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ONE PASSION, TWO LOVES

THE STORY OF HEINRICH AND SOPHIA SCHLIEMANN, DISCOVERERS OF TROY

BY LYNN AND GRAY POOLE

THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY

NEW YORK ESTABLISHED 1834

COPYRIGHT 1966 BY LYNN D. AND GRAY J. POOLE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED NO PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM, EXCEPT BY A REVIEWER WITHOUT THE PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER. DESIGNED BY JUDITH WORACEK BARRY. MANUFACTURED !N THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. UBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NO. 66-25434

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THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF HEINRICH AND SOPHIA SCHLIEMANN

PLATO, EPISTLES VII. 841 C.

“There Is no way of putting it into words like other studies, but after much communion and constant inter course unth the thing itself suddenly, like a light kindled from a leaping fire, it is born within the soul and henceforth nourishes itself”

Alex L. Melas, Schliemann’s last living grandchild, gave invaluable assistance with long-guarded family material and newly discovered letters of his grandparents. The little-finger ring is his sole possession from the excavated treasures.

FOREWORD

BY ALEX L. MELAS

It is half past midnight. The air over Athens tonight is chilly, but there is a full moon. My own heart is brightened by the manuscript of the book written by Mr. Lynn and Madame Gray Poole about my grandparents, Heinrich and Sophia Schliemann.

After lunch today, I began reading what my friends wrote, and I was filled with great emotion and pride over how my grand parents come alive in this book. Night arrived and the full moon came up over the Hills of Hymettus and made the columns of the Temple of Olympian Zeus cast sharp shadows. I see the Hills and Temple from one balcony of my apartment ; from the other side I see the moon shining on the Parthenon, on the Acropolis, “the Sacred Rock,” as we call it.

I stood up from my armchair, where I sat watching this beautiful night. I walked to the balcony and, impulsively, I looked toward the templelike mausoleum where Heinrich, Sophia, and all the other dead members of my family are entombed. My eyes blurred and I could feel the souls of my grandparents wandering into my living room, guiding my hand to trace these lines, as I left the balcony and started to write. The night was so quiet, so beautiful and so serene. The only sound was my fast-pounding heart which said, “Thanks God, at last someone has written the truth about my grandparents who devoted their life to archaeology, created a science of this art, and brought forth, for the world to see, the ancient Trojan and Mycenaean civilization, as the great Homer wrote in his poems.”

I also thanked my lucky stars for the day I met the Pooles, who have since become my dear friends. I knew at once that I had found two people to whom I could entrust memorabilia that previously I had refused to give to any other biographers.

[vii]

After many talks, Lynn Poole said to me, “There is no reason merely to write another book about their archaeological excavations. The book that must be written is one about Heinrich and Sophia as two great, unique people and about the lives they lived. To accomplish this we must relive their lives if we are to under stand them and tell their personal story.” Truly, the Pooles have actually “lived with” Heinrich and Sophia Schliemann through these years, as they sought for every clue to their character and dug into old and newly found records to interpret what the young Greek girl, Sophia, and the German man, Heinrich, contributed to the world. The Pooles searched in seven nations for facts included in this book.

How deep and clear is the authors’ thought in so many places throughout the book ! Even I was startled from time to time by some of their new interpretations, based on facts never before realized. One example concerns the gold treasure of Troy. Everyone  has written that the treasure was found in a copper box. The Pooles read and reread the diaries, letters, cables, articles and books. They are certain and I am sure they are correct that there never was a copper box, only a copper shield hiding the treasure, which had originally been placed in a wooden box.

They have told for the first time the true story of how Heinrich and Sophia met. Research and refusal to accept apochryphal accounts have shown there is no evidence to support the theory that Heinrich’s major objective in excavating Troy was to find gold. My grandfather had more gold than he needed ; he worked and earned it, then spent vast sums of his own money on his excavations. He did not need gold from Troy to add to his personal fortunes.

Many times we worked together in Athens for unending hours, poring over new archives, which by mere luck were found locked and forgotten in an old trunk in a basement of an Athenian house. This trunk contained twenty-nine diplomas from the most important universities, archaeological institutes and societies, museums, and governments of the time, together with letters from the most prominent men of the nineteenth century. In addition there was intimate correspondence of Heinrich and Sophia, in five different languages, according to which country they were writing from. Here we discovered letters of Heinrich’s last weeks in Halle where he suffered surgical operations. I am happy that I could make these treasures, along with other data from our family records, available to the Pooles.

As my friends searched for new information throughout the world, we three worked together, communicating by letter, cable and telephone across the Atlantic, from Athens to Baltimore, Maryland.

Over these years, the Pooles and I have made our own odyssey, tracing step by step, scene by scene, motivation by motivation, the lives of my grandparents.

A little more than an hour ago, as I stood in the cemetery beside the mausoleum of my grandparents I felt sure that they know what has now been written. In the life after death, where they are joined together, they know that at last the story of their life has been set down with truth and understanding.

Who can be certain that the dead do not know what the living perform ? No one can be certain. But I am sure they do know and rest better in peace. They were both somewhat superstitious. They believed their own dreams. They believed, too, in metempsychosis and transmigration. So why, as their grandson, should I not believe that Heinrich and Sophia were with us as One Passion, Two Loves was being written.

I was born in Iliou Melathron and spent the most and best time of my life in that beautiful Palace in Athens, the home where for ten years Heinrich and Sophia lived, with the world of great men passing through their doors. I grew up hearing my grandmother, Sophia, and my mother, Sophia’s daughter, Andromache, repeat
again and again always the same the stories of the Schliemanns’ life together. I read the many letters and diaries of my grandparents.

 

Most of all, I saw the light of love in Sophia’s eyes each time she spoke of Heinrich, until the day she died in 1932, invoking her be loved husband’s name.

Because I had this privilege, I am certain that my grandparents know what has been written now and are content ; as I am happy and honored being their last living grandchild.

Athens, Greece

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

On September 28, 1963, we met Alex L. Melas, only living grand child of Heinrich and Sophia Schliemann. We were in Athens, participating in the Greek Heritage Symposium on Hellenic Culture, being held at the Grande Bretagne Hotel. Christopher G. Janus, publisher of Greek Heritage Quarterly, was eager for us to know his old friend General Melas. The introduction made by Mr. Janus was significant for us. It concluded many years of avocational study of the lives of Dr. Schliemann and his wife, and marked the beginning of purposeful research for the writing of One Passion, Two Loves.

General Melas made available to us vast amounts of family material that he had not previously shown to any author. There was also for our use the tremendous collection of Schliemann memorabilia in the Gennadius Library of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. We sought verification and amplification of data in letters, diaries and other source material from numberless people in several countries. We did research in West Berlin, East Berlin, Paris and London. In these cities and in many villages on the Continent we found information vital to an in-depth understanding of Heinrich and Sophia Schliemann. Newspapers in Greek archives, in German, French and British repositories, shed light on facts not used by other authors; cleared up misconceptions previously written.

During extended visits to Athens we were sought out by Greeks, strangers to us, who had heard we were searching for information about Heinrich and Sophia Schliemann, An old priest brought us a well-worn book with an illustration of the church of St. Meletios as it was when Heinrich and Sophia were married there on September 23, 1869 ; two icons pictured are on the altar of the present church of St. Meletios. Collateral descendants of the Schliemanns had hitherto unpublished pictures of members of the family. One such remote relative presented us with an engraved calling card of Dr. Heinrich Schliemann; a notation on it in Schliemann’s own handwriting provided the missing link to an important chain of events. Many cooperative informants respectively offered tiny bits of information that proved to be invaluable to the total work. These are but a few examples of contributions made by warmhearted and wonderful Greeks.

In the fall of 1965 a locked trunk filled with 750 Schliemann letters and other memorabilia was discovered in Athens. We were privileged to have sole access to those letters, which revealed previously unknown data about the personal and professional lives of Heinrich and Sophia.

Facts used in this book have been taken from many long known documents and from original sources we used while doing intensive research. When we state in our narrative that “Sophia felt” or “Heinrich thought” we are factually reporting from letters, diaries, articles, books and other written memorabilia of both Heinrich and Sophia Schliemann, including long-missing documents stored in the trunk in Athens; we are not reporting what someone else said or thought about the Schliemanns.

Like all authors of biography, we are indebted to many more people than we can ever properly thank for assistance in seeking out source material.

 

Our first and deepest thanks go to Alex L. Melas whose faith in us was confirmed by his generous sharing of the wealth of family material that he had so assiduously guarded through the years. General Melas gave of his time and energies to help us whenever we were working in Greece and to advise us by correspondence when we were far from Athens. Through the happy years of our research on this book about his illustrious grandparents, he aided us with enthusiasm. He provided written and photographic evidence we needed to tell the personal story of the lives of Heinrich and Sophia Schliemann. The depth and scope of our book would not have been possible without the assistance and collaboration of General Melas.

We are grateful to Christopher G. Janus, publisher of Greek Heritage Quarterly, for the original introduction to Alex Melas and for continued interest and enthusiasm throughout the project.

We owe an immeasurable debt to Dr. Francis R. Walton, Librarian of the Gennadius Library in Athens, his assistant librarian Miss Eurydice Demetracopoulou, and Miss Loukia Frangouli of the library staff. To Professor Henry Robinson, Director of the American School of Classical Studies, we pay respects and appreciation for his aid since our first meeting in 1962.

We express our thanks for valuable assistance and hospitality to D. Papaefstratiou, former Director General of the Greek National Tourist Office in Athens, and his associates, T. Frangopoulos and C. Gondikas ; to George Canellos, General Manager of the Grande Bretagne Hotel, who was interested in our project and arranged interviews with many people, including the grandson of Yannakis, Schliemann’s faithful overseer at Troy ; to Brian Bojonell, Director of the Athens’ office of Pan American World Airways, whose advice on many vital matters was ebullient and productive. With special pleasure we acknowledge the kind aid and productive assistance given by lason Antoniades while we were in Greece.

We take pleasure in expressing our special thanks to Professor Emil Kuntze, Director of the German Archaeological Institute in Athens, and his assistant Mrs. Maria Tzannetokos, for making available rare items and specific information, as well as permission to use photographs which we selected and they provided ; to Professor George E. Mylonas of Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, currently director of excavations at Mycenae, for his enthusiastic encouragement and assistance ; to Professor Oscar Bro-neer, who, having lived and excavated for more than forty years in Greece, gave us vital direction and provided important information about many episodes in our book ; to Professor Carl Blegen whose discussions of his own excavations at Troy, long after Schliemann’s death, were of incalculable help, not only with facts but in adding to our own understanding of Schliemann’s work and his place in history.

We would be grossly remiss if we did not pay our respects to His Excellency Alexander Matsas, Greek Ambassador to the United States of America, for his encouragement and enthusiasm, his personal and official assistance for more than three years.

We are indebted to the late Professor Dimitri Papadimitriou, who talked with us often about Schliemann’s role in the growth of archaeological investigation. While lunching beside the water at Tourcolimano at the Piraeus, Professor Papadimitriou approved our writing down his statement that, “Schliemann was the father of a totally new approach to archaeology and without him we might well still be in the dark ages of knowledge about the Mycenaen civilization.” Professor George Mylonas added his belief and emphasis to Papadimitriou’s conclusion. With this fact many modern archaeologists agree, in spite of the manner in which Schliemann slashed through the Hill of Hissarlik where he uncovered the cities of Troy.

Our brief thanks to the following is not commensurate with the extent of their contributions to our research :

Aileen M. Armstrong, secretary of the Royal Historical Society, London ; Edward Bacon, Archaeological Editor of the Illustrated London News; Werner Brussau, professor at the Free University of West Berlin; Professor Heinrich Bleich, Director, Stadt. Archive, Mannheim, Germany; Sir Tranchard Cox, Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London ; D. M. Day of the British Embassy in Washington, D.C ; Dr. Sterling Dow, Harvard University ; Edward J. Dziczkowski of Frankfurt, Germany ; Sir Frank Francis, Director, British Museum, London; Sir William Haley, Editor, the London Times; Dr. W. J. van Hoboken, Director of the City Archives, Amsterdam; Dr. Willy Gellert, Mannheim, Germany ; C. H. Gibbs-Smith, Keeper of the Department of Education, Victoria and Albert Museum, London ; George Kastriotes, sculptor, painter and great-grandson of Sophia Schliemann’s brother, Alexandros; Dr. William G. Niederland, psychoanalyst who made a year’s study of Heinrich Schliemann from records in the Gennadius Library; The Honorable Henry Richardson La-bouisse, United States Ambassador to Greece, 1962-65; Dr. Roger Lyon, Cultural Counsellor of the Mission of the United States of America to West Berlin ; Miss Jean K. Macdonald, secre tary to the Royal Archaeological Society of Great Britain and Ireland ; The Honorable Stephanos K. Galetes, Director of the Foundation of the Society of Friends of Education, Athens, Greece; Lanning MacFarland, Chicago Philhellene ; Miss Nanon Manotopoulos, knowledgeable translator in Athens; Edouard Morot-Sir, Cultural Counsellor, Embassy of France, Washington, D.C. ; Dr. Werner Mueller and his assistant Dr. Henrika Hesse of the Near Eastern Division, Staatliche Museum in East Germany ; Professor Adrian von Mueller and Professor Wolfram Nagel of the Museum fuer Von-und Freuhgeschichte of West Berlin; Mrs. S. Riccardi, Chief, Newspaper Section of the New York Public Library, New York City; A. M. Michael Robb, A.M. CMC, Minister, British Embassy, Washington, B.C.; Professor James Poultney, Depart ment of Classics, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Mary land; Bruno J. Schroeder, the Henry Schroeder Company, London; Carsten Seecamp, Department of German, The Johns Hopkins University; The Honorable C. T. Rolf van Baarda, Minister, Embassy of the Netherlands, Washington, D.C. ; Peter-Nick Va-valis, of Athens, Greece, who helped prepare the book Schliemann in Indianapolis, and who aided us while in Athens ; Dr. John H. Young, professor of classics at The Johns Hopkins University, and his wife, also a classical scholar and archaeologist.

To Hugh Rawson, editor of One Passion, Two Loves, we extend our gratitude for his great contributions from manuscript to printed page.

To all who made it possible for us to prepare this book, and to all who smoothed our path and offered true Hellenic hospitality we say Ejkaristo, a single word conveying the true depths of our affection and appreciation.

LYNN AND GRAY POOLE

Baltimore, Maryland

Appendix A, an address given by Madame Schliemann for The Royal Archaeological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, will be found on page 285. Appendix B, some facts and suppositions about the fate of the Schliemann Collection, will be found on page 289. The index begins on page 291.

The Aegean and Asia Minor

ONE

As the S/S Niemen, out of Marseille, slowly approached the harbor of Piraeus, a middle-aged man, restlessly pacing the upper deck, stared at a small photograph clutched in his right hand. With the Greek port in sight on that September morning of 1869, Dr. Heinrich Schliemann was impatient to land. World citizen, self-made scholar, and international financier, he was about to start a new life as excavator searching for prehistoric Troy, and as bridegroom of a teen-age wife. It was her photograph he held; brown eyes, wide-set and with an expression as serious as his own, were the outstanding feature of the beautiful girl pictured. He peered intently at the young face, marking the conformation, the texture and the quality, all long familiar from deep study of the photograph. On the back of the frayed print, its edges torn and split by frequent handling, the name Sophia was scribbled.

Landing boats were close to the Niemen and its anchor chains clanking before Schliemann jammed the photograph into the pocket of his loose-fitting summer suit and rapidly went below. With the efficiency of an experienced traveler, he counted his luggage stacked by prearrangement for speedy removal from the ship. Schliemann’s voice, reedy and high-pitched, had nonetheless a tone of authority that spurred into action the unloading crew and the captain of a small boat at the liner’s side. Schliemann gave orders to deckhands in French and to the boatman in Greek, accenting the words with imperious gestures. His landing boat, shortly piled high with valises, packing cases and small trunks, reached the quay before any other; and Schliemann, the first passenger ashore, was also first at the railroad station. A train to Athens was pulling away, and Schliemann sputtered with agitation when told that another would not leave for two hours. Moody and preoccupied, he fretted through the delay, intolerable to him. Irritation welled again when there was no carriage at the Athens station, and he had to walk to the hotel in the heat of the day. Moving with graceless gait, he entered the lobby of the Hotel d’Angleterre and signed his name on the register’s page dated September 2, 1869. The staff of the hotel rallied for a cordial welcome to their returning guest, but he cut short the amenities in his haste to get on with arrangements for his marriage, the purpose of his visit to Athens.

Schliemann’s compulsive drive toward the immediate realization of any project was deeply ingrained. In early life he over came the handicaps of poverty, illness and lack of education, achieving the successful status that was to permit the pursuit of his future goal. In quest of knowledge, he traveled to many lands, everywhere attempting to separate legend and lore from history and fact. He walked the Great Wall of China and penetrated the jungles of Peru, Mexico and Chile; he crisscrossed the United States and traipsed the deserts of Arabia.

He grasped every opportunity to make the money that was essential to the financing of excavation of Troy. Leaving a flourishing business in Russia, the German-born Schliemann traveled to California, on a family matter, and made a fortune in the gold rush before returning to St. Petersburg, where he amassed enormous wealth. He was a profiteer of the Crimean War, justifying himself by saying the cash was needed to prove that Homer wrote history and Troy was a real place. Later he wrote, “I loved money, indeed, but solely as the means of realizing the one passion of my life to find Troy.” No more realistic than romantic, he wanted a Greek wife at his side while he searched for Troy.

After a miserable marriage with a physically frigid, emotionally selfish, and intellectually sterile Russian woman, he arranged to divorce her in the United States at Indianapolis. While there, he began negotiations for an Hellenic bride. Photographs of matrimonial prospects were sent to him by an Athenian friend, Archbishop Theoclitus Vimbos, who, as a theological student in St. Petersburg, had tutored Schliemann the businessman in ancient and modern Greek. Their friendship remained constant through correspondence, the most recent letters having dealt with two subjects: Schliemann’s intention to excavate Troy and his hopes for betrothal to a Greek girl.

In his first letter, outlining his requirements for a wife, Schliemann stated that he wanted to marry a girl of pure Greek heritage who resembled Helen of Troy as he visualized her. He specified, too, that she should be unsophisticated as well as good-looking. Vimbos, accepting the challenge of his friend and former student, assembled a collection of photographs of prospective brides. When packing them to send to Schliemann in Indianapolis, Vimbos, as an afterthought, included one of the young Sophia, daughter of his favorite cousin. Schliemann carefully studied the photo graphed faces, judging one girl to be too bossy; another, obviously of Italian descent; and another, frivolous. Vacillating during his perusal of the pictures, he returned again and again to the portrait of Sophia. He had it copied and sent prints to his father and to other members of his family, with the notation: “I shall go to Athens and marry Sophia.”

The morning after Schliemann’s 1869 arrival in Athens, his hotel suite looked like a settled home. On his well-ordered desk were papers neatly stacked, books arranged in a graduated row, and pens lined up beside a brimful inkwell. A highly polished silver dresser set- shone on the top of a bureau ; its capacious drawers were filled with scarfs of silk and wool, with neckties and cravats, with piles of underwear and, by the dozens, stiff collars and shirts, labeled by his London shirtmaker. Schliemann selected a suit of linen from a huge wooden wardrobe ; in it, hang ing shoulder to shoulder, were other suits of tweed and twill, greatcoats in heavy weight and light, full-dress suits and cotton dusters. Schliemann, who at forty-seven possessed the accoutre ments of a boulevardier, lacked the flair to make him the image of one. Before leaving his room, he glanced into a mirror that reflected not a dashing gallant but a conservatively tailored, slight man of no physical distinction.

Hat in hand, cane handle curved over his left wrist, Schliemann went down to the lobby to meet Leon Melas, chairman of the board of The Arsakeion, the private school for daughters of prominent Athenians, where Sophia studied. Melas knew only that Schliemann wanted to observe Sophia in her classroom, and the two men set a fast pace toward the school. The board chair man bowed to acquaintances as he and Schliemann crossed the plaza in front of the Royal Palace. They turned left into University Street and, continuing along that thoroughfare, passed a wooded acreage where Schliemann was eventually to build his own palatial home. Just beyond that site and to the right, was the University of Athens, and diagonally from it was the Arsakeion School. There the two men lingered briefly to look at the Ionic columns, supporting a pediment on which was lettered the word AP2AKEION. Entering, Melas and Schliemann walked down a broad hall to a classroom. A wave of nervous excitement swept through the room as the young girls surreptitiously exchanged questioning glances. What possible reason could there be for the presence of the eminent Mr. Melas, normally seen only at the school’s formal functions? And who was the unknown mustached man, as old as many of their fathers ?

It was he who asked the teacher if he might hear recitations from his favorite poet, Homer. One after another, tongue-tied pupils were unable to stammer out more than a couple of lines from the Odyssey and the Iliad. Schliemann, having identified the seventeen-year-old Sophia from her photograph, eagerly waited for her to rise from her place in the second row from the front. At last, at a nod from the teacher, Sophia stood and, facing the guests, started to recite in classical Greek. Without affectation or elaborate gesture, she spoke the following lines from Homer : “Helen rose third, leading the lament : Oh Hector, most dear of all my stalwart brothers, and most close to my heart! Truly my husband is the royal Alexandros who fled me to Honored Troy, yet would I had died before this. Twenty years have come and gone since I left mine homeland for Troy, yet while here none among you has said an unkind and cruel word to me. If others spoke harshly of me, a sister or brother among you, or even a brother’s wife, or your mother; fair indeed was your father to me as though my own; you challenged them, silenced them, with your loving spirit and loving words. For this I weep for you all and we together weep for my sorrowing self. Throughout all Troy there is no one good and kind ; instead they revile me.” Sophia’s rendition of the quotation from the Iliad so moved Schliemann that tears misted his eyes. As attentive as if he him self did not know each line of the poetry and every syllable of the words, he listened to her recitation of the concluding passage : “Dawn on the following day showed her rosy fingers through the clouds, and Trojans circled round the funeral pyre of great Hector.

At first they quenched the flame with their wine where flames still burned. Next, Hector’s brothers and dearest friends brushed together his white-ash bones, while tears of sorrow wet their cheeks. Placing his remains in a golden casket, wrapping it in fine purple cloth, they put the casket in a grave and piled heavy stones atop the grave. Swiftly they formed the marked-place as guards stood alert lest the Achaeans attack without warning. This accomplished, mourners returned to the city, and all in family and of friends partook of a great feast in the Palace of their King, Priam. That was the funeral of Hector.”

Sophia sat down to spontaneous applause. Schliemann, without showing the exultation he felt, thanked the teacher and Sophia and, with Melas, left the school. Jubilant, Schliemann proceeded at once to the home of Vimbos, Archbishop of Mantineia and Kynouria, who greeted Heinrich with a hug and kisses on both cheeks. The two old friends set tled comfortably in the Archbishop’s study, and throughout the long afternoon of September 3 Schliemann eagerly questioned Vimbos, drawing from him information about Sophia and her large family. Sophia was the youngest of seven children : the two eldest were sisters, Katingo and Marigo, and there were four brothers, Spiros, Alexandras, Yiango and Panighotes. By Greek custom, Archbishop Vimbos, as first cousin to their mother, was maternal “uncle” of the children to whom he was devoted and attentive.
Sophia was always the least lively of the children who, close in age, together competed in numerous active and sedentary games. Particularly after her matriculation at The Arsakeion, Sophia so patently preferred her books to contests of wit and athletic skill that her brothers and sisters teasingly called her Miss Philosophia, a word that could be written in Greek as a pun meaning I kiss you, Sophia.

Sophia’s mother, a member of the Cretan family Gheladaki, was a statuesque matron, proud and formidable in appearance, in spiring everybody with awe. She was addressed and invariably referred to as Madame Victoria, never by her husband’s surname. That name was confusing. Sophia’s father was born George Kastromenos, whose ancestors for generations occupied a house in the Thesion section of Athens.Kastromenos, meaning house *Translation by Lynn Poole.

nearest the castle, aptly described the patrimonial home that was the building nearest to the Acropolis. The Church of Our Lady of Vlassarou was close by, and to the west on a small hill stood the Temple of Theseus.

George Kastromenos, ebullient, jovial and talkative, had a ready laugh and a hearty appetite that, uncontrolled, produced a mammoth paunch. It earned him the nickname Engastromenos, meaning pregnant, and in the custom of the time in Greece, the nickname became the designation for others in the family. While not affluent, George owned a successful business in drapery, the importing of fine fabrics, and had, in addition to the ancestral house, a country home in the Colonos section, famous as the birthplace of Sophocles.
It was to the country place that the Archbishop and Schliemann drove in the late day. The house was tile-roofed, box-shaped, and small. Its spacious garden was adjacent to St. Meletios Church, a long low building topped with a bell tower forward, and toward the back, a small dome, centered by a cross. Flourishing cedar trees planted by George Engastromenos marked the boundary of his garden and the churchyard.

Madame Victoria and her husband welcomed Schliemann and Vimbos, who suggested they withdraw to a quiet place, away from the activity of the bustling household, for a confidential talk. Schliemann, without preamble, asked Sophia’s parents for per mission to marry her. Astounded, they heard him out in silence.
With succinct statement he touched on his financial successes and explained that his previous marriage to the mother of his three children had failed because she refused to travel or to live with him, either in Paris or anywhere else outside her native Russia. He expressed his delight with Sophia, showing her parents the well-worn photograph that he had been carrying for more than six months, and telling them of his visit to The Arsakeion earlier in the day.

Schliemann, in a letter dated the day of his wedding, wrote to a friend, “When I asked for the approval of Sophia’s parents to our wedding, I asked if there is any objection because of my recent divorce. They answered . . . : ‘Thanks god we are not enemies of our daughter and it would be a wicked doing to turn down such a great happiness for which the whole of Greece must envy us.

Even if we waited ten thousand years, never a second time would it happen to us that a Schliemann should honor us (by asking) to marry our daughter. Even the Furies would punish us if we made such a sin (as refusal), so take our daughter and live with her. Having received parental blessings for the match, Schliemann  peremptorily announced that he wanted the wedding to be held within a matter of weeks. Madame Victoria demurred but Schliemann prevailed. A tentative day was decided on by the time Schliemann and Vimbos, with Sophia’s parents, joined the family group. If Sophia was surprised to see the stranger of the class room in her home, she gave no sign, but smilingly greeted “Uncle” Vimbos, who kissed her on the forehead and then said, “Sophia, this is my friend, Heinrich Schliemann.” With grace she put out her hand to him. Nothing in that casual introduction augured the misunderstandings of the ensuing days, the future clash of wills of two headstrong people, or the ultimate shared joys of a loving couple. Sophia, demure in a simple cotton frock, her unbound black hair shining across her shoulders, typified a young daughter being presented to a guest of her parents. Hardly taller than Sophia, Schliemann, slope-shouldered and balding, looked to be a most unlikely suitor for the slender girl he expected to marry, and soon.

At table Schliemann talked volubly with a sparkling wit and charm that he never evidenced outside an intimate circle of family and friends. Those acquaintances who judged him as dour and monosyllabic would not have thought it possible for him to hold companions spellbound, as he did throughout the evening. The immediate family and visiting relatives were all enthralled by the world traveler who spoke with familiarity of places known to them only as words in an atlas.

(COURTESY : ALEX L. MELAS)

Heinrich Schliemann ‘was a ‘wealthy financier, a world traveler, a scholar and linguist. At the age of forty-seven he divorced his first <wije y Ekaterina, and ‘wrote to Archbishop Vimbos in Athens to find him a new bride.

 

Schliemanris diary, dated 22 July 1869, he writes oj New York City, “. . . new constructions are going on every where” On July 24, once headed for France aboard the steamship St. Laurent, Schliemann began writing in French.

From a photo, Heinrich chose Sophia Engastromenos to be his second wife. Her parents, delighted by his offer, were happy for Sophia; Schlieniann, happy to have their permission, was delighted by Sophia. Sophia, only seventeen, obediently accepted.

A proud and formidable woman, whose appearance and manner were awe-inspiring, Sophia’s mother was always addressed as “Madame Victoria” never by her husband’s surname.

 

(PAINTING BY GEORGE KASTRIOTES)

George Engastromenos was head of a family of seven children. He enjoyed eating, talking, and life in general qualities not evident in this severe portrait.

TWO

The Engastromenos family did not know that Schliemann’s at tainment of prominence was a personal triumph motivated by a boyhood dream. Heinrich Schliemann, born on January 6, 1822, at Neu-Buckow, Germany, was taken the following year to Anker- shagen where his father accepted the post of clergyman. Heinrich was one of seven children, having two brothers and four sisters. In the parsonage of the small village church, young Heinrich first heard about ancient Troy from Ernst Schliemann. Though neither scholar nor archaeologist, the pastor had a passion for ancient history and, with enthusiasm, often told of the tragic fate of Herculaneum and Pompeii. Ernst Schliemann, who related with admiration the great deeds of Homeric heroes and the events of the Trojan War, always found his son to be a defender of the Trojan cause. Heinrich grieved that Troy had disappeared with out leaving any traces of its existence. The child’s joy was bound less when, in 1829, he received as a Christmas gift Dr. George Ludwig Jerrer’s Universal History, which had an illustration showing Troy in flames. Heinrich excitedly said to his father that Jerrer must have seen Troy, for otherwise he could not have represented it so well. The clergyman told the boy that the picture was merely fanciful, but Heinrich would not be convinced. He insisted that if such walls once existed they could not possibly have been completely destroyed. “Ruins must be buried by earth,” he stubbornly claimed. Heinrich then and there vowed that he would one day excavate Troy, and his father agreed.

The father’s concession probably was made to cut short a bootless argument and to humor a small boy who believed in legends both of faraway places and of his own neighborhood. Little Heinrich roamed in search of ghosts reputed to haunt Ankershagen and of treasure said to be buried in the local graveyard and ruins
of a castle. His natural disposition for the mysterious and the marvelous was stimulated to a passion by the wonders of his locality. There was supposed to be one ghost on the grounds of the parsonage and another in the pond beyond the garden. Treasure was reputedly buried in numerous locations in and near the village, and a left leg grew out of a grave in the churchyard. In his autobiography Schliemann, affirming that “in my childish simplicity I, of course, believed in all of this,” gave precise details about each tale told in the town.

On how many moonlight nights must the small Heinrich have leaned out of his bedroom window, hoping for a glimpse of the ghost of Pastor von Russdorf, his father’s predecessor and haunt of the garden house of the parsonage, and of the maiden in the pond who was believed to rise each midnight, holding a silver bowl. By day, Heinrich’s explorations were wide-ranging, and at various sites he optimistically dug with trowel and small shovel. There was so much to believe in : A child in a golden cradle was buried in a small hill of the German village. Treasure was concealed somewhere close to the ruins of a round tower in the garden of the
town’s proprietor. A long line of stones in the churchyard marked the grave of one Henning, a murderer whose left leg, covered with a black silk stocking, grew out for centuries. Local men alleged that, as boys, they had cut off the leg and used the bone for knocking fruit from orchard trees, but that in 1802 the leg had
stopped growing. A footnote to this legend, written by Schliemann in his late fifties, hardly the age of “childish simplicity,” indicates his continued interest. “According to tradition, when some years ago the church of Ankershagen was being repaired, a single leg-bone was found at a small depth before the altar, as my cousin, the Reverend Hans Becker, the present clergyman [1879] of Ankershagen, assures me.”

Few in Heinrich’s childhood shared his acceptance of legends as reality. His father, who dismissed local lore and the existence of ancient Troy, lived to see his son become famous, one of the most spectacular and controversial figures of the 19th century.

Most of the playmates of little Heinrich made fun of his constant talk about Troy and the legends of Ankershagen. But there were two sisters, Louise and Minna Meincke, who listened to Heinrich with flattering attention. Minna became his childhood sweetheart and entered into all his vast plans for the future.

The happy life of the imaginative child, who dreamed of excavating Troy, was cut short by the untimely death of his mother. The boy had little to support his ebullience for the next five years. His father, who had taken the family maid as a mistress even be fore the death of Mrs. Schliemann, sent Heinrich to live with an uncle, the Reverend Friederich Schliemann, pastor of a church in the town of Kalkhorst. The boy was doing well when a second disaster struck. Ernst Schliemann, accused of misguiding church funds, was relieved of his duties as pastor at Ankershagen and was not exonerated until 1838. In 1834 Heinrich left private school
and entered the Realschule at Neu Strelitz. His formal schooling came to an end in April 1836, and at the age of fourteen, he became a grocer’s apprentice at Furstenberg.

The hours, from five in the morning until eleven at night, left the apprentice not a moment’s leisure for study. He sold goods at the shop, swept up, unpacked the stock, arranged it for display, and ground potatoes for the still in which his employer produced the popular potato-whisky of the region.

Heinrich’s life was miserable, but he never lost his love of learning. Often he recounted a vital evening in his life. Hermann Niederhoffer, the son of a Protestant clergyman in Roebel, Mecklenburg, Germany, had almost completed his studies at the Gymnasium of Neu Ruppin, when he was expelled for bad conduct. The young Niederhoffer gave himself up to drink, which, however, had not made him forget his Homer.

One evening he entered the shop where Heinrich worked and recited about one hundred lines of the Iliad, observing the rhyth mic cadence of the verses. “Although I did not understand a syllable, the melodious sound of the words made a deep impres sion on me, and I wept bitter tears over my own unhappy, uneducated fate. Three times over did I get him to repeat to me those divine verses, rewarding his trouble with three glasses of whiskey, which I bought with the few pence that made up my whole fortune. From that moment on I never ceased to pray to God that by His grace I might yet have the happiness of learning Greek’

Heinrich bore misfortune well, refusing to succumb to long work hours or illness, shipwreck or starvation. Suffering from tuberculosis while clerking at the shop, he stoically endured the stench of his own expectoration of blood and phlegm. Determined to obtain an education and to make enough money to excavate Troy, Heinrich gave up his job, realizing that financial advancement was impossible in the small community of Furstenberg. But first he must be restored to health. Thinking that a sea voyage would be good for him, he signed as cabin boy aboard the brig Dorothea bound for South America, a land of opportunity.

The Dorothea, out of Hamburg, was wrecked off Texel and, after hazardous hours of exposure at sea, Heinrich reached the shores of that island of the Netherlands.

He made his way to Amsterdam, where he suffered cruelly both from the cold and at the hands of German consuls indifferent to the plight of their young fellow countryman. Finally, with the help of the consul general from Prussia, Heinrich secured a position as clerk at an annual salary of 32, some of which he spent for lessons in calligraphy. Debilitated by tuberculosis and by Spartan living, he prodded himself to stay awake when he should have slept. The zealous young clerk taught himself to read, write and speak English, devising a linguistic method that enabled him to learn nine foreign tongues in the next half-dozen years and as many more in his lifetime. By day, he observed with knowing eyes the activities of his employers and avidly investigated business procedures.

The twenty-two-year-old Schliemann, restored to good health, became correspondent and chief bookkeeper for Messrs. B. H. Schroder and Co. of Amsterdam, on March 1, 1844. By then his English and French were flawless, and he became proficient in Russian because the Schroder company maintained an office in St. Petersburg for the purpose of indigo trade. As a result of his diligence and canny planning, Schliemann was sent to Russia, as chief agent of the Schroders, in January 1846. With the approval of the Amsterdam company, he set up his own office in St. Peters burg and became an active member of the wholesale merchants’ guild. Every success in business advanced Schliemann’s dream of finding Troy.

In 1850 he sailed for the United States to investigate the death of a brother, Louis, in California, and to claim the estate. Heinrich, who lived through the San Francisco fire of 1851 and nearly died of yellow fever, amassed a fortune of $350,000 in the California gold rush. Returning to Russia at the end of 1852, he prospered in St. Petersburg, and set up a branch office in Moscow. He acquired fluency in Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish and Polish, while also studying Latin and reading Roman classics in the original. It was at this period that he took Greek lessons from Theoclitus Vimbos.

An ardent suitor, Schliemann had always been romantically involved with women and was much sought after as both lover and husband in St. Petersburg. Even at Ankershagen he had a precocious attachment for his childhood playmate Minna Meincke, and the affectionate children pledged their eternal love with solemnity.
For years after Heinrich left Germany, Troy and Minna were the inspirations for his ambitious undertakings, and he languished when he learned that she had married just as he became successful enough to propose.

Schliemann was married in 1852 to Ekaterina Lyschin a Russian belle who bore him three children. She refused to interest herself in his passion for the excavation of Troy, and would not travel with him on business or pleasure trips. Schliemann went alone to Sweden, Denmark, Italy, and Egypt; he visited Jeru salem and Petra and, while acquiring a practical knowledge of Arabic, traversed Syria. In 1859, on his first visit to Greece, he intended to go to the Homeric island of Ithaca, but had to leave
Athens for urgent business in St. Petersburg.

Schliemann’s dedication to his one passion made it possible for him to endure hardship, misery and censure as he progressed from a youth of little education to a man of great learning, from an impoverished child to an international financier of immense wealth. Expanding his commercial empire, he invested in Greek olive oil, in American cotton fields and railroad lines, in Cuban sugar and tobacco plantations, and in South American hemp production. He profited from the Crimean War and from the Civil War in the United States. His business ventures provided the financial security that freed him, at forty-one, to start for his ultimate goal. By December 1863 he possessed the fortune he needed for the excavation of Troy, but wrote that “, . . before devoting myself entirely to archaeology and to the realization of my life dream, I wished to see a little more of the world.”

He capsuled that world trip for the Engastromenos family at his first dinner with them in 1869. Foreign lands became real to them as Schliemann, creating excitement by dramatic detail, high lighted the experiences that began in April 1864. He retraced his route from the ruins of Carthage, near Tunis, into Egypt and on to India where he visited Calcutta, Benares, Agra, Madras, Lucknow and Delhi. From the islands of Ceylon and Java, he went to China for a two-month stay, touring seven cities including Hong Kong, Shanghai and Peking, and concluded his Oriental trip in Japan. His was no mere listing of geographic locations. Embellishing the narration for his listeners, he told of climbing in the foothills of the Himalaya Mountains and tramping along the Great Wall of China; of riding camels and elephants; of being passenger in rickshaw and sampan; of dining with digni taries whose rich robes blazed with priceless jewels and recoiling from beggars whose tattered clothing crawled with loathsome lice.

Heinrich was urged to continue the story of his adventures whenever he paused to enjoy the food offered from serving dishes filled with tempting fare. Encouraged by the eager faces and enthusiastic comments of his intimate audience, he spun more tales of exotic travel, eating little and sipping only enough of his wine to be able to compliment George Engastromenos on its vintage. While dessert was being served, Schliemann excused himself from the table, returning with a package, which he gave to Madame Victoria. In it were gift copies of two of his books.
He explained that one of them, La Chine et le Japon, published in Paris in 1866, had been written during the long voyage from Japan to San Francisco aboard an English ship. The fact that crossing the Pacific Ocean had taken fifty days elicited amaze ment from those whose sea trips were gauged by the few hours required to reach the nearest Greek islands.

The other book, his second, was Ithaca, the Peloponnesus and Troy, a report of his archaeological investigations there in 1868. Pointing to it, Schliemann began to talk with intensity. The raconteur became zealot, his voice emotional, eyes aglow. He poured out his hopes for the future, looking directly at Sophia who did not understand the implication of his words. He spoke of his expectations of success in the exploration of ancient sites and his need for a partner who, with understanding and faith, would be constantly at his side. Ahead was the necessity to prove the Homeric legends to have been fact, in support of his long-held views. In preparation for his serious archaeological work, he had excavated at Ithaca, and then at Mycenae in the Peloponnesus and at two sites in Asia Minor. Certain conclusions about Mycenae and his identification of the probable site of Troy in Asia Minor were in absolute variance with those of most scholars. His two prime theories, unequivocally stated in Ithaca, the Peloponnesus and Troy, gained him a doctoral degree from the University of Rostock. His ambition was to attain future success with one who shared his passionate belief that Troy once existed, a flourishing city described in truth by Homer.

No one at the table not even Schliemann himself, much less Sophia realized that his convictions would involve him in constant controversy. In future, he was to be bitter opponent of eminent scholars, defendant at a courtroom trial, challenger of royalty, and antagonist of government officials, both petty and influential. But against such formidable obstacles, he would remain steadfast in his dedication to his one passion.

 

THREE

On the morning following his request to the parents for permission to marry Sophia, Schliemann arrived early at the National Bank to confer with a senior officer, Pericles Dentopoulos, with whom he had done business on previous visits to Athens. Before leaving the bank, Schliemann, unable to contain his elation over his betrothal, confided in Dentopoulos that he was engaged to marry Sophia Engastromenos. The banker, leaping from his chair, exclaimed, “What did you say? You are going to marry Sophaki?” Affronted by the banker’s tone of incredulity no less than by the use of the diminutive for Sophia, Schliemann glared at Dento
poulos and indignantly demanded an explanation of his right to call her Sophaki. Amused by the jealousy of the offended suitor, the banker smiled disarmingly and said that he, as a close friend of Sophia’s brother Alexandras, was practically a member of the Engastromenos family. Schliemann, pacified, left the bank with
the congratulations of Dentopoulos and with his heartwarming assurance that “neither you yourself nor anybody else who has seen Sophaki can possibly conceive what an exceptional young woman she is and how she stands out from all the girls of her age.”

In the late afternoon Schliemann, having been invited to the Engastromenos’ town house, arrived there to find Sophia’s broth ers with several friends. He was asked to join them in the beautiful garden with its sweeping view of the Thesion and, when seated, was plied with questions about his travel experiences. The previous night he had mentioned that he had been in the great fire that destroyed San Francisco in 1851, and the young men pressed him to give a detailed account of that disaster.

Reluctantly, since the purpose of his visit was to talk with Sophia, Schliemann recounted the events of the night of June 4, eighteen years earlier. He had arrived in San Francisco after dark and was asleep in his room at the Union Hotel when shouts of Fire! Fire! and the clang of alarm bells had roused him. He looked out and saw flames consuming a frame building only a few feet from his window. Hastily dressing, he ran from the hotel, which itself was on fire by the time he gained safety in the city’s plaza. A gale spread the blaze that immediately destroyed wooden structures, slowly caused brick homes to crumble, and turned from red-hot to white-hot the metal houses in which doomed residents mistakenly had felt themselves to be protected from fire.

Schliemann made his way from the center of the fire up steep streets, and at last reached Telegraph Hill from which he had full view of the dreadful spectacle. He heard from below the cries of human torches, victims of the fire, and the reverberations of explosions deliberately set off in unsuccessful attempts to halt the spread of flames. Through the night of tragedy and terror, Schliemann stayed in a restaurant on the Hill, descending at about six in the morning to the ruins of what only hours before had been a flourishing city.

His description of the smoldering remains of the city with no walls standing perplexed the young Athenians whose homes, truly fireproof, were made of the cheapest building materials available, stone and marble. Their homes, which might be razed by earthquake, could never be destroyed by windswept flames.

Schliemann, questioned about San Francisco after the holocaust, said that its rebuilding started the very morning following the fire. On his way down to the plaza area, he passed many foreign inhabitants of San Francisco sitting in shock and despair, num bers of them bitterly weeping. He noticed that the Americans on the other hand, seemingly undaunted, joked and laughed as they began to lay foundations for new buildings on earth still covered with hot ash.

Concluding the fire story, Schliemann brushed aside further attempts to question him when he saw Sophia sitting quietly at some distance behind the young men who ringed his chair. She returned his smile but seemed remote, her expression contemplative.

By the time Schliemann had risen from his chair and reached Sophia’s side, it was too late to speak with her alone. The garden was filled with people: friends had called to offer sincere congratulations; curious gossips, to scrutinize the prospective bride groom. These left to start mischief-making throughout the town where those envious of Sophia’s good fortune publicly referred to her fiance as “old Schliemann.”

Vexed by the many visitors who prevented him from conversing with Sophia, Schliemann sent her a necklace of coral on September 6, and in the accompanying letter wrote: “Can you please ask your excellent parents and write to me if it is possible to see you without all those people around but alone with them [the parents] not once, but often, because I think we must see each other to get acquainted and to see whether our characters go along together.”

The letter contained his views on marriage in general and specifics about their own. He defined marriage as the “most magnificent of all human establishments if the only bases are respect, love and virtue,” but described marriage as the “heaviest bondage if it is based on material interest or sexual attraction.

“Wealth contributes to the happiness in marriage,” he continued, “but cannot build it by itself, and the woman who will marry me for my money only or to become, because of it, a great lady in Paris will regret very much to have left Athens because she would make me and herself very unhappy. The woman who will marry me must do it for my value as a human being. I am not flattering myself with illusions. I know perfectly well that a young and beautiful girl cannot fall in love with a 47-year-old man for his beautiful face for the simple reason that the man does not have beauty. But I think that a woman, the character of whom completely agrees with mine and has the same love and enthusiastic inclination for the sciences, could respect me. Because we are created to respect always the person who is more learned, especially in those sciences that we are mostly interested in. And because this woman would be my student for all her life I dare to hope that she would love me, because love is born by respect, second because I would try to be a good teacher and would dedicate every free moment of my life to help the lover of science in Tier philological and archaeological considerations.”

The letter, hardly one to arouse in a schoolgirl a desire to be alone with her fiance or to fire her enthusiasm for marriage, served Schliemann’s purpose, Sophia’s parents asked him to come to their home as often as he wished, promising frequent oppor tunity for him to converse with Sophia. Assurance of privacy was easier to offer than to realize in their home bustling with sons and daughters, with relatives and friends by the dozens. Moreover, Sophia was required to spend hours with fittings for trousseau clothes. Even Heinrich was drawn into conferences about the wedding reception. There was more chaos than calm whenever he and Sophia met, whether at the city house or in the country, where the wedding was to be held at St. Meletios Church.

Schliemann himself found it difficult to get away to be with Sophia, because he was besieged at his hotel by fathers and brothers importuning him to consider their daughters and sisters as prospective brides. With lack of tact, insistent Athenians ex tolled their female relatives as more suitable in age and sophisti cation for a man of Schliemann 5 s years and experience. “Old Schliemann” though he might be, he was, in Athens, the matri monial catch of the century. He gave short interviews and curt dismissals to the blatant solicitors, but they, by their very num bers, kept him engaged for hours of every day. By September 12 he was so frustrated by the obstacles that kept him from private talks with Sophia that he decided to escape from Athens, taking her with him. Early that morning he sent her a note asking her and her “honorable mother” to join him at two in the afternoon at the railway station. “You will find there Mr. Lamprides and his excellent wife and we will all go to the Piraeus together. There we will take a boat and go sailing a little, which you will maybe do for the first time in your life. Hoping that you will not deprive us of the joy to have you with us I beg you to receive the expression of my respect. Please answer me with one or two words. H.S.”

By return messenger Sophia explained in a note that, before accepting, she had to ask the permission of her “venerable and beloved father,” who was not at home. Schliemann, impatient at the delay, sent her another letter saying that he must have an answer, and to this she replied, “This very moment my father arrived home and saw fit to extend me the permisison for us to go to the Piraeus.” In spite of her innate fear of the water, Sophia, with Madame Victoria, met Schliemann and his friends at the train station in Athens.

The group traveled in holiday mood to the Piraeus and embarked on an ill-fated sail. Heinrich, at last free to talk with Sophia alone, asked her why she had consented to be his bride.

Artless and incapable of subterfuge, she gave him an honest and straightforward answer: her parents wanted her to accept him. The ingenuous reply infuriated Heinrich. Having searched for a bride who was unsophisticated, he was deeply hurt by irrefutable proof that he had found one. At a time and in a country where marriages of arrangement were common and love matches rare, he was unreasonably angered by a dutiful daughter’s acquiescence. Leaving Sophia’s side, he huffily ordered the sailing captain to return the little boat to port, and on the train trip back to Athens was withdrawn and hardly civil.

He seethed over Sophia’s forthright answer for several days, then wrote her a farewell that created consternation in the Engas-tromenos family. Urged by her parents to try to placate Heinrich, Sophia wrote him that, after reading his letter, she “prayed to God to bring back to you the feelings that have fled.” She asked that he visit her before he left Athens and hoped that his “gentle soul” would not decline the request.

Schliemann did not at once capitulate, but sternly taxed Sophia with having acted as a slave to her parents in consenting to marry him at their request. He described her answer to him on the boat as having been so “unworthy of an educated human being” that he had been unable to converse with her longer that day and had decided not to “think on you any more.” Referring to a ring sent to remind her of the “love I have had for you,” Schliemann then gave a probable date for his sailing and a tentative itinerary for Europe. After a lively exchange of notes carried by busy messengers, steadily shuttling between his hotel and Sophia’s home, Heinrich finally initiated a reconciliation.

Correspondence was ever a thread of life to Schliemann, and in letters written during the days of his courtship in Athens, he dashed off random thoughts, penned fanciful interpretations of much that transpired, and contradicted himself on decisions, opinions and dates. These letters show him to have been as muddled and flustered as any young lover. The one constant was his reiteration to distant friends that Sophia would be his student for her lifetime. He regretted that she spoke only ancient and modern Greek, but pledged to do “my best that she learns four languages in two years.” That she might have some difficulty in keeping to his imposed schedule never crossed the mind of Schliemann, a linguistic genius, who already spoke and wrote seventeen Ian-

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guages. He had no qualms about Sophia’s ability to acquire such graces as piano playing and the fine manners of the fashionables of Paris, and was hopeful of making a scholar of her although she lacked “any profound scientific education.” Sophia, a “docileand obedient plant, clever and. intelligent,” was to have her chance to prove herself while he educated her “according to my will/’Without realizing to what extent she was to be involuntary pupil as well as wife, the young Sophia busily prepared for her
wedding. It took place on September 23 at the close of a breath lessly hot day. The tiny church was jammed with guests long be fore the hour set for the ceremony. Light from hundreds of flickering candles enhanced the glitter of silver and gold threads and semiprecious stones that decorated the colorful regional costumes of Sophia’s relatives from Crete and from distant com munities on the mainland. Patriarchs wearing jackets of embroidered velvet and voluminous kilts, tightly pleated, stood elbow to elbow with dignitaries in full-dress suits.

Sophia, with serene dignity, passed through the congregation, the long train of her simple bridal gown broadening behind her. A short veil of white tulle was attached to a floral cap that lay flat on her black hair, which was parted in the middle and braided into a slight coronet. She held a dainty bouquet from which a flowering vine showered. Around her neck she wore the necklace of coral strands that was Heinrich’s first gift to her.

They stood before the iconastisis, dominated by a life-sized icon of St. Meletios painted in rich colors accented by gold-leaf wrist lets, halo and cross. In a smaller icon only the face of the saint was painted; all else within the frame was hammered silver.

Archbishop Vimbos, resplendent in his robe weighted with gems and embroidery, officiated at the ceremony with the parish priest assisting. The solemn service was long, following the pub lished Liturgies of the Orthodox Church prepared by Symeon of Thessalonika. The deep voices of the archbishop and the at tending priest reverberated throughout the small church, but few could catch the responses of Sophia and Heinrich made during the high nuptial Mass. The bride and groom received communion during that rite ; and at the actual marriage ceremony they again sipped wine from a chalice, the formal and traditional Orthodox plighting of the troth.

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The wedding party and guests, moving out of the church, walked the short distance to the Engastromenos’ garden where the wedding banquet was served to the accompaniment of music and laughter. Heinrich was constantly at the side of his smiling bride. Beaming with pride and joy, he for once looked younger than his years.

The feasting and dancing and singing continued even after Sophia went into the house to dress for the journey ahead. When she and Heinrich, with her family, were ready to leave for the Piraeus, Sophia asked to be left alone for a few minutes in her own room. There she had played children’s games, studied school lessons, read for pleasure, and indulged in daydreams. These could not have been fanciful enough to approach the reality of her future as professional partner to her husband and, as skilled diplomatist, his invaluable aide.

Whatever Sophia’s thoughts in her room, she emerged from it dry-eyed and controlled. Immediately the members of the family, calling goodbye to the guests still celebrating, stepped into waiting carriages and, in cavalcade, started for the harbor from which the bride and groom were to sail at 1 A.M. At the Piraeus, Sophia, in tearful farewell, kissed her parents and sisters and brothers. They remained on the quay calling “Kalos taxidi ! Good trip!” until Heinrich and Sophia stepped from the little harbor boat onto the anchored ship. It was typical of Heinrich to have booked passage on that specific vessel with its name significant for a honeymoon : Aphrodite. Sophia, uneasy throughout the short sea voyage, was happy with the landfall off the boot-tip of Italy that was her first view of a foreign shore. The Schliemanns landed at Messina and stayed for two days on Sicily before crossing to the mainland for a week at Naples.

Naples, site of the ancient Greek colony Neapolis, and its surrounding countryside pleased Sophia more than Sicily with its rugged hills and valleys. The Neapolitans gay, noisy, lively seemed carefree and created a bustling activity day and night. Like the vendors of Athens, those in Naples crowded the streets, calling their wares, chiefly amulets and edibles. In a letter to her parents, Sophia wrote that the Neapolitans were more swarthy than Greeks, but were happy and “do much as our own people/*

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She evidently pondered at length about whether the Greek origin of the city accounted for its atmosphere, for in every letter written from Naples she mentioned the heritage of the Neapolitans, ques tioning their relationship to the Greeks.

The honeymoon travels of the Schliemanns were well documented because Sophia proved to be as persistent a letter-writer as her husband. In daily correspondence she gave detailed accounts of their activities, along with her opinions and impressions of what she saw and experienced. Heinrich, in letters and his diary, wrote in similar vein, frequently adding his perceptive comments on Sophia’s conduct and reactions.

Nothing in Naples delighted Sophia more than La Villa (Villa Nazionale), the public garden enlivened by strolling musicians, ambling couples, and gamboling children. Like fashionable Neapoli tans, she and Heinrich drove along the Via Caracciolo, enjoying views of the sea and the park. In La Villa she was amazed to see temple-memorials to Virgil and Tasso, poets whose work she had studied at school.

San Domenico Maggiore depressed Sophia. The family chapels of prominent Neapolitans seemed dark and gloomy to her, and she was repulsed by the velvet-covered coffins in the sacristy. The architecture of San Gennaro was so foreign to her that she was unable to appreciate the original French Gothic construction, somewhat obscured by a succession of hodgepodge alterations made after the mid- 15th century. 

Their tour of the Palazzo Reale, the former royal palace, was complete and exhausting. Heinrich pointed out its wonders: the great staircases of white marble, the carved bas-reliefs, the floors of mosaic, the exquisitely painted walls, the huge collection of statues. While resting on the terrace of the palace garden, with its breathtaking view of the sea, Heinrich told Sophia that he would one day build her such a palace with a view of the Aegean. She reported in a letter that she was about to question his state ment but then, on second thought, remained silent. Already she was beginning to learn how to live with Heinrich.

On another day, at the national museum, she listened to his expansive projection of excavations at Troy with her at his side, digging and searching for artifacts that would irrefutably establish Homer as the author of fact, not fiction. Heinrich led Sophia from 

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gallery to gallery, explaining the significance of the treasures excavated from Herculaneum, Pompeii, Stabiae, and Cummae, and pointing out many forms of antiquities from numerous countries. Suddenly weary beyond endurance, Sophia surprised Heinrich by interrupting his definitive description of an encased object and insisting that they leave at once for the hotel There, although footsore and bone-tired, Sophia allowed Heinrich to inveigle her into going out for dinner and to the theater.

Early the following morning they took the electric train for the hour’s ride to Pompeii. Sophia, having studied Pliny at The Arsakeion, knew well the tragic story of the ancient city buried when Vesuvius erupted A.D. 79. Setting a rapid pace, the eager Heinrich took Sophia on a tour of the excavated ruins. She was shocked by the murals- depicting Actaeon peeking at Diana bathing and then being torn to death by his own dogs. The paintings of nudes in sexual positions made Sophia blush, and she turned away in girlish confusion and embarrassment. Heinrich, sensibly, did not insist that they linger.

They drove by. carriage from Pompeii to Sorrento. Heinrich did not want Sophia to miss the spectacular setting of the little town, enclosed by mysterious deep ravines on the land side and, on the seacoast, perched high on a cliff against which dramatic waves crashed nearly two hundred feet below. Toward the end of that particularly taxing day of sightseeing, Sophia was in no mood for views, and the natural beauty of Sorrento escaped her. In the fading light of late afternoon, she found the ravines not haunting but forbidding. Ever fearful of water, she was repulsed by the violence of the white surf pounding at the base of the cliff. Sorrento’s orange and lemon trees, growing from tufa rock, instead of pleasantly reminding her of the citrus groves of Greece gave her an acute attack of homesickness.

After she and Heinrich were back at the hotel in Naples, Sophia demanded that she be allowed to have an entire day to rest and just to be alone. The tireless Heinrich, accustomed to being active every waking minute, was both puzzled and hurt by her request, to which he acceded with reluctance. The evening of her solitary day, they went to the theater, where Sophia was as delighted as a child by a gay operetta. Heinrich was so “stimulated by the joy of my Sophithion’s reaction to the pretty music and 

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colorful costumes, I applauded much more than the spectacle was worth.”

The next week was spent in Rome. Although Heinrich as cicerone was relentless, Sophia began to appreciate the facts and the quotations he recited at museums and historic sites. In a letter to her mother, Sophia wrote that she had confessed to Heinrich the extent of her ignorance, begging him to share his vast knowledge with her and promising, in return, to be a good wife.

Captivated by the wonders of a world previously unknown to her, Sophia began slowly to place things in perspective. St. Peter’s, which thrilled her, “is the most great and splendid church I have ever seen/’ she wrote her family, adding how wrong it had been to think of the Metropolitan Church in Athens as the biggest in the world. Receptive as she was to the new experiences, Sophia found all things “so big that they cannot enter fully into my small head.”

In Rome, as in Naples, Heinrich and Sophia went to the theater every evening. The performances, being in a language she did not understand, often bewildered her, although Heinrich patiently explained the substance of what they were seeing. At the opera Traviata, the story as he told it so moved Sophia that she leaned her head on his shoulder, shuddering and softly weeping. But even Heinrich’s resumes could not lessen the tedium of wordy plays without music that she endured with eyelids heavy from lack of sleep.

Only remarkable stamina sustained Sophia through the mental, physical and emotional strain of her honeymoon. She was “so confused by the splendors that I am most certain I can never put them in place or good order/’ The strenuous days gave her no time for relaxation, and she was constantly fatigued, in part because of the late hours to which she was unaccustomed. Heinrich, determined to educate her mind, was not one to make easy her adjustment to the intimate relationships of marriage. It was not in his nature to be a restrained lover. But even had he been disposed to be a tender tutor in the art of love-making, the frenetic schedule permitted no time for dalliance.

The last week of the honeymoon was the most hectic of all. The Schliemanns spent two days in Florence, two in Venice, and

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Schliemann 1- 30   Schliemann 30-60   Schliemann 60-90   Schliemann 90-120   Schliemann 120-150   Schliemann 150-180   Schliemann 180 – 210   Schliemann 210 – 240   Schliemann 240 – 270  Schliemann 270 – End

118 de kaldim

ONE PASSION, TWO LOVES

THE STORY OF HEINRICH AND SOPHIA SCHLIEMANN, DISCOVERERS OF TROY

BY LYNN AND GRAY POOLE

THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY

NEW YORK ESTABLISHED 1834

COPYRIGHT 1966 BY LYNN D. AND GRAY J. POOLE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED NO PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM, EXCEPT BY A REVIEWER WITHOUT THE PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER. DESIGNED BY JUDITH WORACEK BARRY. MANUFACTURED !N THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. UBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NO. 66-25434

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THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF HEINRICH AND SOPHIA SCHLIEMANN

PLATO, EPISTLES VII. 841 C.

“There Is no way of putting it into words like other studies, but after much communion and constant inter course unth the thing itself suddenly, like a light kindled from a leaping fire, it is born within the soul and henceforth nourishes itself”

Alex L. Melas, Schliemann’s last living grandchild, gave invaluable assistance with long-guarded family material and newly discovered letters of his grandparents. The little-finger ring is his sole possession from the excavated treasures.

FOREWORD

BY ALEX L. MELAS

It is half past midnight. The air over Athens tonight is chilly, but there is a full moon. My own heart is brightened by the manuscript of the book written by Mr. Lynn and Madame Gray Poole about my grandparents, Heinrich and Sophia Schliemann.

After lunch today, I began reading what my friends wrote, and I was filled with great emotion and pride over how my grand parents come alive in this book. Night arrived and the full moon came up over the Hills of Hymettus and made the columns of the Temple of Olympian Zeus cast sharp shadows. I see the Hills and Temple from one balcony of my apartment ; from the other side I see the moon shining on the Parthenon, on the Acropolis, “the Sacred Rock,” as we call it.

I stood up from my armchair, where I sat watching this beautiful night. I walked to the balcony and, impulsively, I looked toward the templelike mausoleum where Heinrich, Sophia, and all the other dead members of my family are entombed. My eyes blurred and I could feel the souls of my grandparents wandering into my living room, guiding my hand to trace these lines, as I left the balcony and started to write. The night was so quiet, so beautiful and so serene. The only sound was my fast-pounding heart which said, “Thanks God, at last someone has written the truth about my grandparents who devoted their life to archaeology, created a science of this art, and brought forth, for the world to see, the ancient Trojan and Mycenaean civilization, as the great Homer wrote in his poems.”

I also thanked my lucky stars for the day I met the Pooles, who have since become my dear friends. I knew at once that I had found two people to whom I could entrust memorabilia that previously I had refused to give to any other biographers.

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After many talks, Lynn Poole said to me, “There is no reason merely to write another book about their archaeological excavations. The book that must be written is one about Heinrich and Sophia as two great, unique people and about the lives they lived. To accomplish this we must relive their lives if we are to under stand them and tell their personal story.” Truly, the Pooles have actually “lived with” Heinrich and Sophia Schliemann through these years, as they sought for every clue to their character and dug into old and newly found records to interpret what the young Greek girl, Sophia, and the German man, Heinrich, contributed to the world. The Pooles searched in seven nations for facts included in this book.

How deep and clear is the authors’ thought in so many places throughout the book ! Even I was startled from time to time by some of their new interpretations, based on facts never before realized. One example concerns the gold treasure of Troy. Everyone  has written that the treasure was found in a copper box. The Pooles read and reread the diaries, letters, cables, articles and books. They are certain and I am sure they are correct that there never was a copper box, only a copper shield hiding the treasure, which had originally been placed in a wooden box.

They have told for the first time the true story of how Heinrich and Sophia met. Research and refusal to accept apochryphal accounts have shown there is no evidence to support the theory that Heinrich’s major objective in excavating Troy was to find gold. My grandfather had more gold than he needed ; he worked and earned it, then spent vast sums of his own money on his excavations. He did not need gold from Troy to add to his personal fortunes.

Many times we worked together in Athens for unending hours, poring over new archives, which by mere luck were found locked and forgotten in an old trunk in a basement of an Athenian house. This trunk contained twenty-nine diplomas from the most important universities, archaeological institutes and societies, museums, and governments of the time, together with letters from the most prominent men of the nineteenth century. In addition there was intimate correspondence of Heinrich and Sophia, in five different languages, according to which country they were writing from. Here we discovered letters of Heinrich’s last weeks in Halle where he suffered surgical operations. I am happy that I could make these treasures, along with other data from our family records, available to the Pooles.

As my friends searched for new information throughout the world, we three worked together, communicating by letter, cable and telephone across the Atlantic, from Athens to Baltimore, Maryland.

Over these years, the Pooles and I have made our own odyssey, tracing step by step, scene by scene, motivation by motivation, the lives of my grandparents.

A little more than an hour ago, as I stood in the cemetery beside the mausoleum of my grandparents I felt sure that they know what has now been written. In the life after death, where they are joined together, they know that at last the story of their life has been set down with truth and understanding.

Who can be certain that the dead do not know what the living perform ? No one can be certain. But I am sure they do know and rest better in peace. They were both somewhat superstitious. They believed their own dreams. They believed, too, in metempsychosis and transmigration. So why, as their grandson, should I not believe that Heinrich and Sophia were with us as One Passion, Two Loves was being written.

I was born in Iliou Melathron and spent the most and best time of my life in that beautiful Palace in Athens, the home where for ten years Heinrich and Sophia lived, with the world of great men passing through their doors. I grew up hearing my grandmother, Sophia, and my mother, Sophia’s daughter, Andromache, repeat
again and again always the same the stories of the Schliemanns’ life together. I read the many letters and diaries of my grandparents.

 

Most of all, I saw the light of love in Sophia’s eyes each time she spoke of Heinrich, until the day she died in 1932, invoking her be loved husband’s name.

Because I had this privilege, I am certain that my grandparents know what has been written now and are content ; as I am happy and honored being their last living grandchild.

Athens, Greece

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

On September 28, 1963, we met Alex L. Melas, only living grand child of Heinrich and Sophia Schliemann. We were in Athens, participating in the Greek Heritage Symposium on Hellenic Culture, being held at the Grande Bretagne Hotel. Christopher G. Janus, publisher of Greek Heritage Quarterly, was eager for us to know his old friend General Melas. The introduction made by Mr. Janus was significant for us. It concluded many years of avocational study of the lives of Dr. Schliemann and his wife, and marked the beginning of purposeful research for the writing of One Passion, Two Loves.

General Melas made available to us vast amounts of family material that he had not previously shown to any author. There was also for our use the tremendous collection of Schliemann memorabilia in the Gennadius Library of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. We sought verification and amplification of data in letters, diaries and other source material from numberless people in several countries. We did research in West Berlin, East Berlin, Paris and London. In these cities and in many villages on the Continent we found information vital to an in-depth understanding of Heinrich and Sophia Schliemann. Newspapers in Greek archives, in German, French and British repositories, shed light on facts not used by other authors; cleared up misconceptions previously written.

During extended visits to Athens we were sought out by Greeks, strangers to us, who had heard we were searching for information about Heinrich and Sophia Schliemann, An old priest brought us a well-worn book with an illustration of the church of St. Meletios as it was when Heinrich and Sophia were married there on September 23, 1869 ; two icons pictured are on the altar of the present church of St. Meletios. Collateral descendants of the Schliemanns had hitherto unpublished pictures of members of the family. One such remote relative presented us with an engraved calling card of Dr. Heinrich Schliemann; a notation on it in Schliemann’s own handwriting provided the missing link to an important chain of events. Many cooperative informants respectively offered tiny bits of information that proved to be invaluable to the total work. These are but a few examples of contributions made by warmhearted and wonderful Greeks.

In the fall of 1965 a locked trunk filled with 750 Schliemann letters and other memorabilia was discovered in Athens. We were privileged to have sole access to those letters, which revealed previously unknown data about the personal and professional lives of Heinrich and Sophia.

Facts used in this book have been taken from many long known documents and from original sources we used while doing intensive research. When we state in our narrative that “Sophia felt” or “Heinrich thought” we are factually reporting from letters, diaries, articles, books and other written memorabilia of both Heinrich and Sophia Schliemann, including long-missing documents stored in the trunk in Athens; we are not reporting what someone else said or thought about the Schliemanns.

Like all authors of biography, we are indebted to many more people than we can ever properly thank for assistance in seeking out source material.

 

Our first and deepest thanks go to Alex L. Melas whose faith in us was confirmed by his generous sharing of the wealth of family material that he had so assiduously guarded through the years. General Melas gave of his time and energies to help us whenever we were working in Greece and to advise us by correspondence when we were far from Athens. Through the happy years of our research on this book about his illustrious grandparents, he aided us with enthusiasm. He provided written and photographic evidence we needed to tell the personal story of the lives of Heinrich and Sophia Schliemann. The depth and scope of our book would not have been possible without the assistance and collaboration of General Melas.

We are grateful to Christopher G. Janus, publisher of Greek Heritage Quarterly, for the original introduction to Alex Melas and for continued interest and enthusiasm throughout the project.

We owe an immeasurable debt to Dr. Francis R. Walton, Librarian of the Gennadius Library in Athens, his assistant librarian Miss Eurydice Demetracopoulou, and Miss Loukia Frangouli of the library staff. To Professor Henry Robinson, Director of the American School of Classical Studies, we pay respects and appreciation for his aid since our first meeting in 1962.

We express our thanks for valuable assistance and hospitality to D. Papaefstratiou, former Director General of the Greek National Tourist Office in Athens, and his associates, T. Frangopoulos and C. Gondikas ; to George Canellos, General Manager of the Grande Bretagne Hotel, who was interested in our project and arranged interviews with many people, including the grandson of Yannakis, Schliemann’s faithful overseer at Troy ; to Brian Bojonell, Director of the Athens’ office of Pan American World Airways, whose advice on many vital matters was ebullient and productive. With special pleasure we acknowledge the kind aid and productive assistance given by lason Antoniades while we were in Greece.

We take pleasure in expressing our special thanks to Professor Emil Kuntze, Director of the German Archaeological Institute in Athens, and his assistant Mrs. Maria Tzannetokos, for making available rare items and specific information, as well as permission to use photographs which we selected and they provided ; to Professor George E. Mylonas of Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, currently director of excavations at Mycenae, for his enthusiastic encouragement and assistance ; to Professor Oscar Bro-neer, who, having lived and excavated for more than forty years in Greece, gave us vital direction and provided important information about many episodes in our book ; to Professor Carl Blegen whose discussions of his own excavations at Troy, long after Schliemann’s death, were of incalculable help, not only with facts but in adding to our own understanding of Schliemann’s work and his place in history.

We would be grossly remiss if we did not pay our respects to His Excellency Alexander Matsas, Greek Ambassador to the United States of America, for his encouragement and enthusiasm, his personal and official assistance for more than three years.

We are indebted to the late Professor Dimitri Papadimitriou, who talked with us often about Schliemann’s role in the growth of archaeological investigation. While lunching beside the water at Tourcolimano at the Piraeus, Professor Papadimitriou approved our writing down his statement that, “Schliemann was the father of a totally new approach to archaeology and without him we might well still be in the dark ages of knowledge about the Mycenaen civilization.” Professor George Mylonas added his belief and emphasis to Papadimitriou’s conclusion. With this fact many modern archaeologists agree, in spite of the manner in which Schliemann slashed through the Hill of Hissarlik where he uncovered the cities of Troy.

Our brief thanks to the following is not commensurate with the extent of their contributions to our research :

Aileen M. Armstrong, secretary of the Royal Historical Society, London ; Edward Bacon, Archaeological Editor of the Illustrated London News; Werner Brussau, professor at the Free University of West Berlin; Professor Heinrich Bleich, Director, Stadt. Archive, Mannheim, Germany; Sir Tranchard Cox, Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London ; D. M. Day of the British Embassy in Washington, D.C ; Dr. Sterling Dow, Harvard University ; Edward J. Dziczkowski of Frankfurt, Germany ; Sir Frank Francis, Director, British Museum, London; Sir William Haley, Editor, the London Times; Dr. W. J. van Hoboken, Director of the City Archives, Amsterdam; Dr. Willy Gellert, Mannheim, Germany ; C. H. Gibbs-Smith, Keeper of the Department of Education, Victoria and Albert Museum, London ; George Kastriotes, sculptor, painter and great-grandson of Sophia Schliemann’s brother, Alexandros; Dr. William G. Niederland, psychoanalyst who made a year’s study of Heinrich Schliemann from records in the Gennadius Library; The Honorable Henry Richardson La-bouisse, United States Ambassador to Greece, 1962-65; Dr. Roger Lyon, Cultural Counsellor of the Mission of the United States of America to West Berlin ; Miss Jean K. Macdonald, secre tary to the Royal Archaeological Society of Great Britain and Ireland ; The Honorable Stephanos K. Galetes, Director of the Foundation of the Society of Friends of Education, Athens, Greece; Lanning MacFarland, Chicago Philhellene ; Miss Nanon Manotopoulos, knowledgeable translator in Athens; Edouard Morot-Sir, Cultural Counsellor, Embassy of France, Washington, D.C. ; Dr. Werner Mueller and his assistant Dr. Henrika Hesse of the Near Eastern Division, Staatliche Museum in East Germany ; Professor Adrian von Mueller and Professor Wolfram Nagel of the Museum fuer Von-und Freuhgeschichte of West Berlin; Mrs. S. Riccardi, Chief, Newspaper Section of the New York Public Library, New York City; A. M. Michael Robb, A.M. CMC, Minister, British Embassy, Washington, B.C.; Professor James Poultney, Depart ment of Classics, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Mary land; Bruno J. Schroeder, the Henry Schroeder Company, London; Carsten Seecamp, Department of German, The Johns Hopkins University; The Honorable C. T. Rolf van Baarda, Minister, Embassy of the Netherlands, Washington, D.C. ; Peter-Nick Va-valis, of Athens, Greece, who helped prepare the book Schliemann in Indianapolis, and who aided us while in Athens ; Dr. John H. Young, professor of classics at The Johns Hopkins University, and his wife, also a classical scholar and archaeologist.

To Hugh Rawson, editor of One Passion, Two Loves, we extend our gratitude for his great contributions from manuscript to printed page.

To all who made it possible for us to prepare this book, and to all who smoothed our path and offered true Hellenic hospitality we say Ejkaristo, a single word conveying the true depths of our affection and appreciation.

LYNN AND GRAY POOLE

Baltimore, Maryland

Appendix A, an address given by Madame Schliemann for The Royal Archaeological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, will be found on page 285. Appendix B, some facts and suppositions about the fate of the Schliemann Collection, will be found on page 289. The index begins on page 291.

The Aegean and Asia Minor

ONE

As the S/S Niemen, out of Marseille, slowly approached the harbor of Piraeus, a middle-aged man, restlessly pacing the upper deck, stared at a small photograph clutched in his right hand. With the Greek port in sight on that September morning of 1869, Dr. Heinrich Schliemann was impatient to land. World citizen, self-made scholar, and international financier, he was about to start a new life as excavator searching for prehistoric Troy, and as bridegroom of a teen-age wife. It was her photograph he held; brown eyes, wide-set and with an expression as serious as his own, were the outstanding feature of the beautiful girl pictured. He peered intently at the young face, marking the conformation, the texture and the quality, all long familiar from deep study of the photograph. On the back of the frayed print, its edges torn and split by frequent handling, the name Sophia was scribbled.

Landing boats were close to the Niemen and its anchor chains clanking before Schliemann jammed the photograph into the pocket of his loose-fitting summer suit and rapidly went below. With the efficiency of an experienced traveler, he counted his luggage stacked by prearrangement for speedy removal from the ship. Schliemann’s voice, reedy and high-pitched, had nonetheless a tone of authority that spurred into action the unloading crew and the captain of a small boat at the liner’s side. Schliemann gave orders to deckhands in French and to the boatman in Greek, accenting the words with imperious gestures. His landing boat, shortly piled high with valises, packing cases and small trunks, reached the quay before any other; and Schliemann, the first passenger ashore, was also first at the railroad station. A train to Athens was pulling away, and Schliemann sputtered with agitation when told that another would not leave for two hours. Moody and preoccupied, he fretted through the delay, intolerable to him. Irritation welled again when there was no carriage at the Athens station, and he had to walk to the hotel in the heat of the day. Moving with graceless gait, he entered the lobby of the Hotel d’Angleterre and signed his name on the register’s page dated September 2, 1869. The staff of the hotel rallied for a cordial welcome to their returning guest, but he cut short the amenities in his haste to get on with arrangements for his marriage, the purpose of his visit to Athens.

Schliemann’s compulsive drive toward the immediate realization of any project was deeply ingrained. In early life he over came the handicaps of poverty, illness and lack of education, achieving the successful status that was to permit the pursuit of his future goal. In quest of knowledge, he traveled to many lands, everywhere attempting to separate legend and lore from history and fact. He walked the Great Wall of China and penetrated the jungles of Peru, Mexico and Chile; he crisscrossed the United States and traipsed the deserts of Arabia.

He grasped every opportunity to make the money that was essential to the financing of excavation of Troy. Leaving a flourishing business in Russia, the German-born Schliemann traveled to California, on a family matter, and made a fortune in the gold rush before returning to St. Petersburg, where he amassed enormous wealth. He was a profiteer of the Crimean War, justifying himself by saying the cash was needed to prove that Homer wrote history and Troy was a real place. Later he wrote, “I loved money, indeed, but solely as the means of realizing the one passion of my life to find Troy.” No more realistic than romantic, he wanted a Greek wife at his side while he searched for Troy.

After a miserable marriage with a physically frigid, emotionally selfish, and intellectually sterile Russian woman, he arranged to divorce her in the United States at Indianapolis. While there, he began negotiations for an Hellenic bride. Photographs of matrimonial prospects were sent to him by an Athenian friend, Archbishop Theoclitus Vimbos, who, as a theological student in St. Petersburg, had tutored Schliemann the businessman in ancient and modern Greek. Their friendship remained constant through correspondence, the most recent letters having dealt with two subjects: Schliemann’s intention to excavate Troy and his hopes for betrothal to a Greek girl.

In his first letter, outlining his requirements for a wife, Schliemann stated that he wanted to marry a girl of pure Greek heritage who resembled Helen of Troy as he visualized her. He specified, too, that she should be unsophisticated as well as good-looking. Vimbos, accepting the challenge of his friend and former student, assembled a collection of photographs of prospective brides. When packing them to send to Schliemann in Indianapolis, Vimbos, as an afterthought, included one of the young Sophia, daughter of his favorite cousin. Schliemann carefully studied the photo graphed faces, judging one girl to be too bossy; another, obviously of Italian descent; and another, frivolous. Vacillating during his perusal of the pictures, he returned again and again to the portrait of Sophia. He had it copied and sent prints to his father and to other members of his family, with the notation: “I shall go to Athens and marry Sophia.”

The morning after Schliemann’s 1869 arrival in Athens, his hotel suite looked like a settled home. On his well-ordered desk were papers neatly stacked, books arranged in a graduated row, and pens lined up beside a brimful inkwell. A highly polished silver dresser set- shone on the top of a bureau ; its capacious drawers were filled with scarfs of silk and wool, with neckties and cravats, with piles of underwear and, by the dozens, stiff collars and shirts, labeled by his London shirtmaker. Schliemann selected a suit of linen from a huge wooden wardrobe ; in it, hang ing shoulder to shoulder, were other suits of tweed and twill, greatcoats in heavy weight and light, full-dress suits and cotton dusters. Schliemann, who at forty-seven possessed the accoutre ments of a boulevardier, lacked the flair to make him the image of one. Before leaving his room, he glanced into a mirror that reflected not a dashing gallant but a conservatively tailored, slight man of no physical distinction.

Hat in hand, cane handle curved over his left wrist, Schliemann went down to the lobby to meet Leon Melas, chairman of the board of The Arsakeion, the private school for daughters of prominent Athenians, where Sophia studied. Melas knew only that Schliemann wanted to observe Sophia in her classroom, and the two men set a fast pace toward the school. The board chair man bowed to acquaintances as he and Schliemann crossed the plaza in front of the Royal Palace. They turned left into University Street and, continuing along that thoroughfare, passed a wooded acreage where Schliemann was eventually to build his own palatial home. Just beyond that site and to the right, was the University of Athens, and diagonally from it was the Arsakeion School. There the two men lingered briefly to look at the Ionic columns, supporting a pediment on which was lettered the word AP2AKEION. Entering, Melas and Schliemann walked down a broad hall to a classroom. A wave of nervous excitement swept through the room as the young girls surreptitiously exchanged questioning glances. What possible reason could there be for the presence of the eminent Mr. Melas, normally seen only at the school’s formal functions? And who was the unknown mustached man, as old as many of their fathers ?

It was he who asked the teacher if he might hear recitations from his favorite poet, Homer. One after another, tongue-tied pupils were unable to stammer out more than a couple of lines from the Odyssey and the Iliad. Schliemann, having identified the seventeen-year-old Sophia from her photograph, eagerly waited for her to rise from her place in the second row from the front. At last, at a nod from the teacher, Sophia stood and, facing the guests, started to recite in classical Greek. Without affectation or elaborate gesture, she spoke the following lines from Homer : “Helen rose third, leading the lament : Oh Hector, most dear of all my stalwart brothers, and most close to my heart! Truly my husband is the royal Alexandros who fled me to Honored Troy, yet would I had died before this. Twenty years have come and gone since I left mine homeland for Troy, yet while here none among you has said an unkind and cruel word to me. If others spoke harshly of me, a sister or brother among you, or even a brother’s wife, or your mother; fair indeed was your father to me as though my own; you challenged them, silenced them, with your loving spirit and loving words. For this I weep for you all and we together weep for my sorrowing self. Throughout all Troy there is no one good and kind ; instead they revile me.” Sophia’s rendition of the quotation from the Iliad so moved Schliemann that tears misted his eyes. As attentive as if he him self did not know each line of the poetry and every syllable of the words, he listened to her recitation of the concluding passage : “Dawn on the following day showed her rosy fingers through the clouds, and Trojans circled round the funeral pyre of great Hector.

At first they quenched the flame with their wine where flames still burned. Next, Hector’s brothers and dearest friends brushed together his white-ash bones, while tears of sorrow wet their cheeks. Placing his remains in a golden casket, wrapping it in fine purple cloth, they put the casket in a grave and piled heavy stones atop the grave. Swiftly they formed the marked-place as guards stood alert lest the Achaeans attack without warning. This accomplished, mourners returned to the city, and all in family and of friends partook of a great feast in the Palace of their King, Priam. That was the funeral of Hector.”

Sophia sat down to spontaneous applause. Schliemann, without showing the exultation he felt, thanked the teacher and Sophia and, with Melas, left the school. Jubilant, Schliemann proceeded at once to the home of Vimbos, Archbishop of Mantineia and Kynouria, who greeted Heinrich with a hug and kisses on both cheeks. The two old friends set tled comfortably in the Archbishop’s study, and throughout the long afternoon of September 3 Schliemann eagerly questioned Vimbos, drawing from him information about Sophia and her large family. Sophia was the youngest of seven children : the two eldest were sisters, Katingo and Marigo, and there were four brothers, Spiros, Alexandras, Yiango and Panighotes. By Greek custom, Archbishop Vimbos, as first cousin to their mother, was maternal “uncle” of the children to whom he was devoted and attentive.
Sophia was always the least lively of the children who, close in age, together competed in numerous active and sedentary games. Particularly after her matriculation at The Arsakeion, Sophia so patently preferred her books to contests of wit and athletic skill that her brothers and sisters teasingly called her Miss Philosophia, a word that could be written in Greek as a pun meaning I kiss you, Sophia.

Sophia’s mother, a member of the Cretan family Gheladaki, was a statuesque matron, proud and formidable in appearance, in spiring everybody with awe. She was addressed and invariably referred to as Madame Victoria, never by her husband’s surname. That name was confusing. Sophia’s father was born George Kastromenos, whose ancestors for generations occupied a house in the Thesion section of Athens.Kastromenos, meaning house *Translation by Lynn Poole.

nearest the castle, aptly described the patrimonial home that was the building nearest to the Acropolis. The Church of Our Lady of Vlassarou was close by, and to the west on a small hill stood the Temple of Theseus.

George Kastromenos, ebullient, jovial and talkative, had a ready laugh and a hearty appetite that, uncontrolled, produced a mammoth paunch. It earned him the nickname Engastromenos, meaning pregnant, and in the custom of the time in Greece, the nickname became the designation for others in the family. While not affluent, George owned a successful business in drapery, the importing of fine fabrics, and had, in addition to the ancestral house, a country home in the Colonos section, famous as the birthplace of Sophocles.
It was to the country place that the Archbishop and Schliemann drove in the late day. The house was tile-roofed, box-shaped, and small. Its spacious garden was adjacent to St. Meletios Church, a long low building topped with a bell tower forward, and toward the back, a small dome, centered by a cross. Flourishing cedar trees planted by George Engastromenos marked the boundary of his garden and the churchyard.

Madame Victoria and her husband welcomed Schliemann and Vimbos, who suggested they withdraw to a quiet place, away from the activity of the bustling household, for a confidential talk. Schliemann, without preamble, asked Sophia’s parents for per mission to marry her. Astounded, they heard him out in silence.
With succinct statement he touched on his financial successes and explained that his previous marriage to the mother of his three children had failed because she refused to travel or to live with him, either in Paris or anywhere else outside her native Russia. He expressed his delight with Sophia, showing her parents the well-worn photograph that he had been carrying for more than six months, and telling them of his visit to The Arsakeion earlier in the day.

Schliemann, in a letter dated the day of his wedding, wrote to a friend, “When I asked for the approval of Sophia’s parents to our wedding, I asked if there is any objection because of my recent divorce. They answered . . . : ‘Thanks god we are not enemies of our daughter and it would be a wicked doing to turn down such a great happiness for which the whole of Greece must envy us.

Even if we waited ten thousand years, never a second time would it happen to us that a Schliemann should honor us (by asking) to marry our daughter. Even the Furies would punish us if we made such a sin (as refusal), so take our daughter and live with her. Having received parental blessings for the match, Schliemann  peremptorily announced that he wanted the wedding to be held within a matter of weeks. Madame Victoria demurred but Schliemann prevailed. A tentative day was decided on by the time Schliemann and Vimbos, with Sophia’s parents, joined the family group. If Sophia was surprised to see the stranger of the class room in her home, she gave no sign, but smilingly greeted “Uncle” Vimbos, who kissed her on the forehead and then said, “Sophia, this is my friend, Heinrich Schliemann.” With grace she put out her hand to him. Nothing in that casual introduction augured the misunderstandings of the ensuing days, the future clash of wills of two headstrong people, or the ultimate shared joys of a loving couple. Sophia, demure in a simple cotton frock, her unbound black hair shining across her shoulders, typified a young daughter being presented to a guest of her parents. Hardly taller than Sophia, Schliemann, slope-shouldered and balding, looked to be a most unlikely suitor for the slender girl he expected to marry, and soon.

At table Schliemann talked volubly with a sparkling wit and charm that he never evidenced outside an intimate circle of family and friends. Those acquaintances who judged him as dour and monosyllabic would not have thought it possible for him to hold companions spellbound, as he did throughout the evening. The immediate family and visiting relatives were all enthralled by the world traveler who spoke with familiarity of places known to them only as words in an atlas.

(COURTESY : ALEX L. MELAS)

Heinrich Schliemann ‘was a ‘wealthy financier, a world traveler, a scholar and linguist. At the age of forty-seven he divorced his first <wije y Ekaterina, and ‘wrote to Archbishop Vimbos in Athens to find him a new bride.

 

Schliemanris diary, dated 22 July 1869, he writes oj New York City, “. . . new constructions are going on every where” On July 24, once headed for France aboard the steamship St. Laurent, Schliemann began writing in French.

From a photo, Heinrich chose Sophia Engastromenos to be his second wife. Her parents, delighted by his offer, were happy for Sophia; Schlieniann, happy to have their permission, was delighted by Sophia. Sophia, only seventeen, obediently accepted.

A proud and formidable woman, whose appearance and manner were awe-inspiring, Sophia’s mother was always addressed as “Madame Victoria” never by her husband’s surname.

 

(PAINTING BY GEORGE KASTRIOTES)

George Engastromenos was head of a family of seven children. He enjoyed eating, talking, and life in general qualities not evident in this severe portrait.

TWO

The Engastromenos family did not know that Schliemann’s at tainment of prominence was a personal triumph motivated by a boyhood dream. Heinrich Schliemann, born on January 6, 1822, at Neu-Buckow, Germany, was taken the following year to Anker- shagen where his father accepted the post of clergyman. Heinrich was one of seven children, having two brothers and four sisters. In the parsonage of the small village church, young Heinrich first heard about ancient Troy from Ernst Schliemann. Though neither scholar nor archaeologist, the pastor had a passion for ancient history and, with enthusiasm, often told of the tragic fate of Herculaneum and Pompeii. Ernst Schliemann, who related with admiration the great deeds of Homeric heroes and the events of the Trojan War, always found his son to be a defender of the Trojan cause. Heinrich grieved that Troy had disappeared with out leaving any traces of its existence. The child’s joy was bound less when, in 1829, he received as a Christmas gift Dr. George Ludwig Jerrer’s Universal History, which had an illustration showing Troy in flames. Heinrich excitedly said to his father that Jerrer must have seen Troy, for otherwise he could not have represented it so well. The clergyman told the boy that the picture was merely fanciful, but Heinrich would not be convinced. He insisted that if such walls once existed they could not possibly have been completely destroyed. “Ruins must be buried by earth,” he stubbornly claimed. Heinrich then and there vowed that he would one day excavate Troy, and his father agreed.

The father’s concession probably was made to cut short a bootless argument and to humor a small boy who believed in legends both of faraway places and of his own neighborhood. Little Heinrich roamed in search of ghosts reputed to haunt Ankershagen and of treasure said to be buried in the local graveyard and ruins
of a castle. His natural disposition for the mysterious and the marvelous was stimulated to a passion by the wonders of his locality. There was supposed to be one ghost on the grounds of the parsonage and another in the pond beyond the garden. Treasure was reputedly buried in numerous locations in and near the village, and a left leg grew out of a grave in the churchyard. In his autobiography Schliemann, affirming that “in my childish simplicity I, of course, believed in all of this,” gave precise details about each tale told in the town.

On how many moonlight nights must the small Heinrich have leaned out of his bedroom window, hoping for a glimpse of the ghost of Pastor von Russdorf, his father’s predecessor and haunt of the garden house of the parsonage, and of the maiden in the pond who was believed to rise each midnight, holding a silver bowl. By day, Heinrich’s explorations were wide-ranging, and at various sites he optimistically dug with trowel and small shovel. There was so much to believe in : A child in a golden cradle was buried in a small hill of the German village. Treasure was concealed somewhere close to the ruins of a round tower in the garden of the
town’s proprietor. A long line of stones in the churchyard marked the grave of one Henning, a murderer whose left leg, covered with a black silk stocking, grew out for centuries. Local men alleged that, as boys, they had cut off the leg and used the bone for knocking fruit from orchard trees, but that in 1802 the leg had
stopped growing. A footnote to this legend, written by Schliemann in his late fifties, hardly the age of “childish simplicity,” indicates his continued interest. “According to tradition, when some years ago the church of Ankershagen was being repaired, a single leg-bone was found at a small depth before the altar, as my cousin, the Reverend Hans Becker, the present clergyman [1879] of Ankershagen, assures me.”

Few in Heinrich’s childhood shared his acceptance of legends as reality. His father, who dismissed local lore and the existence of ancient Troy, lived to see his son become famous, one of the most spectacular and controversial figures of the 19th century.

Most of the playmates of little Heinrich made fun of his constant talk about Troy and the legends of Ankershagen. But there were two sisters, Louise and Minna Meincke, who listened to Heinrich with flattering attention. Minna became his childhood sweetheart and entered into all his vast plans for the future.

The happy life of the imaginative child, who dreamed of excavating Troy, was cut short by the untimely death of his mother. The boy had little to support his ebullience for the next five years. His father, who had taken the family maid as a mistress even be fore the death of Mrs. Schliemann, sent Heinrich to live with an uncle, the Reverend Friederich Schliemann, pastor of a church in the town of Kalkhorst. The boy was doing well when a second disaster struck. Ernst Schliemann, accused of misguiding church funds, was relieved of his duties as pastor at Ankershagen and was not exonerated until 1838. In 1834 Heinrich left private school
and entered the Realschule at Neu Strelitz. His formal schooling came to an end in April 1836, and at the age of fourteen, he became a grocer’s apprentice at Furstenberg.

The hours, from five in the morning until eleven at night, left the apprentice not a moment’s leisure for study. He sold goods at the shop, swept up, unpacked the stock, arranged it for display, and ground potatoes for the still in which his employer produced the popular potato-whisky of the region.

Heinrich’s life was miserable, but he never lost his love of learning. Often he recounted a vital evening in his life. Hermann Niederhoffer, the son of a Protestant clergyman in Roebel, Mecklenburg, Germany, had almost completed his studies at the Gymnasium of Neu Ruppin, when he was expelled for bad conduct. The young Niederhoffer gave himself up to drink, which, however, had not made him forget his Homer.

One evening he entered the shop where Heinrich worked and recited about one hundred lines of the Iliad, observing the rhyth mic cadence of the verses. “Although I did not understand a syllable, the melodious sound of the words made a deep impres sion on me, and I wept bitter tears over my own unhappy, uneducated fate. Three times over did I get him to repeat to me those divine verses, rewarding his trouble with three glasses of whiskey, which I bought with the few pence that made up my whole fortune. From that moment on I never ceased to pray to God that by His grace I might yet have the happiness of learning Greek’

Heinrich bore misfortune well, refusing to succumb to long work hours or illness, shipwreck or starvation. Suffering from tuberculosis while clerking at the shop, he stoically endured the stench of his own expectoration of blood and phlegm. Determined to obtain an education and to make enough money to excavate Troy, Heinrich gave up his job, realizing that financial advancement was impossible in the small community of Furstenberg. But first he must be restored to health. Thinking that a sea voyage would be good for him, he signed as cabin boy aboard the brig Dorothea bound for South America, a land of opportunity.

The Dorothea, out of Hamburg, was wrecked off Texel and, after hazardous hours of exposure at sea, Heinrich reached the shores of that island of the Netherlands.

He made his way to Amsterdam, where he suffered cruelly both from the cold and at the hands of German consuls indifferent to the plight of their young fellow countryman. Finally, with the help of the consul general from Prussia, Heinrich secured a position as clerk at an annual salary of 32, some of which he spent for lessons in calligraphy. Debilitated by tuberculosis and by Spartan living, he prodded himself to stay awake when he should have slept. The zealous young clerk taught himself to read, write and speak English, devising a linguistic method that enabled him to learn nine foreign tongues in the next half-dozen years and as many more in his lifetime. By day, he observed with knowing eyes the activities of his employers and avidly investigated business procedures.

The twenty-two-year-old Schliemann, restored to good health, became correspondent and chief bookkeeper for Messrs. B. H. Schroder and Co. of Amsterdam, on March 1, 1844. By then his English and French were flawless, and he became proficient in Russian because the Schroder company maintained an office in St. Petersburg for the purpose of indigo trade. As a result of his diligence and canny planning, Schliemann was sent to Russia, as chief agent of the Schroders, in January 1846. With the approval of the Amsterdam company, he set up his own office in St. Peters burg and became an active member of the wholesale merchants’ guild. Every success in business advanced Schliemann’s dream of finding Troy.

In 1850 he sailed for the United States to investigate the death of a brother, Louis, in California, and to claim the estate. Heinrich, who lived through the San Francisco fire of 1851 and nearly died of yellow fever, amassed a fortune of $350,000 in the California gold rush. Returning to Russia at the end of 1852, he prospered in St. Petersburg, and set up a branch office in Moscow. He acquired fluency in Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish and Polish, while also studying Latin and reading Roman classics in the original. It was at this period that he took Greek lessons from Theoclitus Vimbos.

An ardent suitor, Schliemann had always been romantically involved with women and was much sought after as both lover and husband in St. Petersburg. Even at Ankershagen he had a precocious attachment for his childhood playmate Minna Meincke, and the affectionate children pledged their eternal love with solemnity.
For years after Heinrich left Germany, Troy and Minna were the inspirations for his ambitious undertakings, and he languished when he learned that she had married just as he became successful enough to propose.

Schliemann was married in 1852 to Ekaterina Lyschin a Russian belle who bore him three children. She refused to interest herself in his passion for the excavation of Troy, and would not travel with him on business or pleasure trips. Schliemann went alone to Sweden, Denmark, Italy, and Egypt; he visited Jeru salem and Petra and, while acquiring a practical knowledge of Arabic, traversed Syria. In 1859, on his first visit to Greece, he intended to go to the Homeric island of Ithaca, but had to leave
Athens for urgent business in St. Petersburg.

Schliemann’s dedication to his one passion made it possible for him to endure hardship, misery and censure as he progressed from a youth of little education to a man of great learning, from an impoverished child to an international financier of immense wealth. Expanding his commercial empire, he invested in Greek olive oil, in American cotton fields and railroad lines, in Cuban sugar and tobacco plantations, and in South American hemp production. He profited from the Crimean War and from the Civil War in the United States. His business ventures provided the financial security that freed him, at forty-one, to start for his ultimate goal. By December 1863 he possessed the fortune he needed for the excavation of Troy, but wrote that “, . . before devoting myself entirely to archaeology and to the realization of my life dream, I wished to see a little more of the world.”

He capsuled that world trip for the Engastromenos family at his first dinner with them in 1869. Foreign lands became real to them as Schliemann, creating excitement by dramatic detail, high lighted the experiences that began in April 1864. He retraced his route from the ruins of Carthage, near Tunis, into Egypt and on to India where he visited Calcutta, Benares, Agra, Madras, Lucknow and Delhi. From the islands of Ceylon and Java, he went to China for a two-month stay, touring seven cities including Hong Kong, Shanghai and Peking, and concluded his Oriental trip in Japan. His was no mere listing of geographic locations. Embellishing the narration for his listeners, he told of climbing in the foothills of the Himalaya Mountains and tramping along the Great Wall of China; of riding camels and elephants; of being passenger in rickshaw and sampan; of dining with digni taries whose rich robes blazed with priceless jewels and recoiling from beggars whose tattered clothing crawled with loathsome lice.

Heinrich was urged to continue the story of his adventures whenever he paused to enjoy the food offered from serving dishes filled with tempting fare. Encouraged by the eager faces and enthusiastic comments of his intimate audience, he spun more tales of exotic travel, eating little and sipping only enough of his wine to be able to compliment George Engastromenos on its vintage. While dessert was being served, Schliemann excused himself from the table, returning with a package, which he gave to Madame Victoria. In it were gift copies of two of his books.
He explained that one of them, La Chine et le Japon, published in Paris in 1866, had been written during the long voyage from Japan to San Francisco aboard an English ship. The fact that crossing the Pacific Ocean had taken fifty days elicited amaze ment from those whose sea trips were gauged by the few hours required to reach the nearest Greek islands.

The other book, his second, was Ithaca, the Peloponnesus and Troy, a report of his archaeological investigations there in 1868. Pointing to it, Schliemann began to talk with intensity. The raconteur became zealot, his voice emotional, eyes aglow. He poured out his hopes for the future, looking directly at Sophia who did not understand the implication of his words. He spoke of his expectations of success in the exploration of ancient sites and his need for a partner who, with understanding and faith, would be constantly at his side. Ahead was the necessity to prove the Homeric legends to have been fact, in support of his long-held views. In preparation for his serious archaeological work, he had excavated at Ithaca, and then at Mycenae in the Peloponnesus and at two sites in Asia Minor. Certain conclusions about Mycenae and his identification of the probable site of Troy in Asia Minor were in absolute variance with those of most scholars. His two prime theories, unequivocally stated in Ithaca, the Peloponnesus and Troy, gained him a doctoral degree from the University of Rostock. His ambition was to attain future success with one who shared his passionate belief that Troy once existed, a flourishing city described in truth by Homer.

No one at the table not even Schliemann himself, much less Sophia realized that his convictions would involve him in constant controversy. In future, he was to be bitter opponent of eminent scholars, defendant at a courtroom trial, challenger of royalty, and antagonist of government officials, both petty and influential. But against such formidable obstacles, he would remain steadfast in his dedication to his one passion.

 

THREE

On the morning following his request to the parents for permission to marry Sophia, Schliemann arrived early at the National Bank to confer with a senior officer, Pericles Dentopoulos, with whom he had done business on previous visits to Athens. Before leaving the bank, Schliemann, unable to contain his elation over his betrothal, confided in Dentopoulos that he was engaged to marry Sophia Engastromenos. The banker, leaping from his chair, exclaimed, “What did you say? You are going to marry Sophaki?” Affronted by the banker’s tone of incredulity no less than by the use of the diminutive for Sophia, Schliemann glared at Dento
poulos and indignantly demanded an explanation of his right to call her Sophaki. Amused by the jealousy of the offended suitor, the banker smiled disarmingly and said that he, as a close friend of Sophia’s brother Alexandras, was practically a member of the Engastromenos family. Schliemann, pacified, left the bank with
the congratulations of Dentopoulos and with his heartwarming assurance that “neither you yourself nor anybody else who has seen Sophaki can possibly conceive what an exceptional young woman she is and how she stands out from all the girls of her age.”

In the late afternoon Schliemann, having been invited to the Engastromenos’ town house, arrived there to find Sophia’s broth ers with several friends. He was asked to join them in the beautiful garden with its sweeping view of the Thesion and, when seated, was plied with questions about his travel experiences. The previous night he had mentioned that he had been in the great fire that destroyed San Francisco in 1851, and the young men pressed him to give a detailed account of that disaster.

Reluctantly, since the purpose of his visit was to talk with Sophia, Schliemann recounted the events of the night of June 4, eighteen years earlier. He had arrived in San Francisco after dark and was asleep in his room at the Union Hotel when shouts of Fire! Fire! and the clang of alarm bells had roused him. He looked out and saw flames consuming a frame building only a few feet from his window. Hastily dressing, he ran from the hotel, which itself was on fire by the time he gained safety in the city’s plaza. A gale spread the blaze that immediately destroyed wooden structures, slowly caused brick homes to crumble, and turned from red-hot to white-hot the metal houses in which doomed residents mistakenly had felt themselves to be protected from fire.

Schliemann made his way from the center of the fire up steep streets, and at last reached Telegraph Hill from which he had full view of the dreadful spectacle. He heard from below the cries of human torches, victims of the fire, and the reverberations of explosions deliberately set off in unsuccessful attempts to halt the spread of flames. Through the night of tragedy and terror, Schliemann stayed in a restaurant on the Hill, descending at about six in the morning to the ruins of what only hours before had been a flourishing city.

His description of the smoldering remains of the city with no walls standing perplexed the young Athenians whose homes, truly fireproof, were made of the cheapest building materials available, stone and marble. Their homes, which might be razed by earthquake, could never be destroyed by windswept flames.

Schliemann, questioned about San Francisco after the holocaust, said that its rebuilding started the very morning following the fire. On his way down to the plaza area, he passed many foreign inhabitants of San Francisco sitting in shock and despair, num bers of them bitterly weeping. He noticed that the Americans on the other hand, seemingly undaunted, joked and laughed as they began to lay foundations for new buildings on earth still covered with hot ash.

Concluding the fire story, Schliemann brushed aside further attempts to question him when he saw Sophia sitting quietly at some distance behind the young men who ringed his chair. She returned his smile but seemed remote, her expression contemplative.

By the time Schliemann had risen from his chair and reached Sophia’s side, it was too late to speak with her alone. The garden was filled with people: friends had called to offer sincere congratulations; curious gossips, to scrutinize the prospective bride groom. These left to start mischief-making throughout the town where those envious of Sophia’s good fortune publicly referred to her fiance as “old Schliemann.”

Vexed by the many visitors who prevented him from conversing with Sophia, Schliemann sent her a necklace of coral on September 6, and in the accompanying letter wrote: “Can you please ask your excellent parents and write to me if it is possible to see you without all those people around but alone with them [the parents] not once, but often, because I think we must see each other to get acquainted and to see whether our characters go along together.”

The letter contained his views on marriage in general and specifics about their own. He defined marriage as the “most magnificent of all human establishments if the only bases are respect, love and virtue,” but described marriage as the “heaviest bondage if it is based on material interest or sexual attraction.

“Wealth contributes to the happiness in marriage,” he continued, “but cannot build it by itself, and the woman who will marry me for my money only or to become, because of it, a great lady in Paris will regret very much to have left Athens because she would make me and herself very unhappy. The woman who will marry me must do it for my value as a human being. I am not flattering myself with illusions. I know perfectly well that a young and beautiful girl cannot fall in love with a 47-year-old man for his beautiful face for the simple reason that the man does not have beauty. But I think that a woman, the character of whom completely agrees with mine and has the same love and enthusiastic inclination for the sciences, could respect me. Because we are created to respect always the person who is more learned, especially in those sciences that we are mostly interested in. And because this woman would be my student for all her life I dare to hope that she would love me, because love is born by respect, second because I would try to be a good teacher and would dedicate every free moment of my life to help the lover of science in Tier philological and archaeological considerations.”

The letter, hardly one to arouse in a schoolgirl a desire to be alone with her fiance or to fire her enthusiasm for marriage, served Schliemann’s purpose, Sophia’s parents asked him to come to their home as often as he wished, promising frequent oppor tunity for him to converse with Sophia. Assurance of privacy was easier to offer than to realize in their home bustling with sons and daughters, with relatives and friends by the dozens. Moreover, Sophia was required to spend hours with fittings for trousseau clothes. Even Heinrich was drawn into conferences about the wedding reception. There was more chaos than calm whenever he and Sophia met, whether at the city house or in the country, where the wedding was to be held at St. Meletios Church.

Schliemann himself found it difficult to get away to be with Sophia, because he was besieged at his hotel by fathers and brothers importuning him to consider their daughters and sisters as prospective brides. With lack of tact, insistent Athenians ex tolled their female relatives as more suitable in age and sophisti cation for a man of Schliemann 5 s years and experience. “Old Schliemann” though he might be, he was, in Athens, the matri monial catch of the century. He gave short interviews and curt dismissals to the blatant solicitors, but they, by their very num bers, kept him engaged for hours of every day. By September 12 he was so frustrated by the obstacles that kept him from private talks with Sophia that he decided to escape from Athens, taking her with him. Early that morning he sent her a note asking her and her “honorable mother” to join him at two in the afternoon at the railway station. “You will find there Mr. Lamprides and his excellent wife and we will all go to the Piraeus together. There we will take a boat and go sailing a little, which you will maybe do for the first time in your life. Hoping that you will not deprive us of the joy to have you with us I beg you to receive the expression of my respect. Please answer me with one or two words. H.S.”

By return messenger Sophia explained in a note that, before accepting, she had to ask the permission of her “venerable and beloved father,” who was not at home. Schliemann, impatient at the delay, sent her another letter saying that he must have an answer, and to this she replied, “This very moment my father arrived home and saw fit to extend me the permisison for us to go to the Piraeus.” In spite of her innate fear of the water, Sophia, with Madame Victoria, met Schliemann and his friends at the train station in Athens.

The group traveled in holiday mood to the Piraeus and embarked on an ill-fated sail. Heinrich, at last free to talk with Sophia alone, asked her why she had consented to be his bride.

Artless and incapable of subterfuge, she gave him an honest and straightforward answer: her parents wanted her to accept him. The ingenuous reply infuriated Heinrich. Having searched for a bride who was unsophisticated, he was deeply hurt by irrefutable proof that he had found one. At a time and in a country where marriages of arrangement were common and love matches rare, he was unreasonably angered by a dutiful daughter’s acquiescence. Leaving Sophia’s side, he huffily ordered the sailing captain to return the little boat to port, and on the train trip back to Athens was withdrawn and hardly civil.

He seethed over Sophia’s forthright answer for several days, then wrote her a farewell that created consternation in the Engas-tromenos family. Urged by her parents to try to placate Heinrich, Sophia wrote him that, after reading his letter, she “prayed to God to bring back to you the feelings that have fled.” She asked that he visit her before he left Athens and hoped that his “gentle soul” would not decline the request.

Schliemann did not at once capitulate, but sternly taxed Sophia with having acted as a slave to her parents in consenting to marry him at their request. He described her answer to him on the boat as having been so “unworthy of an educated human being” that he had been unable to converse with her longer that day and had decided not to “think on you any more.” Referring to a ring sent to remind her of the “love I have had for you,” Schliemann then gave a probable date for his sailing and a tentative itinerary for Europe. After a lively exchange of notes carried by busy messengers, steadily shuttling between his hotel and Sophia’s home, Heinrich finally initiated a reconciliation.

Correspondence was ever a thread of life to Schliemann, and in letters written during the days of his courtship in Athens, he dashed off random thoughts, penned fanciful interpretations of much that transpired, and contradicted himself on decisions, opinions and dates. These letters show him to have been as muddled and flustered as any young lover. The one constant was his reiteration to distant friends that Sophia would be his student for her lifetime. He regretted that she spoke only ancient and modern Greek, but pledged to do “my best that she learns four languages in two years.” That she might have some difficulty in keeping to his imposed schedule never crossed the mind of Schliemann, a linguistic genius, who already spoke and wrote seventeen Ian-

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guages. He had no qualms about Sophia’s ability to acquire such graces as piano playing and the fine manners of the fashionables of Paris, and was hopeful of making a scholar of her although she lacked “any profound scientific education.” Sophia, a “docileand obedient plant, clever and. intelligent,” was to have her chance to prove herself while he educated her “according to my will/’Without realizing to what extent she was to be involuntary pupil as well as wife, the young Sophia busily prepared for her
wedding. It took place on September 23 at the close of a breath lessly hot day. The tiny church was jammed with guests long be fore the hour set for the ceremony. Light from hundreds of flickering candles enhanced the glitter of silver and gold threads and semiprecious stones that decorated the colorful regional costumes of Sophia’s relatives from Crete and from distant com munities on the mainland. Patriarchs wearing jackets of embroidered velvet and voluminous kilts, tightly pleated, stood elbow to elbow with dignitaries in full-dress suits.

Sophia, with serene dignity, passed through the congregation, the long train of her simple bridal gown broadening behind her. A short veil of white tulle was attached to a floral cap that lay flat on her black hair, which was parted in the middle and braided into a slight coronet. She held a dainty bouquet from which a flowering vine showered. Around her neck she wore the necklace of coral strands that was Heinrich’s first gift to her.

They stood before the iconastisis, dominated by a life-sized icon of St. Meletios painted in rich colors accented by gold-leaf wrist lets, halo and cross. In a smaller icon only the face of the saint was painted; all else within the frame was hammered silver.

Archbishop Vimbos, resplendent in his robe weighted with gems and embroidery, officiated at the ceremony with the parish priest assisting. The solemn service was long, following the pub lished Liturgies of the Orthodox Church prepared by Symeon of Thessalonika. The deep voices of the archbishop and the at tending priest reverberated throughout the small church, but few could catch the responses of Sophia and Heinrich made during the high nuptial Mass. The bride and groom received communion during that rite ; and at the actual marriage ceremony they again sipped wine from a chalice, the formal and traditional Orthodox plighting of the troth.

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The wedding party and guests, moving out of the church, walked the short distance to the Engastromenos’ garden where the wedding banquet was served to the accompaniment of music and laughter. Heinrich was constantly at the side of his smiling bride. Beaming with pride and joy, he for once looked younger than his years.

The feasting and dancing and singing continued even after Sophia went into the house to dress for the journey ahead. When she and Heinrich, with her family, were ready to leave for the Piraeus, Sophia asked to be left alone for a few minutes in her own room. There she had played children’s games, studied school lessons, read for pleasure, and indulged in daydreams. These could not have been fanciful enough to approach the reality of her future as professional partner to her husband and, as skilled diplomatist, his invaluable aide.

Whatever Sophia’s thoughts in her room, she emerged from it dry-eyed and controlled. Immediately the members of the family, calling goodbye to the guests still celebrating, stepped into waiting carriages and, in cavalcade, started for the harbor from which the bride and groom were to sail at 1 A.M. At the Piraeus, Sophia, in tearful farewell, kissed her parents and sisters and brothers. They remained on the quay calling “Kalos taxidi ! Good trip!” until Heinrich and Sophia stepped from the little harbor boat onto the anchored ship. It was typical of Heinrich to have booked passage on that specific vessel with its name significant for a honeymoon : Aphrodite. Sophia, uneasy throughout the short sea voyage, was happy with the landfall off the boot-tip of Italy that was her first view of a foreign shore. The Schliemanns landed at Messina and stayed for two days on Sicily before crossing to the mainland for a week at Naples.

Naples, site of the ancient Greek colony Neapolis, and its surrounding countryside pleased Sophia more than Sicily with its rugged hills and valleys. The Neapolitans gay, noisy, lively seemed carefree and created a bustling activity day and night. Like the vendors of Athens, those in Naples crowded the streets, calling their wares, chiefly amulets and edibles. In a letter to her parents, Sophia wrote that the Neapolitans were more swarthy than Greeks, but were happy and “do much as our own people/*

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She evidently pondered at length about whether the Greek origin of the city accounted for its atmosphere, for in every letter written from Naples she mentioned the heritage of the Neapolitans, ques tioning their relationship to the Greeks.

The honeymoon travels of the Schliemanns were well documented because Sophia proved to be as persistent a letter-writer as her husband. In daily correspondence she gave detailed accounts of their activities, along with her opinions and impressions of what she saw and experienced. Heinrich, in letters and his diary, wrote in similar vein, frequently adding his perceptive comments on Sophia’s conduct and reactions.

Nothing in Naples delighted Sophia more than La Villa (Villa Nazionale), the public garden enlivened by strolling musicians, ambling couples, and gamboling children. Like fashionable Neapoli tans, she and Heinrich drove along the Via Caracciolo, enjoying views of the sea and the park. In La Villa she was amazed to see temple-memorials to Virgil and Tasso, poets whose work she had studied at school.

San Domenico Maggiore depressed Sophia. The family chapels of prominent Neapolitans seemed dark and gloomy to her, and she was repulsed by the velvet-covered coffins in the sacristy. The architecture of San Gennaro was so foreign to her that she was unable to appreciate the original French Gothic construction, somewhat obscured by a succession of hodgepodge alterations made after the mid- 15th century. 

Their tour of the Palazzo Reale, the former royal palace, was complete and exhausting. Heinrich pointed out its wonders: the great staircases of white marble, the carved bas-reliefs, the floors of mosaic, the exquisitely painted walls, the huge collection of statues. While resting on the terrace of the palace garden, with its breathtaking view of the sea, Heinrich told Sophia that he would one day build her such a palace with a view of the Aegean. She reported in a letter that she was about to question his state ment but then, on second thought, remained silent. Already she was beginning to learn how to live with Heinrich.

On another day, at the national museum, she listened to his expansive projection of excavations at Troy with her at his side, digging and searching for artifacts that would irrefutably establish Homer as the author of fact, not fiction. Heinrich led Sophia from 

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gallery to gallery, explaining the significance of the treasures excavated from Herculaneum, Pompeii, Stabiae, and Cummae, and pointing out many forms of antiquities from numerous countries. Suddenly weary beyond endurance, Sophia surprised Heinrich by interrupting his definitive description of an encased object and insisting that they leave at once for the hotel There, although footsore and bone-tired, Sophia allowed Heinrich to inveigle her into going out for dinner and to the theater.

Early the following morning they took the electric train for the hour’s ride to Pompeii. Sophia, having studied Pliny at The Arsakeion, knew well the tragic story of the ancient city buried when Vesuvius erupted A.D. 79. Setting a rapid pace, the eager Heinrich took Sophia on a tour of the excavated ruins. She was shocked by the murals- depicting Actaeon peeking at Diana bathing and then being torn to death by his own dogs. The paintings of nudes in sexual positions made Sophia blush, and she turned away in girlish confusion and embarrassment. Heinrich, sensibly, did not insist that they linger.

They drove by. carriage from Pompeii to Sorrento. Heinrich did not want Sophia to miss the spectacular setting of the little town, enclosed by mysterious deep ravines on the land side and, on the seacoast, perched high on a cliff against which dramatic waves crashed nearly two hundred feet below. Toward the end of that particularly taxing day of sightseeing, Sophia was in no mood for views, and the natural beauty of Sorrento escaped her. In the fading light of late afternoon, she found the ravines not haunting but forbidding. Ever fearful of water, she was repulsed by the violence of the white surf pounding at the base of the cliff. Sorrento’s orange and lemon trees, growing from tufa rock, instead of pleasantly reminding her of the citrus groves of Greece gave her an acute attack of homesickness.

After she and Heinrich were back at the hotel in Naples, Sophia demanded that she be allowed to have an entire day to rest and just to be alone. The tireless Heinrich, accustomed to being active every waking minute, was both puzzled and hurt by her request, to which he acceded with reluctance. The evening of her solitary day, they went to the theater, where Sophia was as delighted as a child by a gay operetta. Heinrich was so “stimulated by the joy of my Sophithion’s reaction to the pretty music and 

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colorful costumes, I applauded much more than the spectacle was worth.”

The next week was spent in Rome. Although Heinrich as cicerone was relentless, Sophia began to appreciate the facts and the quotations he recited at museums and historic sites. In a letter to her mother, Sophia wrote that she had confessed to Heinrich the extent of her ignorance, begging him to share his vast knowledge with her and promising, in return, to be a good wife.

Captivated by the wonders of a world previously unknown to her, Sophia began slowly to place things in perspective. St. Peter’s, which thrilled her, “is the most great and splendid church I have ever seen/’ she wrote her family, adding how wrong it had been to think of the Metropolitan Church in Athens as the biggest in the world. Receptive as she was to the new experiences, Sophia found all things “so big that they cannot enter fully into my small head.”

In Rome, as in Naples, Heinrich and Sophia went to the theater every evening. The performances, being in a language she did not understand, often bewildered her, although Heinrich patiently explained the substance of what they were seeing. At the opera Traviata, the story as he told it so moved Sophia that she leaned her head on his shoulder, shuddering and softly weeping. But even Heinrich’s resumes could not lessen the tedium of wordy plays without music that she endured with eyelids heavy from lack of sleep.

Only remarkable stamina sustained Sophia through the mental, physical and emotional strain of her honeymoon. She was “so confused by the splendors that I am most certain I can never put them in place or good order/’ The strenuous days gave her no time for relaxation, and she was constantly fatigued, in part because of the late hours to which she was unaccustomed. Heinrich, determined to educate her mind, was not one to make easy her adjustment to the intimate relationships of marriage. It was not in his nature to be a restrained lover. But even had he been disposed to be a tender tutor in the art of love-making, the frenetic schedule permitted no time for dalliance.

The last week of the honeymoon was the most hectic of all. The Schliemanns spent two days in Florence, two in Venice, and

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Schliemann 1- 30   Schliemann 30-60   Schliemann 60-90   Schliemann 90-120   Schliemann 120-150  Schliemann 150-180   Schliemann 180 – 210   Schliemann 210 – 240   Schliemann 240 – 270  Schliemann 270 – End