaching the age when boarding school in England beckoned – John had already spent time there. During the period the family were in Gümüşlük, George and John had attended a school in Kos while Thetis was schooled in Smyrna (present-day Izmir).
George and Thetis believed to have been taken in Greece (photograph courtesy of Emmanuel Olympitis)
Irini and Augusta left Gümüşlük to meet Paton and the boys in Kalymnos. Irini was heartbroken to leave the home where she’d been so happy. She was never to see the house again.
The family came together again in the Olympitis house on the quayside of Pothia in Kalymnos, where they celebrated Christmas 1905.
Paris
Thetis believed to have been taken while in France (photograph courtesy of Emmanuel Olympitis)
But, for the ever-driven Paton, time was dragging in Kalymnos and, early in 1906, he uprooted the family in favour of the Parisian suburb of Viroflay, near Versailles. There, Irini and Augusta learned French and made friends. Irini was happy that she could go to the church of St. Julien le Pauvre note 3 . They were content with life in Viroflay.
Brittany
But, once again, Paton moved them on, this time to a villa by the sea on the coast of Brittany at Peros Guirec. Irini was never happy in the period she spent in Brittany.
A sad, sad ending
It was in Brittany that the first signs of Irini’s illness appeared; she was often in great pain. One of her kidneys was damaged and had to be removed. In October 1908, she was admitted to a hospital in Paris where the successful operation was carried out. Irini was free from the pain she’d suffered.
The day came to leave the hospital and Irini’s best friend, Delphine, was helping her to dress amid happy laughter while Paton was pacing around outside in the corridor. Suddenly Irini clutched at her chest and said in Greek ‘Pono’ note 4 . She collapsed into Delphine’s arms and died. She was 38 years old. Paton ‘went quite beserk’ and ripped his shirt to shreds in his uncontrollable grief.
William Paton in later life on Samos, (c) Endre Kemeny
The fairy-tale romance had ended. Paton was 51, George 22, Thetis 21, John 18, and Augusta just 8. Irini had been the source of all the love that had brought happiness to Paton and the family since that first vision of her, all those years ago, in a tiny boat bobbing on the waters of Pothia Bay. William Paton was a broken man.
● The author wishes to thank Emmanuel N. Olympitis for his enthusiastic assistance in providing material and invaluable information for this article.
● The author wishes to thank William Paton, Paton’s great-grandson, for his suggestions and contributions from the family archives.
● Some of the material for this article was derived from the autobiography of Augusta Paton (Kemény), William and Irini Paton’s daughter. The autobiography is currently available only in Hungarian. Read a short biography of Augusta Paton.
● The images used in this article may be subject to various copyright restrictions.
Notes
Note 1:O Lordos – literally ‘the Lord’ – used to describe a gentleman of high status. Return from Note 1
Note 2:O Ouiliermos – The transliterated Greek phonetic spelling of ‘William’ with the masculine nominative ‘os’ ending added. Return from Note 2
Note 3:St. Julien le Pauvre is actually a Melkite Greek Catholic church which has its roots in the same beliefs and rites as the Greek Orthodox Church. Return from Note 3
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