Prospero's Cell: A Guide to the Landscape and Manners of the Island of Corfu (27 page)

All this you would understand as coming from me, but others would speak differently of the place. Lady Young for instance calls it Paradise. No drawbacks annoy her at home, and between horses, & carriages,
& yachts, she is away from it as she pleases. The Reids do not dislike Corfu as they would, had they not a nice family, and themselves to care about. The Cortazzi are gone, almost all the military offices are full of new people. My drawing companion Edward is gone, & I miss him terribly. I vow I never felt more shockingly alone than the two or three evenings I have staid in.

Yet all this must be conquered if fighting can do it. Yet at all times, I have thought of, I hardly know what. The constant walking and noise overhead prevents my application to any sort of work, & it is only from
6
to 8 in the morning that I can attend really to anything: Then
. I am beginning bits of Plutarch and of Lucian dialogues. And then, if I can’t sleep, my whole system seems to turn into pins, cayenne-pepper, & vinegar & I suffer hideously. You see I have no means of carrying off my irritation: others have horses, or boats, in short—I have only walking, and that is beginning to be impossible alone. I could not go to church today. I felt I should make faces at everybody, so I read some Greek of St. John, wishing for you to read it with—some of Robinsons Palestine, some Jane Eyre, some Burton’s Mecca, some Friends in Council, some Shakespeare, some Vingt Ans après, some Leakes Topography, some Gardiner Wilkinson, some Grote, some Ruskin—& all in half an hour O! doesn’t “he take it out of me” in a raging worry? Just this moment I think I must have a piano: that may do
me good. But then I remember Miss Hendon over my head has one, & plays jocular jigs continually. Then what the devil can I do? Buy a baboon & a parrot & let them rush about the room?

There is one thing here which cannot be grumbled at—at present at least. The weather, it has been simply cloudless glory, for 7 long days & nights. Anything like the splendour of olive-grove & orange-garden, the blue of sky & ivory of church & chapel, the violet of mountain, rising from peacock-wing-hued sea, & tipped with lines of silver snow, can hardly be imagined. I wish to goodness gracious grasshoppers you were here.

The weather has been utterly wonderful, this the 28th day since I came, being the first with a single cloud in it! Nor has there been the least wind, or temporal annoyance of any kind, but always a lovely blue & golden sphere about all earth sky & sea. How different from the 2 preceding years this! And the olives are one bending mass of fruit. I have however walked but little. I grow weary of the 3 dull miles out & 3 back in order to reach any scenery.

O mi i! how cold it is! The weather hasn’t changed after all, & I believe don’t mean to. It’s as bright and cold & icicular as possible, and elicits the ordibble
murmurs of the cantankerous Corcyreans. As for the English they like the cold generally, I don’t:—Not-withstanding which, I must own to being in absolously better health than for I don’t know how long past. Yesterday I went up a mounting & made a sketch,
. A majestic abundance of tympanum-torturing turkeys are now met with on all the roads, coming in to Corfu to be eaten. These birds are of a highly irascible disposition, and I never knew before 2 days ago, that they objected to being whistled to. But Col. Campbell informed me of the fact, and proved it to me, since when it is one of my peculiar happiness to whistle to all the Turkeys I meet or see, they get into such a damnable rage I can hardly stand for laughing.

It is but right you should know the important life concerns of the Island, and therefore I shall not hesitate to insert the following facts.… Madam Vitalis the Greek Consul’s wife has purchased a large red maccaw. Mrs. Macfarlane’s female domestic has fallen downstairs, by which precipitate act Mrs. M’s baby has been killed. Sir Gorgeous Figginson Blowing has had an attack of fever. Colonel Campbell dined with Mr. Lear the artist on Thursday. On Friday that accomplished person entertained Mr. Bunsen & Mr. Justice Lushington. Capt. R. has purchased a Cornopeon, & practises, on it, (Mrs. G. invariably calls it a cornicopean.) but it is
not heard generally, on account of the superior row made by Mrs. Vitalis’ maccaw, Capt. P’s howling dogs, & about 400 turkeys who live at ease about the terrace and adopt a remarkable gobble at certain periods. Lady H. has astonished the multitude by a pink satin dress stuffed with pearls.

I meant to have written a lot about priests & signori, and the good peasantry & the orange-trees, and seagulls, and geraniums, & the Ionian Ball, & Jerusalem Artichokes, & Colonel Paterson, & old Dandolo’s palm-tree, & my spectacles and the Eastwind, & Zambelli’s nasty little dogs, & fishermen, & Scarpe’s cats, & whatnot, but I am too sleepy.

O! here is bit of queerness in my life. Brought up by women—& badly besides—& ill always, I have never had any chance of manly improvement & exercise, etc.—and never touched firearms in all my days—But you can’t do work at the Dead Sea without them. So Lushington who is always very kind and good—makes me take a 5-barelled revolver, & I have been practising shooting at a mark (I can hardly write for laughing), & have learned all the occult nature of pistols. Don’t grin. My progress is slow—but always (I trust) somewhat. At 103 I may marry possibly.

You will be sorry to hear I have had a bad eye, a sty, only more like an abscess: My brain is confused between cause & effect, & I don’t know if my being a pig has produced the sty, or whether the sty makes me a pig. But I know I am a pig.

I will send you such a funny book, “The Tempest,” H TPIKYMIA. It is extremely well translated, Caliban & Ariel are delightful. Isn’t this pretty.