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bedroom, while those wretched oil-lamps sputtering on the wall have been
replaced by a lavish use of electricity.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.
