Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images available at The Internet Archive)
SICILY IN SHADOW AND IN SUN
Books on Italy and Spain
_By_ MAUD HOWE
ROMA BEATA. Letters from the Eternal City. With illustrations from
drawings by JOHN ELLIOTT and from photographs. 8vo. In box. $2.50
_net_. _Popular Illustrated Edition._ Crown 8vo. In box. $1.50
_net_.
TWO IN ITALY. _Popular Illustrated Edition._ With six full-page
drawings by JOHN ELLIOTT. Crown 8vo. In box. $1.50 _net_.
SUN AND SHADOW IN SPAIN. With four plates in color and other
illustrations. 8vo. In box. $3.00 _net_.
SICILY IN SHADOW AND IN SUN. With twelve pictures from original
drawings and numerous illustrations from photographs taken by JOHN
ELLIOTT. 8vo. In box. $3.00 _net_.
LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., Publishers
34 BEACON STREET, BOSTON
[Illustration: THE TELL TALE TOWER. _Frontispiece._
The clock stopped at the hour of the earthquake.]
SICILY IN SHADOW
AND IN SUN
THE EARTHQUAKE AND THE
AMERICAN RELIEF WORK
BY
MAUD HOWE
AUTHOR OF “ROMA BEATA,” “SUN AND SHADOW
IN SPAIN,” “TWO IN ITALY,” ETC.
_With numerous illustrations_
_Including pictures from photographs taken
in Sicily and original drawings by_
JOHN ELLIOTT
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1910
_Copyright, 1910_,
BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
_All rights reserved_
Published, November, 1910.
_LOUIS E. CROSSCUP_
_Printer_
_Boston, Mass., U. S. A._
TO
MRS. LLOYD C. GRISCOM
FOREWORD
Sicily, the “Four Corners” of that little ancient world that was bounded
on the west by the Pillars of Hercules, is to southern Europe what
Britain is to northern Europe, Chief of Isles, universal Cross-roads.
Sicily lies nearer both to Africa and to Europe than any other
Mediterranean island, and is the true connecting link between East and
West. Battle-ground of contending races and creeds, it has been soaked
over and over again in the blood of the strong men who fought each other
for its possession. There has never been a Sicilian nation. Perhaps that
is the reason the story of the island is so hard to follow, it’s all
snarled up with the history of first one, then another nation. The most
obvious way of learning something about Sicily is to read what
historians have to say about it; a pleasanter way is to listen to what
the poets from Homer to Goethe have sung of it, paying special heed to
Theocritus--he knew Sicily better than anybody else before his time or
since! Then there’s the geologist’s story--you can’t spare that; it’s
the key to all the rest. The best way of all is to go to Sicily, and
there fit together what little bits of knowledge you have or can lay
your hands upon,--scraps of history, poetry, geology. You will be
surprised how well the different parts of the picture-puzzle, now
knocking about loose in your mind, will fit together, and what a good
picture, once put together, they will give you of Sicily.
When a child in the nursery, you learned the story of the earliest time!
How Kronos threw down his scythe, and it sank into the earth and made
the harbor of Messina. (The geologists hint that the wonderful round,
land-locked harbor is the crater of a sunken volcano, but you and I
cling to the legend of Kronos.) In that golden age of childhood, you
learned the story of the burning mountain, Etna, and went wandering
through the purple fields of Sicily with Demeter, seeking her lost
daughter, Persephone. You raced with Ulysses and his men from the angry
Cyclops down to that lovely shore, put out to sea with them, and felt
the boat whirled from its course and twisted like a leaf in the
whirlpool current of Charybdis. When you left the nursery for the
schoolroom, you learned the names of the succeeding nations that have
ruled Sicily, every one of whom has left some enduring trace of their
presence. As you cross from the mainland of Italy to this Sicily, you
can, if you will use your memory and imagination, see in fancy the hosts
who have crossed before you, eager, as you are, to make this jewel of
the south their own.
First of all, look for the Sicans; some say they are of the same
pre-Aryan race as the Basques. After the Sicans come the Sikels. They
are Latins, people we feel quite at home with; their coming marks the
time when the age of fable ends and history begins. Next come the
Phoenicians, the great traders of the world, bringing the rich gift of
commerce. They set up their trading stations near the coasts, as they
did in Spain, and bartered with the natives--a peaceful people--as they
bartered with the Iberians of the Peninsula. The real fighting began
when the Greeks came, bringing their great gift of Art. Sicily now
became part of Magna Graecia, and rose to its apogee of power and glory.
Syracuse was the chief of the Greek cities of Sicily. The Greek rulers
were called Tyrants. They were great rulers indeed; the greatest of
them, Dionysius, ruled 406 B.C. Then came the heavy-handed Romans and
the first glory of Sicily was at end. The Romans made a granary of
Sicily and carried off its treasures to adorn imperial Rome. They stayed
a long time, but with the crumbling of the Roman Empire there came a
change in Sicily, the first Roman province, and for a time the Goths and
the Byzantines ruled her. Then came the Saracens. They destroyed
Syracuse and made a new capital, Palermo, that from their time to ours
has remained the chief city of the island. After the Saracens came the
Normans--the same generation of men that subdued England under William
the Conqueror,--and gave to Sicily a second period of greatness; for if
the Greeks gave Sicily her Golden Age, the Norman age at least was
Silver Gilt. The French came too, but their stay was short, their reign
inglorious; it is chiefly remembered on account of the massacre of the
Sicilian Vespers, when the Sicilians rose, drove out their conquerors,
and drenched the land in French blood. In the early part of the
fifteenth century, Spain, who was beginning her age of conquest,
conquered Sicily and held it subject for more than four hundred years.
Finally, in the year 1860, came Garibaldi, and reunited Sicily to Italy.
Geologically, Sicily has been as restless as it has been politically and
socially. At least twice it was connected with Italy, and once probably
with Africa, so that African animals entered it. The Straits of Messina,
only two miles wide, and one hundred and fifty fathoms deep, are
Nature’s record of an earthquake rupture between Italy and Sicily. Mount
Etna, the most impressive thing in the island, has been there since
early tertiary times--before the days of the ice-age, when the mammoth
and cave-bear roamed through the woods of Europe. It is probably a
younger mountain than Vesuvius, but long before the dawn of history
Sicily and Calabria were the prey of the earthquake and the volcano. The
Straits of Messina and Mount Etna are both the results of earthquake
activity. The Straits are a gigantic crevice in the earth; the volcano
is only a tear in the earth’s crust, so deep that the hot steam of the
interior of the earth rises from the ever open rupture. Etna, therefore,
is not the cause of earthquake, but is itself the child of an
earthquake. It sprang, a full-grown mountain, from the breast of earth,
as Pallas from the brain of Zeus. Etna was probably far larger once than
it is now. The present cone rests on a volcanic plateau, that appears to
have been the base of a larger cone, which was blown to atoms. The old
mountain is full of cracks which are filled with hard basalt that
cements it together. Its explosive tendency causes it to give rise to a
great many little cones upon the sides, called parasitic cones, which
burst forth suddenly almost anywhere.
Historian, poet, geologist, each tells his story, but the poet tells it
best of all. There is no better description of Sicily and its people
than the one you will find in the Odyssey.
“They all their products to free Nature owe,
The soil untilled, a ready harvest yields,
With wheat and barley wave the golden fields,
Spontaneous wines from weighty clusters pour,
And Jove descends in each prolific shower.
By these no statutes and no rights are known,
No council held, no monarch fills the throne;
* * * * *
Each rules his race, his neighbor not his care,
Heedless of others, to his own severe.”
--_Homer’s Odyssey, translated by Pope._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. MESSINA DESTROYED 1
II. THE STRAITS OF DEATH 39
III. AMERICA TO THE RESCUE 77
IV. THE CRUISE OF THE “BAYERN” 116
V. ROYAL VISITORS 161
VI. AT PALAZZO MARGHERITA 191
VII. BUILDING THE NEW MESSINA 217
VIII. THE CAMP BY TORRENTE ZAERA 248
IX. GUESTS AT CAMP 269
X. THE VILLAGGIO REGINA ELENA 293
XI. TAORMINA 312
XII. SYRACUSE 344
XIII. PALERMO 377
XIV. MR. ROOSEVELT AT MESSINA 427
XV. EASTER 446
XVI. MESSINA (AVE ATQUE VALE!) 466
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
From Drawings by John Elliott
THE TELL TALE TOWER _Frontispiece_
_Facing Page_
RUINS OF THE AMERICAN CONSULATE, MESSINA 20
MESSINA. THE TORRENTE ZAERA 244
REGGIO. QUEEN ELENA’S GROUP OF AMERICAN COTTAGES 248
HOTEL REGINA ELENA AND CHURCH OF SANTA CROCE, AMERICAN
VILLAGE, MESSINA 282
MESSINA. AMERICAN COTTAGES, VILLAGGIO REGINA ELENA 304
VIALE GRISCOM, AMERICAN VILLAGE, MESSINA 436
A MAKESHIFT CHURCH AND BELFRY 448
PAY-WINDOW AND THE ARCHBISHOP’S BELL 454
SCYLLA 468
VIA BELKNAP, AMERICAN VILLAGE, MESSINA 472
ELIZABETH GRISCOM HOSPITAL, VILLAGGIO REGINA ELENA 476
Illustrations from Photographs
MESSINA IN FLAMES 10
THE MUNICIPIO IN FLAMES, MESSINA 10
RESCUE PARTY OF RUSSIAN SAILORS 11
THE PALAZZATA, MESSINA 11
THE WATER FRONT, MESSINA 40
A FUNERAL BARGE 41
THE KING AND THE WOUNDED OFFICER 41
THE BARRACKS, MESSINA 44
RUINS OF A CHURCH, MESSINA 44
DIGGING FOR THE BURIED-ALIVE 45
THE KING AT MESSINA 45
MESSINA. THE CATHEDRAL BEFORE THE DISASTER 50
THE CATHEDRAL, AFTER THE DISASTER 50
ARCANGELO’S HOUSE 51
MESSINA. WHERE MARIETTA LIVED 51
STROMBOLI FROM THE “BAYERN” 114
THE AMERICAN AMBASSADOR AND RED CROSS NURSES ON THE
“BAYERN” 114
ITALIAN MILITARY ENCAMPMENT, MESSINA 115
ITALIAN OFFICERS AND MEN, MESSINA 115
MESSINA. A HOUSE THAT ESCAPED DESTRUCTION 130
SOLDIERS ON THEIR WAY TO A RESCUE 130
THE MILITARY COLLEGE, MESSINA 131
PALACE OF THE PREFECT, MESSINA 131
TENENTE DI VASCELLO ALFREDO BROFFERIO 222
LIEUTENANT COMMANDER REGINALD ROWAN BELKNAP, U. S. N. 222
WRECK OF RAILROAD, REGGIO 223
STREET IN REGGIO 223
GRAND HOTEL REGINA ELENA, AMERICAN VILLAGE, MESSINA 226
ARRIVAL OF THE “EVA” 227
FRAME OF FIRST HOUSE, AMERICAN VILLAGE, MESSINA 227
LIEUTENANT COMMANDER BELKNAP PUTTING THE AMERICAN CAMP
IN COMMISSION 240
HAULING UP THE COLORS, AMERICAN VILLAGE, MESSINA 240
MESSINA. VIA I. SETTEMBRE 241
THE CATHEDRAL, PALMI 241
MESSINA. ARRIVAL OF FURNITURE FOR AMERICAN COTTAGES 252
AMERICAN VILLAGE, MESSINA. VIA BICKNELL, FIRST STREET 252
STRAGGLERS FROM THE HERD, AMERICAN CAMP, MESSINA 253
IN THE AMERICAN VILLAGE, MESSINA 253
AVVOCATO DONATI 258
MR. BUCHANAN’S BOY AND HIS MATES 258
QUITTING WORK 259
ARRIVAL OF THE BARBER 259
WORKSHOP OF AMERICAN VILLAGE, REGGIO 266
FIRST AMERICAN HOUSE IN REGGIO 266
AMERICAN SHELTERS, PALMI 267
REGGIO. CARPENTERS AT WORK 267
OLIVE GROVE NEAR PALMI 276
CAPTAIN BELKNAP AND CARPENTER FAUST 277
VIEW FROM THE HOTEL, AMERICAN VILLAGE, MESSINA 277
AMERICAN VILLAGE, MESSINA. THE PAY LINE 286
“THE FRONT OF THE PALACE HAD FALLEN INTO A HEAP OF RUINS” 287
CHURCH OF OUR LADY OF THE POOR, SEMINARA 287
ZIA MADDALENA AND HER FAMILY 308
CAPTAIN BIGNAMI AND HIS STAFF 308
GASPARONE AND WATER BOYS IN HOTEL COURTYARD, MESSINA 309
ROAD-MAKING IN THE AMERICAN VILLAGE, MESSINA 309
AMERICAN QUARTER, MESSINA 312
AN ERUPTION OF MT. ETNA 313
THE ROAD TO TAORMINA 313
MT. ETNA FROM TAORMINA 324
EXAMPLE OF SICILIAN GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE, TAORMINA 324
CHOIR STALLS, SAN DOMENICO, TAORMINA 325
FRIAR JOSEPH’S MISSAL 325
FORT EURYELUS, SYRACUSE 352
EXAMPLE OF SICILIAN GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE, SYRACUSE 352
GIRGENTI. A WINE CART 353
GIRGENTI. A SICILIAN CART 353
CHURCH OF SAN GIOVANNI, SYRACUSE 360
THEATRE, PALERMO 360
ETRUSCAN SARCOPHAGUS, PALERMO MUSEUM 361
IN THE MUSEUM, PALERMO 361
VILLA TASCA, PALERMO 376
VILLA D’ORLEANS, PALERMO 376
FOUNTAIN OF THE PRETORIA, PALERMO 377
CHURCH OF SAN GIOVANNI, PALERMO 377
TOWER OF THE MARTORANA, PALERMO 390
WATER CARRIERS, TAORMINA 390
CHURCH OF THE MARTORANA, PALERMO 391
PALERMO. CAPELLA PALATINA 391
MONREALE 396
THE ROYAL PALACE, PALERMO 397
THE CATHEDRAL, PALERMO 397
REAR OF THE CATHEDRAL, MONREALE 400
THE CATHEDRAL, MONREALE. TOMBS OF WILLIAM I. AND WILLIAM II 400
MONTE PELLEGRINO, PALERMO 401
FAÇADE OF THE CATHEDRAL, MONREALE 401
INTERIOR OF THE CATHEDRAL, MONREALE 404
MONREALE. THE CLOISTERS 404
BRONZE DOOR OF THE CATHEDRAL, MONREALE 405
THE ARAB FOUNTAIN, MONREALE 405
PALERMO. THE QUATTRO CANTI 432
PALERMO. THE MARINA 432
AMERICAN VILLAGE, MESSINA. THE CELTIC’S CARPENTER COOK AND TWO
“SCORPIONS” MEASURING OFF THE LAND 433
WING OF THE ELIZABETH GRISCOM HOSPITAL, VILLAGGIO REGINA ELENA 433
THE KING, ESCORTED BY BUCHANAN, BROFFERIO AND ELLIOTT, VISITS
AMERICAN VILLAGE 440
MESSINA. PAINTING THE AMERICAN COTTAGES 440
CHURCH OF SANTA CROCE, AMERICAN VILLAGE, MESSINA 441
HOTEL IN CONSTRUCTION, AMERICAN VILLAGE, MESSINA 464
ENCLOSING GANG AT WORK 464
GRAND HOTEL REGINA ELENA FROM THE RAILROAD 465
VIEW FROM THE HOTEL, AMERICAN VILLAGE, MESSINA 465
GRAND HOTEL REGINA ELENA AND CHURCH OF SANTA CROCE 480
* * * * *
MAP OF SICILY 1
[Illustration: MAP OF SICILY]
Sicily in Shadow and in Sun
I
MESSINA DESTROYED
Monday evening, December 28th, 1908, four friends were dining together
in a luxurious Roman villa. The hostess, Vera, sat opposite me at the
head of her table with Lombardi, the Milanese mathematician on one side,
and Athol, an Englishman, the representative of a great English
newspaper, on the other. It was our first meeting that season. Vera, who
had passed the summer at home in Russia, had just returned to Rome; I
had arrived three days before on Christmas evening. We were all really
glad to see one another, eager to hear the other’s news and to give our
own. The dinner was a triumph! Attilio, the Neapolitan chef, had outdone
himself; the pheasant in aspic was an inspiration, though the dish may
have been prepared from a receipt known to the cook of Lucullus.
Whatever decline other arts may show, the culinary art of Rome has lost
nothing since the days of the famous banquets in the gardens of Sallust.
Vera’s table was laid with the robin’s-egg Sevres service, the
Copenhagen glass with its gilt borders, and the gold plate that had
belonged to Cardinal Antonelli. In the middle stood an exquisitely
wrought silver partridge, Vera’s own work, modelled and hammered out of
silver by that strong small hand, the speaking hand of the artist, that
now sparkled with jewels as she raised her glass of Orvieto and drank to
our next meeting. After dinner we drew our chairs round the library fire
where the tiny Roman Yule logs blazed cheerily on the hearth. It was
extraordinarily cold for Rome; the thick fur of the great white polar
bear skin before the fire was comforting to our chilled feet. Outside on
the terrace a dog bayed.
“Open the door and let Romulus in,” said Vera. “It’s very wrong of
course--a watch-dog ought to sleep in his little cold house--but I
haven’t the heart to leave even a dog out on such a night.”
“It’s the coldest season we have ever known in Italy,” Lombardi
remarked. We all shivered in the piercing gust that came from the open
door as a shambling uncouth white puppy tumbled, capering with joy, into
the room. He was a foundling from the campagna, lost, strayed or stolen
from his sheep-dog kin, and adopted by Vera. His rough ugliness
emphasized the refinement of the violet-scented villa where a crumpled
roseleaf would have hurt.
As we drank our coffee, the dog nuzzling Vera’s satin slipper with
little sounds of joy, a servant brought in the evening papers and handed
them to Lombardi--I can see him now standing before the fire, unfolding
the Tribuna and glancing at the headlines; I can smell the damp
printer’s ink.
“Any news?” asked Vera.
“There has been an earthquake in Calabria.”
The Englishman nodded; he had heard it, he always heard the news before
the rest of us!
“Another earthquake! Not a bad one?” I cried.
“The paper naturally makes the most of it, though it does not seem to
have done much damage,” Athol reassured us.
“Poor people, how they have suffered!” Vera sighed comfortably. After a
few more comments the subject was dropped and we began again to abuse
the powers that be for the shocking breaches that have been made in the
ancient walls of Rome. Bits of our talk come back to me now as from an
immeasurable distance. It is as if that conversation over the fire in
Vera’s library had taken place in another planet during another
existence.
“The wall that Belisarius defended fifteen hundred years ago against the
Goths without the gates has been demolished by the Goths within the
gates!” exclaimed Athol.
“It’s a world’s crime,” I said, “because Rome belongs to the world; it’s
just as much ours as the Italians’!”
“Ah! so you like to think!” said the only Italian present, indulgently.
“I have heard you say it yourself, Lombardi, when you wanted something
of us outlanders,” Athol came to my rescue.
“Remember, the petition to have the streets put through was got up by an
Englishman, who owned property near by that he thought would be
improved,” Vera defended.
The talk drifted from one archæological matter to another. Athol told us
of Boni’s last discoveries in the Forum, the tombs under Trajan’s
column; the “finds” made by Goclaire, the Frenchman, on the Gianiculum;
why the excavation at Herculaneum had been given up:--The peasant owners
of the land, seeing so much said about it in the papers, believe their
land covers priceless treasures, and will not allow a spade to be put
into the earth until a vast sum of money is deposited beforehand to
indemnify them for the buried treasure that may be found. Though the
talk veered lightly from one subject to another, it always came back to
Pompeii and Herculaneum, to that old, old disaster, that volcanic horror
of nineteen centuries ago, and yet at that very moment, though we did
not know it, a worse devastation had again laid waste the beautiful
treacherous land of southern Italy.
The party broke up in high spirits. Vera, followed by the ecstatic
puppy, came into the hall with us. I see her vivid face, her white and
silver dress, as she stood below the enormous Russian bear that
eternally climbs a pine tree in her vestibule; I can see the gay
graceful gesture of her hand as she waves us a last good night.
The moment’s uneasiness that had fallen upon us when Lombardi spoke of
the earthquake in Calabria was forgotten. If they are short of news, the
Roman papers publish rumors of the Pope’s illness, an earthquake in
Calabria, or war between Germany and France, with strict impartiality.
It was the old story of “wolf, wolf.” We were as deaf to the first
rumble of the storm, as a few days before we had been deaf to the last
war scare.
Nothing but a death in the house has ever made so sharp a difference as
I knew between the evening of the 28th of December and the morning of
the 29th, for it was only on Tuesday, the day after the earthquake, that
we in Rome began to understand--but only began to understand--that the
greatest disaster of European history had stricken Italy, our Italy, the
world’s beloved. To each of us our own country is really dearest; we
hope to die and lay our bones in the land where we were born. But Italy,
like a lover, for a time makes us forget home, kin, native land, in an
infatuation heady and unreasonable as lover’s love. The spell may be
broken, never forgotten. This is the reason the whole civilized world
not only shuddered, but suffered with Italy in the dark hour as it could
have suffered for no other country.
The first news came from Catanzaro, Menteleone, and the other least
damaged districts. Messina and Reggio were silent; their silence was
ominous. Tuesday was a day of fear and restlessness. We lived from hour
to hour, waiting for the extra editions of the papers, hoping, always
hoping, that the rumors that every moment grew more grave might prove
exaggerated.
“Calabria and Sicily flagellated by earthquake. Enormous damage. Towns
in ruins, many dead and wounded. A tidal wave on the coast of Sicily,”
such were the headlines of the first editions. Later came the dreadful
news: “Messina and Reggio destroyed!”
In the Corso I met Athol. He had been very ill in bed but had struggled
out to do his duty, to weigh the news, sift truth from rumor, flash the
dreadful tidings to the earth’s end.
“How much must we believe?” I asked him.
“Such reports are always exaggerated at first,” he answered.
We soon learned the first reports did not begin to tell the story.
“Earthquake? It is the end of the world!” people said to each other. As
rumor grew to certainty, fear to dreadful fact, the effect upon our
minds was very curious; nothing that concerned our private affairs
seemed of any consequence. This was equally true of our friends, most of
whom were like ourselves, foreigners in Italy. The day after the dinner
party I dropped into Vera’s studio. The Signorina had not come in,
Beppino, the model, told me; he had never known such a thing happen
before. The clay was dry and greatly in need of being dampened. He was
forbidden to lift the sheet that covered the statue and dared not do so.
If I were not afraid?--
Afraid? What did it matter? I committed the unpardonable sin, stripped
off the sheet, and with the big syringe wetted down the grey clay of
that statue of Vera’s we had all been so curious about. Her well-kept
secret was before me, but I only know that it was a female figure,
whether a Psyche or a Niobe I neither knew or cared, nor whether it was
good, bad, or indifferent. Vera had only a week to finish the statue
that was to compete for the prize she had strained every nerve to win.
Three times I wetted down the clay for my friend; after that I forgot it
and the statue fell to pieces. Vera had other work to do, and so had I.
We ourselves were at rather an important juncture in our lives. J. had
just finished his decorative painting, Diana of the Tides, for the
Smithsonian Institute in Washington; he was on the point of sending out
cards for his exhibition. All this was swept into the background of our
thoughts. We lived only for tidings of the South. All day long we could
only speak, only think of Calabria and Sicily. At night we only slept to
dream of them, to wake from the terror of the nightmare to the greater
terror of the reality, and then to sleep painfully again. A feverish
desire to do something, to be of some use, seemed to drive us and all
the Americans and English we saw. Inaction became intolerable; we were
scourged by pity and sorrow into some sort of doing, whether it was of
any use or not.
Athol alone of all our intimates stood steady at his post, his finger
on the pulse of Europe. His work was quadrupled. Instead of being jarred
and thrown off the track like the rest of us, he toiled day and night,
sometimes without sleep, often without food, in order that his
words--words that would sway a nation, influence a world--should be the
wisest, the best words that it was possible for him to say.
When I found that I could be of some small use (or I thought I could) by
running about picking up little straws of news for Athol, who was
sending off despatches day and night, I took heart and felt that I could
get through the day. It may not have been of much real use to him or to
Sicily and Calabria, but it was of use to me. Besides, the most
infinitesimal thing counts, the universe is built of atoms. For these
stricken people to have their story well told was surely something. It
was a little comfort to me, it gave me all the repose of mind I knew in
those first days to gather these tiny straws, whether or no they were
woven into the texture of my friend’s “story.” It helped me to bear the
strain if it did not help Athol to do his work.
Day and night the cries and groans of those
[Illustration: MESSINA IN FLAMES. _Page 7._]
[Illustration: MESSINA. THE MUNICIPIO IN FLAMES. _Page 7._]
[Illustration: MESSINA. RESCUE PARTY OF RUSSIAN SAILORS. _Page 36._]
[Illustration: MESSINA. THE PALAZZATA. _Page 41._]
sufferers buried alive in the ruins of their houses were in my ears. I
felt their pain in my bones, in my brain, in my heart. I breathed pain
with every breath till it seemed to me there was nothing but pain in the
world. When notes of invitation to dine came--as a few did--it seemed an
insult to humanity that tables should be spread with rich food and wine
while our brothers agonized and slowly, slowly starved to death. When
cards were left with the usual wishes for _Buon Anno_, one almost
laughed at the mockery of people wishing each other Happy New Year. For
the most part, though, the conventions and civilities of Rome--the most
civilized of cities--were dropped. People threw their social duties or
pleasures to the wind, even those whose whole business in life seems to
consist of leaving the proper number of cards, making the proper visits,
the exchange of banquets, teas and other formal courtesies. Birth and
death always strip away these silly rags and trimmings; when there is
such a harvest of death, humanity, even the humanity of Rome, perhaps
the most sophisticated place in the world, weeps and cowers and
stretches out to touch hands with any hand that is warm and living and
in which the pulses beat.
Wednesday morning a bugle sounded in the street under our windows. I
looked out and saw a group of young men wearing gay fifteenth century
plush caps, and on their arms a strip of white cloth with the words
“_Pro Calabria e Sicilia_” in red letters. The bugle sounded again. I
knew what the summons meant, caught up the pile of extra clothing I had
sorted out, snatched an overcoat and a cloak from the rack in the hall
and ran downstairs into the street. I was immediately surrounded by half
a dozen lads with fresh shining schoolboy faces. They carried between
them, two by two, heavy wooden money boxes with a slit in the top, which
they rattled and offered to all who passed.
“Who are these?” I asked the tall boy with a scarlet cap on his mop of
brown curls, who relieved me of the coat and cloak.
He made me the bow of a prince as he answered: “We are the students of
the University of Rome, Signora, at your service.”
In Italy, an old country where we find that supreme virtue of age,
thrift, even spendthrift Americans grow cautious about spending money.
I had meant to put a few sous in the box, but the eager eyes, the urgent
voices, overcame discretion. I emptied my small purse, heavy with silver
for the day’s expenses, into the first money box and so bought the
sufferance of the students. I was now immune from other demands and free
to follow them on their errand of mercy.
Another trumpet call and the students, laden with gifts, swarmed like
honey bees to the hive about the lean obelisk in the Piazza del Popolo,
just outside the monastery with the tall cypresses, in whose shade
Luther paced, deep in the thoughts that were to change the course of
history. In the middle of the piazza stood forage cart number 24 of the
13th Regiment of Artillery. The cart was drawn by two big army mules,
one of them ridden by a soldier. At the back of the cart sat the bugler,
a hard, merry, Irish-faced man with a snub nose and a missing tooth; he
looked a living proof of Boni’s theory that the Celts and the Italians
were originally of the same race. In the cart beside the bugler stood a
young student with soft brown eyes and the rich coloring of the
southern Italian; he wore an orange velvet cap on the back of his head
and seemed to be chosen for his beauty, as the third man in the cart (a
rather plain shabby fellow with a bandaged throat) had been chosen for
his voice. The bugler sounded his trumpet, the driver cracked his whip
and the procession started. The cart was closely followed by two
artillery men in uniform and surrounded by that host of clustering
students, busy as bees with their task of gathering _soldi_.
The cart passed at a footpace across the Piazza del Popolo under the
shadow of the obelisk that Sixtus the Fifth, the great building pope,
placed in the middle of that noble square, which lies between the old
Flaminian Way and the Corso. The cart jogged and rumbled along just as
in the old days the carnival cars jogged and rumbled over the rough
stone pavement. The bugler sounded his call again as the cart turned
into the Corso; the gallant notes stirred the souls of the people. When
the fiery call of the bugle trailed into silence the voice of the tall
man with the bandaged throat rang out above the noise of the crowd:
“_Pro Calabria e Sicilia!_ Give much, give little, give something!
Every _centesimo_ is wanted down there!”
From every window fell an _obolo_. A hailstorm of coppers rattled on the
pavement, white envelopes with money folded in them came fluttering down
like so many white birds. Outside the Palazzo Fiano, where the Italian
flag tied with crape hung at half mast, the forage cart halted. At an
open window on the top floor two sturdy men servants appeared and threw
down a red striped bundle of pillows, another of blankets, a third a
great packet of clothes. From every house, rich or poor (there are many
poor houses in the Corso), came some offering. Two good beds were
carried out from a narrow door. The cart was now filling fast, the money
boxes were growing heavy. From a shabby window a pair of black
pantaloons came hurtling through the air and the crowd, strung up and
nervous with the tension of a night of mourning--for Rome mourned as I
had never believed it could mourn for anything--laughed from pure
nervousness.
At the shop of A. Pavia, the furrier, on the second floor, two people
came to the window, an elderly woman with a face swollen with weeping,
and a dark man who looked as if he had not slept. The cart stopped
again, and from that modest shop there hailed down no less than twenty
warm new fur coats and tippets--and this in Rome, the heart of thrift.
If I had not seen it with my eyes I should not have believed it. At
Olivieri’s, the grocer’s, a great quantity of canned meats, vegetables
and groceries were handed out. From a hosier’s near by came two great
packages of men’s shirts, some of cotton, and dozens of brand new
flannel shirts. At a tailor’s bale after bale of stout cloth was brought
out and thrown into the cart. Another bed with pillows was given by a
very poor looking woman; at the sight of this a man of the middle class
took the overcoat off his back--it was a cold morning, too, with a good
nip in the air--and threw it into the cart. I went into a news vendor’s
to buy the last edition of the _Messaggero_. The woman behind the
counter said to me:
“I have not read the papers, I could not--but I know; I am from that
country. Never since the beginning of the world has there been such a
calamity.”
How did she know? It was only later that most of us began to realize it!
Outside the Palazzo Sciarra I met Vera walking with Donna Hilda.
“Oh, to think that we were warm at your fireside that night when down
there they were freezing!” I began.
“I know, I know!” Vera interrupted. “Can you get me some money for my
Belgian nuns? I have raised a thousand pounds already, but we shall need
more.” I promised I would try; I knew her nuns to be wise as they are
good, and that the money would be well spent. It was our first meeting
since the dinner. Vera was pale, with disordered hair and hat awry. I
think her jacket and skirt did not belong together. It was a shock to
see her, with whom dress is a fine art, so unconscious of what she wore,
or how she looked. Donna Hilda, a Roman, though white as paper, was
perfectly trim and smart in appearance.
“You have no one of yours down there?” I asked Donna Hilda. That was the
first, the inevitable question that in those days one asked every
Italian one met.
“Not I, thank God! But my grandmother has some cousins. She does not
know if they are alive or dead. If they are gone, it would be best if
they are all gone together. I am more sorry for those that are saved
than for those that are killed.”
I shall always think of the Roman Corso--the gay thoroughfare where in
the carnivals of my mother’s time the wild horses used to run their race
from the Piazza del Popolo at one end to the Piazza Venezia at the
other--as it looked that day. I never saw the _barberi_, but I have seen
many carnival processions when the balconies of the Corso were full of
pretty women throwing flowers and confetti, and the street of young men
tossing flowers to the belles in the carriages and balconies. To-day the
street was filled with these stern-faced students in their gay carnival
caps. Every cart, carriage or automobile that passed carried a student
on each step, asking, begging, _demanding_ alms! They were no respecters
of persons. The Japanese Ambassador, with his inscrutable face, and his
wife and doll-like child passed in their unbecoming European dress. They
alone looked impassive and indifferent in a crowd where every other
face was tense and tragic. The students who stood on each step of the
Ambassador’s carriage would not be denied; I could not see in the end if
their passion or his passivity won the day.
It was nearly one o’clock when forage wagon number 24 reached the Piazza
Venezia. The cart was piled high. The streets were emptying; people were
going home to lunch. The students and the tall man with the bandaged
throat held a consultation, to decide whether or no there was any use
going on with their work. Meanwhile, the bugler, sitting on his stool at
the back of the cart, lighted a cigarette and began to read a newspaper.
The sight of his sturdy merry face was somehow calming. If the end of
the world was coming, had begun, while his world lasted it was for him
to blow his bugle!--to call upon the people to give food, clothes,
money, everything, _pro Calabria e Sicilia_.
From the first J. refused to read the papers or hear the details, and
from the first he said, “I want to go down and dig if I can get the
chance, but I don’t want to hear about it.”
For some days there seemed no chance of his carrying out his wish of
“going down to dig.” The red tape, the slowness, the utter incapacity of
the railroads, the post, the telegraph to cope with the situation seemed
maddening; it may have been inevitable, it probably was. He offered his
services here, there, everywhere, but martial law had been proclaimed
and it was impossible to reach the earthquake region without great
influence.
Thursday, December 31st, the American Ambassador, Mr. Lloyd Griscom,
despatched the first American relief party from Rome to Messina. The
Ambassador himself had hoped to lead the expedition. In those days of
anguish when we knew that thousands of lives might yet be saved if only
help came in time, it was torture for such a man to sit with idle
hands,--hands that might dig!--no matter how actively he might be
working with brain and wits. He soon realized that he could not leave
his post; his place was Rome, his work to inspire, organize and plan the
American Relief, to dispense the nation’s largess!
Major Landis, the military attaché of the embassy, was put in charge of
the party. His special care was to search for the bodies of
[Illustration: MESSINA. RUINS OF THE AMERICAN CONSULATE. _Page 21._]
Mr. and Mrs. Cheney, our Consul and his wife, and to recover the papers
of the Consulate, for we knew now that the Consulate had been entirely
destroyed. Mr. Bayard Cutting, our Consul from Milan, was of the party,
and Mr. Winthrop Chanler, whose mission was to look up missing
Americans. From the moment the news of the earthquake was known in
America, the Embassy was besieged by telegrams from people at home who
had friends in Sicily. The largest American colony in Southern Italy is
at Taormina, only two hours distant by train from Messina. It was
impossible for our Taorminesi to send word of their safety to their
relations at home, who were torn with anxiety about them. It was at this
time we first heard that Miss Catharine Bennett Davis of the Bedford
Reformatory was traveling in Sicily and it was feared was in Messina,
and of Anne Lee, Dr. and Mrs. Herbert Paton, Harry Bowdoin, Charles King
and Charles Williams, all Americans settled in Taormina by Etna, a town
at first believed to have suffered severely.
We went up to the station to see the relief party start. The train was
half an hour behind time. It was easy to see the impatience of the
Americans to be off.
“You have plenty of provisions?” a friend on the platform asked Chanler.
“I have a sack of Bologna sausages, a whole Parmesan cheese, and a case
of Nocera water,” was the answer.
“Where will you sleep?” asked an anxious wife of one of the travelers.
“We have one small tent, the last in Rome,--all the rest have been
bought up,--and several umbrellas.”
Food, water, shelter were the three indispensables; they were going to a
desert that lacked all these, and the torrential rain that began on the
fatal day still continued.
“Try to establish wireless communication between a warship in the harbor
and the Marconi station at Monte Mario,” said Athol to a press
representative. “If that’s impossible, wire Rome via Malta.”
“Don’t expect news of me till I bring it myself,” one of the travelers
called as the tardy train moved out of the station.
It seemed hopeless to expect news. Our first friend to leave was Colonel
Delmé Radcliffe of the English Embassy (the famous hunter of lions),
who went down on the first train after the disaster. Later several
official people we knew and one or two newspaper men followed. After
they left Naples we heard no more from them. They disappeared into the
blue, and we learned not to look for news of them till they themselves
brought it.
As the train pulled out we heard the tramp, tramp of marching men coming
up the street--more soldiers for the south. Nearly all the garrison at
Messina had been killed; every day regiments of soldiers went down to
that grim battle-field, some to lose their lives, all to suffer agonies
of mind and body, for as usual the army bore the brunt of the
disaster--and bore it well.
As we left the station we met Princess Nadine, called “the first citizen
of Rome” by reason of her splendid work for the poor sick children of
the city. Something was said about meeting the _profughi_ (refugees) who
were expected on the next train from Naples. She shook her great
benevolent head and answered firmly:
“That is for the rest of you. I must keep to my work. My sick babies
cannot be neglected. Everybody else will do for Calabria and Sicily;
_they_ only have me.”
The Princess was right. She belongs to the regular working army of
philanthropists. The reserve volunteer force of the world was already
mustering for this world disaster.
A little farther on we met our friend, Lombardi, the great
mathematician, carrying a traveling shawl and an umbrella. He stopped to
speak to us:
“Just in time to say good-by! I am leaving by the next train.”
“For Messina?”
He laughed--“No, to get _out_ of Messina--that’s more than I can do in
Rome! I am off for Morocco, the farthest place from Messina I know. The
Moors won’t trouble themselves much about the earthquake. I must have
more quiet than can be found in Italy this year, if I am to finish my
calculations.”
Just as we were getting into our cab outside the station our friend
Nerone came along. He looked pale, red-eyed, completely knocked out.
“What is the matter?” I asked. “Have you been ill?”
“Matter?” he cried, astonished at the question. “This thing has made me
ill. I had to take a purge and go to bed.”
I never heard that Nerone did anything else for the sufferers--taking a
purge did seem an odd way of showing sympathy.
As we drove from the station, past the Baths of Diocletian, we met the
regiment, whose measured tread we had heard, and recognized, marching
gallantly at the head of his company, a young captain whom we had often
watched drilling his men in the great field across the Tiber. We called
him Philippus for that soldier of Crotona the Segesteans found slain
among their foes after the battle, and to whose memory on account of his
superhuman beauty a temple was erected. Philippus was our neighbor; now
that he was leaving it seemed he was almost our friend. The barracks
where he and his soldiers lived were near our house. It was their bugle
that every night at halfpast ten sounded the call we too obeyed, “Go to
bed, go to bed, put out the lights.” The soldiers were most of them mere
boys with beardless faces. When we should meet again they would not look
so young. Those who went down to the earthquake region aged fast as men
do in battle.
I haunted the station in those days, watching the departure of the bands
of engineers, firemen, doctors, medical students that went down from
Rome by every train that left for Naples. From Milan, from Turin, from
Florence, from every city or town of northern Italy, help poured down
towards the stricken country. The Knights of Malta sent a field hospital
and a corps of doctors and nurses. Food, clothes, medicines, tents,
nurses, doctors, the great stream of help flowed steadily towards the
south. The railroads were not equal to the tremendous strain put upon
them, and the congestion of traffic was one of the hardest of Italy’s
trials. Her people were starving, dying of cold and hunger, while the
whole railroad system was congested and the good food and the warm
clothes, instead of reaching the poor victims, were shunted on
side-tracks or delayed in freight houses for weeks, even months. It was
inevitable that this should have happened; the same thing would have
happened in any country. But everything was against Italy. The
unheard-of severity of the winter was not the least element of danger
and difficulty. The railroad is managed by the Government, that poor
overburdened Government that tries its best to carry the great weight
put upon it. The strain of carrying south the vast stream of provisions
and supplies and of carrying north the enormous numbers of the refugees
flying from Sicily was too much for it. What nation, what railroad
system could have handled such a situation? One sinister commodity took
precedence of all others--quicklime; already the menace of pestilence
was in people’s minds, for now we knew that in Messina, a city of
200,000 souls, more than half the inhabitants had perished.
On Saturday, the second of January, Athol asked me to visit one of the
first families of refugees who had arrived in Rome. I found them in a
gaunt new barrack of a house in an arid street of one of the ugliest
quarters of new Rome.
“You have some _superstiti_ here?” I inquired of the porter’s wife, who
came out of the little den where she lived and cooked (chiefly garlic it
appeared), for her husband and children.
“Oh yes, poor people! You will find them on the second floor. You are
not the first who has asked for them.” She stopped and looked at me
curiously. “Excuse me, you too have perhaps come to inquire for news of
some relative down there?”
“No, no, thank Heaven! only to ask if I can do anything for them.”
“So much the better! There is enough to do.” The porter’s wife nodded
and went back to her cooking. I climbed two long flights of the cheap,
stark building and rang a strident bell. The thin varnished pine door
was opened a crack, and a handsome slatternly woman looked out. When I
asked to see the _profughi_, she stood aside and let me pass. In the
entry I met two people coming out, a shabby man with a hard dry face
like an eagle’s and a very beautiful young girl with a waxen complexion.
When they heard me ask for the _profughi_ they stopped and looked at me
so intently that I paused and looked helplessly back at them.
“You have asked to see the _profughi_,” said the man in a harsh dry
voice; “do you possibly know something of them--or of others--down
there--?”
“Nothing. And you?--do you know anything of Messina?”
“I?” laughed the eagle-faced man drearily, “I am of Messina. This one
also,” he looked at the girl, “though I never saw her till today. We go
here, there, together, asking news--her people are all there and mine.”
“Come,” said the girl, “do not let us waste time.” She spoke with
authority as one used to giving orders and having them obeyed. I noticed
then how sumptuously she was dressed. They went down the stairs
together, a strange pair, the shabby eagle-faced man and the young
lovely lady. I never saw the girl again, or knew whether she found those
for whom she sought.
“It is the truth that I have not had five minutes to comb myself today,”
said the _padrona_, who had opened the door, a dark woman of the noble
Trasteverine type. She smoothed her magnificent black hair that lay in
full natural waves over her low forehead, and pulled up the collar of
her white jacket to hide her beautiful bronze throat. “Believe me,
Signora, that blessed bell has never stopped ringing. Holy Apostles! One
would think that the Messinesi were different from other Christians,
that they had two heads, everybody must have a look at them.”
“I am sorry to disturb you,” I began.
“No, no,” she said, “I did not mean that. What is it to do? They are
relations of relations of my husband’s. They knew our name and address
in Rome and, having no other friends, they came to us. They arrived
yesterday. We have taken the furniture out of one of our rooms, borrowed
a few beds, and done what we could to make them comfortable. Poor souls!
Anything that you can do--” she threw open the door of a large
apartment, evidently the property room of some theatrical company. The
floor space on the left was taken up with bundles of stage costumes
neatly folded and tagged. A white toga with an olive wreath and a pair
of sandals lay next a costume Othello might have worn, judging by the
coffee-colored stockinette tucked into the yellow satin cloak. On the
right of the door were four decent beds; in the corner stood a dining
table with a loaf of bread, a green wicker basket of ricotta, and a
flask of Genzano. The room was half full of people.
“This lady wishes to talk with the Messinesi,” cried the _padrona_,
good-naturedly elbowing the crowd, evidently friends and hangers-on of
the house. “You have seen them, yes? They only have two eyes apiece and
one mouth? Well, then make room for the stranger lady. She may do
something besides stare at the poor abandoned creatures.”
The people readily fell back and I found myself face to face with one of
the first families of the survivors who had reached Rome. At sight of
them I was overcome with suffocating emotion. It was a full minute
before I could speak, before I could see through the sudden mist that
blinded me. It was as if their sufferings had set them apart, their
sorrows hallowed them.
In the middle of the group stood an old man and woman, holding each
other by the hand. Both were bent and wan looking; the woman seemed the
less shaken of the two. She had a wonderful shrivelled face with
gray-blue eyes and a brown seamed skin, stooping shoulders covered by a
small peasant shawl, and an alert wiry little body. It was my business
to ask certain questions, but it was more than a minute before I could
get out the words.
“What are your names?”
“I am Rosina Calabresi,” the staunch old woman quavered. “This is my
husband; he cannot talk much yet. He is better now, but for three days
after the earthquake he could not say a word. This is our son Francesco,
and this is his wife.” Francesco, a soft-eyed young man, patted his
wife’s hand; she hid her face on his shoulder and began to weep. “This
is my grandson,” Rosina continued, “he is of Reggio. He was staying with
us that he might go to school in Messina. His mother is my eldest
daughter. We have not yet heard from his parents. We do not know whether
they are alive or dead.”
The boy, a pale, interesting lad of fourteen, looked at me with serious
unmoved face.
“My husband was a government employé formerly,” the old woman continued;
“he was a postman.” She shook him gently by the arm. “Cannot you speak
to the lady?” The old postman moved his lips dumbly. “He is only
seventy-eight years old, and I am seventy,” Rosina went on. “Francesco
is our youngest son.” I asked the young woman her name.
“Lucia,” she said, and hid her face again. The young man comforted her.