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Updated: June 5, 2025
'At Cotrone the tone of the dining-room was decidedly morose. One man he seemed to be a sort of clerk came only to quarrel. I am convinced that he ordered things which he knew that the people could not cook, just for the sake of reviling their handiwork when it was presented.
I like to think of him as still quietly happy amid his garden walls, tending flowers that grow over the dead at Cotrone." Dead, like those whose graves he tended; like Gissing himself.
It was in 1897 that he lodged here with that worthy trio: Gibbon, Lenormant and Cassiodorus. The chapters devoted to Cotrone are the most lively and characteristic in his "Ionian Sea." Strangely does the description of his arrival in the town, and his reception in the "Concordia," resemble that in Bourget's "Sensations." The establishment has vastly improved since those days.
Even here, it seemed to me, the air was fresher. I lifted my eyes to the hills and seemed to feel the breezes of Catanzaro. The train was made up at Cotrone, and no undue haste appeared in our departure. When we were already twenty minutes late, there stepped into the carriage where I was sitting a good-humoured railway official, who smiled and greeted me.
There, says legend, armed folk of Cotrone used to lie in wait to attack the corsairs who occasionally landed for water. When I led him to talk of Cotrone and its people, the Doctor could but confirm my observations. He contrasted the present with the past; this fever-stricken and waterless village with the great city which was called the healthiest in the world.
Those who have wealth cling to it fiercely; the majority have neither time nor inclination to occupy themselves with anything but the earning of a livelihood which for multitudes signifies the bare appeasing of hunger. What was I doing at Cotrone? I endeavoured to explain that Cotrone greatly interested me. Ha! Cotrone interested me? Really? Now what did I find interesting at Cotrone?
This is simply hearth-money, an impost on each fireplace where food is cooked; the same tax which made trouble in old England, and was happily got rid of long ago. But the hungry plebs of Cotrone lacked vigour for any effective self-assertion; they merely exhausted themselves with shouting "Abbass' 'o sindaco!" and dispersed to the hearths which paid for an all but imaginary service.
Nearly three hundred years later, after the terrible earthquake of 1783, Cotrone strengthened her harbour with the great stones of the temple basement. It was a more legitimate pillage. Driven inland by the gale, I wandered among low hills which overlook the town.
This noble relic stands about 85 centimetres in height and measures some 215 centimetres in circumference; it was never completed, as can be seen by the rim, which is still partially in the rough. A similar vessel is figured, I believe, in Tischbein. The small villa-settlement on this promontory is deserted owing to lack of water, every drop of which has to be brought hither by sea from Cotrone.
Evidently this is the work of hot sun on moisture; but when was it done? For they tell me that it rains very little at Cotrone, and only a deluge could moisten this iron soil. Here and there I came upon yet more striking evidence of waterpower; great holes on the hillside, generally funnel-shaped, and often deep enough to be dangerous to the careless walker.
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