Did
Lord Elgin plunder or protect the great sculptures of the Parthenon?
Read the First Chapter
By NIGEL NICOLSON
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THE ELGIN
AFFAIR |
Two
summers ago I joined a group of tourists on the Acropolis at Athens and listened
to the Greek guide's lecture to us on the glories of the Parthenon. She tactfully
avoided comment on the removal of its sculptures by Lord Elgin in 1800-3,
apart from appealing to her audience (mainly British) to call them the ''Parthenon
marbles,'' not the ''Elgin marbles.'' ''That's not your only complaint,''
one of us generously said: ''You want them back.'' ''Yes, we want them back!''
she cried, her discretion abandoned, the wrath of Athena flashing from her
lovely eyes.
The arguments
for returning the sculptures from London to Athens have many times been rehearsed,
and never better than in ''The Elgin Affair,'' by Theodore Vrettos. Lord Byron
led the way in his poem ''Childe Harold,'' followed by the eloquent Melina
Mercouri when she was Greek Minister of Culture in the 1980's. Both accused
Elgin of vandalism -- but wrongly, for vandalism implies destruction, and
the sculptures have been better protected against neglect and weather than
they would have been if they had remained high up on the Parthenon's walls.
The Turks, who
then occupied Greece, cared little about its past. They deliberately destroyed
the little temple of Athena Nike on the Acropolis to make room for their artillery;
they used the Parthenon as an ammunition dump, which exploded, doing irreparable
damage; and they allowed tourists to take their pick of the remains. It was
from further destruction and pillage that Lord Elgin, the British Ambassador
in Constantinople, was determined to save them. Even the Greeks, he said,
could not be trusted with their heritage: they ''have looked upon the superb
works of Pheidias with ingratitude and indifference. They do not deserve them!''
For ''vandalism,''
then, let us substitute the word ''theft.'' But even this is disputable, for
Lord Elgin obtained from the Turks three official permits (firmans) to sketch,
remove and export the marbles, and he paid Turkish officials handsomely in
bribes. He did so at his own expense, and although he eventually sold the
marbles to the British Government, it was for half what they had cost him,
and he died in abject poverty. The British Museum, which acquired them, has
never felt guilty about the transaction. Nor have successive Governments when
importuned by the Greeks for their return. In 1941 the head of the Foreign
Office minuted, ''They were actually acquired in a manner no more disreputable
then many of the contents of European and American museums.'' If there is
a hint of remorse in that remark, it was echoed in the 1980's by the Labor
Party leader Neil Kinnock, who said that if he became Prime Minister he would
return the marbles to Greece. His successor as head of Labor, Prime Minister
Tony Blair, has not underwritten that promise.
Vrettos, in
the subtitle to his excellent book, uses the word ''abduction,'' which at
first suggested to me that he considered that the marbles had been removed
by dishonest means or stealth, but in fact his narrative is free from prejudice
and remarkably sympathetic to Lord Elgin. He quotes at length the arguments
for and against restitution but does not come down firmly on either side.
In fact, there is rather too little about plans the Greeks have made to receive
the marbles if they are restored to them, and about the excellent conditions
in which they are displayed in London. Nor does he discuss the precedent such
restoration would set: every nation would lay claim to its ''abducted'' treasures.
The Metropolitan and the British Museum would be stripped.
Vrettos, an
American writer, is an excellent anecdotist. He quotes enough from original
documents to confirm their authenticity and paraphrases the rest, scintillatingly.
He gives us a detailed account of the dismantling and transport of the sculptures,
but the main narrative concerns Elgin himself, his embassy to Constantinople,
his happy (later disastrous) marriage and his struggles to win acceptance
and financial compensation for his loot.
He is fortunate
in his sources. Lady Elgin's letters are graphic and often funny (''Talleyrand's
fragile body was held together only by his tight-fitting clothes''); the official
dispatches were written with a freedom and elegance rare in modern times;
and Byron's poems denouncing Elgin and his descendants are mercilessly bitter:
First on the
head of him who did this deed
My curse shall light -- on him and all his seed;
Without one spark of intellectual fire,
Be all the sons as senseless as the sire!
At the end of
the book Vrettos finds room for the transcript of the trial in Edinburgh of
one of Elgin's secretaries, charged with committing adultery with Lady Elgin.
You may call this irrelevant, but it adds sparkle to an enthralling story.
Let us remember
that Elgin was not alone in what he did. Napoleon sent agents to Athens to
acquire vases, statues and bas-reliefs from every part of the city, including
the Acropolis. I have in my own garden five marble altars an ancestor pinched
from Delos in 1820. And Elgin's motive was a genuine love of antiquity. He
not only wished to save the marbles but to exhibit them as an inspiration
to the British. Keats, for example, visited them again and again; his friend
the artist Joseph Severn said he would sit beside them an hour or more, ''rapt
in revery.''
Elgin's reward for his trouble? It is disheartening to read of the sadness the affair caused him. His adjutants let him down badly, but not without cause, for he failed to pay their salaries. The Turks reneged on promises to leave him a free hand. One of his ships sank in midpassage (but the marbles were saved). He was constantly ridiculed for the enterprise that benefited his country so greatly. During his journey home he was taken prisoner in France, on Napoleon's orders. His wife deserted him. His nose was eaten away by an infection, leaving an ugly smear. His pitiable condition -- which disfigured him more than time and accident had done to many of his statues -- may have been one cause of his wife's infidelities, but it can also stand as a symbol of his blighted career. The current Lord Elgin has said he dares not visit Greece under his real name, and he is sorry his great-great-grandfather ever saw those ''bloody stones.'' Vrettos's verdict is more generous, and truer.
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