Vistas in Sicily Part 4

Restoration has not harmed the chapel, and both it and its decorations and furniture remain intact--the magnificent mosaic pulpit, in the Lombard style; the giant candelabrum beside it, about fifteen feet high, a superb piece of pure Byzantine sculpture with a wealth of mythological details, which strikes a strange pagan note in this Christian church; and the stalact.i.te ceiling, carved wood of the best period of Saracenic workmanship, much after the style of the ceilings of the Alhambra at Granada. The Saracen glorified it with magnificent star-shaped coffers, geometrical designs, Cufic lettering--his religion allowed him no image of anything in heaven above or the earth beneath--and the less prescribed Norman placed his saints and virgins in the divisions of the stars. Yet the work was done with such rare skill--so thoroughly were the Saracens artists first and Mohammedans afterward--that nowhere is there a clash of motive or execution. It fills one with the delight of the East, the subtle perception of ma.s.ses of color shaded and mellowed by time.

That, unfortunately, cannot be said of Palermo's other royal residence, the little Summer palace of La Favorita, built by the Bourbon King Ferdinand IV under the shoulder of Monte Pellegrino, and evidently his conception of a Chinese n.o.bleman's residence. Striking a jangling note of color in the landscape, it stands boldly forth a great rubricated initial upon the green and gold of the smiling Conca d'Oro. Surely there never was such another freak of royal fancy! In their search for the bizarre, King Ferdinand's architects and decorators succeeded in cramming into one architectural nightmare the styles of a dozen realms and epochs; and the result is a queer hodge-podge of no artistic value, but of mirth-provoking interest to the traveler. Only Mr. Kipling's famous phrase can describe it--"A sort of a giddy harumfrodite!"

In the King's suite, j.a.panese artisans may have decorated the bedchamber, some forgotten artist from hundred-gated Thebes the ceiling of the anteroom, and then with supreme disregard for these exotic effects, the royal humorist--if he were such!--must have turned over the beautifying of his dressing room to a commonplace decorator of modern times, and permitted him to do his worst.

The dining table, a huge circular affair, is the _piece de resistance_ of the whole palace. Nothing queerer--or more entirely up-to-date and practical--has ever made its appearance in the most recently constructed American houses. Standing upon a ma.s.sive cylindrical shaft that runs straight through to the kitchen in the bas.e.m.e.nt, the table is a sort of combination dumbwaiter-quicklunch counter. At each place a silver tray, imbedded in a small shaft, connects below with the main trunk, and these trays, operated automatically with the larger central charger, answer djinn-like by serving a whole course at once, smoking hot, when the royal host rubs the b.u.t.ton at his place. Slow eaters might find it somewhat disconcerting to turn from conversation back to--an empty black hole before them! But perhaps King Ferdinand was not a joker.

Every room has some freakish combination peculiarly its own, some in Turkish, Arabic or Pompeiian motives, and one huge reception salon in hand-painted silk with Chinese mandarins in full ceremonial costume upon the walls. Above all are the luxurious smoking and lounging rooms, and of course, a wide, tiled veranda on each floor affording sweeping views on either hand.

To the Sicilian in his blissful ignorance, La Favorita appears a masterpiece, the people generally regarding the _chateau_ with the reverence of simplicity. Indeed, poverty and ignorance are the mainsprings of life for a majority of the people. Nor is ignorance confined to the ma.s.ses. A Sicilian doctor in Palermo, himself graduated from one of our greatest universities and therefore an exception to the rule, told me in all seriousness that a majority of the "society people"

of the capital could read nothing more difficult than the daily papers.

"They often forget how to spell their own names"--you don't wonder much at that when you see some of the names!--"and their notions of first aid in sickness or injury are barbarous and medieval. When my wife and I first began to practise in Palermo, we tried to help the people with clubs and societies of a semi-educational nature. But we had to drop it all. You can't begin education with the adults."

This was recognized a century ago by one of the foremost patriots of Sicily, the Prince of Castlenuovo, who was one of the prime movers in lifting his island out of the medievalism of Ferdinand's regime. Out in this region of the suburbs--known as _I Colli_ (The Tops), and dotted with splendid villas--and not far distant from Ferdinand's Favorita, the Prince established a model farm, kitchen garden and dairy where the boys of both rich and poor families are taught by experts how to get the most out of the ground without having recourse to the antiquated methods of their forefathers. And if one may judge from the att.i.tude of the young students and the eagerness with which they display their knowledge, the big Inst.i.tute is still proving most successful.

The boy who showed us about said proudly that when he finished his schooling he was to be overseer of a big plantation up country, much like the one spreading around us. America had no attractions for him. In his own words: "My father has taught me to love Sicily very much, _signore_. He makes much money in his business in N'ova York. But I will be patriot. I stay here. I study. By and by I can help my poor country to grow rich!"

Gardens and boys are interesting, but the stockyards of the school are a revelation. Goats and kids, sheep and lambs, magnificent bulls and kine and soft-eyed, frisky little calves have each their separate yards, all immaculate; and in the neat brick addition to the cow-stables is a model piggery comfortably full of grunters, who seem to appreciate quarters where a fresh handkerchief dropped in an occupied pen can be recovered quite unsoiled. The school dairy is as complete as it is wholesome and clean; but you are not likely to go far outside until another phase of the milk industry appears--a donkey carrying large jute panniers full of goats'-milk potcheese, or _ricotta fresca_. The whey oozing from the bags and the donkey's sweat gather a crust of dust over all. Don't manifest a talkative interest--unless you wish to have the peasant merchant urge you to try "just a taste, _signori_!"

Among the splendid estates of _I Colli_, the Villa Sofia is one of the finest, and the genius of its creator, a wealthy Briton named Whitaker, shows what may be accomplished by perfect taste when man and Nature work together harmoniously to draw the most and best from the breast of the warm and generous earth. Villa, by the way, is almost as flexible a term in Italian as palace. It means not merely a house for summering, but grounds as well as mansion; and many of the houses quite equal the so-called palaces. Another estate worthy a visit is the Villa of the late Count Tasca--this is out Monreale way--who laid out the grounds as an experimental agricultural station, and who was one of the first men in Sicily to farm on a scientific basis. But he dearly loved royalty, too. On the "bas.e.m.e.nt" door of the house a bronze tablet impressively records with a wealth of adjectives the fact that Queen (Dowager) Margharita once took luncheon here with the delighted owner, and that ever since the premises have had an added value and charm because of her Majesty's visit.

Occupying the monastery of the suppressed and exiled Filippini monks, the Palermo Museum--a vivid epitomization of all Sicily's various periods and renascences of art and culture--is given a distinct character of its own by the crumbling though palatial home housing it, worthier far to be called a palace than many of the _palazzi_ of the n.o.bility. You are apt to be disappointed on entering, however, when the courteous guardian of the gate informs you that you will be "permitted"

to leave your cameras with the inc.u.mbrance clerk across the entrance hall. In vain you plead, catching sight of some of the untrammeled beauties of the first courtyard just beyond. But the guard is uncompromisingly honest; you enter in without so much as the moral support of a sunshade.

The little court is a veritable wild Eden. Flowering vines drip down over the edges of the walls and twist about the pillars; a single p.r.i.c.kly pear rears its fat donkey-cars above the cornice and glories in the sunshine; great bursts of foliage clothe in green the joints of the corners. In the center of the courtyard a low stone fountain basin full of brilliant plants affords a picturesque foothold for a sixteenth century Triton drinking deep from a conch. And over on the left, just beyond the archway that gives an entrancing vista of the second court beyond, a tender vine wreathes completely about the tragic column topped with a cross of iron from the Piazza dei Vespri, in which it once stood to mark the spot where some of the French who fell in the ma.s.sacre were buried.

Sidewalks and columns, cornice and roof are a museum in themselves, decorated with quaint bits of ancient and medieval architecture, some actually built in as parts of the cloister, others arranged in artistic abandon about the shade-dappled walks. But why puzzle out ancient inscriptions on crumbling marbles when the second court beckons, like a coquettish woman, from the stern lines of the archway? Shake off the persistent employe who offers to be your mentor, and pa.s.s through into a tropical palm garden where the luxuriance of the foliage almost hides the antiquities. No attempt has been made to curb the riotous propensities of the plants. Palm tree and shrub, flowers in beds and rows, vines and creepers give the brilliant court the air of a Spanish patio. But you have really come to see the antiquities, and gradually getting back your sense of proportion, you look about.

Directly before you is a queer, somewhat battered thing of dark stone, looking more like a bathtub than anything else. It proves to be a sarcophagus; one of the rare prehistoric Sikel monuments, of inestimable value in studying the customs and culture of the vanished people, whom the Greeks so effectually absorbed that the only trace we have of their mode of life is in a few such scattered pieces as this from the tombs, though even these are often of doubtful authenticity.

Papyrus reeds, descendants of the paper-plants imported into Sicily long centuries ago by some forgotten Arab, rear their puffball heads from the fountain, a little grove of living feather dusters. Who knows but that the thrifty Saracen caretaker may have used them to dust out his immaculate mosques and public baths?

So varied and comprehensive a collection as the Museum contains has required consummate skill and taste to arrange coherently, and throughout the entire building the director, Professor Salinas, has done his work so admirably that each group's significance is fully apparent.

In the various halls are quaint old pictures and triptyches so ugly that their very repulsiveness spells the perfect expression of the art of their time, marvelous coins which gave Sicily the reputation of leading the world in numismatics during the Greek era, and most important of all, the metopes.

Carven slabs from the temple friezes--what a story they tell of the primitive and ardent culture of the early Greeks perched upon their twin hills at Selinus, beside the sounding deep! One whole hall is lined with them, arranged symmetrically in series, speaking even to-day with the voice of that mystic lore which, to understand, reveals ancient Sicily.

And though individual carvings excel them in precision and beauty, as a series denoting the exact progress of Greek Sicilian art from its crudest to its most perfected form, the metopes are unsurpa.s.sed.

Moreover, these metopes from the temples of Selinus recall a story so tragic, so amazing, that comparisons fail and mere words avail little to picture its horror. Selinus was still young, and the wealthy and expanding Selinuntines were still engaged in building their tremendous temples in 409 B.C. when Hannibal Gisgon with his Carthaginians fell upon the city with a ferocity that is even yet appalling in its details, butchering the inhabitants ruthlessly, and expunging the city from the book of the living. But Hannibal was in a hurry. He had no time to spare to destroy structures of such problematical value as unfinished temples, since he purposed to avenge the defeat and death of his grandfather, Hamilcar, at Himera on the north sh.o.r.e of the island. Giving the temples and the desolate city over to the owl and the locust, he hurried northward, flushed and confident. So it was that the partially completed homes of the bright G.o.ds remained until the shock of earthquake hurled them crashing down into chaos.

Centuries elapsed in the silence of desolation before the metopes, which Freeman so aptly calls "the choicest offerings Selinuntine piety could offer the immortal G.o.ds," were picked carefully by the archaeologists from the ruins and ranged upon the plaster walls of the Museum, showing the evolution of the art from the weird, uncouth shapes of the earlier metopes to the finished later shapes of G.o.ds and heroes and men. Yet so rapid was the development of the sculptors that within a century the first metopes had become curiosities, and the later work so superior it is hard to realize it was produced in the same age. And one cannot but wonder what might have been the fullest flower of this strong, budding genius at Selinus, had not the insatiable African smitten it with his blighting breath of war.

One palace that has fallen upon evil days, after as picturesque a past as any building in the island can boast, is the lofty home of the Barons of the Chiaramonte. In the fourteenth century, during the Aragonese period, these and other n.o.bles became so powerful that no systematic administration of Sicily by the government was possible, and the palace--usually called Lo Steri--is an excellent manifestation of the Chiaramonte power. Grim and stiff outside, it still preserves within something of the magnificence of the days when knights in armor clanked through its lofty halls and ladies in quaint headdresses and billowing skirts peeped through the folds of the arras and tapestries to watch the wheels of intrigue and government go round. Many a dark tale could these old halls tell. Andrew Chiaramonte, the last of his line to rule, was dragged hence to the block in 1392, and the palace became the court, with justice taking the place of chicanery. Later on the Spanish viceroys made it their official residence, and in 1600 it became the seat of the dreaded Spanish Inquisition. In the inner courtyard is the private chapel, where no doubt many of the Inquisition's bitter and fruitless tragedies had their inception. The whole structure smells of blood. To-day, as the Dogana, or Custom House, it is as useful as ever--and for the Sicilian importer no doubt still a palace of most unpleasant inquisition.

King William the Bad, King Roger's son, and father of William II, the Good--who built the Cathedral of Monreale--called his favorite palace in Arabic La Zisa, the Beloved or the Splendid. It is of distinctly Moorish character--bare walls unrelieved by projecting decorations of any sort, with Oriental doorways, pointed-arch windows, and a heavy battlemented frieze. In King William I's time the palace eunuchs were almost as powerful as they were at Constantinople, and most of the palace officials were Saracens, which is perhaps one reason for the architecture of the structure. William himself lived the idle, sensual life of a voluptuary, and toward the end of his reign, with Oriental indifference, shut himself up in his splendid house and refused any bad news.

It is not hard to see in the mutilated grandeur of the main hall why he fell a victim to the insidious charm of the East, for more than any other place in Palermo this chamber breathes of "Araby the blest." The ceiling is a great stalact.i.te vault: a little fountain still bubbles down over steps of mosaic; and it runs across the floor through square pools exactly as do those other similar fountains in the Alhambra at Granada. Only the frescoes on the walls are modern, replacing ancient panels of marble which once embellished the villa. No--there was one other modern touch: a flock of tiny white wax ducks, belonging to the caretaker's little daughter, bobbing serenely about in the rippled pool!

VI

THE PLAIN OF PANORMOS

A short distance outside the Porta Sant'agata--one of the southern gates--on the edge of the rolling Conca d'Oro, is the Campo di Santo Spirito or cemetery, a lovely greensward full of curious tombs and graves and vaults. Its chapel is old and bare, a relic of the Cistercian monastery established on the same spot in 1173 by Archbishop Walter of the Mill, the English mentor of King William the Good. Doubtless the Archbishop had much to do with the King's goodness, since his father was William the Bad. When the church was restored in 1882, the greatest care was taken to preserve at least the spirit of the prelate's design, with the result that among these Sicilian graves under the matchless blue of the Sicilian sky there stands an English church of the Middle Ages.

Close beside it on the 31st of March, 1282, just at the tap of the bell for evening prayer, began the terrible ma.s.sacre of the Sicilian Vespers, while in the city near by the great bell of San Giovanni boomed out the knell of all the Frenchmen in the island and the downfall of the heartless House of Anjou. Many of the French who perished in that orgy of slaughter have been buried here.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The bells of the church of the Holy Spirit boomed the knell of the French in the Sicilian Vespers.]

This ma.s.sacre has often been declared a premeditated rising, but it was really a popular spontaneous outbreak which began at the vesper hour on Easter Tuesday. The church of the Santo Spirito was then a favorite place for worship, and the people on this occasion were moving quietly between it and the city when some two hundred Frenchmen appeared among them, and alarmed the natives greatly by their more than usually offensive remarks and bearing. In the throng was an attractive young Sicilian woman with her lover. Unprovoked, a French soldier addressed an insulting remark to her. Her escort naturally resented this, and instantly all the bitter ignominy and the wrongs the patient islanders had endured at the hands of their French oppressors boiled over. Though practically unarmed, the Sicilians attacked the French so fearlessly that of the two hundred present, not a single one escaped. The church bells sounded a wild alarm, and yelling "_Morte ai francesi!_ Death to the French!" the blood-maddened mob streamed back into town, killing on sight, storming palaces and houses, and dispatching even those Sicilians known or suspected to have friendly relations with the Angevins. Brief as the struggle in Palermo was, no less than two thousand French perished; and the brand the Palermitans had kindled swept its fiery way through the island until every Frenchman was either dead or a fugitive.

And though the War of the Vespers that followed this summary vengeance lasted for years, the rule of the House of Anjou was over so far as Sicily was concerned.

Farther out from the city the beautiful precincts of the old Minorite monastery and church of Santa Maria di Gesu ramble along the steep side of one of those emerald hills that bound the Conca d'Oro. Long pebbled paths lead up from the gate through cool green vistas dotted with stately trees and headstones; and, with a pride which is the more curious in a Minorite--whose pledges are of humility and poverty--the monk who lets one in explains that this cemetery has never been used by any except the wealthiest of Palermo's n.o.ble families. Many of the graves are decorated with huge wreaths of artificial flowers in dishpan-like tin cases, gla.s.s-covered and frequently containing faded photographs of the deceased, the men appearing very stiff and uncomfortable in their best clothes, tall collars, and derby hats. Some of the "pans" are a yard in diameter by about eight inches deep, the wreaths draped with plentiful streamers of black upon which are stamped in gold letters suitable inscriptions and the names of the departed.

The monks were chanting sleepily in a choir gallery as we entered the sacristy of the little church, to examine some interesting unfinished cartoons upon the walls for frescoes never executed--our guide an amazing friendly young brother whose face was a replica of Giotto's unforgettable fresco of Dante in the Florence Bargello. Fra Giacomo, he called himself; and his interest in the world generally, his simple att.i.tude of dangerous curiosity in everything not connected with the cloistered life, made us think of Hichens' sorry hero--if hero he could be called!--in the "Garden of Allah." Neither he, nor any of the other monks with whom we came into contact anywhere in either Sicily or Italy, had the spiritual austerity that is so marked a characteristic of the Spanish monk; nothing at all of the bearing or atmosphere that instantly stamps a man as either genuinely consecrated or fanatic--according to the eye with which he is seen.

This lack of spirituality came out strongly when, wholly ignoring the service going on, Fra Giacomo dragged a confessional with a dreadful clatter across the tiled floor to serve as a camera-stand from which he insisted that I photograph the poor, bare little altar with its tawdry image beneath in a gla.s.s case. At each outburst of the rasping din, the monks aloft--seemingly quite undismayed by the sacrilege--kindly sang with greater zeal that they might not hear our profane noises.

From the monastery a zig-zag path leads to the very top of the hill, where two once highly venerated female saints had an altar and a hermitage on a fine bit of bluff overlooking the Conca d'Oro. Here the country unfolds below like a huge military map, the roads written with white ink, the sea in sapphire, the Conca d'Oro in emerald and topaz, and the city in agate. Far in the distance, beyond Palermo, Monte Pellegrino looms soft and vague, its square shoulders half hidden in bluish haze, with the sea fading so delicately into the sky that often the horizon line is lost. Nestling among the lemons in the foreground are large chimneys, the sign visible of an irrigation system nearly a thousand years old, of Saracenic origin. Hills and plain alike murmur with flowing water, for wherever the Arab went he turned barrens into gardens, planted and tended and improved, and devised irrigation systems so complete and permanent that--considering his resources and the times--our own watering schemes in the West seem puerile and scattering.

To-day in the Conca d'Oro about an hundred steam engines pump up water from artesian wells and subterranean rivers, while conduits and water-wheels utilize every drop that issues from the springs. So fertile is the soil that this irrigation has increased the yield from seven to one hundred and fifty dollars an acre.

There seems to be something in the atmosphere of the Gesu, some subtle ether of sympathy, perhaps, that makes the visitor's presence on the hill known to all the children round. At any rate, they pop out of the earth, and as you come down from the hermitage at the very top of the step to the main buildings, you are pretty certain to hear a scratching noise on the low stone wall at one side of the road. Naturally you look over. At the cleft upper end of a long pole a spray of lemon blossoms sc.r.a.pes along the rough wall; at the lower end, some twenty-five feet below in a grove, an attractive child clamors to you for "_Due soldi mangiare_--Two cents, to eat!"

As we were leaving the monastery, "Dante's" interest in worldly affairs came out strongly once more. Pointing to my camera, he asked plaintively: "Have you a plate left for me?"

I let him choose his own pose and his own background. With the skill of an artist he selected a stone step flanked by lofty cypresses, and taking out his breviary immediately lost himself in meditation which required some imagination to consider holy. The photograph made, he spoke again, his wistful expression intensified.

"Now will you please register the package? Many tourists have been here and taken pictures, several of myself. They all promised to send me copies. I know they did so," he sighed regretfully, with a charity which would have been ludicrous had it not been so childishly unaffected and sincere, "but I never got a single one. Oh, but the mails are bad here!"

Genial Gualterio, for all his eagerness to serve us to our best advantage, could not forget his own advantage once in a while, and cheerily singing on his box, drove us far out of our way, at last drawing rein before the mouth of a large cavern which appeared to be full of very dirty children whose hands were full of very dirty bones.

On the other side of the road lay a pool covered with green slime. I was getting out with my camera when Gualterio stopped me abruptly. "Oh, no, _signore_, there is nothing worth examining; but I thought you might like to see the Giants' Cave, which is full of old fossils, and the Mar'

Dolc'!"

No visitor is likely to be thirsty enough to drink of the "sweet water"

that reminds him of Gunga Din and his goatskin bag. It is to be hoped, moreover, that the slimy pool is only the overflow of the Mare Dolce (Sweet Water), most famous of the Conca d'Oro's innumerable springs.

Neither is one likely to speculate in bones of doubtful authenticity. So the only thing to do under the circ.u.mstances is to be just as cheerful as the cabman, and drive back to the ruins of the old Saracen-Norman stronghold of La Favara, whose splendor was famous during the Middle Ages, for there Frederick II, greatest of all kings of Sicily, held royal court. The brilliant court has vanished, and the castle itself is a crumbling wreck, a mere dank stable and storehouse, dark and ill smelling. Yet merely to see it recalls Frederick's striking personality and character. And it is to be remembered that he was not merely Emperor of Germany and King of Sicily, but King of Italy, Sardinia, Apulia, Burgundy and for a while of Jerusalem. His connection with that city and with the Sixth Crusade forms one of the most picturesque and pleasant incidents of that fierce and warlike age. Speaking Arabic fluently--besides several other languages--he was able, through sheer force of character and winning personality, to negotiate treaty after treaty with the Saracens peacefully, winning the Holy City itself without striking a blow, and remaining its king for a decade during which peace instead of bloodshed was the rule. His army even contained a picked body of Saracen troops which he made his personal bodyguard.

There was nothing, in fact, in either the intellectual or the political life of his age which this man, described by the Latin chroniclers as _stupor mundi_, "wonder of the world," failed to grasp and master thoroughly. And in all the whirl of his incessant activities at home and abroad he found time to be a poet and scholar, to encourage learning in all its branches, and, most important of all, to articulate and reduce to written form the crude Italian speech of the day.

If you care for an experience out of the usual in this smiling island, stop on the Bagheria road at the church of San Giovanni dei Lebrosi or, as some Americans call it, "The Leprosy," in the midst of a settlement of tanners. Here you are attended by three women, each flourishing a large key, all dirty and unkempt, and a barking, snapping, currish crowd of begging children. One of the three women unlocks the door of the alley at whose inner end the church stands. The stench is almost stupefying, the air thick with vapors. The second woman opens the door of the church, one of the oldest Norman structures in the island, now painfully restored with obtrusive brick and whitewash, and the third proves to be the keeper of the sacristy. Still another huge key now appears--this time in the hands of a surly man, who insists on showing you out another way, through an orange grove, though your carriage is in plain sight at the foot of the lane. These evil-looking children and caretakers are the most pertinacious and insolent you will encounter anywhere in the island. Has the fetid atmosphere anything to do with their crabbed humor?

In this plain of ancient Panormos, as both city and district were once known, there comes vividly to mind a curious battle scene. To-day we experiment with automobiles and aeroplanes as instruments of war: more than two thousand years ago disaster overtook the arms of Carthage because General Asdrubal placed his reliance in the then new-fangled elephant auxiliaries. Rome, for all she was conquering the world, trembled before these "great gray oxen," as the legionaries called them.

However, the Consul Metellus, who commanded inside the city, directed his attention effectually first of all to these splendid targets moving ponderously and disdainfully up against him. Pain-maddened by a ceaseless shower of darts and arrows, the great beasts shook off their helpless drivers and charged furiously to and fro, trumpeting, goring, trampling, wild engines of destruction which did more mischief to the Carthaginians than to Rome; and before night fell over the field of slaughter, the Romans led captive more than half of the hundred and twenty once dreaded t.i.tans that had been Asdrubal's reliance, but which had cost him the battle.

Continuing toward the city along the road called the Corso dei Mille, over which Garibaldi and his immortal Thousand marched to victory, we pa.s.s close beside the old Ponte d'Ammiraglio, built some eight hundred years ago by King Roger's Grand Admiral Giorgios Antiochenos. In those days it spanned the swift Fiume Oreto, but now the fickle water has chosen another bed, leaving the ma.s.sive stone bridge high and dry, and looking very useless and absurd in an open field.