Palermo—Fête given by Mr. Gardiner, the American Consul—Temple
of Clitumnus—Cottage of Petrarch—Messina—Lipari
Islands—Scylla and Charybdis.
PALERMO, _June 28th_.—The curve of “The Golden Shell,” which bends to
the east of Palermo, is a luxuriant plain of ten miles in length,
terminated by a bluff which forms a headland corner of the bay. A broad
neck of land between this bay and another indenting the coast less
deeply on the other side, is occupied by a cluster of summer palaces
belonging to several of the richer princes of Sicily. The breeze,
whenever there is one on land or sea, sweeps freshly across this ridge,
and a more desirable residence for combined coolness and beauty could
scarce be imagined. The Palermitan princes, however, find every country
more attractive than their own; and while you may find a dozen of them
in any city of Europe, their once magnificent residences are deserted
and falling to decay, almost without an exception.
The old walls of one of these palaces were enlivened yesterday, by a
_fête_ given to the officers of the squadron by the American consul, Mr.
Gardiner. We left Palermo in a long cavalcade, followed by a large
omnibus containing the ship’s band, early in the forenoon. The road was
lined with prickly pear and oleander in the most luxuriant blossom.
Exotics in our country, these plants are indigenous to Sicily, and form
the only hedges to the large plantations of cane and the spreading
vineyards and fields. A more brilliant show than these long lines of
trees, laden with bright pink flowers, and varied by the gigantic and
massive leaf of the pear, cannot easily be imagined.
We were to visit one or two places on our way. The carriage drew up
about eight miles from town, at the gate of a ruinous building, and
passing through a deserted court, we entered an old-fashioned garden,
presenting one succession of trimmed walks, urns, statues, and
fountains. The green mould of age and exposure upon the marbles, the
broken seats, the once costly but now ruined and silent fountains, the
tall weeds in the seldom-trodden walks, and the wild vegetation of
fragrant jasmine and brier, burying everything with its luxuriance, all
told the story of decay. I remembered the scenes of the Decameron; the
many “tales of love,” laid in these very gardens; the gay romances of
which Palermo was the favourite home; and the dames and knights of
Sicily, the fairest and bravest themes, and I longed to let my merry
companions pass on, and remain to realise more deeply the spells of
poetry and story. The pleasure of travel is in the fancy. Men and
manners are so nearly alike over the world, and the same annoyances
disturb so certainly, wherever we are, the gratification of seeing and
conversing with our living fellow-beings, that it is only by the mingled
illusion of fancy and memory, by getting apart, and peopling the
deserted palace or the sombre ruin from the pages of a book, that we
ever realise the anticipated pleasure of standing on celebrated ground.
The eye, the curiosity, are both disappointed, and the voice of a common
companion reduces the most romantic ruin to a heap of stone. In some of
the footsteps of Childe Harold himself, with his glorious thoughts upon
my lips, and all that moved his imagination addressing my eye, with the
additional grace which his poetry has left around them, I have found
myself unable to overstep the vulgar circumstances of the hour—“the
Temple of Clitumnus” was a ruined shed glaring in the sunshine, and the
“Cottage of Petrarch” an apology for extortion and annoyance.
I heard a shout from the party, and followed them to a building at the
foot of a garden. I passed the threshold and started back. A ghastly
monk, with a broom in his hand, stood gazing at me, and at a door just
beyond, a decrepit nun was see-sawing backward and forward, ringing a
bell with the most impatient violence. I ventured to pass in, and a door
opened at the right, disclosing the self-denying cell of a hermit with
his narrow bed and single chair, and at the table sat the rosy-gilled
friar, filling his glass from an antiquated bottle, and nodding his head
to his visitor in grinning welcome. A long cloister with six or eight
cells extended beyond, and in each was a monk in some startling
attitude, or a pale and saintly nun employed in work or prayer. The
whole was as like a living monastery as wax could make it. The mingling
of monks and nuns seemed an anachronism, but we were told that it
represented a tale, the title of which I have forgotten. It was
certainly an odd as well as an expensive fancy for a garden ornament,
and shows by its uselessness the once princely condition of the
possessors of the palace. An Englishman married not many years since an
old princess, to whom the estates had descended, and with much
unavailable property and the title of prince, he has entered the service
of the king of the Sicilies for a support.
We drove on to another palace, still more curious in its ornaments. The
extensive wall which enclosed it, the gates, the fountains in the courts
and gardens, were studded with marble monsters of every conceivable
deformity. The head of a man crowned the body of an eagle standing on
the legs of a horse; the lovely face and bosom of a female crouched upon
the body of a dog; alligators, serpents, lions, monkeys, birds, and
reptiles, were mixed up with parts of the human body in the most
revolting variety. So admirable was the work, too, and so beautiful the
material, that even outraged taste would hesitate to destroy them. The
wonder is that artists of so much merit could have been hired to commit
such sins against decency, or that a man in his senses would waste upon
them the fortune they must have cost.
We mounted a massive flight of steps, with a balustrade of
gorgeously-carved marble, and entered a hall hung round with the family
portraits, the eccentric founder at their head. He was a thin,
quizzical-looking gentleman, in a laced coat and sword, and had
precisely the face I imagined for him—that of a whimsical madman. You
would select it from a thousand as the subject for a lunatic asylum.
We were led next to a long, narrow hall, famous for having dined the
king and his courtiers an age or two ago. The ceiling was of plate
mirror, reflecting us all, upside down, as we strolled through, and the
walls were studded from the floor to the roof with the quartz diamond,
(valueless but brilliant), bits of coloured glass, spangles, and
everything that could reflect light. The effect, when the quaint old
chandeliers were lit, and the table spread with silver and surrounded by
a king and his nobles, in the costume of a court in the olden time, must
have exceeded faëry.
Beyond, we were ushered into the state drawing-room, a saloon of grand
proportions, roofed like the other with mirrors, but paved and lined
throughout with the costliest marbles, Sicilian agates, paintings set in
the wall and covered with glass, while on pedestals around, stood
statues of the finest workmanship, representing the males of the family
in the costume or armour of the times. A table of inlaid precious stones
stood in the centre, cabinets of lapis-lazuli and side tables, occupied
the spaces between the furniture, and the chairs and sofas were covered
with the rich velvet stuffs now out of use, embroidered and fringed
magnificently. I sat down upon a tripod stool, and with my eyes half
closed, looked up at the mirrored reflections of the officers in the
ceiling, and tried to imagine back the gay throngs that had moved across
the floor they were treading so unceremoniously, the knightly and royal
feet that had probably danced the stars down with the best beauty of
Sicily beneath those silent mirrors; the joy, the jealousy, the love and
hate, that had lived their hour and been repeated, as were our lighter
feelings and faces now, outlived by the perishing mirrors that might
still outlive ours as long. How much there is in an _atmosphere_! How
full the air of these old palaces is of thought! How one might enjoy
them could he ramble here alone, or with one congenial and musing
companion to answer to his moralising.
We drove on to our appointment. At the end of a handsome avenue stood a
large palace, in rather more modern taste than those we had left. The
crowd of carriages in the court, the gold-laced midshipmen scattered
about the massive stairs and in the formal walks of the gardens, the gay
dresses of the ship’s band, playing on the terrace, and the troops of
ladies and gentlemen in every direction, gave an air of bustle to the
stately structure that might have reminded the marble nymphs of the days
when they were first lifted to their pedestals.
The old hall was thrown open at two, and a table stretching from one end
to the other, loaded with every luxury of the season, and capable of
accommodating sixty or seventy persons, usurped the place of
unsubstantial romance, and brought in the wildest straggler willingly
from his ramble. No cost had been spared, and the hospitable consul (a
Bostonian) did the honours of his table in a manner that stirred
powerfully my pride of country and birthplace. All the English resident
in Palermo were present; and it was the more agreeable to me that their
countrymen are usually the only givers of generous entertainment in
Europe. One feels ever so distant a reflection on his country abroad.
The liberal and elegant hospitality of one of our countrymen at
Florence, has served me as a better argument against the charge of
hardness and selfishness urged upon our nation, than all which could be
drawn from the acknowledgments of travellers.
When dinner was over, an hour was passed at coffee in a small saloon
stained after the fashion of Pompeii, and we then assembled on a broad
terrace facing the sea, and with the band in the gallery above,
commenced dances which lasted till an hour or two into the moonlight.
The sunset had the eternal but untiring glory of the Italian summer, and
it never set on a gayer party. There were among the English one or two
lovely girls, and with the four ladies belonging to the squadron (the
commodore’s family and Captain Reed’s), the dancers were sufficient to
include all the officers, and the scene in the soft light of the moon
was like a description in an old tale. The broad sea on either side,
broke by the headland in front, the distant crescent of lights glancing
along the seaside at Palermo, the solemn old palaces seen from the
eminence around us, and the noble pile through whose low windows we
strolled out upon the terrace, the music and the excitement, all blended
a scene that is drawn with bright and living lines in my memory. We
parted unwillingly, and reaching Palermo about midnight, pulled off to
the frigates, and were under-weigh at daylight for Messina.
* * * * *
This is the poetry of sailing. The long, low frigate glides on through
the water with no more motion than is felt in a dining-room on shore.
The sea changes only from a glossy calm to a feathery ripple, the sky is
always serene, the merchant sail appears and disappears on the horizon
edge, the island rises on the bow, creeps along the quarter, is examined
by the glasses of the idlers on deck and sinks gradually astern; the
sun-fish whirls in the eddy of the wake, the tortoise plunges and
breathes about us; and the delightful temperature of the sea, even and
invigorating, keeps both mind and body in an undisturbed equilibrium of
enjoyment. For me it is a paradise. I am glad to escape from the
contact, the dust, the trials of temper, the noon-day sultriness, and
the midnight chill, the fatigue, and privation, and vexation, which
beset the traveller on shore. I shall return to it no doubt willingly
after a while, but for the present, it is rest, it is relief,
refreshment, to be at sea. There is no swell in the Mediterranean during
the summer months, and this gliding about, sleeping or reading, as if at
home, from one port to another, seems to me just now the Utopia of
enjoyment.
We have been all day among the Lipari islands. It is pleasant to look up
at the shaded and peaceful huts on their mountainous sides, as we creep
along under them, or to watch the fisherman’s children with a glass, as
they run out from their huts on the seashore to gaze at the uncommon
apparition of a ship-of-war. They seem seats of solitude and retirement.
I have just dropped the glass, which I had raised to look at what I took
to be a large ship in full sail rounding the point of Felicudi. It is a
tall, pyramidal rock, rising right from the sea, and resembling exactly
a ship with studding-sails set, coming down before the wind. The band is
playing on the deck; and a fisherman’s boat with twenty of the islanders
resting on their oars and listening in wondering admiration, lies just
under our quarter. It will form a tale for the evening meal, to which
they were hastening home.
* * * * *
We run between Scylla and Charybdis, with a fresh wind and a strong
current. The “dogs” were silent, and the “whirlpool” is a bubble to
Hurl-gate. Scylla is quite a town, and the tall rock at the entrance of
the strait is crowned with a large building, which seems part of a
fortification. The passage through the Faro is lonely—quite like a
river. Messina lies in a curve of the western shore, at the base of a
hill; and, opposite, a graceful slope covered with vineyards, swells up
to a broad table plain on the mountain, which looked like the home of
peace and fertility.
We rounded-to, off the town, to send in for letters, and I went ashore
in the boat. Two American friends, whom I had as little expectation of
meeting as if I had dropped upon Jerusalem, hailed me from the grating
of the health-office, before we reached the land, and having exhibited
our bill of health, I had half an hour for a call upon an old friend,
resident at Messina, and we were off again to the ship. The sails
filled, and we shot away on a strong breeze down the straits. Rhegium
lay on our left, a large cluster of old-looking houses on the edge of
the sea. It was at this town of Calabria that St. Paul landed on his
journey to Rome. We sped on without much time to look at it, even with a
glass, and were soon rounding the toe of “the boot,” the southern point
of Italy. We are heading at this moment for the gulf of Tarento, and
hope to be in Venice by the fourth of July.
* * * * *
* * * * *