Letters to friends
Charles Church (1, 2)
Quarantine Island, Corfu 9th October, 1856
My dear Church
After an absence of exactly two months, I return here; but as these idiot Corfiots have heard of a report of Cholera at Constantinople and I happened to come by a steamer from Dardanelles, they have locked me up for five days .... in a good large room, and with plenty of time to answer numerous letters [..............]
Well, I have been to Athos at last - and not only been to it, but I have drawings of every one of the twenty monasteries! I was so unwell by the beginning of August that I resolved at all risks to make a trial that would call out my energy of mind and body - if I had any left. This trial I made, but with very great and serious drawbacks, but having persevered in going right through with it, I have been thoroughly repaid, not only by the obtaining a most new and valuable set of drawings, but by returning here immensely strengthened in body, and with quite another tone of mind to what I set out in. So I have much to be thankful for.
[........] I got on to Salonica by the 27th of August. I then set out (I had Giorgio, my Suliot servant, with me, a bed, canteen, etc.) bravely to Athos, sleeping at Galatira and Eripo, and so on the fourth day entered Karyes. Here I got a circular to all the convents and went onward to Koutloumousi, Pantokratora, Stavroniketes, Iveron and Philotheo, but there Giorgio, who had taken a bad fever at Karyes and who was ill at Iveron, became so bad he could not go on. I had, therefore, to travel alone to Lavra for assistance, and returning with mules, found him much worse, and it was with great difficulty I got him on to the seventh convent. Here the fever increased until I gave up all hopes of saving him - and how often I thought of your anxiety and kindness to me at Thebes [3], when I had to sit and watch the poor man, who was most violently delirious for long periods. The monks were like dead men as to helping me, so at last, as a last resource, I bled profusely, and then the medicines began to be effective. After the seventh day, thank God, he began to rally, and I got him to the Ionian Convent of St. Paul, of which I cannot help thinking I saw a drawing of yours. (Do not forget to tell me when you write, minutely, what you saw and how much you drew at Athos in 1848).
From St. Paul I saw Dionysio, Gregorio and Simopetra, and then returned to Karyes, where, odious to say, I took the fever myself directly! However, I can doctor fever now, and I grew better in four days, when I obstinately (weak as I was) set out to do the remaining nine convents, and finally I went to all and every one and back to Karyes (where I bought you a little cross), and so back again to Salonica by the same route I had come [.............]
This trip has, as you may suppose, cost me a good deal, but it does not appear to me but that I have acted wisely in procuring, as it were, capital to work on; and I am sure that the great improvement in my health is worth something.
As soon as I get out from here, I shall see if my rooms are waterproof for the winter, and if the Landlord will make them so, I shall stay and commence my large Corfiot picture, together with other smaller commission pictures and drawings, I hope, now and then. Your remaining two I shall try to get to you soon, as I shall be sending off a picture for Sir J. Simeon. Should you like any one of the Convents of Athos as the other subject, or a general view of the mountain, or any other ? or anything of Troy? Those of Athos, however, are most studied.* [4]
Pray write to me at once or as soon as you can.
I was greatly struck with the magnificence of the twenty monasteries. But although I felt Athos to be one of the most wonderful of the world's wonders, I should be sorry ever to return there. Such a turning God's world upside down, such a maiming and falsifying His will and works, such selfish folly and miserable ignorance, one can hardly see in so great a mass elsewhere. [..........]
* Note by C.M.C[hurch] at foot of page [4] - Ultimately, I had a drawing of the Monastery of St. Paul, of which I had made a sketch during a three days' stay there in 1848, and one of Philates, as described by Lear here.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Notes
[1] Charles Marcus Church (1823-1915) was a teenager when he first met Lear in Rome. They met again in 1848 in Athens and planned to travel together around Greece. Church in later life had access to Lear's diary of these travels though it is now lost. Using this he wrote his own description of their travels which is now the subject of a website Edward Lear's Grecian travels http://edwardlear.westminster.org.uk/?page_id=48
The introduction to the site gives this further description of Church and his contacts with Lear :
Lear, who had not yet learned Modern Greek, found Church’s antiquarian interests and knowledge of Classical Greek helpful but the real bonus was his cheerful and practical disposition. When Lear became seriously ill en route Church took good care of him and managed to get him back to Athens “by 4 horses on an Indiarrubber bed”. Lear and Church continued to meet and correspond throughout their lives, though their paths diverged. Church became Sub-Principal of Wells Theological College and later Sub-Dean of Wells: Lear found him generous and warm, if a trifle parsonical: “he is ever the same good Charles Church”.
[2] The text of the letter above is an excerpt from a transcription of Lear's letter to Church of 9 October 1856, held by Wesrtminster School in London..
[3] The incident Lear refers to at Thebes is the one referred to in the quotation in note 1 of Lear's serious illness in 1848 when travelling with Church.
[4] Church refers here to acquiring one of Lear's drawings of St. Paul monastery on Athos. This might refer to the drawing itself or to a worked up watercolour from it. Later in both their lives, though we do not know when or whether as an inheritance, Church acquired a very large number of Lear's original drawings of Athos, many of which have come onto the market for the first time in recent years through Church's family or from later gifts by that family. The Provenances tab on this site gives details of twenty such drawings. The reference in the note to the Philates drawing refers to Lear's journey across Northern Greece in order to get to Mount Athos, which is described in Rowena Fowler's website Lear in Greece 1856 : http://www.rowenafowler.com/362750979