Island of Sicily—Palermo—Saracenic appearance of the
town—Cathedral—The Marina—Viceroy Leopold—Monastery of the
Capuchins—Celebrated Catacombs—Fanciful Gardens.
FRIGATE UNITED STATES, _June 25_.—The mountain coast of Sicily lay
piled up before us at the distance of ten or twelve miles, when I came
on deck this morning. The quarter-master handed me the glass, and
running my eye along the shore, I observed three or four low plains,
extending between projecting spurs of the hills, studded thickly with
country-houses, and bright with groves which I knew, by the deep
glancing green, to be the orange. In a corner of the longest of these
intervals, a sprinkling of white, looking in the distance like a bed of
pearly shells on the edge of the sea, was pointed out as Palermo. With a
steady glass its turrets and gardens became apparent, and its mole,
bristling above the wall with masts; and, running in with a free wind,
the character of our ship was soon recognised from the shore, and the
flags of every vessel in the harbour ran up to the mast, the customary
courtesy to a man-of-war entering port.
As the ship came to her anchorage, the view of the city was very
captivating. The bend of the shore embraced our position, and the
eastern half of the curve was a succession of gardens and palaces. A
broad street extended along in front, crowded with people gazing at the
frigates, and up one of the long avenues of the public gardens, we could
distinguish the veiled women walking in groups, children playing,
priests, soldiers, and all the motley frequenters of such places in this
idle clime, enjoying the refreshing sea-breeze, upon whose wings we had
come. I was impatient to get ashore, but between the health-officer and
some other hindrances, it was evening before we set foot upon the pier.
With Captain Nicholson and the purser I walked up to the Toledo, as the
still half-asleep tradesmen were opening their shops after the _siesta_.
The oddity of the Palermitan style of building struck me forcibly. Of
the two long streets, crossing each other at right angles and extending
to the four gates of the city, the lower story of every house is a shop,
of course. The second and third stories are ornamented with
tricksy-looking iron balconies, in which the women sit at work
universally, while from above projects, far over the street, a grated
enclosure, like a long birdcage, from which look down girls and children
(or, if it is a convent, the nuns), as if it were an airy prison to keep
the household from the contact of the world. The whole air of Palermo is
different from that of the towns upon the continent. The peculiarities
are said to be Saracenic, and inscriptions in Arabic are still found
upon the ancient buildings. The town is poetically called the _concha
d’oro_, or “the golden shell.”
We walked on to the cathedral, followed by a troop of literally naked
beggars, baked black in the sun, and more emaciated and diseased than
any I have yet seen abroad. Their cries and gestures were painfully
energetic. In the course of five minutes we had seen two or three
hundred. They lay along the sidewalks, and upon the steps of the houses
and churches, men, women, and children, nearly or quite naked, and as
unnoticed by the inhabitants as the stones of the street.
Ten or twenty indolent-looking priests sat in the shade of the porch of
the cathedral. The columns of the vestibule were curiously wrought, the
capitals exceedingly rich with fretted leaf-work, and the ornaments of
the front of the same wild-looking character as the buildings of the
town. A hunchback scarce three feet high, came up and offered his
services as a cicerone, and we entered the church. The antiquity of the
interior was injured by the new white paint, covering every part except
the more valuable decorations, but with its four splendid sarcophagi
standing like separate buildings in the aisles, and covering the ashes
of Ruggiero and his kinsmen; the eighty columns of Egyptian granite in
the nave; the _ciborio_ of entire lapis-lazuli with its lovely blue, and
the mosaics, frescoes, and relievos about the altar, it could scarce
fail of producing an effect of great richness. The floor was occupied by
here and there a kneeling beggar, praying in his rags, and undisturbed
even by the tempting neighbourhood of strangers. I stood long by an old
man, who seemed hardly to have the strength to hold himself upon his
knees. His eyes were fixed upon a lovely picture of the virgin, and his
trembling hands loosed bead after bead as his prayer proceeded. I
slipped a small piece of silver between his palm and the cross of his
rosary, and without removing his eyes from the face of the holy mother,
he implored an audible blessing upon me in a tone of the most earnest
feeling. I have scarce been so moved within my recollection.
The equipages were beginning to roll toward the “Marina,” and the
sea-breeze was felt even through the streets. We took a carriage and
followed to the corso, where we counted near two hundred gay,
well-appointed equipages, in the course of an hour, What a contrast to
the wretchedness we had left behind! Driving up and down this half mile
in front of the palaces on the sea, seemed quite a sufficient amusement
for the indolent nobility of Palermo. They were named to us by their
imposing titles as they passed, and we looked in vain into their dull
unanimated faces for the chivalrous character of the once renowned
knights of Sicily. Ladies and gentlemen sat alike silent, leaning back
in their carriages in the elegant attitudes studied to such effect on
this side of the water, and gazing for acquaintances among those passing
on the opposite line.
Toward the dusk of the evening, an _avant-courrier_ on horseback
announced the approach of the viceroy Leopold, the brother of the King
of Naples. He drove himself in an English hunting-wagon with two seats,
and looked like a dandy whip of the first water from Regent Street. He
is about twenty and quite handsome. His horses, fine English bays, flew
up and down the short corso, passing and repassing every other minute,
till we were weary of touching our hats and stopping till he had gone
by. He noticed the uniform of our officers, and raised his hat with
particular politeness to them.
As it grew dark, the carriages came to a stand around a small open
gallery raised in the broadest part of the Marina. Rows of lamps,
suspended from the roof, were lit, and a band of forty or fifty
musicians appeared in the area, and played parts of the popular operas.
We were told they performed every night from nine till twelve. Chairs
were set around for the people on foot, ices circulated, and some ten or
twelve thousand people enjoyed the music in a delicious moonlight,
keeping perfect silence from the first note to the last. These heavenly
nights of Italy are thus begun, and at twelve the people separate and go
to visit, or lounge at home till morning, when the windows are closed,
the cool night air shut in, and they sleep till evening comes again,
literally “keeping the hours the stars do.” It is very certain that it
is the only way to enjoy life in this enervating climate. The sun is the
worst enemy to health, and life and spirits sink under its intensity.
The English, who are the only people abroad in an Italian noon, are
constant victims to it.
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We drove this morning to the monastery of the Capuchins. Three or four
of the brothers in long grey beards, and the heavy brown sackcloth cowls
of the order tied round the waist with ropes, received us cordially, and
took us through the cells and chapels. We had come to see the famous
catacombs of the convent. A door was opened on the side of the main
cloister, and we descended a long flight of stairs into the centre of
three lofty vaults, lighted each by a window at the extremity of the
ceiling. A more frightful scene never appalled the eye. The walls were
lined with shallow niches, from which hung, leaning forward as if to
fall upon the gazer, the dried bodies of monks in the full dress of
their order. Their hands were crossed upon their breasts or hung at
their sides, their faces were blackened and withered, and every one
seemed to have preserved, in diabolical caricature, the very expression
of life. The hair lay reddened and dry on the dusty skull, the teeth,
perfect or imperfect, had grown brown in their open mouths, the nose had
shrunk, the cheeks fallen in and cracked, and they looked more like
living men cursed with some horrid plague, than the inanimate corpses
they were. The name of each was pinned upon his cowl, with his age and
the time of his death. Below in three or four tiers, lay long boxes
painted fantastically, and containing, the monk told us, the remains of
Sicilian nobles. Upon a long shelf above sat perhaps a hundred children
of from one year to five, in little chairs worn with their use while in
life, dressed in the gayest manner, with fanciful caps upon their little
blackened heads, dolls in their hands, and in one or two instances, a
stuffed dog or parrot lying in their laps. A more horribly ludicrous
collection of little withered faces, shrunk into expression so entirely
inconsistent with the gaiety of their dresses, could scarce be
conceived. One of them had his arm tied up, holding a child’s whip in
the act of striking, while the poor thing’s head had rotted and dropped
upon its breast; and a leather cap fallen on one side, showed his bare
skull, with the most comical expression of carelessness. We quite
shocked the old monk with our laughter, but the scene was irresistible.
We went through several long galleries filled in the same manner, with
the dead monks standing over the coffins of nobles, and children on the
shelf above. There were three thousand bodies and upward in the place,
monks and all. Some of them were very ancient. There was one, dated a
century and a half back, whose tongue still hangs from his mouth. The
friar took hold of it, and moved it up and down, rattling it against his
teeth. It was like a piece of dried fish-skin, and as sharp and thin as
a nail.
At the extremity of the last passage was a new vault appropriated to
women. There were nine already lying on white pillows in the different
recesses, who had died within the year, and among them a young girl, the
daughter of a noble family of Palermo, stated in the inscription to have
been a virgin of seventeen years. The monk said her twin-sister was the
most beautiful woman of the city at this moment. She was laid upon her
back, on a small shelf faced with a wire grating, dressed in white, with
a large bouquet of artificial flowers on the centre of the body. Her
hands and face were exposed, and the skin, which seemed to me scarcely
dry, was covered with small black ants. I struck with my stick against
the shelf, and startled by the concussion, the disgusting vermin poured
from the mouth and nostrils in hundreds. How difficult it is to believe
that the beauty we worship must come to this!
As we went toward the staircase, the friar showed us the deeper niches,
in which the bodies were placed for the first six months. There were
fortunately no fresh bodies in them at the time of our visit. The
stench, for a week or two, he told us, was intolerable. They are
suffered to get quite dry here, and then are disposed of according to
their sex or profession. A rope passed round the middle, fastens the
dead monk to his shallow niche, and there he stands till his bones rot
from each other, sometimes for a century or more.
We hurried up the gloomy stairs, and giving the monk our gratuity, were
passing out of the cloister to our carriage, when two of the brothers
entered, bearing a sedan chair with the blinds closed. Our friend called
us back, and opened the door. An old grey-headed woman sat bolt upright
within, with a rope around her body and another around her neck,
supporting her by two rings in the back of the sedan. She had died that
morning, and was brought to be dried in the capuchin catacombs. The
effect of the newly deceased body in a handsome silk dress and plaited
cap was horrible.
We drove from the monastery to the gardens of a Sicilian prince, near
by. I was agreeably disappointed to find the grounds laid out in the
English taste, winding into secluded walks shaded with unclipped trees,
and opening into glades of greensward cooled by fountains. We strolled
on from one sweet spot to another, coming constantly upon little Grecian
temples, ruins, broken aqueducts, aviaries, bowers furnished with
curious seats and tables, bridges over streams, and labyrinths of
shrubbery, ending in hermitages built curiously of cane. So far, the
garden, though lovely, was like many others. On our return, the person
who accompanied us began to surprise us with singular contrivances,
fortunately selecting the coachman who had driven us as the subject of
his experiments. In the middle of a long green alley he requested him to
step forward a few paces, and, in an instant, streams of water poured
upon him from the bushes around in every direction. There were seats in
the arbours, the least pressure of which sent up a stream beneath the
unwary visitor; steps to an ascent, which you no sooner touched than you
were showered from an invisible source; and one small hermitage, which
sent a _jet d’eau_ into the face of a person lifting the latch. Nearly
in the centre of the garden stood a pretty building, with an ascending
staircase. At the first step, a friar in white, represented to the life
in wax, opened the door, and fixed his eyes on the comer. At the next
step, the door was violently shut. At the third, it was half opened
again, and as the foot pressed the platform above, both doors flew wide
open, and the old friar made room for the visitor to enter. Life itself
could not have been more natural. The garden was full of similar tricks.
We were hurried away by an engagement before we had seen them all, and
stopping for a moment to look at a magnificent Egyptian Ibis, walking
around in an aviary like a temple, we drove into town to dinner.
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