Archaeologist[edit]
Excavations at Aylesford[edit]
A cemetery of the British Iron Age discovered in 1886 at Aylesford in Kent was excavated under the leadership of Evans, and published in 1890.[35] With the later excavation by others atSwarling not far away (discovery to publication was 1921–1925) this is the type site for Aylesford-Swarling pottery or the Aylesford-Swarling culture, which included the first wheel-made pottery in Britain. Evans's conclusion that the site belonged to a culture closely related to the continental Belgae, remains the modern view, though the dating has been refined to the period after about 75 BC. His analysis of the site was still regarded as "an outstanding contribution to Iron Age studies" with "a masterly consideration of the metalwork" by Sir Barry Cunliffe in 2012.[36]
End and beginning[edit]
In 1893, Arthur's way of life as a married, middling archaeologist, puttering around the Ashmolean, and travelling extensively and perpetually on holiday with his beloved Margaret, came to an abrupt end, leaving emotional devastation in its wake and changing the course of his life. Freeman died in March 1892. Always of precarious health, he had heard that Spain had a salubrious climate. Traveling there to test the hypothesis and perhaps improve his physical condition, he contracted smallpox and was gone in a few days. His oldest daughter did not survive him long. Always of precarious health herself – she is said to have had tuberculosis – she was too weak to prepare her father's papers for publication, so she delegated the task to a family friend, Reverend William Stephens.
In October of that year Arthur took her to visit Boar's Hill, near Oxford, in legend so named because a scholar attacked by a boar there choked it to death by stuffing a copy of Aristotle in its mouth. The view was famous, the air clear. He wanted to buy 60 acres to build a home for Margaret on the hill. She approved the location, so he convinced his father to put up the money. Then he had the tops of the pines cut, eight feet from the ground, on which he had built a platform and a log cabin to serve as a temporary quarters while the mansion was being built. His intent was to keep her from the cold, damp ground.[37] Apparently she never lived there. They were away again for the winter, Margaret to winter with her sister in Bordighera, Arthur to Sicily to complete the last volume of the history he and Freeman had begun together.
In February he met John Myres, a student at the British School, in Athens. The two shopped the flea markets looking for antiquities. Arthur purchased some seal stones inscribed with a mysterious writing, said to have come from Crete. Then he met Margaret in Bordighera. The two started back to Athens, but en route, in Alassio, Italy she was overtaken by a severe attack. On 11 March 1893, after experiencing painful spasms for two hours,[38] she died with Arthur holding her hand, of an unknown disease, perhaps tuberculosis, although the symptoms fit a heart attack also. He was 42; she, 45. He would outlive her by another lifetime according to his age then.
Margaret rests in the English cemetery at Alassio, where her grave marker may be seen to this day. Her epitaph says,[39] in part, "Her bright, energetic spirit, undaunted by suffering to the last, and ever working for the welfare of those around her, made a short life long." Arthur placed on the grave a wreath he wove himself of margarite and wild broom, expressive of their innermost feelings, commemorating the event with a private poem, To Margaret my beloved wife, not published until after his death decades later:
To his father, who had a more practical view, having had motherless children to care for, he wrote:[38] "I do not think anyone can ever know what Margaret has been to me." He never married again. For the rest of his life he wrote on black-bordered stationery.[40] He went ahead with the mansion on Boar's Hill, against the advice of his father, who regarded it as wasteful and useless. He called it Youlbury, after the name of the locality.
Waiting for the future[edit]
After Margaret's death Arthur wandered aimlessly around Liguria ostensibly looking at Terramare Culture sites and for Neolithic remains in Ligurian caves. Then he revisited the locations of his youthful explorations in Zagreb. Finally he returned to live a hermit-like existence in the cabin he had built for her. The Ashmolean no longer interested him. He complained petulantly to Fortnam in a late, childish display of sibling rivalry, that his father had had another child, his half-sister Joan.[41] After a year of grief the mounting tension in Crete began to attract his interest. Knossos was now known to be a major site, thanks to Arthur's old friend and fellow journalist in Bosnia, William James Stillman. Another old friend, Federico Halbherr, the Italian archaeologist and future excavator of Phaistos, was keeping him posted on developments at Knossos by mail.
Archaeologists from the United States, Britain, France, Germany and Italy were in attendance at the site watching the progress, so to speak, of "the sick man of Europe", a metaphor of the dying Ottoman Empire. The various pashas, eager not to offend the native Cretan parliament, were encouraging foreigners to apply for a firman to excavate, and then not granting any. The Cretans were afraid of the Ottomans' removing any artifacts to Istanbul. The Ottoman method of stalling was to require any would-be excavators to buy the site from its native owners first. The owners in turn were coached to charge so much money that none would think it worthwhile to apply in such uncertain circumstances. Even the wealthy Schliemann had given up on the price in 1890 and had gone home to die in that year.[42]
In 1894, Arthur, always an active man, intrigued by the idea that the script engraved on the stones he had purchased before Margaret's death might be Cretan, his grief abated, steamed off to Heraklion to join the circle of watchers. During his year of tending to the details of Youlbury, administering the Ashmolean, and writing some minor papers, he had also discovered the script on some other jewelry that came to the museum from Myres in Crete. He announced that he had concluded to a Mycenaean hieroglyphic script of about 60 characters. Shortly he wrote to his friend and patron at the Ashmolean, Charles Fortnum, that he was "very restless" and must go to Crete.[43]
Arriving in Heraklion he did not connect with his friends immediately, but took the opportunity to examine the excavations at Knossos. Seeing the sign of the double axe almost immediately he knew that he was at the home of the script. If he did not formulate the intent to excavate at that moment it must have been shortly after, when his friends gave him the tour. He turned some original thinking on the problem of succeeding in acquiring the site when all others had failed. His solution was the Cretan Exploration Fund, devised on the model of the Palestine Exploration Fund. The owners would not sell to individuals, who could not afford it, but they would sell to a fund. Apparently Arthur did not bother to explain that he was the only contributor. He bought 1/4 of the site with first option to buy the rest later. The firman was still in deficit. Politics in Crete were taking a violent turn however. Anything might happen. Arthur returned to London to wind up his affairs there and make sure the Ashmolean had suitable direction in the event of his further absence.
The pen-viper uncaged[edit]
In September 1898, the last of the Turkish troops withdrew from Crete. The war was over, but not the fighting, as the Christians took reprisals on the Moslems, and the Moslems sought to defend themselves. The British Army forbad travel for any reason. Checkpoints went up everywhere. Arthur, Myres and Hogarth returned to Crete together, Arthur this time as correspondent for the Manchester Guardian, a role in which he reveled. His sharp tongue had not mellowed over the years. He was once again the Pen-viper, but this time there was no administration to cage him. He criticized the Ottoman Empire for its corruption, as usual. Then he criticized the British Empire for its collaboration with the Ottoman. Many officials of that empire had been Greek. Now they were working with the British trying to build a credible Cretan government. For them Arthur invented a new and eloquent term, "the Turco-British regime". He criticized the Moslems for attacking the Christians, and the Christians for attacking the Moslems. He collided with the British military, complaining vociferously to the British higher authorities.
Arthur went everywhere, investigating everything recklessly. The British public must be kept informed. He always made moral judgments, taking the side of the underdog, no matter who it was. He saw that the Moslem population was now on the decline, some being massacred, and some abandoning the island. After the massacre at the village of Eteà, he came down mainly on the Moslem side. The villagers had been attacked by Christians in the night. They sought refuge in a mosque. The next day they were promised clemency if they would disarm themselves. Handing over their weapons, they were lined up to be marched elsewhere, they were told. Instead, they were shot, the only survivor being a small girl who had a cape thrown over her to conceal her.
It is impossible now to determine what effect Arthur might have had on the authorities. Prince George was completely conciliatory, assisting in any way that he could to halt the bloodshed and establish a new Constitution. In 1899 a government of both Christians and Moslems was elected under it. Crete was a republic, although a protected one. Arthur's political work was done.
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