By the Ionian Sea: Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy

country had nothing to recommend it. It was very heady, and smacked of

drugs rather than of grape juice.

But men must eat, and the Concordia, being the only restaurant, daily

entertained several citizens, besides guests staying in the house. One

of these visitants excited my curiosity; he was a middle-aged man of

austere countenance; shabby in attire, but with the bearing of one

accustomed to command. Arriving always at exactly the same moment, he

seated himself in his accustomed place, drew his hat over his brows,

and began to munch bread. No word did I hear him speak. As soon as he

appeared in the doorway, the waiter called out, with respectful hurry,

“Don Ferdinando!” and in a minute his first course was served. Bent

like a hunchback over the table, his hat dropping ever lower, until it

almost hid his eyes, the Don ate voraciously. His dishes seemed to be

always the same, and as soon as he had finished the last mouthful, he

rose and strode from the room.

Don is a common title of respect in Southern Italy; it dates of course

from the time of Spanish rule. At a favourable moment I ventured to

inquire of the waiter who Don Ferdinando might be; the only answer,

given with extreme discretion, was “A proprietor.” If in easy

circumstances, the Don must have been miserly, his diet was wretched

beyond description. And in the manner of his feeding he differed

strangely from the ordinary Italian who frequents restaurants.

Wonderful to observe, the representative diner. He always seems to know

exactly what his appetite demands; he addresses the waiter in a

preliminary discourse, sketching out his meal, and then proceeds to

fill in the minutiae. If he orders a common dish, he describes with

exquisite detail how it is to be prepared; in demanding something out

of the way he glows with culinary enthusiasm. An ordinary bill of fare

never satisfies him; he plays variations upon the theme suggested,

divides or combines, introduces novelties of the most unexpected kind.

As a rule, he eats enormously (I speak only of dinner), a piled dish of

macaroni is but the prelude to his meal, a whetting of his appetite.

Throughout he grumbles, nothing is quite as it should be, and when the

bill is presented he grumbles still more vigorously, seldom paying the

sum as it stands. He rarely appears content with his entertainment, and

often indulges in unbounded abuse of those who serve him. These

characteristics, which I have noted more or less in every part of

Italy, were strongly illustrated at the Concordia. In general, they

consist with a fundamental good humour, but at Cotrone the tone of the

dining-room was decidedly morose. One man—he seemed to be a sort of

clerk—came only to quarrel. I am convinced that he ordered things

which he knew the people could not cook just for the sake of reviling

their handiwork when it was presented. Therewith he spent incredibly

small sums; after growling and remonstrating and eating for more than

an hour, his bill would amount to seventy or eighty centesimi, wine

included. Every day he threatened to withdraw his custom; every day he

sent for the landlady, pointed out to her how vilely he was treated,

and asked how she could expect him to recommend the Concordia to his

acquaintances. On one occasion I saw him push away a plate of

something, plant his elbows on the table, and hide his face in his

hands; thus he sat for ten minutes, an image of indignant misery, and

when at last his countenance was again visible, it showed traces of

tears.

I dwell upon the question of food because it was on this day that I

began to feel a loss of appetite and found myself disgusted with the

dishes set before me. In ordinary health I have the happiest

qualification of the traveller, an ability to eat and enjoy the

familiar dishes of any quasi-civilized country; it was a bad sign when

I grew fastidious. After a mere pretence of dinner, I lay down in my

room to rest and read. But I could do neither; it grew plain to me that

I was feverish. Through a sleepless night, the fever manifestly

increasing, I wished that illness had fallen on me anywhere rather than

at Cotrone.

CHAPTER IX

MY FRIEND THE DOCTOR

In the morning I arose as usual, though with difficulty. I tried to

persuade myself that I was merely suffering from a violent attack of

dyspepsia, the natural result of Concordia diet. When the waiter

brought my breakfast I regarded it with resentful eye, feeling for the

moment very much like my grumbling acquaintance of the dinner hour. It

may be as well to explain that the breakfast consisted of very bad

coffee, with goat’s milk, hard, coarse bread, and goat’s butter, which

tasted exactly like indifferent lard. The so-called butter, by a

strange custom of Cotrone, was served in the emptied rind of a

spherical cheese—the small caccio cavallo, horse cheese, which one

sees everywhere in the South. I should not have liked to inquire where,

how, when, or by whom the substance of the cheese had been consumed.