Calabria Opposite Sicily, forming the ‘toe’ of Italy. DHL’s viewpoint is from his villa, Fontana Vecchia, at Taormina, on the east coast below Mount Etna.
Orion … the hound of heaven Orion is the constellation named after mighty hunter of Greek mythology. Sirius, Orion’s dog, is ‘the hound of heaven’, which is the title of a poem (1893) by Francis Thompson (1859–1907).
Etna … Pillar of Heaven The volcano is described as ‘a column soaring to heaven’ by the Greek poet Pindar (518–438 BC) in his first Pythian Ode, lines 19–20.
Naxos The earliest (c. 734 BC) Greek colony in Sicily.
ether Formerly thought to fill stellar space, as air on earth.
Circe’s panthers The sorceress of Greek myth, who turned men into beasts, is often represented as accompanied by panthers or other large cats.
She … mad As by tradition in the case of the Greek philosopher Empedocles (c. 493–c. 433 BC), who leaped into the crater of Etna.
Girgenti Agrigento, on the southern coast (hence nearer to Tunis in North Africa), famed for its Greek temple ruins.
Syracuse … quarries In the Latomia quarries of Syracuse, in 413 BC, many imprisoned Athenians died.
queen bee Frieda.
capucin convent Convent church of the Cappuccini or Capuchins.
Palazzo Corvaia … Corso Prominent fourteenth-century ‘palace’ or aristocrat’s house … Corso Umberto, Taormina’s main street.
Catania to Messina I.e. the train going north to Messina, the port closest to the mainland.
Adonis … all flesh is grass Adonis is the beautiful youth of Greek myth. Don Juan is the legendary Spanish aristocratic seducer. All flesh is grass: Isaiah xl.6.
Aspromonte! Garibaldi … Victor Emmanuel Mountain at the tip of the toe of Italy, where on 29 August 1862 General Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807–82), marching on Rome, refused to fire back on troops sent to stop him by Victor Emmanuel II (1820–78), the King of Sardinia who in 1861 had become, with Garibaldi’s aid, the first king of a united Italy. DHL conflates this with the meeting of the two men at Teano near Naples on 26 October 1860, when Garibaldi handed over his conquests.
earthquake-shattered … renewing your youth By a very destructive quake in 1908. renewing your youth: cf. Psalms ciii.5: ‘thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s’.
Stromboli Volcanic island north of Sicily.
Lipari islands Off the north-east coast of Sicily, with several prisons.
Oscar Wilde … noli me tangere Oscar Wilde, the Irish writer was humiliatingly exposed to public view at Clapham Junction on being sent to Reading Gaol in 1895 to start a sentence for homosexual practices. canaille: rabble (French). noli me tangere: touch me not (Latin), from John xx.17 (Vulgate).
scatter … heaven From Zechariah ii.6.
principalities and powers Ironic use of a biblical phrase (e.g. Ephesians iii.10).
Vogue la galère Keep going, come what may (literally ‘Sail the galley’, French).
Noi … buoni We Italians are so good-tempered (Italian).
David and Jonathan For their love, see 2 Samuel i.26.
Juno … Hera Roman and Greek forms of the wife of the supreme god, Jupiter or Zeus, in classical mythology; a statuesque beauty.
high-low … Termini high-low: covering the ankle (high for a shoe, low for a boot). Termini Imerese, c. 24 miles east of Palermo.
American woman Ruth Wheelock (1891–1958), of the American Consulate in Palermo, did typing for DHL.
Panormus Ancient Greek name for Palermo, literally ‘all-harbour’ (here), or harbour suitable for all weather.
wedgewood … Hygeia In the style of the English potter Josiah Wedgwood (1730–95). Hygeia is the Greek goddess of health.
Weego’s DHL’s comic coinage for a laxative (we go).
Monte Pellegrino Mountain above Palermo.
Ah ma … Molto vento Oh but … Oh yes! A lot of wind! (Italian).
Cività Vecchia Mainland port, c. 45 miles from Rome, by which the Lawrences returned from Sardinia.
General Navigation Company The largest Italian shipping company.
Michael Angelo … Botticelli See notes here and here.
through a glass, darkly 1 Corinthians xiii.12.
King Harry … gold Shakespeare, Henry V, II.ii.98: ‘have coin’d me into gold’.
Capo Gallo North-west of Palermo.
stony ground Matthew xiii.5.
swilkers Splashes about (dialect).
far-off cape Capo San Vito, to the west.
“OOn … classe.” A ticket for one – third class (Italianised French).
ten-pounder French I.e. heavy, unwieldy.
Egades Or ‘Egatian’ islands, off the west coast of Sicily.
Rip van Winkle Lost in time, as in the story (1820) by American writer Washington Irving (1783–1859) in which Rip sleeps for twenty years.
Astarte Phoenician predecessor, also called Ashtaroth, to the Greek Aphrodite and Roman Venus (see note here).
Erycina ridens The Venus anciently worshipped on Mount Eryx (Venus Erycina) was described as ‘laughing’ (Latin ridens).
“Madame … mer?” Your lady wife, she is in bed? … She is seasick? (unidiomatic French).
factories … Levanzo factories … East India Company: These, as built on the coast of India from the seventeenth century, were more like fortified warehouses, sharing a square palatial look with some of Trapani’s buildings. Levanzo: Smallest of the Egades, and nearest to Trapani.
Crusaders … called here From the First Crusade in 1077 through to the thirteenth century.
Don Quixote The eponymous hero of the comic romance (1605–15), by Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616), thinks windmills are giants.
“Vous … terre?” Do you go down to the land? (unidiomatic French).
W LENIN … BORGHESIA Long live Lenin and Down with the Bourgeoisie (Italian). Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, 1870–1924), first leader of Russia after the 1917 Communist Revolution.
New honours … them Shakespeare, Macbeth I.iii.144 (‘… him’).
dignity of human labour … nobility of toil A notion found as early as the Greek writer Hesiod’s Works and Days (c. 800 BC), widespread from the mid-nineteenth century: the Scottish sage Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) avers ‘All work … is noble; work is alone noble’ in Past and Present (1843), at the opening of Bk ii, chap. 4, and is echoed by many others, especially but not only ‘English’ and American.
Galahad quest For the Holy Grail, which his purity earned for Galahad (see note here).
Babylonian harlot As in Revelation xvii and xviii.
Apollo See notes here and here.
large island Favignana, south of Levanzo.
Amphitrite’s Sea-nymph in Greek mythology.
“Bonjour … femme …” Good day, Sir … Have you taken coffee? … Not yet. And you? … No! Your lady wife … (French).
Mars Roman god of war.
wide bay Gulf of Cagliari, southernmost Sardinia.
“Ecco … italiana!” Behold the Italian flag! (Italian).
“festa” … Epiphany ‘Feast’ or church festival on 6 January, commemorating the manifestation of Christ to the Magi.
Scala di Ferro ‘Iron Stairway’ hotel, straddling Via Torino and Viale Regina Margherita, near the port.
the bastions … lagoons The bastions are, rather, a terrace by one of these fortifications, probably Bastion San Remy. watch-fort (here): watch-tower of Su Forti, some 5 miles east. The lagoons are Stagni di Cagliari, with their salt-pans.
mountains … gloomy hills Iglesiente and Sulcis mountains to the south-west, while the hills are the peaks of the Sárrabus range to the east.
serpent-crest hills As in Serpeddi (The Serpent), the highest of these.
shepherdess … Marie Antoinette Dressing like a shepherdess or dairymaid was an often-noted fancy of the French queen (1755–93).
Watteau Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684–1721), French painter of elegant aristocrats in gardens or parks.
Pierrots … Pierrette Male and female French pantomime characters, typically dressed in white with whitened faces.
Kensington Gardens London park popular with well-dressed upper-class children and their minders.
baldachins The elaborate baldachin or pillar-supported canopy over the altar in St Peter’s was designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680) and much imitated.
What can it profit a man Biblical imitation, as in, e.g., Job xxxiv.9.
Baedeker Popular series of guidebooks begun by Karl Baedeker (1801–59).
light, fantastic trip Adapting Milton’s L’Allegro (1632), Il. 33–4: ‘Come, and trip it as ye go, / On the light fantastic toe’.
Dante and Beatrice … Inferno Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) idealises Beatrice Portinara as his guide to Paradise in La Divina Commedia (The Divine Comedy, 1310–14), which begins with Inferno (Hell).
aqua vitae ‘Water of life’ (Latin), applied to brandy and other spirits.
below the salt I.e. the central salt cellar: sitting lower down the table formerly meant lower social standing.
phrygian cap Conical cap of liberty for freed slaves in ancient Rome, adopted by French Revolutionaries.
Cyclops One-eyed giants in Greek mythology.
Manchester goods Cotton wares as commonly made in Manchester.
Sierra Nevada ‘Snowy mountain range’ (Spanish name of mountains in three continents), hence DHL’s link with mounds of white eggs.
Friday 7 January 1921; preferred to meat on Friday by many Christians, fish would be scarcer on that day.
“noble woman nobly planned” … Carmen noble woman nobly planned: Cf. Wordsworth’s ‘A perfect woman, nobly planned’, l. 27 of ‘She was a Phantom of Delight’ (1807). stiff-necked generation: a common biblical conflation of, e.g., Deuteronomy ix.6 (‘a stiffnecked people’) and Psalm lxxviii.8 (‘a stubborn and rebellious generation’). Carmen: i.e. openly changing affections, like the eponymous gipsy heroine of the opera (1875) by Georges Bizet (1838–75).
Velasquez … Goya Naturalistic Spanish painters, Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velasquez (1599–1660) (see also note here) and Francisco Goya (1746–1828).
Land’s End region South-west peninsula of Cornwall, where the Lawrences lived 1916–17.
Wilhelm Meister water-falls As in the romantic setting at the start of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre (1829).
clair-obscur ‘Light-dark’ (French), ‘chiaroscuro’ in Italian: used of contrasted light and shade in painting.
Duke of Clarence By tradition, he was drowned in a butt of malmsey in 1478 by order of his brother, the future Richard III.
throwing dust in his eyes Misleading or deceiving him.
melted butter … parsnips Humorously adapting the proverb, ‘Fine words butter no parsnips’ (words are not deeds).
rusé Wily, canny (French).
staff of life Proverbially said of bread or similar staple food.
how fresh and sweet and clean From the opening line of ‘The Flower’ (1633) by George Herbert (1593–1633): ‘How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean’.
all my-eye Nonsense (slang).
Camorra Equivalent in Naples to the Mafia in Sicily.
and devil take the hindmost Proverbial, ‘and to hell with the rest’; see also here: ‘and devil take the rest’.
post-Renaissance Jesus Of universal love, as DHL’s following pages clarify.
“thou shalt … thyself” Leviticus xix.18, Matthew xix.19.
Third International The Third Communist International, or Comintern, founded in 1919 to promote world revolution on the Russian model.
Scythism Typical of the fierce mounted warriors of Scythia, anciently a territory in Russia between the rivers Dnieper and Don.
billy-cock Bowler hat; an indicator, with ‘collar-and-tie’, of respectable conformity.
New Jerusalem The holy city to be established at Christ’s Second Coming (Revelation xxi).
Albergo d’Italia ‘Hotel of Italy’, noted as good in DHL’s guidebook.
Sodom-apple Something beautiful but rotten, with reference to the corrupt city destroyed by God (Genesis xviii–xix).
Blessed … disappointed Humorous proverbial addition to the Beatitudes in Christ’s Sermon on the Mount (Matthew v.3–12).
Lombard ornaments … Celtic illuminations Stylised elongated animals as in Germanic ornaments from Lombardy (now northern Italy) in the sixth and seventh centuries and in Celtic illustrated, or illuminated, manuscripts such as the Irish Book of Kells in the eighth century.
war … Austrians … Italy again In the First World War, which had ended in 1918, Austria lost the last of her territories in Italy.
thieves’ Latin—Latino dei furbi Thieves’ slang; ‘Latin of the cunning ones’ (Italian).
Iglesias region Mineral rich south-western Sardinia.
pis-aller Last resort, ‘worst course’ (French).
Macedonia cigarettes A brand distributed under the state monopoly in Italy.
the Abruzzi Mountainous central region of Italy.
Proserpine, or Pan … Sikels Proserpine, or Pan: see notes here (Proserpine = Persephone) and here. shrouded … Sikels: phrase applied by Latin writers (Dii Involuti) to the mysterious gods of the Etruscans, here linked with those of the Sikels (or Sicels), the ancient races who gave their names to Tuscany and Sicily respectively.
connu Known (French).
Osiris God of the ancient Egyptians whose dismembered body was pieced together by his wife Isis and restored to life.
salt … savour Cf. Matthew v.13.
en voyage On a voyage, travelling (French).
Saint Anthony of Padua Franciscan monk (1195–1231) widely adopted as a patron saint.
Velasquez princesses As painter to the Spanish king, Velasquez (see note here) made portraits of royal children in ‘stiff’ formal dress.
cockled Wobbled (dialect).
Demeter Greek goddess (Roman Ceres) of crops and fertility, often depicted seated and solemn, hence ‘static’.
arquebuses Sixteenth-century portable guns.
Doré Gustave Doré (1832–83), French illustrator of detailed ‘visions’ from the Bible, Dante’s Inferno, Milton’s Paradise Lost and other works.
government grain Price-controlled, to end post-war food riots.
Grazia Deledda The Sardinian writer (1871–1936) of novels and short stories, born in Nuoro, won the Nobel Prize in 1926; in 1928 DHL wrote an introduction to her 1920 novel La Madre (The Mother).
Star of Italy, was it? The hotel seems to have been simply the Italia.
Thumbelina Eponymous tiny heroine of the English version (1864) of the tale (‘Tommelise’, 1836) by Hans Christian Andersen (1805–75).
dog-fish, pesce-cane Term for profiteers (see here) popularised by Dario Niccodemi’s comedy, I pescecani (1913).
mountain Mount Cuciullo, rather than the higher white Ortobene.
“Quando … nostra—” When we return home (Italian).
verses I.e. of this traditional ‘counting-out’ rhyme.
“Un brav’ … si!” A good man! Oh yes! (Italian).
Pisan I.e. of the Pisan school of painters and sculptors founded in the thirteenth century.
Peruginos … Carpaccio … Botticelli DHL would have seen paintings by the Umbrian Pietro Perugino (c. 1445–1523), the Venetian Vittore Carpaccio (fl. 1490–1523) and Botticelli (see note here) in Florence and elsewhere.
Attila King of the Huns who conquered vast areas of Europe in the fifth century.
coupé End compartment, usually with seats for two (French).
Hamlet I.e. an archetype of black moodiness, from Shakespeare’s eponymous hero.
au fond Deep down, basically (French).
Mr. Rochester … Jane Moody hero and plain heroine of the novel Jane Eyre (1847) by Charlotte Brontë (1816–55); ‘illusion’ indicates DHL’s view of their love.
beating … ploughshare From Isaiah ii.4.
a church San Giacomo Maggiore, with an eighteenth-century façade.
“painter’s bit” I.e. picturesque, attractive to painters.
a river The Cedrino.
“Timor … me.” The fear of death troubles me (Latin), refrain in ‘Lament for the Makars’ (1500–1506) by the Scots poet William Dunbar (c. 1460–c. 1525), from the Office of the Dead in Catholic liturgy.
beat … cigarette-holders Cf. here and note.
immigration … down By the impending Quota Law of 19 May 1921.
the bottomless pit Jocular use of a biblical phrase (e.g. Revelation ix.1).
His reigning Majesty King Victor Emmanuel III (1869–1947).
rotondo Rounded (Italian) part of the bus.
pouring oil I.e. on troubled waters (proverbial).
nipped Reproved.
glegging Glancing shyly or slyly (Nottinghamshire dialect).
dove … broken reed dove: as Genesis viii.8–11: the olive leaf brought by a dove to Noah after the Flood, broken reed: as in, e.g., Isaiah xlii.3, not a reliable prop.
Spitzbergen Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean.
mud-larks Boys scavenging, working or playing by the waterside.
tendres … durs Tender feelings … hard feelings (French).
Scipio Africanus The name of two great Roman generals, 236–184/3 BC and 185/4–129 BC.
evening-star Venus (usually ‘she’) on 10 January 1921.
Scottish friend The writer Catherine Carswell (1879–1946).
ospreys Feathers that suggest higher-class stylishness.
what this means I.e. that the steward is angling for a bribe.
Voilà There you are! (French).
a military air … the shadow of death Frieda was born, to a soldier father, Baron Friedrich von Richthofen, in the garrison town of Metz, hence ‘a military air’, the shadow of death: Psalm xxiii.4.
Titanics DHL seems to be confusing the Titanic, lost after hitting an iceberg in 1912, with the Lusitania, sunk by a German submarine in 1915.
Corriere della Sera ‘Evening Courier’, the leading Italian newspaper.
wine … pearl Showing off wealth by dissolving pearls in wine was reported of Cleopatra and others.
the Maremma Once-marshy coastal region of Tuscany between Livorno and Rome. For DHL’s fuller description, see here.
the Roman Campagna The countryside around Rome.
“white as wool” Revelation i.14: ‘white like wool, as white as snow’.
pyramid tomb Of Gaius Cestius, built 12 BC, by the Porto San Paolo.
two friends The painter Jan Juta (1897–1991), who illustrated the first edition of Sea and Sardinia, and the painter and writer Alan Insole.
Piazza delle Terme Also known as Piazza dell’ Esedra (both names referring to being sited over the ruins of the Baths of Diocletian), now Piazza della Repubblica, near Rome’s main railway station.
wedding Of Prince Conrad of Bavaria and Princess Bona of Savoy at Agliè, near Turin, the previous day (10 January 1921).
Tivoli hills … Alban Mounts In the Tivoli hills north-east of Rome, Cardinal Ippolito d’Este built his celebrated villa in 1550. Alban Mounts are hills south-east of Rome.
Montecassino … the monk Don Bernardo, whom DHL met when visiting the American adventurer and writer Maurice Magnus (1876–1920) in February 1920 at this famed Benedictine monastery.
Fiume … D’Annunzio legion In September 1919 D’Annunzio (see note here) raised troops and occupied Fiume (now Rijecka), on the border with and ceded to Yugoslavia at the end of the First World War, until the Italian army forced his surrender in late December 1920.
W ‘Evviva’, as DHL explains at 175:35–7; D’Annunzio’s names follow with surname first, a common Italian practice.
professore Title used of school as well as university teachers in Italy.
ground … Demos From Friederich von Logau (1604–55), Sinngedichte, as translated by Longfellow: ‘Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small’. Demos: the people (Greek).
Integer … purus Wholesome of life and innocent of sin (Horace, Odes I.xxii.1).
Deutschland über … unter alles Germany over all (the German national anthem) … Germany under all (German).
Ireland Referring to the Anglo-Irish War of 1919–21, which led to the independence of the Irish Free State.
Murattis Despite the Italian name, a brand of ‘expensive English cigarettes’ (here) made by B. Muratti Sons & Co, London and Manchester.
Capri … on the island Popular tourist island in the Bay of Naples with two small towns, Capri and Anacapri, and a lighthouse at its south-western tip. DHL was resident from December 1919 to February 1920, and his ‘few people’ could have included the British novelists Compton Mackenzie (1883–1972) and Francis Brett Young (1884–1954).
He swanked England An idiosyncratic slang usage, meaning ‘He boasted about England’ or ‘He puffed up England’.
commis voyageurs Commercial travellers (French).
Rosencavalier … Moussorgsky Der Rosenkavalier (1911), opera by Richard Strauss (1864–1949). Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (1839–81), composer of the opera Boris Godunov (1869), among other works.
Ulysses … Odyssey The Greek mythological hero of Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus (Roman Ulysses), has adventures in the Mediterranean on his way home to Ithaca from the Trojan War. See also here and note.
“It’s a long … Piccadilly—” From a marching song composed in 1912 by Jack Judge (1878–1938) to words by Harry Williams (1874–1924), popular in the First World War.
Entente Agreement (French) or understanding between nations.
Paladins … Rinaldo! Orlando Knights of Charlemagne (using the Italian forms of the French Renaud and Roland) in the French national epic, renowned for their chivalry and martial prowess.
Magicce … Merlin I.e. versions of Merlin the magician in the English Arthurian legend.
the Black Hand A notorious branch of the Mafia as well as a Serbian nationalist secret society, one of whose members, Gavrilo Princip, assassinated the Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, precipitating the First World War.
dragons in Wagner … Munich DHL saw Wagner’s opera Siegfried (1876), in Act II of which the hero slays a dragon, at London’s Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, on 13 November 1911 and in Germany in 1912 or 1913.
Beelzebub The ‘prince’ (Matthew xii.24) or ‘chief of the devils’ (Luke xi.15).
girning Snarling.
Freudian analysis I.e. typical of analyses of relationships in literature and life by the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud (1856–1939); here the basis is repressed unconscious male resentment of female dominance.
Buddha As in seated statues of the Indian religious teacher (c. 563–c. 483 BC).