The best of law-systems, no doubt, is but a compromise. Science being

one thing, and public order another, the most enlightened of

legislators may well tremble to engraft the fruits of modern

psychological research upon the tree of law, lest the scion prove too

vigorous for the aged vegetable. But some compromises are better than

others; and the Italian code, which reads like a fairy tale and works

like a Fury, is as bad a one as human ingenuity can devise. If a

prisoner escape punishment, it is due not so much to his innocence as

to some access of sanity or benevolence on the part of the judge, who

courageously twists the law in his favour. Fortunately, such humane

exponents of the code are common enough; were it otherwise, the

prisons, extensive as they are, would have to be considerably enlarged.

But that ideal judge who shall be paid as befits his grave calling, who

shall combine the honesty and common sense of the north with the

analytical acumen of the south, has yet to be evolved. What interests

the student of history is that things hereabouts have not changed by a

hair since the days of Demosthenes and those preposterous old Hellenic

tribunals. Not by a single hair! On the one hand, we have a deluge of

subtle disquisitions on “jurisprudence,” “personal responsibility” and

so forth; on the other, the sinister tomfoolery known as _law—_that is,

babble, corruption, palæolithic ideas of what constitutes evidence, and

a court-procedure that reminds one of Gilbert and Sullivan at their

best.

There was a report in the papers not long ago of the trial of an old

married couple, on the charge of murdering a young girl. The bench

dismissed the case, remarking that there was not a particle of evidence

against them; they had plainly been exemplary citizens all their long

lives. They had spent five years in prison awaiting trial. Five years,

and innocent! It stands to reason that such abuses disorganize the

family, especially in Italy, where the “family” means much more than it

does in England; the land lies barren, and savings are wasted in paying

lawyers and bribing greedy court

officials. What are this worthy couple to think of _Avanti, Savoia!_

once they have issued from their dungeon?

I read, in yesterday’s Parliamentary Proceedings, of an honourable

member (Aprile) rising to ask the Minister of Justice (Gallini) whether

the time has not come to proceed with the trial of “Signori Camerano

and their co-accused,” who have been in prison for six years, charged

with voluntary homicide. Whereto His Excellency sagely replies that “la

magistratura ha avuto i suoi motivi”—the magistrates have had their

reasons. Six years in confinement, and perhaps innocent! Can one

wonder, under such circumstances, at the anarchist schools of Prato and

elsewhere? Can one wonder if even a vindictive and corrupt rag like the

socialistic “Avanti” occasionally prints frantic protests of

quasi-righteous indignation? And not a hundredth part of such accused

persons can cause a Minister of the Crown to be interpellated on their

behalf. The others suffer silently and often die, forgotten, in their

cells.

And yet—how seriously we take this nation! Almost as seriously as we

take ourselves. The reason is that most of us come to Italy too

undiscerning, too reverent; in the pre-critical and pre-humorous

stages. We arrive here, stuffed with Renaissance ideals or classical

lore, and viewing the present through coloured spectacles. We arrive

here, above all things, too young; for youth loves to lean on tradition

and to draw inspiration from what has gone before; youth finds nothing

more difficult than to follow Goethe’s advice about grasping that

living life which shifts and fluctuates about us. Few writers are

sufficiently detached to laugh at these people as they, together with

ourselves, so often and so richly deserve. I spoke of the buffoonery of

Italian law; I might have called it a burlesque. The trial of the

ex-minister Nasi: here was a _cause célèbre_ conducted by the highest

tribunal of the land; and if it was not a burlesque—why, we must coin a

new word for what is.

XXXIV

MALARIA

A black snake of alarming dimensions, one of the monsters that still

infest the Calabrian lowlands, glided across the roadway while I was

waiting for the post carriage to drive me to Caulonia from its

railway-station. Auspicious omen! It carried my thoughts from old

Æsculapius to his modern representatives—to that school of wise and

disinterested healers who are ridding these regions of their curse, and

with whom I was soon to have some nearer acquaintance.

We started at last, in the hot hours of the morning, and the road at

first skirts the banks of the Alaro, the Sagra of old, on whose banks

was fought the fabled battle between the men of Croton and Locri. Then

it begins to climb upwards. My companion was a poor peasant woman,

nearly blind (from malaria, possibly). Full of my impressions of

yesterday, I promptly led the conversation towards the subject of

Musolino. She had never spoken to him, she said, or even seen him. But

she got ten francs from him, all the same. In dire distress, some years

ago, she had asked a friend in the mountains to approach the brigand on

her behalf. The money was long in coming, she added, but of course it

came in the end. He always helped poor people, even those outside his

own country.

The site of the original Caulonia is quite uncertain. Excavations now

going on at Monasterace, some ten miles further on, may decide that the

town lay there. Some are in favour of the miserable village of Focà,

near at hand; or of other sites. The name of Focà seems to point,

rather, to a settlement of the regenerator Nicephorus Phocas. Be that

as it may, the present town of Caulonia used to be called Castelvetere,

and it appropriated the Greek name in accordance with a custom which

has been largely followed hereabouts.[1] It contains some ten thousand

inhabitants, amiable, intelligent and distinguished by a _philoxenia_

befitting the traditions

of men who sheltered Pythagoras in his hour of need. As at Rossano,

Catanzaro and many other Calabrian towns, there used to be a ghetto of

Jews here; the district is still called “La Giudeca”; their synagogue

was duly changed into a church of the Madonna.

[1] It is represented with two towers in Peutinger’s Tables. But

these, says an editor, should have been given to the neighbouring

Scilatio, for Caulon was in ruins at the time of Pliny, and is not

even mentioned by Ptolemy. Servius makes another mistake; he confuses

the Calabrian Caulon with a locality of the same name near Capua.

So much I learn from Montorio, who further informs me that the

ubiquitous Saint Peter preached here on his way to Rome, and converted

the people to Christianity; and that the town can boast of three

authentic portraits of the Mother of God painted by Saint Luke (“Lukas

me pinxit”). One is rather bewildered by the number of these

masterpieces in Italy, until one realizes, as an old ecclesiastical

writer has pointed out, that “the Saint, being excellent in his art,

could make several of them in a few days, to correspond to the great

devotion of those early Christians, fervent in their love to the Great

Mother of God. Whence we may believe that to satisfy their ardent

desires he was continually applying himself to this task of so much

glory to Mary and her blessed Son.” But the sacristan of the church at

Caulonia, to whom I applied for information regarding these local

treasures, knew nothing about them, and his comments gave me the

impression that he has relapsed into a somewhat pagan way of regarding

such matters.

You may obtain a fairly good view of Caulonia from the southeast; or

again, from the neighbouring hillock of San Vito. The town lies some

300 metres above sea-level on a platform commanding the valleys of the

Amusa and Alaro. This position, which was clearly chosen for its

strategic value, unfortunately does not allow it to expand, and so the

inhabitants are deprived of that public garden which they amply

deserve. At the highest point lies a celebrated old castle wherein,

according to tradition, Campanella was imprisoned for a while. In the

days of Pacicchelli, it was a fine place—“magnifico nelle regole di

Fortezza, con cinque baloardi provveduti di cannoni di bronzo, ed una

riccha Armeria, degna habitazione di don Carlo Maria Carrafa, Prencipe

della Roccella, che se ne intitola Marchese.” Mingled with the stones

of its old walls they have recently found skeletons—victims, possibly,

of the same macabre superstition to which the blood-drenched masonry of

the Tower of London bears witness. Here, too, have been unearthed

terra-cotta lamps and other antiquities. What are we to surmise from

this? That it was a Roman foundation? Or that the malaria in older

times forced Caulonia to wander towards healthier inland heights after

the example of Sybaris-Terranova, and that the Romans continued to

occupy this same site? Or, assuming Castelvetere to date only from

mediæval times, that these ancient relics found their way into it

accidentally? The low-lying

district of Foca, at this day, is certainly very malarious, whereas the

death-rate up here is only about 12 per 1000.

Dr. Francesco Genovese of Caulonia, to whom I am indebted for much

kindness and who is himself a distinguished worker in the humanitarian

mission of combating malaria, has published, among other interesting

pamphlets, one which deals with this village of Focà, a small place of

about 200 inhabitants, surrounded by fertile orange and vine

plantations near the mouth of the Alaro. His researches into its vital

statistics for the half-century ending 1902 reveal an appalling state

of affairs. Briefly summarized, they amount to this, that during this

period there were 391 births and 516 deaths. In other words, the

village, which in 1902 ought to have contained between 600 and 800

inhabitants, not only failed to progress, but devoured its original

population of 200; and not only them, but also 125 fresh immigrants who

had entered the region from the healthy uplands, lured by the hope of

gaining a little money during the vintage season.

A veritable Moloch!

Had the old city of Caulonia, numbering perhaps 20,000 inhabitants,

stood here under such conditions of hygiene, it would have been

expunged off the face of the earth in fifty years.

Yet—speaking of malaria in general—a good deal of evidence has been

brought together to show that the disease has been endemic in Magna

Græcia for two thousand years, and the customs of the Sybarites seem to

prove that they had some acquaintance with marsh fever, and tried to

guard against it. “Whoever would live long,” so ran their proverb,

“must see neither the rising nor the setting sun.” A queer piece of

advice, intelligible only if the land was infested with malaria. Many

of their luxurious habits assume another import, on this hypothesis.

Like the inhabitants of the malarious Etruscan region, they were adepts

at draining, and their river is described, in one of the minor works

attributed to Galen, as “rendering men infertile”—a characteristic

result of malaria. What is still more significant is that their new

town Thurii, built on the heights, was soon infected, and though twice

repeopled, decayed away. And that they had chosen the heights for their

relative healthfulness we can infer from Strabo, who says that Paestum,

a colony from Sybaris, was removed further inland from the shore, on

account of the pestilential climate of the lowlands.

But the Ionian shores cannot have been as deadly as they now are. We

calculate, for example, that the town walls of Croton measured eighteen

kilometres in circumference, a figure which the modern visitor to

Cotrone only brings himself to believe when he

remembers what can be actually proved of other Hellenic colonies, such

as Syracuse. Well, the populace of so large a city requires a

surrounding district to supply it with agricultural produce. The

Marchesato, the vast tract bordering on Cotrone, is now practically

uninhabitable; the population (including the town) has sunk to 45 to

the square kilometre. That is malaria.

Or rather, only one side of the evil. For these coastlands attract

rural labourers who descend from the mountains during the season of

hay-making or fruit-harvest, and then return infected to their homes.

One single malarious patient may inoculate an entire village, hitherto

immune, granted the anophelines are there to propagate the mischief. By

means of these annual migrations the scourge has spread, in the past.

And so it spreads to-day, whenever possible. Of forty labourers that

left Caulonia for Cotrone in 1908 all returned infected save two, who

had made liberal use of quinine as a prophylactic. Fortunately, there

are no anophelines at Caulonia.

Greatly, indeed, must this country have changed since olden days; and

gleaning here and there among the ancients, Dr. Genovese has garnered

some interesting facts on this head. The coast-line, now unbroken sand,

is called _rocky,_ in several regions, by Strabo, Virgil and Persius

Flaccus; of the two harbours, of Locri, of that of Metapontum, Caulonia

and other cities, nothing remains; the promontory of Cocynthum

(Stilo)—described as the longest promontory in Italy—together with

other capes, has been washed away by the waves or submerged under silt

carried down from the hills; islands, like that of Calypso which is

described in Vincenzo Pascale’s book (1796), and mentioned by G.

Castaldi (1842), have clean vanished from the map.

The woodlands have retired far inland; yet here at Caulonia, says

Thucydides, was prepared the timber for the fleets of Athens. The

rivers, irregular and spasmodic torrents, must have flowed with more

equal and deeper current, since Pliny mentions five of them as

navigable; snow, very likely, covered the mountain tops; the rainfall

was clearly more abundant—one of the sights of Locri was its daily

rainbow; the cicadas of the territory of Reggio are said to have been

“dumb,” on account of the dampness of the climate. They are anything

but dumb nowadays.

Earth-movements, too, have tilted the coast-line up and down, and there

is evidence to show that while the Tyrrhenian shore has been raised by

these oscillations, the Ionian has sunk. Not long ago four columns were

found in the sea at Cotrone two hundred yards from the beach; old

sailors remember another group of columns

visible at low tide near Caulonia. It is quite possible that the Ionian

used to be as rocky as the other shore, and this gradual sinking of the

coast must have retarded the rapid outflow of the rivers, as it has

done in the plain of Paestum and in the Pontine marshes, favouring

malarious conditions. Earthquakes have helped in the work; that of 1908

lowered certain parts of the Calabrian shore opposite Messina by about

one metre. Indeed, though earthquakes have been known to raise the soil

and thereby improve it, the Calabrian ones have generally had a

contrary effect. The terrific upheavals of 1783-1787 produced two

hundred and fifteen lakes in the country; they were drained away in a

style most creditable to the Bourbons, but there followed an epidemic

of malaria which carried off 18,800 people!

These Calabrian conditions are only part of a general change of climate

which seems to have taken place all over Italy; a change to which

Columella refers when, quoting Saserna, he says that formerly the vine

and olive could not prosper “by reason of the severe winter” in certain

places where they have since become abundant, “thanks to a milder

temperature.” We never hear of the frozen Tiber nowadays, and many

remarks of the ancients as to the moist and cold climate seem strange

to us. Pliny praises the chestnuts of Tarentum; I question whether the

tree could survive the hot climate of to-day. Nobody could induce

“splendid beeches” to grow in the _lowlands_ of Latium, yet

Theophrastus, a botanist, says that they were drawn from this region

for shipbuilding purposes. This gradual desiccation has probably gone

on for long ages; so Signor Cavara has discovered old trunks of white

fir in districts of the Apennines where such a plant could not possibly

grow to-day.

A change to a dry and warm atmosphere is naturally propitious to

malaria, granted sufficient water remains to propagate the mosquito.

And the mosquito contents itself with very little—the merest teacupful.

Returning to old Calabria, we find the woods of Locri praised by

Proclus—woods that must have been of coniferous timber, since Virgil

lauds their resinous pitch. Now the Aleppo pine produces pitch, and

would still flourish there, as it does in the lowlands between Taranto

and Metaponto; the classical Sila pitch-trees, however, could not grow

at this level any more. Corroborative evidence can be drawn from

Theocritus, who mentions heath and arbutus as thriving in the marine

thickets near Cotrone—mountain shrubs, nowadays, that have taken refuge

in cooler uplands,

together with the wood-pigeon which haunted the same jungles. It is

true that he hints at marshes near Cotrone, and, indeed, large tracts

of south Italy are described as marshy by the ancients; they may well

have harboured the anopheles mosquito from time immemorial, but it does

not follow that they were malarious.

Much of the healthy physical conditions may have remained into the

Middle Ages or even later; it is strange to read, for example, in

Edrisius, of the pitch and tar that were exported to all parts from the

Bradano river, or of the torrential Sinno that “ships enter this

river—it offers excellent anchorage”; odd, too, to hear of coral

fisheries as late as the seventeenth century at Rocella Ionica, where

the waves now slumber on an even and sandy beach.

But malaria had made insidious strides, meanwhile. Dr. Genovese thinks

that by the year 1691 the entire coast was malarious and abandoned like

now, though only within the last two centuries has man actively

co-operated in its dissemination. So long as the woodlands on the

plains are cut down or grazed by goats, relatively little damage is

done; but it spells ruin to denude, in a country like this, the steep

slopes of their timber. Whoever wishes to know what mischief the goats,

those picturesque but pernicious quadrupeds, can do to a mountainous

country, should study the history of St. Helena.[2] Man, with his

charcoal-burning, has completed the disaster. What happens? The friable

rock, no longer sustained by plant-life, crashes down with each

thunderstorm, blocks up the valleys, devastating large tracts of

fertile land; it creates swamps in the lowlands, and impedes the

outflow of water to the sea. These ravenous _fiumare_ have become a

feature in Calabrian scenery; underneath one of the most terrible of

them lies the birthplace of Praxiteles. Dry or half-dry during the warm

months, and of formidable breadth, such torrent-beds—the stagnant water

at their skirts—are ideal breeding-places for the anophelines from

their mouth up to a height of 250 metres. So it comes about that,

within recent times, rivers have grown to be the main arteries of

malaria. And there are rivers galore in Calabria. The patriotic Barrius

enumerates 110 of them—Father Fiore, less learned, or more prudent, not

quite so many. Deforestation and malaria have gone hand in hand here,

as in Greece, Asia Minor, North Africa, and other countries.

[2] By J. C. Melliss (London, 1875). Thanks to the goats, Maltese

fever has lately been introduced into Calabria.

Thus year after year, from one cause or another, the conditions have

become more favourable for the disease to do its fatal work.

[Illustration: Effects of deforestation (Aspromonte)]

That much of this harm has been done quite lately can often be

proved. At Caulonia, for instance, the woodlands are known to have

reached the shore a hundred years ago, and there are bare tracts of

land still bearing the name of “foresta.” In a single summer (1807) a

French regiment stationed at Cosenza lost 800 men from fever, and when

Rath visited the town in 1871 it was described to him as a “vast

hospital” during the hot months; nevertheless, says he, the disease has

only been so destructive during the last two centuries, for up to that

time the forests touched the outskirts of the town and regulated the

Crati-bed, preventing the formation of marshes. The literary record of

Cosenza is one of exceptional brilliance; for acute and original

thought this town can hardly be surpassed by any other of its size on

earth. Were statistics available, I have not the slightest doubt that

fever could be shown to be largely responsible for the withering of its

spiritual life.

The same fate—the same relapse from prosperity to decay—and for the

same reasons, has overtaken many other riverside villages, among them

that of Tarsia, the Caprasia of the Antonine Itinerary. “It was

described to us,” says Rath, “as the most miserable and dirty village

in Calabria; but we found it worse.” It remains, to-day, a highly

infected and altogether pitiable place, concerning which I have made

certain modest researches that would require, none the less, a chapter

to themselves. . . .

Perhaps I have already said over-much on the subject. An Englishman

unacquainted with malaria might think so, oblivious of the fact that

Sir Ronald Ross has called it “perhaps the most important of human

diseases.” But let him go to a malarious country and see with his own

eyes something of the degradation it involves; how it stamps its

accursed imprimatur upon man and nature alike! It is the blight of

youth—the desert-maker. A well-known Italian senator has declared that

the story of south Italy is, was, and will be the story of malaria; and

the greater part of Calabria will certainly remain an enigma to the

traveller who ignores what is meant by this plague.

Malaria is the key to a correct understanding of the landscape; it

explains the inhabitants, their mode of life, their habits, their

history.

XXXV

CAULONIA TO SERRA

“How do you treat your malaria patients?” I once enquired of a doctor

in India.

A few good stiff doses, he said, when the attack is on; that generally

settles them. If not, they can begin again. To take quinine as a

prophylactic, he considered folly. It might grow into a habit; you

never know. . . .

It is to be hoped that such types are extinct, out there. They are

extinct hereabouts. None but an ignorant person would now traverse

malarious tracts in summer without previous quininization; or, if

infected, deal with the disease otherwise than by an amply protracted

treatment of cure. Yet it is only quite lately that we have gained our

knowledge of a proper use of the drug; and this accounts for the great

mortality long after its specific effects had been recognized by the

profession. It was given both inefficiently and insufficiently. It was

sold at a prohibitive price. The country people were distrustful;

so-and-so had taken it for three or four days; he had improved, yes;

but the fever was on him once more. Why waste money on such

experiments?

I remember accosting a lad, anemic, shivering with the tertian, and

marked by that untimely senility which is the sign-manual of malaria. I

suggested quinine.

“I don’t take doctors’ stuff,” he said. “Even if I wanted to, my father

would not let me. And if he did, there’s no money to pay for it. And if

there were, it would do no good. He’s tried it himself.”

“Well, but how are you feeling?”

“Oh, all right. There’s nothing much the matter with me. Just the bad

air.”

Such types, too, are practically extinct nowadays; the people are being

educated to recognize their peril and how to avoid it; they begin to

follow Professor Celli’s advice in the matter of regarding quinine as

their “daily bread.” For since the discovery of the anophelic origin of

malaria many devices have been put into execution to combat the

disease, not the least of them being a

popularized teaching of its causes and consequences by means of

pamphlets, lectures to school-children, and so forth.

Now, you may either fight the anopheles—the vehicle, or the disease

itself. The first entails putting the country into such a state that

the mosquito finds it unpleasant to live there, a labour of Hercules.

Yet large sums are being expended in draining marshy tracts, regulating

river-beds and afforesting bare spaces; and if you are interested in

such works, you will do well to see what is going on at Metaponto at

this moment. (A considerable portion of the Government grant for these

purposes has lately been deflected for use in the Tripolitan war.)

Exemplary fines are also imposed for illicit timber-cutting and

grazing,—in those towns, at least, where the magistrate has sufficient

sense to perceive the ulterior benefits to be derived from what

certainly entails a good deal of temporary hardship on poor people.

Certain economic changes are helping in this work; so the wealth

imported from America helps to break up the big properties, those

latifundia which, says an Italian authority, “are synonymous with

malaria.” The ideal condition—the extirpation of anophelines—will never

be attained; nor is it of vital importance that it should be.

Far more pressing is the protection of man against their attacks.

Wonderful success has crowned the wire-netting of the windows—an

outcome of the classical experiments of 1899, in the Roman Campagna.

But chiefest and most urgent of all is the cure of the infected

population. In this direction, results astonishing—results well-nigh

incredible—have attended the recently introduced governmental sale of

quinine. In the year 1895 there were 16,464 deaths from malaria

throughout Italy. By 1908 the number had sunk to 3463. Eloquent

figures, that require no comment! And, despite the fact that the drug

is now sold at a merely nominal rate or freely given away to the

needy—nay, thrust down the very throats of the afflicted peasantry by

devoted gentlemen who scour the plains with ambulances during the

deadly season—despite this, the yearly profits from its sale are

amounting to about three-quarters of a million francs.

So these forlorn regions are at last beginning to revive.

And returning to Focà, of whose dreadful condition up to 1902 (year of

the introduction of Government quinine) I have just spoken, we find

that a revolution has taken place. Between that year and 1908 the

birth-rate more than doubled the death-rate. In 1908 some two hundred

poor folks frequented the ambulance, nearly six kilogrammes of quinine

being gratuitously distributed;

not one of the natives of the place was attacked by the disease; and

there was a single death—an old woman of eighty, who succumbed to

senile decay.[1]

[1] Doctor Genovese’s statistical investigations have brought an

interesting little fact to light. In the debilitating pre-quinine

period there was a surplus of female births; now, with increased

healthfulness, those of the males preponderate.

This is an example of what the new quinine-policy has done for Italy,

in briefest space of time. Well may the nation be proud of the men who

conceived this genial and beneficial measure and carried it through

Parliament, and of those local doctors without whose enlightened zeal

such a triumph could not have been achieved. . . .

Sir Ronald Ross’s discovery, by the way, has been fruitful not only in

practical humanitarian results. For instance, it has reduced North’s

laborious “Roman Fever” to something little better than a curiosity.

And here, on these deserted shores that were once resplendent with a

great civilization—here is the place to peruse Mr. W. M. Jones’s

studies on this subject. I will not give even the shortest précis of

his conscientious researches nor attempt to picture their effect upon a

mind trained in the old school of thought; suffice to say, that the

author would persuade us that malaria is implicated, to an hitherto

unsuspected extent, in the decline of ancient Greece and Rome. And he

succeeds. Yes; a man accustomed to weigh evidence will admit, I think,

that he has made out a suggestively strong case.

How puzzled we were to explain why the brilliant life of Magna Graecia

was snuffed out suddenly, like a candle, without any appreciably

efficient cause—how we listened to our preachers cackling about the

inevitable consequences of Sybaritic luxury, and to the warnings of

sage politicians concerning the dangers of mere town-patriotism as

opposed to worthier systems of confederation! How we drank it all in!

And how it warmed the cockles of our hearts to think that we were not

vicious, narrow-minded heathens, such as these!

And now a vulgar gnat is declared to be at the bottom of the whole

mystery.

Crudely disconcerting, these scientific discoveries. Or is it not

rather hard to be dragged to earth in this callous fashion, while

soaring heavenward on the wings of our edifying reflections? For the

rest—the old, old story; a simple, physical explanation of what used to

be an enigma brimful of moral significance.

That Mr. Jones’s facts and arguments will be found applicable to

other decayed races in the old and new worlds is highly probable.

Meanwhile, it takes one’s breath away quite sufficiently to realize

that they apply to Hellas and her old colonies on these shores.

“‘AUTOS. Strange! My interest waxes. Tell me then, what affliction, God

or Devil, wiped away the fair life upon the globe, the beasts, the

birds, the delectable plantations, and all the blithe millions of the

human race? What calamity fell upon them?’

“‘ESCHATA. A gnat.’

“‘AUTOS. A gnat?’

“‘ESCHATA. Even so.’”

Thus I wrote, while yet unaware that such pests as anophelines existed

upon earth. . . .

At the same time, I think we must be cautious in following certain

deductions of our author; that theory of brutality, for example, as

resulting from malaria. Speaking of Calabria, I would almost undertake

to prove, from the archives of law-courts, that certain of the most

malarial tracts are precisely those in which there is least brutality

of any kind. Cotrone, for instance. . . . The _delegato_ (head of the

police) of that town is so young—a mere boy—that I marvelled how he

could possibly have obtained a position which is usually filled by

seasoned and experienced officers. He was a “son of the white hen,”

they told me; that is, a socially favoured individual, who was given

this job for the simple reason that there was hardly any serious work

for him to do. Cosenza, on the other hand, has a very different

reputation nowadays. And it is perfectly easy to explain how malaria

might have contributed to this end. For the disease—and herein lies its

curse—lowers both the physical and social standard of a people; it

breeds misery, poverty and ignorance—fit soil for callous rapacity.

But how about his theory of “pessimism” infecting the outlook of

generations of malaria-weakened sages? I find no trace of pessimism

here, not even in its mild Buddhistic form. The most salient mental

trait of cultured Calabrians is a subtle detachment and contempt of

illusions—whence their time-honoured renown as abstract thinkers and

speculators. This derives from a philosophic view of life and entails,

naturally enough, the outward semblance of gravity—a Spanish gravity,

due not so much to a strong graft of Spanish blood and customs during

the viceregal period, as to actual affinities with the race of Spain.

But this gravity has nothing in common with pessimism, antagonistic

though it be to those outbursts of irresponsible optimism engendered

under northern skies by copious food, or beer.

To reach the uplands of Fabbrizia and Serra, whither I was now bound, I

might have utilized the driving road from Gioioso, on the Reggio side

of Caulonia. But that was everybody’s route. Or I might have gone _via_

Stilo, on the other side. But Stilo with its memories of Campanella—a

Spanish type, this!—and of Otho II, its winding track into the

beech-clad heights of Ferdinandea, was already familiar to me. I

elected to penetrate straight inland by the shortest way; a capable

muleteer at once presented himself.

We passed through one single village, Ragona; leaving those of S.

Nicola and Nardo di Pace on the right. The first of them is celebrated

for its annual miracle of the burning olive, when, armed to the teeth

(for some ancient reason), the populace repairs to the walls of a

certain convent out of which there grows an olive tree: at its foot is

kindled a fire whose flames are sufficient to scorch all the leaves,

but behold! next day the foliage is seen to glow more bravely green

than ever. Perhaps the roots of the tree are near some cistern. These

mountain villages, hidden under oaks and vines, with waters trickling

through their lanes, a fine climate and a soil that bears everything

needful for life, must be ideal habitations for simple folks. In some

of them, the death-rate is as low as 7: 1000. Malaria is unknown here:

they seem to fulfil all the conditions of a terrestrial paradise.

There is a note of joyous vigour in this landscape. The mule-track

winds in and out among the heights, through flowery meadows grazed by

cattle and full of buzzing insects and butterflies, and along

hill-sides cunningly irrigated; it climbs up to heathery summits and

down again through glades of chestnut and ilex with mossy trunks, whose

shadow fosters strange sensations of chill and gloom. Then out again,

into the sunshine of waving corn and poppies.

For a short while we stumbled along a torrent-bed, and I grew rather

sad to think that it might be the last I should see for some time to

come, my days in this country being now numbered. This one was narrow.

But there are others, interminable in length and breadth. Interminable!

No breeze stirs in those deep depressions through which the merest

thread of milky water trickles disconsolately. The sun blazes overhead

and hours pass, while you trudge through the fiery inferno;

scintillations of heat rise from the stones and still you crawl

onwards, breathless and footsore, till eyes are dazed and senses reel.

One may well say bad things of these torrid deserts of pebbles which,

up till lately, were the only highways from the lowlands into the

mountainous parts. But they are sweet in memory. One calls to mind the

wild savours that hang in

the stagnant air; the cloven hill-sides, seamed with gorgeous patches

of russet and purple and green; the spectral tamarisks, and the glory

of coral-tinted oleanders rising in solitary tufts of beauty, or

flaming congregations, out of the pallid waste of boulders.

After exactly six hours Fabbrizia was reached—a large place whose name,

like that of Borgia, Savelli, Carafa and other villages on these

southern hills, calls up associations utterly non-Calabrian; Fabbrizia,

with pretentious new church and fantastically dirty side-streets. It

lies at the respectable elevation of 900 metres, on the summit of a

monstrous landslide which has disfigured the country.

While ascending along the flank of this deformity I was able to see how

the authorities have attempted to cope with the mischief and arrest

further collapses. This is what they have done. The minute channels of

water, that might contribute to the disintegration of the soil by

running into this gaping wound from the sides or above, have been

artfully diverted from their natural courses; trees and shrubs are

planted at its outskirts in order to uphold the earth at these spots by

their roots—they have been protected by barbed wire from the grazing of

cattle; furthermore, a multitude of wickerwork dykes are thrown across

the accessible portions of the scar, to collect the downward-rushing

material and tempt winged plant-seeds to establish themselves on the

ledges thus formed. To bridle this runaway mountain is no mean task,

for such _frane_ are like rodent ulcers, ever enlarging at the edges.

With the heat, with every shower of rain, with every breath of wind,

the earth crumbles away; there is an eternal trickling, day and night,

until some huge boulder is exposed which crashes down, loosening

everything in its wild career; a single tempest may disrupture what the

patience and ingenuity of years have contrived.

Three more hours or thereabouts will take you to Serra San Bruno along

the backbone of southern Italy, through cultivated lands and pasture

and lonely stretches of bracken, once covered by woodlands.

It may well be that the townlet has grown up around, or rather near,

the far-famed Carthusian monastery. I know nothing of its history save

that it has the reputation of being one of the most bigoted places in

Calabria—a fact of which the sagacious General Manhes availed himself

when he devised his original and effective plan of chastising the

inhabitants for a piece of atrocious conduct on their part. He caused

all the local priests to be arrested and imprisoned; the churches were

closed, and the town placed under

what might be called an interdict. The natives took it quietly at

first, but soon the terror of the situation dawned upon them. No

religious marriages, no baptisms, no funerals—the comforts of heaven

refused to living and dead alike. . . . The strain grew intolerable

and, in a panic of remorse, the populace hunted down their own

brigand-relations and handed them over to Manhes, who duly executed

them, one and all. Then the interdict was taken off and the priests set

at liberty; and a certain writer tells us that the people were so

charmed with the General’s humane and businesslike methods that they

forthwith christened him “Saint Manhes,” a name which, he avers, has

clung to him ever since.

The monastery lies about a mile distant; near at hand is a little

artificial lake and the renowned chapel of Santa Maria. There was a

time when I would have dilated lovingly upon this structure—a time when

I probably knew as much about Carthusian convents as is needful for any

of their inmates; when I studied Tromby’s ponderous work and God knows

how many more—ay, and spent two precious weeks of my life in

deciphering certain crabbed MSS. of Tutini in the Brancacciana

library—ay, and tested the spleenful Perrey’s “Ragioni del Regio Fisco,

etc.,” as to the alleged land-grabbing propensities of this order—ay,

and even pilgrimaged to Rome to consult the present general of the

Carthusians (his predecessor, more likely) as to some administrative

detail, all-important, which has wholly escaped my memory. Gone are

those days of studious gropings into blind alleys! The current of zeal

has slowed down or turned aside, maybe, into other channels. They who

wish, will find a description of the pristine splendour of this

monastery in various books by Pacicchelli; the catastrophe of 1783 was

described by Keppel Craven and reported upon, with illustrations, by

the Commission of the Naples Academy; and if you are of a romantic turn

of mind, you will find a good story of the place, as it looked during

the ruinous days of desolation, in Misasi’s “Calabrian Tales.”

It is now rebuilt on modern lines and not much of the original

structure remains upright. I wandered about the precincts in the

company of two white-robed French monks, endeavouring to reconstruct

not the convent as it was in its younger days, but _them._ That older

one, especially—he had known the world. . . .

Meat being forbidden, the godly brethren have a contract for fish to be

brought up every day by the post-carriage from the distant Soverato.

And what happens, I asked, when none are caught?

“Eh bien, nous mangeons des macaroni!”

[Illustration: Old Soverato]

Such a diet would never suit me. Let me retire to a monkery where

carnivorous leanings may be indulged. Methinks I could pray more

cheerfully with the prospect of a rational _déjeuner à la fourchette_

looming ahead.

At the back of the monastery lies a majestic forest of white

firs—nothing but firs; a unique region, so far as south and central

Italy are concerned. I was there in the golden hour after sunset, and

yet again in the twilight of dew-drenched morning; and it seemed to me

that in this temple not made by hands there dwelt an enchantment more

elemental, and more holy, than in the cloistered aisles hard by. This

assemblage of solemn trees has survived, thanks to rare conditions of

soil and climate. The land lies high; the ground is perennially moist

and intersected by a horde of rills that join their waters to form the

river Ancinale; frequent showers descend from above. Serra San Bruno

has an uncommonly heavy rainfall. It lies in a vale occupying the site

of a pleistocene lake, and the forest, now restricted to one side of

the basin, encircled it entirely in olden days. At its margin they have

established a manufactory which converts the wood into paper—blissful

sight for the utilitarian.

Finding little else of interest in Serra, and hungering for the

flesh-pots of Cotrone, I descended by the postal diligence to Soverato,

nearly a day’s journey. Old Soverato is in ruins, but the new town

seems to thrive in spite of being surrounded by deserts of malaria.

While waiting for supper and the train to Cotrone, I strolled along the

beach, and soon found myself sitting beside the bleached anatomy of

some stranded leviathan, and gazing at the mountains of Squillace that

glowed in the soft lights of sunset. The shore was deserted save for

myself and a portly dogana-official who was playing with his little

son—trying to amuse him by elephantine gambols on the sand, regardless

of his uniform and manly dignity. Notwithstanding his rotundity, he was

an active and resourceful parent, and enjoyed himself vastly; the boy

pretending, as polite children sometimes do, to enter into the fun of

the game.

XXXVI

MEMORIES OF GISSING

Two new hotels have recently sprung up at Cotrone. With laudable

patriotism, they are called after its great local champions, athletic

and spiritual, in ancient days—Hotel Milo and Hotel Pythagoras. As

such, they might be expected to make a strong appeal to the muscles and

brains of their respective clients. I rather fancy that the chief

customers of both are commercial travellers who have as little of the

one as of the other, and to whom these fine names are Greek.

As for myself, I remain faithful to the “Concordia” which has twice

already sheltered me within its walls.

The shade of George Gissing haunts these chambers and passages. It was

in 1897 that he lodged here with that worthy trio: Gibbon, Lenormant

and Cassiodorus. The chapters devoted to Cotrone are the most lively

and characteristic in his “Ionian Sea.” Strangely does the description

of his arrival in the town, and his reception in the “Concordia,”

resemble that in Bourget’s “Sensations.”

The establishment has vastly improved since those days. The food is

good and varied, the charges moderate; the place is spotlessly clean in

every part—I could only wish that the hotels in some of our English

country towns were up to the standard of the “Concordia” in this

respect. “One cannot live without cleanliness,” as the housemaid,

assiduously scrubbing, remarked to me. It is also enlarged; the old

dining-room, whose guests are so humorously described by him, is now my

favourite bedroom, while those wretched oil-lamps sputtering on the

wall have been replaced by a lavish use of electricity. One is hardly

safe, however, in praising these inns over-much; they are so apt to

change hands. So long as competition with the two others continues, the

“Concordia” will presumably keep to its present level.

Of freaks in the dining-room, I have so far only observed one whom

Gissing might have added to his collection. He is a _director_ of some

kind, and his method of devouring maccheroni I unreservedly admire—it

displays that lack of all effort which distinguishes true art from

false. He does not eat them with

deliberate mastication; he does not even—like your ordinary

amateur—drink them in separate gulps; but he contrives, by some

swiftly-adroit process of levitation, that the whole plateful shall

rise in a noiseless and unbroken flood from the table to his mouth,

whence it glides down his gullet with the relentless ease of a river

pouring into a cavern. Altogether, a series of films depicting him at

work upon a meal would make the fortune of a picture-show company—in

England. Not here, however; such types are too common to be remarked,

the reason being that boys are seldom sent to boarding schools where

stereotyped conventions of “good form” are held up for their imitation,

but brought up at home by adoring mothers who care little for such

externals or, if they do, have no great authority to enforce their

views. On entering the world, these eccentricities in manner are

proudly clung to, as a sign of manly independence.

Death has made hideous gaps in the short interval. The kindly

Vice-Consul at Catanzaro is no more; the mayor of Cotrone, whose permit

enabled Gissing to visit that orchard by the riverside, has likewise

joined the majority; the housemaid of the “Concordia,” the domestic

serf with dark and fiercely flashing eyes—dead! And dead is mine

hostess, “the stout, slatternly, sleepy woman, who seemed surprised at

my demand for food, but at length complied with it.”

But the little waiter is alive and now married; and Doctor Sculco still

resides in his aristocratic _palazzo_ up that winding way in the old

town, with the escutcheon of a scorpion—portentous emblem for a

doctor—over its entrance. He is a little greyer, no doubt; but the same

genial and alert personage as in those days.

I called on this gentleman, hoping to obtain from him some

reminiscences of Gissing, whom he attended during a serious illness.

“Yes,” he replied, to my enquiries, “I remember him quite well; the

young English poet who was ill here. I prescribed for him. Yes—yes! He

wore his hair long.”

And that was all I could draw from him. I have noticed more than once

that Italian physicians have a stern conception of the Hippocratic

oath: the affairs of their patients, dead or alive, are a sacred trust

in perpetuity.

The town, furthermore, has undergone manifold improvements in those few

years. Trees are being planted by the roadsides; electric light is

everywhere and, best of all, an excellent water-supply has been led

down from the cool heights of the Sila, bringing cleanliness, health

and prosperity in its train. And a stately cement-bridge is being built

over the Esaro, that “all but stagnant

and wholly pestilential stream.” The Esaro _glides pleasantly,_ says

the chronicler Nola Molisi. Perhaps it really glided, in his day.

One might do worse than spend a quiet month or two at Cotrone in the

spring, for the place grows upon one: it is so reposeful and orderly.

But not in winter. Gissing committed the common error of visiting south

Italy at that season when, even if the weather will pass, the country

and its inhabitants are not true to themselves. You must not come to

these parts in winter time.

Nor yet in the autumn, for the surrounding district is highly

malarious. Thucydides already speaks of these coastlands as depopulated

(relatively speaking, I suppose), and under the Romans they recovered

but little; they have only begun to revive quite lately.[1] Yet this

town must have looked well enough in the twelfth century, since it is

described by Edrisius as “a very old city, primitive and beautiful,

prosperous and populated, in a smiling position, with walls of defence

and an ample port for anchorage.” I suspect that the history of Cotrone

will be found to bear out Professor Celli’s theory of the periodical

recrudescences and abatements of malaria. However that may be, the

place used to be in a deplorable state. Riedesel (1771) calls it “la

ville la plus affreuse de l’Italie, et peut-être du monde entier”;

twenty years later, it is described as “sehr ungesund ... so ärmlich

als möglich”; in 1808 it was “réduite à une population de trois mille

habitants rongés par la misère, et les maladies qu’occasionne la

stagnation des eaux qui autrefois fertilisaient ces belles campagnes.”

In 1828, says Vespoli, it contained only 3932 souls.

[1] Between 1815—1843, and in this single province of Catanzaro, there

was an actual decline in the population of thirty-six towns and

villages. Malaria!

I rejoice to cite such figures. They show how vastly Cotrone, together

with the rest of Calabria, has improved since the Bourbons were ousted.

The sack of the town by their hero Cardinal Ruffo, described by Pepe

and others, must have left long traces. “Horrible was the carnage

perpetrated by these ferocious bands. Neither age nor sex nor condition

was spared. . . . After two days of pillage accompanied by a multitude

of excesses and cruelties, they erected, on the third day, a

magnificent altar in the middle of a large square” —and here the

Cardinal, clothed in his sacred purple, praised the good deeds of the

past two days and then, raising his arms, displayed a crucifix,

absolving his crew from the faults committed during the ardour of the

sack, and blessed them.

[Illustration: The modern Aesarus]

I shall be sorry to leave these regions for the north, as leave them I

must, in shortest time. The bathing alone would tempt me to prolong my

stay, were it possible. Whereas Taranto, despite its

situation, possesses no convenient beach, there are here, on either

side of the town, leagues of shimmering sand lapped by tepid and

caressing waves; it is a sunlit solitude; the land is your own, the sea

your own, as far as eye can reach. One may well become an amphibian, at

Cotrone.

The inhabitants of this town are well-mannered and devoid of the

“ineffable” air of the Tarentines. But they are not a handsome race.

Gissing says, à propos of the products of a local photographer, that it

was “a hideous exhibition; some of the visages attained an incredible

degree of vulgar ugliness.” That is quite true. Old authors praise the

beauty of the women of Cotrone, Bagnara, and other southern towns; for

my part, I have seldom found good-looking women in the coastlands of

Calabria; the matrons, especially, seem to favour that ideal of the

Hottentot Venus which you may study in the Jardin des Plantes; they are

decidedly centripetal. Of the girls and boys one notices only those who

possess a peculiar trait: the eyebrows pencilled in a dead straight

line, which gives them an almost hieratic aspect. I cannot guess from

what race is derived this marked feature which fades away with age as

the brows wax thicker and irregular in contour. We may call it Hellenic

on the old-fashioned principle that everything attractive comes from

the Greeks, while its opposite is ascribed to those unfortunate “Arabs”

who, as a matter of fact, are a sufficiently fine-looking breed.

And there must be very little Greek blood left here. The town—among

many similar vicissitudes—was peopled largely by Bruttians, after

Hannibal had established himself here. In the Viceregal period, again,

there was a great infusion of Spanish elements. A number of Spanish

surnames still linger on the spot.

And what of Gissing’s other friend, the amiable guardian of the

cemetery? “His simple good nature and intelligence greatly won upon me.

I like to think of him as still quietly happy amid his garden walls,

tending flowers that grow over the dead at Cotrone.”

Dead, like those whose graves he tended; like Gissing himself. He

expired in February 1901—the year of the publication of the “Ionian

Sea,” and they showed me his tomb near the right side of the entrance;

a poor little grave, with a wooden cross bearing a number, which will

soon be removed to make room for another one.

This cemetery by the sea is a fair green spot, enclosed in a high wall

and set with flowering plants and comely cypresses that look well

against their background of barren clay-hills. Wandering here, I called

to mind the decent cemetery of Lucera, and that of

Manfredonia, built in a sleepy hollow at the back of the town which the

monks in olden days had utilized as their kitchen garden (it is one of

the few localities where deep soil can be found on that thirsty

limestone plain); I remembered the Venosa burial-ground near the site

of the Roman amphitheatre, among the tombs of which I had vainly

endeavoured to find proofs that the name of Horace is as common here as

that of Manfred in those other two towns; the Taranto cemetery, beyond

the railway quarter, somewhat overloaded with pretentious ornaments; I

thought of many cities of the dead, in places recently explored—that of

Rossano, ill-kept within, but splendidly situated on a projecting spur

that dominates the Ionian; of Caulonia, secluded among ravines at the

back of the town. . . .

They are all full of character; a note in the landscape, with their

cypresses darkly towering amid the pale and lowly olives; one would

think the populace had thrown its whole poetic feeling into the choice

of these sites and their embellishments. But this is not the case; they

are chosen merely for convenience—not too far from habitations, and yet

on ground that is comparatively cheap. Nor are they truly venerable,

like ours. They date, for the most part, from the time when the

Government abolished the old system of inhumation in churches—a system

which, for the rest, still survives; there are over six hundred of

these _fosse carnarie_ in use at this moment, most of them in churches.

And a sad thought obtrudes itself in these oases of peace and verdure.

The Italian law requires that the body shall be buried within

twenty-four hours after decease (the French consider forty-eight hours

too short a term, and are thinking of modifying their regulations in

this respect): a doctor’s certificate of death is necessary but often

impossible to procure, since some five hundred Italian communities

possess no medical man whatever. Add to this, the superstitions of

ignorant country people towards the dead, testified to by extraordinary

beliefs and customs which you will find in Pitré and other collectors

of native lore—their mingled fear and hatred of a corpse, which prompts

them to thrust it underground at the earliest possible opportunity. . .

. Premature burial must be all too frequent here. I will not enlarge

upon the theme of horror by relating what gravediggers have seen with

their own eyes on disturbing old coffins; if only half what they tell

me is true, it reveals a state of affairs not to be contemplated

without shuddering pity, and one that calls for prompt legislation.

Only last year a frightful case came to light in Sicily. _Videant

Consules._

[Illustration: The Cemetery of Cotrone]

Here, at the cemetery, the driving road abruptly ends;

thenceforward there is merely a track along the sea that leads,

ultimately, to Capo Nau, where stands a solitary column, last relic of

the great temple of Hera. I sometimes follow it as far as certain wells

that are sunk, Arab-fashion, into the sand, and dedicated to Saint

Anne. Goats and cows recline here after their meagre repast of scorched

grasses, and the shepherds in charge have voices so soft, and manners

so gentle, as to call up suggestions of the Golden Age. These pastoral

folk are the primitives of Cotrone. From father to son, for untold ages

before Theocritus hymned them, they have kept up their peculiar habits

and traditions; between them and the agricultural classes is a gulf as

deep as between these and the citizens. Conversing with them, one

marvels how the same occupation can produce creatures so unlike as

these and the goat-boys of Naples, the most desperate _camorristi._

The cows may well be descendants of the sacred cattle of Hera that

browsed under the pines which are known to have clothed the bleak

promontory. You may encounter them every day, wandering on the way to

the town which they supply with milk; to avoid the dusty road, they

march sedately through the soft wet sand at the water’s edge, their

silvery bodies outlined against a cærulean flood of sky and sea.

On this promenade I yesterday observed, slow-pacing beside the waves, a

meditative priest, who gave me some details regarding the ruined church

of which Gissing speaks. It lies in the direction of the cemetery,

outside the town; “its lonely position,” he says, “made it interesting,

and the cupola of coloured tiles (like that of the cathedral of Amalfi)

remained intact, a bright spot against the grey hills behind.” This

cupola has recently been removed, but part of the old walls serve as

foundation for a new sanctuary, a sordid-looking structure with

red-tiled roof: I am glad to have taken a view of it, some years ago,

ere its transformation. Its patroness is the Madonna del Carmine—the

same whose church in Naples is frequented by thieves and cut-throats,

who make a special cult of this Virgin Mother and invoke Her blessing

on their nefarious undertakings.

The old church, he told me, was built in the middle of the seventeenth

century; this new one, he agreed, might have been constructed on more

ambitious lines, “but nowadays——” and he broke off, with eloquent

aposiopesis.

It was the same, he went on, with the road to the cemetery; why should

it not be continued right up to the cape of the Column as in olden

days, over ground _dove ogni passo è una memoria:_ where every footstep

is a memory?

_“_Rich Italians,” he said, “sometimes give away money to benefit the

public. But the very rich—never! And at Cotrone, you must remember,

every one belongs to the latter class.”

We spoke of the Sila, which he had occasionally visited.

“What?” he asked incredulously, “you have crossed the whole of that

country, where there is nothing to eat—nothing in the purest and most

literal sense of that word? My dear sir! You must feel like Hannibal,

after his passage of the Alps.”

Those barren clay-hills on our right of which Gissing speaks (they are

like the _balze_ of the Apennines) annoyed him considerably; they were

the malediction of the town, he declared. At the same time, they

supplied him with the groundwork of a theory for which there is a good

deal to be said. The old Greek city, he conjectured, must have been

largely built of bricks made from their clay, which is once more being

utilized for this purpose. How else account for its utter

disappearance? Much of the finer buildings were doubtless of stone, and

these have been worked into the fort, the harbour and _palazzi_ of new

Cotrone; but this would never account for the vanishing of a town

nearly twelve miles in circumference. Bricks, he said, would explain

the mystery; they had crumbled into dust ere yet the Romans rebuilt,

with old Greek stones, the city on the promontory now occupied by the

new settlement.

The modern palaces on the rising ground of the citadel are worthy of a

visit; they are inhabited by some half-dozen “millionaires” who have

given Cotrone the reputation of being the richest town of its size in

Italy. So far as I can judge, the histories of some of these wealthy

families would be curious reading.

“Gentlemen,” said the Shepherd, “if you have designs of Trading, you

must go another way; but if you’re of the admired sort of Men, that

have the thriving qualifications of Lying and Cheating, you’re in the

direct Path to Business; for in this City no Learning flourisheth;

Eloquence finds no room here; nor can Temperance, Good Manners, or any

Vertue meet with a Reward; assure yourselves of finding but two sorts

of Men, and those are the Cheated, and those that Cheat.”

If gossip at Naples and elsewhere is to be trusted, old Petronius seems

to have had a prophetic glimpse of the _dessus du panier_ of modern

Cotrone.

XXXVII

COTRONE

The sun has entered the Lion. But the temperature at Cotrone is not

excessive—five degrees lower than Taranto or Milan or London. One grows

weary, none the less, of the deluge of implacable light that descends,

day after day, from the aether. The glistering streets are all but

deserted after the early hours of the morning. A few busy folks move

about till midday on the pavements; and so do I—in the water. But the

long hours following luncheon are consecrated to meditation and repose.

A bundle of Italian newspapers has preceded me hither; upon these I

browse dispersedly, while awaiting the soft call to slumber. Here are

some provincial sheets—the “Movement” of Castrovillari—the “New

Rossano”—the “Bruttian” of Corigliano, with strong literary flavour.

Astonishing how decentralized Italy still is, how brimful of purely

local patriotism: what conception have these men of Rome as their

capital? These articles often reflect a lively turmoil of ideas,

well-expressed. Who pays for such journalistic ventures? Typography is

cheap, and contributors naturally content themselves with the ample

remuneration of appearing in print before their fellow-citizens; a

considerable number of copies are exported to America. Yet I question

whether the circulation of the “New Rossano,” a fortnightly in its

sixth year, can exceed five hundred copies.

But these venial and vapid Neapolitan dailies are my pet aversion. We

know them, _nous autres,_ with their odious personalities and playful

blackmailing tactics; many “distinguished foreigners,” myself included,

could tell a tale anent that subject. Instead of descending to such

matters, let me copy—it is too good to translate—a thrilling item of

news from the chiefest of them, the _Mattino,_ which touches,

furthermore, upon the all-important subject of Calabrian progress.

“CETRARO. Per le continuate premure ed insistenze di questo egregio

uffiziale postale Signor Rocca Francesco—che nulla lascia

pel bene avviamento del nostro uffizio—presso l’ on. Direzione delle

poste di Cosenza, si è ottenuta una cassetta postale, che affissa lungo

il Corso Carlo Pancaso, ci dà la bella commodità di imbucare le nostre

corrispondenze per essere rilevate tre volte al giorno non solo, quanto

ci evita persino la dolorosa e lunga via crucis che dovevamo percorrere

qualvolta si era costretti d’ imbuccare una lettera, essendo il nostro

uffizio situato all’ estremità del paese.

“Tributiamo perciò sincera lode al nostro caro uffiziale postale Sig.

Rocca, e ci auguriamo che egli continui ancora al miglioramento dell’

uffizio istesso, e mercè l’ opera sua costante ed indefessa siamo

sicuri che l’ uffizio postale di Cetraro assurgerà fra non molto ad un’

importanza maggiore di quella che attualmente.”

The erection of a letter-box in the street of a small place of which 80

per cent of the readers have never so much as heard. ... I begin to

understand why the cultured Tarentines do not read these journals.

By far the best part of all such papers is the richly-tinted personal

column, wherein lovers communicate with each other, or endeavour to do

so. I read it conscientiously from beginning to end, admiring, in my

physical capacity, the throbbing passion that prompts such public

outbursts of confidence and, from a literary point of view, their

lapidary style, model of condensation, impossible to render in English

and conditioned by the hard fact that every word costs two sous. Under

this painful material stress, indeed, the messages are sometimes

crushed into a conciseness which the females concerned must have some

difficulty in unperplexing: what on earth does the parsimonious

_Flower_ mean by his Delphic fourpenny worth, thus punctuated—

“(You have) not received. How. Safety.”

One cannot help smiling at this circuitous and unromantic method of

touching the hearts of ladies who take one’s fancy; at the same time,

it testifies to a resourceful vitality, striving to break through the

barriers of Hispano-Arabic convention which surround the fair sex in

this country. They are nothing if not poetic, these love-sick swains.

_Arrow_ murmurs: “My soul lies on your pillow, caressing you softly”;

_Strawberry_ laments that “as bird outside nest, I am alone and lost.

What sadness,” and _Star_ finds the “Days eternal, till Thursday.” And

yet they often choose rather prosaic pseudonyms. Here is _Sahara_ who

“suffers from your silence,” while _Asthma_ is “anticipating one

endless kiss,” and _Old England_ observing, more ir sorrow than in

anger, that he “waited vainly one whole hour.”

But the sagacious _Cooked Lobster_ desires, before commiting himself

further, “a personal interview.” He has perhaps been cooked once

before.

Letters and numbers are best, after all. So thinks F. N. 13, who is

utterly disgusted with his flame—

“Your silence speaks. Useless saying anything. Ça ira.” And likewise

7776—B, a designing rogue and plainly a spendthrift, who wastes

ninepence in making it clear that he “wishes to marry rich young lady,

forgiving youthful errors.” If I were the girl, I would prefer to take

my chances with “Cooked Lobster.”

_“Will much-admired young-lady cherries-in-black-hat indicate method

possible correspondence_ 10211, _Post-Office?”_

How many of these arrows, I wonder, reach their mark?

Ah, here are politics and News of the World, at last. A promising

article on the “Direttissimo Roma-Napoli”—the railway line that is to

connect the two towns by way of the Pontine Marshes. . . . Dear me!

This reads very familiarly. . . . Why, to be sure, it is the identical

dissertation, with a few changes by the office-boy, that has cropped up

periodically in these pages for the last half-century, or whenever the

railway was first projected. The line, as usual, is being projected

more strenuously than before, and certain members of the government

have gone so far as to declare. . . . H’m! Let me try something else:

“The Feminist Movement in England” by Our London Correspondent (who

lives in a little side street off the Toledo); that sounds stimulating.

. . . The advanced English Feminists—so it runs—are taking the lead in

encouraging their torpid sisters on the Continent. . . . Hardly a day

passes, that some new manifestation of the Feminist Movement ... in

fact, it may be avowed that the Feminist Movement in England. . . .

The air is cooler, as I awake, and looking out of the window I perceive

from the mellow light-effects that day is declining.

Towards this sunset hour the unbroken dome of the sky often undergoes a

brief transformation. High-piled masses of cloud may then be seen

accumulating over the Sila heights and gathering auxiliaries from every

quarter; lightning is soon playing about the livid and murky

vapours—you can hear the thunders muttering, up yonder, to some

drenching downpour. But on the plain the sun continues to shine in

vacuously benevolent fashion; nothing is felt of the tempest save

unquiet breaths of wind that raise dust-eddies from the country roads

and lash the sea into a mock frenzy of crisp little waves. It is the

merest interlude. Soon the blue-black drifts have fled away from the

mountains that stand out, clear and

refreshed, in the twilight. The wind has died down, the storm is over

and Cotrone thirsts, as ever, for rain that never comes. Yet they have

a Madonna-picture here—a celebrated _black_ Madonna, painted by Saint

Luke—who “always procures rain, when prayed to.”

Once indeed the tail of a shower must have passed overhead, for there

fell a few sad drops. I hurried abroad, together with some other

citizens, to observe the phenomenon. There was no doubt about the

matter; it was genuine rain; the drops lay, at respectable intervals,

on the white dust of the station turnpike. A boy, who happened to be

passing in a cart, remarked that if the shower could have been

collected into a saucer or some other small receptacle, it might have

sufficed to quench the thirst of a puppy-dog.

I usually take a final dip in the sea, at this time of the evening.

After that, it is advisable to absorb an ice or two—they are excellent,

at Cotrone—and a glass of Strega liqueur, to ward off the effects of

over-work. Next, a brief promenade through the clean, well-lighted

streets and now populous streets, or along the boulevard Margherita to

view the rank and fashion taking the air by the murmuring waves, under

the cliff-like battlements of Charles the Fifth’s castle; and so to

dinner.

This meal marks the termination of my daily tasks; nothing serious is

allowed to engage my attention, once that repast is ended; I call for a

chair and sit down at one of the small marble-topped tables in the open

street and watch the crowd as it floats around me, smoking a Neapolitan

cigar and imbibing, alternately, ices and black coffee until, towards

midnight, a final bottle of _vino di Cirò_ is uncorked—fit seal for the

labours of the day.

One might say much in praise of Calabrian wine. The land is full of

pleasant surprises for the œnophilist, and one of these days I hope to

embody my experiences in the publication of a wine-chart of the

province with descriptive text running alongside—the purchasers of

which, if few, will certainly be of the right kind. The good Dr.

Barth—all praise to him!—has already done something of the kind for

certain parts of Italy, but does not so much as mention Calabria. And

yet here nearly every village has its own type of wine and every

self-respecting family its own peculiar method of preparation, little

known though they be outside the place of production, on account of the

octroi laws which strangle internal trade and remove all stimulus to

manufacture a good article for export. This wine of Cirò, for instance,

is purest nectar, and so is that which grows still nearer at hand in

the classical vale of the

Neto and was praised, long ago, by old Pliny; and so are at least two

dozen more. For even as Gregorovius says that the smallest Italian

community possesses its duly informed antiquarian, if you can but put

your hand upon him, so, I may be allowed to add, every little place

hereabouts can boast of at least one individual who will give you good

wine, provided—provided you go properly to work to find him.

Now although, when young, the Calabrian Bacchus has a wild-eyed _beauté

du diable_ which appeals to one’s expansive moods, he already begins to

totter, at seven years of age, in sour, decrepit eld. To pounce upon

him at the psychological moment, to discover in whose cool and cobwebby

cellar he is dreaming out his golden summer of manhood—that is what a

foreigner can never, never hope to achieve, without competent local

aid.

To this end, I generally apply to the priests; not because they are the

greatest drunkards (far from it; they are mildly epicurean, or even

abstemious) but by reason of their unrivalled knowledge of

personalities. They know exactly who has been able to keep his liquor

of such and such a year, and who has been obliged to sell or partially

adulterate it; they know, from the confessional of the wives, the why

and wherefore of all such private family affairs and share, with the

chemist, the gift of seeing furthest into the tangled web of home life.

They are “gialosi,” however, of these acquirements, and must be

approached in the right spirit—a spirit of humility. But if you

tactfully lead up to the subject by telling of the manifold hardships

of travel in foreign lands, the discomfort of life in hostelries, the

food that leaves so much to be desired and, above all, the coarse wine

that is already beginning, you greatly fear, to injure your sensitive

spleen (an important organ, in Calabria), inducing a hypochondriacal

tendency to see all the beauties of this fair land in an odious and

sombre light—turning your day into night, as it were—it must be an odd

priest, indeed, who is not compassionately moved to impart the desired

information regarding the whereabouts of the best _vino di famiglia_ at

that moment obtainable. After all, it costs him nothing to do a double

favour—one to yourself and another to the proprietor of the wine,

doubtless an old friend of his, who will be able to sell his stuff to a

foreigner 20 per cent dearer than to a native.

And failing the priests, I go to an elderly individual of that tribe of

red-nosed connaisseurs, the coachmen, ever thirsty and mercenary souls,

who for a small consideration may be able to disclose not only this

secret, but others far more mysterious.

As to your host at the inn—he raises not the least objection to

your importing alien liquor into his house. His own wine, he tells you,

is last year’s vintage and somewhat harsh (slightly watered, he might

add)—and why not? The ordinary customers are gentlemen of commerce who

don’t care a fig what they eat and drink, so long as there is enough of

it. No horrible suggestions are proffered concerning corkage; on the

contrary, he tests your wine, smacks his lips, and thanks you for

communicating a valuable discovery. He thinks he will buy a bottle or

two for the use of himself and a few particular friends. . . .

Midnight has come and gone. The street is emptying; the footsteps of

passengers begin to ring hollow. I arise, for my customary stroll in

the direction of the cemetery, to attune myself to repose by shaking

off those restlessly trivial images of humanity which might otherwise

haunt my slumbers.

Town visions are soon left behind; it is very quiet here under the hot,

starlit heavens; nothing speaks of man save the lighthouse flashing in

ghostly activity—no, it is a fixed light—on the distant Cape of the

Column. And nothing breaks the stillness save the rhythmic breathing of

the waves, and a solitary cricket that has yet to finish his daily task

of instrumental music, far away, in some warm crevice of the hills.

A suave odour rises up from the narrow patch of olives, and figs loaded

with fruit, and ripening vines, that skirts the path by the beach. _The

fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender

grape give a good smell._

And so I plough my way through the sand, in the darkness, encompassed

by tepid exhalations of earth and sea. Another spirit has fallen upon

me—a spirit of biblical calm. Here, then, stood _the rejoicing city

that dwelt carelessly, that said in her heart, I am, and there is none

beside me: how is she become a desolation!_ It is indeed hard to

realize that a town thronged with citizens covered all this area. Yet

so it is. Every footstep is a memory. Along this very track walked the

sumptuous ladies of Croton on their way to deposit their vain jewels

before the goddess Hera, at the bidding of Pythagoras. On this spot,

maybe, stood that public hall which was specially built for the

delivery of his lectures.

No doubt the townsfolk had been sunk in apathetic luxury; the time was

ripe for a Messiah.

And lo! he appeared.

XXXVIII

THE SAGE OF CROTON

The popularity of this sage at Croton offers no problem: the

inhabitants had become sufficiently civilized to appreciate the charm

of being regenerated. We all do. Renunciation has always exercised an

irresistible attraction for good society; it makes us feel so

comfortable, to be told we are going to hell—and Pythagoras was very

eloquent on the subject of Tartarus as a punishment. The Crotoniates

discovered in repentance of sins a new and subtle form of pleasure;

exactly as did the Florentines, when Savonarola appeared on the scene.

Next: his doctrines found a ready soil in Magna Graecia which was

already impregnated with certain vague notions akin to those he

introduced. And then—he permitted and even encouraged the emotional sex

to participate in the mysteries; the same tactics that later on

materially helped the triumph of Christianity over the more exclusive

and rational cult of Mithra. Lastly, he came with a “message,” like the

Apostle of the Gentiles; and in those times a preaching reformer was a

novelty. That added a zest.

We know them a little better, nowadays.

He enjoyed the specious and short-lived success that has attended,

elsewhere, such efforts to cultivate the _ego_ at the expense of its

environment. “A type of aspiring humanity,” says Gissing, echoing the

sentiments of many of us, “a sweet and noble figure, moving as a dim

radiance through legendary Hellas.” I fancy that the mist of centuries

of undiscriminating admiration has magnified this figure out of all

proportion and contrived, furthermore, to fix an iridescent nimbus of

sanctity about its head. Such things have been known to happen, in

foggy weather.

Was Greece so very legendary, in those times? Why, on the contrary, it

was full of real personages, of true sages to whom it seemed as if no

secrets of heaven or earth were past fathoming; far from being

legendary, the country had never attained a higher plane of

intellectual curiosity than when Pythagoras made his appearance. And it

cannot be gainsaid that he and his disciples gave the

impetus away from these wise and beneficial researches into the arid

regions of metaphysics. It is so much more gentlemanly (and so much

easier) to talk bland balderdash about soul-migrations than to

calculate an eclipse of the moon or bother about the circulation of the

blood.

That a man of his speculative vigour, knowing so many extra-Hellenic

races, should have hit upon one or two good things adventitiously is

only to be expected. But they were mere by-products. One might as well

praise John Knox for creating the commons of Scotland with a view to

the future prosperity of that country—a consummation which his black

fanaticism assuredly never foresaw.

The chief practical doctrine of Pythagoras, that mankind are to be

governed on the principle of a community of eastern monks, makes for

the disintegration of rational civic life.

And his chief theoretical doctrines, of metempsychosis and the

reduction of everything to a system of numbers[1]—these are sheer

lunacy.

[1] Vincenzo Dorsa, an Albanian, has written two pamphlets on the

survival of Greco-Roman traditions in Calabria. They are difficult to

procure, but whoever is lucky enough to find them will be much helped

in his understanding of the common people. In one place, he speaks of

the charm-formula of _Otto-Nave!_ (Eight-Nine) It is considered meet

and proper, in the presence of a suckling infant, to spit thrice and

then call out, three times, Otto-Nove! This brings luck; and the

practice, he thinks, is an echo of the number-system of Pythagoras.

Was it not something of a relapse, after the rigorous mental discipline

of old, to have a man gravely assuring his fellows that he is the son

of Hermes and the divinely appointed messenger of Apollo; treating

diseases, like an Eskimo Angekok, by incantation; recording veracious

incidents of his experiences during a previous life in Hell, which he

seems to have explored almost as thoroughly as Swedenborg; dabbling in

magic, and consulting dreams, birds and the smoke of incense as

oracles? And in the exotic conglomerate of his teachings are to be

found the _prima stamina_ of much that is worse: the theory of the

pious fraud which has infected Latin countries to this day; the

Jesuitical maxim of the end justifying the means; the insanity of

preferring deductions to facts which has degraded philosophy up to the

days of Kant; mysticism, demon-worship and much else of pernicious

mettle—they are all there, embryonically embedded in Pythagoras.

We are told much of his charity; indeed, an English author has written

a learned work to prove that Pythagoreanism has close affinities with

Christianity. Charity has now been tried on an ample scale, and has

proved a dismal failure. To give, they say, is more blessed than to

receive. It is certainly far easier, for the most

part, to give than to refrain from giving. We are at last shaking off

the form, of self-indulgence called charity; we realize that if mankind

is to profit, sterner conceptions must prevail. The apotheosis of the

god-favoured loafer is drawing to a close.

For the rest, there was the inevitable admixture of quackery about our

reforming sage; his warmest admirers cannot but admit that he savours

somewhat strongly of the holy impostor. Those charms and amulets, those

dark gnomic aphorisms which constitute the stock-in-trade of all

religious cheap-jacks, the bribe of future life, the sacerdotal tinge

with its complement of mendacity, the secrecy of doctrine, the

pretentiously-mysterious self-retirement, the “sacred quaternion,” the

bean-humbug . . .

He had the true maraboutic note.

And for me, this regenerator crowned with a saintly aureole remains a

glorified marabout—an intellectual dissolvent; the importer of that

oriental introspectiveness which culminated in the idly-splendid

yearnings of Plato, paved the way for the quaint Alexandrian

_tutti-frutti_ known as Christianity, and tainted the well-springs of

honest research for two thousand years. By their works ye shall known

them. It was the Pythagoreans who, not content with a just victory over

the Sybarites, annihilated their city amid anathemas worthy of those

old Chaldeans (past masters in the art of pious cursings); a crime

against their common traditions and common interests; a piece of

savagery which wrecked Hellenic civilization in Italy. It is ever thus,

when the soul is appointed arbiter over reason. It is ever thus, when

gentle, god-fearing dreamers meddle with worldly affairs. Beware of the

wrath of the lamb!

So rapidly did the virus act, that soon we find Plato declaring that

all the useful arts are _degrading;_ that “so long as a man tries to

study any sensible object, he can never be said to be learning

anything”; in other words, that the kind of person to whom one looks

for common sense should be excluded from the management of his most

refined republic. It needed courage of a rather droll kind to make such

propositions in Greece, under the shadow of the Parthenon. And hand in

hand with this feudalism in philosophy there began that unhealthy

preoccupation with the morals of our fellow-creatures, that miasma of

puritanism, which has infected life and literature up to this moment.

The Renaissance brought many fine things to England. But the wicked

fairy was there with her gift: Pythagoras and Plato. We were not like

the Italians who, after the first rapture of discovery was over, soon

outgrew these distracted dialectics; we stuck fast in

them. Hence our Platonic touch: our _demi-vierge_ attitude in matters

of the mind, our academic horror of clean thinking. How Plato hated a

fact! He could find no place for it in his twilight world of

abstractions. Was it not he who wished to burn the works of Democritus

of Abdera, most exact and reasonable of old sages?

They are all alike, these humanitarian lovers of first causes. Always

ready to burn something, or somebody; always ready with their cheerful

Hell-fire and gnashing of teeth.

_Know thyself:_ to what depths of vain, egocentric brooding has that

dictum led! But we are discarding, now, such a mischievously narrow

view of the Cosmos, though our upbringing is still too rhetorical and

mediæval to appraise its authors at their true worth. Youth is prone to

judge with the heart rather than the head; youth thrives on vaporous

ideas, and there was a time when I would have yielded to none in my

enthusiasm for these mellifluous babblers; one had a blind, sentimental

regard for their great names. It seems to me, now, that we take them

somewhat too seriously; that a healthy adult has nothing to learn from

their teachings, save by way of warning example. Plato is food for

adolescents. And a comfort, possibly, in old age, when the judicial

faculties of the mind are breaking up and primitive man, the visionary,

reasserts his ancient rights. For questioning moods grow burdensome

with years; after a strain of virile doubt we are glad to acquiesce

once more—to relapse into Platonic animism, the logic of

valetudinarians. The dog to his vomit.

And after Plato—the deluge. Neo-platonism. . . .

Yet it was quite good sport, while it lasted. To “make men better” by

choice dissertations about Utopias, to sit in marble halls and have a

fair and fondly ardent _jeunesse dorée_ reclining about your knees

while you discourse, in rounded periods, concerning the salvation of

their souls by means of transcendental Love—it would suit me well

enough, at this present moment; far better than croaking, forlorn as

the night-raven, among the ruins of their radiant lives.

Meanwhile, and despite our Universities, new conceptions are

prevailing, Aristotle is winning the day. A fresh kind of thinker has

arisen, whose chief idea of “virtue” is to investigate patiently the

facts of life; men of the type of Lister, any one of whom have done

more to regenerate mankind, and to increase the sum of human happiness,

than a wilderness of the amiably-hazy old doctrinaires who professed

the same object. I call to mind those physicians engaged in their

malaria-campaign, and wonder what Plato would have thought of them.

Would he have recognized the

significance of their researches which, while allaying pain and misery,

are furthering the prosperity of the country, causing waters to flow in

dry places and villages to spring up in deserts—strengthening its

political resources, improving its very appearance? Not likely. Plato’s

opinion of doctors was on a par with the rest of his mentality. Yet

these are the men who are taking up the thread where it was dropped,

perforce, by those veritable Greek sages, whelmed under turbid floods

of Pythagorean irrationalism. And are such things purely utilitarian?

Are they so grossly mundane? Is there really no “philosophy” in the

choice of such a healing career, no romance in its studious

self-denial, no beauty in its results? If so, we must revise that

classic adage which connects vigour with beauty—not to speak of several

others.

XXXIX

MIDDAY AT PETELIA

Day after day, I look across the six miles of sea to the Lacinian

promontory and its column. How reach it? The boatmen are eager for the

voyage: it all depends, they say, upon the wind.

Day after day—a dead calm.

“Two hours—three hours—four hours—according!” And they point to the

sky. A little breeze, they add, sometimes makes itself felt in the

early mornings; one might fix up a sail.

“And for returning at midday?”

“Three hours—four hours—five hours—according!”

The prospect of rocking about for half a day in a small boat under a

blazing sky is not my ideal of enjoyment, the novelty of such an

experience having worn off a good many years ago. I decide to wait; to

make an attack, meanwhile, upon old Petelia—the “Stromboli” of my

lady-friend at the Catanzaro Museum....

It is an easy day’s excursion from Cotrone to Strongoli, which is

supposed to lie on the site of that ancient, much-besieged town. It

sits upon a hill-top, and the diligence which awaits the traveller at

the little railway-station takes about two hours to reach the place,

climbing up the olive-covered slopes in ample loops and windings.

Of Strongoli my memories, even at this short distance of time, are

confused and blurred. The drive up under the glowing beams of morning,

the great heat of the last few days, and two or three nights’

sleeplessness at Cotrone had considerably blunted my appetite for new

things. I remember seeing some Roman marbles in the church, and being

thence conducted into a castle.

Afterwards I reposed awhile in the upper regions, under an olive, and

looked down towards the valley of the Neto, which flows not far from

here into the Ionian. I thought upon Theocritus, trying to picture this

vale of Neaithos as it appeared to him and his

shepherds. The woodlands are gone, and the rains of winter, streaming

down the earthen slopes, have remodelled the whole face of the country.

Yet, be nature what it may, men will always turn to one who sings so

melodiously of eternal verities—of those human tasks and needs which no

lapse of years can change. How modern he reads to us, who have been

brought into contact with the true spirit by men like Johnson-Cory and

Lefroy! And how unbelievably remote is that Bartolozzi-Hellenism which

went before! What, for example—what of the renowned pseudo-Theocritus,

Salamon Gessner, who sang of this same vale of Neto in his “Daphnis”?

Alas, the good Salamon has gone the way of all derivative bores; he is

dead—deader than King Psammeticus; he is now moralizing in some

decorous Paradise amid flocks of Dresden-China sheep and sugar-watery

youths and maidens. Who can read his much-translated masterpiece

without unpleasant twinges? Dead as a doornail!

So far as I can recollect, there is an infinity of kissing in

“Daphnis.” It was an age of sentimentality, and the Greek pastoral

ideal, transfused into a Swiss environment of 1810, could not but end

in slobber and _Gefühlsduselei._ True it is that shepherds have ample

opportunities of sporting with Amaryllis in the shade; opportunities

which, to my certain knowledge, they do not neglect. Theocritus knew it

well enough. But, in a general way, he is niggardly with the precious

commodity of kisses; he seems to have thought that in literature, if

not in real life, one can have too much of a good thing. Also, being a

southerner, he could not have trusted his young folks to remain

eternally at the kissing-stage, after the pattern of our fish-like

English lovers. Such behaviour would have struck him as improbable;

possibly immoral. . . .

From where I sat one may trace a road that winds upwards into the Sila,

past Pallagorio. Along its sides are certain mounded heaps and the

smoke of refining works. These are mines of that dusky sulphur which I

had observed being drawn in carts through the streets of Cotrone. There

are some eight or ten of them, they tell me, discovered about thirty

years ago—this is all wrong: they are mentioned in 1571—and employing

several hundred workmen. It had been my intention to visit these

excavations. But now, in the heat of day, I wavered; the distance, even

to the nearest of them, seemed inordinately great; and just as I had

decided to look for a carriage with a view of being driven there (that

curse of

conscientiousness!) an amiable citizen snatched me up as his guest for

luncheon. He led me, weakly resisting, to a vaulted chamber where, amid

a repast of rural delicacies and the converse of his spouse, all such

fond projects were straightway forgotten. Instead of

sulphur-statistics, I learnt a little piece of local history.

“You were speaking about the emptiness of our streets of Strongoli,” my

host said. “And yet, up to a short time ago, there was no emigration

from this place. Then a change came about: I’ll tell you how it was.

There was a _guardia di finanze_ here—a miserable octroi official. To

keep up the name of his family, he married an heiress; not for the sake

of having progeny, but—well! He began buying up all the land round

about—slowly, systematically, cautiously—till, by dint of threats and

intrigues, he absorbed nearly all the surrounding country. Inch by

inch, he ate it up; with his wife’s money. That was his idea of

perpetuating his memory. All the small proprietors were driven from

their domains and fled to America to escape starvation; immense tracts

of well-cultivated land are now almost desert. Look at the country! But

some day he will get his reward; under the ribs, you know.”

By this purposeful re-creation of those feudal conditions of olden,

days, this man has become the best-hated person in the district.

Soon it was time to leave the friendly shelter and inspect in the

glaring sunshine the remaining antiquities of Petelia. Never have I

felt less inclined for such antiquarian exploits. How much better the

hours would have passed in some cool tavern! I went forth, none the

less; and was delighted to discover that there are practically no

antiquities left—nothing save a few walls standing near a now ruined

convent, which is largely built of Roman stone-blocks and bricks. Up to

a few years ago, the municipality carried on excavations here and

unearthed a few relics which were promptly dispersed. Perhaps some of

these are what one sees in the Catanzaro Museum. The paternal

government, hearing of this enterprise, claimed the site and sat down

upon it; the exposed remains were once more covered up with soil.

A goat-boy, a sad little fellow, sprang out of the earth as I dutifully

wandered about here. He volunteered to show me not only Strongoli, but

all Calabria; in fact, his heart’s desire was soon manifest: to escape

from home and find his way to America under my passport and protection.

Here was his chance—a foreigner (American) returning sooner or later to

his own country! He pressed the matter with naif forcefulness. Vainly I

told him that there were other lands on earth; that I was not going to

America. He shook his head and sagely remarked:

“I have understood. You think my journey would cost too much. But you,

also, must understand. Once I get work there, I will repay you every

farthing.”

As a consolation, I offered him some cigarettes. He accepted one;

pensive, unresigned.

The goat-herds had no such cravings—in the days of Theocritus.

XL

THE COLUMN

“Two hours—three hours—four hours: according!”

The boatmen are still eager for the voyage. It all depends, as before,

upon the wind.

And day after day the Ionian lies before us—immaculate, immutable.

I determined to approach the column by land. A mule was discovered, and

starting from the “Concordia” rather late in the morning, reached the

temple-ruin in two hours to the minute. I might have been tempted to

linger by the way but for the intense sunshine and for the fact that

the muleteer was an exceptionally dull dog—a dusky youth of the

taciturn and wooden-faced Spanish variety, whose anti-Hellenic profile

irked me, in that landscape. The driving road ends at the cemetery.

Thence onward a pathway skirts the sea at the foot of the clay-hills;

passes the sunken wells; climbs up and down steepish gradients and so

attains the plateau at whose extremity stands the lighthouse, the

column, and a few white bungalows—summer-residences of Cotrone

citizens.

A day of shimmering heat. . . .

The ground is parched. Altogether, it is a poor and thinly peopled

stretch of land between Cotrone and Capo Rizzuto. No wonder the wolves

are famished. Nine days ago one of them actually ventured upon the road

near the cemetery, in daylight.

Yet there is some plant-life, and I was pleased to see, emerging from

the bleak sand-dunes, the tufts of the well-known and conspicuous sea

lily in full flower. Wishful to obtain a few blossoms, I asked the boy

to descend from his mule, but he objected.

“Non si toccano questi fiori,” he said. These flowers are not to be

touched.

Their odour displeased him. Like the Arab, the uncultivated Italian is

insensitive to certain smells that revolt us; while he cannot endure,

on the other hand, the scent of some flowers. I have seen a man

professing to feel faint at the odour of crushed geranium

leaves. They are _fiori di morti,_ he says: planted (sometimes) in

graveyards.

The last remarkable antiquity found at this site, to my knowledge, is a

stone vase, fished up some years ago out of the sea, into which it may

have fallen while being carried off by pious marauders for the purpose

of figuring as font in some church (unless, indeed, the land has sunk

at this point, as there is some evidence to show). I saw it, shortly

after its return to dry land, in a shed near the harbour of Cotrone;

the Taranto museum has now claimed it. It is a basin of purple-veined

pavonazzetto marble. Originally a monolith, it now consists of two

fragments; the third and smallest is still missing. This noble relic

stands about 85 centimetres in height and measures some 215 centimetres

in circumference; it was never completed, as can be seen by the rim,

which is still partially in the rough. A similar vessel is figured, I

believe, in Tischbein.

The small villa-settlement on this promontory is deserted owing to lack

of water, every drop of which has to be brought hither by sea from

Cotrone. One wonders why they have not thought of building a cistern to

catch the winter rains, if there are any; for a respectable stone crops

up at this end of the peninsula.

One often wonders at things. . . .

The column has been underpinned and strengthened by a foundation of

cement; rains of centuries had begun to threaten its base, and there

was some risk of a catastrophe. Near at hand are a few ancient walls of

reticulated masonry in strangely leaning attitudes, peopled by black

goats; on the ground I picked up some chips of amphoræ and vases, as

well as a fragment of the limb of a marble statue. The site of this

pillar, fronting the waves, is impressively forlorn. And it was rather

thoughtful, after all, of the despoiling Bishop Lucifero to leave two

of the forty-eight columns standing upright on the spot, as a sample of

the local Doric style. One has fallen to earth since his day. Nobody

would have complained at the time, if he had stolen all of them,

instead of only forty-six. I took a picture of the survivor; then

wandered a little apart, in the direction of the shore, and soon found

myself in a solitude of burning stones, a miniature Sahara.

The temple has vanished, together with the sacred grove that once

embowered it; the island of Calypso, where Swinburne took his ease (if

such it was), has sunk into the purple realms of Glaucus; the corals

and sea-beasts that writhed among its crevices are engulphed under

mounds of submarine sand. There was life, once, at this promontory.

Argosies touched here, leaving priceless gifts;

fountains flowed, and cornfields waved in the genial sunshine.

Doubtless there will be life again; earth and sea are only waiting for

the enchanter’s wand.

All now lies bare, swooning in summer stagnation.

Calabria is not a land to traverse alone. It is too wistful and

stricken; too deficient in those externals that conduce to comfort. Its

charms do not appeal to the eye of romance, and the man who would

perambulate Magna Graecia as he does the Alps would soon regret his

choice. One needs something of that “human element” which delighted the

genteel photographer of Morano—comrades, in short; if only those sages,

like old Nola Molisi, who have fallen under the spell of its ancient

glories. The joys of Calabria are not to be bought, like those of

Switzerland, for gold.

_Sir Giovan Battista di Nola Molisi, the last of bis family and name,

having no sons and being come to old age without further hope of

offspring, has desired in the place of children to leave of himself an

eternal memory to mankind—_to wit, this Chronicle of the most Ancient,

Magnificent, and Faithful City of Cotrone. A worthier effort at

self-perpetuation than that of Strongoli. . . .

A sturgeon, he notes, was caught in 1593 by the Spanish Castellan of

the town. This nobleman, puzzling whom he could best honour with so

rare a dainty, despatched it by means of a man on horseback to the Duke

of Nocera. The Duke was no less surprised than pleased; he thought

mighty well of the sturgeon and of the respectful consideration which

prompted the gift; and then, by another horseman, sent it to Nola

Molisi’s own uncle, accompanied, we may conjecture, by some ceremonious

compliment befitting the occasion.

A man of parts, therefore, our author’s uncle, to whom his Lordship of

Nocera sends table-delicacies by mounted messenger; and himself a

mellow comrade whom I am loath to leave; his pages are distinguished by

a pleasing absence of those saintly paraphernalia which hang like a fog

athwart the fair sky of the south.

Yet to him and to all of them I must bid good-bye, here and now. At

this hour to-morrow I shall be far from Cotrone.

Farewell to Capialbi, inspired bookworm! And to Lenormant.

[Illustration: Roman Masonry at Capo Colonna]

On a day like this, the scholar sailed at Bivona over a sea so

unruffled that the barque seemed to be suspended in air. The water’s

surface, he tells us, is “unie comme une glace.” He sees the vitreous

depths invaded by piercing sunbeams that light up its mysterious

forests of algae, its rock-headlands and silvery stretches of sand; he

peers down into these “prairies pélagiennes” and

beholds all their wondrous fauna—the urchins, the crabs, the floating

fishes and translucent medusae “semblables a des clochettes d’opale.”

Then, realizing how this “population pullulante des petits animaux

marins” must have impressed the observing ancients, he goes on to

touch—ever so lightly!—upon those old local arts of ornamentation

whereby sea-beasts and molluscs and aquatic plants were reverently

copied by master-hand, not from dead specimens, but “pris sur le vif et

observés au milieu des eaux”; he explains how an entire school grew up,

which drew its inspiration from the dainty ... apes and movements of

these frail creatures. This is _du meilleur Lenormant._ His was a

full-blooded yet discriminating zest of knowledge. One wonders what

more was fermenting in that restlessly curious brain, when a miserable

accident ended his short life, after 120 days of suffering.

So Italy proved fatal to him, as Greece to his father. But one of his

happiest moments must have been spent on the sea at Bivona, on that

clear summer day—a day such as this, when every nerve tingles with joy

of life.

Meanwhile it is good to rest here, immovable but alert, in the

breathless hush of noon. Showers of benevolent heat stream down upon

this desolation; not the faintest wisp of vapour floats upon the

horizon; not a sail, not a ripple, disquiets the waters. The silence

can be felt. Slumber is brooding over the things of earth:

Asleep are the peaks of the hills, and the vales,

The promontories, the clefts,

And all the creatures that move upon the black earth. . . .

Such torrid splendour, drenching a land of austerest simplicity,

decomposes the mind into corresponding states of primal contentment and

resilience. There arises before our phantasy a new perspective of human

affairs; a suggestion of well-being wherein the futile complexities and

disharmonies of our age shall have no place. To discard these

wrappings, to claim kinship with some elemental and robust archetype,

lover of earth and sun——

How fair they are, these moments of golden equipoise!

Yes; it is good to be merged awhile into these harshly-vibrant

surroundings, into the meridian glow of all things. This noontide is

the “heavy” hour of the Greeks, when temples are untrodden by priest or

worshipper. _Controra_ they now call it—the ominous hour. Man and beast

are fettered in sleep, while spirits walk abroad, as at midnight. _Non

timebis a timore noctuno: a sagitta_

_volante in die: a negotio perambulante in tenebris: ab incursu et

demonio meridiano._ The midday demon—that southern Haunter of calm blue

spaces. . . .

So may some enchantment of kindlier intent have crept over Phædrus and

his friend, at converse in the noontide under the whispering

plane-tree. And the genius dwelling about this old headland of the

Column is candid and benign.

This corner of Magna Graecia is a severely parsimonious manifestation

of nature. Rocks and waters! But these rocks and waters are

actualities; the stuff whereof man is made. A landscape so luminous, so

resolutely scornful of accessories, hints at brave and simple forms of

expression; it brings us to the ground, where we belong; it medicines

to the disease of introspection and stimulates a capacity which we are

in danger of unlearning amid our morbid hyperborean gloom—the capacity

for honest contempt: contempt of that scarecrow of a theory which would

have us neglect what is earthly, tangible. What is life well lived but

a blithe discarding of primordial husks, of those comfortable

intangibilities that lurk about us, waiting for our weak moments?

The sage, that perfect savage, will be the last to withdraw himself

from the influence of these radiant realities. He will strive to knit

closer the bond, and to devise a more durable and affectionate

relationship between himself and them. Let him open his eyes. For a

reasonable adjustment lies at his feet. From these brown stones that

seam the tranquil Ionian, from this gracious solitude, he can carve

out, and bear away into the cheerful din of cities, the rudiments of

something clean and veracious and wholly terrestrial—some tonic

philosophy that shall foster sunny mischiefs and farewell regret.