Castellinaria, and Other Sicilian Diversions Part 14

So we got into the train and pursued our journey.

"I see you have brought your great-coat," I said.

"Yes," he said, "if I am to be an English gentleman I shall have to wear it in Catania."

"But won't it do if you carry it over your arm?" I inquired.

"No," he said, "because then they would see my other coat, and that is so dilapidated they would suspect the truth."

"Your clothes are quite good enough for any English gentleman anywhere,"

I pointed out.

"They are not so good as yours," he replied; "the teatrino is dirty and they soon wear out. My great-coat appears to be fresh because I seldom put it on. I shall use it in Catania to conceal the shabbiness of my other clothes."

"You need not be so particular. My father when he travelled in Italy did not pay so much attention to his personal appearance."

"You have never told me about your father. Did he travel for some English firm? Was it tiles? or perhaps sewing-machines? They pay better, I believe."

"He did not travel for any firm. He was a barrister, an avvocato, and travelled for recreation during the Long Vacation. I can tell you how he used to dress, because just before I left London I copied part of a letter he wrote to my mother, and I have it in my pocket."

This is the extract from my father's letter which I read to the buffo; it is dated Hotel des Bergues, Geneva, 1 October, 1861:

Reading the _Times_ of Friday this morning I saw a letter signed G.U.

which I have no doubt is a mistake for J.U. and means John Unthank and which signifies he and his family are in Paris. It is a letter complaining of the shabby costume of Englishmen and is a foolish letter but it will have the effect of making me furnish myself with a new wideawake or something of that sort at Paris for my present wideawake has got another hole in it and is really very bad though I don't know why it should wear so fast as I take great care of it and am rather disappointed that it should fall to pieces. Mr. Unthank pointed out to me on the Lake of Como that my dressing-gown which I always wear travelling is out at elbows which indeed I find it is but that fact seemed to grieve Mr. Unthank less than the shabbiness of my hat and he offered to give me a new one that is a wideawake of his own which had been newly lined and not worn as he said since it was lined if I would throw my old wideawake away. I consented but I left Milan before he had an opportunity of performing his promise.

"It was kind of your father's friend to offer him his old hat; don't you think so?"

"Yes, very kind of him. But, you see, he had his reasons."

"Of course, he did not want to be seen with anyone so badly dressed."

"That is what he says in his letter to the _Times_. I copied that in the British Museum. He does not mention my father by name, he merely speaks of well-dressed Englishmen in Paris (by which he means people like himself) frequently seeing a respectable professional man disguised as an omnibus conductor or cab-driver and 'being compelled to stand talking with a vulgar-looking object because they have unfortunately recognised an old acquaintance and not had time to run across the road to avoid him.' My father, no doubt, thought of Mr. Unthank's conversations with him at Como and Milan and said to himself, 'That's me.' The cap fitted him and he put it on."

"Excuse me; your father cannot have put the cap on, he says he had to leave Milan too soon for that."

"O my dear Buffo, I am so sorry. When I said the cap, I did not mean the wideawake, I was only using an English idiom."

"I see, I understand. We also have a similar expression, but it is not about hats, it is about boots, I think, or coats. I will find out and tell you."

"My father does not say he 'had to leave'; he only says he left; and my mother, who agreed with his friends and thought his taste in dress deplorable, believed that he ran away to escape from Mr. Unthank's hat."

"Oh! but a hat is always worth something. I should have waited for the hat. Was it really a very bad one?"

"I do not remember it, I should think it must have been pretty bad. The dressing-gown was awful. It was maroon, and his friends called it his wife's mantle. After he left off wearing it, it was given to us children for dressing up. It was no use for anything else and it was not much use for that. So you see, Buffo, you need not trouble about your clothes if you want to appear English. You do not look in the least like a cab-driver."

"Perhaps not; but I think it will be safer for me not to be an Englishman. All this about your father's dressing-gown happened half a century ago, and the letter and the article in the _Times_ must have done some good because the English gentlemen who come to the teatrino do not dress like that now. You are always beautifully dressed."

"Thank you very much, Buffo, but if that is more than merely one of your Sicilian compliments, it only shows that I inherit my ideas about dress from my mother rather than from my father."

"I think I had better be a Portuguese gentleman from Rio, a friend of yours, over on a visit, and you shall be a Sicilian."

"We will be a couple of cavalieri erranti like Guido Santo and Argantino on their travels. But I do not think it will quite do for me to be a Sicilian. I cannot talk dialect and I cannot gesticulate. And then, am I not too well dressed?"

"That will not matter; you shall be an aristocratic Sicilian, they are often quite well dressed. And as for the dialect and the gesticulation, it is now the fashion among the upper cla.s.ses to speak Tuscan and not to gesticulate. It is considered more--I cannot remember the word, I saw it in the _Giornale di Sicilia_, it is an English word."

"Do you mean it is more chic?"

"It is not exactly that and chic is a French word. One moment, if you please. It is--we say lo sn.o.bismo."

"I see. Very well; I will play the Sicilian sn.o.b, but I never saw one so I shall have to do it extempore as Snug had to play the part of Lion."

"What is Snug? another American poet?

"He was a joiner and lived in Athens at the time when all the good things happened. But his father, the author of his being, as we say, was an English poet and cast him for the part of Lion in _Pyramus and Thisbe_."

"What is Thisbe? a wandering knight?"

"No. Thisbe was the lady loved by Pyramus and was acted by Flute the bellows-mender. It's all in that poet who said what I told you when we were making the Escape from Paris--you remember, about holding the mirror up to nature."

"I wish I could read your English poets. I like everything English. The Englishmen who come to the teatrino are always good and kind--tutti bravi--I wish I were an Englishman--a real one I mean, like you."

Here were more compliments, so I replied: "I wish I were a Sicilian buffo."

"Ah! but you could not be that," said he. "Now I could have my hair cut short, grow a beard on my chin, a pair of spectacles on my eyes and heels on my boots and then I should only have to be naturalised. But you could never be a buffo--not even an English one."

"No; I suppose not. You see, I'm too serious. Gildo says I take a gloomy view of life."

"Yes," he agreed, "why do you?"

"I don't know," I replied. "My poor mother--my adorata mamma, as you call her--used to make the same complaint. She thought I inherited my desponding temperament from my father."

"As you inherited your taste in dress from her."

"Just so. But I think I am like Orlando and your other paladins, and that I am as I am because it was the will of heaven."

"That is only another way of saying the same thing," observed the buffo; which rather surprised me because I did not know he took such a just view of the significance of evolution.

On arriving at Catania we went to the albergo and, instead of following the usual course and giving his Christian name and surname, Alessandro Greco, he preferred to specify his profession and describe himself as "Tenore Greco." They posted this up in the hall under my name, with the unexpected result that the other guests ignored him, thinking the words applied to me and that I was a tenor singer from Greece.

The first thing to be done was to go out and get something to eat, and as we went along the buffo expressed his delight with the appearance of Catania. He had no idea that such a town could exist outside Palermo or Brazil.

"It is beautiful," he exclaimed, "yes, and I shall always declare that it is beautiful. But, my dear Enrico, will you be kind enough to tell me why it is so black?"

"That, my dear Buffo," I replied, "is on account of the lava."

"But how do you mean--the lava? What is this lava that you speak of, and how does it darken the houses and the streets?"

To which I replied as follows: "The lava is that ma.s.s of fire which issues from Etna and then dissolves itself and becomes formed into black rock, and, as it is excessively hard, the people of Catania use it for building their houses and for paving their streets."