Mistress of the Elgin Marbles Read online

  In the early eighteenth century, Lady Wortley Montagu wrote to her friends advising them that the rush was on to bring home pieces of ancient artifacts from the classical world. In one letter to Abbé Conti (written on May 17, 1717), she informs him that “you will expect I should say something to you of the antiquities of this country; but there are few remains of ancient Greece.” She was amused and annoyed that local entrepreneurs would try to convince Christian travelers that pagan relics were Christian icons in order to make a sale. Lady Wortley Montagu wrote that she had purchased some for the fun of the acquisition:

  I have a porphyry head finely cut, of the true Greek sculpture; but who it represents, is to be guessed at by the learned when I return. For you are not to suppose these antiquaries (who are all Greek) know anything. Their trade is only to sell…. They get the best price they can for any of them, without knowing those that are valuable from those that are not.

  In 1732, the Society of Dilettanti was founded in London by a group of prominent men who were also interested in classical Greece. Among its members were the Duke of Buckingham, the Earls of Oxford, Carlisle, Burlington, and Harcourt, the first Baron Carteret, Sir Andrew Fontaine, Lord Robert Montagu, Sir James Gray, and William Ponsoby. These men were able to spend small fortunes on the study and acquisition of artifacts. The society sponsored the adventures of James Stuart and Nicholas Revett who published, in 1748, Proposals for Publishing an Accurate Description of the Antiquities of Athens and, in 1762, The Antiquities of Athens, which were so widely and well received that a second volume of The Antiquities of Athens came out in 1787. In 1764, the Dilettanti established a fund expressly for archaeological study in Greece. Other notable collectors of Greek classical art included Prime Minister Robert Walpole and King George III. The Comte de Choiseul-Gouffier, a French marquis, published Voyage Pittoresque de la Grèce in 1782, which also fueled interest in traveling to places not included on the Grand Tour. Choiseul-Gouffier, as Louis XVI’s ambassador to the Ottoman court, received permission for his own artists to investigate the Acropolis. In 1786, the English Countess of Craven traveled throughout the Ottoman Empire recording her impressions in a collection of letters to her future husband, the Margrave of Anspach. Three years later, these letters were published as A Journey Through the Crimea to Constantinople. During her visit to the Sublime Porte, Lady Craven was a guest of Ambassador Choiseul-Gouffier and was escorted around the sites for her pleasure. At the Acropolis, noted that a “quantity of beautiful sculptures” were in pieces all about the ground, and she longed

  to have permission to pick up the broken pieces on the ground—but, alas, Sir, I cannot even have a little finger or a toe … the Ambassador … had been a whole year negotiating for permission to convey to Constantinople a fragment he had pitched upon…. The sailors were prepared with cranes, and everything necessary to convey this beautiful relick on board the Tarleton; when after the governor of the citadel, a Turk, had received us with great politeness, he took Mr. de Truguet aside, and told him unless he chooses to endanger his life he must give up the thoughts of touching anything.

  When Lord Elgin arrived as the new ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, he requested the same courtesy that had been extended to the French ambassador. He wanted permission for his artists to examine the Acropolis and sketch what they observed.

  Although the Elgins had arrived in Turkey in November 1799, it was two and a half years before they were able to visit their own working artists in Athens; it was, in fact, the Nisbets who, in the summer of 1801, after having spent a year in Turkey, first made the rounds on their way back to England on behalf of their daughter and son-in-law. Having been less than lukewarm about Elgin’s project until they actually got to the ruins, they began to immerse themselves in their son-in-law’s undertaking, and all three became his cultural collaborators. On July 9, 1801, Mary wrote to her parents that they had received permission, a signed “firman,” from the sultan authorizing Elgin to remove marbles from the Acropolis. The firman was a well-known letter from the sultan to all local pashas with instructions to provide its bearer safe passage and any other particular necessities detailed within.

  I am happy to tell you Pisani has succeeded a merveille in his firman from the Porte. Hunt is in raptures, for the firman is perfection, and P. says he will answer with his whiskers that it is exact. It allows all our artists to go into the citadel, to copy and model everything in it, to erect scaffolds all round the Temple, to dig and discover all the ancient foundations, and to bring away any marbles that may be deemed curious by their having inscriptions on them, and that they are not to be disturbed by the soldiers, etc., under any pretence whatever. Don’t you think this will do? I am in the greatest glee, for it would have been a great pity to have failed in the principal part, after having been at such an expence.

  Thanks to the encouragement and prompting of the Reverend Philip Hunt and Mr. and Mrs. Nisbet, Elgin’s project took on a wider scope. Since the Nisbets were willing to add their financial support, additional monies could be used to erect scaffolds and pay local workers to help remove sculpture. The removal and transport of the pediment sculptures, metopes, and friezes from the Parthenon resulted in loads that most captains were unwilling to deal with. They were so heavy that naval officers frowned and refused to haul them on board. Lord Nelson, for that very reason, told Elgin to use his own ship, the Mentor, which Elgin had constructed from his own (Mary’s) funds and placed at the British Navy’s disposal for the Mediterranean wars. Despite Elgin’s generosity, Nelson would not provide one single ship in His Majesty’s navy to carry home any bit of marble. Mary decided to override Nelson’s veto and called on her old friend Captain Hoste. She was happy to report to her husband on May 19, 1802:

  In the morning I sent a very civil message to Capt. Hoste…. I then coaxed over the Lieut. To prevaile upon the Captain to take the Three large Cases you saw in the Magazine, I told him they were seven feet long he gave me little hopes, as it was impossible to put any thing above 3 feet long in the hold—I then found it necessary to use my persuasive powers, so I began by saying as the Capt. Was going straight to Malta & there being no Enemies to encounter I ventured to propose his taking them it would be doing me a very great favor as you were extremely anxious to get them off & I sh. Feel so proud to tell you how well I had succeeded during your absence—Female eloquence as usual succeeded, the Capt. Sent me a very polite answer & by peep of Day I send down the 3 Cases!

  As the captain could not ride due to his weakened condition, Mary sent her carriage to bring him to her own home, where she placed him on the sofa, gave him a novel to read, and served him warm milk. Her solicitous treatment worked. She wrote, “He saw the 3 Cases at ye waterside when he came up; having got them safely off my Hands, I next set to work to see if I could not contrive to get away something more. What say You to Dot?” She continued, “I have sent for Lusieri to know if he has any thing that we can send on Board if there is I shall set to work with the greatest vigor you may trust me for not being indifferent to any thing I now think my Elgin would like.” Elgin was well aware that when his wife set her sights on accomplishing something, it was always done “with the greatest vigor” and usually completed with a higher degree of success than most any other person’s attempts. Mary knew how to get things done. He had seen that time and again in Constantinople when she stood in for him, stood up for him, and stood by him.

  Mary let him know that one day there was a holiday and no one wanted to work. She offered the men “Backcheses” (baksheesh—gratuities) which did the trick. She succeeded once again, astonishing Lusieri, whom she instructed to “pack up the Horse’s head [the famous Horse of the Moon], the Urn & the stone that is in this house ahead, and the Captain will take that also for me.”

  Longing for her husband to appear in person, she wrote to him, “Give me credit for my exertion dearest Elgin for I have been very anxious to do as much as possible…. I love you with all my heart. Oh, never let us part again.
” She suffered an asthma attack as a result of his departure, took opium pills to relieve the pain, and persisted on his behalf. “I have got another large Case packed up this Day a long piece of the Baso Relievo from ye Temple of Minerva, I forgot the proper term, so I have by my management go on board 4 immense long heavy packages, & tomorrow the Horses head…. The two last Cases is entirely my doing & I feel proud Elgin.” Although she told him to enjoy his tour, she missed him desperately and felt that their hearts would be closer if she took charge in his absence. Ships were arriving daily, and Mary, determined to fulfill her husband’s wishes, supervised the packing up of as many cases as could possibly fit on board the Mutine. She wanted Elgin to be removed from all anxiety about the project and assured him that “C.H. [Captain Hoste] is thoroughly convinced all your things will be taken great care of…. Do you think of me Elgin?” This letter was written over a two-day period and then followed by another letter begun soon after she dispatched the first. “Tho it is only four hours ago since I sent off a very long Letter to my beloved dear Elgin, yet I cannot resist saying again I love you dearly and I think if possible I love you better than I did the 11th of March [their wedding day].”

  The following day, May 22, 1802, she began her updated correspondence with “Best & Dearest of Husbands” and reported that the Anson had arrived in Piraeus and it was larger than the Phaeton. She invited its Captain Cracraft to dine, and he arrived “without his Wig & looked like a young Man.” Captain Hoste advised Mary not to place the marbles on merchant ships, as they would cost a fortune to send. “He thinks your Cases will be sent home in King’s Ships.” The job of circumventing Nelson was now remitted to Mary, and she proceeded to charm and to cajole His Majesty’s naval heroes into loading the boxes on their ships. She wrote her mother-in-law, “You cannot think how well our Artists works have turned out & almost all our immence packages have gone on board Men of War, consequently have pd nothing. I thought all Elgin’s Marbles got in free of the 3d a pound.”

  There was one more very important task for Mary. The local officials, the voivode and the disdar, were getting nervous. They saw the enormous quantities of cases at the dock and wanted to be assured that the sultan had authorized their excavation. Mary was in possession of a second firman from the sultan that authorized further activity. “I told Lusieri of the firmans, he says nothing can be going on better than every thing, so for the present I shall lock them up.” She was doing a splendid job for Elgin, but she missed him: “Come back to your Mary as fast as possible,” she wrote, and added, “my mother says, Come home before there is a Willy on the road—Little she knows.”

  It was clear to Mrs. Nisbet, as it was to most people, that her daughter and son-in-law had a very sexually charged marriage, and although she hadn’t yet received notice that Mary would have another baby in the early fall, she suspected that her daughter would be pregnant often. Mary, exhausted with her third pregnancy in three years, would have liked to return to England. Although the horse’s head and cases from the Parthenon were on their way home, Mary could not make the journey quite yet. She had a job to do and there would be no other time to do it. It was getting very expensive for Mary, who had to draw continually from her bank account at Coutts in London, and that May she wrote for £10,000.

  On May 25 she apprised her husband, “Know that beside the 5 Cases I have already told you of I have prevailed on Capt. Hoste to take Three more … do you love me better for it Elgin?” In the meantime, the local disdar was making noise about all of the marbles leaving the mountain. Mary assured Lusieri that he might, at the appropriate moment, advise the disdar that if the voivode, his superior, was at all uncomfortable with the activity on the Acropolis, Mary had the new firman and would show it to him. As these officials were well aware of the special favor accorded Elgin since the great victory and because of the unprecedented relationship Mary had cultivated with the Valida Sultana and Selim III, there was no reason to doubt her veracity; they were merely protecting their own interests. So the British consul, Logotheti, went to the voivoide’s to pay him £170 for a statue, and in return, the voivode sent Logotheti back to Mary with his compliments and the statue. She, in turn, sent a ring to the voivoide with her best wishes. She then wrapped up the statue and some pots and pans and sent them all on their way. As the artists began dismantling the caryatids, a column arrived from Corinth, which

  [I] had the impudence to ask Capt. H. to take on board…. I beg you will show delight/Lay aside the Diplomatic Character…. I am now satisfied of what I always thought; which is how much more Women can do if they set about it, than Men.—I will lay any bet had you been here you would not have got half so much on board as I have…. Come quickly back to your Mary she Longs for You.

  While Elgin was still on his tour, Captain Hoste and the Mutine sailed for Malta on May 29, and on June 2, Mary wrote to her mother, “We yesterday got down the last thing we want from the Acropolis, so now we may boldly bid defiance to our enemies. Captain Donnelly is to take all our remaining cases on board the Narcissus.” Unblinking and in fact staring in the eye of controversy, Mary wrapped up Elgin’s marbles and sent them home, using her charm, her wit, and her own money. She paid the artists and laborers, massaged the local—and very anxious—politicians, took charge of her children, and involved herself in the welfare of every visiting British citizen. Before her efforts in May 1802, the only ship that had begun to carry home the massive pieces was Elgin’s own Mentor. Now, despite Nelson’s dictate and the risk involved to their own ships, Mary had established a precedent for other military officers to carry the marbles on board. No one wanted to refuse Lady Elgin.

  Over the years, debate on the marbles would divide tastemakers, lawmakers, and average citizens. In 1806, American statesman and financier Nicholas Biddle, himself a leading figure in a new democracy, bemoaned the fate of Athens, once the shining light of freedom and now under tyranny. On his visit, he observed intolerable cruelty perpetrated against its citizens on behalf of the sultan and cried, “Where is her freedom? Where are her orators?” to rise up against injustice. Biddle, who made the acquaintance of both Lusieri and his French rival, Fauvel, proposed that the “little Turkish despot” gave both parties permission to remove artifacts with strategic forethought: a form of psychological warfare. Remove the heart of the city and you humble its people and demonstrate who is in control.

  Athens presents every visage of desolation & despair. When I walk amongst her ruins & first recalling her ancient greatness meditate on her fall, the mind sickens over the melancholy picture … when I see her temple of Theseus which teaches us to admire the grand simplicity of a great people, her temple of Jupiter the most stupendous of all ruins; when I see all this I feel for the decline of human greatness.1

  Biddle was furious with Lord Elgin for what he felt was taking advantage of a downtrodden people. Biddle further claimed that Elgin, might have redeemed himself if he had presented the marbles to Great Britain as a gift instead of later offering to sell them. Later, Biddle would make very unkind personal remarks about the Earl of Elgin, claiming that he should have drowned with his marbles when the Mentor, transporting a collection of them, went down at sea. He wasn’t alone.

  Some of Lord Elgin’s own countrymen abhorred the deed the earl had done. In his diatribe against Lord Elgin, “The Curse of Minerva,” Lord Byron, himself a Scot, advised the gods of ancient Greece, “Frown not on England; England owns him not:/Athena, no! thy plunderer was a Scot.” He called Caledonia a “bastard land,” which, as we have seen, was not an unpopular thought before the union of the two countries in 1707 and was naturally thought by some long afterward. The 1707 union had paved the way for alliances in industry and politics, but perhaps nothing pointed more to the success of the actual merger of its people than the subconscious commingling and appropriation of cultural values. The hearts and minds that expressed the notions of the Romantic Age included Sir Henry Raeburn, Lord Byron, Robert Burns, and Sir Walter Scott, proving that t
he Scots could suffer the same impractical excesses and enjoy the same passions as any Englishman. In their grand, romantic, and excessive gesture, Lord and Lady Elgin served as living examples of the intellectual trend of the day.

  William Hazlitt (whom Simon Schama calls “the greatest essayist in the English language”)2 wrote that before the arrival in Britain of the Elgin marbles, “Scotland seems to have been hitherto the country of the Useful rather than of the Fine Arts.”3 Hazlitt, enamored of the marbles, expressed the widely held opinion that the Elgins, who were both Scots, had contradicted the expected. For if they, the Scots, were a practical people who had little regard for beauty, why then would a practical Scottish girl and her practical Scottish husband, schooled in diplomatic restraint, undertake the wildly impractical and hitherto unimaginable program of dismantling a six-story, two-thousand-year-old landmark? What would make them throw all good sense to the wind and move improbably colossal figures around two continents and across an ocean? The answer is they were both romantics, products of their times.

  Elgin’s own reason for collecting the artifacts was that he had an intellectual and visceral passion for these timeless treasures. He felt that by bringing the great works of art to Britain, he was rescuing history, and instead of leaving them to wither and disintegrate, uncared for, he was serving mankind. His intent was to make these great works of art available to artists and educators and in a sense become a messenger of time. That was certainly a romantic notion, and he appeared to be a very romantic figure, a weathered warrior for Britain, slings and arrows to his reputation, health, and appearance. Mary’s reason was simple: the Elgin marbles were sailing home because one young determined woman adored her husband. (For an account of Lord Elgin’s activities on the Acropolis, see the appendix, the letter from the Reverend Philip Hunt to Mr. and Mrs. Nisbet published here in its entirety for the first time.)