Thursday July 8, 2021
8 PM
LETTERS FROM CYPRUS
The Massacres of July, 1821
John Carne, Esq., Queen’s College Cambridge, 1826
About John Carne
(1789–1844)
John Carne was a British traveller and author, born on the 18 June 1789 in Penzance, Cornwall, Great Britain.
He was a member of Queens' College, Cambridge, at different times both before and after his journey to the East, but he never resided long enough for a degree. He was admitted in 1826 to deacon's orders by Dr Matthew Henry Thornhill Luscombe, the chaplain of the British embassy at Paris, and a bishop of the Episcopal church of Scotland; but, except during a few months' residence at Vevey in Switzerland, he did not officiate as a clergyman. However, as a younger man, living in West Cornwall and from a committed Methodist family, he had frequently preached with other local preachers at chapels in Penzance and Newlyn.
Carne’s wrote his first literary production, Poems containing the Indian and Lazarus anonymously in 1820. Subsequently, he resolved to visit the Holy Lands, and accordingly left England on 26 March 1821. He visited Constantinople, Greece, the Levant, Cyprus, Egypt, and Palestine. Returning to England to, he commenced writing for the New Monthly Magazine an account of his travels, under the title of Letters from the East. These Letters were then reproduced in a volume, dedicated to Sir Walter Scott, which went to a third edition.
In 1828, he published Tales of the West, a treatise of his native county. Among those who knew him, his fame as a story-teller far exceeded his renown as a writer, and social company often gathered around him to be spellbound by some exciting or pathetic narration.
During the latter part of his life he resided chiefly in Penzance. Oppressed by the infirmities of a premature old age, he had ceased for some years before his death to engage in any literary pursuits. He died at Penzance on the 19th of April 1844.
Carne landed in Cyprus right at the time when the Turks began their persecution of the Cypriots and within a day of the beginning of the slaughter of the Cypriots. His account of his meeting Archbishop Kyprianos remains among the most sober and passionate; an account of his meeting someone who he considered to be a decent man and a martyr.