An evening out of doors, in summer, is pleasant enough anywhere in Italy: but I have found no place where the people and their amusements were so concentrated at that hour, as upon the “Marina” of Palermo. A ramble with the officers up and down, renewing the acquaintances made with visitors to the ships, listening to the music and observing the various characters of the crowd, concludes every day agreeably. A terraced promenade twenty feet above the street, extends nearly the whole length of the Marina, and here, under the balconies of the viceroy’s palace, with the crescent harbour spread out before the eye, trees above, and marble seats tempting the weary at every step, may be met pedestrians of every class, from the first cool hour when the sea-breeze sets in till midnight or morning. The intervals between the pieces performed by the royal band in the centre of the drive, is seized by the wandering improvisatrice, or the ludicrous puncinello, and even the beggars cease to importune in the general abandonment to pleasure. Every other moment the air is filled with a delightful perfume, and you are addressed by the bearer of a tall pole tied thickly with the odorous flowers of this voluptuous climate—a mode of selling these cheap luxuries which I believe is peculiar to Palermo. The gaiety they give a crowd, by the way, is singular. They move about among the gaudily-dressed contadini like a troop of banners—tulips, narcissus, moss-roses, branches of jasmine, geraniums, every flower that is rare and beautiful scenting the air from a hundred overladen poles, and the merest pittance will purchase the rarest and loveliest. It seems a clime of fruits and flowers; and if one could but shut his eyes to the dreadful contrasts of nakedness and starvation, he might believe himself in a Utopia.
We were standing on the balcony of the consul’s residence (a charming situation overlooking the Marina), and remarking the gaiety of the scene on the first evening of our arrival. The conversation turned upon the condition of the people. The consul remarked that it was an every-day circumstance to find beggars starved to death in the streets; and that, in the small villages near Palermo, eight or ten were often taken up dead from the road-side in the morning. The difficulty of getting a subsistence is every day increasing, and in the midst of one of the most fertile spots of the earth, one half the population are driven to the last extremity for bread. The results appear in constant conspiracies against the government, detected and put down with more or less difficulty. The island is garrisoned with troops from Italy, and the viceroy has lately sent to his brother for a reinforcement, and is said to feel very insecure. A more lamentably misgoverned kingdom than that of the Sicilies, probably does not exist in the world.
LETTER IX.
Palermo—Fête given by Mr. Gardiner, the American Consul—Temple of Clitumnus—Cottage of Petrarch—Messina—Lipari Islands—Scylla and Charybdis.
Palermo, June 28th.—The curve of “The Golden Shell,” which bends to the east of Palermo, is a luxuriant plain of ten miles in length, terminated by a bluff which forms a headland corner of the bay. A broad neck of land between this bay and another indenting the coast less deeply on the other side, is occupied by a cluster of summer palaces belonging to several of the richer princes of Sicily. The breeze, whenever there is one on land or sea, sweeps freshly across this ridge, and a more desirable residence for combined coolness and beauty could scarce be imagined. The Palermitan princes, however, find every country more attractive than their own; and while you may find a dozen of them in any city of Europe, their once magnificent residences are deserted and falling to decay, almost without an exception.
The old walls of one of these palaces were enlivened yesterday, by a fête given to the officers of the squadron by the American consul, Mr. Gardiner. We left Palermo in a long cavalcade, followed by a large omnibus containing the ship’s band, early in the forenoon. The road was lined with prickly pear and oleander in the most luxuriant blossom. Exotics in our country, these plants are indigenous to Sicily, and form the only hedges to the large plantations of cane and the spreading vineyards and fields. A more brilliant show than these long lines of trees, laden with bright pink flowers, and varied by the gigantic and massive leaf of the pear, cannot easily be imagined.
We were to visit one or two places on our way. The carriage drew up about eight miles from town, at the gate of a ruinous building, and passing through a deserted court, we entered an old-fashioned garden, presenting one succession of trimmed walks, urns, statues, and fountains. The green mould of age and exposure upon the marbles, the broken seats, the once costly but now ruined and silent fountains, the tall weeds in the seldom-trodden walks, and the wild vegetation of fragrant jasmine and brier, burying everything with its luxuriance, all told the story of decay. I remembered the scenes of the Decameron; the many “tales of love,” laid in these very gardens; the gay romances of which Palermo was the favourite home; and the dames and knights of Sicily, the fairest and bravest themes, and I longed to let my merry companions pass on, and remain to realise more deeply the spells of poetry and story. The pleasure of travel is in the fancy. Men and manners are so nearly alike over the world, and the same annoyances disturb so certainly, wherever we are, the gratification of seeing and conversing with our living fellow-beings, that it is only by the mingled illusion of fancy and memory, by getting apart, and peopling the deserted palace or the sombre ruin from the pages of a book, that we ever realise the anticipated pleasure of standing on celebrated ground. The eye, the curiosity, are both disappointed, and the voice of a common companion reduces the most romantic ruin to a heap of stone. In some of the footsteps of Childe Harold himself, with his glorious thoughts upon my lips, and all that moved his imagination addressing my eye, with the additional grace which his poetry has left around them, I have found myself unable to overstep the vulgar circumstances of the hour—“the Temple of Clitumnus” was a ruined shed glaring in the sunshine, and the “Cottage of Petrarch” an apology for extortion and annoyance.