MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
DURING the past few weeks I have seen, both on the news-reels and in the illustrated papers, piotures of men and women emerging from the sea. These Channel swimmers do not seem from their photographs to be very beauti- ful or very young ; cupids do not waft them from shore to shore, nor tritons herald their approach ; no Aphrodite Anadyomene rides with pink feet across the laughing waves, but Caliban and Sycorax clamber across the boulders smeared from head to foot with blubber-oil. I have asked many of my friends Sycorax clamber across the boulders smeared from head to foot with blubber-oil. I have asked many of my friends who are expert swimmers why it is that, although everybody today seems to cross the Channel by this method of propulsion, when Matthew Webb did so in August, 1875, the whole world stood amazed. It seems that, in the interval, science has made giant strides. Swimmers today can suck at bottles tendered to them by their impresarios and containing the special glucose mixture that is administered to sick sea-lions at the Zoo ; the knowledge of the habits of tides has increased so much since the Webb days that swimmers can now float in the right, instead of in the wrong, direction ; and it has been found that huge quanti- ties of grease keep out the chill and the brine. The only person I know of who had any serious motive in undergoing these endurance tests was Leander, who would swim backwards and forwards between Abydos and Sestos in order to visit Hero, priestess of the Temple of Aphrodite. Nightly did he cross and recross the Heptastadium near the narrows, landing at the Apobathra where Xerxes had anchored his mulberry, and swimming back, with current helping, to the Nagara Bournu, near Chanak. But then Poseidon became jealous and drowned him. Which was, as Hero remarked, a dirty ("turpe ") trick.
* * * * On May 3rd, 1810, Lord Byron, as he so frequently reminds us, repeated Leander's exploit. He had made a first attempt on April 13th, but the wind was in the north, the current increased in strength and speed, and the waves cold. Lord Byron had to be pulled back into the boat. Three weeks later he made a second attempt, this time accompanied by Lieutenant Ekenhead. Although the actual distance from point to point was not more than a mile, they were carried four miles beyond the headland in the direction of Chanak. Byron was in the water one hour and ten minutes and Mr. Ekenhead one hour and five minutes ; so I presume that the Lieutenant won. " We were not fatigued," wrote Byron, " but a little chilled." How delighted he was by this exploit! He wrote to his mother about it ; he wrote to Drury ; he wrote a very poor stanza on the subject ; he made Hobhouse insert a special note in the book he was writing on his travels in the Levant ; and many years later the memory returned to him in the brightest colours: " A better swimmer you could scarce see ever,
He could perhaps have passed the Hellespont, As once (a feat on which ourselves we prided),
Leander, Mr. Ekenhead and 1 did." - Always have I enjoyed the picture of Byron, glorying in his twenty-two years, plunging across the Dardanelles, indifferent to currents and dolphins, on that May afternoon of 1810. I had always wanted to learn more about the episode, and now the kindness of an unknown correspondent has given me an unexpected opportunity. * * * * She has sent me, as an unsolicited gift, a book entitled The Life of a Sailor, written by Captain Frederick Chamier, and first published in 1831. Fred Chamier was a midshipman on board the ' Salsette ' frigate, in which Byron and Hobhouse had been granted a passage from Malta to Constantinople. They were delayed for several weeks at the narrows in the Dardanelles, awaiting the firman that would permit them, after unloading all gunpowder, to sail further and enter the Golden Horn. Fred Chamier seems to have been a sturdy but withal sensitive little boy ; when obliged to witness a sailor being' flogged on the quarter-deck he turned very white and burst into tears ; and when he heard the purser inform Lord Byron that there were no oranges left, he dived into his sea-chest, polished his own orange on the seat of his trousers, and presented it to Lord Byron with what I am sure was an engaging smile. Byron, who was kind to young people, was delighted by this courtesy ; he asked Captain Bathurst whether he might take Fred with him on his expedition to the Troad. Off they went, mounted on wild horses, with Byron's two Souliote attendants keeping guard. Byron seated himself upon the tomb of Patroclos and made notes in a book, which Fred felt sure must be Homer, but which I suspect to have been a volume of the learned Gell. Fred meanwhile scampered after the lizards and much amused Byron by jumping backwards and forwards across the Scamander. Then they all rode on to Abydos, where they arrived in the early afteinoon. Byron decided then and there to swim the Hellespont. In vain did the British Consul, Mr. Tarragona, seek to dissuade him. At least, urged Mr. Tarragona, let him cross to the opposite shore and swim back to Asia with the current less unfavourable. So they all took the boat across to Sestos.
Fred Chamier, being very young, took a dislike to Mr. Tarra- gona. He refers to him as " the dirtiest Consul I have ever known. . . . The vermin, which even a Maltese woman dis- lodges from her child, crawled in careless security over his collar." He was annoyed also by the seemingly useless business of rowing across the Straits to the Apobathra : " While I was ruminating," he writes, " on the useless excur- sion, I saw Lord Byron in a state of nudity, rubbing himself all over with oil, and taking to the water like a duck—When he arrived about half-way across, he gave up the attempt and was handed into the boat and dressed. He did not appear in the least fatigued, but was as cold as charity and white as snow. He was cruelly mortified at the failure and did not speak one word until he arrived on shore. His look was that of an angry, disappointed girl, and his upper lip curled, like that of a pas- sionate woman. I see it now, as if it were yesterday."
Thereafter Byron and Fred Chamier appear to have made great friends. When they reached Constantinople they would take walks together among the alleys of Pera and Stamboul. The midshipman was invited with the rest of the party to lunch at the Sublime Porte, and while seated cross-legged upon the ground, and embarrassed by the strange dishes that were served to him, he was encouraged by a great wink that Byron addressed to him across the room. He thought Byron brave and calm and grand ; he liked the way he stared with cool defiance at the janissaries ; he liked the way " he recovered his gaiety with the rising of the moon." He did not think him so wonderfully handsome, " as I consider beauty only applicable to women." He says it was all nonsense to pretend that Byron was sensitive about his deformed foot ; how often -bad he seen him sitting on the taffrail and dangling his legs for all to see. " He certainly," writes Fred, " did not swim the Hellespont in Hessian boots."
* * * * At the island of Zea, Byron left the Salsette ' and returned to Athens. Fred Chamier was sorry to see him go. They parted on the scala at Zea with " a warm and friendly shake of the hand." Thereafter some Greeks " took charge of his little luggage. . . . He turned towards the frigate, waved his hand- kerchief, and then advanced into the interior of the island." And what of Lieutenant Ekenhead of the Marines ? So overjoyed was he, on returning to Malta, to learn that he had received promotion, that " he managed to tumble over the bridge which separates Nix Mangiare Stairs from Valetta and was killed on the spot." Captain Bathurst, for his part, was killed at Navarino. Byron returned, after some months in Athens and the Morea, to wake up famous. I doubt whether he ever met Midshipman Fred Chamier again.
Previous page
