Old Calabria Part 34

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 timewhen the Government abolished the oldsystem 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 superst.i.tions of ignorant country people towards the dead, testified to by extraordinary beliefs and customs which you will find in Pitre 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._

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-fas.h.i.+on, into the sand, and dedicated to Saint Anne. Goats and cows recline here after their meagre repast of scorched gra.s.ses, 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 cla.s.ses 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 cserulean 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 Motherand 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 pa.s.so e 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 cla.s.s."

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 pa.s.sage of the Alps."

Those barren clay-hills on our right of which Gissing speaks (they are like the _baize_ 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 vanis.h.i.+ng of a town nearly twelve miles in circ.u.mference. 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; a.s.sure 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.

x.x.xVII

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 Castro-villari--the "New Rossano"--the "Bruttian" of Corigliano, with strong literary flavour.

Astonis.h.i.+ng 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 1' on. Dirczione delle poste di Cosenza, si e ottenuta una ca.s.setta postale, che affissa lungo il Corso Carlo Pancaso, ci da la bella commodita 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 ali' estremita del paese.

"Tributiamo perci sincera lode al nostro caro uffiziale postale Sig.

Rocca, e ci auguriamo che egli continui ancora al miglioramento deli'

uffizio istesso, e merce 1' opera sua costante ed indefessa siamo sicuri che 1' uffizio postale di Cetraro a.s.surgera 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 pa.s.sion 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 s.e.x 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 "antic.i.p.ating 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. Ca 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 goneso 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 pa.s.ses, 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 ma.s.ses of cloud may then be seen acc.u.mulating 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 s.h.i.+ne in vacuously benevolent fas.h.i.+on; 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sing 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 gla.s.s 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 Ciro_ 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 cenophilist, 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 Ciro, for instance, is purest nectar, and so is that which grows still nearer at hand in the cla.s.sical 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 _beaute 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 hards.h.i.+ps of travel in foreign lands, the discomfort of life in hostelries, the food that leaves so much to be desired and, above all, the coa.r.s.e 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 compa.s.sionately 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. . . .