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.
