Celebrating Christmas and New Year’s in Athens, 1895-96: From the Letters of Nellie Reed, Student of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.
Posted: December 31, 2024 Filed under: Archaeology, Archival Research, Biography, Greek Folk Art, History of Archaeology, Modern Greek History, Philhellenism, Uncategorized, Women's Studies | Tags: American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Benjamin Ide Wheeler, Charles Edward Prior Merlin, Eben Alexander, Merlin House, Nellie Marie Reed, photography, Wilhelm Wilberg 8 Comments
“The American in Athens at Christmas time has a distinct advantage over the rest of mankind for each of his holidays is multiplied by two. He must of course celebrate the day the dear ones at home are enjoying and he is equally desirous of helping the Greeks in their festivities. The heading of his letter, Dec. 25, is contradicted by the postmark Dec. 13, much to his confusion until he finds that in Greece Father Time lags twelve days behind his record in other lands. But one is inclined to doubt even that date, so different is the approach of the sacred festival. Windows flung wide open admit the warm southern sunshine. A walk along the streets is rewarded by glimpses into gardens full of orange trees hung with golden fruit and rose trees covered with fragrant blossoms,” wrote Nellie Marie Reed (1872-1957) sometime in early 1896, after having spent a year at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA or the School hereafter).
She was referring to Greece following the old (Julian) calendar, as did other eastern Orthodox countries in the 19th century. Christmas was celebrated on January 6 and New Year’s on January 13. The Gregorian calendar was adopted in Greece only in 1923. (See “An Odd Christmas” or the “Christmasless Year of 1923” in Greece .)
A graduate of Cornell University, Nellie attended the School in 1895-1896. We are fortunate to have in the School’s Archives the letters she sent to her family because they contain valuable information about her Greek experience. They were my main source of information for an essay exploring the close relations between the American School and the German Archaeological Institute in the late 19th century (On the Trail of the “German Model”: ASCSA and DAI, 1881-1918). Without her letters we would not have known that these relations were not limited to an official level but extended to informal, social gatherings between members of the two schools (the so-called “Kneipe” evenings); members of the Austrian Archaeological Station (not yet an Institute) were also part of these meetings.
In Reed’s papers there is a typescript titled “Christmas Holidays at Athens” which is the source of the quote above. She must have intended to publish her story in some American magazine, but it is not known if she did. This edited copy contains descriptions and comments that are also present in her letters home; unlike the letters, the story in the typescript focuses more on the weather, landscape, and local customs and less on the people she with whom she celebrated the Christmas holiday. Her informal writings are more interesting (and less florid) because they describe life and people at the School and the American colony in Athens. I will be quoting from both sources.
Gregorian Calendar Christmas (December 25)
On the 24th of December (December 12 in the old calendar), Nellie began her day at the Acropolis Museum with a presentation on two Archaic korai (she called them “Aunties”) to other members of the School. “I cannot realize that Christmas is here –it is glorious October weather […]. There will be but little celebration in the American colony,” she wrote later that day. It was also her birthday, as it was the Greek King’s. She joked about their “joint birthday” (ASCSA Archives, Nellie M. Reed Papers, Nellie to her mother and brother, Dec. 22, 1895).
A week later, on December 29th, she started another letter by saying that: “Christmas time has come and gone but seemed really so little like Christmas that it wasn’t nearly so hard to bear […]. In the afternoon [Christmas Eve] we attended the Christian service at the German church.” From the typescript, however, we learn that Nellie attended the German service at the royal chapel in the Palace where every attendant had to carry his/her own candle since there was no provision for lighting, “on account of the fine work in the ceiling… the effect of these tiny lights in the entire absence of larger ones was quaint and pleasing in the extreme.” In addition to the Orthodox chapel that Queen Olga had created on the second floor of the Palace, there was still the Protestant chapel in the southeast corner of the ground floor which dated to the time of King Otto. That’s where Nellie and the other Americans attended the mass on Christmas Eve.
On the 25th of December (December 13 in the old calendar), she and her best friend at the School, Ruth Emerson, together with Alice Walton got up at 6am and climbed Mount Lycabettus to see the sunrise. “The Acropolis rose boldly out from clouds of pale blue mist that veiled but did not conceal the city below […]. It was not till quarter to eight that we actually saw the sun pull up from behind Hymettos, light the cross on the little chapel that crowns Lycabettos and then suddenly burst out in its full glory over us. It was warm as summer all day as in fact it was nearly the whole week.”
“Carnal creatures” in the words of Nelie, they rushed back to Merlin House to join the other female students and the family of the School’s Annual Professor, Benjamin Ide Wheeler for breakfast. Wheeler was Professor of Greek at Cornell University and the one who had encouraged Nellie and his other student, Eugene Andrews, to apply to the School. Nellie was surprised to find many presents for her under the Christmas tree that the foreign residents of the Merlin House had decked. (I have written about the Merlin House at the corner of Sekeri and Kanari streets in Kolonaki, and its owner Charles Edouard Prior Merlin (1850-1898), in an older post The Man from Damascus, the Good Wife, and Baby Solon: R.I.P. at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. At the time I did not have a photo of the house, but I have now discovered a good one in the Nellie M. Reed Papers.)
The Director of the School, Rufus Richardson, and his family joined the crowd at the Merlin House. “The Richardsons were the only outsiders here and after they were gone, you would have been amused to see the scene in the hall -tiny little Benjamin [the son of Benjamin and Amey Wheeler] with a gun and diminutive horn, Dr. Wheeler following him with a drum, Prof. Lord [George Dana Lord] with another horn, Mrs. Lord, Mrs. Wheeler, Miss Walton and I following with feather dusters or such other implements of warfare as we could find, marching in solemn procession up and down the hall.”
On Christmas Eve, the Richardsons had invited members of the School and of the American colony including the American Minister Eben Alexander and his wife [Marion Howard-Smith] and the Director of the British School [Ernest Arthur Gardner] and his wife [Mary Wilson], for an evening of games, charades, and dancing. Alexander was an academic himself having taught Greek at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“The charades were very funny – I figured in nearly every imaginable character, lame old woman healed in the Asklepieion, a bride, a queen, but funniest of all as an antique statue, one of the very “Aunties” on which I had spoken the day before. I kept my face fairly still till Prof. Lord and Dr. Wheeler who were lecturing on the statues remarked that my nose very evidently didn’t belong on my face and that my arm was of a different material from the rest of me and ought to be removed –then I smiled a smile that was not particularly archaic. I was really very happy and hardly thought of its being Christmas till the last half-hour and then I wished most devoutly that I could step in at home for a few minutes” wrote a homesick Nellie.
Old Calendar Christmas (January 6)
It was not until January 6th that the Greek Christmas came, not celebrated particularly in the homes but in the churches. On Greek Christmas Eve, the members of the School witnessed what for them was a strange event.
“A group of boys were carrying a fair-sized ship made in various colors of paper and brilliantly lighted both on the masts and inside. They halted before each house to play on crude instruments, expecting of course a reward.” It reminded them “of the great ship in the old Panathenaia festival.”
Next morning they attended mass at Agia Eirini (Saint Irene) church (the old metropolitan church) on Aiolou Street. The ceremony seemed even stranger.
“The church was about full. You must not imagine seats only a few chairs for some of the women… There was much the same rigmarole as in the Russian church but more tawdry, the priests being dressed in showy but rather untidy robes of blue, white, gold, and the attendants running about lighting candles, changing chairs, passing plates for contributions […]. Some very good Byzantine music was mixed with the monotonous intoning and chanting of the priests and the bowing and crossing of the people, kissing of pictures and various other things that did not seem in the least sacred and religious,” Nellie wrote to her family. In the typescript the last sentence was omitted.
Αγία Ειρήνη (Agia Eirini), postcard, end of 19th century.
After an hour at the Greek church, they wandered over to the Russian church at Philellinon Street, the chapel of Queen Olga, who was of Russian descent. The ceremony was more impressive and eye-catching than the one in Agia Eirini: whole robes made of gold thread, tiaras and crosses with exquisite, sparkling precious stones, and lots of chanting.
But Nellie still found the service lacking in religious sentiment: “a mere show, a very good piece of acting but not impressive enough to be able to keep my eyes off the gorgeously uniformed officers in attendance, beautiful suits with loads of gold decorations that fairly dazzled my eyes.” Her last comment was also omitted from the typescript and replaced by a description of mystagogic character: “The rich full voice of a gray-haired intoned the service answered by sweet music from an unseen choir, the curtain was slowly pulled aside, the bronze doors noiselessly opened, the clouds of fragrant incense from the swinging censer rose above the altar…”.
The Russian Church on Philellinon Street, ca. 1870. Photo Source: Ε. Γ. Σκιαδάς, “Η Σώτειρα του Λυκοδήμου (Αγία Τριάς) της οδού Φιλελλήνων,” Τα Αθηναϊκά, 6/8/2019.
In the evening Nellie and other members of the School were invited to a Christmas Eve formal dinner at the U.S. Minister’s house, Eben Alexander. “The table looked lovely, a tower of sweet alyssum, simple green and white. I can’t remember all there was, but is all nine or ten courses, soup, oyster platters, cutlets, some kind of meat, tiny cold birds, turkey, a particular kind of vegetable all alone and of course various vegetables, salads etc. with each one of these various dishes. For dessert some cakes and whipped cream, fruit and nuts. Three kinds of wine and champagne of all which I took only about two swallows and then after leaving the table, coffee, cigarettes and Benedictine in the drawing room, and still later some kind of liquers with soda-water.” Nellie had a very pleasant time “but much of that sort of thing would be an awful bore; deliver me from diplomatic life.”
Nellie preferred informal evenings with the German archaeological community. On December 26th, there was a gathering at the Dörpfelds. She “had a jolly, jolly time for besides a charming host and hostess,” she “found the Germans most entertaining.” We know that in the course of her year in Athens, Nellie developed feelings for Austrian architect Wilhelm Wilberg, the subject of a recent biography. (Their correspondence has recently been donated to the German Archaeological Institute by the Wilberg family. See Katharina Brandt, “Wilhelm Wilberg (1872-1956) and His Family,” People at the DAI Athens, 24/11/2022)
Old Calendar New Year’s Day (January 13)
On January 16th, three days after the Greek New Year’s, Nellie dispatched another long letter describing blow-by-blow the service she attended in the Metropolitan church. “Thanks to Mr. Alexander’s son Eben[izer], we had fine places up in the choir-stall in the gallery where we could see everything. There was some preparatory service which all the common people attend but about half past nine the police came in and cleared most of them out but letting foreigners to stay. For a little while the church seemed almost deserted but very soon officers in brilliant uniforms came streaming in and filled up the back half of the church, standing all close together. Then diplomats came one-by-one taking places in the front half –the Turkish minister in gorgeous gold embroidery and red fez […]; the British minister in black and gold attended by dapper secretaries; the Italian legation in graceful cape-like cloaks in soft colors and resplendent uniforms underneath; the German minister with bands and sashes and embroidery and decorations, all sorts of men in all sorts of costumes from the blazing Russian minister to Mr. Alexander who entered in simple dress suit, high hat and white gloves, immaculate and distinctive from the extreme simplicity. I had an actual thrill that I belonged to the country he represented.”
After the church had filled with Greek and foreign dignitaries, the priests started down the aisle to meet the royal family entering the church:
“Τhe King in uniform but simple, the Queen in a handsome lavender gown and black cape, the Crown Prince and Princess Marie, Prince Nicholas, Prince George and the small Prince Andreas [later the father of Prince Philip and grandfather of King Charles of England]. The service was short but the music, a choir of men’s voices, was magnificent, such strong splendid voices.”
Metropolitan Church of the Annunciation, 1870s. Photographer: Pascal Sebah. Source: Η μηχανή του χρόνου.
Nellie described the whole scene as “brilliant beyond description and gave one an inkling of what a great nation might do if a single little court could bring out such splendor.” I am not sure what she meant with her last comment whether she referred to her own country or to Greece.
Later in the morning there was a reception at the palace with the Queen and the court ladies all dressed in elegant national Greek costumes. In a recent exhibition at the Benaki Museum, titled Δίασμα (Weft and Warp) and based on the private collection of Ιoanna Papantoniou, there was an entire corner dedicated to Queen Olga and her efforts to make the national Greek costume the official costume of her court.
The next night the court ball served as the official start to carnival, which was the beginning rather than the end of the festival season.
______________________________________________
“You Undoubtedly Remember Mr. L. E. Feldmahn”: The Bulgarian Dolls of the Near East Foundation
Posted: August 31, 2024 Filed under: Archaeology, Archival Research, Biography, Economic History, Greek Folk Art, Greek Folklore, History, History of Archaeology, Mediterranean Studies, Modern Greek History, Philhellenism, Uncategorized | Tags: Dolls, Leonty E. Feldmahn, Near East Foundation, Near East Industries, Near East Industries Sofia, Near East Relief Museum, Priscilla Capps Hill, Rockefeller Archives Center 2 CommentsJack L. Davis, Carl W. Blegen Professor of Greek Archaeology at the University of Cincinnati and a former director of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (2007-2012), here contributes an essay about Leonty E. Feldmahn, the man who conceived and produced in the 1930s the Bulgarian dolls of the Near East Foundation.
One rewarding sidelight of researching institutional history is that, from time to time, it affords an opportunity to resurrect once well-known individuals who have been lost to history. Here I call attention to a fascinating man, who, throughout much of his life, made outsize contributions to addressing one Balkan refugee crisis that resulted from the Russian Revolution of 1917. In the years prior to World War II, his activities in Bulgaria were sometimes tangential to those of certain individuals known to readers of this blog through the intermediary of the Near East Industries subsidiary of the Near East Foundation.
I only learned of Leonty E. Feldmahn recently and by accident. I didn’t remember him from any earlier reading. Feldmahn is not mentioned in the standard history of the Near East Foundation, or on the Foundation’s historical web site. He appears only three times in the New York Times: when he was awarded the Bulgarian Cross for Philanthropy from King Boris (he had in 1923 established “a playground and children’s club in Sofia serving 4200 poor children,” December 31, 1935, p. 17); earlier in 1935, when the character of the playground and club was described in detail (April 21, 1935, pp. 78, 80); and in his obituary (January 6, 1962, p. 16).
Dollies and Doilies: Priscilla Capps Hill and the Refugee Crisis in Athens, 1922-1941
Posted: July 1, 2017 Filed under: Archival Research, Greek Folk Art, History of Archaeology, Modern Greek History, Philhellenism, Women's Studies | Tags: Edward Capps, Gladys Slade Thompson, Near East Industries, Priscilla Capps Hill 5 CommentsPosted by Jack L. Davis
Jack L. Davis, Carl W. Blegen Professor of Greek Archaeology at the University of Cincinnati and a former director of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (2007-2012), here contributes an essay about the (forgotten) relief efforts of Priscilla Capps Hill through Near East Industries during the great refugee crisis that followed the Asia Minor catastrophe in 1922.
In the months that followed the Asia Minor catastrophe in September 1922 and the population exchange of 1923, more than a million Orthodox Christians were ultimately compelled to desert their birth rights in Anatolia. Their influx to Greece generated an unprecedented humanitarian crisis. American expatriates in Greece took immediate action. Darrell O. Hibbard of the YMCA and Jefferson Caffery, Chargé d’Affaires of the U.S. Mission, created the Athens American Relief Committee, which notified Red Cross missions in Europe and America about the crisis and organized the first relief efforts. Bert H. Hill, Director of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA or the School hereafter), was appointed Chairman of the Relief Committee, in which role he was expected to coordinate communication with the Greek government. Harry Hill (no relation to Bert), an Englishman, head of the American Express Company in Athens, was charged with purchases and banking. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were collected by the time the Committee was disbanded on November 24, 1922, when the American Red Cross arrived in Greece to provide humanitarian aid together with Near East Relief, the latter focusing largely on Turkey. Its work had been invaluable. (See also E. Daleziou, ” ‘Adjuster and Negotiator’: Bert Hodge Hill and the Greek Refugee Crisis, 1918-1928,” Hesperia 82, 2013, pp. 49-65.)
The ASCSA’s involvement did not stop there. In the years to come “the School continued to be a hub for Americans offering their services to a variety of refugee relief efforts such as the ARC, the American Women’s Hospital Organization, Near East Relief, the YMCA, and the Athens American Relief Committee” (Daleziou 2013, p. 58). In addition to relief work, Edward Capps, the Chair of the School’s Managing Committee and a professor of Classics at Princeton University, was asked by Greece’s former prime-minister Eleftherios Venizelos to raise awareness in America of what was happening in Greece. Without wasting time, Capps, who knew Venizelos personally from his days as U.S. Minister to Greece (1920-1921), founded The American Friends of Greece (AFG), the broader mission of which was “to promote friendly relations between Greece and the U.S.” (The AFG later published booklets in support of Greece during World War II and a monthly newsletter, “The Philhellene,” which circulated from 1942-1950.)
Priscilla’s Story
Incorporation of the AFG on October 15, 1923 marked the start of Priscilla Capps’s involvement in refugee affairs, a much less well-known story than her father’s. Priscilla Capps (1900-1985), a graduate of Smith College, had assisted her father in Athens during his service as Minister, while she was a student at the ASCSA, as a kind of “first daughter.”
Priscilla Capps clad in a traditional Greek costume, ca. 1920s. Photo: ASCSA Archives, Oscar Broneer Papers.
The Spirit of St. Louis Lives in Athens, Greece
Posted: February 2, 2017 Filed under: Archaeology, Archival Research, Biography, Exhibits, Greek Folk Art, History of Archaeology, Philhellenism | Tags: Betty Grossman, George Mylonas, Lucia O' Reilly, Martyl Langsdorf, Spirit of St. Louis, Wallace Herndon Smith 3 CommentsHave you noticed that in the last ten days the press has been flooded with articles about the Doomsday Clock? Here are some of the titles: “The Doomsday Clock is the closest to midnight since 1953” (Engadget, Jan. 28, 2017), “Nuclear ‘Doomsday Clock’ ticks closest to midnight in 64 years (Reuters), “Doomsday Clock Moves Closer to Midnight, Signaling Concern Among Scientists (The New York Times, Jan. 26, 2017), and “The Doomsday Clock is now 2.5 minutes to midnight, but what does that really mean? (Science Alert).
Martyl’s design of the Doomsday Clock for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists
The Doomsday Clock was created in 1947 by members of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’s Science and Security Board; several of them were part of the “The Manhattan Project” that led to the creation of the first atomic bomb. (For those of you who want to learn more about “The Manhattan Project,” I recommend a drama series that premiered in 2014; although the series was discontinued after the second season, it featured good acting and it was fun to watch. Also see Jack Davis’s Communism In and Out of Fashion, Sept. 1, 2016.) “Originally the Clock, which hangs on a wall in The Bulletin’s office at the University of Chicago, represented an analogy for the threat of global nuclear war; however, since 2007 it has also reflected climate change and new developments in the life sciences and technology that could inflict irrevocable harm to humanity… The Clock’s original setting in 1947 was seven minutes to midnight. It has been set backward and forward 22 times since then, the smallest ever number of minutes to midnight being two in 1953, and the largest seventeen in 1991” (after Wikipedia, accessed 28/1/2017). As of January 2017 (and this explains the flurry of articles in the press), the Clock has been set at two and a half minutes to midnight, a reflection of President Trump’s comments about nuclear weapons: “The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.” Trump posted this remark on Twitter on December 22, 2016, and followed it with an even more worrisome comment: “Let it be an arms race,” he said, referring to the Russians.
While reading the history of the Doomsday Clock my eyes happened to fall on the cover of the 1947 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which featured for the first time the Clock (at seven minutes to midnight), and the name of the artist who had designed it: Martyl Langsdorf. Martyl is an unusual name, and I had seen it before. I went to the Archives Room of the American School of Classical Studies (ASCSA or the School hereafter), where we keep the School’s administrative records, and personal papers of its members. There, hanging on one of the walls, was an abstract painting depicting a mountainous landscape, and signed in the bottom left corner: “Martyl.” To my surprise, when I checked our inventory, there was a second work of art, an etching, by “Martyl” in the Archives of the ASCSA. But this one also carried a personal dedication: “To George and Lela with affection and admiration, Martyl.” This meant that Martyl’s other painting had also originally belonged to George and Lela Mylonas. Read the rest of this entry »
Skyromania? American Archaeologists in 1930s Skyros
Posted: June 1, 2016 Filed under: Archaeology, Archival Research, Greek Folk Art, History of Archaeology, Mediterranean Studies, Modern Greek History | Tags: Carol Bullard, Doreen Canaday Spitzer, Dorothy Burr Thompson, Faltaina Kalimeri Peschke, Georg von Peschke, Αngeliki Hatzimichali, Σκύρος, Richard H. Howland, Skyros 9 Comments
Skyros, house interior, 1931. ASCSA Archives, Dorothy Burr Thompson Photographic Collection
“The island of Skyros is fairly remote and inaccessible, on account of the winds. One consequence of its geographical location is that there is very little information about the island in the ancient authors, and the picture also given by the travelers is also fragmentary,” archaeologist Efi Sapouna-Sakellaraki could write in her archaeological guide to Skyros, as recently as 1998. Before her, American archaeologist Hazel Hansen, in writing about prehistoric Skyros in 1951, similarly described the island as “one of the most solitary islands in the Aegean for nearly all the other islands are nearer to one another or to the mainland.” Its isolation and the capricious sea between it and the mainland and Euboea are the reasons why Skyros is far less frequently visited…”.
From the Archivist's Notebook 