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bedroom, while those wretched oil-lamps sputtering on the wall have been
replaced by a lavish use of electricity.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