1. This sketch of Carlyle is mainly drawn from Public Characters of 1802-3 (volume 5 of the series, London 1803) 338-350: this must be used with some caution; the Gentleman’s Magazine, lxxiv (1804), pt. 1, 390 and lxxxii (1812), pt. 2, 93-4; Walpole, Robert, Memoirs relating to European and Asiatic Turkey; edited from manuscript journals (London 1817) 152-97Google Scholar, and the Dictionary of National Biography. Walpole (1781-1856) was a descendant of the statesman and travelled in Greece in 1806.

2. Twigg, John, A History of the Queens’ College, Cambridge 1448-1986 (Woodbridge 1987) 213–214, 297Google Scholar.

3. For the Arabic Bible, cf. British Library Additional MS. 73733, 68/14 (part of the Barrington papers formerly in the Ipswich and East Suffolk Record Office); Gentleman’s Magazine, lxix (1799), pt. 1, 369-72 and Walpole, Memoirs, 184. It was to be sold at twelve shillings or less.

4. Quarterly Review, 18 (1817), 52n. The reviewer described Carlyle as ‘a man of the strictest honour and veracity’.

5. Paley, Edmund, ‘The Works of William Paley’, Quarterly Review 38 (July & October, 1828) 305-35 (334-45)Google Scholar. Carlyle is enjoined to compare everything with the scenery of Cumberland, rivers with the Eden, mountains with Skiddaw etc. and to describe everyday life, particularly food and drink. ‘Describe your impression upon first seeing things; upon catching the first view of Constantinople; ...’, Paley added. A letter of Carlyle to Paley on 10 Dec. 1799 does indeed follow much of this advice, British Library Addit. MS 73733, 68/10.

6. For Carlyle and the embassy, Clair, William St., Lord Elgin and the marbles, 3rd revised edn (Oxford 1998), esp. 8–10, 68-79CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The DNB, following Gentleman’s Magazine, lxxix (1804), pt. 1, 390, wrongly has Carlyle as chaplain to Elgin. The belief that manuscripts were to be found in the Seraglio and on the Princes’ Isles may especially have been implanted by the remarks of Dallaway, James in his Constantinople ancient and modern, with excursions to the shores and islands of the Archipelago and to the Troad (London 1797)Google Scholar. Dallaway had been physician and chaplain to the embassy in the 1790s. His handsome volume refers to the possibilities in the Seraglio (23-4), the Princes’ Isles (133) and elsewhere (64-5) but does not refer to Athos. Cf. also Walpole, Memoirs, 161, 164-5, showing Carlyle was sceptical despite his persistence in seeking admission to the Seraglio library. See also St. Clair, 355 n.l.

7. Walpole, Memoirs, 169-174, 189; St. Clair, 68-79.

8. British Library Addit. MS 73733; Walpole, Memoirs, 186.

9. Walpole, Memoirs, 185-6. This was presumably John Hawkins, who visited Athos four times, see below, note 33 and Appendix III. The folder also contains a letter of 14 May 1800 from J. Hawkins to a Mr M. Montagu (British Library Addit. MS 73733, 68/12) thanking him for sight of a letter from Carlyle. Hawkins expresses concern that rivalries between the eastern churches will impede the success of the Arabic New Testament.

10. On 12 July 1800 Elgin wrote to the Foreign Secretary Lord Grenville of the return of Mr Carlyle from ‘a most interesting excursion’, PRO FO 78/29; St. Clair, 17-19, 74-79.

11. Carlyle, J.D., Poems, suggested chiefly by scenes in Asia-Minor, Syria, and Greece (London 1805)Google Scholar [by subscription]. In 1996 most of the pages in the Bodleian copy were still unopened.

12. For these other schemes, note 3 above; Walpole, Memoirs, 85-7, 181; St. Clair, 240-1.

13. An account of Greek Manuscripts ... of the late professor Carlyle ...at Lambeth Palace [by Henry John Todd] (London n.d.). Todd was keeper of archiepiscopal manuscripts and records that the manuscripts were presented by Carlyle’s sister in 1806. His book is a justification of the retention of some, and an account of the return of others to the Patriarch of Jerusalem through the English ambassador. Some of the contents are to be found in Walpole’s Memoirs. For an admirable account of the complex dispute, St. Clair, 241-244.

14. On 2 August 1774 Elizabeth Palmer, widow, married Joseph Greenhow of Woodend. Palmer’s will (22 July 1836) appointed his sister, Mrs. Ann Walker, the daughter of Joseph Greenhow and Elizabeth Palmer, as executrix. (A local tradition associates Greenhowes Cemetery at Whitehaven with this Joseph Greenhow) The bequest to the Chair of Arabic was subject to stringent conditions to ensure that the incumbent fulfilled his duties. I am much indebted to Miss Anne Dick of the Cumbria Record Office, Whitehaven, for drawing my attention to a copy of Palmer’s will and for guiding me through the parish registers.

15. The spare sources are Admissions to the College of St. John the Evangelist Cambridge, Part II 1767-1802 (Cambridge 1931) 409-11; Gentleman’s Magazine, xiv, new series (July, 1840) 102 and the memoir by Wood, J.S. prefaced to Palmer’s ‘The missing Fragment of the Fourth Book of Esdras’, Journal of Philology 7 (1877) 264–278 (264-5)Google Scholar, summarized by Pearson, J.B., Abstract of the Diary of John Palmer, M.A., Professor of Arabic and Fellow of St. John’s College (Cambridge 1899)Google Scholar. Pearson described Palmer as ‘a discreet and enterprising traveller, one who could have gone anywhere and seen anything’ and author of ‘a very interesting journal’, pp. 5-7. Pearson, p. 1, inadvertently gives the year of his birth as 1788. For the manuscripts, James, M.R., A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts of St. John’s College Cambridge (Cambridge 1913), 361-2Google Scholar.

16. The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, abridged and edited by de Selincourt, E., 2nd ed., ii, pt. 1 (1806-11) (Oxford 1969) 246 Google Scholar. Did they speak on the journey? Apparently not, for Dorothy only learned his identity afterwards; she had travelled on the outside of the coach for much of the journey. William Wordsworth had of course been a sizar at St. John’s, 1787-1791. St. John’s was ‘a haven of north countrymen’ Miller, Edward, Portrait of a College: a history of the College of St. John the Evangelist, Cambridge (Cambridge 1961) 69 Google Scholar.

17. Annotation in St. John’s interleaved copy of Appendix to Admissions, Part IV 1767-1802.

18. Nicholas Biddle in Greece: The Journals and Letters of 1806, ed. McNeal, R.A. (Pennsylvania 1993)Google Scholar. The editor noted that Palmer ‘has proved elusive’ and hazards no identification of him (104 n.149). For further particulars of Biddle, cf. McNeal’s Introduction and Govan, Thomas P., Nicholas Biddle, Nationalist and Banker (Chicago 1959)Google Scholar.

19. Alexander Mackenzie (1741-1809) presented a sculpture of Aphrodite and Eros, a Roman copy of a Greek original, which he had acquired near Pella, to Christ Church, his old college, Biddle, 103-4 n. 149. He went with Palmer to Athens and apparently to the Morea. Later Biddle consulted Mackenzie’s notes on Nemea, Biddle, ibid., and 107, 110, 124, 172. From Greece, Mackenzie went to Italy where he was with Dodwell in Messina and Civitavecchia in 1806. Dodwell later wrote, ‘It is with the deepest regret that I recal [sic] to mind the many aimiable qualities of that accomplished and classical traveller, who is now no more’, Dodwell, Edward, A Classical and Topographical Tour through Greece, during the years 1801, 1805, and 1806, 2 vols., (London 1819), ii, 461-2, 467Google Scholar. The sculpture is presently in the Upper Library at Christ Church.

20. Biddle, 107-111, 123, 137; Dodwell, Tour, i, 287-89. For Walpole, see note 1 above. Other English guests at the monastery were Edward Dodwell (Tour, i, 287-89, the prolix Gait, John (Autobiography, 2 vols [London 1833], i, 152, 160Google Scholar) and Byron, , Marchand, Leslie A., Byron: A Biography, 3 vols (London 1952), i, 253-54Google Scholar; Eliot, C.W.J., ‘Athens in the time of Lord Byron’, Hesperia, 37 (1968) 134-58, esp. 137-8, 140-41, 151CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Palmer, Notebooks, vols III and IV, refers to ‘.. .our tranquil and hospitable convent...’. St. Clair, 46, associates the convent more especially with French visitors.

21. Biddle, 168-9, 171, 186-7. Palmer must not have carried out his intention of returning to England via Vienna (169), for he was back in Constantinople in September 1806, Admissions to St. John’s, 410.

22. Biddle, 169-70.

23. Biddle, 186-7: an ironic remark in view of the circumstances and location of Palmer’s birth.

24. de Chateaubriand, F.A., Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem et de Jérusalem à Paris, 2nd ed., 2 vols, (Paris 1812), i, 198-99Google Scholar. Chateaubriand reached Athens sometime in August 1806; for the difficulties of chronology, de Diesbach, Ghislain, Chateaubriand, (Paris 1998) 213 Google Scholar. For the Athos scheme, Evans, Joan, Chateaubriand, a biography (London 1939) 150 Google Scholar.

25. Walpole, Memoirs, 198-230. Biddle, 173, refers contemptuously to Hunt, ‘[Elgin] ... & his monk Hunt’.

26. BL Addit. MS, 27604; Anghelou, Alkis, ‘J.D. Carlyle’s Journal of Mount Athos (1801)’, ‘О Έρανιστής 14 (1965) 33–75 Google Scholar. Anghelou, 33, modestly remarks that the MS presents no palaeographical difficulties, but the present writer was glad enough to be able to consult his transcription. Athos is fols. 3^Γ-68^v: in general, the text is recto to fol. 52, then verso back to fol. 3; the last pages are on fols 54-68 (recto only). Sketch maps locating 24 monasteries are found at fol. 53^Γ and fol. 86 (a double folio). Anghelou’s text is reliable throughout. (There are two minor transpositions.) The volume also has fragments of Carlyle’s diary at Constantinople, fols 106-113 (recto only) and (copied by Carlyle’s daughter, Mrs Ellen Maclean), fol. 119^Γ-129^v (with some blanks) and catalogues of the libraries of the Patriarch [Anthimos] of Jerusalem, then resident at Constantinople (fol. 89-93 [recto only]), and of Mohammed Raghib Pasha (fol. 130^Γ-168^Γ). Other documents — not noted in the British Library Catalogue — include a note of Mrs Maclean’s offer of the MS to the British Museum; some fragmentary notes of investigations by Louis-François-Sebastien Fauvel at Marathon (fol. 88 [folded]); and instructions for making drawings of buildings (fol. 176^Γ-182^v). Carlyle’s journal is said to be unpublished by Cook, J.M., The Troad (Oxford 1973) 27 Google Scholar. In the notes that follow, references to Carlyle’s journal are to Anghelou’s text. I have been refused access to a further collection of Carlyle’s papers in private hands.

27. The notebooks on the Levant are St. John’s College, Cambridge, no. 466 (misprinted in the catalogue as 461), S.74, catalogued as, The East 1805-7: in six notebooks. The extracts from these notebooks which follow are reproduced by kind permission of the Master and Fellows of St. John’s College, Cambridge. They are cited as Palmer, East. They preserve the capitalization of the original. Common contractions have been expanded. The account of Athos is in volume II. The notebooks are unfoliated. I am grateful to Miss Elizabeth A. Quarmby and to Mr Jonathan Harrison of St. John’s College Library for their kind assistance, and for making my visits so agreeable.

28. Cook, 27-8.

29. The Letters of Maty Nisbet of Dirleton, Countess of Elgin, ed. Grant, Nisbet Hamilton (London 1926) 324-7Google Scholar. For Lady Elgin’s attitude to Carlyle, 9-10, 53, 165, 264-67. In the letter, she also recalled Carlyle’s odes, including that on Athos, and wondered if they had been published. She ‘did not admire’ Carlyle’s Asia Minor journal, 27-8. Typical of her ingénu comments is part of a memorandum she wrote to her husband on 25 May 1802, relating to the work on the Acropolis: ‘As for getting the other things you wished for down from the Acropolis, it is quite impossible before you return. Lusieri says Captain Lacy was, upon his first coming here, against the things being taken down, but at last he is keener than anybody, and absolutely wished you to have the whole Temple of the Cari-- something where the Statues of the Women are’, 197; cf. also St. Clair, 27, 115.

30. Hunt in Walpole, Memoirs, 198, 224-230. Carlyle’s Athos journal ends on 17 April. He later said their stay on Athos extended to more than three weeks, Letter to the Bishop of Durham, Salonica, 27 April 1801, in Walpole, Memoirs, 196. Palmer left Athos on 2 May 1806. He gives a full account of the traces of Xerxes’ canal and remarks, ‘At present Boats are frequently drawn over this Channel, from Sea to Sea’, Palmer, East, 3 May: in the mid-sixteenth century Païssius of Khiliandarion referred to the dragging of boats, de Khitrowo, B., Itinéraires russes en orient I, i (Geneva 1889) 277-82Google Scholar.

31. Carlyle, 34-5, 43 and letter of 27 April 1801 to the Bishop of Durham, BL Addit. MS 73739 and a copy in Addit. MS 73733; a version is in Walpole, Travels, 194; Hunt in Walpole, Memoirs, 194-98.

32. Carlyle, 34, 61, 66; Pearson, 5; for Catholic interpreters, cf. Hunt in Walpole, Memoirs, 221. Palmer went by boat from Paulou to Dionysiou, East, 30 April. For Mackenzie, note 19 above.

33. Hunt in Walpole, Memoirs, 197, 215-6. Carlyle, 58-60, 62. Excerpts from Sibthorp’s journals are given, often confusingly interspersed with other material and with no indication of omissions, in Walpole’s Memoirs, and his Travels in various countries of the east, being a continuation of memoirs relating to European and Asiatic Turkey etc (London 1820). See also, Lack, H. Walter with Mabberley, David J., The Flora Graeca Story: Sibthorp, Ferdinand Bauer, and Hawkins in the Levant (Oxford 1999) 71, 83Google Scholar. John Sibthorp (1758-1796) succeeded his father as Sherardian Professor. John Flaxman’s monument (1798-1806?) to Sibthorp in Bath Abbey shows him in Greek dress carrying a bunch of flowers while stepping into Charon’s boat. Whinney, Margaret, Sculpture in Britain 1530-1830 (Hammersmith 1964) 192 Google Scholar and plate 154. Morritt, J.B.S., Morritt of Rokeby A Grand Tour: Letters and Journal 1794-6, ed. Marindin, G.E. (London 1985) 150 Google Scholar. (Morritt has a brief but appreciative account of the scenery of Athos and some amusing remarks on Xerxes’ canal, 150-55. At St. John’s, Morritt had been Palmer’s junior by two years.) A warning of piracy in the Gulf of Athos is given in a book of advice for travellers, St. John’s College, MS. 464 S.72: see Appendix III.

34. Carlyle, 43, for warm appreciation of their reception at Pantokrator, Hunt in Walpole, Memoirs, 222-24.

35. Hunt in Walpole, Memoirs, 200, and Carlyle, 37-8, are both indignant at the decay of the school established forty years earlier by Eugenios which had attracted pupils of many nationalities. For Eugenios Voulgaris (1716-1806), Kitromilides, Paschalis M., ‘Athos and the Enlightenment’ in Bryer, A.A.M. and Cunningham, Mary, Mount Athos and Byzantine Monasticism (Aldershot 1996) 257-72 esp. 259-63Google Scholar. For tolerance of squalor, compare Carlyle, 51-3 and Hunt 211.

36. Carlyle, 53-5. The archbishop had lived more than fifteen years on Athos. Anghelou, 73, identifies him as Joasaph I, archbishop 1752-60 and 1765-1801. Cf. also Carlyle, 39.

37. Palmer, East, 22 April [1806]. On hospitality see also his reception at Vatopedi, 23 April: ‘We were received at Vatopedi with the same kind Welcome which we found at the other monasteries, being immediately served with Sweets, and a Glass of Water, followed by a Cup of Coffee, whilst we endeavoured to entertain, in modern Greek, the Superior and some of the καλάνεροι who honoured us with a visit. The Day was so far advanced that we could not return to Ivero, as we intended; and the worthy Fathers anticipated our Wishes of passing the Night in their Monastery’.

38. Letter of Carlyle to the Bishop of Durham, 27 April 1801, Walpole, Memoirs, 195-96.

39. Compare, for instance, Hunt in Walpole, Memoirs, 198-203, and Carlyle, 35, 39-40, on Vatopedi and its surroundings. Neither can match Morritt, 150-55, for raptures on the scenery of Athos.

40. Palmer, East, 23 April.

41. Carlyle, 44 (slightly emended from the manuscript).

42. Palmer, East, 23 April. For St. Demetrios, Lamberz, Erich, ‘The Library and its Manuscripts’ in The Holy and Great Monastery of Vatopaidi, 2 vols, (Athos 1998), ii, 562-74, esp. 563Google Scholar.

43. Palmer, East, 24 April.

44. Carlyle, 50; Hunt was told the season was unfavourable for the ascent, Walpole, Memoirs, 212.

45. Ninian Imrie, Sibthorp’s Scottish companion, had also scaled Athos: Lack, esp. 45, 84-85; Walpole, Memoirs, 62, 67-68, 71-2.

46. Palmer, East, 28 April. A sketch map shows the view from the summit of Athos; ‘Altitude of Sun’s upper Limb, above artificial Horizon 137° 13¹’ lower 134° 24¹’; Pearson, 6-7. Hunt, p.212, states that an ascent from the hermitages of St. Anne was expected to take five hours.

47. Xeropotamou, Carlyle, 64; Hunt in Walpole, Memoirs, 215; Sibthorp in Lack, 84; Palmer, East, 30 April. At Khiliandarion Palmer noted Hospital-Apartments for the sick, ibid.

48. Carlyle, 60.

49. Carlyle, 59-60, 62-3. Hunt in Walpole, Memoirs, 217, is critical of the clumsiness of the work at Zographou.

50. Palmer, East, 28 April.

51. Carlyle, 59, 65.

52. Carlyle, 59, 61.

53. Palmer, East, 27 April. For the salubrious air of Lavra, see ‘Monasteries of Mt. Athos’ immediately following the journal.

54. Carlyle on Vatopedi, 36, praising the workmanship but deploring the taste (cf. also his remarks on painting at Zographou, 63).

55. Hunt in Walpole, Memoirs, 211, 215.

56. Hunt in Walpole, Memoirs, 202; Carlyle, 35-40. At Zographou, Carlyle gives the number of MSS, all Bulgarian, as at least 300, most of them liturgical and superseded in use by printed books from Russia. Cf. Hunt, 217.

57. BL Addit. MS 27234. It was presented in 1865 by Carlyle’s daughter Mrs Ellen Maclean of Lazenby Hall near Penrith. The MS is of fifty-three octavo folios, many only partially filled. A note by Mrs Maclean on fol. 23 states that the first 22 folios are in the hand of Hunt and the remainder by her father.

58. The MSS, as at Paulou (p.167 below), are more properly described as Cyrillic. For the letter, Walpole, Memoirs, 194-7.

59. Quarterly Review, xix (1818) 238.

60. Anghelou, 69-71.

61. BL Addit. MSS, 73739, fol. 68-9 (original), 73733, 68/6 (copy). For another similar slip by Walpole, see notes to Appendix I below; for Lambros, note 60 above.

62. Carlyle, 36. His Catalogue, BL Addit. MS 27234, fol. 8^Γ says of Vatopedi, ‘The Books are in a most wretched condition, mostly without beginning or end, and in a very damp room’.

63. Palmer, East, 24 April.

64. Carlyle, 41-42, 50. In the Catalogue, Carlyle says there was ‘no accurate catalogue’ at Koutloumousiou, fol. 11^Γ.

65. Carlyle, 46.

66. Palmer, East, 25 April.

67. Hunt in Walpole, Memoirs, 210; Carlyle, 48-9.

68. Carlyle, 49-50; cf. Hunt in Walpole, Memoirs, 211, who gives a fuller account. John Sibthorp had also noted that the library had two small rooms, one for printed books and the other for MSS; the latter included a MS of Dioscorides, Lack, 84.

69. Palmer, East, 28 April.

70. Carlyle, 53-4.

71. Carlyle, 58.

72. Palmer, East, 30 April.

73. Palmer, East, 29 April.

74. Carlyle, 59, 65.

75. Carlyle, 60.

76. Carlyle, 61.

77. Carlyle, 44; BL Addit. MS 27234, fol. 14^Γ.

78. Hunt in Walpole, Memoirs, 219; for Carlyle see table below; Palmer, East, ‘Monasteries of Mt. Athos’ immediately following the journal.

79. Palmer, East, ‘Monasteries of Mt. Athos’ immediately following the journal.

80. Hunt in Walpole, Memoirs, 216; Carlyle, 59-60. Palmer, East, ibid.

81. Hasluck, 71. For a general account of the two forms of monasticism, Ibid., 33-35, 71-75.

82. Hunt in Walpole, Memoirs, 199, 207, 212.

83.

84. Palmer, East, ‘Monasteries of Mt. Athos’ immediately following the journal.

85. Hunt in Walpole, Memoirs, 200, 214, 218-19. Interest rates were between 4% and 8%. Carlyle understood that maladministration and the appropriation of moneys by previous superiors were the cause of its decline, 57.

86. Carlyle, 57, 59. The new church at Zographou cost more than 40,000 piastres, 63.

87. Hunt in Walpole, Memoirs, 208, 210.

88. Hunt in Walpole, Memoirs, 200, 218-19.

89. Carlyle, 48; Hunt in Walpole, Memoirs, 208.

90. Hunt in Walpole, Memoirs, 214; cf. Carlyle, 56.

91. Hunt in Walpole, Memoirs, 218-19.

92. Palmer, East, ‘Monasteries of Mt. Athos’ immediately following the journal; Hunt noted that the haraç in the region north of Athos was 6 piastres per head, Walpole, Memoirs, 227.

93. PRO, FO 78/29 fols 241-8. In forwarding the report to Lord Grenville, Elgin remarked: ‘In a Government so little accustomed to regularity or precision in any branch of public business, Your Lordship must not rely on the perfect accuracy of the inclosed details’. Unfortunately, Athos is one of the few places omitted from the report. Salonica is given as 530 purses (265,000 piastres), Negroponte as 500 purses (250,000 piastres). Roumelia as a whole produced 20,515 purses (10,257,500 piastres).

94. Hunt in Walpole, Memoirs, 204-6; cf. Carlyle, 40-41; Palmer, East, 24 April.

95. Johnson, Samuel, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland [1775] ed. Chapman, R.W. (Oxford 1970) 133 Google Scholar. On the discrepancies between Hunt and Carlyle, cf. also the remarks of Lowry, H.W., ‘A note on the population and status of the Athonite monasteries under Ottoman rule (ca.1520)’, Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, 73 (1981) 115-35, esp. 127 n. 37 Google Scholar.