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 Noia 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. [Footnote: 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!] 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-etre du monde entier"; twenty years later, it is described as
"sehr ungesund ... so aermlich als moeglich"; in 1808 it was "reduite a
une population de trois mille habitants ronges par la misere, et les
maladies qu'occasionne la stagnation des eaux qui autrefois
fertilisaient ces belles campagnes." In 1828, says Vespoli, it contained
only 3932 souls.
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.
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, a 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.
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