A Sweet and Glorious Land (24 page)

Over the years, I have seen this again and again. I would think I was watching two Italians in heated, perhaps even deadly, exchange, their voices rising, one on top of the other, on street corners or on crowded trains. Then, suddenly, at what seemed to be the height of the debate, they would stop, smile, and shake hands or embrace, wishing each other well as they parted company.

In Reggio late one afternoon, I saw such theater played out in the street, in the aftermath of a three-car collision during rush hour. A car in the rear banged into the car in front, pushing it into a third car. Three drivers, all muscular, well dressed, and male, simultaneously jumped out of their vehicles, shouting, waving, and pointing fingers of blame. The heated debate rose in pitch over perhaps five minutes. Then, when the driver in the rear acknowledged he actually may have caused the problem, the mood of the two in front, their mastery of their automobiles unassailed, instantly turned calm and cordial. The three men quickly exchanged names and addresses and, presumably, insurance numbers. They patted each other on the shoulder and shook hands, warmly shouting
“Ciao! Ciao!”
as if they were saying farewell to long-lost friends. Each climbed into his slightly damaged car and sped off in a separate direction.

*   *   *

From my rooftop, I turned to the Strait of Messina and watched a line of ships, slowly following astern of one another, crossing south to north through the strait, so rich in mythology and real history. Through here, across my very line of sight, the Mediterranean world sailed, as each empire grew out of the dust, developed into great and powerful, but brutal, conquerors, and, in turn, each disappeared back into dust.

Today along this slight cusp of asphalt-covered land, only fragments of their towers, walls, temples, and forums remain visible. Through it all, the Greeks developed their art and their culture, and that is what the Romans, in turn, with their own embellishments, passed down to the rest of the Western world.

I thought again of Herodotus, that amazing Greek historian who was the first to write, in prose, of the follies of men, taking them out of the veil of mythology and making them human. Peter Romm, in his study of the historian, quotes from the ancient writer who “quotes” Solon, a historic figure, discoursing on the inevitable sorrow of human life and why wealth—and power—cannot make up for those sorrows:

“One must look to the end of every matter, how it will turn out; for the god has shown a glimpse of happiness to many men, then destroyed them root and branch.”

So it was with the ancient civilizations and their peoples. Each had a “glimpse of happiness,” a moment of glory and power, and each has disappeared. Egypt lasted several thousand years as the world's greatest power, replaced by Greece for several hundred years after the Greeks descended from earlier civilizations farther east, beyond the Aegean; Rome lasted a thousand years, grinding into dust its greatest challengers, the Carthaginians, before weakened, decadent Rome itself was devastated by the barbarians in the West and the Saracens in the East. Almost all have become forgotten races that ended up absorbed by other peoples.

In modern times, the Germans launched a thousand-year Reich, only to see it dissolve after a brief, brutal decade. Americans, conquerors in the nineteenth century and liberators in the twentieth, have lasted as a united people barely more than two hundred years. We still forget what “old” is. Where will our civilization be in one thousand years? What part of the earth, what nation, what people, still to be formed into new governments, will dominate then? Are we living our “glimpse of happiness” now, just to have it snatched away in the centuries ahead?

Within a few days, I would return to Rome and head home—on April 13, 1998. George Gissing, I knew, left Rome one hundred years and a day before me—on April 12, 1898—heading north on the 2:30 train where, according to his diary, he spent a sleepless night. He arrived in Berlin on April 14, stopping briefly to visit a friend before returning to England. He, too, following his Ionian adventure, had spent time—several weeks, contrasted with my few days—in Rome sight-seeing and visiting with his friends Arthur Conan Doyle and H. G. Wells, and the impressionable and enchanting Brian Ború Dunne.

But first I wanted to spend a few days in Sicily, where Gissing longed to go but never made it.

I walked through the door held open by the gracious and kindly desk clerk, picked up my luggage, and walked several blocks toward the port of Reggio di Calabria. There I caught the small state railroad–operated boat that would carry me across the strait to the Sicilian port of Messina.

Acknowledgments

For help in this task, I have many people to thank. I begin with my daughter, Jennifer, and sons, Todd and Brad, whose excitement over the project reinvigorated me on a regular basis. I also am grateful to Giovanni Maschero, the Italian vice-consul in Salt Lake City, Utah, who contacted key people for me to speak with in Rome; and to Vittorio Cammarota, a native of Catanzaro in Calabria, who works for the Italian Cultural Institute in Washington, D.C. Vittorio answered many questions about his region, tracked down key photographs, and queried his parents, Giuseppina and Beda Cammarota, about Signor Paparazzo's Hotel Centrale in Catanzaro. His sister, Maria Cammarota, provided a photo of the hotel.

I owe several debts to a cadre of devoted Gissing scholars. His first major biographer, Professor Jacob (Jack) Korg of the University of Washington in Seattle, and I developed a lively correspondence in which we reviewed aspects of Gissing's life that have come to light over the three and a half decades since the professor's biography was first published.

I also developed a delightful letter and fax exchange with Pierre Coustillas of the University of Lille in France, who is working on a comprehensive Gissing biography. Coustillas also was scheduled to publish, in late 1999 in
The Gissing Journal,
an article about his 1998 visit to Gissing sites in Calabria. Pierre and I discovered that his October 1998 trip followed nearly the same path of my early 1998 and early 1999 trips. We conducted them each unbeknownst to the other. He spent a day with me in July 1999 at his home in northern France, showing me his private Gissing “museum” and his twelve hundred fifty–volume collection of Gissing works in a variety of editions and languages. This collection includes a small portion of Gissing's personal library, and a bookcase and chair owned by Gissing in the later years of his life.

I also thank his friend and colleague Paul F. Mattheisen of Binghamton University, New York, who helped me with Gissing photographs and offered much moral support through a remarkable series of letters to me. Peter Morton of Flinders University of South Australia helped with critical dates.

My gratitude extends to Salt Lake City rare-book dealer and friend Kent Walgren, who never failed to find any obscure, out-of-print book I needed for this research, and who encouraged me—visit after visit to his small, comfortable shop—to keep writing. And I often relied on the advice of fellow Italophile Mike Homer of Salt Lake City, who tipped me off about Gissing's relationship with Arthur Conan Doyle and H. G. Wells, and who caught errors in my brief recounting of Italy's unification. Others who provided encouragement and support are Gary Bergera, Ron Priddis, Bill Slaughter, and Jim Ure, all of Salt Lake City.

I have particularly deep gratitude for Professor Baldassare Conticello, an eminent Italian archaeologist and specialist in the Greek colonization of southern Italy. He spent several hours over two days with me in Rome, educating a not-too-knowledgeable journalist with a twenty-five-year-old bachelor's degree in U.S. history about the nuances of ancient history.

And there is my friend and colleague Paul Paolicelli, whom I first met in Rome in 1992. His love and excitement for Italy have never failed to motivate me, and it was he who at first gently, then more forcibly, pushed me to get this book written and published, and who led me by the hand to my agent, Tony Seidl.

Another Roman friend comes to mind: Maria Findlow, who walked around Naples with me one cold, windy, wet March morning, showing me the places she loves. She made a special trip to that city months later to gather key information I had missed.

I cannot forget Isora Migliari, a researcher at the Sybaris/Thurii/Copia excavation who rescued me when the site was closed and offered a private tour. She shed more light in a few short hours on what was happening there than I had found in all my reading.

I have people closer to home to thank, too: Mark Trahant, one of my former editors in the daily newspaper business, now a columnist in Seattle, who read the manuscript to make sure that the narrative flowed and to ensure that I never mixed metaphors; and my dear Italian-language teacher, Marné Milner, now of Rebersburg, Pennsylvania, who corrected my sometimes shaky use of Italian.

I also must thank another former newspaper editor, David Ledford, now running his own daily in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. He taught me more about writing and storytelling in the three years I directly worked for him than I had learned in some thirty years of practicing various forms of journalism. His influence is on every page.

Finally, I thank Connie Disney, my friend and companion, who has tolerated my incurable love for Italy and my need to return there, year after year. She tolerates my growing piles of books about Italy, its history, its archaeology, and its culture, always allowing room for them amidst her own considerable collection. She encouraged me to do this book from the first moment the idea hit and never backed off from that encouragement, pushing me to make an additional trip when I realized I had more to do and see. She has been my first, best reader, marking in red ink confusing passages and demanding that I do better. Without her, this book could not have been written.

—John Keahey

Salt Lake City, Utah

November 1999

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