Publisher’s note: This is the first installment of Edmonds resident Nathaniel Brown’s travels to Greece.
Three threads are woven into my life — each an enduring source of fascination, delight, joy and ongoing exploration and learning.
The first is music. One of my earliest memories is of my brother stretched out on the floor of the living room, listening to Beethoven or Rachmaninov on 78 RPM records. One of my few regrets is that I didn’t start to learn the viola when I was very young, and have to give it up to arthritis when I got old.
The second thread is skiing. Cross-country skiing became what I spent all of my working life in, in various ways. No longer possible, with a prosthetic leg on the left, and a fused right ankle – but even now, the sight of really good skiing thrills me and can even bring tears to my eyes. It was a healthy, wonderful profession and avocation that took me all over Europe, Canada and the U.S., allowed me to meet many of the world’s best athletes, and to make many lasting friends.
The third is classic studies. I discovered Greek history and literature at around middle school age, and I remember being first entranced by Edith Hamilton’s The Greek Way. Later it was Mary Renault’s novels, which I devoured then, and return to regularly now, though I have also grown up enough along the way to read and enjoy the classic authors through their own writings – Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon — the great plays. The Greats and the Classics are great and classics because across all though centuries they still instruct and hold a mirror up to our own times and troubles.
There is perhaps no finer introduction to the Greeks than any of Mary Renault’s books, and taken in order of their subjects: The Theseus novels, the novels of the Great Period and The Lion in the Gateway (for young readers) and the Alexander trilogy. They form a captivating guide to the history of ancient Greece, one which tends to pull me in much as do the novels of Patrick O’Brian, who was a friend and admirer of Renault. Shortly before she died in 1983, Renault received a letter from O’Brian, who told her he’d overheard the Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford speaking her name at a dinner party. Asked what to read to gain an insight into the Hellenic world, he had replied, “Oh Mary Renault every time — perfect for historical accuracy, perfect for atmosphere.”
All of which leads me to this current trip, which I began writing about on the last day of the passage to England on the Queen Mary 2. I realized not long ago that I had never visited the scenes of ancient history, never visited Athens nor seen Delphi or Crete, and that if I did not soon do so, I might never experience them. So here I am, en route to all three, happily using up Cunard credits from a COVID cancellation last year
I flew to New York on Oct. 7. Cunard arranges a driver to take you to the hotel they book for you, and then transport you from the hotel to the ship. Very easy and convenient, and while the Midtown Hilton isn’t one of the old hotels (think Algonquin – my favorite) and a bit busy and sterile, it is certainly very decent and comfortable. And after a late and “exciting” trip with a mad Russian driver, and after the Hilton’s surprisingly good truffle and prosciutto pizza, I gratefully collapsed into bed. Long day – 5 a.m. wakeup, trip to SeaTac provided by kind friends, five-hour flight, mad Russian…but not a single snag!
The next day I passed up on the COVID test, no longer required by Cunard, and made my way to the Metropolitan Museum, where an exhibit of colored Greek statues was on display, a serendipitous prelude to what I’ll at last be seeing in Athens and then in Crete.
We are all used to the white marble of Greek statuary. But the Greeks didn’t have it that way; their statuary and architectural elements were brightly colored, so that the statues looked perhaps more like the waxwork figures we know, and the grave steles and the details on buildings were in vivid colors. The examples at the Met are the result of scientific analysis of traces of pigments in the marble, and an attempt to recreate the original colors on 3-D printings of the originals, using only the natural minerals which would have been available 25 centuries ago.
The results are virtually shocking after a lifetime of being used to white marble. They are also somewhat controversial in that some feel that the skin colors, for example, might have been more nuanced by the individualities of the original painters, rather than the uniform skin color on the reproductions — just as the subtleties of bone and muscle structure become more and more nuanced in high classical art. There is a thorough explanation of the research and methods employed in this video.
One other question, shared by an artist I spoke to who was sketching a study of the bronze Riace warriors, was whether bronzes were ever colored. Right or wrong – who knows? Further research and analysis will surely reveal more in the future, but we will never know for certain. Still, the exhibit is a wake-up call, stimulating and very worth seeing. It’s still difficult to visualize the Parthenon, for example, lit up with the colors of the statuary, metopes, freezes and architectural details in vivid — to us perhaps garish –fundamental colors. But the ancient Greeks were a lively, quarrelsome and sometime garish bunch despite the gravity of much of their surviving writing; so again – who knows?
New York notes: The Grand Central Oyster Bar was disappointing: oysters Rockefeller that were bland, and pan-roasted lobster that was more sauce than lobster. I was running my reservation at the Oyster Bar close, and taxis were being mobbed, so I took a rickshaw.
Yes, they get through traffic by weaving and darting in and out, but the charge is by the minute and ranges up to $7.98 per minute. The ride was 15 minutes – you can do the math; it still hurts. But the tariff is official, according the infallible internet, that Delphic source of wisdom and knowledge.
Queen Mary 2 notes: The booklet claims Wi-Fi everywhere on the boat. No one I spoke to was able to get any connection, until the last night, when the couple at the table next to me reported that if you stood next to the elevator with your iPhone or laptop, there was actually reception! Nor is there a complete phone book for the ship: I needed to see a doctor about my leg – there is a very well-equipped and staffed infirmary – but I had to dial the 911 emergency number to ask for the infirmary’s number. All other callers get the same answer — “paging your correspondent” — which I will admit threw me off at first try, as letter-writing was not exactly what I had in mind.
Good if not brilliant food; a 2001 Mouton Rothschild Bordeaux with dinner two nights running. I couldn’t possibly drink an entire bottle at one dinner, so they cork the half-empty bottle and it is waiting for you at your table the next evening; I had a small glass of Chateaux d’Yquem for dessert the last evening.
Someone very ill was airlifted off the ship the last night – helicopters thrumming around the ship for half and hour or so. Then the sound of foghorns in the Channel. The ship docks at 6 in the morning, and you wait until a scheduled disembarkation time. Mine was at 8:15 a.m., then bus from Southampton to King’s Cross/Saint Pancras, London, and the Strand Palace hotel, possibly London’s least-expensive good hotel, my usual haunt and just yards from Covent Garden.
Church today with William Chapman, a dear friend I’ve known for many years. I’ve somehow arrived at an age when most of my friends can safely be referred to as “old” friends (in consideration of William, I shall avoid the phrase in his case). Still, “Age appears to be best in four things – wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.” – Francis Bacon.
Sunday morning we went to the Chapel of the Savoy. A palace was built here on the Savoy estate in the 14th century by John o’Gaunt (1340-1399), Duke of Lancaster, well-known to Shakespeare readers.
The palace was destroyed in 1381 during the Peasants’ Revolt, and nothing of the old palace survives above ground. In the early 16th century King Henry VII founded a hospital to provide a night’s lodging for 100 “pour and nedie” men, and completed in 1515. (I am indebted to the chapel’s webpage, which I have freely ransacked for this information.) The interior and ceiling were gutted by fires in 1843 and 1864 and the chapel was restored by Sidney Smirke in 1864. Fine choir and a sermon by the Bishop of Ripon.
As an aside, the chapel is within the confines of the Liberty of the Savoy, under the authority of the Duchy of Lancaster, which meant the area was ruled by noblemen possessing special autonomy from the crown. As a result, you could not be arrested for debt as long as you remained within the confines of the Liberty — good to bear in mind when credit cards get out of control. But rumors are that while Royal writs were not enforceable within the County of Lancashire until the 19th century, Lancaster lost its own Court of Chancery in the 1970s. And alas, the Grapes, that fine old hostelry, is gone; goodness knows where a debtor can lodge in these degenerate times!
Nat Brown taught and coached cross-country running and skiing for 16 years before joining the US Biathlon Team as wax technician, switching to the US Cross-Country team in 1989. He was the first American to take over technical services for a foreign team (Slovenia) and worked also for Germany and Sweden. He coached at 3 Olympics and 14 World Championships, edited Nordic Update for 9 years and Cross-Country Skier for 2. He has written three books on skiing and training; the latest was The Complete Guide to Cross-Country Ski Preparation (Mountaineers Books) which has gone through two editions and a Russian translation. He owned and operated Nordic UltraTune, an international freelance ski tuning service until retirement.
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