Diversions in Sicily

by Henry Festing Jones

Some winds blow some clouds away, but the roots of this cloud were so firmly wedged in among the narrow streets and through the cracks of the doors and windows, which would not shut close, that this wind could do nothing with it but blow it more deeply in and the house was full of mist like the Albert Hall in a winter fog. The natives consider it more healthy to keep the same temperature indoors and out, so there is not a house on the mountain with a fireplace, and only a few with stoves. The absence of chimneys is a feature of the town, as it is of other Sicilian towns that can bear their absence better. And these are the people who commiserate an Englishman on being compelled to live in our cold, damp, foggy island! In support of my statement that we do occasionally see the sun, I showed them a picture-postcard of a house in London standing in a garden. It was midday, but we had to have a lamp to see the picture; nevertheless they supposed that the flowers were artificial and were renewed when we had a festa because, of course, real flowers will not grow in our perpetual fog. I told them that our fogs prevent flowers from growing in England just as much as their brigands prevent foreigners

from travelling in Sicily, and that both are more spoken of than seen.

It must, however, be admitted that the natives do not appear to suffer from the effects of their climate. They boast that statistics show them to be particularly free from pulmonary complaints, and to have an unusually low death rate. As the doctor said, in a tone of professional discontent, they enjoy an epidemic of good health.

Supper consisted of maccaroni, bread and wine, and the table-cloth and napkins were as damp as one’s towels after a bath. My two friends sat with me and introduced me to a student with a slight cast in one of his melancholy eyes, a misty tenor voice and the facile Italian smile, who had come up from Castelvetrano to study a little philosophy, and supped with me.

When it was bedtime, they all three came with Donna Anna into my bedroom to make sure that I was comfortable and the old landlady took the opportunity of consulting the accountant about the prisoners. Although the inhabitants of the province of Trapani are all good people, nevertheless now and then some slight crime is committed, an occasional wounding, a simple stabbing or so,

and consequently it is convenient to have a prison handy. Part of the castle on the mountain is used for the purpose and Donna Anna provides the prisoners with their food and also sees to their sheets, bedding etc. They could not have a better matron and if she keeps everything in the prison as clean and good as it is in her house, I am afraid she may perhaps make the prisoners more comfortable than they deserve.

When she had disposed of her business she asked whether I should like some fire in my bed. I was going to decline, not being in the habit of using a warming-pan, but then I thought of the table-cloth and the napkins at supper—and my friends said that every one on the mountain always has fire in the bed in cold, damp weather—so I agreed, and Donna Anna fetched what looked like a flower-pot containing hot charcoal. She put this between my sheets with a wicker cage over it, and presently shifted its position. I wanted her to leave it all night in a corner of the room to take the chill off, but this met with opposition from all because they did not wish me to be found in the morning asphyxiated in my sleep like a Parisian milliner in a novel. I would have chanced it, had I

been allowed, for the milliners always have the greatest difficulty in stopping up all the chinks, and even then occasionally survive; whereas, although Donna Anna pinned up a blanket across my window, it did not keep out the gale that was raging all about the room. The general opinion being against the charcoal, I acquiesced and it was taken back to its home in the kitchen. It was the only fire in the house and was what Dickens would have called an honest and stout little fire. It had cooked the maccaroni for supper and, after warming all the beds, went back to rest from its labour until the morning when it would be called to make the coffee for breakfast. It deserved its rest, not that it dried my sheets, but it warmed them; and the doctor assured me that it is the coldness and not the dampness of wet sheets that gives one a chill, so he considered me practically safe. If only I had had a cold at the time, he said, I should have been completely safe on the principle that one must be off with the old cold before one can be on with the new. Owing, doubtless, to the kindly influence of the good little fire, I passed a comfortable night and took no harm.

When I came down in the morning there

was the student immersed in his philosophy; the industrious little fire had obligingly allowed itself to be coaxed into two, and he had secured part of it in a flower-pot on the floor between his feet and had a rug over his knees. The cloud was as thick and the wind as boisterous as it had been the day before, so I followed his example, got another flowerpot, split off a bit of fire for myself and sat down with a rug.