This interesting volume is a sign of the times. The claims of the modern Greek language are becoming more generally acknowledged. The Rustic Muse finds more suitors day by day. The study of folk-lore attracts an ever-widening circle of scholars.Footnote 1
The centrality of Greek antiquity in the formation of Victorian culture is well attested and extensively studied. The British perception of modern Greece during the same period has not been so thoroughly studied. Nevertheless, an interest in modern Greece and Greeks in late nineteenth-century Britain was a sign of the times, evidenced by articles in the British press and numerous publications with modern Greek subject matter, addressed both to the more educated and to the wider reading public.
A growing preoccupation with modern Greek vernacular language, literature and cultural life was an integral part of the historical moment. Since the 1870s, developments in the Eastern Question had brought the Balkans back into British focus and rekindled the philhellenic sentiments that had been widespread earlier in the century. Cultural responses to modern Greece and its culture were coloured by the ideological preoccupations of imperial society, which, guided by colonial interests, was intrigued by what were considered remote or exotic peoples and defined by the dynamic of cultural interchange. In addition, and perhaps more significantly, they were shaped by the enduring activities of European networks of philhellenes, Hellenists, diaspora Greeks and Greek scholars who, often aware of each other's writings, shared intellectual concerns, disseminated knowledge of the modern Greek language and culture and solicited sympathy for the intellectual progress of modern Greeks. British scholars were not alone in turning their attention to these subjects. Since the mid-1860s, Hellenists and potential Neohellenists in France and Germany, building on an earlier tradition, had developed an interest in Byzantine and early modern Greek texts, in the continuity of the Greek language and in the proper pronunciation of both Ancient and Modern Greek, in an attempt to emancipate research on modern Greece from the study of ancient Hellas.Footnote 2 The characters and perspectives of the individuals functioning as cultural mediators, the pivotal mediating role played by certain key figures, such as Dimitrios Vikelas, and the cultural dynamics between Greek domestic and European-wide discourse systems have recently attracted scholarly attention.Footnote 3
The letters sent by E. M. Edmonds (baptized 1821–1907) – a female writer, critic and translator active in the advocacy of modern Greece in Victorian England during the 1880s and 1890s – to Nikolaos G. Politis (1852-1921), the founder of the discipline of folklore in Greece, shed light on this wider intercommunication between European and Greek intellectuals that reinforced the study of modern Greece as an autonomous subject of interest. This collection of documents forms part of Politis’ rich and mostly unexplored exchanges with about two hundred European and American correspondents, principally scholars, writers and editors, preserved in the Benaki Museum Historical Archives. Of these, few are British, and only four of them, owing to a shared interest in folklore, have been the subject of brief analysis:Footnote 4 E. M. Edmonds; Henry Fanshawe Tozer (1829-1916, five letters and four postcards), Fellow and Classics tutor at Exeter College, Oxford, during the years 1878–96 and a member of the clergy since 1852; the eminent anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor (1832-1917, two letters); and the classicist John Cuthbert Lawson (1874-1935, four letters). The few letters to Politis from the three male scholars are mostly concise and formal, typical of an academic exchange, mainly thanking him for the receipt of his papers, congratulating him on his work, or seeking expert information. For his part, the Greek folklorist provided them with copies of his own studies and of works he edited, due to his concern to disseminate his ideas and insert himself into a European scholarly discussion.Footnote 5 By comparison, Edmonds's correspondence, despite its fragmentary nature, is more systematic. Indeed, it is one of the lengthiest ones in Politis’ archive, as it comprises seventeen letters and three postcards written between 1885 and 1905. It is also more substantive, illustrating not only Edmonds's wish to gain access to Greek literary life but also offering glimpses of her personality and social interactions.
Numerous threads already connect these four correspondents. They were all members of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, and had travelled to Greece, took an interest in Politis’ work and publicized his research among Victorian society.Footnote 6 Edmonds, Tozer, and Tylor were elected honorary members of the Parnassos Literary Society in the mid-1890s, when Politis was its president.Footnote 7 Edmonds's election was announced in the columns of The Academy,Footnote 8 enhancing her public image as an authority on modern Greek subjects. By itself, but more so in the context of similar examples, this announcement suggests that the process of cultural exchange was immediate, two-directional and self-reinforcing. Edmonds also knew Lawson, whom, as we shall see, she introduced to Politis.
The links between Edmonds and Tozer, who both wrote about the country's folklore and contemporary cultural life and regularly contributed to The Academy, were stronger.Footnote 9 Furthermore, Greek translations of their texts appeared in the highbrow literary journal Hestia (Εστία) strongly associated with Politis,Footnote 10 while both the journal and its Bulletin (Δελτίον της Εστίας) reprinted news regarding Edmonds's translations of Greek poets and prose writers and their reception by the British press.Footnote 11 Tozer was also an appreciative critic of Edmonds's work, writing about the ‘good taste’ of her versions of recent Greek poetry, devoting much attention to the ballad, valuing the historical poems by Valaoritis, Typaldos, Zalokostas and Alexandros Soutsos she had anthologized, and teasing out the animistic element in Vizyinos’ poetry.Footnote 12 In addition, he reviewed her abridged translation of Kolokotronis’ autobiographyFootnote 13 and praised her biographical account of Rigas for its simplicity and ‘strict regard to historic truth’.Footnote 14
Unlike Tylor, his eminent fellow Oxonian, whose influence on the development of the English folklore movement can hardly be exaggerated, Tozer occupied a minor position in his academic milieu. While this can partly be attributed to his ‘quaint personality’, ‘remote from anything modern’,Footnote 15 the more influential factor probably lay in his style of scholarship. His active interest in geography, defined as a close study of the natural environment in relation to social behaviour, the traditions and the history of the communities living in it, set him apart from the main concerns of the Oxford classicists of his time, who were devoted to linguistic study and philosophical enquiries.Footnote 16 If Tozer was an outsider in the dominant climate of Oxford classics, Edmonds had no academic credentials at all. According to her hitherto unknown autobiographical note, published in 1888 in the Women's Penny Paper, edited by the suffragist Henrietta B. Müller, it was only at the age of fifty, after a full programme of domesticity, that Edmonds, who as a child was ‘an insatiable reader’, began to teach herself Classical and then Modern Greek.Footnote 17 A few years later, Grigorios Xenopoulos drew a similar, albeit more romanticized biographical portrait for the readers of Hestia. According to the Greek author, whose story The Stepmother Edmonds translated, the female writer received no formal schooling and had to restrain her early poetic penchant. However, she became an avid, if surreptitious, reader and educated herself in Latin, English, French and Italian letters under the guidance of two of her brothers, whereas later on she was strongly supported in her intellectual endeavours by her husband, Augustus Robert Edmonds (1813–1906).Footnote 18 Her story – far from unique – is that of a Victorian woman with literary aspirations striving to resist patriarchal strictures. Exploring the ‘feminine fascination’ with modern Greeks and their culture in late nineteenth-century Britain, Semele Assinder has posited that knowledge of modern Greek language, literature and cultural life — a marginal subject at best — offered Edmonds, and a few other women, an alternative means by which to challenge conventional authority regarding learning and also gain access to male-dominated arenas of scholarship and publishing; more significantly, for Edmonds, it constituted a vehicle for expressing her literary ambition and advancing socially liberal views.Footnote 19
Nevertheless, the appeal modern Greece held for Edmonds and Tozer, as well as for other unconventional intellectuals such as their contemporary, the lapsed Anglican and socialist scholar Edmund Martin Geldart (1844-85), suggests it was a more varied phenomenon of self-realization. Regardless of the author's gender, systematic writing on modern Greece and allied topics, particularly in the accessible medium of periodicals, offered less well-placed philhellene writers a means to develop a visible authorial identity.Footnote 20 In this sense, Edmonds's exchanges with Politis served both personal desires for literary distinction and the broad politics of promoting ‘New Hellas’ in Great Britain. Against this background she appears to be selective in the texts she rendered into English: her diverse translations (poems, short fictions, fairy-tales, memoirs dealing with the Greek War of Independence) were chosen with an eye towards Victorian readers’ enthusiasm for ethnographic knowledge, folkloric fictions and palatable pastime reading.Footnote 21 Moreover, as in the cases of Politis and Ioannis Gennadius, she chose well-known figures with which to associate her name as a translator. Thus, she approached Politis in order to translate one of his papers for the official organ of the Folk-Lore Society in London. In 1885, when Edmonds initially wrote to him, Politis, who the previous year had coined the term laographia for that distinctive branch of Greek folklore, was a leading Greek intellectual, well acknowledged outside his country. British folklorists had taken notice of his landmark Νεοελληνική μυθολογία Footnote 22 and subsequent treatises as contributing to the comparative investigation of archaic beliefs, customs and traditions. In fact, this award-winning study for the Rodokanakis competition had been reviewed in the British press soon after publication – by Tozer among others – and its ‘contribution to the science of comparative mythology’ had been recognized.Footnote 23 Through her adaptation of studies by a distinguished Greek specialist, Edmonds was able to communicate with George Laurence Gomme (1853-1916), a member of the Council and honorary secretary of the Folk-Lore Society in 1884–5 and its Director for a number of years starting in 1885–6. She thus gained recognition as an associate of the prestigious Folk-Lore Journal and reinforced her credentials as a ‘folklorist’.Footnote 24
Moreover, Edmonds's letters to Politis highlight the troubling question of religion that arises in any ethnographic discussion on the persistence of pagan superstitions and practices among Greek peasants.Footnote 25 The writer, acquainted with Christian Orthodox circles, shows a deep respect for religion; in her letters of late 1885 (nos 4 and 6), her appreciation of the Eastern Church and its clerics seems to set her apart from Politis’ unsympathetic stance. The folklorist viewed Christianity as polemical, or barely tolerant, towards ancient religion and he frequently treated Christian saints as veiled reincarnations of ancient deities. Committed to the values of Enlightenment thought, Politis aimed to connect modern Greek identity with ancient Greece and therefore questioned the influence of Christianity upon Greek culture, resisted the very notion of dogmatic truth and promoted critical reason against prejudice and superstition.Footnote 26 In fact, a few months earlier, in late 1884, the official Church, forced by the wrath of para-ecclesiastical circles who charged Politis with atheism, materialism and Darwinism, censored his choice of certain literary materials for the secondary school curriculum.Footnote 27 In her letters, Edmonds apologizes for Matthias Jenkyns's inadequate introduction to her anthology of translated modern Greek poetry Greek Lays, defending her friend on the basis of his philhellenism and Orthodox religiosity. Clearly, from her arguments in support of Jenkyns, and views expressed elsewhere in her writings, Edmonds shared his positions on the Christian foundations of the Greek War of Independence, on the active role of the Orthodox clergy in the liberation struggles and, most importantly, on the ‘Helleno-Christian’ nature of Greek national identity. As Jenkyns had emphatically stated in his essay, ‘to the Hellene, Greek and Orthodox are synonymous terms’.Footnote 28
If Edmonds's divergence from Politis is discreetly expressed, her disapproval of John Stuart Stuart Glennie's (1841-1910) tenets on the absence of Christian sentiment in Greek folk culture is vociferous and may reflect a personal dislike of his dogmatic style and ‘graceless personality’.Footnote 29 Edmonds interprets Stuart Glennie's ‘historical introduction’ on ‘the survival of paganism’ and his notes to Lucy M. J. Garnett's compilation of Greek Folk-Songs (1885)Footnote 30 as a rejection of Christian belief by a secular folklorist, dismissing it accordingly as anti-Hellenic. More specifically, in his prefatory essays to Garnett's collection, Stuart Glennie presented a dubious theory of racial conflict, economic change and civilizational difference on the basis of which Hellenes were close kinsmen to Celts.Footnote 31 This, in his view, explained why ‘the most distinguished of English-speaking Philhellenes [. . .] have, almost all, had in their veins a more than usual proportion of that Keltic blood which is common to the whole Britannic Race’.Footnote 32 Church-beliefs, despite ‘the domination of Christianity for nearly 2,000 years’, had little impact on Western Paganism, a feature he found to be ‘only somewhat more conspicuous among the Greeks’ and was attested to by their folk-songs.Footnote 33 He contended that the Olympian gods lived on, ‘transformed only, and deformed, in Greek Christianity’, citing in evidence Politis’ position on the solar origins of the worship of St Elias.Footnote 34 In accordance with his racial schema, the Semitic origins of the Eastern Church's theology underlay its intellectual deficiencies.Footnote 35
It would have been interesting to know the Greek folklorist's stance towards Stuart Glennie's thesis, given their shared assumption about the cultural superiority of the classical world. By demonstrating the survival of various ancient linguistic, cosmological and religious elements in popular culture, and pointing to their acceptance of, or syncretism with, the Christian tradition, Politis established continuity between ancient and modern Hellas. Following a line agreeable with Politis’ Enlightenment Hellenism, Stuart Glennie spoke of ‘the wonderful identity of Modern with Classical Greek sentiments’, explained by the ‘identity of Modern with Classical, Greek speech’ and exhibited in Greek folk-songs.Footnote 36
It is quite possible that Edmonds's disputing of Garnett's and Stuart Glennie's philhellenism, despite their book's dedication ‘to the Hellenes of enslaved Greece [. . .] for the completion of Hellenic independence’ and their forthright calls for the country's territorial enlargement,Footnote 37 conceals a rivalry towards collaborators concurrently introducing Greek poetry to the English public. Nevertheless, her ideological disagreement, conveyed in her remarks about the Greek nation's Christianity, reveals a further difference: a divergence of views about Greece's transition to modernity.
In his preface to Greek Folk-Songs, Stuart Glennie was very critical of the ‘disastrous Foreign Policy of the Gladstone Administration’. Citing the argument of linguistic and ethnological affinity between Greeks and the inhabitants of Southern Albania, he advocated the creation of a ‘Greco-Albanian Confederation’ potentially serving as a means for the ‘enfranchisement of Northern Greece’ and forming a barrier against the threat of a Greater Serbia.Footnote 38 Edmonds, in contrast, espoused the blessings of order and peace with the Ottoman Empire. Consistently, in the 1880s and 1890s – a period of military turmoil in the Balkans – she embraced the policy of Greece's ‘internal progress’ as a prerequisite for the future expansion of its borders. Notably, as early as May 1881, just a month before the settlement of Greek authorities in newly annexed Arta, she used the preface of her travelogue Fair Athens to caution: ‘War, however, would but retard all internal progress, and undo much that has been done; strength here being the arts of Peace alone; and the disinterested enlightenment of Europe will hope that through its means the future of Hellas will be what her National Hymn expresses [. . .]’.Footnote 39 Along the same lines, in both the 1885 and 1886 editions of Greek Lays, Edmonds and Jenkyns hope for the future enlargement of Greece on the basis of her ‘steady progress commercially and educationally’.Footnote 40 Edmonds admired Charilaos Trikoupis (letter no. 14) and seems to have endorsed his policy of prioritizing state and army modernization, economic growth, and social progress over territorial expansion. By contrast, in her letter of 10 March 1886 (no. 7), she openly blames Prime Minister Theodoros Deliyannis (1826-1905) for his frivolous tactics of threatening war with Turkey to extract concessions for Greece from European powers.
*
Many aspects of Edmonds's letters presented here help us understand the process by which modern Greek culture was mediated in late nineteenth-century Europe: they reveal hitherto unknown facets of her translating activity, publishing circles, and role as cultural mediator; they also contribute to the reconstruction of her still incomplete biography and corpus of texts. Thus, through her letters we gain insights into her relations with Ioannis Gennadius and Georgios Vizyinos, and additionally learn about her acquaintance with John Cuthbert Lawson whom, in 1898, she introduced to the doyen of Greek ethnography as ‘a young student in folk-lore’ (letter no. 16).Footnote 41
Letter no. 11 brings to light her previously unknown collaboration with The Ladder: A Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art (1891). Edited by David Balsillie, a thinker of socialist orientation, this short-lived sixpenny monthly, designed ‘to interest and instruct,’Footnote 42 contained fiction as well as a range of articles concerned with political leadership, scientific developments, and literary and cultural issues. Showing remarkable awareness of continental literature, the magazine also provided brief critical descriptions of the contents of leading home and foreign periodicals. Edmonds joined the Ladder in its fourth issue, dated April 1891, when a new section on ‘Athenian Magazines’, most probably designed by her, was added to its regular contents.Footnote 43
In the following period, a few of Edmonds's pieces appeared in The Eastern and Western Review (February 1892-May 1893), a monthly magazine of orientalist interest and political objectives. This periodical contained articles that dealt with colonial and Eastern European and Asian affairs, travel, history, religious, scientific and literary issues, together with fiction and descriptions of foreign women's lives and activities. Among the various contributions by women, Edmonds's translations of two modern Greek short stories and her articles recording Greek folk customs and superstitions, as well as her double-focused piece on Zante's earthquakes and the eminent poets associated with the island (cf. postcard no. 13), were pertinent to the periodical's purpose to promote ‘a better knowledge’ of Western and Eastern peoples.Footnote 44
Edmonds's collaboration with these two ephemeral publications of scholarly flavour, alongside her involvement in various other magazines (some aimed primarily at a female readership and at least one other at churchgoers) and her regular contributions to the high-quality Academy, is indicative of her efforts to find outlets for her writings and ensure some income. The outcome was the inclusion of her texts in a wide range of magazines and journals that made modern Greece accessible to a variety of audiences. In parallel, the diffusion of her work in the printed media of the English-speaking world raised her writerly profile, giving her an aura of authority. As a result, the elderly woman writer was celebrated in the Greek press as the matron of Greek letters in England. Nevertheless, her letters, marked by deference towards Politis, reveal her insecurity about her mastery of modern Greek and her limited knowledge of national affairs, which she strove to overcome by rigorous concern for factual and linguistic accuracy.
One final point: the personal tone of her later letters to Politis displays the growing familiarity between them, despite their apparently sparse correspondence. These letters offer an insight into Edmonds's Christian moralism and devotion to her marriage. The boon of a tranquil married life, described both in letter no. 19 and in her autobiographical note in the Women's Penny Paper, appears to have contributed to Edmonds's increasing autonomy: it allowed her the freedom to exercise her writing skills, to create an extended intellectual family through her correspondence with Greek poets, writers and scholars and to achieve self-realization. In clarifying her marital status to Politis (letter no. 4) she underlines its significance for her authorial identity. That said, the reader of Edmonds's letters might still notice her almost systematic use of the gender-ambiguous signature ‘E. M. Edmonds’ in the 1880s. In the next decade she tends to replace the abbreviated initials with fuller forms of her first names ‘Eliz.’, ‘Elizabeth’, ‘Elizabeth Mayhew’. This shift, also attested in her publications, confirms the view that Edmonds, after gaining some authorial recognition, traded on a signature linked to her gender and marital status.Footnote 45
Edmonds's correspondence with Politis is necessarily presented here in an incomplete form, without the Greek scholar's letters. Even so, it grants us an insight into an aspect of a complex cultural exchange which established modern Greek society and culture as a subject of discussion in contemporary discourses on European cultural identity.
*
The letters Footnote 46
In all letters transcribed below, the author's own underlining, as well as her spelling and accentuation of Greek words, has been preserved, except that I tacitly corrected accents and breathings in the Greek text of postcard no. 9. I added full stops to initials and abbreviated versions of proper names where they were missing. Edmonds writes informally, and a little casually; she occasionally capitalizes the word ‘Church’, whereas she writes both Polites and Politȇs. In these examples and others I have always followed her spelling. Her punctuation is sometimes careless, and here, in contrast, when necessary for clarity, I have corrected it according to current conventions.
1. (Figs 1 & 2)
Fig. 1 and 2. Letter from E. M. Edmonds to N. G. Politis, 19 August [1885]. N. G. Politis Archive, Benaki Museum Historical Archives.
Carisbrook
Blackheath
19 Augt [1885]
Dear Sir
Do you know whether any English translation of the work upon which you are now engaged is contemplated[?] I have thought whether it would not be in my power to undertake it if no other person would be likely to engage in it.
I have lately issued an English rhymthical [sic] translation of Recent Greek Poets, ‘Greek Lays’ and I do not think Greek Prose would present half the difficulties.
I should be glad to hear from you upon the subject.
I remain
Yours very truly
E. M. Edmonds
—Politês Esq[ re ]
On the third page of the four-page folded letter
Address
Mrs Edmonds
Carisbrook
Blackheath
England
2.
Carisbrook
Blackheath
17 Sept 1885
My dear Sir
Many many thanks for your very kind letter, and for your generous gift of books. I am reading them with the greatest interest. I have well considered the matter and think you are possibly quite right in saying that their great attraction would be to ‘Folk Lorists’ and not for the Reading Public as a whole. I shall therefore communicate with the ‘Folk Lore Society’ through the Editor of the Folk Lore Journal, Mr G. L. Gomme, and if he gives me any encouragement to undertake the translation of any of your exhaustive papers I will let you know.
I could not undertake such a work at my own cost and so it must depend upon the Society, whether it will bear the expense. I have forwarded a copy of ‘Greek Lays’Footnote 47 to you which I beg you will accept with all faults. In a second edition I shall revise & correct many errors of the press and others arising from my own inadvertence. In the copy I send you I have taken the liberty to make some corrections which I append in a flyleaf.
I do not write to you in your dear native tongue as I know you are a perfect English scholar but I thank you much for writing to me in Greek as I so very much prefer that my Greek friends and correspondents should write to me in their own language.
Again expressing the profound pleasure which the perusal and study of your works afford me I remain
My dear Sir
Yours most truly obliged
Eliz. M. Edmonds
N. G. Politês Esq re
3.
Carisbrook
Blackheath
7 Oct 1885
My dear Sir
I have made a translation of Ἀι Ἀσθενειαι,Footnote 48 but abridged it considerably, only extracting those parts which are strictly Greek & modern Greek, and have sent it to the Folk Lore Society to be inserted in their Journal. I have no doubt that the Editor will gladly avail himself of it, if he do not even now find it too long for his Journal which is a small one.
You will my dear Sir readily understand the necessity I was under (when intending to present your able paper in an English form to an English public) to withdraw quotations which you yourself had translated from German & other Authors who are accessible to the English public. I have gathered out of your paper all the accounts that come firsthand and I am pleased with the result. I am sure it will be acceptable to folk lorists who cannot read it in the original. If Mr Gomme thinks so also, I will forward you a number of the Journal when it is inserted, but it may be some time before such is the case as they are rather full of papers just now. I shall now try my hand upon ‘Ὀ Ηλιος’ but solar myths are more generally known and Mr Max Muller [sic] is even now about bringing out a work upon the subject.
With many thanks for your kindness. Believe me to remain
My dear Sir
Yours very sincerely
E. M. Edmonds
G. N. [sic] Politês Esq re
4.
Carisbrook
Blackheath
Oct 17th 1885
My dear Sir
I am just in receipt of your most kind letter of the 11th inst. for which accept my many thanks. You are very generous towards ‘Greek Lays’. There is much which I should like to alter however in it.
The friend who wrote the Introduction would be very glad to be corrected in his errors. It was not exactly what I wished but Mr Matthias Jenkyns is so true a Philhellen[e] that it was as a token of friendship to him and his feelings, that I entrusted it to him. It will surprise you doubtless much, to hear that he is a member of the Orthodox Greek church. He was baptized into it many years since, and his wife and seven children all belong to it. He is a true son of the church and strange as it may seem to you that a son of our misty island should throw himself into the arms of the Eastern mother church yet the fact is very interesting. The Introduction to the ‘Greek Folk Songs’ of Miss Garnett is able of its kind but rambling off to air the writer's hatred to Christianity.Footnote 49 I cannot believe in the Philhellenism that derides and insults the Greek Orthodox church. Despite the dedication therefore I consider the Greek people are ignored and their feelings disregarded by Mr Glennie. We cannot have back classic paganism if we would. It would be a doubtful blessing to Greece if we could. But I should grieve if in purging away superstitiousFootnote 50 and foolish habits, one finger was raised against that venerable structure the Eastern Church. Therefore, I let Mr Jenkyns as a lover, and not a hater of Orthodoxy write the Introduction, would it were better!
I believe that the ‘Folk Lore Society’ will publish the abbreviated translation of ‘Sicknesses &c’ which I sent them. As there are two or three passages which are hardly clear to me such as ’ς τὰ κὰρκαρα1 ’πίσων τὸν ἥλιο, ποῦ σσιοῦλος2 δε βαυίζει3 σελ 9, and again on σελ. 10, ‘4κουλουροῦλα’ ‘5βλογάει’.Footnote 51 Is ‘little cake’ for no 4 and ‘blessed’ or ‘consecrated’ for no 5 a fit rendering? I could not submit the proofs for your approval, so will possibly send the rough MS for you to run your eye over as for the sake of your high name I should not like any foolish mistake to be overlooked. A few minutes would enable you to see errors.
With many thanks for all your generous consideration and kindness. Αllow me to remain my dear and honoured Sir
Yours Ever sincerely
(Mrs not Miss) E. M. Edmonds
N. G. Politês Esqre
5. Postcard
recto
N. G. Politês Esq re
Athens
Greece
Postmarked: Blackheath OC19 85
verso
My dear Sir
I did not think it worth while to trouble you with a whole MS. so have only sent some portions wherein there were words unknown to me. Do not trouble to return them as the real MS. is with the Editors of Folk Lore Journal. If you will only put down the meaning of the words indicated or note any errors I shall be grateful.
Yrs obliged
E. M. Edmonds
N. G. Politês Esq re
6.
Carisbrook
Blackheath
1st December [1885]
My dear Sir
I desire to thank you most sincerely for your great kindness, and for the trouble you took in correcting my stupid mistakes. How you must have laughed about the crowns. I assure you I laughed most heartily at myself when I read your explanations.
I beg to thank you also for the newspapers containing some contributions of yours which are very curious and interesting. I think Mr Drosines’ version of one very good.
I do not know whether he has already written but my friend Mr Jenkyns intends to ask you kindly to point out his errors in the Introduction to ‘Greek Lays’. He is too sincere a Philhellene not to be most grateful for any corrections. In a 2nd Edition if called for it might be possible to supply some deficiencies. I dare say you (with your advanced opinions) will be surprised to hear that Mr Jenkyns has entered the Orthodox church and that all his family were baptized into it. You will see therefore that he takes a different view to Mr Stuart Glennie who in ‘Greek Folk Songs’ grossly insults the Greek church & its priests. I myself have a great veneration for the Mother church & nurseFootnote 52 of Christianity and wished to show this in my little book. I do not think any benefit will be derived for Greece by her casting aside her Church. Some practices are out of place with the age that is true and the sooner the heathenish superstitions which you so ably portray are gone, the better. I think in ‘Greek Folk Songs’ the notes & Introduction is an offence which every Greek ought to resent.
When the Folk Lore Society think fit to insert my Translations I will forward you a copy immediately.
Do you know where Mr George Bizuenos is now?Footnote 53 I think he cannot be in Athens, as I have not heard from him for a long period of time. Excuse me for asking you but in so small a city as Athens I always think every literary man must know each other.
Would it be too great a liberty to ask you (if you have one by you) for a photograph. I am trying to get a collection of the portraits of Greek celebrities and surely no one has done more service than yourself for Greek letters.
I am in an agony of suspense about Greece. If she goes to war I fear she will be crushed. Alas! what greedy eyes are watching every movement.
Again thanking you much and with prayers for the welfare of your dear country.
Believe me
Ever Yours faithfully
E. M. Edmonds
N.G. Politês Esqre
7.
Carisbrook
Blackheath
10 Mar. 1886
Most learned and Dear Sir
I thank you so very much for your kind letter and photograph just received. It will be literally a very handsome addition to my gallery of Hellenes. You will be between His Excellency A. Rhangabe and Dr Spyridon Lambros. In the ‘Spectator’ of this week is an interesting paper on ‘Jewish Folk Medicine’.Footnote 54 I forward it to you by this post thinking it to be possible that you may not have seen it. The cures are very disgusting, but the different charms employed are wonderfully similar to those in your paper on Greek folk treatment of diseases. I almost wish that I had not sent my translation of your paper to the ‘Folk Lore Journal’ as it is so long before it could be published.Footnote 55 As regards the crisis I believe the opportunity is past Six months since — a decisive blow might have been struck — but dilitoriness [sic] ruins everything in this world. Is it a national feature not to be prompt? To engage in war now would be suicidal. Minister DelyannisFootnote 56 is unfit for his position, and that will be but too clearly seen hereafter. Thanks for Mr Vizyenos’ address. Again thanking you deeply, I remain
Sincerely Yours
E. M. Edmonds
Dr N. G. Politês
8.
Carisbrook
Blackheath
Oct 22 [1889]
My dear Sir
I have a life of Rhigas Pheraios going to the press.Footnote 57 I have taken the liberty of making use of your paper in Ἑστία, Jan. 1885Footnote 58 for certain facts in regard to his youth. In it you mention a village called ‘Νταμπέγλι’ which I have rendered Ntampegli. My friend Mr Gennadius our Greek minister here does not know the place and almost thinks that I have made a mistake. Could you kindly oblige me by sending two or three words on postal card, two or three words will suffice, if there is another name besides Νταμπέγλι, or whether Dampegli would be the best anglicism for it.Footnote 59 The very little book is dedicated to Mr Gennadius who is much interested in it.
I take this opportunity for thanking you most warmly for the Ἑστία which reaches me every week. I consider that it has much benefited by the present editorship. With warmest congratulations, I remain
Yours most faithfully
E. M. Edmonds
Dr. G. N. Polites
9. Postcard
recto
Dr N. G. Polites
Athens
Greece
Postmarked: London NO22 89
verso
Carisbrook
Blackheath
Kent
England
Nov. 21 [1889]
Εὐγενέστατε Κύριε
Εὐχαριστῶ ὑμᾶς ἐξ ὅλης καρδίας μου. Ἅμα ἐκδί[δ]εται θὰ σπεύσω ἐγὼ νὰ σᾶς στείλω τὸ μικρὸν τόμον ‘Rhigas Pheraios’[.]
Ὅλως Ὑμέτ.
E. M. Edmonds
10.
Carisbrook
Blackheath
[1891]
Dear Dr Politês
Please accept my hearty goodwishes and warm greetings for the New Year of 1891 during which I hope not one cloud will darken the horizon in your life & surroundings.
Ever Yours truly
Elizabeth Mayhew Edmonds
You will excuse me for enclosing a notice of my forthcoming translation of Old Kolokotrones[.]
11.
Carisbrook
Blackheath
Kent
England
March 14 [1891]
Dear Dr Politês
I am about to ask a favour which I feel sure you will have no objection to grant. I am engaged on a new Monthly Magazine to write notices of Greek periodicals. You know full well that I have the Ἑστία and Mr Damberges sends me the Ἕβδομας [sic]. I have reviewed both the current numbers of these magazines which will appear in April.Footnote 60 Now I want to prepare notices of some other periodicals for the May number, and if you could help me by asking the Editor of any historical or scientific magazine to forward me a number [of] the latest one out, I should be very grateful. I have written to the Editor of the ΛόγοςFootnote 61 to this effect and would have written myself to others if I had known of them. They must be magazines not newspapers. I will send you a copy of ‘the Ladder’ when out. I am sure you will agree with me that any effort to spread the closer knowledge of the English peoples with Greek literature is desirable.
Ever Yours faithfully
E. M. Edmonds
12.
Carisbrook
Blackheath
Feb 10 [1893]
Dear Dr Polites
I beg to thank you most warmly for your interesting pamphlet, which I value much. I am sending you by this post a no of ‘Eastern & Western Review’, and a little tale I wrote for children at Xmas.Footnote 62 I suppose your children can read English.
What great sympathy all must feel at the present time for unfortunate Zante. How terrible is such an infliction!
Again thanking you much
I remain
Yours faithfully
E. M. Edmonds
The mag ought to have been sent in Nov. I put it on one side & forgot it.
13. Postcard
recto
Dr G N[sic] Politês
Athens
Greece
Postmarked: London MY13 93
verso
Carisbrook
Blackheath
May 13 [1893]
Dear Mr Polites
I regret to say that the no of Eastern & W. Review containing ‘Quaint Customs in Rural Greece’Footnote 63 is out of print and all my efforts to procure a copy have been unavailing. I have however great pleasure in sending you the current number with my few words on poor Zante.Footnote 64
Yours Ever sincerely
E. M. Edmonds
14.
Carisbrook
Blackheath
May 4 [1896]
Dear Dr Polites
I have been quite overjoyed at the great success of the Olympic games in which you took so great a part and thank you most warmly for the beautiful publication sent to me by your orders. I hope that you did not think my lines in the ‘Academy’ quite unworthy of the Marathonean victory.Footnote 65 They were struck off red hot as it were as they had to appear directly whilst the feeling was fresh. Mr Gennadius liked them and others thought they were just enough without any undue exaggeration. Of course I think that they are not nearly good enough, but I am never satisfied with anything I do, but I can but give of my best, though that best is but poor.
It was a sad cloud following so soon upon victory to have the city in mourning for her great statesman[,] for whatever difference of opinion may exist, Trikoupis was a great man:Footnote 66 but grief follows, or treads closely upon the heels of joy, in this life.
Please accept my congratulations for the success of the Games & Believe me
Ever Yours sincerely
Eliz. M. Edmonds
15.
Carisbrook
Blackheath
May 14 [1898]Footnote 67
Dear Dr Polites
Allow me to thank you as the President of the Parnassos for the Annual Report, that you have so kindly sent me. I think that this year's Ἐπετηρὶς exceeds in interest those that have gone before. Being much interested in all matters connected with the Greek church I read the papers bearing references to it with much pleasure and profit.
I think dear Dr Polites that we may now rejoice together over the improved aspect of Greek affairs. Much of course remains to be accomplished, and there are many pessimists who will always look on the cloudy side, but as I have never despaired in the hour of your greatest peril, I shall not begin to do so now.
Ever believe me
Faithfully Yours
Elizabeth M. Edmonds
16.
Carisbrook
Blackheath
July 1st [1898]
Dear Dr Polites
Will you kindly give Mr Lawson, a young student in folk-lore, a few hints that may be useful in enabling him to prosecute his researches in Greece. Any advice from so great an authority as yourself would be most invaluable to him and would save him much loss of time.
I take this opportunity of thanking you for the volume of ΕΤΟΣ ΒFootnote 68 of the reports of PAPΝΑΣΣΟΣ [sic] and for various papers of your own received at different times, and remain as ever
Yours most sincerely
Eliz. M. Edmonds
17.
Carisbrook
Blackheath
SE
England
[190-]
Dear Dr Polites
I write a few lines of thankful joy in discovering that in the late disastrous fire at our house to which we ourselves almost fell as sacrifice, among the many treasured books that were destroyed, your most erudite and justly valued volume ‘Παροιμίαι’Footnote 69 was preserved.
I am sorry to say that your kind congratulations on my Golden weddingFootnote 70 as well as the diploma of my admission as Honorary member into the Parnassos were amongst the many papers and MSS. that perished in the flames.Footnote 71
My husband joins with me in wishing the happiness and success of yourself, your family[,] your country, and the Society in which you are interested and believe me
Ever Yours most sincerely
Elizabeth Mayhew Edmonds
18.
Carisbrook
Blackheath
[St John R.: struck out]
Se Footnote 72
ἀπ. 16/29 X. ’03
Dear Dr Polites
May I so far presume upon past kindness as to ask you a few questions relative to the policy of your dear country. A friend of mine is going to lecture upon ‘Greece’ on the 15` November (‘The political systems of the world’). I have promised to help her in preparing her lecture. Will you kindly tell me if 1. Education is still free[?] 2. If there is Conscription? 3. Universal suffrage? and give me a few notes that will be useful in bringing the present state of Greece before an audience who meet to learn from a series of lectures how to acquire through descriptions of their history & modes of government a more sympathetic feeling to [cancelled word] and with [sic] foreign countries with a view to promote international amity.
Believe me
Always Yours faithfully
Elizabeth M. Edmonds
19.
Carisbrook
Blackheath
England
23 Feb [1906]
D[ea]r Dr Polites
It is long since I heard from you, and very many things have occurred since the time when you wrote your kind congratulations upon the golden wedding of myself and my adorable husband. You then wished that we might see a diamond wedding. Well, at one time I thought it might be but I hardly desired that it should be [,] as at a diamond with increase of infirmities Joy can never be present. We were not however destined to have a diamond wedding. God decreed otherwise. My dear husband never really recovered from a sharp attack of influenza in 1902, but he enjoyed his life, gardened, and exerted himself to the utmost to make home gladsome & bright, but was frequently obliged to remain a semi invalid. We enjoyed however our 55th Wedding day on the 15th of last December, but though he was bright and compani[on]able as usual he declined soon after & passed away on the 24` January. I enclose a cutting from a local paper as perhaps you missed the notice in the Times and other papers.
I still take a lively interest in Greek affairs. My darling husband shared my tastes. We had never worn spectacles and therefore could enjoy reading to the last. He was very enthusiastic in his youth and his bright loveable nature never became dimmed.
I suppose you are still much concerned with your studies in Folklore. Hoping Mrs Polites & your family are well I remain
Ever sincerely yours
Elizabeth EdmondsFootnote 73
20.
Undated letter on decorated notepaper inserted in a small envelope with ‘Dr Polites’ written on it.
Dear Dr Polites
A very happy Christmas to yourself and all who are dear to you with hearty wishes for a prosperous New Year, never forgetting the wider prosperity and peace of our beloved Hellas from
Yours Ever sincerely
Elizabeth Mayhew Edmonds
