An Appeal to the Ladies of England
Manto Mavrogenous hoped that her fellow women might show more solidarity with Greece than many men had done.
1824
King George III 1760-1820
Manto Mavrogenous hoped that her fellow women might show more solidarity with Greece than many men had done.
1824
King George III 1760-1820
On August 12th, 1824, Manto Mavrogenous wrote an open letter to the Ladies of England, soliciting donations to the cause of Greek independence from Ottoman rule. Above all, she needed funds to take Euboia, and make it into a safe island for children and women displaced by the fighting.
IN a situation thus desperate, it is natural they [‘Greece’s despairing sons’] should appeal to the sympathy of all noble minded and benevolent Christians throughout the world;* and by what civilised nation, what class of humanised men, shall this plea be rejected?
Surely not by the philosopher, who must with gratitude remember that land in which philosophers were born to enlighten mankind; nor is it for the hero to regard with indifference the indignities offered to the posterity of the race of Mars.* Where is the artist, the poet, or even the citizen, who can contemplate without emotion the degradation of a people to whom belonged a Plato,* a Miltiades,* a Socrates,* an Agesilaus,* an Apelles,* a Phidias.*
If such men exist, there is at least no woman so insensible to honour and humanity. In compassion, or generosity, when did women yield the palm to their masculine compeers – most of all in Britain, whose fair daughters are eminently distinguished by the virtues that belong exclusively to noble souls, – charity, beneficence, and philanthropy?*
Mavrogenous was disappointed in the response from Christian countries in Western Europe. The Vatican was still smarting from the Greeks’ refusal to (literally) kiss the Pope’s shoes in 1453, and Protestants regarded the Greek Orthodox Church as superstitious. Political support came mainly from Russia, which did not help because the Tsars were regarded in London and Paris as an economic and military threat – a view rubbished by Richard Cobden: see Misreading Russia. Among British statesmen, George Canning, President of the Board of Control and then Foreign Secretary, was especially sympathetic.
Manto is drawing here on Roman myth: Mars was supposedly the father of Romulus and Remus, founders of Rome. For most Greeks, ‘Greece’ was the Roman Empire as it was in 1453 when the Turks conquered Constantinople, the capital for over 1100 years. The Greek revolution in that sense partially failed, since it did not recover ‘the City’ (Constantinople, or Istanbul) or Asia Minor from the Ottoman Empire.
Plato (?429–347 BC) and his student Aristotle (384-322 BC) are arguably the two most important philosophers in history, to whom we are indebted for many fundamental ideas of justice, morality, science, fine art, music and religion.
Miltiades the Younger (?550-489 BC), mastermind of The Battle of Marathon, one of the few battles that truly can be said to have changed the course of world history.
Socrates (?470-399 BC) was the teacher of Plato. J. S. Mill called him “the acknowledged master of all the eminent thinkers who have since lived”, and credited him with all that is best in the British justice system.
Agesilaus II, King of Sparta (?444-?360 BC). A curious inclusion, as Agesilaus pursued Spartan expansion at the expense of other Greek city-states, came off the worse against Corinth and Thebes, and lost to the Persians at Cnidus in 394.
Apelles of Kos (4th century BC), a painter who fascinated the Renaissance artists.
Phidias (?480-430 BC), a sculptor and architect who contributed work to the Parthenon and whose statue of Zeus at Olympia was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
Edward Blaquière (to whom the letter was entrusted, as a founder-member of the London Philhellenic Committee) tells us that the ladies of Edinburgh were especially generous. Manto signed the letter ‘Madalena Mavrojenes’.
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate her ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.