Saw The Elgin Marbles, Had To Visit Greece

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30626, 17 December 1964, Page 2

Saw The Elgin Marbles, Had To Visit Greece

Standing by the site of the Temple of Apollo with a chip of the original marble in her hand, Mrs Dorothy Berrow, of Christchurch, felt she was living in another age when in Greece recently. “Restoration work was being done to the temple and the guide gave me this tiny chip to keep as a memento. It is one of my most cherished possessions,” Mrs Berrow said on her return home vesterday.

Having seen the magnificent frieze from the Parthenon, known as the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum, London, Mrs Berrow’s interest was aroused to a compulsion to wander among the ruins of ancient Greece at Delphi, Corinth and the Acropolis. They were some of the most rewarding days of a tour of nearly eight months.

But Greece was also a series of shocks. The vista of green isles she saw from the air was, in fact, sparce scrub on red earth. The houses from the airport to Athens were square boxes with no fences. Then suddenly there was the Parthenon on the Acropolis in all its majesty. The poverty and grim faces of the peasants, their tumbledown, patched up houses, their single ox-drawn ploughs, the dusty black dresses and black head shawls of the women, were the biggest surprise of all. “1 had not realised the peasants of Greece lived in such miserable conditions.” she said. “As we drove through the primitive countrvside from Athens to Corinth or Delphi I felt 1 was back in Biblical times." In Contrast In the modern city of Athens it was a different story. “New buildings are going up everywhere and the noise is terriffic. The Athenians even blare their car horns at the traffic lights. Everyone shouts. But they are making a renewed effort to preserve the ancient culture, history and dignity of their city. And they would dearly love to get the Elgin Marbles back from the British Museum,” she said. Modern Sculpture Mrs Berrow’s interest in archaeology, which stems from her student days, widen-

ed to sculpture after seeing the Elgin Marbles. Before going to Greece on her way home she visited the Vigeland Park in Oslo, where the Swedish sculptor (Vigeland) has depicted the life cycle from conception to death in stone and bronze. In Stockholm she made a trip to the Milles Garden where the Norwegian sculptor’s work is exhibited in his home and garden.

“Vigeland’s work appealed to me more,” she said. “He concentrated on vitality and expression rather than the perfect form. Milles went for

beauty of form, grace and balance in quite a different style. I felt some of them were merely perfect geometrical problems worked out. Having seen these two Scandinavian sculptors work I found the sculpture of ancient Greece all the more fascinating by contrast.”

London Rambles Determined to explore London by herself—and on foot — Mrs Berrow usually found something of archaeological interest in her wanderings, even if she did not reach the destination she had set herself for the day. “One day I set out to see St. Clement Danes, but I wandered up a lane off Fleet street on the way and came face to face with Dr, Samuel Johnson’s house. On another effort to reach St. Clement Danes I found St. Bride’s Church quite by accident. When the rubble was cleared after war bombings the foundations of seven other churches, going back to Saxon times, were found under St. Bride’s. I fell in love with this place.”

On another browse she found an archaeological group digging up a bombed site with the intensity of people “on to something.” “Unfortunately, I could only stand and watch,” she said. Soroptimist Conference Mrs Berrow was a New Zealand observer at a conference of the Soroptimist International Association in Lausanne, Switzerland.

“I made some wonderful friendships at the conference and I feel this organisation is doing a great deal to bring women of many nations closer together—women of common interests, even if they speak different languages,” she said. Mrs Berrow stayed with several Soroptimists in Holland and England and was entertained at an aloha dinner at “The Willows,” Honolulu, owned by a member of the Honolulu club. “The Honolulu club has a friendship link with the Christchurch club,” she said. “When I was in Engand I visited the Soroptimist Club of Christchurch, Dorset, whose members also want to form a friendship link with the New Zealand club of the same name,” Mrs Berrow said.