Cavaliere Ragusa, to give the new proprietor his somewhat dashing title, was initially a reluctant hotelier. He was just fourteen when his father, Salvatore, made the decision to send him to Berlin for the purpose of learning the family trade. He attended a school that specialised in the hotel business where he gained a more than passing acquaintance with French, English and Russian, as well as the German in which his lessons were conducted.
Back in Sicily at the tender age of twenty, Ragusa was ready to take on the running of establishments in Catania and Agrigento. The southern city of Agrigento was beginning to cash in on the fashion for touring ancient sites. Its Greek ruins, although heavily reconstructed, are among some of the most spectacular examples outside of Greece itself, so Ragusa’s business was naturally called ‘L’Hotel des Temples’. The establishment of The Palms, at the heart of Sicily’s capital, was an obvious progression and a flamboyant sign of his success. Running such a prestigious hotel in his twenties made the entrepreneur quite a catch, and he caught the eye of Lucia Salvo Cozzo di Pietraganzili, a young Marchioness. Unfortunately, she died at the age of only twenty-seven in 1887, just ten years into their marriage, leaving him to look after their six children. Their relationship, however, opened to Ragusa the corridors of power and the salons of culture.
Both of these avenues were useful to a man who was not just obsessed with commerce. The sojourn in Berlin had also stimulated Ragusa’s interest in the study of butterflies and other insects. Three years prior to establishing The Palms, he had met Baron Arthur Leopold Rottenberg, who had come to Sicily with the express aim of studying all things entomological, a meeting which prompted Ragusa to join the Società Entomologica Italiana (Italian Entomological Society). Ragusa was assiduous in collecting specimens, which he dated and geographically pinpointed for the society. It seems that the hotelier also had a keen eye for recognising specimens and describing them for the scientific community. Although he did not come from an academic background, Ragusa became friendly with those responsible for the entomological section of the zoological museum.
By 1881 Ragusa had become so well-known in the world of the study of the island’s natural sciences, having also made friends and acquaintances in the fields of geology, malacology and botany, that he decided to found a monthly magazine called Il naturalista siciliano: giornale di scienze naturali (The Sicilian Naturalist: Journal of Natural Sciences). We can see from the introduction labelled ‘To the readers’ in the edition from 1 October 1881 that Ragusa and his editorial team were upbeat about scientific progress and the island in general: ‘Alongside the vigorous economic development taking place in Sicily, there is a lively intellectual reawakening, and parallel to the growth in industry and commerce is an increase in the love of the arts, letters and scientific study.’
The introduction also lists the specialisms of the magazine’s major contributors. The importance of Ragusa’s aristocratic connections can be seen by the fact that two of the seven names listed were marquises — the Marchese Allery di Monterosato in charge of the study of shells, and the Marchese Antonio De Gregorio Brunaccini dealing with geology. Naturally, Ragusa was the entomologist. For this edition, he wrote an article entitled ‘Coleotteri nuovi o poco conosciuti della Sicilia’ (‘The lesser-known new coleoptera of Sicily’). The piece starts with the activity he loved the most, hunting down his specimens in the field. A nod is given to his inspiration, Baron Rottenberg:
One July, years ago, whilst out hunting between Palermo and Mondello, I caught on the sand, near the sea, a beautiful variety of littoralis, having a third off-white spot on each elytra, united with a fifth which is closest to the suture of the elytra, forming the shape of a seven.
Poor Baron Rottenberg also found this variety in a single specimen, and with the seven only on the left elytra, mentioning it in his piece on the coleoptera of Sicily (Beri, Ent. Zeit. 1870) — not giving the name, but only saying that Schaum cites it. Mr René Oberthur, the fortunate purchaser of Baron Chaudoir’s magnificent collection of carabidae, wrote to me having found it in said collection with the name var. lugens Dahl.
Clearly, Ragusa had stretched his self-taught passion beyond the concept of mere amateur hobbyism. He uses the term ‘poor’ to refer to Rottenberg because the unfortunate Baron died before he could realise his full potential as an entomologist. Not so Ragusa, who saw his magazine fire the interests of both serious amateurs and career academics. His day job as hotel proprietor was also very useful in facilitating the visits of foreign specialists, notably the renowned Austrian coleopterist Edmund Reitter and the French lepidopterists Jean-Baptiste Eugène Bellier de la Chavignerie and Pierre Millière.
The 1883 publication Catalogo ragionato dei coleotteri di Sicilia (The Annotated Catalogue of Sicilian Coleoptera) could be considered Ragusa’s masterwork, as it echoes down the decades and continues to provide a point of reference for the modern-day entomologist. Some of his specimens of beetles and butterflies also still exist, most importantly the collection of lepidoptera sold to Lionel Walter Rothschild which is now in London. Other specimens can be found as far afield as Budapest or more locally in the Biological, Geological and Environmental Sciences department of Catania University.
When not out in the field in pursuit of rare species, normal life encroached on Ragusa with all its complications. It is fair to say that the editors of Il naturalista siciliano skated over some of the less palatable facts when they lauded the island’s economic and cultural developments. Sicily was in a state of flux and the lobby of The Palms soon became a meeting place for those concerned with the complexities of Sicilian society. As evidenced by the various uprisings and general disorder, the Risorgimento had not created the sunlit uplands of stable Sicilian autonomy so desired by the majority of the rich and poor alike. Those at the forefront of Garibaldi’s movement were now faced with some significant dilemmas: how to provide stability and the opportunities promised whilst placating the opposing factions. Francesco Crispi believed himself to be up to the challenge.
The hotel provided the perfect backdrop for Crispi’s sense of theatricality which, as we know, had once manifested itself in the ridiculous guises he had adopted as a covert agent prior to the arrival of the Redshirts. He was a Sicilian of complex origin, descending from Albanians who had fled the Adriatic coast during the aftermath of Scanderbeg’s defeat by the Ottomans in 1468. The exiled Albanians, known as the Arbërëshe, set up communities in Sicily and continued to use their own language. In fact, standard Italian was Crispi’s third language after Albanian and Sicilian. His family had been Orthodox priests and gabellotti — that is to say guardians of acreage and property working for the landed gentry. Infamously, some gabellotti gained so much power they became proto-mafiosi. As Alfio Caruso points out in his book, I Siciliani (The Sicilians), Crispi came from an area where it was difficult to distinguish between mafiosi and non-mafiosi.
These ancestral professions were a potent force in forming Crispi’s political thought and pugnacious attitudes. Acolytes came to see him at The Palms, where he would hold forth on his political beliefs. He was not so steadfast in his views, however, that his mind could not be changed by events. Once a militant Republican, he declared, post-Risorgimento, that ‘the monarchy unites us, a republic would divide us’. Historians see this as the start of his slide from fundamentally democratic principles into the far darker territory of political repression. He was also a master in the art of Machiavellian defamation, denigrating the reputation of opponents — some would say in an attempt to further his own career.
By 1876 Crispi had become President of Italy’s Chamber of Deputies and, a year later, he took up the office of Minister of the Interior under Prime Minister Depretis. He had already survived the political machinations of the 1868 Lobbia Affair, something the newspaper Corriere della Sera has christened ‘Il primo scandalo’ — one of many to come in the topsy-turvy world of Italian politics. The affair concerned the giving of a tobacco concession to a company that had never dealt in tobacco. Deputies, in order to vote the concession through, were passed significant bribes. The Republican Giuseppe Ferrari asked for an enquiry into the matter, upon which former Garibaldi campaigner Cristiano Lobbia stepped forward and brandished two envelopes in Parliament. Realising that an enquiry would not be readily forthcoming, he had decided to draw attention to the evidence he had been collecting about the affair, which included witness statements.
Lobbia set a hare running that caused much panic amongst those who had sold their consciences for money. What did the envelopes actually contain? The intervention had the desired effect and an enquiry could not be avoided. As soon as the commission had been established, newspapers began to attack Lobbia’s integrity, and, in an attempt to prevent him from speaking at the enquiry, he was assaulted and injured in the street. Lobbia defended himself in a letter to Crispi’s newspaper, La Riforma, lamenting the personal attacks on his character and honour. Crispi waded into the argument on behalf of the former Garibaldino, hurling violent accusations at those accused of corruption. His indiscriminate allegations probably did more harm than good and he only succeeded in adding fuel to the fire, not to mention calling his own honesty into question.
Lobbia was continuously watched and followed, and eventually was summoned to court on the charge of fabricating a crime against his person. Defence witnesses were intimidated and prosecution witnesses were offered a way out of debt. Ludicrously, as one can see with the benefit of hindsight, Lobbia was sentenced to a year in a military prison. On the occasion of the birth of the future Victor Emmanuel III in 1869, a pardon was granted which Lobbia and his fellow prisoners refused, preferring a retrial which resulted in the overturning of the verdict. Sadly, the clearing of his name was hidden in the back pages of the press and Lobbia never recovered from the opprobrium. Crispi, however, despite his forthright passion, which scared even his followers, survived and flourished.
Whilst in his role as Minister of the Interior, another scandal hit that was far more personal in nature — Crispi was accused of bigamy. His first marriage had lasted only two years before his wife died in childbirth. In 1854 he married Rosalia Montmason, forming a fiery partnership fuelled by her partiality for alcohol and his infidelity. In 1878 Lina Barbagallo came into his life. This daughter of a former Bourbon magistrate captured his heart and his bed — he swiftly married her, but soon found himself in court on charges of bigamy. He escaped the charge on a point of administration; it seemed that his marriage to Montmason in Malta was not conducted by a priest officially sanctioned to carry out marriages and, on his arrival in Sicily, the documentation had not been added to the civil records. Nevertheless, his enemies had enough ammunition to accuse him of immorality and he was forced to resign from political life.
It would be nine years before Crispi could return to high office. In 1887 the old survivor took the top job, becoming Prime Minister, and immediately sparked a trade war with France. He also pursued Italy’s belated colonial venture in Ethiopia, a campaign that would prove disastrous for those soldiers caught up in what became known as the Dogali massacre. A troop of 550 men had been sent to reinforce the Italian garrison at Sahati but were surprised at Dogali by an army led by Ras Alula, the Asmara tribal leader. Only eighty men escaped the ensuing slaughter. Crispi described it as ‘Italy’s Thermopylae’ and threatened vengeance. He would not have the opportunity to carry through his threats, however, as the unpopularity of his tax increases and the effects of the trade war with France on agriculture precipitated his resignation.
Like a latter-day Berlusconi, he could not resist one last tilt at power in 1893. This term in office would be his defining moment as Prime Minister as he immediately had to deal with the social unrest stirred up by collectives of workers and peasants known as the Fasci Siciliani. The word fascio conjures up images of black-shirted militants but although the term (meaning a bundle or binding of sticks) shares a common root with Fascism, the nineteenth-century movement was in fact a left-wing version of early trade unionism. The collectives were campaigning for higher wages, lower taxes, land redistribution and equitable rents — plus ça change for the Sicilian peasantry.
The situation rapidly spun out of control when those with vested interests in Sicily’s agriculture and mining refused to consider any of the demands. Strikes led to violence and clashes with the police which prompted landowners to ask for government assistance. Crispi declared a state of emergency in January 1894 and despatched 40,000 troops to Sicily. During his own visits he conducted governmental business from The Palms and must have been aware of the degree of repression his actions had instituted. The army rounded up not only the ringleaders, but anyone vaguely connected with the Fasci, whether they were students from Palermo, peasants from the interior or merely sympathisers from the professional classes. The ringleaders received lengthy prison sentences and many others were incarcerated for even the most minor offences in a brutal repression that marked the end of the Fasci movement.
Crispi had fallen into the trap of believing a conspiracy was behind the Fasci, suspecting them to be a front for Sicilian independence financed by his old adversaries the French. In an attempt to assuage the fears of the left, he endeavoured to put through a parliamentary bill appropriating some of the larger estates that could be rented on long leases. Unsurprisingly, the landowners were far from happy. Whilst entangled in this seemingly eternal Sicilian dilemma, the spectre of Ethiopia arose once again with the routing of Italian troops at Adwa in 1896. Crispi resigned and was succeeded by his old nemesis, the Sicilian aristocrat Antonio di Rudinì, the property-owners’ candidate.
Rudinì (1839–1908) was of a different stamp to Crispi; he was a marquis who would have employed the likes of Francesco’s family to manage his estates. The plush surroundings of The Palms were second nature to such a man, although, rather like Tancredi in The Leopard, he supported the Garibaldini, perhaps in an attempt to see the sort of change that would keep the status quo. He was not, however, without some liberal credentials, recognising the cruelty of the Fasci repressions. Leniency was shown and pardons were issued to a proportion of those who had been summarily thrown in gaol. Throughout his life as a landowner, Rudinì escaped the kind of rebellion seen in Bronte which persuaded the Encyclopaedia Britannica to say that ‘he managed his estates on liberal lines’. The same publication also called him a ‘grand seigneur’, that is to say a non-threatening patrician with old-school manners.
Whilst in his earlier incarnation as the Mayor of Palermo, Rudinì had favoured the arts, announcing competitions for the design and construction of two theatres, the Massimo and Politeama. The contract for the Massimo was won by Giovan Battista Filippo Basile, whose son Ernesto carried on the work after his death and would have a significant impact on The Palms. The burgeoning theatre scene and an explosion in the creative arts attracted a new clientele to Ragusa’s hotel. In 1881, not long after the proprietor had launched his journal in homage to the diversity of Sicilian nature, Richard Wagner (1813–83) arrived at The Palms accompanied by his wife, Cosima, and their children, intent on a long stay in the twin hopes of stimulating his creativity and ameliorating his poor health.
Cosima, fortunately for us, was a prolific diarist and we can learn much about his stay through her writing. She was Wagner’s second wife, the first being Christine Wilhelmine Planer, known as Minna, who died from a heart condition at the age of fifty-six. Minna and Wagner had a tempestuous marriage during which Wagner had an affair with the German poet and author, Mathilde Wesendonck. It was during his years in Bavaria, under the patronage of Ludwig II, that he met Cosima who, at the time, was married to the conductor Hans von Bülow, who refused to divorce her. It was only after she had given birth to her third child with Wagner that Bülow finally consented. Cosima’s father, the composer Franz Lizst, was not happy with the age gap of twenty-four years between his daughter and Wagner or the scandal that the affair created in Munich, although the pair remained friends and Lizst was in attendance at some of Wagner’s greatest triumphs.
Simon Callow, in his book Being Wagner: The Triumph of the Will, paints an evocative portrait of the composer at the height of his powers, just five years before he travelled to Palermo. The scene is the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth at the premiere of The Twilight of the Gods. The audience contained not only Lizst, but Bruckner, Grieg, Rubenstein and Tchaikovsky, as well as a sprinkling of the crowned heads of Europe and lesser aristocracy. At the end of the performance, the concert hall erupted into a crescendo of appreciation and a tiny figure shuffled to the centre of the stage to take the applause. Callow tells us that Tchaikovsky thought Wagner looked every inch and more of his sixty-three years, a fragile, hunched man, seemingly incapable of a work of such magnitude.
In 1881 Wagner’s doctor fetched a specialist from the university town of Erlangen to fully assess the maestro’s health. Having ascertained that all seemed in working order, the specialist pronounced a strict dietary regime and sunshine. Initially, the Wagner family headed for Naples and were dazzled by the luminosity, both during the day and at night. On the boat trip to Palermo, as the composer noted in a letter to Ludwig II, the moonlight was ‘glorious’. They arrived in the city on 5 November to brilliant sunshine. In the same letter, Wagner tells the king that they had taken rooms in The Palms, where he was clearly entranced by the gardens and felt sure that he would regain his health in such an environment. Cosima, in her diary, details that they were given rooms 24, 25 and 26 which afforded them a view of the gardens from the conservatory terrace.
Their first trip around Palermo proved something of a disappointment in comparison to Naples, an opinion that was soon to change. The blousy charms of the Vesuvian city presented themselves immediately; Palermo’s attraction, however, as many other visitors have also found, required more coaxing. Within days Cosima wrote that they ‘spent a long time in the evening sitting on the terrace (conservatory) in moonlight. The idyllic aspect of Palermo is beginning to captivate us.’ In addition to the delights of the terrace, Wagner was happy with the rooms and began to organise his workspace in the salon. A sepia-tinted photograph of the interior exists showing an ornate chandelier above a central table; a gilded mirror dominates the wall above the fireplace and swagged curtains add a homely feel to what could otherwise seem rather grandiose.
It was in these surroundings that Wagner set to work on completing Parsifal, an opera whose libretto he had begun in 1865. The work is Wagner’s take on the Grail legend in which a wounded Amfortas, the keeper of the Grail, reveals the holy vessel to Parsifal. A mysterious woman called Kundry, condemned to perpetual penance for mocking Christ, lures Parsifal to Klingsor’s magic castle where the young man rejects her advances and is cursed to wander aimlessly. Klingsor now appears and throws a sacred spear at Parsifal who catches it and, by making the sign of the cross, destroys Klingsor’s fortress. In the final act, years later, the eldest Knight of the Grail, Gurnemanz, comes across an ailing Kundry and revives her with holy water; then spies a knight in black armour with a spear who turns out to be none other than Parsifal. Parsifal is then crowned King of the Grail and, using the spear, heals Amfortas’ eternal wound. Finally, he lifts the Grail to the accompaniment of a white dove. At this, Kundry falls to the ground with her life draining away.
Musicologists and historians find Parsifal one of Wagner’s most problematic works. In conjunction with the completion of the opera, Wagner published an essay called ‘Heroism and Christianity’ in which he gave free reign to the most bizarre and objectionable of his opinions. He proposed the insidious and unconscionable belief that the Aryans, his ‘German leaders of mankind’, were descendants of the Gods and that everyone else had derived from Darwin’s apes. In creating the character Parsifal, he is proclaiming an Aryan Christ rather than the Jewish originator of Christianity. The paradox that confronts many drawn to Wagner’s work is that the music, language and choreography form a perfect synergy, a harmony never previously achieved. The first performance of the opera was conducted by Hermann Levi who Wagner tried to coerce into baptism because he did not want to hand over the score to a Jew. Quite rightly, Levi refused although he continued in his role. The philosopher Nietzsche, who had previously been an admirer of Wagner, was appalled by the opera and called it ‘a work of malice, of vindictiveness … an outrage on morality’.
Cosima’s informal journal is full of references to her husband’s composition and, at various intervals, she mentions that he would run through a segment of music with her, looking for feedback and reassurance that he had achieved his intended aim. Cosima was a woman of musical understanding given her family credentials, but she seldom contradicted his feelings with regard to the direction of his work. They were clearly compatible and during their stay in Palermo Wagner once wistfully commented that he regretted the fact that they had not discovered each other ten or fifteen years earlier. Cosima, for her part, felt that all the beauty surrounding them in the city would mean nothing without him.
They did not restrict themselves to strolls through the city streets and gardens, and occasionally ventured further afield into the Conca d’Oro, the bowl-shaped hinterland behind Palermo dotted with orange and lemon groves. Their first excursion was to the Cathedral of Monreale. Surprisingly, Cosima makes no specific mention of the gold mosaics that cover the interior of the building. There are 130 scenes depicting biblical and other religious events, and a plethora of figures which amount to 10,000 square metres of tesserae, making it one of the most of heavily-mosaicked buildings in the world. Work on the structure began in 1174 after it was commissioned by the Norman king William II, who was heavily advised in the choice of iconography by his clergy, some of whom had connections with that other Norman outpost, England.
Although the overall impression on the Wagners was one of sublimity, they were most enchanted by the cloisters which flank the south side of the Cathedral. The Romanesque design is a perfect square with the arcading supported by a sequence of double pillars decorated with a variety of patterns made from inlaid mosaic and lava stone. It was William II’s idea to introduce the oriental element of water by adding a corner fountain which is also housed in a miniature cloister with barley-sugar columns topped by ornate terracotta tiling. The area is a perfect place to escape the heat and to dream.
The Wagners avoided the excesses of a Sicilian summer, but were occasionally plagued by two debilitating elements of these southern latitudes — irritating mosquitoes and the enervating wind known as the Sirocco which blows in directly from the Sahara. The wind is infamous for its ability to sap strength and alter the mood of anyone attempting to achieve a task involving either thought or physical effort. The greatest mood enhancer for Cosima and Richard was Shakespeare and they would spend most evenings reading aloud from one of his plays. After visiting Monreale, they decided that ‘nothing less than Shakespeare will do’ and they settled down to read Henry VI, Part I. According to Cosima, Wagner exclaimed: ‘He is the greatest of them all — What images!’
Wagner clearly appreciated and employed a high degree of visual acuity, enabling him to conjure Shakespeare’s characters in his mind’s eye as if they were players in one of his own operas. Henry VI was perfect for the composer in that it covers a stormy period of English history which saw a high-stakes game for political power. The play begins in 1422 as the Duke of Gloucester has been appointed Lord Protector during the infancy of Henry VI, although the Bishop of Winchester fears he is trying to usurp power. Meanwhile in France the English are besieging Orléans in a bid to drive out the French. As this battle rages, the rival factions at home ask their followers to pick red or white roses to show their allegiance; this will ultimately result in the civil war known as the Wars of the Roses. Joan la Pucelle, otherwise known as Joan of Arc, disguises herself as she leads the French to retake Rouen and is involved in a plot to persuade the Duke of Burgundy to change sides. The play ends with Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, condemning Joan of Arc to death and Henry VI accepting the hand of Margaret of Anjou. The synopsis reads like a super-charged Machiavellian fight for dominance. It is easy to imagine Wagner, with play in hand, strutting over the carpeted floor of the salon and giving full force to the Duke of Exeter’s simile: ‘Like captives bound to a triumphant car.’
Wagner’s Shakespearean obsession even extended to nicknaming Via Maqueda, the thoroughfare that crosses Via Vittorio Emanuele at the Quattro Canti. His play on words morphed the already Hispanic Maqueda into Macbetha. The greatest talent he saw in Shakespeare was his ability to bring characters to life in an authentic manner as ‘living beings’. It was a gift he also recognised in the Bard’s great Spanish contemporary, Cervantes. Wagner may not have realised, but the author of Don Quixote knew Sicily well. During his time as a soldier, Cervantes recovered from the Battle of Lepanto at a hospital in Messina, the city with which he was most familiar, but he also knew Palermo and Trapani from when the Spanish fleet docked at both ports.
The Wagners would have these literary discussions whilst walking through Palermo’s gardens, either those attached to villas, or more public spaces such as the Giardino Inglese. It is once again the Basile family, specifically Giovan Battista Filippo, that we have to thank for this approximation of an English garden in the heart of the city. His intention was to move away from the strict, geometric formality of an Italian garden, creating a more natural feel in tune with the environment and terrain. He planted a bosco, a woodland that may have been English in concept but is much more in sympathy with the climate. Today, there are many exotic species amongst which are the Canary Island Dragon Tree, the Illawarra flame tree from Australia and another antipodean species, the Moreton Bay fig, a further example of which also famously fills Palermo’s Piazza Marina.
Giovan Battista Filippo’s son, Ernesto, added a little pavilion in Arab-Norman style with a crenelated roof surround, underscored by a geometrically patterned panel that also outlines the arched doorway and grilled windows. The effect of the diminutive folly in the middle of the glade, simulating the hunting lodge of a medieval Norman king, has been somewhat lost by the addition of an expanse of concrete poured over what would once have been earth and gravel. Basile took his inspiration from the ruined palazzo known as La Cuba and the Castello della Zisa, two remnants of the Normans’ obsessional embrace of Saracen culture.
Both buildings are beyond the Porta Nuova which signals the start of the Via Vittorio Emanuele. Of the two, the Zisa is in a better state of repair. The structure was started in the twelfth century by Arab craftsmen employed by William I and was intended as a summer residence for the Norman kings. There are echoes of the great Moorish buildings of Spain in the honeycomb carvings of the niches and the term al-Aziz (splendid) etched above the entrance in Arabic script. When Wagner first visited in December 1881, he was in the company of Count Giuseppe Tasca Lanza, which was probably a wise move in terms of gaining the appropriate introductions as the Zisa was then owned by the powerful Notarbartolo family who can trace their lineage through the upheavals of European conflict right back to the fifth-century lords of Alsace.
Tasca took Wagner in his carriage, thereby saving his aristocratic legs and avoiding the onset of his ailing guest’s heart palpitations. The Wagners were soon receiving Tasca at the hotel and visiting the Count at his villa along what is now known as Viale della Regione Siciliana. Originally constructed in the 1500s, it featured one of Palermo’s most sumptuous Victorian-style gardens, complete with winding pathways through luxurious lawns surrounded by tropical vegetation. Today, the pale honey-coloured palazzo can be hired for auspicious occasions. Just before World War I, the Romanian-French writer Anna de Noailles was so beguiled by the villa that she described it as a location which finally enabled her to appreciate ‘the full beauty, the noble and peaceful splendour, of Palermo’s pure and immense light’. Wagner thought the villa ‘magnificent’ and noted the interior design that reflected the antiquity of Ancient Rome. One room is frescoed in such a manner that the visitor could almost walk through the trompe l’oeil archways as they romantically crumble to reveal the supposed landscape and statuary beyond.
Giuseppe Tasca (1849–1917) is the first Sicilian to be regularly mentioned in Cosima’s diaries. He had studied chemistry at Palermo University and used this to inform the cultivation of his land, employing the most up-to-date technological advancements in the whole of the Conca d’Oro. At the turn of the century, twenty years after Wagner had left Sicily, he would become the Mayor of Palermo — a move into politics that inspired his son, Lucio, who was one of the leading instigators in the move towards Sicilian independence after the Allies’ invasion, as we shall see in chapter 4.
The terrace, conservatory and gardens of The Palms made a perfect venue for receiving Tasca. Cosima always found him friendly and was delighted to discover that his wife knew German. In addition to discussing the merits of places the couple should visit during their stay, the conversation occasionally turned to the wider world. Unfortunately, the detail of such conversations is not recorded by Cosima, but we have other glimpses into her own discussions with Wagner. During coffee after one memorable lunch, the topics ranged from Wagner’s loathing of Rococo design to his thoughts on Nietzsche, whose ideas he had grown to hate. Later, he made the family laugh with a caricature of the modern world as he saw it — prancing horses, a noble, hardworking coachman and a ‘bloated Jewish banker’ inside the coach. When pressed to give strong opinions, his prejudices would seemingly always rise to the surface. He knew Jewish musicians and bankers who were gentiles, but the caricature overruled the reality.
Throughout the diary, however, Cosima shows us Wagner’s compassion for the poverty he saw around him in Palermo. In response to Sicilians listing the progress being made in society, he would always issue a retort about the state of begging on the island. During their stay, he and Cosima noticed, with sadness, a young woman holding her baby and picking through the rubbish. There was also a beggar who habitually propped up the doorpost opposite their hotel room, using the scant shelter this provided in order to escape the biting winter wind. The couple would watch him struggle to obtain alms from anyone other than the occasional passing tourist. Despite this, Wagner reserved an even greater sympathy for the animal world. When walking home via the Teatro Politeama, he saw a boy mistreating his dog. In an exasperated rage, the composer berated him in pigeon Italian that went unheeded, largely thanks to Wagner’s lack of vocabulary and execrable accent. The encounter was enough to persuade him to learn Italian, simply for the purpose of rescuing a tormented puppy.
The hotel’s terrace was a playground for two monkeys that amused the Wagner family with their antics. The composer was fond of trying to playfully tap the unsuspecting simians and, on one occasion, his game was anticipated by the more astute monkey, who turned and smacked him before he was able to approach. The memory of this spectacle was spoilt for evermore when Richard discovered that one of the monkeys had died by feasting on a cactus offered by a naïve boy, and the remaining primate could be seen mourning the loss of its friend. Wagner’s response was to suggest that little else could be expected from a creature who went around walking upright on two legs. The terrace subsequently fell out of favour, forever tainted.
The Wagners were delighted to hear that the hotel proprietor was a butterfly specialist. Ragusa occasionally visited his illustrious clients to ensure that all was to their satisfaction. In his perfect German he would enquire after the maestro’s health and ask if any adjustments were required to the rooms or the food. Sometimes this merely consisted of a few sentences and a nod of assurance; at other times the conversation would broaden to diverse matters. On 12 December 1881, Cosima records how Ragusa told them of his entomological passion and shocked the couple by revealing the carelessness of butterfly collecting. The fashion for pinning these delicate, brightly coloured insects to boards for display in glass cabinets had led to the decimation of entire species. Ragusa must have been aware that he was not entirely without blame himself, but he did at least restrict his collections in an attempt to prevent such loss.
Although Ragusa was keen to facilitate a comfortable stay, it clearly had a price tag. Consequently, Wagner was always rather circumspect in the company of the man he referred to as his ‘landlord’. This was not so with more intimate friends, notably the composer Anton Rubenstein who was waiting to greet the Wagners when they first arrived in Palermo. On one occasion Rubenstein was playing a Beethoven sonata and this triggered a conversation on the comparison between painting and music. Wagner could not understand how anyone could compare Mozart’s compositions with Raphael’s artwork, tacitly realising that his own musical imagery would find little comparison in more physical manifestations. It was with this mindset that he received the Impressionist painter, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, who had his own unique way of expressing the reality he perceived.
Renoir (1876–1919), a leader in the Impressionist movement, had been trying to earn a living through portrait commissions, as can be seen from his submissions to the second Impressionist exhibition in 1876. Following this, he extended his range of subject matter for the third exhibition, which included his now famous canvas, Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette. The painting that sealed his fame was that of Mme Charpentier and her Children. The lady in question, wearing a long black dress edged in white lace, is relaxing on a chaise with her two young daughters, one of whom has her legs draped over the family dog. The picture exudes luxury and privilege, but also warmth and affection. Madame Charpentier and her husband, Georges, were significant art collectors and she was one of the earliest champions of Impressionist art.
It was Georges Charpentier (1846–1905) who gave Renoir the commission to paint the portrait of Wagner. By 1880, Renoir had decided that a degree of travelling would broaden his painterly horizons. Initially he travelled to Algeria in the footsteps of Eugène Delacroix who had painted over one hundred scenes of everyday life in North Africa. From the souks of Tangier he travelled to Madrid in order to study the art of Diego Velázquez, perhaps the greatest of all the Spanish Golden Age painters. Any tour in search of artistic inspiration would not be complete without seeing the Italian masters however; with this in mind, Renoir headed over the Alps to Italy. He spent two months in the country, making his way through the peninsula, taking in the delights of masterpieces by Titian and Raphael along the way. He was particularly struck by Raphael’s frescos in the Villa Farnesina, lamenting that he had not put them at the top of his agenda. He described them in a letter to the art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel as being ‘full of knowledge and wisdom’.
As Renoir made his way to Palermo, Wagner was putting the finishing touches to Parsifal. Surprisingly, the Frenchman had struggled, thus far, to persuade Italians to pose for him. He had managed to paint the head of a woman in Venice and a mother and child in Naples, but the problem he encountered was his inability to chat in a friendly manner with the locals, having no knowledge of Italian. He was to find that he would have little time for idle chit-chat with the German maestro during the portrait session itself, although he did manage a conversation with Wagner in the hotel bar during the previous day. Cosima says that the sitting was scheduled for 12 o’clock prompt in his suite at The Palms on Sunday 15 January 1882. In Barbara Ehrlich White’s biography of the painter she says that the session lasted a mere thirty-five minutes.
Wagner was amused by the fact that he had initially mistaken Renoir for the French journalist Victor Noir, as both sported facial hair and wavy locks. As the Frenchman worked in a frenzy on the portrait, his excitability and facial grimaces added to the composer’s amusement. The result, with its delicate use of a blue background and pink tones on the face, caused Wagner to say that it made him look like ‘the embryo of an angel, an oyster swallowed by an epicure’. Following the sitting, Renoir put pen to paper to tell Charpentier that, if he liked the image, he could inscribe it with a wording that detailed the date, location and the fact that it had been painted the day after Wagner had completed Parsifal. As Ehrlich White notes, he added that he was uncontrollably nervous during the painting of the commission and had wished that he was Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres — his predecessor and a man who had painted many prestigious portraits. Renoir blamed his nerves on pushing his shyness to the limit.
Incredibly, Renoir also thought that the final result would have been better if he had stopped sooner, given that the initial good humour displayed by the composer had soon been replaced by a certain stiffness of manner. Renoir felt that he had allowed his brush to follow this change in demeanour too closely. Perhaps this led to Wagner’s famous repost: ‘Ah! Ah! It’s true that I look like a Protestant minister.’ While it is true to say that there is something of the Presbyterian minister about his countenance with its white whiskered jawline, the overall effect is of an artistic man capable of deep thought, but seemingly intransigent if challenged and rather haughty in his dealings with the wider world.
The portrait’s future fared better than that of Georges Charpentier himself. The man who had commissioned Renoir was soon to see the fortunes of his publishing company go from bad to worse. Matters did not improve when he launched an illustrated newspaper called La Vie moderne, even though he had Renoir as an associate illustrator. Charpentier took on extra investors but to no avail as authors moved to other publications and the number of releases dwindled. The Charpentiers were forced to sell some of their precious art collection. The portrait of Wagner eventually ended up in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, where art critics, notably Julius Meier-Graefe, tell us that the hastily completed ‘little souvenir’ reveals aspects of Wagner with an ‘astonishing, almost pitiless, psychology’. As a footnote, Renoir produced a graphite and charcoal copy of the work for Charpentier’s La Vie moderne to accompany the paper’s obituary of the composer on his death in 1883.
Wagner was happier in the company of those less likely to scrutinise his every thought and movement, particularly those with musical leanings. It was almost inevitable that Tina Scalia would be dragged into his orbit. Tina (1858–1957) was the daughter of General Alfonso Scalia, who had been part of Garibaldi’s campaign. Prior to the Risorgimento the family had been exiled in London, where Tina was born. In the years following unification, Alfonso was posted to various parts of Italy and the family eventually found their way back to Palermo. His daughter’s recollections of first setting foot in the city at that time are associated with the black drapes displayed for the mourning of Ben Ingham, whose death would eventually lead to the sale of Palazzo Ingham to Enrico Ragusa.
Tina had been trained as a singer and had taken lessons from the soprano Virginia Boccabadati in Turin, and from the baritone Ferlotti in Bologna, both of whom were famous in their day. The family held hopes that their prodigy would one day make an appearance at La Scala in Milan. Tina had made friends with Lily Belmonte, the daughter of the Prince of Pandolfina, whose family owned a villa below Monte Pellegrino, and it was through Lily that Tina met various aristocrats from German and Russian nobility including the Grand Duchess Vladimir. She was occasionally called to sing at soirées but, sadly, her musical career stalled and her interest remained nothing more than a hobby.
Tina was also increasingly spending time with the Whitakers and had caught the eye of Joseph Whitaker, who was the son of Joseph (Benjamin Ingham Senior’s nephew) and known to all as Pip. Initially, Pip had been more interested in a certain Alice Bennett but had eventually succumbed to Tina’s charms. The moment of connection was distinctly lacking in fireworks; Raleigh Trevelyan, quoting Tina, says that Pip was simply taken by the fact that his dogs repeatedly trailed after her and so, trusting in their canine instinct, decided that she was the one for him.
It was during their courtship that Tina Scalia was summoned to The Palms in order to meet Wagner. Her recollections are anything but sympathetic. She found him conceited, overbearing and totally wrapped up in his own thoughts to the extent that he ignored those around him. Cosima’s devotion to her husband did not help matters, especially when the muse struck. Tina recalls one occasion when the maestro stopped mid-sentence and looked off into the far distance as though thunderstruck. Cosima was keen that everybody should know he had been overcome by ‘an inspiration’ and asked people to leave lest the spell be broken. This conjures the image of a pompous Wagner, dismissing mere mortals who could possibly taint his genius. Tina goes on to say that during such an inspiration, Cosima would throw a coloured veil over his head to exclude the outside world and encourage his visions.
It was at a celebration given by Count Tasca that Tina was able to demonstrate her singing prowess in front of the composer. She sang items from his early repertoire and also an aria from Lohengrin. Tina was embarrassed when an ecstatic Wagner demonstrably demanded encores before the rest of the audience had begun their appreciation. It was not the only time she sang for him. During a run-through of some extracts from Parsifal in the presence of Prince Constantine of Russia, Wagner asked for a third repetition of a particular passage he had liked. This was too much for the Prince, who hastily took his leave, saluting as he went.
Tina is one of the few to verify Cosima’s assertion that Wagner found The Palms increasingly expensive. On 23 January 1882, Wagner and Cosima took a carriage to Bagheria with a view to renting a villa called the Casa Ferdinande; this was not the first time they had investigated alternative accommodation. On the same day, their friend Tasca arrived with Prince Gangi who was prepared to rent them his villa in the countryside surrounding Palermo. After a perusal of the building and its grounds, they happily accepted the Prince’s offer and the family gave notice to the hotel. Wagner is reputed to have held the sentiment that the biggest thief on the island was The Palms’ proprietor.
The following day saw the family make preparations to leave. Wagner received a communiqué from Ragusa but sadly Cosima makes no reference to the contents except to say that ‘all is settled peacefully, R. as usual prepared to make payment in full’. It is left to Tina to tell us that Ragusa had been annoyed by the fact that the composer and his family had booked to stay for several months and were leaving earlier than expected; consequently, Ragusa demanded a degree of compensation for this loss of income. Without further evidence to the contrary, we have to assume that a conciliatory amount was paid in order to leave in the peaceful manner described by Cosima. We do not know if the wider Wagnerian circle, including the artist Joukowski and the composer Rubenstein, left at the same time.
Coincidentally, Tina was involved in matchmaking for Blandine von Bülow, Cosima’s daughter from her first marriage, although it was Tasca who eventually introduced Blandine to Count Biagio Gravina, who had fallen on financial hard times but came from the same prestigious family as the Prince from Bagheria whose Villa Palagonia was adorned with monsters. The couple went on to marry and Wagner was able to attend the engagement in Acireale, where he came face to face with Garibaldi shortly before the leader’s death. Not long after the celebration, the Wagner family left the island and took up residence in Venice where the composer died in February 1883. In the same year Pip and Tina were married, forming a partnership that would be at the heart of Palermitan social circles for years to come, with the shy, retiring Pip leaving the entertaining to his more outgoing wife. Interestingly, the wedding reception took place in the Hotel Trinacria and not The Palms.
The traces left behind by Wagner were strong enough to pass into legend, and tales of him reached the ears of Guy de Maupassant (1850–93). After the publication of Bel-Ami in 1885, the author and his friends Amic, Legrand and Gervex toured Italy. Having visited Venice and Rome Maupassant, especially, was drawn to Sicily. The writer starts his account of the trip, published in La Vie Errante, with this lament regarding the island’s relative lack of visitors:
The French are under the impression that Sicily is a wild country, difficult of access, and even dangerous to explore. Now and then some traveler [sic], who is thought very daring, ventures as far as Palermo, and returns with the information that it is a very interesting town. But what makes Palermo and all Sicily so interesting? No one can tell. To tell the truth, this is only a question of custom. This island, a jewel of the Mediterranean, is not on the list of those countries usually visited by tourists … From two special points of view, however, Sicily should attract travelers [sic], because its natural and artistic beauties are as singular as they are wonderful.
Stepping from the boat, Maupassant was immediately struck by the bustling shops and commercial animation of the people. It was a time when those involved in economic activity still transported goods using the famous Sicilian cart, now consigned to museums and exhibitions of traditional folk life. The Frenchman marvelled at the brightly hand-painted waggons with their ‘crude and odd paintings, representing historical facts, adventures of all kinds’. If he found the carts naively attractive, he was transported to another realm by the Palatine Chapel inside the Palazzo dei Normanni. Roger II commissioned this masterwork of Byzantine gold mosaic, Arab-style wood carving and inlaid tilework in the twelfth century. Maupassant’s awed prose encapsulates the radiance: ‘The calm beauty and attractiveness of this little chapel, which is positively the most wonderful masterpiece of its kind, causes one to stand entranced before these walls … shining with a soft light that dimly illuminates the whole edifice, leading one’s mind into biblical and heavenly landscapes …’
In a state of almost meditative bliss, Maupassant leisurely made his way to The Palms, where his serene state of mind leads him to pick up the story thus:
I came back slowly to the Hotel of the Palms, which has one of the finest gardens in the city, — the gardens of tropical countries, filled with enormous and strange plants. A traveler [sic], seated on a bench, gives me in a few words the events of the past year, and going back to the memories of by-gone years, he says, among other things: ‘This happened when Wagner lived here.’ Astonished at this, I said: ‘What, here, in this hotel?’ ‘Why, yes, it was while here that he wrote the last notes of “Parsifal” and corrected the proofs.’
Maupassant, on further enquiry, realised that Wagner had left a strong impression of his immutability which corresponds remarkably with Tina Scalia’s account. Maupassant noted the maestro’s reckless temper, insufferable arrogance and disdain for company; nevertheless he was most keen to go in search of the hotel room occupied by the German, and swiftly sought out Ragusa, requesting that the proprietor show him Wagner’s suite. Ragusa was only too happy to oblige and took him to the desired location where Maupassant proceeded to look for an object, a chair, a table, anything that contained the essence of the man. Ragusa pointed out the couch that Wagner had requested and explained that the maestro had covered it with rugs worked in gold thread.
Just as Maupassant was conjuring an image of the recumbent composer, he found an even more evocative object:
Then I opened the door of a mirrored cabinet. A delicious and powerful perfume blew out, like the caress of a breeze passing over a field of roses. The owner of the place, who was my guide, said: ‘He kept his clothes in here, after perfuming them with the essence of roses. This odor [sic] will never evaporate.’ I inhaled this breath of flowers, inclosed [sic] in this piece of furniture, forgotten here, a captive; and it seemed, in truth, as if I had found something of Wagner, in this perfume which he loved — a little of his personality, of his desires, of his soul, in this mere trifle, of the secret and beloved habits which are the making of the intimate life of a man.
Raleigh Trevelyan highlights Tina’s claim that the veil thrown over Wagner in moments of inspiration was designed to produce ‘roseate’ ideas. However, Trevelyan then brings us all down to earth by explaining that Wagner’s overuse of rose perfume was due to the fact that he had a reduced sense of smell caused by his liberal intake of snuff.
If Maupassant let his imagination fly with these olfactory reminiscences of Wagner, his subsequent descriptions of the Sicilian in the street are far more rooted in close observation. He found nothing of the Neapolitan in the average Palermitan, but was impressed with a sedateness of manner that he attributed to an Arab influence. He also felt that Sicilians more resembled Spaniards than Italians, both in terms of facial features and native pride. The only place where he felt that a Sicilian became thoroughly Italianised was at the opera, something which, no doubt, would have pleased and horrified Wagner:
Every impression of the public is expressed as soon as felt. Excessively nervous, gifted with an ear as true as it is sensitive, loving music to distraction, the entire audience becomes a sort of vibrating animal, which feels but cannot reason. In five minutes it will applaud an actor with enthusiasm and hiss him with frenzy; it stamps with joy or with rage, and if a false note falls from the throat of a singer, a strange cry, exasperated and in a high key, bursts from every voice at the same time.
Being the popular refrains of the day, opera arias were hummed in the streets by the populace and Maupassant was amused to hear Bizet’s Carmen, specifically the ‘Toreador Song’, on the lips of the city’s inhabitants.
As captivated as he was by Palermo, the capital could not hold him forever. His first venture inland was to Monreale and its cathedral, William II’s masterpiece of mosaic art. From the town, he scanned the surrounding mountains and spotted a ruined fortress on one of the summits which, according to a local inhabitant, was the ultimate redoubt of those involved in brigandage. He was warned off approaching the citadel, known as Castellaccio, for the obvious reason, but also because the path was deemed difficult and treacherous. Obstinately, he insisted on going and had to resort to a guide recommended by the Chief of Police.
Unfortunately, the guide turned out to be clueless and asked every passer-by for directions. The climb became tortuous and the party had to scramble over rocks underneath a burning sun before they reached the tumbledown castle with its ‘chaos of enormous gray [sic] stones’. Maupassant was rewarded with a stunning view of Palermo and its necklace of orange trees looping around the Conca d’Oro. His climb was considered ill-advised and certainly not an excursion to be recommended to a woman.
Female travellers attempting to break out of these shackles were few and far between in this era of conservative Victorianism. A notable exception was Margaret Fountaine (1862–1940), the daughter of an Anglican vicar from South Acre in East Anglia who, despite her quiet provincial upbringing, managed to fulfil her longing to experience the wider world. She travelled alone in her pursuit of butterflies, a passion that would lead to renown in the field of lepidopterology. In 1896 she set off for Sicily, and arrived at The Palms with two aims in mind — one was to base herself in comfortable surroundings, and the other was to meet Enrico Ragusa who, as we know, was a man after her own heart.
Many years later, when Fountaine died at the age of seventy-seven, her extensive butterfly collection was bequeathed to the Castle Museum at Norwich with the curious codicil that the boxes should not be opened until 1978, some thirty-eight years after her death. The mystery as to why these collections could not see the light of day for such a long period of time was solved when the lid was removed from one unprepossessing container. Inside were a dozen cloth-bound diaries, revealing more than mere scientific procedure. Interwoven with the accounts of her beloved butterflies were far more gossipy pages detailing, with surprising candour for the era, her romantic liaisons. This rare opportunity to gaze into the inner world of an adventurous woman with the veil of propriety removed proved too tempting for W.F. Carter, the assistant editor of the Sunday Times, who edited the diaries into two volumes.
Published as Love Among the Butterflies (1980) and Butterflies and Late Loves (1986), the diaries inevitably attracted attention for reasons other than lepidopterological study. The first volume is subtitled ‘The diaries of a wayward, determined and passionate Victorian lady’. The description on the back cover details the litany of men who fell for Fountaine’s charms, including an Egyptian mariner, a Hungarian noble, a Syrian dragoman and a Sicilian butterfly hunter. The hunter in question was not Signor Ragusa; however, as she tells us in her diary, she wasted no time in contacting The Palms’ proprietor, who was able to provide her with much useful information concerning the species she was interested in finding, specifically M. Pherusa. She points out that this genus had very specific localities and only a man of Ragusa’s knowledge could direct her to its actual habitat on Monte Cuccio, approximately eight kilometres from Palermo.
The intrepid Fountaine was only too happy to scrabble over the rocks of Monte Cuccio, net in hand, heedless of the loose terrain, weather and spiky vegetation. Her tenacity was rewarded with the specimens she craved which she would pin out in display boxes once back in her room. Fountaine gives us a wonderful evocation of the attention she attracted when walking through central Palermo in her field attire, complete with a knapsack. Everyone from sellers of sponges to carriage drivers and beggars would approach her for custom, money or more nefarious reasons. On one occasion, three dandified youths engaged her in conversation. The expected reaction of a lone Victorian woman would be one of polite coldness and a hasty retreat. Instead, she agreed to accompany them for the morning — even taking an excursion to the church of Santa Maria di Jesu along dusty roads in order to admire the view.
After stopping for a drink of lemon water with the young men, a fourth youth joined the party and took a particular interest in Fountaine. Against her better judgement, she found herself accepting an offer to attend the theatre with them that evening. Back at the hotel, she fell in with a bearded Italian who lent her his Baedeker guide. Still uncertain as to whether she had been rash in accepting the theatre proposal, she asked her new friend for advice. He casually told her to attend if she was interested in the performance, but suggested that she spend the evening with him instead. As it turned out, there was no performance that night but Fountaine agreed to a walk with one of the youths along the Marina, although as she records, she ‘soon saw the bent of his inclinations’. Eventually, the young man made the comical proposition that he would like to come up to see her butterflies. Realising exactly what that meant, she parried with the suggestion that she could bring the collection down to the public salon for him to see. She never saw him again.
Meanwhile, the bearded Italian was less easily dissuaded and managed to convince Fountaine to accompany him on a trip to Villa Belmonte, where the couple rambled through the mix of cultivation and chaos found in the villa’s grounds. The gentleman turned out to be a baron and apparently behaved impeccably during the many hours the pair spent together. Not all of Fountaine’s male admirers were so highly-born. In Taormina, she was wooed by the son of a hotel keeper who flooded her with compliments in their mutually-understood French and, in Messina, a fellow tourist propositioned her on the way back to her room and later knocked on her door, just in case she had changed her mind.
Relieved to have rebuffed these advances, she was much happier in the company of young Signor Amenta who assisted her collecting and shared her interest. They roamed the landscape in search of the species Charaxes Iasius and she calls her partner in crime the ‘dark-eyed youth’. They took picnics with them which they ate under the benign branches of an olive tree, seemingly wrapped up in the splendid surroundings and each other’s company. She found Amenta both attractive and amenable, but is at pains to point out that their relationship was platonic.
During one memorable excursion to Monte Ciccia, they found a species whose identity they could not agree upon. Fountaine decided she would take it back to Ragusa for discussion and possible identification. Ragusa was thrilled to find that the butterfly in question was completely new to Sicily and therefore he carefully packaged it and sent it on to a German expert who might be able to verify its name. Back in Palermo, Fountaine also renewed her friendship with the baron who had now decided to cut to the chase and lay bare his intentions. Tired of being a powerless woman and constantly rejecting advances, she came to the startlingly modern conclusion, under the baron’s influence, that free love was better than wedlock, believing that married couples soon became tired of each other — a state which would lead to shameful infidelity. She considered convention to be more easily broken when unmarried. This new perspective led to a tentative tumble in the brushwood with Amenta but she only went so far, realising that, despite his looks and their mutual lepidopterist passion, love was missing.
Fountaine’s diary also makes reference to an unnamed professor, whom she had presumably met in Sicily for lepidopterological reasons. She agreed to yet another evening stroll during which the professor suggested, rather rashly, that they run into the sea together. They had intended to visit some gardens, although she neglects to reveal which of Palermo’s green spaces they had decided upon. Instead, the devious academic led her along some very dark and twisting alleyways where he suddenly produced handkerchiefs for them to sit on and suggested they pause for a while. ‘Here we go again’ could not have been far from her mind and she tells us that kissing a man to whom she was indifferent was not an experience to be repeated. She went back to the hotel for a much-needed wash — neck, eyes, ears and face. Not to tar everyone with the same brush, she later realised that, far from making an improper proposition, the professor had intended to ask for her hand in marriage. Needless to say, this was not on her agenda and the mere thought of tying the knot with such a grizzled older man repelled Fountaine.
Aside from promoting a change in her philosophy to life, Sicily also provided the catalyst for her scientific career. In the year following the trip, at the age of twenty-seven, she saw her first paper published in The Entomologist’s Record and Journal of Variation. Her ramblings with Amenta had not been in vain; she was able to detail for her article both the habitats and butterfly species to be found in Sicily. In the same year, a considerable inheritance left to Fountaine and her sisters by their uncle afforded her even greater independence, and facilitated a lifetime of travel from Budapest to Baalbek and the Sea of Galilee to Sikkim.
Sadly, we do not know if Ragusa wrote to inform Fountaine of the Monte Ciccia butterfly’s identity or, indeed, if his German expert had even been able to provide enlightenment. Ragusa would have delighted in finding someone equally enthusiastic about the science of lepidopterology. However, he was increasingly reminded that his real love was not the means by which he sustained his family and status. The Palms was a constant nagging presence that required attention.
Elsewhere in Palermo, Tina Whitaker continued to invite guests to stay who had originally intended to spend a period of time at the hotel. Pip and Tina had commissioned a villa to be built in Via Dante, just a thirty-minute walk from The Palms. Tina now held court at the Villa Malfitano, where visitors would gather in the sala d’estate (summer room) with its delicately painted frescoes mimicking the iron-strutted frames of a glasshouse through which are depicted the kind of lush vegetation to be found in the gardens of Ragusa’s hotel — palms, trailing vines, bright Mediterranean flowers standing tall through the undergrowth — all against the soft blue and wispy cloud of an early morning sky. Mr and Mrs Whitaker were moving in exulted circles; Pip thought nothing of rubbing shoulders with people of illustrious lineage including Luigi Medici, who casually gifted Whitaker some red deer for the Malfitano estate. Those travelling from Britain often arrived proffering a letter from a mutual acquaintance who could assure the Whitakers of their good standing even if, in reality, they had a raffish reputation.
Some of the aristocracy who pitched up at Tina’s door carried considerable metaphorical baggage — none more so than Lord Ronald Sutherland-Leverson-Gower (1845–1916). He first visited the Whitakers in 1889, the same year in which he was involved in the Cleveland Street Scandal, a cause célèbre that hit the headlines in 1890. Cleveland Street in London’s Fitzrovia had been home to a homosexual brothel which was raided by the police, following which Gower, together with other notable social figures, was implicated. It was even rumoured that the Prince of Wales’ eldest son had frequented the establishment. Gower was a friend of John Addington Symonds, a student of Sicily’s Grecian past who enjoyed translating classical homoerotic poetry and had penned A Problem in Greek Ethics, published privately in 1883 and one of the first books to use the term ‘homosexual’. One hundred years later, the book was re-issued with the more revealing title Male Love.
Gower dabbled with writing biography, but his real talent lay in sculpture. His most celebrated works are figures of William Shakespeare and four of his most well-known characters including Hamlet — all of which can be found in Stratford-upon-Avon. Gower’s contribution to this branch of the arts is detailed in David Getsy’s Sculpture and the Pursuit of a Modern Ideal in Britain, in which he quotes Addington Symonds, who went to stay with Gower and made the startling statement that he thought that Ronny, as he was known, ‘saturates one’s spirit in Urningthum of the rankest most diabolical kind’. ‘Urningthum’ was the word of the day for male homosexuality, whose practitioners were known as Uranians. After his spell in prison for gross indecency, the Victorian era’s most famous persecuted Uranian, Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), wrote to his friend Robert Ross that ‘[to] have altered my life would have been to have admitted that Uranian love is ignoble. I hold it to be noble — more noble than other forms.’
Wilde modelled the character of Lord Henry Wotton in his book The Picture of Dorian Gray on Gower. Wotton is Dorian’s hedonistic mentor who leads the young man along a path of vice-ridden destruction. Dorian locks his infamous portrait in the attic to age on his behalf, and leads a vain, shallow existence based on a French novel lent to him by Lord Henry. There are certain parallels between the real-life fortunes of Wilde and Gower. On 2 April 1900 Wilde arrived in Palermo; his health had been weakened by hard labour in prison and he was spiralling down towards his demise in November of the same year. Gower and his lover, Frank Hird, had spent the previous five weeks with the Whitakers and missed Wilde’s arrival by a few hours.
Raleigh Trevelyan quotes a letter from Tina which states how the garrulous Gower and the effete Hird had just missed the ‘embarrassing arrival’ of the writer. There is a degree of hypocrisy in this statement given that Tina must have been aware of Gower’s sexual preferences, especially as she mentions in the same letter his amusement when teasing Hamilton Aïdé about his supposed naked bath-time antics with a bar of soap, whilst being watched by his German servant. Needless to say, Wilde was not invited to stay at the Villa Malfitano and therefore repaired to The Palms. It is uncertain as to how he managed to pay the bill as he was subsisting on very little income while he badgered his publisher for payment. Wilde was living above his means, as attested by his final days in Paris in the grimy Hôtel d’Alsace, the pension he was forced to live in when the money ran out.
In another letter to Robert Ross, Wilde describes the eight days he spent in Palermo using the pronoun ‘we’, suggesting that he had assistance in coping with the financial expenditure. It is clear from the letter, dated 16 April 1900 and sent from Rome, that he had very much enjoyed his stay, finding beauty in the orange and lemon groves of the Conca d’Oro and the mosaics in the Palatine Chapel. Oscar also provides his friend with a description of the tomb of Frederick II, the Holy Roman Emperor, which lies in the city’s cathedral: ‘ … I really knelt before the huge porphyry sarcophagus in which Frederick II lies. It is a sublime bare monstrous thing, blood-coloured, and held up by lions, who have caught some of the rage of the great Emperor’s restless soul.’
Wilde was shown around the building by a young seminarian called Giuseppe Loverde who, when quizzed by the author, explained that he had joined the church due to his family’s poverty, a reason that Wilde thought ‘singularly mediaeval [sic]’. Wilde became somewhat infatuated with Giuseppe as his letter reveals:
I told him to be comforted, because God used poverty often as a means of bringing people to Him, and used riches never, or but rarely. So Giuseppe was comforted, and I gave him a little book of devotion, very pretty and with far more pictures than prayers in it; so of great service to Giuseppe, whose eyes are beautiful. I also gave him many lire, and prophesied for him a Cardinal’s hat, if he remained very good and never forgot me. He said he never would: and indeed I don’t think he will, for every day I kissed him behind the high altar.
Palermo provided a short respite from the embarrassment he felt in France when frequently bumping into old acquaintances who remembered him at the height of his fame and powers. Secretly, Wilde may have been grateful that he had missed meeting Gower at the Villa Malfitano where Gower was a treasured house guest and Wilde nothing but an ex-criminal interloper. The Palms was an anonymous bolt-hole and Ragusa was shrewd and polite enough to extend to Wilde the same hospitality he would show any guest. Doubtless, Wilde would have brought his flamboyant yet faded glamour to the hotel. As more guests from the European beau monde walked through Ragusa’s always open doors, the proprietor was beginning to realise that his establishment had to keep pace with changing fashions in order to remain at the forefront of Palermitan life. Looking around the property, he decided that it was time for Benjamin Ingham’s tired structure and décor to undergo a revamp that would reflect the tastes of the Belle Époque.