As we were having tea, Mr. Bowdoin happened in; later, several English and American Taorminians dropped in. This was one of the colony’s social centres.
“All of us here,” said Mr. Wood, “had a narrow escape. We had arranged to go to Messina on the 27th of December, spend the night and hear Madame Butterfly. At the last minute the manager changed the opera to Aida; we had all heard Aida so often that we gave up going. The hotel where we would have stayed was destroyed; all the opera singers perished!”
We tried to talk of other things, a dozen subjects were started—in vain, it was impossible to get away from that all-absorbing topic, the earthquake. One and another told their experiences, letters were read, extracts from journals. With our new friends, we lived over again those dreadful days, when we in Rome were torn with anxiety about them, because no word came from Taormina.
“The Sicilians are a strange race,” said one; “they talk loud over nothing; when something really hurts, they burn dumb; at heart they are a melancholy people. Here at Taormina they had a bad earthquake, a bad tidal wave. In the beginning the poor were dazed, but the first clothing distributed was collected by a Sicilian woman, who performed an act extraordinary among people so Oriental as the Sicilians still are. She went from house to house, at the tail of a cart, gathering clothing. This lady does not leave her house alone twice a month; Sicilian women, even by daylight, mostly go out in twos and threes. Her house was turned into a factory for cutting out and making clothes and mattresses. The money I was able to get together for her, bought an incredible number of mattresses—incredible except for the fact that she and the women of Taormina made them up themselves. A sister of this woman went about the village, asking for helpers to go down with her to meet the trains. At first Sicilian men and two English women went with her. Later the forestieri waked up and with their greater command of money of course accomplished much more—the work of the foreign colony here has been splendid; but it was not the foreign colony that started the work; the impulse was Sicilian.”
“I see you like the Sicilians,” I said.
“I love them,” said my new friend. “Give them three words of dialetto, and you will see; there are no warmer hearts in the world.”
Though we never saw Miss Hill, we heard of her everywhere. She had provided the necessary sewing for our camp; she had defended carloads of lumber destined for a wretched hamlet, that had been seized by the people in a larger and less needy village, One morning, when it was too wet to be out of doors, we went to see Miss Hill’s school of needlework. The names of the streets we passed through delighted Patsy,—the Lane-behind-the-nut-tree, the Alley-behind-the-Cathedral. In a pleasant workroom a bevy of girls sat at work, learning to make the lovely Sicilian drawn-work and embroidery. Before Miss Hill started her school, these industries were among the lost arts.
“The shops are full of our patterns,” said the manageress tartly. “They learn them here and then go away and make them for any one who will pay them!”
“That’s the test of the school’s usefulness, isn’t it?” I asked. Impossible to resist the lovely Sicilian embroideries and drawn-thread work, Patsy and I bought all we could afford.
Taormina is like Cornish, the chief personage in the place is the mountain. There is much rivalry among the colonists as to who has the best view. You go to make a visit, first of all you must make your respects to the mountain. I thought of dear blue Ascutney, whenever I was asked to pronounce for or against each new view of Etna, from hotel terrace or friendly garden. One of the best was from the old house on the Corso, where we went one afternoon to tea, with Dr. and Mrs. Paton. The stemma over the door bears the column of the Colonnas, the lily of the Farnese; these familiar emblems of two famous old Roman families made us feel at home at once. We had arrived punctually on the minute of half past four; so had the prince of peacocks. Walking sedately to the side of his mistress, he fed daintily from her hand, his jewelled neck shining in the sun, the splendor of his fan unfolded.