The re-discovery of a small cache of old photos depicting students at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA or School hereafter) from 1907-08 inspired me to write about the first years of Bert Hodge Hill’s directorship at the School. [1]
The photos depict four men and one woman: George Wicker Elderkin (1879-1965), Kendall Kerfoot Smith (1882-1929), Charles Edward Whitmore (1887-1970), Henry Dunn Wood (1882-1940), and Elizabeth Manning Gardiner (1879-1958). Of the five, Elderkin, Smith, and Wood were second year students at the School. In 1908, Elderkin, who already held a PhD from Johns Hopkins (1906), succeeded Lacey D. Caskey as Secretary of the School, a position he held for two years (1908-10). Smith came to the School in 1906 holding the Charles Eliot Norton Fellowship, established by James Loeb in 1901 for Harvard or Radcliffe students. Wood, a trained architect with a BS in Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania, was the second recipient of the Fellowship in Architecture (1906-08) that was funded by the Carnegie Institution in Washington.
Henry Dunn Wood, George W. Elderkin, and Kendall K. Smith, ca. 1907. ASCSA Archives.
Of the new students, Whitmore, another Harvard man, was the Charles Eliot Norton Fellow for 1907, and Gardiner, the only woman in the photos, was a graduate of Radcliffe College (1901), with an MA from Wellesley (1906), and a recipient of the Alice Palmer Fellowship that supported female students.
Elizabeth Manning Gardiner with Kendall K. Smith (?), ca. 1907. ASCSA Archives.
An Untimely Death
Bert Hodge Hill (1874-1958), an Assistant Curator at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (MFA Boston), succeeded Theodore Woolsey Heermance in the School’s directorship after Heermance died unexpectedly in Athens in September 1905. Heermance, who held a PhD from Yale University, was about to start the third year of his directorship when he became sick with typhoid. Within a few days, the 33-year-old man was dead, leaving the academic community in shock. His body was shipped to his mother in America and buried with the rest of the Heermance family. (Heermance in the photo. ASCSA Archives, Theodore W. Heermance Papers)
The Annual Professor William N. Bates and the Secretary of the School Lacey D. Caskey assumed the duties of the directorship for 1905-06. At the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America in December 1905, a special committee of the School’s Managing Committee was charged with the selection of the new director. In the Annual Report (1905-06) we read about the appointment of a young but promising scholar, Bert Hodge Hill. Hill had been a student and a Fellow of the School in 1900-03. James R. Wheeler, Chair of the Managing Committee, publicly praised Hill, despite his personal reservations.
Hill’s biggest supporter for the directorship, Samuel E. Bassett, Professor of Classics at the University of Vermont (the alma mater of Hill) highlighted the many positive features of the candidate (clear headed, independent thinker, thorough archaeological training, good reader of character), and downplayed his one negative trait (which ironically tortured Hill for the rest of his life and caused his dismissal from the School’s directorship twenty years later): Hill’s inability to deliver timely reports or to publish.
“His mental activities are so alert that he always sees something new in whatever he is studying, and the multiplication of these new subjects has so far prevented his publishing anything. He is too conscientious to publish anything before he has done all in it that he can, and so he has given the impression to some (Prof. Wheeler especially I fear) that he allows himself to be drawn off from the subject in hand […]. Hill does not always appreciate the need of promptness, it is true, and this way has contributed to the delay in bringing out what he has on hand.” Bassett found this defect a small matter which could be balanced by Hill’s other qualities (AdmRec 310/3 folder 3, Bassett to Wheeler, Oct. 22, 1905).
Other people’s opinions about Hill are preserved in the School’s Administrative Records. Angie Clara Chapin, Professor of Classics at Wellesley College, wrote to Wheeler: “A little informal inquiry from two or three who are competent to judge brings out the impression that he [Hill] is scholarly in his work and of agreeable personality and is highly thought of at the Museum in Boston as well as here [Wellesley]. He is, however, spoken of as ‘very boyish,’ and while not at all ungentlemanly, perhaps rather unconventional.” (Adm Rec 301/1 folder 1, Dec. 12, 1905).
Despite Wheeler’s and others’ reservations, Hill beat out other candidates such as Charles Weller and Walter Miller. Hill’s appointment was approved at the May meeting of the Managing Committee but with one condition: Hill would not maintain a formal connection with the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Hill could offer general advice and one month’s work during the summer but he could not keep his position or title as Curator. “The reason is this: During the years when the Museum bought Greek antiquities freely, various objects of value passed out of Greece and went eventually to the Museum. No suspicion, of course, then attached to the School and no blame to the Museum, but the Committee felt that, if an official connection were to exist publicly between the two institutions, it would be difficult to avoid creating a doubt in the minds of the Greek authorities, with whom it is of first importance for the School to be on friendly terms” wrote Wheeler to Hill on May 12, 1906 (ASCSA Archives, Bert H. Hill Papers, box 5, folder 1). [Bert H. Hill in the photo, ca. 1906. ASCSA Archives.]
Becoming Director
Hill arrived in Athens in September 1906 in the company of Caskey. He was 32 years old. Within days he called on the U.S. Minister, John Brinckerhoff Jackson, to ask his advice about the social duties of the School’s Director. Jackson had several years of experience in Greek matters (1902-07) and advised “formal calls on diplomats, ministers of education and foreign affairs, marshals of households of Crown Prince, Prince Nicholas and Prince Andrew, Greek archaeologists and chief ephors.” Georg Karo of the German Archaeological Institute should be called upon as well as Wilhelm Dörpfeld, “he [Karo] Dörpfeld’s colleague, not subordinate.” Following Jackson’s advice Hill shortly called upon Panayotis Kavvadias (1850-1928), the powerful Director General of Antiquities, who attempted to intimidate Hill by asking his age, implying that he was too young to head the American School (Bert H. Hill Papers, Diaries, entry for October 2, 1906). A day later Hill was lunching at the American Legation as a guest of Mr. Jackson together with the British Minister Sir Francis Elliot, the U.S. Consul General George Horton, Admiral Willard Brownson and a handful of other U.S. Captains who were with their ships in Piraeus, as part of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet, and on their way to Egypt. Hill noted that the occasion required a frock and high hat which he must have brought with him from America.
The School officially opened on October 1. It was a full house with sixteen members: eleven men and five women. Hill proudly stated that the membership had “equaled the largest previous enrolment -that of 1900-1901,” including returning members such as Louis Francis Anderson, professor of Greek at Whitman College, and Minnie Bunker, a high school teacher in Oakland, who both had been students of the School in 1900-01; PhD holders such as Clarence Owen Harris, George W. Elderkin, and Albert Ten Eyck Olmstead; second year fellows such as Kendall K. Smith, the Charles Eliot Norton Fellow, and Henry Dunn Wood, recipient of the Carnegie Fellowship in Architecture, and a younger crowd such as Florence Mary Bennett, Eva Woodward Grey, James Samuel Martin, Louis Earle Rowe, and Raymond Henry White.
Charles E. Whitmore, Kendall K. Smith, George W. Elderkin, ca. 1907. ASCSA Archives.
In addition to being responsible for the School’s academic program, Hill inherited from Heermance two projects that the School’s Editorial Committee was anxious to see completed soon: the publication of the Erechtheum and a special Bulletin on the Excavations at Corinth (Annual Report 1904-05, 11). Taking advantage of scaffolding that architect Nikolaos Balanos had erected about different parts of the Erechtheum for its restoration, Heermance with the endorsement of James R. Wheeler received permission from the Ephor General of Antiquities to measure and study the building with a view to a new publication. The School assigned the task of drawing to Gorham P. Stevens, a graduate of MIT and the first recipient of the Fellowship in Architecture. (In 1903 the Carnegie Institution of Washington awarded the School an annual fellowship to support the production of architectural plans for Corinth and other School projects.)
The Erechtheum with scaffolding, ca. 1905. ASCSA Archives, Archaeological Photographic Collection (AK 266).
“The School has never entered upon a more useful and important undertaking than this. The book is sure not to be only a thing of beauty, but a matter of permanent scientific value” commented Wheeler in his report (Annual Report 1903-04, 13). According to the same report, Dörpfeld “put at Mr. Stevens’s disposal his entire store of knowledge of the Erechtheum and its problems” (Annual Report 1903-04, 22).
Heermance had planned to write most of the sections himself, except for the chapter on the sculpture which he entrusted to Harold N. Fowler. To facilitate the completion of the project after Heermance’s sudden death, the School’s Editorial Committee decided to go on with a collaborative publication (sections assigned to L. D. Caskey, H. N. Fowler, J. M. Paton, and G. P. Stevens) which did not appear, however, until two decades later (1927). Hill was not included in the publication even though its authors relied on him for new measurements and “whose suggestions have sometimes been adopted verbatim.”
Stevens’s measured drawings were exhibited at the School during the Archaeological Congress in the spring of 1905. From January until March 1906, they were on display at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. “What shall be done with the drawings after March 1st, the date when the Museum exhibition of them closes?” asked J. R. Coolidge Jr., the interim director of the Museum (AdmRec 310/1 folder 1, Coolidge to Wheeler, Feb. 19, 1906). Shortly after, Coolidge offered $1,000 to buy the drawings and photos which had been exhibited at the Museum, and “if the drawings shall pass into the possession of the Museum before the book on the Erechtheum appears, the Museum shall allow no reproduction of them by anyone before the book is on the market or until the lapse of five years from this date.”[2]
One of Gorham P. Stevens’s drawings of the Erechtheum. ASCSA Archives, Archaeological Photographic Collection (AK 156).
The Bulletin on the Corinth excavations did not fare better than the Erechtheum publication. It was briefly replaced by plans for another publication, titled Papers on Corinth, which also never took off. The School continued its excavations at Corinth with Hill reporting on them at the School’s Open Meetings in Athens, and occasionally at the Annual Meetings of the Archaeological Institute of America, but almost never in writing.
Instead, the enlargement of the School’s building became the main topic of concern in the School’s Annual Reports after 1907. The School needed more library space, additional rooms for students (not to mention that there were no baths) and faculty, and a much-desired common room. The enlargement of the School was finally achieved in 1915, thanks to the generosity of James Loeb who funded half of the construction cost (AdmRec 310/2 folder 5, Wheeler to Hill, Dec. 9, 1907).
The ASCSA before 1915.The ASCSA after the addition of the new wing (visible on the left), ca. 1922. To the right, the British School of Archaeology. ASCSA Archives, Leicester B. Holland Papers.
Fighting Death in Athens
Living in Greece in the early years of the 20th century was not safe. Malaria and typhoid fever were almost endemic. In the winter of 1906, Hill, Caskey, Smith and Wood came down with malaria contracted on a trip to Phocis and Boeotia (Annual Report 1906-07, 12). In the fall of 1907 Elderkin succumbed to malaria, eventually becoming delirious from the high fever. Hill, however, was thankful that “it was rather malaria than something worse.” Within days, the Annual Professor Edward B. Clapp was also struck with fever. The School’s doctor, Dr. Makkas, managed to secure him a nurse from the Children’s Hospital, “one of the νέαι Αμερικανίδες” (Greek nurses who had just returned from four years’ training in American hospitals). Caskey, who was taking care of Elderkin, contracted malaria for a second time within a few months of the first incident. To fight malaria Hill proposed placing screens on the windows: “screens will be difficult to secure, well fitted, and we shall doubtless find them disagreeable when we have them; but I intend to try placing them in all the sleeping-room windows. Doubtless, I shall have my adventures as an inventor of window-screens here in a land where such things are quite unknown” Hill wrote to Wheeler (AdmRec 310/2 folder 5, Nov. 20, 1907).
In the spring of 1908, one of the five people in the cache of photos that inspired this essay, Kendall K. Smith, became sick with typhoid fever (AdmRec 310/2 folder 6, Hill to Wheeler, May 11, May 22, and May 26, 1908). Hill suspected that the infection had come from consuming lettuce “which we ate very freely in April. It will be forbidden hereafter.” For many days his temperature ranged from 102F to 106F. His case was so serious that his father had to rush to Greece. Soon after, Smith, who was Hill’s first choice to replace Caskey as the School’s Secretary, returned to America to convalesce at home. Hill settled on Elderkin for the Secretary’s position. Although a better qualified candidate, at least in paper, Elderkin was not Hill’s first choice.
Heermance’s death was followed by that of Eva Woodward Grey from acute uremia in March 1907. A graduate of Cornell University (1898) and a high-school teacher, “her coming to Greece had been the fulfillment of a long-cherished hope, and she was one of the most earnest and eagerly interested members of the School” Hill reported (Annual Report 1906-07). It must have been extremely stressful for Hill to have to deal with the death of one of the students within months of assuming the School’s directorship. After telegraphing Grey’s family and inventorying her personal things, “Mr. Horton and I ordered a coffin, with no word coming from America I took the responsibility of deciding that the body should not be embalmed, Mr. Horton strongly advising against embalming because of the great difficulties encountered two years ago” [Hill is referring to Heermance’s death]. Hill and Horton secured a burial permit and a plot in the First Cemetery “near the graves of Professors Merriam and Lolling.”
Hill acted fast because according to the Greek law the burial had to take place within twenty-four hours; in addition, he had not heard back from Grey’s father. Hill and Horton made the decision to spare the family the high cost of embalming “in view of what Miss Grey had said about her means” (AdmRec 310/2 folder 5, Hill to Wheeler, March 16, 1907]. At least Hill had the Consul General (Horton) advising him on such difficult matters. “The attendance at the church was large, and about fifty persons followed the body to the cemetery […]” Hill wrote. Soon after Grey had been buried, the family telegraphed asking that their daughter’s body be embalmed and placed in a sealed casket, to be shipped to America. It was too late, however. The Greek law did not allow exhumation until three years had passed after the burial.
With all this sickness, there was concern among the members of the Managing Committee that the School was not a safe place to send students. Hill tried to defend the School by explaining that “Miss Grey’s illness [uremia] had no possible connection with conditions in Greece. Malaria and influenza have been the only other maladies[…]. The malaria is Greek, I admit, but not due to the American School’s own local conditions” (AdmRec 310/2 folder 5, Hill to Wheeler, April 26 [1907]).
In October 1907, the archaeological community lamented one more death in Athens, that of German archaeologist Adolf Furtwängler. “Greece, apparently, cannot be blamed for Professor Furtwängler’s illness, at least not wholly; suffered from dysentery this summer before he came down here [Aegina]. In fact, his familiarity with the trouble seems to have made him underestimate the seriousness of this last attack. He kept at work and continued to eat local food in Aegina, until last Saturday. Then he consented to be brought here; but it was too late” (AdmRec 310/2 folder 5, Hill to Wheeler, Oct. 10, 1907).
The Mochlos Case: Treading on Thin Ice
In April 1907, Hill informed Wheeler that his report for the May Managing Committee meeting would be late because he was “so crowded with small time-consuming duties.” He also noted Seager’s visit. Richard Berry Seager (1882-1925), according to his biographers “one of the last of the wealthy ‘collector-excavator-historians’,” was excavating on the small island of Pseira on the north coast of Crete, with funding from the American Exploration Society in Philadelphia. [4] (Suggested reading: Phantom Threads of Mothers and Sons.)
Richard B. Seager, ca. 1907.
Back then, American museums and societies were eager to sponsor excavations on Crete, because it was an autonomous state (1898-1913), under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire and the supervision of the Great Powers; with its own archaeological law, the Cretan State was more “generous” in the matter of exporting antiquities. Because of problems between the Exploration Society and Seager, Hill conveyed to Wheeler Seager’s new idea: “There is another Cretan site which he regards as very promising and I have authorized him to apply for a permit in the name of the School -no obligation involved except that of being interested in his work” (AdmRec 310/2, folder 5, April 22, 1907).
The island of Mochlos, 1908. Source: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia.
Having secured a permit in the name of the ASCSA, Seager crossed over to the small island to do some testing in the summer of 1907: “… everything points to a good town site rather like the one I have been digging this season in Psyra [sic]. The earth is only 1 to 3 metres deep […] We found several vases in the two days we worked. The best one […] Mackenzie agrees with me… is the best LMI vase that has ever been found. It is of large size and is wonderfully preserved. […] If Mochlos continues as well as it has begun it ought to be a most valuable site and be worth at least two seasons work.” To entice the School’s interest in the site and knowing Hill’s past connection with the MFA Boston, Seager added: “Also as the Cretan museums get more and more crowded the more things they allow to leave the island. So there might be something really worth sending home […]” (AdmRec 310/2, folder 5, Hill to Wheeler, October 7, 1907).
Seager included a watercolor by Émile Gilliéron (1850-1924) of the LMI jar he found in 1907 in his article “Excavations on the Island of Mochlos, in 1908,” published in AJA 13, 1909, 280, pl. VI. Eighty years later while digging the Artisan’s Quarter at Mochlos, Jeffrey Soles and his team discovered another one of these large “lily jars,” a watercolor of which, this time by Doug Faulmann, featured as frontispiece in Mochlos IA. [4]
On the left, the lily jar found in 1907; on the right, the lily jar found in the 1990s.
Seager communicated through Hill that he could supply $1,000 himself but he needed the School to fund the remaining sum, from $500 to $800. However, confusion arose when Seager secured $600 from a Mrs. James Bowlker, who had a connection with the Egyptian Department of the MFA Boston (I remind you once again of Hill’s connection with that museum). Arthur Fairbanks, the new Director of the MFA, wrote to Hill: “I understand that officially you know nothing about our connection with the expedition and I am writing Mr. Seager as though we are dealing directly with him and not with him through you”(quoted in Hill to Wheeler, January 28, 1908, AdmRec 310/2, folder 6).
Aware of the MFA’s connection to the Mochlos excavation, Wheeler confirmed:
“Our situation therefore is that the School gets the concession, entrusts the work under it to Seager […], we leave the disposition of the finds entirely in his hands. If he arranges with the Cretan authorities that some of them go to Boston, it is none of our business. In any publication the School name should of course appear in some way […]. We may be skating on rather thin ice, but we shall have to trust to your discretion to make things appear in a proper light” (Bert H. Hill Papers, Box 5, folder 1, Wheeler to Hill, Jan. 24, 1908).
As Seager predicted, the excavation of Mochlos proved to be a success. In late June of 1908, Seager wrote: “I know you will be glad to hear that Mochlos as a dig has been a far greater success than I had dared to hope. […] The town site for the first month was singularly unproductive but our first stroke of luck was a horde of six bronze basins rather like those found at Knossos some years ago. There is a lot of pottery from the town houses none of it very striking but good of its kind. Perhaps it is a good thing as it won’t tempt the Cretan Museum and I may manage to persuade them to let me have a good lot for the Boston Museum. Towards the end of the season we found the early cemetery which was a very rich one quite the best I should say that has been found so far in Crete. There were five large tombs evidently of important families and about twenty smaller ones containing a number of bodies. One of the large tombs was literally filled with gold ornaments. Diadems, pins, chains, etc. You will realize the importance if this when I tell you that the graves are for the most part Early Minoan II and III. […] Last but not least are the stone vases which have been a revelation to everyone who has seen them. They are all in bright colored marbles, alabaster, breccia, various kinds of soapstone and what seems to be serpentine. The shapes are very graceful and there are in all at least 150. […] Mr. Evans came up from Knossos for a few days and said that he never could have believed that E.M. II and III could have produced such fine gold chains or such stone vases” (Bert H. Hill Papers, Box 4, folder 5, Seager to Hill, June 30, 1908). A few months later, Arthur Evans sent a letter to Wheeler praising Seager’s work at Mochlos as “thoroughly well done from the scientific point of view” but also criticizing the School for not having sufficiently backed him up with an architect or a surveyor” (AdmRec 310/1, folder 2, Sept. 20, 1908).
Some of the stone vases found at Mochlos, 1908. Source: R.B. Seager, Explorations in the Island of Mochlos, Boston 1912.
Seager continued: “I had almost forgotten the best single object of the whole season. Lying near the surface and badly destroyed lay a few Late Minoan I burials and from one of them comes a gold signet like those from Mycenae with a religious scene. A goddess in a serpent boat containing her sacred tress is arriving at a pillar shrine which stands on the shore. It is in perfect preservation and in the field are one or two curious symbols that I believe are new to this class of rings. It is one of the best of its kind and might well be said to be worth the whole expense of the dig (Bert H. Hill Papers, Box 4, folder 5, Seager to Hill, June 30, 1908).
Drawing of the gold ring found by Seager in 1908.
On August 14, 1908, Seager dispatched another letter from Herakleion stating that he had had a hard time in the matter of exporting antiquities from Crete. “They [the Cretan authorities] are keeping all the things for Greece as of course they now think annexation is very close. […] However truthfully, I can advise no one to subscribe money to Cretan excavations under the present circumstances unless they do it with no expectations as to the increasing of home collections”. Although the formal unification of Crete with Greece did not happen until 1913, 1908 marked the end of an era. The American museums could no longer fund excavations on Crete with the expectation of enriching their collections with new finds.
“Richard Seager may seem to be an anachronism, but he was a product of his time. Modern archaeology grew out of the collecting zeal and passion with history of nineteenth-century amateur antiquarians. […] In the final analysis, Seager remains an enigma. He pursued archaeology as an amateur with no formal training […]. By the time he was thirty, he was regarded as a major scholar by the leading men and women in his field. […] At his death, he was remembered for his excavations and publications, for his generous gifts, and for his friendships. However, there was no one to carry on his archaeological work in Crete. He had no students, no young assistants, and no professional associates,” concluded Marshall Becker and Phil Betancourt, Seager’s biographers. [4]
I would add that Hill was also a product of the same time. But Hill lived much longer than Seager, and by having a formal affiliation with a recognized institution he was forced to respond to the calls of the new era that condemned illegal exportation of antiquities. Hill’s directorship lasted twenty years, the longest in the School’s history. But back in 1910 his reappointment for a second five-year term was not as unanimous as the Annual Report of 1910-11 implied. I will be exploring the second half of Hill’s first term as well as the (after)lives of the five students featured in the photos in my next post.
Notes
[1] The photos in the envelope had been identified by their owner or creator, but there was no obvious connection with any of our collections. The envelope which was stored in a drawer with miscellaneous material carried the handwriting of my predecessor, Carol Zerner. They had either been sent to her by the descendants of one the people depicted in the photos, or, more likely, they had been removed from the papers of Bert Hodge Hill.
[2] In the Preface of the Erechtheum volume published in 1927, the editors noted that the “The original drawings are in the School of Applied Arts of the University of Cincinnati.” Stevens’s drawings are lost, despite the efforts of members of the UC Department of Classics to find out where the drawings ended up after the School of Applied Arts was dissolved. I do not know yet how they ended up in Cincinnati since the MFA Boston was ready to buy them.
[3] Soles, J.S. 2003. Mochlos IA: Period III. Neopalatial Settlement on the Coast. The Artisans’ Quarter and the Farmhouse at Chalinomouri, Philadelphia
[4] Becker, M. J. and P.P. Betancourt, 1996. Richard Berry Seager: Pioneer Archaeologist and Proper Gentleman, Philadelphia, 191-192.
We have been processing a large shipment of files that the Princeton office of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA or School hereafter) mailed to Greece during their relocation in 2021. The files contain many surprises, especially those associated with the production of the School’s Newsletter. There we found a trove of unpublished (and unknown) photos and among other material an envelope with letters, calling cards, and photos that once belonged to Minnie Bunker (1867-1959).
Minnie was a high school teacher and a student at the School in 1900-1901 who returned in 1906-1907 and again in 1911-1912. She also is no stranger to the School’s Archives which already contained a small collection of her water-damaged photographs and letters, as well as an 1894 Baedeker, which her grandniece Nancy Perrin Weston (1922-2011) mailed to Athens in the 2000’s. After her aunt’s death in 1959, Nancy also spent time in Greece, working for renowned architect Constantine Doxiadis and volunteering in the School’s Library from 1963-1964. Minnie must have transmitted her love for Greece and the School to her grandniece because in 2011, the year of Nancy’s death, the School received $25,000 from her estate.
Minnie Bunker’s own copy of Baedeker (1894) with a snapshot of Epidauros (1900) attached on the left. Source: ASCSA Archives, Minnie Bunker Papers.
The thrill of archival research is not limited to discovery but encompasses rediscovery. The envelope that we found in 2020 contained another small cache of Minnie Bunker papers that Weston had shipped to the School’s office in New York in 1981, when the School was actively looking for letters and photos of past students and members on the occasion of its upcoming centenary.
Nancy responded to that call by mailing some of her great aunt’s papers together with a transcription of a long letter that Minnie had sent to her family on November 9, 1900. The letter together with accompanying photos was published in the School’s spring Newsletter of 1983 (p. 16). The rest of the material that Nancy had sent in 1981-1982 remained forgotten in a file cabinet, first in New York and later at Princeton, until the U.S. office’s recent relocation. Even now, as the Minnie Bunker papers are finally “reunited,” we know that they represent only a small fraction of the original collection. In 2002, after Nancy Weston had already sent to the School’s Archives a small number of items that once belonged to Minnie, she wrote me saying “I have a great many letters she [Minnie] wrote home from Greece and I hope to have time to read someday. Would you like them eventually?” To which I replied that “we should be most grateful if you ever decided to deposit the rest of your aunt’s correspondence to the American School.” In 2008, Nancy sent Charles Watkinson, then Director of ASCSA Publications, her aunt’s 1894 Baedeker, but no letters. Follow-up communication with the trustees of Nancy Perrin Weston’s estate in 2011 bore no results.
I am revisiting Minnie Bunker for two reasons. First, it is worth rereading her letter from 1900 published in the School’s Newsletter. Minnie wrote long and detailed letters because she wanted her family to follow her trips, “if you have a good map of Greece.” In pre-radio times, we can easily imagine families getting together to read loud a letter from far away, exotic Greece, with the visual aid of a map. And second, I wanted to grab the opportunity to publish two rare photos of Athens’ Constitution Square (Πλατεία Συντάγματος) from the early 1900s.
Minnie’s Boeotian Trip, 1900
As a high school teacher in Oakland, California, Minnie was not a typical student of the American School. Born in 1867 she was older than most of the other students in 1900-1901. After graduating from the University of California in 1889, one of six girls in her class, she lived most of her life in Oakland teaching at the local high school. She must have been introduced to the American School through either Edward B. Clapp, Professor of Classics at the University of California and member of the School’s Managing Committee (1894-1917), or Benjamin Ide Wheeler, who had just become President of the University of California. Wheeler was the School’s Annual Professor in 1895-1896.
L-R, front row: Maurice E. Dunham (?), Charles Weller, Minnie Bunker, Louis F. Anderson, and Samuel E. Bassett (?) at Olympia, September 1900. A young Bert Hodge Hill (later Director of the School) is visible on the back row, first from right. Source: ASCSA Archives, Minnie Bunker Papers.
On November 9, 1900, Minnie composed a long letter to her family describing blow-by-blow the School’s trip to Boeotia. Minnie was staying at the Grand Hotel on Mouson (Μουσών) Street (now Karageorgevich of Serbia), at the southwest side of Constitution Square (Syndagma Square). The other female students of the School stayed at the Merlin House on Kephissias avenue opposite the Palace (now the Hellenic Parliament). The School had a limited number of rooms, and those were reserved for its male students.
Of the thirteen people who participated in the trip, five travelled by horse carriage and the rest on bikes. They first rode west to see Eleusis and Salamis, and from there through a pass they entered the Boeotian plain. Although they were travelling on dirt roads, the pass allowed them to speed down with the carriage, “while the bicyclists had to coast with a watchful eye.” At the sign of the first bicyclist, villagers would come out to stare at the strangers. Minnie identified many of the people living in Boeotia as Albanians (Αρβανίτες) although they insisted on being called Greeks. The living conditions were quite primitive, humans and animals living side-by-side, chickens and turkeys flying by, and cats dividing “the spoils of the frying pan where the last meal had been cooked.” The food was cooked on a fire burning on the stone floor. No hearth (a note for archaeologists looking for kitchens in their household assemblages).
Of great interest is her comment about the numerous turkeys in the Greek countryside: “our way is often stopped by great bands of them being driven to market.” What happened to the Greek turkeys? Nowadays it is hard to find fresh turkeys in butcher shops with the exception of Christmas when the American Farm School in Thessaloniki is the main supplier. (The photo below comes from the papers of Agnes Baldwin, a well-known numismatist, who was also a student at the School in 1900 and part of the group. Agnes Baldwin Brett’s papers are deposited in the Archives of the American Numismatic Society.)
Minnie Bunker, Agnes Baldwin, unidentified member, and local man, looking at a herd of turkeys. Source: American Numismatic Society, Agnes Baldwin Brett Papers.
Minnie skips worrisome descriptions in her letter, such as the dirty, bug-infested pensions or the frequently stuck horse carriage. Not a hint of complaint or exasperation. Instead, she adopts a cheerful tone and turns everything into an adventure. It had to be so. When Bruni Ridgway donated to the ASCSA Archives her letters from when she was a student at the School in 1955-1956, she warned me about their cheerful tone. Because mail was slow and international calls prohibitively expensive, students did not want their parents to worry about them.
A tableau vivant with students of the American School pretending to be asleep in their flea bags. The photo was taken in Edward D. Perry’s room at the Grand Hotel, Athens, Dec. 1900. Front row (l-r): Helen E. Hoag. Agnes Baldwin, Rufus Richardson. Back row (l-r): Maurice E. Dunham, Samuel E. Bassett, Edward D. Perry, Bert H. Hill, Louis F. Anderson, and Charles Weller. Source: ASCSA Archives, Charles Weller Papers.
Two (or Three?) Boeotian Lions
Minnie described in a sentimental way the fragments of the Lion of Chaironea that lay beside the road.
Some say that a leader in the Greek War [of Independence] maliciously broke it in pieces, others think that this ruin is only the result of time […]. At any rate, there he lies with his great head in the dust, broken, disregarded for centuries, like the nation whose defeat he marks; if, as is hoped, the Chaeronean lion should be restored and set up again, he would form a still more fitting emblem of the new Greece that is gathering itself from the shocks of the past.
So, Minnie and her group had seen the Chaironea lion just before its restoration which took place in 1902-1903. She also recorded what the locals were saying about its restoration: “the war [she refers to the Greek-Turkish war of 1897 which ended with Greece’s defeat] prevented its being done two years ago, but now -they shrug their shoulders and say ‘When? Greece is so poor!’” Although there is no photo of the Chaironea lion in Minnie’s papers, there is one preserved in the papers of her fellow student, Charles Weller, who would excavate the Vari Cave (Attica) in the spring of 1901.
Charles Weller seated on the head of the Chaironea Lion, November 1900. Source: ASCSA Archives, Charles Weller Papers.
Minnie’s papers once preserved a photo depicting fragments of another Boeotian lion (not preserved in her papers at the School’s Archives). We do not know who took the snapshot, not Minnie who stands behind the lion holding a dark umbrella. The other people in the photo, left to right, are: Rufus B. Richardson, Agnes Baldwin, and an unidentified member of the group. She did not describe this one in her letter although Richardson, the School’s Director and leader of the trip, must have told the students that this other lion most likely belonged to a polyandrion (communal tomb), first excavated by Panayotis Stamatakis in 1882, and later, in 1911, by Antonios Keramopoulos. Keramopoulos connected the burials and the lion with the funeral monument (polyandrion) erected by the Thespians to honor their dead soldiers at the Battle of Delion in 424 B.C.
Minnie Bunker and the Thespian lion, November 1900. Source: ASCSA Newsletter Spring 1983.
While going through the Baldwin photos which are available online at the site of the ANS, I also came across another lion with a puzzling provenance: Agios Nikolaos, Priniatikos Pyrgos, Crete. After publishing the post, John Camp and Brady Kiesling sent me notes identifying the lion as the one still to be found next to the church of Agios Nikolaos at Kantza in Attica. Baldwin must have scribbled Agios Nikolaos on the back of the photo, but the site was misidentified during cataloguing. I also remembered that the Kantza lion is mentioned in a travelogue by Lincoln and Margaret MacVeagh, Greek Journey (New York 1937) where Peggy, the daughter of Lincoln, wrote: “But my lion [the Kantza one] is nice and friendly, even if he isn’t beautiful. One of the nicest things about him is that Daddy can’t tell you anything about him, where he came from or why. I think he just grew here” (p. 265-267).
Cretan or Boeotian? Source: American Numismatic Society, Agnes Baldwin Brett Papers
Furthermore, in 2012, the Greek police confiscated a marble lion at Itea, Phocis. It is very possible that the confiscated lion was originated from Boeotia before it was transferred to the harbor of Itea for illegal exportation. The newspaper mentioned that in 2009 the police had found in Boeotia another marble lion that weighed about 300 kilos, deserted by smugglers.
Πλατεία Συντάγματος (Constitution Square), ca. 1900
Minnie’s papers also contained two rare photos of Constitution Square. On the one that shows the south side of the Square, the unidentified photographer has chosen to focus on Hermes Street (Οδός Ερμού). (There are contemporary postcards with similar views, lacking, however, the clarity and quality of our photo). The corner building on the left is the Hotel Victoria. The corner building on the right is the Grand Hotel d’ Anglettere where Minnie stayed during her second time in Athens, in 1906-1907. (The third floor which was added in 1905 gives us a terminus post-quem for the date of the photo.) On the ground floor of the Grand Hotel d’ Angleterre, we see the office of Thomas Cook & Son, the famous travel agency. (There are so many references to Cook’s agency in the letters and diaries of the ASCSA members, but until I came across this photo, I did not know its exact location in Athens.) The arches between the lampposts were carrying the gaslight. On the south side of Hotel Victoria, at the corner of Hermes and Nike streets, one can discern the billboard of Boehringer’s photo shop. Carl Boehringer worked as a photographer in Athens in the late 19th/early 20th century. He held the unofficial title of the royal photographer because he had photographed members of the royal family (Xanthakis, A. 2008. Ιστορία της ελληνικής φωτογραφίας, 1839-1970, Athens, 173-174).
Constitution Square looking at Hermes Street, Athens, ca. 1906-1911. Source: ASCSA Archives, Minnie Bunker Papers.
The other photo shows the southwest side of Constitution Square looking at Mouson Street (Οδός Μουσών, Karageorgevics of Serbia today) having taken its name from a boundary (horos) stone found nearby (ΟΡΟΣ ΚΗΠΟΥ ΜΟΥΣΩΝ). Minnie scribbled that she stayed at the “Hotel Grand Patrion[?]”in 1900-1901, the building adjacent to the Grand Hotel (an extension?). Built in 1844 and remodeled by Ernst Ziller in the early 20th century, the arched building housed in later years on its rooftop the workshop of famous painter Yannis Tsarouchis. The famous bookstore ΕΛΕΥΘΕΡΟΥΔΑΚΗΣ occupied the building’s ground floor. Later, when the arched building was demolished and Grand Hotel ended its operation, Eleftheroudakis moved into the ground floor of the old Grand Hotel at the corner of Mouson (Karageorgevics of Serbia) and Stadiou (https://repo.in-athens.gr/item/825). Looking at Stadiou Street to the right of the photo, one gets a glimpse of the royal stables, which were demolished in the 1930s to build the Μετοχικό Ταμείο Στρατού, an art deco building that houses today the ATTICA shopping mall.
(If you are interested in the history of the city of Athens, I recommend that you check out a new and useful site titled in-Athens: Ιστορίες μιας αόρατης πόλης. And if you are on Facebook, it is worth checking out the site Η ΑΘΗΝΑ ΜΕΣΑ ΣΤΟ ΧΡΟΝΟ, run by Despina Drepania).
Author’s Note
It is the 10th anniversary of From the Archivist’s Notebook. It all began in July 2013, when the ASCSA suspended for a short period the publication of its Newsletter where I used to write a short story once or twice a year. Κάθε εμπόδιο σε καλό we say in Greek. The launch of the blog gave me the opportunity not only to publish a story almost every month, but also to invite guest writers to contribute from their own research in archival repositories. (My first story was published on July 13, 2013, One Portrait, Three Institutions: Anders Zorn’s Portrait of William Amory Gardner.) Ten years later From the Archivist’s Notebook counts 125 stories, about 1,500-2,000 monthly hits, and a good number of fans. Many of the essays have featured in bibliographies of scholarly publications or have been included in academic syllabi. Not only did it become the main publicity vehicle of the School’s Archives, but it also facilitated contact with descendants of past ASCSA members, who now have a trusted repository to deposit papers and photos of their parents or grandparents. Most importantly, the readers of the blog have come to realize that the School’s Archives are an important research facility for interdisciplinary scholarship.
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The post was revised on July 10, 2023 with new information about the marble lion found near the church of Agios Nikolaos.
In American Influence in Greece, 1917-1929 (Kent, Ohio 1988), historian Louis P. Cassimatis refers to Brainerd P. Salmon, chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in Greece, twice. In the Preface, by quoting a line from Salmon’s Glimpses of Greece (1928): “‘American interests in Greece are commercial, financial, educational, and at times philanthropic, but never political’.” And again, in Chapter Five under “Constantine and the Forced Loan of 1922,” when Cassimatis discusses the three-man economic and diplomatic mission that the Greek Government sent to Washington D.C. in the fall of 1921.
The mission composed of John Gennadius, former minister of Greece to Great Britain, Stamos Papafrangos, solicitor of the National Bank of Greece, and Salmon was sent to the United States by the Royalist government of Demetrios Gounaris to obtain recognition of King Constantine as head of the Greek State and request the advancement of the remaining part of the Tripartite Loan of 1918 (about 33 million dollars), which had been suspended. (Until King Constantine formally acknowledged that he had succeeded his dead son King Alexander, the United States could not honor agreements made with the previous Greek government, that of Eleutherios Venizelos.) Failing that goal, the three men had high hopes for a private loan from American banks since there were already several U.S. commercial firms active in Greece in the early 1920s (Cassimatis 1988, 166-172).
According to Cassimatis, the idea of a Greek mission to the U.S. was the “brainchild of Paxton P. Hibben” (1880-1928), a former diplomat and an Associated Press war correspondent sent to Greece in 1915, and a close friend of King Constantine (so close that, in 1920, Hibben would publish Constantine I and the Greek People, in support of Constantine’s decision that Greece should remain neutral during WW I). Hibben’s recommendations included Papafrangos, Philippos Dragoumis, Ion’s younger brother, and Alexander Mercati, “a confidant of the Royal Family” (Malakasses 1976). Gennadius, writing to Demetrios Maximos, Governor of the National Bank of Greece, described in detail his meeting with Prime Minister Gounaris in London in the fall of 1921. According to Gennadius, it was Gounaris who persistently asked him to head the Greek mission to America (ASCSA Archives, Joannes Gennadius Papers, Box 4, folder 15). Maximos must have supported the inclusion of Papafrangos, a lawyer and a high-ranking officer of the National Bank of Greece.
BPS Enters the Scene
But how did an American like Brainerd (or Brainard) Pomeroy Salmon become involved in this mission? I became interested in Salmon because his name kept popping up in the institutional records of the American School in the early 1920s. A google name search produced very little, however. Searching in www.ancestry.com and www.newspapers.com proved more fruitful. Salmon also appears in the Eleutherios Venizelos Papers at the Benaki Museum (accessed through www.searchculture.gr). The Salmon puzzle remains far from complete, but I was able to piece together certain parts of it.
Salmon’s early years, up until WW I, are very sketchy. He was born into a small family in Fulton, a small industrial city in Oswego County, N.Y., in 1878. I could not find where he went to school, or if he did go to college. His name appears in the city lists of New York (1910-1915) as a manager, a manufacturer agent, and he is once associated with Mountain Construction Co. His journeys to Europe must have begun in 1918 according to border crossing lists, and at first he seems to list France as his final destination. By 1919, he was listed as married although he traveled by himself. In April of 1919, Salmon traveled first class as an “architect.” At some point Salmon must have made his way to Greece for business reasons. In May 1921 he was invited to the farewell dinner for U.S. Minister Edward Capps. (Capps was Minister to Greece for a short period in 1920 under the Wilson administration.) Salmon, representing the North American Wood Products Company, is listed among the members of the American Colony in Athens.
Six months later, Salmon was on his way to the U.S. as the third link in the three-man mission that I described above. Who vouched for Salmon? Not Gennadius because he did not know him personally. Was he recommended by someone in the U.S. Legation? Could it have been Capps, the former Minister? Somehow the Greek government was convinced to include Salmon in this important mission, as someone who could strengthen commercial ties between the two countries. «Α Mr. Salmon is in the city [Washington] attempting to make appointments for Mr. Papafrango to obtain a loan», reported the Chief of the Near Eastern Division to the Secretary of State, sent on December 12, 1921 (Malakasses 1976, 68).
In his personal papers in the Archives of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA or the School hereafter), John Gennadius mentions that during his 8-month stay in America, he sent 77 reports to the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs describing the group’s various contacts and meetings, and listing some of Salmon’s articles in the U.S. newspapers in support of Greece (Box 11, folder 4). Gennadius’s report of April 17, 1922, exalted Salmon’s important services. And it was during his trip to the U.S. that Gennadius was brought into contact with Edward Capps, the Chairman of the American School , a meeting that led Gennadius to donate his magnificent library to the School.
Salmon signed his press releases as President or Chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in Greece, although the Undersecretary of the State expressed some doubts about the official character of his position: “Mr. Salmon claims to be President of the American Chamber of Commerce” (Malakasses 1976). In one of his lengthiest press releases, Salmon argued for Greece’s right of self-government, and if that meant that her people wanted King Constantine back, America should stand “for the right of free peoples to govern themselves.” What was happening in the Near East was not just a “European matter.” In addition, both Greece and America would benefit the most from an “open door” trade policy (“Denies Europe Has a Monopoly of Interest in the Near East,” The Sunday Star Washington, 26/3/1922).
Despite all of the hard work and lobbying, Gennadius did not get an audience with the Secretary of State, Charles Evans Hughes, until April 25, 1922. It was cordial -in fact, Hughes made special mention of Gennadius’s generous gift to the American School- but bore no fruit. The U.S., in agreement with England and France, refused to recognize the government of King Constantine and, because of this, the State Department could not render any financial assistance to Greece, who was fighting a war with Turkey since 1919 and was in dire straits. For Greece, this was the beginning of the end which came a few months later, with the calamitous defeat of the Greek army in Asia Minor in September of 1922.
After eight months in the U.S., John Gennadius left America in July 1922, having received honorary doctorate degrees from George Washington University and Princeton University; Papafrangos had left earlier. Salmon, on the other hand, stayed longer. During his time in Washington, it is very possible that he met Venizelos, who was also touring the East Coast on an unofficial visit. There is a note in the John Gennadius papers about how awkward they all felt when they found out that Venizelos was staying in the same hotel, but, out of courtesy, Gennadius paid his respects to the former prime minister.
John Gennadius in Washington, D.C., 1921-22. Source: Library of Congress, George Grantham Bain Collection.Eleutherios Venizelos, 1919. Source: Library of Congress.
Two months after the Asia Minor Catastrophe, Salmon addressed from New York a letter to Venizelos, who was not in power, but supported the revolutionary government that governed Greece after September 1922. In it he suggested, in agreement with Capps, “the appointment of a competent American attorney” to support Greece’s case for the 1918 loan. He also mentioned that they (Capps and Salmon) were working on a plan to help Greece with constructive relief (Benaki Museum, Eleutherios Venizelos Papers, Nov. 13, 1922). A few days later Salmon sent Venizelos a copy of an interview about Greece he had given to the New York Evening Post. Venizelos responded with a letter of thanks “for all you are doing for the Greek cause in this great crisis” (Benaki Museum, Eleutherios Venizelos Papers, Nov. 24, 1922).
Officially Appointed
Capps, having taken Salmon under his wings, telegraphed Venizelos, who was in Lausanne negotiating on behalf of Greece the terms of the Lausanne Treaty, on Jan. 5, 1923: “strongly recommend appointment salmon by ministry as liaison with American relief in Greece […]”. Venizelos followed up with a telegram to the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs recommending Salmon as a liaison between the Greek Government and the U.S. humanitarian agencies that were active in Greece after the Asia Minor Catastrophe (Benaki Museum, Eleutherios Venizelos Papers, Jan. 6, 1923).
The telegram Edward Capps sent to Eleutherios Venizelos recommending Brainerd P. Salmon. Benaki Museum, Eleutherios Venizelos Papers.
From his new post Salmon addressed several memoranda to Andreas Michalopoulos, Venizelos’s private secretary, such as “Greek American Relations and Outline of Work to Be Done” and “The Legal Liability of the United States to Greece in Connection with the Credit of 1918,” or updated Venizelos about his and Capps’s actions to raise awareness in the States concerning the continuance of the refugee relief in Greece after the withdrawal of the American Red Cross at the end of June 1923. He also wrote to the Director of Publicity of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, recommending the establishment of a fully equipped Bureau of Publicity in the U.S. “whenever funds are available” (Benaki Museum, Eleutherios Venizelos Papers, May 14, 1923). Salmon proposed Edward Hale Bierstadt, “a well-known writer and journalist” to run the service with a budget of $60,000-70,000 per year (May 29, 1923). He also implied that until the Greek government found the funds to support a complete publicity service, he could start one himself, “which could grow in the future as time and necessity dictated” (Benaki Museum, Eleutherios Venizelos Papers, Salmon to Michalopoulos, June 6, 1923).
There was a flurry of action in the late months of 1923 and early 1924 as Capps spearheaded the creation of the American Friends of Greece (AFG) in October of 1923. This new organization had a three-fold mission: to educate the American people about the refugee situation in Greece, to negotiate with existing organizations for continuance of relief aid to Greece, or to organize a separate appeal for funds.[1] Salmon signing as Special Commissioner in Washington D.C. of the Greek Minister of Public Assistance (i.e., Apostolos Doxiades) prepared and distributed through the American Friends of Greece a “Statement Regarding the Refugee Situation in Greece” that contradicted a recent announcement by the American Red Cross (ARC) that the refugees in Greece had been assimilated and there was no need for more U.S. relief aid (ASCSA Archives, Bert H. Hill Papers, Box 2, folder 2).
American Friends of Greece, leaflet. Dec. 1, 1923. ASCSA Archives Bert H. Hill Papers.
Salmon’s Reputation at Risk
It is in an exchange of letters between Capps, Bert H. Hill, and Carl W. Blegen (the School’s Director and Assistant Director, respectively), that we learn how much the U.S. Legation in Athens disliked Salmon. One of Blegen’s comments to Hill about Salmon must have echoed the Legation’s opinion, namely, that Salmon had been hired by the Greek Government:
“as a propaganda agent in America with the understanding that he was to receive a commission on all loans he may succeed in getting paid and likewise on all sums collected and turned over by philanthropic organizations inspired by his propaganda for relief work… In any case S. appears to have a most unsavory reputation among American (and Greek) circles in Athens. I wonder if Mr. C. knows how unpopular S. is over here” (Bert H. Hill Papers, Box 2, folder 3, Dec. 5, 1923).
When Hill confronted Capps about Salmon’s reputation, Capps explained that Salmon was “under a contract to render services in connection with the refugees […], his compensation was fixed” as well as his expense account, and that his contract had no reference whatever to any change in his compensation conditioned upon his success in any one of the defined field of his activity.” That he had “no relation to the Greek Loan, except to do all in his power to induce the [American] government to pay it.” Capps further added that Salmon had “no relation whatever to philanthropic contributions, except an interest such as I have in seeing that such are made[…] and that he had “no business connection with the AFG and has never received a cent from us, though he has served us with devotion and intelligence whenever we have had need of him.” Capps thought of Salmon as a valuable and trusted person who was successful in building up in Washington D.C.:
“a very wide and influential set of connections. Mr. Hoover [at the time Herbert Hoover was Secretary of Commerce] seems to value his advice, and seeks it; the Near East Relief and the Federal Council, and similar groups; [John] Finley and the newspaper people; and many of the leading men in Washington. The whole complexion of Greek relations in America has been transformed since his coming over”. Capps ended his section about Salmon by noting that he had never seen “work of a higher grade” (Bert H. Hill Papers, Box 2, folder 2, Jan. 11, 1924).
First page of a memorandum that Salmon prepared for Henry Morgenthau, Jan. 8, 1924. ASCSA Archives, Bert H. Hill Papers.
The American Legation treated Salmon as a thorn in its side, hoping to get rid of him. In February 1924, Ray Atherton, the Chargé d’affaires in Athens, met with Doxiades and “made representations against S[almon], and the State Department took up the matter with the Greek Ambassador in Washington, [Michael] Tsamados, but “no statements or allegations were made” (Bert H. Hill Papers, Box 2, folder 2, Feb. 16, 1924). The American Legation in Athens was successful, however, in dissuading the ARC from resuming relief aid to Greece. Capps, much disheartened, refocused his efforts on the establishment of embroidery workshops in Athens that employed refugee women. His daughter Priscilla would direct the AFG workshops which later merged with the Near East Industries.
Glimpses of Greece
Salmon continued his collaboration with the Greek Government under a new contract, that of the Director of the Hellenic Information Bureau in Washington. Salmon’s role (and others, whom Dale Pappas calls “business savvy Byrons”) in the development of Greek tourism in the interwar period is being examined in Pappas’s dissertation “Partners in Pleasure: State and Private Capital in the Making of Modern Mediterranean Tourism” (2021). In a press release about the American School’s intention to excavate the Athenian Agora that appeared in many U.S and Canadian newspapers in July 1927, Salmon promoted Greece as a tourist destination: “Greece offers wonderful tourist possibilities. The country is beautiful and the Government is constructing roads that will compare with the best elsewhere in the world[…] good hotels are being constructed and there is no fear of brigandage …”. Salmon also tagged himself as representative of the Athens Telegraphic Agency and correspondent of the Messager d’ Athènes (The Gazette [Montreal, Quebec, Canada] 11/6/1927).
A year later, in 1928, Salmon would publish Glimpses of Greece, a tourist guide to Greece, jointly sponsored by the Hellenic Information Bureau and the Anglo-Hellenic League in London. It featured articles by many prominent American philhellenes, such as Henry B. Dewing, a classicist and president of (the newly established) Athens College, Charles P. Howland, chairman of the Greek Refugee Settlement Commission of the League of Nations (1925-1926), Ernest A. Gardner, British archaeologist and former director of the British School at Athens, and others. According to Dale Pappas, Salmon’s book “was not solely a guide to ‘what ought to be seen,’ rather it was devoted to the Greece of the 1920 and the refugee crisis,” including an itinerary of locations affiliated with refugee settlement and assimilation. Salmon wrote the chapter “American interests in Greece,” where in addition to promoting Greek commodities (e.g., Hymettus honey, currants, and tapestry) and U.S. companies trading in Greece, he made special reference to educational institutions such as the ASCSA, Athens College, the American Farm School, Anatolia College, the Y.M.C.A., and others. Fred McCallum wrote the part about the “American Workshops in Greece,” but there is no reference to its director Priscilla Capps. (I found it interesting that that Capps did not contribute to Glimpses of Greece and that the chapter about the AFG Workshops was not written by Priscilla Capps.)
Brainerd P. Salmon, Glimpses of Greece, 1928. ASCSA, Gennadius Library.
Going AWOL
It is about this time that Salmon drops off the School’s radar. I could not find any references to him in the School’s administrative records from the late 1920s. (Unfortunately, Edward Capps’s personal archive in America has not been preserved, or, at least, all our efforts to locate it have not borne any results.) Salmon’s contract to run the Greek Information Bureau in Washington continued until 1932. In late 1931 Salmon must have inquired about the renewal of his contract. In the Eleutherios Venizelos Papers there is a memo from the Greek Tourist Organization to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, suggesting the renewal of Salmon’s contract for another three years, but with a modification: Salmon would continue to promote Greece to the American people, while a Greek appointee would develop and strengthen the relations with the Greek American community (November 17, 1931).
The Greek Tourist Organization was responding to public complaints by Greek American organizations, such as AHEPA, who were pushing for a Greek American at the helm of the Greek Information Bureau. A certain Nick Kassavetis, who had applied for the position, but did not get because his services cost three times more than Salmon’s, claimed that Salmon was underperforming, sponging off Greek money, and had been absent from Washington since October 1928 (newspaper Πατρίς 13/2/1932).
It is unclear where Salmon resided after 1928, whether in America or Greece. In the fall of 1930, Salmon was reporting from Addis Ababa, as a United Press writer, the coronation of Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie (The Pittsburgh Press, 2/11/1930). In the spring of 1932 Salmon sent from Greece a brief note to the Wisconsin State Journal to correct news circulating in the U.S. that the Greek government had decreed three meatless days a week. Fearing that such news would discourage American tourists from coming to Greece, Salmon informed the editor that the number of meatless days had been reduced to two, while adding:
“the readers should not envisage these days as days of war-time hardship. On Tuesdays and Wednesdays red meat is replaced by chicken, turkey and duck, all of which are plentiful, and by fresh lobster or the many delicious fish in the waters of the Mediterranean, Adriatic and Aegean seas abound […]. At the moment there is no place in the world where the gastronomic desires of mankind can be better or more cheaply satisfied.”
In January 1934, the then Director of the American School, Richard Stillwell, addressed a brief letter to Salmon, who was living at the Grande Bretagne Hotel in Athens. The letter included a photo and a short description of a Dionysus head discovered in the Corinth excavations in the fall of 1933.
Making the Front Page
On August 16-17, 1934, Salmon made the front page on several Greek newspapers. The day before, he had been found dead in his room at the Grande Bretagne. The toxicological tests showed that he met his death by poison. He had left two notes, one for his lawyer, the other for George Anthony Weller (1907-2002), a fellow journalist in Athens, who would later write The Crack in the Column (1949), a novel about wartime Greece.
Some of the press notices were brief, others lengthier in their remembrance of Salmon’s active support of the Greek refugees, for which he was decorated with the Order of the Savior. All emphasized that his suicide was related to his financial bankruptcy. [2] Once again, the local community was divided over Salmon: for some, he deserved such an end because of his spendthrift lifestyle, for others he, an ardent supporter of Venizelos, was the victim of the new political situation in Greece and the ripple effects of the Great Depression in the Greek economy. Salmon’s contract with the Greek government was cancelled soon after the defeat of the Venizelist party in March 1933. A promised indemnification never came through, and the Greek American newspaper in New York he worked for suddenly closed. Venizelos died in 1935; a year later, on August 4, 1936, the Metaxas regime cancelled key elements of the constitution, and, in so doing, established a dictatorship. One way or the other, “the business savvy Byron” would have been marginalized.
Salmon was buried in the First Cemetery. On his plaque, it is written: American Journalist and Friend of Greece. His death report mentioned no relatives. The only photo we have of him comes from the passport found in his room.
Ελληνικόν Μέλλον, 17/8/1934Brainerd Salmon’s grave at the First Cemetery, Athens. Photo: Natalia Vogeikoff-Brogan, April 2023.
[2]. Ακρόπολις, 15/8/1934; Ελεύθερον Βήμα, 17/8/1934; Έθνος 16/8/1934; Ελληνικόν Μέλλον 17/8/1934, and Εθνικός Κήρυξ 17/8/1934. His death was also reported in the New York Times, “Journalist a Suicide.; B.P. Salmon Had Written From Athens for American Papers,” 17/8/1934.
REFERENCES
L. Cassimatis, 1988. American Influence in Greece, 1917-1929, Kent, Ohio 1988.
J. T. Malakasses, 1976. “American Diplomatic Relations with Greece during the Last Part of Wilson’s Administration and the Beginning of Harding’s: The First Active American Intervention in the Internal Affairs of Greece,” Dodone 5, 47-74.
D. Pappas, 2021. “Partners in Pleasure: State and Private Capital in the Making of Modern Mediterranean Tourism” (Unpublished Diss. University of Miami).
B. P. Salmon (ed.) 1928. Glimpses of Greece, Washington D.C.
On February 17, 1916, The Nation published in its “Foreign Correspondence” section a long essay by John A[lfred] Huybers, titled “Christmas in Athens.” Huybers is no stranger to this blog. Three years ago, I wrote an entire post about him, “On Finding Inspiration in Small Things: The Story of a Pencil Portrait,” after discovering a pencil sketch of Bert Hodge Hill by him.
An English Australian, Huybers earned his living as an illustrator in America, and from about 1915 until his death in 1920 as a foreign correspondent for The Nation and The Christian Science Monitor in Greece. He must have been friends with many members of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (hereafter ASCSA or the School) including Bert H. Hill, Carl W. Blegen, and Edward Capps. Capps, who became the School’s Chair of the Managing Committee in 1919, remembered Huybers in the ASCSA Annual Report for 1920-21 (p. 21) with mention of a fund created in his memory (the Huybers Fund amounted to $714.53 in 1921, which is the equivalent of about $18,000 today):
“[He] was for many years a resident of Greece, whence he sent to the American press, and particularly to the Christian Science Monitor, admirable articles on Greek affairs. He died at Phalerum in 1919 [sic]. His writings showed such admirable sanity of judgement, good information, and genuine philhellenic sympathy and understanding that his friends in America, chiefly those of Hellenic descent, desired to perpetuate his memory in connection with the School, which they highly regard as the permanent symbol in Greece of American-Hellenic unity. We are indebted to Professor A. E. Phoutrides of Harvard University, for conceiving this idea and carrying it to completion, and to His Excellency Mr. Tsamados, then Minister Resident of Greece in Washington for generous assistance. A principal fund of $545 was contributed.”
During my research on Huybers, I found sixteen of his essays in The Nation, including one about the American School, large parts of which l presented in my post of April 2019. Lately, I rediscovered in my notes another one he published in February 1916 after spending Christmas in Athens (since Greece was still following the “old calendar,” Christmas was celebrated thirteen days later, on January 6th).
Wanting to experience Christmas Eve shopping, Huybers took a walk on Athinas Street (described as Rue d’ Athènes) which was and still is the largest market: “Not merely the booths in the market, but all the surrounding shops are open, without windows. The places that are most crowded, where most business is being done, are the shops in which the different varieties of cheese and olives are sold, which, with the excellent bread, are the main staples of life in Greece.” He then proceeded to explain that sheep were not raised just for wool and meat, but also for their cheese, and one would be surprised “at the variety of delicious and wholesome cheeses made from their milk.”
Cheese and meat stalls on Athinas Street in the early 1930s. ASCSA Archives, Charles and Janet Morgan Papers.Read the rest of this entry »
On July 4th, 1914, Francis Henry Bacon (1856-1940) and his wife Alice (née Calvert) departed from New York aboard the S.S. Kaiser Frantz Joseph (the ship would be renamed the President Wilson shortly thereafter). The Dardanelles were their destination, where the Calvert family owned an estate, as well as a farm in nearby Thymbra. This is where Bacon had first met Alice in 1883, when the members of the Assos Excavations received an invitation to dine with Alice’s uncle, Frank Calvert (1828-1908). An amateur archaeologist, Calvert had conducted several excavations in the Dardanelles. Perhaps more importantly, he suggested that Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890) look for Troy at the site of Hissarlik, not far from Thymbra, in the late 1860s. The Calverts were English expatriates long established in the Dardanelles, who made a living trading commodities with the benefit of consular posts.
The time was not good, however, to travel to Europe and especially to the Balkans and Turkey. Just a few days before, on June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife had been assassinated in Sarajevo. His death sparked a series of events that led Austria with the support of Germany to declare war on Serbia a month later. Within a week, the great powers of Europe were forced to ally with or against the main belligerents. Greece tried to remain neutral until 1917 (in no small part because the Greek King was married to the Kaiser’s sister and thus sympathetic to the German side), but the Ottoman Empire openly supported the Germans.
Retracing his Steps
Bacon, a graduate of M.I.T (1876), first traveled to Greece in 1878, before the American School of Classical Studies was even founded. In 1881 he would join, as chief architect, the Archaeological Institute of America’s excavations at Assos in Western Turkey. Following Assos, Bacon pursued a successful career in interior design on the East Coast of America about which I have written before (Francis H. Bacon: Bearer of Precious Gifts from the Dardanelles). He is also credited with the design of the Shrine of the Declaration of Independence in the Library of Congress. Because of Alice’s attachment to the Calvert house in the Dardanelles, the Bacons frequently crossed the Atlantic. Occasionally, Francis would make a stop in Greece to retrace his steps.
After several stops including the Azores, Algiers, and Naples, the Bacons finally reached Patras on July 16th, where the couple parted. Alice continued on another steamer to the Dardanelles, while Francis planned to spend a week in Greece, starting from Olympia. “Splendid Victory of Paionios, and then the lovely, beautifully finished Hermes of Praxiteles – about the only authentic ancient masterpiece in the world,” Bacon scribbled in his notebook. The authenticity of the statue –whether it was a 4th century B.C. original or a fine Roman copy- had not yet been challenged.
The Olympia Museum, 1914. ASCSA Archives, Francis H. Bacon Papers.
From Patras, Bacon took a little steamer to Itea. At Delphi he was much impressed by the restoration of the Athenian Treasury, which the French had completed a few years earlier (1903-1906.) He only wished that “they had restored the acroteria, two horses with naked riders prancing off the corners of the pediment.” Bacon, an ardent photographer, did not miss a chance to capture monuments and landscape, as well as to experiment with interior photography, which was exceptionally difficult at the time. “Back to the Museum where the Ephor Contoleon is very obliging and invited us to photo and measure anything we like.” I cherish Bacon’s interior photos because we catch glimpses of the old museum displays. To him we owe a partial view of the old Delphi Museum, built in 1903, and several charming photos of the local children who had befriended one of his fellow travelers. See slideshow below.
At Delphi, outside the museum, 1914. ASCSA Archives, Francis H. Bacon Papers.
Delphi Museum, interior, 1914. ASCSA Archives, Francis H. Bacon Papers.
Francis H. Bacon next to the Naxian Sphinx, Delphi 1914. ASCSA Archives, Francis H. Bacon Papers.
Outside the Delphi Museum, 1914. ASCSA Archives, Francis H. Bacon Papers.
After two days at Delphi, Bacon headed off for Athens. “Start at Itea at 5 A.M. Steamer at 6:30 for Corinth Canal and Piraeus. There has been a landslide in the canal and the little steamer almost climbs over a pile of clay and earth in the narrow channel. Reach Piraeus at 4 P.M. Drive to Athens over the dusty road. Go to Hotel Minerva where I spent winter in 1883, now rather dirty and forlorn.”
(The Hotel Minerva located at Stadiou 5 operated until 1991. When Bacon first stayed in it in 1883, it was known as Αι Αθήναι. For more information and a photo of the hotel, check out the site of the Greek Literary and Historical Archive.)
From the Archivist's Notebook 