Leading the Blind (18 page)

Baedeker of the same year warns us that oysters are dangerous, ‘cases of typhus have been traced to the consumption of oysters from Santa Lucia, where the water in which the shellfish are kept often leaves something to be desired in point of cleanliness'.

Regarding the prevalence of Tarantella dancing, which takes place in the neighbourhood of every town, Murray quotes a medical man as saying that the spider does not produce any injurious effects whatsoever, though he adds: ‘The cure [for the supposed bite of a tarantula, or ‘female' madness] is a general signal for a musical holiday throughout the village in which it occurs; feasting and dancing are always added, and the process of cure is consequently so expensive, that refractory husbands, it is said, have in late years refused to sanction it', such occasions being thought of by most writers ‘as the remains of the orgies observed in the celebration of the worship of Bacchus'.

The woman so stricken continues dancing, ‘as long as her breath and strength allow, occasionally selecting one of the bystanders as her partner, and sprinkling her face with cold water, a large vessel of which is always placed near at hand. While she rests at times, the guests are invited to relieve her by dancing by turns after the fashion of the country; and when, overcome by restless lassitude and faintness, she determines to give over for the day, she takes the pail or jar of water, and pours its contents entirely over her person, from her head downwards. This is the signal for her friends to undress and convey her to bed; after which the rest of the company endeavour to further her recovery by devouring a substantial repast, which is always prepared on the occasion.'

Instead of a page or so, Baedeker gives only a few sceptical lines, saying that the bite of the spider was ‘formerly believed to be venomous and is still said by the natives to cause convulsions and even madness, for which music and dancing are supposed to be effectual remedies'.

After commenting on the remarkable beauty of the women of Martano, Murray brings us to Otranto, ‘rendered familiar to the English visitor by the romance of Horace Walpole. The realities of it, however, will by no means be commensurate with the notions inspired by that well-known fiction.' In 1480 the Turks captured the town and butchered 12,000 of its 20,000 inhabitants, and many parts of the town and neighbourhood were said to retain marks of the bombardment sustained during its recapture.

Instead of the overland journey one can go from Naples to Otranto by sea. The vessel is a light sailing boat but ‘as its arrival and departure are uncertain, passengers are sometimes obliged to wait a week or a fortnight, and the length of passage is of course doubtful, sometimes occupying many days, at others only 12 hours. The fare is 5 dollars, half of which goes to the government, and half to the captain. Passengers provide themselves with everything, and the captain expects to be invited to breakfast and dinner.'

The assumption was that those who travelled to the southern part of Italy would sooner or later continue to Sicily, the nearest port to the island being Reggio di Calabria – an unfortunate town if ever there was one. At the time of Murray, 1853, the place had a very good inn, and was agreeably situated ‘in the midst of natural beauties which are not surpassed by any other part of Europe', being ‘a handsome and well-built town, with spacious streets, rising from the broad and very noble Marina towards the richly cultivated slopes of the hills behind it, among which are scattered numerous beautiful villas of the wealthy residents … It is difficult to imagine anything more delightful than a lounge in the colonnade of the fountain in a cool summer's evening when the magnificent mountains behind Messina are thrown into relief by the setting sun … With these advantages, added to its agreeable and refined society, the hospitality of its inhabitants, and the amusements of a good theatre, Reggio cannot fail to offer a pleasant sojourn.'

All this changed in 1908, when an earthquake killed five thousand of the town's 35,000 inhabitants. ‘Not a building escaped without injury,' Baedeker says, ‘and those that remained standing had to be pulled down. But it has already been resolved to rebuild the town on its old site …'

Messina, across the straits in Sicily, had an even more calamitous history, for in 1740 a plague ‘carried off' 40,000 people, and in 1854 cholera claimed 16,000 victims; but an account of the earthquake in 1783, given in
Pictures From Sicily
, 1864, by W. H. Bartlett, is worth recounting:

The cries of the dying; the shrieks of those who were half-buried under the ruins; the wild terror with which others, who were still able, attempted to make their escape; the despair of fathers, mothers, and husbands, bereft of those who were dearest to them, – these formed altogether a scene of horror such as can but seldom occur in the history of the calamities of the human race. Amid that fearful scene, instances of the most heroic courage and of the most generous affection were displayed. Mothers, regardless of their own safety, rushed into every danger to snatch their children from death. Conjugal and filial affection prompted deeds not less desperate and heroic. But no sooner did the earthquake cease than the poor wretches who had escaped began to feel the influence of very different passions. When they returned to visit the ruins, to seek out the situation of their fallen dwellings, to inquire into the fate of their families, to procure food and collect some remains of their former fortunes, such as found their circumstances the most wretched became suddenly animated with rage, which nothing but wild despair could inspire. The distinction of ranks and the order of society were disregarded, and property eagerly violated. Murder, rapine, and lawless robbery reigned among the smoking ruins …

In 1848, when the people of Messina rebelled against the king of Naples, the place was mercilessly bombarded, and the Neapolitan forces on entering the town burned whole streets, committing ‘the most unheard-of ravages. Some of the details of their cruelties are really too horrible to be cited.' The carnage was only stopped when French and British warships standing off-shore – in spite of neutrality having been imposed on them by their governments – intervened in the name of humanity to stop the slaughter. And then in 1908 came the worst disaster of all, when the same earthquake which flattened Reggio killed 96,000 people.

On landing at Messina, Hare tells us that it is almost useless to ask one's way. ‘One is sure to be answered by – “Who knows?” or with the assertion in reply to any remonstrance, that a housewife has no need to know the way anywhere but to her church or her fountain.' Should you care to go along the coast to the lighthouse at Cape Pelorus, ‘travellers are beset by the rough, noisy inhabitants of the village, and a dirty begging crowd accompanies them to the lighthouse, and prevents their having any enjoyment'.

As for the travelling in the interior, Bartlett says, with echoes of Charlotte Eaton: ‘I shall spare the reader a detailed account of our progress from Syracuse to Girgenti, in which we made full proof of the deplorable filth and misery of the interior of the island. Suffice it to say that we passed the first night at Palazzolo, the second at Biscari, and the third at Terranova. The first was bad, the second worse, and the third so utterly unsupportable, that to escape the onslaught of the vermin I ordered the mules in the middle of the night and departed. No sooner on horseback, however, than the sense of fatigue returned with increased force, and one rides on half asleep, and at every moment, ready to drop, until the rising sun awakens a forced and feverish activity; and so one goes forward the whole day under the blazing heat.'

Thirty years later the hotels in the larger towns of the island were said by Hare to be excellent, but that if the traveller takes the train to Taormina he will suffer much at the hands of railway officials, ‘who by night thrust emigrants into first and second class carriages'. He also reports that the recent abolition of the rural police has brought insecurity, ‘causing an exaggerated report of brigandage, which has consequently fallen upon the less populated districts, and has deterred most Italian travellers from prolonging their rambles into a country which is nevertheless full of the elements of enjoyment'.

In a later edition he warns travellers, regarding the main cities, ‘not to take the same liberties in the suburbs that he may take with impunity at Florence or Rome: though, for that matter, the lonely or the rash visitor may find himself victimised unpleasantly in those of any large town.'

In climbing the volcanic Mount Etna: ‘The deepest ashes are very fatiguing, and most visitors are grievously overwhelmed by sickness, induced more by the terrible cold than the noxious gases, before reaching the top, where the guides will often cover them up in the warm ashes till they recover.' At the summit: ‘The desolation is supreme – all vegetation has long ceased: there is no sound from beast, bird, or insect. In later times Etna has been supposed to be a place of torment for Anne Boleyn, perverter of the faith in the person of its “Defender”!'

Of all the perils, however, perhaps the greatest was that which at one time threatened in the catacombs of Syracuse. Hare quotes from
Wanderungen in Sicilien
by a German traveller, Gregorovius. ‘Twenty years ago a professor, with six pupils, to whom he wished to explain the wonders of the city of tombs, was lost there. They wandered long and despairingly through the horrible labyrinth in search of the entrance till they died of exhaustion, and they were found lying side by side, four miles distant from the gate. Since that time holes for light and air have been pierced in the galleries, through which the dubious daylight shimmers mysteriously into this fearful Hades.'

CHAPTER TEN

THE SOUTH OF FRANCE

Even as early as 1848 Murray had no illusions about the charms of the South of France, nor did he wish his readers to have any, and his comments are repeated in all later editions:

The Englishman who knows the S. of France only from books – who there finds Provence described as the cradle of Poetry and Romance, the paradise of the Troubadours, a land teeming with oil, wine, silk, and perfumes, has probably formed in his mind a picture of a region beautiful to behold, and charming to inhabit. Nothing, however, can differ more widely from reality. Nature has altogether an arid character; – in summer a sky of copper, an atmosphere loaded with dust, the earth scorched rather than parched by the unmitigated rays of the sun, which overspread every thing with a lurid glare. The hills rise above the surface in masses of bare rock, without any covering of soil, like the dry bones of a wasted skeleton. Only on the low grounds, which can be reached by irrigation, does any verdure appear. There is a sombre, melancholy sternness in the landscape of the South. The aching eye in vain seeks to repose on a patch of green, and the inhabitant of the North would not readily purchase the clear cloudless sky of Provence with the verdure of a misty England. Neither the bush-like vine nor the mop-headed mulberry, stripped of its leaves for a great part of the summer, nor the tawny green olive, whose foliage looks as though powdered with dust, will at all compensate in a picturesque point of view for forests of oak, ash, and beech.

After several hundred more words of this, he treats us to a disquisition on the character of the people. ‘Their fervid temperament knows no control or moderation; hasty and headstrong in disposition, they are led by very slight religious or political excitement, on sudden impulses, to the committal of acts of violence unknown in the North. They are rude in manner, coarse in aspect, and harsh in speech, their patois being unintelligible, even to the French themselves, not unlike the Spanish dialect of Catalonia. From loudness of tone, and energy of gesture, they appear always as though going to fight when merely carrying on an ordinary conversation. The traveller who happens to fall into the hands of the ruffianly porters at Avignon will be able to judge if this be an exaggerated picture.'

Murray goes on to say that anyone who thinks the climate of England is bad should try that of the South of France. ‘The variations between summer and winter are marked by the dead olive, and vine trees killed by the frost; and the torrid influence of summer by the naked beds of torrents left without water. In many years not a drop of rain falls in June, July, and August, and the quantity is commonly very small: the great heats occur between the middle of July and the end of September, yet even in summer scorching heat alternates with the most piercing cold; and the vicissitudes are so sudden and severe, that strong persons, much more invalids, should beware how they yield to the temptation of wearing thin clothing, and of abandoning cloaks and great coats.'

If this were the case (and having lived some years in the South of France I can say that there is at least some truth in Murray's assessment), why did people go there in such numbers? Especially when they went on to read that another plague in that part of the world was that of

mosquitoes
, which, to an inhabitant of the North, unaccustomed to their venomous bite, will alone suffice to destroy all pleasure in travelling. They appear in May, and last sometimes to November; and the only good which the mistral effects is that it modifies the intensely hot air of summer, and represses, momentarily, these pestilential insects. They are not idle by day, but it is at night that the worn-out traveller needing repose is most exposed to the excruciating torments inflicted by this cruel insect. Woe to him who for the sake of coolness leaves his window open for a minute; attracted by the light they will pour in by myriads. It is better to be stifled by the most oppressive heat than to go mad. Even closed shutters and a mosquito curtain, with which all beds in good inns are provided, are ineffectual in protecting the sleeper. A scrutiny of the walls, and a butchery of all that appear, may lessen the number of enemies; but a single one effecting an entry, after closing the curtains and tucking up the bed-clothes with the utmost care, does all the mischief. The sufferer awakes in the middle of the night in a state of fever, and adieu to all further prospect of rest. The pain inflicted by the bites is bad enough, but it is the air of triumph with which the enemy blows his trumpet, the tingling, agonising buzzing which fills the air, gradually advancing nearer and nearer, announcing the certainty of a fresh attack, which carries the irritation to the highest pitch.