John Stephens - Incidents of Travel in Greece, Turkey, Russia, and Poland, Vol. 1 (of 2)

In eighteen hundred and thirty the Rev. Messrs. Hill and Robinson, with their families, sailed from this city (New-York) as the agents of the Episcopal missionary society, to found schools in Greece. They first established themselves in the Island of Tenos; but, finding that it was not the right field for their labours, employed themselves in acquiring a knowledge of the language, and of the character and habits of the modern Greeks. Their attention was directed to Athens, and in the spring of eighteen hundred and thirty-one they made a visit to that city, and were so confirmed in their impressions, that they purchased a lot of ground on which to erect edifices for a permanent establishment, and, in the mean time, rented a house for the immediate commencement of a school. They returned to Tenos for their families and effects, and again arrived at Athens about the end of June following. From the deep interest taken in their struggle for liberty, and the timely help furnished them in their hour of need, the Greeks were warmly prepossessed in favour of our countrymen; and the conduct of the missionaries themselves was so judicious, that they were received with the greatest respect and the warmest welcome by the public authorities and the whole population of Athens. Their furniture, printing-presses, and other effects were admitted free of duties; and it is but justice to them to say that, since that time, they have moved with such discretion among an excitable and suspicious people, that, while they have advanced in the great objects of their mission, they have grown in the esteem and good-will of the best and most influential inhabitants of Greece; and so great was Mr. Hill's confidence in their affections, that, though there was at that time a great political agitation, and it was apprehended that Athens might again become the scene of violence and bloodshed, he told me he had no fears, and felt perfectly sure that, in any outbreaking of popular fury, himself and family, and the property of the mission, would be respected.[1]

In the middle of the summer of their arrival at Athens, Mrs. Hill opened a school for girls in the magazine or cellar of the house in which they resided; the first day she had twenty pupils, and in two months one hundred and sixty-seven. Of the first ninety-six, not more than six could read at all, and that very imperfectly; and not more than ten or twelve knew a letter. At the time of our visit the school numbered nearly five hundred; and when we entered the large room, and the scholars all rose in a body to greet us as Americans, I felt a deep sense of regret that, personally, I had no hand in such a work, and almost envied the feelings of my companion, one of its patrons and founders. Besides teaching them gratitude to those from whose country they derived the privileges they enjoyed, Mr. Hill had wisely endeavoured to impress upon their minds a respect for the constituted authorities, particularly important in that agitated and unsettled community; and on one end of the wall, directly fronting the seats of the scholars, was printed, in large Greek characters, the text of Scripture, "Fear God, honour the king."

It was all important for the missionaries not to offend the strong prejudices of the Greeks by any attempt to withdraw the children from the religion of their fathers; and the school purports to be, and is intended for, the diffusion of elementary education only; but it is opened in the morning with prayer, concluding with the Lord's Prayer as read in our churches, which is repeated by the whole school aloud; and on Sundays, besides the prayers, the creed, and sometimes the Ten Commandments, are recited, and a chapter from the Gospels is read aloud by one of the scholars, the missionaries deeming this more expedient than to conduct the exercises themselves. The lesson for the day is always the portion appointed for the gospel of the day in their own church; and they close by singing a hymn. The room is thrown open to the public, and is frequently resorted to by the parents of the children and strangers; some coming, perhaps, says Mr. Hill, to "hear what these babblers will say," and "other some" from a suspicion that "we are setters forth of strange gods."

The boys' school is divided into three departments, the lowest under charge of a Greek qualified on the Lancasterian system. They were of all ages, from three to eighteen; and, as Mr. Hill told me, most of them had been half-clad, dirty, ragged little urchins, who, before they were put to their A, B, C, or, rather, their Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, had to be thoroughly washed, rubbed, scrubbed, doctored, and dressed, and, but for the school, would now, perhaps, be prowling vagabonds in the streets of Athens, or training for robbery in the mountains. They were a body of fine-looking boys, possessing, as Mr. Hill told me, in an extraordinary degree, all that liveliness of imagination, that curiosity and eagerness after knowledge, which distinguished the Greeks of old, retaining, under centuries of dreadful oppression, the recollection of the greatness of their fathers, and, what was particularly interesting, many of them bearing the great names so familiar in Grecian history; I shook hands with a little Miltiades, Leonidas, Aristides, &c., in features and apparent intelligence worthy descendants of the immortal men whose names they bear. And there was one who startled me, he was the son of the Maid of Athens! To me the Maid of Athens was almost an imaginary being, something fanciful, a creation of the brain, and not a corporeal substance, to have a little urchin of a boy. But so it was. The Maid of Athens is married. She had a right to marry, no doubt; and it is said that there is poetry in married life, and, doubtless, she is a much more interesting person now than the Maid of Athens at thirty-six could be; but the Maid of Athens is married to a Scotchman! the Maid of Athens is now Mrs. Black! wife of George Black. Comment is unnecessary.

But the principal and most interesting part of this missionary school was the female department, under the direction of Mrs. Hill, the first, and, except at Syra, the only school for females in all Greece, and particularly interesting to me from the fact that it owed its existence to the active benevolence of my own country-women. At the close of the Greek revolution, female education was a thing entirely unknown in Greece, and the women of all classes were in a most deplorable state of ignorance. When the strong feeling that ran through our country in favour of this struggling people had subsided, and Greece was freed from the yoke of the Mussulman, an association of ladies in the little town of Troy, perhaps instigated somewhat by an inherent love of power and extended rule, and knowing the influence of their sex in a cultivated state of society, formed the project of establishing at Athens a school exclusively for the education of females; and, humble and unpretending as was its commencement, it is becoming a more powerful instrument in the civilization and moral and religious improvement of Greece, than all that European diplomacy has ever done for her. The girls were distributed in different classes, according to their age and advancement; they had clean faces and hands, a rare thing with Greek children, and were neatly dressed, many of them wearing frocks made by ladies at home (probably at some of our sewing societies); and some of them had attained such an age, and had such fine, dark, rolling eyes as to make even a northern temperament feel the powerful influence they would soon exercise over the rising, excitable generation of Greeks and almost make him bless the hands that were directing that influence aright.

Mr. and Mrs. Hill accompanied us through the whole establishment, and, being Americans, we were everywhere looked upon and received by the girls as patrons and fathers of the school, both which characters I waived in favour of my friend; the one because he was really entitled to it, and the other because some of the girls were so well grown that I did not care to be regarded as standing in that venerable relationship. The didaskalissas, or teachers, were of this description, and they spoke English. Occasionally Mr. Hill called a little girl up to us, and told us her history, generally a melancholy one, as, being reduced to the extremity of want by the revolution; or an orphan, whose parents had been murdered by the Turks; and I had a conversation with a little Penelope, who, however, did not look as if she would play the faithful wife of Ulysses, and, if I am a judge of physiognomy, would never endure widowhood twenty years for any man.