Vistas in Sicily

by Arthur Stanley Riggs

Ripe and green fruit and blossoms are to be seen at the same time on the orange and lemon trees, and by April the scraggy old olive trees bend beneath the weight of their dull green fruit, just beginning to blush with purple. The air is full of the scent of myriad flowers, and the railway tracks, sometimes for miles, run between hedges of geraniums—six to eight feet high—whose pungent fragrance fills the flying trains. The summer climate is as mild and salubrious as that of the winter, for even in July and August the average is not more than seventy-seven or seventy-eight degrees Fahrenheit; about the same as in our own Atlantic States. Occasionally, during one of the African siroccos that sometimes sweep across the island, the mercury rises to an hundred or so; but the sirocco is a rare occurrence, fully as apt to occur in mid-winter as in summer.

In a climate of this sort the jaded city-dweller, searching for health and rest, finds an ideal environment, and while the hotels are not the equals of the fashionable New York and London hostelries, they are comfortable and moderate in price; and many of them have splendid gardens attached, where one may have tea, or rest and wander at will among the scented bowers. One boasts a considerable aviary, and another, perched at the very edge of a precipitous crag, serves refreshments upon a stone promenade with the blue African Mediterranean right below, and the peaks of the Dark Continent faintly suggesting themselves through the mists of the horizon. Many of the best-known of these hostelries are located at historic spots, where history and imagination can conjure up the past vividly—aided, perhaps, by a too generous dinner. More than one traveler has fought the siege of Taormina all over again in his post-prandial dreams, and gone tumbling down the nine-hundred-foot slopes with the Greek tyrant, to wake up on the stony floor of his own bedroom!

Notwithstanding, the food is good, except in the more remote districts, where goat’s flesh is usually the literal piéce de résistance. In many of the hill centers the wine of the country, the vin ordinaire, as the French put it, is remarkably pure and good, while for general attractiveness and cleanly condition, the hotels as a class rank very well indeed. Not so much can be said for the servants, for the Sicilian accepts dirt as a thing given of God and therefore not to be too severely quarreled with under any circumstances; yet he does his best to live up to the finicky notions of the foreigner who, to his unprejudiced eye, is so jaundiced. And the Sicilian’s best, in his efforts to please the stranger, is a very warm-hearted and genial best indeed, full of cheery smiles, of the utmost willingness to fetch and carry, of entire devotion, sometimes to the point of doing actual violence for his patron.

It is characteristic of the people, indeed, that, having so long served for nothing, they should welcome the chance to serve for their own profit and pleasure combined; and the service is as pleasant to reward as it is to receive. Furthermore, the reward need not by any means always take the form of cash. In Italy everywhere one goes it is always tip! tip! tip! But in Sicily it is a delight to learn that one often secures as much for a smile and a gracious word of thanks as for a cash gratuity. In fact, tips are not infrequently refused. I shall never forget the expression that crossed the face of a schoolboy to whom I once offered half a lira, ten cents, for some trifling service. There was hurt pride in the rich brown eyes upturned to mine as the dirty little paw waved away the coin without a word. Another time, in the course of a detailed exploration of a prominent agricultural school in Palermo, the young priest in charge remonstrated with me, half in amusement, half in indignation, because “you offered my máma money!” To the apologetic remark that it is very hard to know when not to offer money, since everyone elsewhere in Italy expects it, the young philosopher, as cordial and proud as he was abjectly poor, helped himself to one of my cigarettes with a neat word of thanks and replied: “Ah, but here it is different! We are a simple, kindly folk in Sicily, always ready to do whatever we can for the well mannered foreigner. And, friend, when you go out, do not try to corrupt my boys with money,” was his parting admonition regarding tips for any of his pupils.

This picturesqueness of character extends to face and costume as well, and in the remoter places the dress and faces of the ancients may be observed, striking a curious note of contrast with the exceedingly modern and well appareled folk of the larger centers. Only fifteen miles by carriage from Palermo, back in the mountains at Piana dei Greci—an Albanian colony founded during the latter part of the fifteenth century—the peasants still hold during festival time to their rich and exceedingly beautiful costumes of embroidered silken gowns and breeches heavily picked out with gold. And a costume wedding can usually be arranged for the benefit of the interested visitor, who is expected to pay the officiating priest and make a modest gift to the newly married young couple.

But ancient or modern though the costume be, the demeanor of the wearer is almost invariably the same, courteous and respectful—one might even say eager—to give nothing but pleasure to the stranger. And this is true even of the cab-drivers. We had come to Sicily weary to exasperation of the importunities and rascality of the Neapolitan jehus—Gregorio was a smiling exception. To our delight we found ourselves able to take a ride in Palermo, of half a mile or more, in a clean, well-kept barouche, drawn by a well-fed little Arab stallion, for ten cents—and no tip necessary or expected.

The prices for longer excursions were on the same basis, and for weeks we had the services of a cab, a magnificent horse, and the peerless Gualterio, for about two dollars a day, including what to the Sicilian mind was a generous gratuity. And the carriage “ran sweetly,” as Gualterio assured us it would; nor was it—in his own words—“dirty, like some!” Of course, the Sicilian cabman, for all his courtly manners and engaging smile, his soft voice and his continual appeal to the ladies, with the set phrase “La Signora vuol’ andare—The Lady would like to ride?” (as she usually did, to the enrichment of the cabby) is not much more to be relied upon for facts, or as a guide, than his brethren in Naples or anywhere else in the world. The first time we saw one of the numberless slender stone towers that dot Palermo from end to end, rising to a height of about twenty feet, covered with fine vines and dripping countless tiny streams of water, Gualterio smiled angelically when asked what it was.

“It is very simple, Signore,” he replied instantly. “It is one of the watch towers, built to enable the guards of the royal Château of La Favorita to keep watch over the entire estate at once.” It seemed a curious thing that royal guards should combine duty with the pleasures of a cooling showerbath; but when I appeared to doubt it, Gualterio simply pointed at the iron ladder leading from top to bottom outside. “Behold,” he said. “Are not the ladders still there by which the guards climbed up and down?” Later we found the structures to be irrigating towers, as useful as they are picturesque, which is saying a good deal. How to make a cab-driver truthful is a recipe one seldom or never learns. Perhaps there is a way, but his fictions are so harmless and amiable, so entirely diverting and ingenuous, that it seems a pity to spoil a child of Nature with ironclad rules for veracity.

Nor is the cabman the only Sicilian given to hyperbole or metaphor. The tendency is marked in all primitive peoples—a large part of the Sicilians are still primitive—to tell an inquirer the thing they suppose he most wishes to know; and the Saracenic blood in the Sicilian has doubtless left him a certain heritage of poetic imagination and exaggeration for the most utter commonplaces of life. At any rate, this inclination is found throughout the island, and it does not, except to the flustered tourist-in-a-hurry, seem a peculiar drawback or fault. Indeed, it rather adds to the fascination of the people, who appear to fit perfectly into their environs. Wild looking young girls, cherry-and-olive of skin, gossiping about the central fountains of their home towns, bear huge replicas of red Greek amphorai upon their well poised heads with all the grace of Greek maidens. Sprightly little goatherds, whose heads are the heads of fauns, and whose half naked and ruddy bodies are often clad in skins, ramble over the precipitous hills with nimble herds able to crop a living from mere stone-piles; and the fauns, Pan-like, pipe to their goats strains Theocritus might have loved. Swart mountaineers dress like their own rough hills in shaggy clothes topped off by big rough shawls; and seamen clump about, afloat and ashore, in boots and “oilers,” or barelegged. The city folk are equally artless, with their tiny marionette theaters, their homeless meals in the open air markets, their goat-blessings, their innumerable other feste.

And the Sicilians are not the only entertaining characters one meets. Sometimes our own countrymen—more often countrywomen!—are not far behind them. At a little mountain hotel, one evening at dinner a vivacious, black-haired, sloe-eyed, young woman with the air of one who comes, sees and conquers, told me in a breath her name, place of residence, father’s occupation, and asked for my credentials. I was rather stunned, but one of her companions—there were five of them in all—reassuring me by “Oh, don’t mind Dulcie! She’s all right,” I admitted my identity.