Elgin knew the best way to get special ancient features for his Broomhall house was to go to the Ottoman Empire territories and simply take them as was the long established practice. He could do this as a private antiquarian collector, or as an ambassador. In 1798 Elgin knew that because of the defeat of the French navy at the Nile the privileges that went with the post of Extraordinary Plenipotentiary Ambassador of Great Britain at the Porte, would be unprecedented. He also knew that if he secured that role he could exceed the plunder of the many ambassadors and rich, aristocratic collectors who had gone before him.
It is worth looking at those who preceded Elgin as ambassadors and antiquarians to give one some idea of the type of person that held these posts, and the privileges that went with the job due to the hospitality of the host, which in many cases was abused.
As someone who has lived the best part of 80 years in the ancient Royal Burgh of Dunfermline it seems logical to begin with another Dunfermline Boy, King Charles I.
Charles I was born in the palace at Dunfermline on November 19, 1600 and is well thought of in Dunfermline for his philanthropy following The Great Fire of Dunfermline. The fire was caused when a young man accidentally discharged his flintlock musket on Wappinschaw day, May 25, 1624, and a spark ignited a thatched roof, quickly spreading and destroying most of the town. When Charles heard of this he donated £500 to the rebuilding fund as he was said to consider himself a ‘Dunfermline boy’.
King Charles is not associated with much else in ‘The Auld Grey Toon’ and was better known for his exploits south of the border where, as soon as he could walk, he lived with his parents at Whitehall Palace. There he would have witnessed his father, King James’ exhibition of marble statues and other artefacts, collected from the lands once occupied by the Greek and Roman empires.
King James was figurehead to a loose group of aristocratic antiquarian collectors called the Whitehall Group, after the King’s home. All of this group had common interests, but kept their own collections of paintings and sculptures. Preeminent among the group was The Earl of Arundel, Earl Marshal of England, said to be the first English noblemen to follow the example of continental collectors at the time of The Renaissance, which saw a renewed interest in the classical art, literature, and philosophy of ancient Greece and Rome.
In 1624 Arundel appointed his long time chaplain, The Rev. William Petty (Petty) as his collection agent at the Porte on account of his knowledge of antiques. Petty’s task from then till 1627 was to collect antique marbles for Arundel in the Ottoman territories.
Arundel advised Petty on arrival at Constantinople to seek out Sir Thomas Roe, British Ambassador to the Porte, as he was the person through whom firmins (Ottoman permission documents) could be obtained. Roe was a collector in his own right as well as acting as a collection agent for Lord Buckingham, another of the Whitehall Group (which also included the Earl of Northumberland, the Earls of Pembroke, and the Duke of Hamilton), so the potential for conflict of interests was evident, and so it turned out with Roe trying to please two masters.
Roe was keen to assist his fellow peers, especially Arundel, who was senior in rank to him, and Roe recommended to Arundel that Petty should visit the island of Delos where many marble antiques could be had, but after Petty arrived at Constantinople in late 1624 Roe ignored his own advice to Petty and concocted an outrageous plan involving him nearer at hand.
The plan in which Roe included Petty was to steal six of the twelve 2-Metres-high decorative marble panels that were set either side of the ceremonial Porte Aura (Golden Gate) in the Constantinople city walls. The panels Roe and Petty planned to steal were inlaid with carvings of legends; of a sleeping Endymion, Hercules leading Cerberus, Pegasus tended by nymphs, a drunken Hercules, etc. Roe saw this as a joint venture for his patron Buckingham and Petty’s boss Arundel.
After consideration Roe and Petty decided that it would be impossible to surreptitiously remove the panels from their location, as each panel weighed about one ton, and the ceremonial gate was closed and guarded by 20 soldiers because it was revered by Sultan Murad IV who lived nearby in his Seven Towers Castle. Even if these difficulties could be overcome it would need 50 men and a scaffold erected to lower them down.
Roe concluded that the only way to get their six panels was to bribe a Turkish Imam to decry the Golden Gates’ depictions as un-Islamic and have them removed to a more convenient location for them to be stolen. Roe gave the Imam and the Grand Treasurer a bribe of 500 dollars over a period of three months and agreed with these officials that for a further 600 Crowns the panels would be removed to another location, from where, for a further 100 Crowns they were to be crated and taken to the docks for shipment to England.
This outrageous plot came undone when, following a reconnaissance by the Grand Treasurer and the Surveyor of the Walls, the public became aware of unhealthy interest in the panels. The Grand Treasurer told Roe that legend had it that if the panels fell then so too would the city and his life was in danger because of his apparent interest in this happening, so Roe should not even think about having them removed.
Later Petty (at Arundel’s prompting) disputed the terms of the agreement between him and Roe maintaining that instead of dividing the spoils between Buckingham and Arundel if the panels were ever obtained, they would belong solely to Arundel. When thieves fall out!
With the Golden Gate heist abandoned Petty move on to Pergamo, Samos, Ephesus, and Athens and after many adventures including shipwreck, he had amassed what was to become the Arundel Marbles. In March 1626 Roe gave Petty this glowing reference to Arundel: “There was never man so fitted to an employment, that encounters all accident with so unwearied patience, eates with Greeks on their worst days, lies with fishermen on planks at the best, is all things to all men, that he may obtain his ends, which are your lordship’s service.”
No doubt inspired by the sensation caused by the arrival of the Arundel Marbles in England in 1627, King Charles I became more active as a collector of sculptured Greek artefacts to add to his late father King James’s collection, and in 1628 appointed his trusted servant, the Privateer Sir Kenelm Digby to act as his collection agent in the East and he infamously carried out a large scale removal of marbles from the deserted island of Delos.
The University of Cambridge describes Digby’s acts thus: “Anchoring at the island of Delos, and finding it deserted, he was able to “avayle myself of the convenience of carrying away” a great many marbles, rolling the stones down to the shore. The largest objects were more problematic. When Digby’s entire crew of 300 men failed to shift one large piece, he devised a mechanism using the “mastes of ships” to lever it aboard. Displayed in a London warehouse, these looted prizes earned the approbation of the king.”
Sir Thomas Roe, by then outgoing English ambassador to the Ottoman Porte, although on record as saying about the Catholic Digby, “he would never trust anyone of that religion”, was said to have: “made much joy” when he heard of Digby’s exploits on Delos.
Moving on to 1649, and following the execution of The Dunfermline Boy, his son King Charles II ascended to the throne and he in turn loved displaying his looted marbles, as Samuel Pepys records in his diary for Saturday 30th June 1660: “So to my Lord, and with him to White Hall, where I saw a great many fine antique heads of marble, that my Lord Northumberland had given the King. Here meeting with Mr. De Cretz, he looked over many of the pieces, in the gallery with me and told me [by] whose hands they were, with great pleasure.”
Later in the early 18th century, we find that Edward Wortley Montagu (Roe’s successor as ambassador to the Porte), sought to emulate Roe, Arundel and the Whitehall Group.
To give one some idea of how British ambassadors and their ilk thought of foreigners, consider Montagu’ s wife Lady Mary, who, while on her way home after her husband’s embassy to the Porte ended in 1718, wrote to her friend Antonio Schinella Conti, (aka Abate Conti) describing Tunisian women at the ruins of the city of Carthage thus:
“Their posture in sitting, the colour of their skin, their lank black hair falling on each side their faces, their features, and the shape of their limbs, differ so little from their own country people the baboons, ’tis hard to fancy them a distinct race ; I could not help thinking there had been some ancient alliances between them.”
There are many other instances of Lady Montagu’s xenophobia, but since the subject of this blog centres on Greece it is appropriate to give a quote from her in a letter she sent to a Lady friend while she was staying in Belgrade Village, Constantinople in 1717: “I heartily beg your ladyship’s pardon; but I really could not forbear laughing heartily at your letter, and the commissions you are pleased to honour me with. You desire me to buy you a Greek slave, who is to be mistress of a thousand good qualities. The Greeks are subjects, and not slaves. Those who are to be bought in that manner, are either such as are taken in war, or stolen by the Tartars from Russia, Circassia, or Georgia, and are such miserable, awkward, poor wretches, you would not think any of them worthy to be your housemaids.”
So forget about the sanitised portraits of these people as being noble antiquarians. Sure, they usually had an artist in their party to paint pretty scenes, or a clergyman to preach on Sundays, but these were trappings to give their robbery a fig-leaf of culture, a thin veneer masking hard English Oak. They were in the main arrogant racists of the worst sort.
They were ruthless too, as Lady Wortley Montagu revealed in her letters that her husband wanted to bribe the Greek priests to allow them to remove the Sigean Marbles (a large inscribed marble of 1 tonne and a carved stele base of 1+ tonne, sacred to the local Greek people) from outside of their church on the Sigean Promontory. This looting was only prevented by the fact that the captain of their homeward-bound ship didn’t have a boat big enough to carry them from the shore to his ship, which lay at anchor offshore.
Edward Wortley Montagu did however manage to hack off another large inscribed marble panel which had been built into the porch of the church there (this inscription had been transcribed and published in England many times since 1702, so this was an act of relic-hunting rather than an interest in ancient inscriptions) and this sort of vandalism aided by bribery and corruption typified the attitude of most aristocratic British antiquarians. On Edward’s death his daughter donated this ancient inscribed slab of marble to Trinity College Cambridge where (despite my pleas that it be returned) it remains to the present day.
The next 18th century relic hunters posing as artists were a party of three, headed by Richard Chandler, (antiquary), Nicholas Revett, (architect) and William Pars, (painter) commissioned by The Society of Dilettanti in 1769, ostensibly to examine, record, and if necessary bring back ancient inscriptions and artefacts from Ottoman lands. Revett was on his second visit to the area having previously spent part of his Grand Tour documenting the ruins of ancient Athens with James Stuart, arising from which they published the book “Antiquities of Athens” in 1762.
Chandler wrote of seeing the hole in the church wall where Wortley Montagu had removed his inscribed marble plaque and like Montagu he wished to remove the two Sigean marbles that acted as seats at the church door, but, like Wortley Montagu before him, he didn’t have the equipment to do this.
Chandler had to be satisfied by having his artist, Pars, copy the designs and inscriptions of the marbles and later wrote that he wished captains of vessels in the Levant trade would bribe the priests and bring them back to England, even if that meant breaking them into pieces. Knowing this was an awful and unlawful act Chandler added: “By a proper application of all-prevailing gold, it is believed they might gain the permission or connivance of the papas [priest] and persons concerned. It should be done with secrecy.”
Not long before Elgin’s team started their collection of marbles from the Acropolis Mount it was visited by John B. S. Morritt, of Rokeby Park, son of Sir Thomas Robinson, 1st Baronet, who bribed the Disdar to have a metope broken out from the Parthenon. In his Letters he wrote of visiting Athens in 1795: “In the middle of this fine building the Turks have built a small, shabby mosque, and even that set awry towards Mecca, to look still worse. The back part is the same as the other, but only with one row of columns; of the second row there is only one remaining. Over the remaining columns on the south side the alto-rilievos are less defaced. They represent the combat of the Centaurs and Lapithae, and in each department is represented a Centaur with his antagonist. Fifteen remain, and in these nothing can exceed the variety and imagination of the attitudes, or the brilliancy and exactness of the execution. You cannot really conceive the life and spirit with which every figure is designed, though there is scarce one unbroken in some manner. I wish I may be able to bring you some as specimens. In the ruins below are laid a thousand other basso-rilievos, some of which I probably shall procure………. The Greeks are, you will see, in tres mauvaise odeur [a very bad smell] with us; and I would much rather hear that the Turks were improving their government than hear that the Empress had driven them out, for I am sure, if left to the Greeks in their present state, the country would not be passable. We have just breakfasted, and are meditating a walk to the citadel, where our Greek attendant is gone to meet the workmen, and is, I hope, hammering down the Centaurs and Lapithae, like Charles’s mayor and aldermen in the “School for Scandal.” Nothing like making hay when the sun shines, and when the commandant has felt the pleasure of having our sequins [1 sequin = app. 10 shillings] for a few days, I think we shall bargain for a good deal of the old temple. ……I am wanted by the Centaurs and Lapithae. Good-bye for a moment. Scruples of conscience had arisen in the mind of the old scoundrel at the citadel; that is to say, he did not think we had offered him enough. We have, however, rather smoothed over his difficulties, and are to have the marble the first opportunity we can find to send it off from Athens. I, only being sensible of the extreme awkwardness of Grecian workmen, tremble lest it should be entirely broken to pieces on taking it out ; if any accident happens to it I shall be quite crazy, as now there is nothing damaged but the faces and one of the hands. If I get it safe I shall be quite happy, and long to show it you at Rokeby.”
As subjects of the leading Empire in the world at the time, the British traveller on a Grand Tour had a grudging respect for their co-imperialist Turkish hosts, but generally had little respect for the subjugated native, Greek, population or their possessions. In short the Turks like the British were cruel imperial conquerors at this time, the Greeks a poor conquered people, shadows of their glorious past.
This attitude is best illustrated by John Galt who, in 1809, while travelling in the Mediterranean, met Lord Byron (who was to become the subject of his biography) wrote this observation of Greek shepherds: “The shepherds were commonly seated near the road; and in one or two instances brought a pitcher of water, which they offered me to drink, in the expectation of being rewarded with a para, a small coin, equal in value to about the fortieth part of a shilling. They had all a remarkable’ grave and melancholy look, doubtless the effect of their lonely mode of life; and they were armed with muskets to protect their sheep from the wolves and vultures. The time may come when this class of men shall be induced to turn their weapons against their oppressors. What are they to the Turks but as sheep, and what are the Turks to them but as wolves and vultures? It is impossible to witness the degraded state of the Greeks, and to remember their antient elevation and glory, without feelings of indignation; and yet, if they had not themselves fallen from their former greatness, they would not have been in the miserable situation which they now hold. It is useless to grieve for their condition. Nations, like individuals, must die; the enterprizing and speculating spirit must depart from them, and the carcase become rotten, and moulder away. The Greeks of these times, as seen among the ruins of the antient temples, are but as the vermin that inhabit the skeleton of a deceased hero.”
Elgin, like Galt was endowed with an inbred superiority complex of a British Empire Exceptionalist.
In fairness to the British looters posing as lovers of the art, the French had their own, most notably the French Ambassador to the Porte in 1784, Gabriel Florent Auguste de Choiseul-Gouffier (Choiseul-Gouffier), who attempted to remove the 650 BC Boustrophedon Inscription, claiming that his crusader ancestor featured in the text (Maths and genealogy weren’t his strong points).
To facilitate its removal Choiseul-Gouffier persuaded Hassan Pacha, the local Ottoman area official to grant him a firman, or permission, to allow this. However, even with this permission he was unable to wrest the marbles from the local Greeks who protested forcefully in large numbers as they considered them sacred items with healing powers proven over centuries.
The long established pretence for looting marble antiques was to say they were needed to inform the arts at home, but given the plethora of books showing the wonders of ancient Greece and Rome in paintings, transcriptions, detailed architectural drawings, this alibi was a weak one. The true objective was clearly stated by the instruction given by Choiseul-Gouffier to his collection team, led by antiquary Louis François Sébastien Fauvel: “Take all you can. Do not neglect any opportunity to pillage anything that is pillageable in Athens and its territory. Spare neither the dead nor the living.”
So you see, beginning with the ambassador Roe who wished to steal the most prized object in Constantinople from under the Sultan’s nose, by the 19th century there was a long established pattern of royalty, ambassadors to the Porte, and wealthy British and French collectors, bribing, bullying and stealing precious relics from the indigenous people in the Ottoman lands, because the power of their empire enabled them to do so.
I believe it is evident that Elgin was no exception to those who preceded him, but rather was typical of those upper-class collectors who believed that natives of lands south of the English Channel were incapable of looking after their own relics and they had a right to take them. In short they believed the dictum that Wogs began at Calais.
Elgin knew, because of the geopolitical situation in late 1799, that if he could get to Constantinople as Plenipotentiary Ambassador to the Porte he could outdo the long list of marble-collecting racketeers who preceded him, and he intended to do just that.
