In one year alone (1903), and in the sole province of Cosenza wherein
San Giovanni lies, there were 156 landslides; they destroyed 1940
hectares of land, and their damage amounted to 432,738 francs. The two
other Calabrian provinces—Reggio and Catanzaro—doubtless also had their
full quota of these catastrophes, all due to mischievous deforestation.
So the bare rock is exposed, and every hope of planting at an end.
_Vox clamantis!_ The Normans, Anjou and Aragonese concerned themselves
with the proper administration of woodlands. Even the Spanish Viceroys,
that ineffable brood, issued rigorous enactments on the subject; while
the Bourbons (to give the devil his due) actually distinguished
themselves as conservators of forests. As to Napoleon—he was busy
enough, one would think, on this
side of the Alps. Yet he found time to frame wise regulations
concerning trees which the present patriotic parliament, during half a
century of frenzied confabulation, has not yet taken to heart.
How a great man will leave his mark on minutiæ!
I passed through the basin of this future lake when, in accordance with
my project, I left San Giovanni to cross the remaining Sila in the
direction of Catanzaro. This getting up at 3.30 a.m., by the way,
rather upsets one’s daily routine; at breakfast time I already find
myself enquiring anxiously for dinner.
The Ampollina valley lies high; here, in the dewy grass, I enjoyed what
I well knew would be my last shiver for some time to come; then moved
for a few miles on the further bank of the rivulet along that driving
road which will soon be submerged under the waters of the lake, and
struck up a wooded glen called Barbarano. At its head lies the upland
Circilla.
There is no rock scenery worth mentioning in all this Sila country; no
waterfalls or other Alpine features. It is a venerable granitic
tableland, that has stood here while the proud Apennines were still
slumbering in the oozy bed of ocean[1]—a region of gentle undulations,
the hill-tops covered with forest-growth, the valleys partly arable and
partly pasture. Were it not for the absence of heather with its
peculiar mauve tints, the traveller might well imagine himself in
Scotland. There is the same smiling alternation of woodland and meadow,
the same huge boulders of gneiss and granite which give a distinctive
tone to the landscape, the same exuberance of living waters. Water,
indeed, is one of the glories of the Sila—everywhere it bubbles forth
in chill rivulets among the stones and trickles down the hill-sides to
join the larger streams that wend their way to the forlorn and
fever-stricken coastlands of Magna Graecia. Often, as I refreshed
myself at these icy fountains, did I thank Providence for making the
Sila of primitive rock, and not of the thirsty Apennine limestone.
[1] Nissen says that “no landscape of Italy has lost so little of its
original appearance in the course of history as Calabria.” This may
apply to the mountains; but the lowlands have suffered hideous
changes.
“Much water in the Sila,” an old shepherd once observed to me, “much
water! And little tobacco.”
One of the largest of these rivers is the Neto, the classic Neaithos
sung by Theocritus, which falls into the sea north of Cotrone; San
Giovanni overlooks its raging flood, and, with the help of a little
imagination here and there, its whole course can be traced from
eminences like that of Pettinascura. The very name of these
streams—Neto, Arvo, Lese, Ampollina—are redolent of pastoral life. All
of them are stocked with trout; they meander in their upper reaches
through valleys grazed by far-tinkling flocks of sheep and goats and
grey cattle—the experiment of acclimatizing Swiss cattle has proved a
failure, I know not why—and their banks are brilliant with blossoms.
Later on, in the autumn, the thistles begin to predominate—the finest
of them being a noble ground thistle of pale gold, of which they eat
the unopened bud; it is the counterpart of the silvery one of the Alps.
The air in these upper regions is keen. I remember, some years ago,
that during the last week of August a lump of snow, which a goat-boy
produced as his contribution to our luncheon, did not melt in the
bright sunshine on the summit of Monte Nero.
From whichever side one climbs out of the surrounding lowlands into the
Sila plateau, the same succession of trees is encountered. To the
warmest zone of olives, lemons and carobs succeeds that of the
chestnuts, some of them of gigantic dimensions and yielding a sure
though moderate return in fruit, others cut down periodically as
coppice for vine-props and scaffoldings. Large tracts of these old
chestnut groves are now doomed; a French society in Cosenza, so they
tell me, is buying them up for the extraction out of their bark of some
chemical or medicine. The vine still flourishes at this height, though
dwarfed in size; soon the oaks begin to dominate, and after that we
enter into the third and highest region of the pines and beeches. Those
accustomed to the stony deserts of nearly all South European mountain
districts will find these woodlands intensely refreshing. Their
inaccessibility has proved their salvation—up to a short time ago.
Nearly all the cattle on the Sila, like the land itself, belongs to
large proprietors. These gentlemen are for the most part invisible;
they inhabit their palaces in the cities, and the very name of the Sila
sends a cold shudder through their bones; their revenues are collected
from the shepherds by agents who seem to do their work very
conscientiously. I once observed, in a hut, a small fragment of the
skin of a newly killed kid; the wolf had devoured the beast, and the
shepherd was keeping this _corpus delicti_ to prove to his superior,
the agent, that he was innocent of the murder. There was something
naive in his honesty—as if a shepherd could not eat a kid as well as
any wolf, and keep a portion of its skin! The agent, no doubt, would
hand it on to his lord, by way of _confirmation and verification._
Another time I saw the debris of a goat hanging from
a tree; it was the wolf again; the boy had attached these remains to
the tree in order that all who passed that way might be his witnesses,
if necessary, that the animal had not been sold underhand.
You may still find the legendary shepherds here—curly-haired
striplings, reclining _sub tegmine fagi_ in the best Theocritean style,
and piping wondrous melodies to their flocks. These have generally come
up for the summer season from the Ionian lowlands. Or you may encounter
yet more primitive creatures, forest boys, clad in leather, with wild
eyes and matted locks, that take an elvish delight in misdirecting you.
These are the Lucanians of old. “They bring them up from childhood in
the woods among the shepherds,” says Justinus, “without servants, and
even without any clothes to cover them, or to lie upon, that from their
early years they may become inured to hardiness and frugality, and have
no intercourse with the city. They live upon game, and drink nothing
but water or milk.” But the majority of modern Sila shepherds are
shrewd fellows of middle age (many of them have been to America), who
keep strict business accounts for their masters of every ounce of
cheese and butter produced. The local cheese, which Cassiodorus praises
in one of his letters, is the _cacciacavallo_ common all over South
Italy; the butter is of the kind which has been humorously, but quite
wrongly, described by various travellers.
Although the old wolves are shot and killed by spring guns and dynamite
while the young ones are caught alive in steel traps and other
appliances, their numbers are still formidable enough to perturb the
pastoral folks. One is therefore surprised to see what a poor breed of
dogs they keep; scraggy mongrels that run for their lives at the mere
sight of a wolf who can, and often does, bite them into two pieces with
one snap of his jaws. They tell me that there is a government reward
for every wolf killed, but it is seldom paid; whoever has the good
fortune to slay one of these beasts, carries the skin as proof of his
prowess from door to door, and receives a small present everywhere—half
a franc, or a cheese, or a glass of wine.
The goats show fight, and therefore the wolf prefers sheep. Shepherds
have told me that he comes up to them _delicatamente,_ and then, fixing
his teeth in the wool of their necks, pulls them onward, caressing
their sides with his tail. The sheep are fascinated with his gentle
manners, and generally allow themselves to be led up to the spot he has
selected for their execution; the truth being that he is too lazy to
carry them, if he can possibly avoid it.
He will promptly kill his quarry and carry its carcase downhill on the
rare occasions when the flocks are grazing above his haunt; but if it
is an uphill walk, they must be good enough to use their own legs.
Incredible stories of his destructiveness are related.
Fortunately, human beings are seldom attacked, a dog or a pig being
generally forthcoming when the usual prey is not to be found. Yet not
long ago a sad affair occurred; a she-wolf attacked a small boy before
the eyes of his parents, who pursued him, powerless to help—the head
and arms had already been torn off before a shot from a neighbour
despatched the monster. Truly, “a great family displeasure,” as my
informant styled it. Milo of Croton, the famous athlete, is the most
renowned victim of these Sila wolves. Tradition has it that, relying on
his great strength, he tried to rend asunder a mighty log of wood which
closed, however, and caught his arms in its grip; thus helpless, he was
devoured alive by them.
By keeping to the left of Circilla, I might have skirted the forest of
Gariglione. This tract lies at about four and a half hours’ distance
from San Giovanni; I found it, some years ago, to be a region of real
“Urwald” or primary jungle; there was nothing like it, to my knowledge,
on this side of the Alps, nor yet in the Alps themselves; nothing of
the kind nearer than Russia. But the Russian jungles, apart from their
monotony of timber, foster feelings of sadness and gloom, whereas these
southern ones, as Hehn has well observed, are full of a luminous
beauty—their darkest recesses being enlivened by a sense of benignant
mystery. Gariglione was at that time a virgin forest, untouched by the
hand of man; a dusky ridge, visible from afar; an impenetrable tangle
of forest trees, chiefest among them being the “garigli” _(Quercus
cerris)_ whence it derives its name, as well as thousands of pines and
bearded firs and all that hoary indigenous vegetation struggling out of
the moist soil wherein their progenitors had lain decaying time out of
mind. In these solitudes, if anywhere, one might still have found the
absent-minded luzard (lynx) of the veracious historian; or that
squirrel whose “calabrere” fur, I strongly suspect, came from Russia;
or, at any rate, the Mushroom-stone _which shineth in the night_.[2]
[2] As a matter of fact, the mushroom-stone is a well-known commodity,
being still collected and eaten, for example, at Santo Stefano in
Aspramente. Older travellers tell us that it used to be exported to
Naples and kept in the cellars of the best houses for the enjoyment of
its fruit—sometimes in lumps measuring two feet in diameter which,
being soaked in water, produced these edible fungi. A stone yielding
food—a miracle! It is a porous tufa adapted, presumably, for
sheltering and fecundating vegetable spores. A little pamphlet by
Professor A. Trotter (“Flora Montana della Calabria”) gives some idea
of the local plants and contains a useful bibliography. A curious
feature is the relative abundance of boreal and Balkan-Oriental forms;
another, the rapid spread of _Genista anglica,_ which is probably an
importation.
Well, I am glad my path to-day did not lead me to Gariglione, and so
destroy old memories of the place. For the domain, they tell me, has
been sold for 350,000 francs to a German company; its primeval silence
is now invaded by an army of 260 workmen, who have been cutting down
the timber as fast as they can. So vanishes another fair spot from
earth! And what is left of the Sila, once these forests are gone? Not
even the charm, such as it is, of Caithness. . . .
After Circilla comes the watershed that separates the Sila Grande from
the westerly regions of Sila Piccola. Thenceforward it was downhill
walking, at first through forest lands, then across verdant stretches,
bereft of timber and simmering in the sunshine. The peculiar character
of this country is soon revealed—ferociously cloven ravines, utterly
different from the Sila Grande.
With the improvidence of the true traveller I had consumed my stock of
provisions ere reaching the town of Taverna after a march of nine hours
or thereabouts. A place of this size and renown, I had argued, would
surely be able to provide a meal. But Taverna belies its name. The only
tavern discoverable was a composite hovel, half wine-shop, half
hen-house, whose proprietor, disturbed in his noonday nap, stoutly
refused to produce anything eatable. And there I stood in the blazing
sunshine, famished and un-befriended. Forthwith the strength melted out
of my bones; the prospect of walking to Catanzaro, so alluring with a
full stomach, faded out of the realm of possibility; and it seemed a
special dispensation of Providence when, at my lowest ebb of vitality,
a small carriage suddenly hove in sight.
“How much to Catanzaro?”
The owner eyed me critically, and then replied in English:
“You can pay twenty dollars.”
Twenty dollars—a hundred francs! But it is useless trying to bargain
with an _americano_ (their time is too valuable).
“A dollar a mile?” I protested.
“That’s so.”
“You be damned.”
“Same to you, mister.” And he drove off.
Such bold defiance of fate never goes unrewarded. A two-wheeled cart
conveying some timber overtook me shortly afterwards on my way from the
inhospitable Taverna. For a small
consideration I was enabled to pass the burning hours of the afternoon
in an improvised couch among its load of boards, admiring the scenery
and the engineering feats that have carried a road through such
difficult country, and thinking out some further polite remarks to be
addressed to my twenty-dollar friend, in the event of our meeting at
Catanzaro. . . .
One must have traversed the Sila in order to appreciate the manifold
charms of the mountain town—I have revelled in them since my arrival.
But it has one irremediable drawback: the sea lies at an inconvenient
distance. It takes forty-five minutes to reach the shore by means of
two railways in whose carriages the citizens descend after wild
scrambles for places, packed tight as sardines in the sweltering heat.
Only a genuine enthusiast will undertake the trip more than once. For
the Marina itself—at this season, at least—is an unappetizing spot; a
sordid agglomeration of houses, a few dirty fruit-stalls, ankle-deep
dust, swarms of flies. I prefer to sleep through the warm hours of the
day, and then take the air in that delightful public garden which, by
the way, has already become too small for the increasing population.
At its entrance stands the civic museum, entrusted, just now, to the
care of a quite remarkably ignorant and slatternly woman. It contains
two rooms, whose exhibits are smothered in dust and cobwebs; as
neglected, in short, as her own brats that sprawl about its floor. I
enquired whether she possessed no catalogue to show where the objects,
bearing no labels, had been found. A catalogue was unnecessary, she
said; she knew everything—everything!
And everything, apparently, hailed from “Stromboli.” The Tiriolo
helmet, the Greek vases, all the rest of the real and sham treasures of
this establishment: they were all discovered at Stromboli.
“Those coins—whence?”
“Stromboli!”
Noticing some neolithic celts similar to those I obtained at
Vaccarizza, I would gladly have learnt their place of origin. Promptly
came the answer:
“Stromboli!”
“Nonsense, my good woman. I’ve been three times to Stromboli; it is an
island of black stones where the devil has a house, and such things are
not found there.” (Of course she meant Strongoli, the ancient Petelia.)
[Illustration: Gateway at Catanzaro]
This vigorous assertion made her more circumspect. Thenceforward
everything was declared to come from the province—_dalla provincia;_ it
was safer.
_“_That bad picture—whence?”
“Dalla provincia!”
“Have you really no catalogue?”
“I know everything.”
“And this broken statue—whence?”
“Dalla provincia!”
“But the province is large,” I objected.
“So it is. Large, and old.”
I have also revisited Tiriolo, once celebrated for the “Sepulchres of
the Giants” (Greek tombs) that were unearthed here, and latterly for a
certain more valuable antiquarian discovery. Not long ago it was a
considerable undertaking to reach this little place, but nowadays a
public motor-car whirls you up and down the ravines at an alarming pace
and will deposit you, within a few hours, at remote Cosenza, once an
enormous drive. It is the same all over modern Calabria. The diligence
service, for instance, that used to take fourteen hours from San
Giovanni to Cosenza has been replaced by motors that cover the distance
in four or five. One is glad to save time, but this new element of
mechanical hurry has produced a corresponding kind of traveller—a
machine-made creature, devoid of the humanity of the old; it has done
away with the personal note of conviviality that reigned in the
post-carriages. What jocund friendships were made, what songs and tales
applauded, during those interminable hours in the lumbering chaise!
You must choose Sunday for Tiriolo, on account of the girls, whose
pretty faces and costumes are worth coming any distance to see. A good
proportion of them have the fair hair which seems to have been
eliminated, in other parts of the country, through the action of
malaria.
Viewed from Catanzaro, one of the hills of Tiriolo looks like a broken
volcanic crater. It is a limestone ridge, decked with those
characteristic flowers like _Campanula fragilis_ which you will vainly
seek on the Sila. Out of the ruins of some massive old building they
have constructed, on the summit, a lonely weather-beaten fabric that
would touch the heart of Maeterlinck. They call it a seismological
station. I pity the people that have to depend for their warnings of
earthquakes upon the outfit of a place like this. I could see no signs
of life here; the windows were broken, the shutters decaying, an old
lightning-rod dangled disconsolately from the roof; it looked as
abandoned as any old tower in a tale. There is a noble view from this
point over both seas and into the
riven complexities of Aspromonte, when the peak is not veiled in mists,
as it frequently is. For Tiriolo lies on the watershed; there (to quote
from a “Person of Quality”) “where the Apennine is drawn into so narrow
a point, that the rain-water which descendeth from the ridge of some
one house, falleth on the left in the Terrene Sea, and on the right
into the Adriatick. . . .”
My visits to the provincial museum have become scandalously frequent
during the last few days. I cannot keep away from the place. I go there
not to study the specimens but to converse with their keeper, the woman
who, in her quiet way, has cast a sort of charm over me. Our relations
are the whispered talk of the town; I am suspected of matrimonial
designs upon a poor widow with the ulterior object of appropriating the
cream of the relics under her care. Regardless of the perils of the
situation, I persevere; for the sake of her company I forswear the
manifold seductions of Catanzaro. She is a noteworthy person, neither
vicious nor vulgar, but simply the _dernier mot_ of incompetence. Her
dress, her looks, her children, her manners—they are all on an even
plane with her spiritual accomplishments; at no point does she sink, or
rise, beyond that level. They are not as common as they seem to be,
these harmoniously inefficient females.
Why has she got this job in a progressive town containing so many folks
who could do it creditably? Oh, that is simple enough! She needs it. On
the platform of the Reggio station (long before the earthquake) I once
counted five station-masters and forty-eight other railway officials,
swaggering about with a magnificent air of incapacity. What were they
doing? Nothing whatever. They were like this woman: they needed a job.
[Illustration: In the Cemetery of Reggio]
We are in a patriarchal country; work is pooled; it is given not to
those who can do it best, but to those who need it most—given, too, on
pretexts which sometimes strike one as inadequate, not to say
recondite. So the street-scavengering in a certain village has been
entrusted to a one-armed cripple, utterly unfit for the business—why?
Because his maternal grand-uncle is serving a long sentence in gaol.
The poor family must be helped! A brawny young fellow will be removed
from a landing-stage boat, and his place taken by some tottering old
peasant who has never handled an oar—why? The old man’s nephew has
married again; the family must be helped. A secretarial appointment was
specially created for an acquaintance of mine who could barely sign his
own name, for the obvious reason that his cousin’s sister was
rheumatic. One must help that family.
A postman whom I knew delivered the letters only once every three days,
alleging, as unanswerable argument in his defence, that his brother’s
wife had fifteen children.
One must help that family!
Somebody seems to have thought so, at all events.
XXIX
CHAOS
I have never beheld the enchantment of the Straits of Messina, that
Fata Morgana, when, under certain conditions of weather, phantasmagoric
palaces of wondrous shape are cast upon the waters—not mirrored, but
standing upright; tangible, as it were; yet diaphanous as a veil of
gauze.
A Dominican monk and correspondent of the Naples Academy, Minasi by
name, friend of Sir W. Hamilton, wrote a dissertation upon this
atmospheric mockery. Many have seen and described it, among them Pilati
de Tassulo; Nicola Leoni reproduces the narrative of an eye-witness of
1643; another account appears in the book of A. Fortis (“Mineralogische
Reisen, 1788”). The apparition is coy. Yet there are pictures of it—in
an article in “La Lettura” by Dr. Vittorio Boccara, who therein refers
to a scientific treatise by himself on the subject, as well as in the
little volume “Da Reggio a Metaponto” by Lupi-Crisafi, which was
printed at Gerace some years ago. I mention these writers for the sake
of any one who, luckier than myself, may be able to observe this
phenomenon and become interested in its history and origin. . . .
The chronicles of Messina record the scarcely human feats of the diver
Cola Pesce (Nicholas the Fish). The dim submarine landscapes of the
Straits with their caves and tangled forests held no secrets from him;
his eyes were as familiar with sea-mysteries as those of any fish. Some
think that the legend dates from Frederick II, to whom he brought up
from the foaming gulf that golden goblet which has been immortalized in
Schiller’s ballad. But Schneegans says there are Norman documents that
speak of him. And that other tale, according to which he took to his
watery life in pursuit of some beloved maiden who had been swallowed by
the waves, makes one think of old Glaucus as his prototype.
[Illustration: Tiriolo]
Many are the fables connected with his name, but the most portentous is
this: One day, during his subaqueous wanderings, he discovered the
foundations of Messina. They were insecure! The city rested upon three
columns, one of them intact, another
quite decayed away, the third partially corroded and soon to crumble
into ruin. He peered up from, his blue depths, and in a fateful couplet
of verses warned the townsmen of their impending doom. In this
prophetic utterance ascribed to the fabulous Cola Pesce is echoed a
popular apprehension that was only too justified.
F. Muenter—one of a band of travellers who explored these regions after
the earthquake of 1783—also gave voice to his fears that Messina had
not yet experienced the full measure of her calamities. . . .
I remember a night in September of 1908, a Sunday night, fragrant with
the odours of withered rosemary and cistus and fennel that streamed in
aromatic showers from the scorched heights overhead—a starlit night,
tranquil and calm. Never had Messina appeared so attractive to me.
Arriving there generally in the daytime and from larger and sprightlier
centres of civilization, one is prone to notice only its defects. But
night, especially a southern night, has a wizard touch. It transforms
into objects of mysterious beauty all unsightly things, or hides them
clean away; while the nobler works of man, those facades and cornices
and full-bellied balconies of cunningly wrought iron rise up, under its
enchantment, ethereal as the palace of fairies. And coming, as I then
did, from the sun-baked river-beds of Calabria, this place, with its
broad and well-paved streets, its glittering cafés and demure throng of
evening idlers, seemed a veritable metropolis, a world-city.
With deliberate slowness, _ritardando con molto sentimento,_ I worked
my way to the familiar restaurant.
At last! At last, after an interminable diet of hard bread, onions and
goat’s cheese, I was to enjoy the complicated menu mapped out weeks
beforehand, after elaborate consideration and balancing of merits; so
complicated, that its details have long ago lapsed from my memory. I
recollect only the sword-fish, a local speciality, and (as crowning
glory) the _cassata alla siciliana,_ a glacial symphony, a
multicoloured ice of commingling flavours, which requires far more time
to describe than to devour. Under the influence of this Sybaritic fare,
helped down with a crusted bottle of Calabrian wine—your Sicilian stuff
is too strong for me, too straightforward, uncompromising; I prefer to
be wheedled out of my faculties by inches, like a gentleman—under this
genial stimulus my extenuated frame was definitely restored; I became
mellow and companionable; the traveller’s lot, I finally concluded, is
not the worst on earth. Everything was as it should be. As for
Messina—Messina was unquestionably a pleasant city. But why were all
the shops shut so early in the evening?
_“_These Sicilians,” said the waiter, an old Neapolitan acquaintance,
in reply to my enquiries, “are always playing some game. They are
pretending to be Englishmen at this moment; they have the
Sunday-closing obsession on the brain. Their attacks generally last a
fortnight; it’s like the measles. Poor people.”
Playing at being Englishmen!
They have invented a new game now, those that are left of them. They
are living in dolls’ houses, and the fit is likely to last for some
little time.
An engineer remarked to me, not long ago, among the ruins:
“This _baracca,_ this wooden shelter, has an interior surface area of
less than thirty square metres. Thirty-three persons—men, women, and
children—have been living and sleeping in it for the last five months.”
“A little overcrowded?” I suggested.
“Yes. Some of them are beginning to talk of overcrowding. It was all
very well in the winter months, but when August comes. . . . Well, we
shall see.”
No prophetic visions of the Messina of to-day, with its minute sheds
perched among a wilderness of ruins and haunted by scared shadows in
sable vestments of mourning, arose in my mind that evening as I sat at
the little marble table, sipping my coffee—over-roasted, like all
Italian coffee, by exactly two minutes—and puffing contentedly at my
cigar, while the sober crowd floated hither and thither before my eyes.
Yes, everything was as it should be. And yet, what a chance!
What a chance for some God, in this age of unbelief, to establish his
rule over mankind on the firm foundations of faith! We are always
complaining, nowadays, of an abatement of religious feeling. How easy
for such a one to send down an Isaiah to foretell the hour of the
coming catastrophe, and thus save those of its victims who were
disposed to hearken to the warning voice; to reanimate the flagging
zeal of worshippers, to straighten doubts and segregate the sheep from
the goats! Truly, He moves in a mysterious way, for no divine message
came; the just were entombed with the unjust amid a considerable deal
of telegraphing and heart-breaking.
A few days after the disaster the Catholic papers explained matters by
saying that the people of Messina had not loved their Madonna
sufficiently well. But she loved them none the less, and sent the
earthquake as an admonishment. Rather a robust method of conciliating
their affection; not exactly the _suaviter in modo. . . ._
But if genuine prophets can only flourish among the malarious
willow swamps of old Babylon and such-like improbable spots, we might
at least have expected better things of our modern spiritualists. Why
should their apparitions content themselves with announcing the
decease, at the Antipodes, of profoundly uninteresting relatives? Alas!
I begin to perceive that spirits of the right kind, of the useful kind,
have yet to be discovered. Our present-day ghosts are like
seismographs; they chronicle the event after it has happened. Now, what
we want is——
“The Signore smokes, and smokes, and smokes. Why not take the tram and
listen to the municipal music in the gardens?”
“Music? Gardens? An excellent suggestion, Gennarino.”
Even as a small Italian town would be incomplete without its piazza
where streets converge and commercial pulses beat their liveliest
measure, so every larger one contrives to possess a public garden for
the evening disport of its citizens; night-life being the true life of
the south. Charming they are, most of them; none more delectable than
that of old Messina—a spacious pleasaunce, decked out with trim palms
and flower-beds and labyrinthine walks freshly watered, and cooled,
that evening, by stealthy breezes from the sea. The grounds were
festively illuminated, and as I sat down near the bandstand and watched
the folk meandering to and fro, I calculated that no fewer than thirty
thousand persons were abroad, taking their pleasure under the trees, in
the bland air of evening. An orderly, well-dressed crowd. We may smile
when they tell us that these people will stint themselves of the
necessities of life in order to wear fine clothes, but the effect, for
an outsider, is all that it should be. For the rest, the very urchins,
gambolling about, had an air of happy prosperity, different from the
squalor of the north with its pinched white faces, its over-breeding
and under-feeding.
And how well the sensuous Italian strains accord with such an hour and
scene! They were playing, if I remember rightly, the ever-popular Aida;
other items followed later—more ambitious ones; a Hungarian rhapsody,
Berlioz, a selection from Wagner.
“_Musica filosofica”_ said my neighbour, alluding to the German
composer. He was a spare man of about sixty; a sunburnt, military
countenance, seamed by lines of suffering. “_Non và in Sicilia_—it
won’t do in this country. Not that we fail to appreciate your great
thinkers,” he added. “We read and admire your Schopenhauer, your
Spencer. They give passable representations of Wagner in Naples. But——”
“The climate?”
“Precisely. I have travelled, sir; and knowing your Berlin, and London,
and Boston, have been able to observe how ill our Italian
architecture looks under your grey skies, how ill our music sounds
among the complex appliances of your artificial life. It has made you
earnest, this climate of yours, and prone to take earnestly your very
pastimes. Music, for us, has remained what it was in the Golden Age—an
unburdening of the soul on a summer’s night. They play well, these
fellows. Palermo, too, has a respectable band—Oh! a little too fast,
that _recitativo!”_
“The Signore is a musician?”
“A _proprietario._ But I delight in music, and I beguiled myself with
the fiddle as a youngster. Nowadays—look here!” And he extended his
hand; it was crippled. “Rheumatism. I have it here, and here”—pointing
to various regions of his body—“_and_ here! Ah, these doctors! The
baths I have taken! The medicines—the ointments—the embrocations: a
perfect pharmacopcœia! I can hardly crawl now, and without the help of
these two devoted boys even this harmless little diversion would have
been denied me. My nephews—orphans,” he added, observing the direction
of my glance.
They sat on his other side, handsome lads, who spoke neither too much
nor too little. Every now and then they rose with one accord and
strolled among the surging crowd to stretch their legs, returning after
five minutes to their uncle’s side. His eyes always followed their
movements.
“My young brother, had he lived, would have made men of them,” he once
observed.
The images revive, curiously pertinacious, with dim lapses and gulfs. I
can see them still, the two boys, their grave demeanour belied by
mobile lips and mischievous fair curls of Northern ancestry; the other,
leaning forward intent upon the music, and caressing his moustache with
bent fingers upon which glittered a jewel set in massive gold—some
scarab or intaglio, the spoil of old Magna Graecia. His conversation,
during the intervals, moved among the accepted formulas of
cosmopolitanism with easy flow, quickened at times by the individual
emphasis of a man who can forsake conventional tracks and think for
himself. Among other things, he had contrived an original project for
reviving the lemon industry of his country, which, though it involved a
few tariff modifications—“a mere detail”—struck me as amazingly
effective and ingenious. The local deputy, it seems, shared my view,
for he had undertaken to bring it before the notice of Parliament.
What was it?