16 April 1900

My Dear Robbie …

Well, everything went well. Palermo, where we stayed for 8 days is delightful. As a location it is the most beautiful city in the world, spend your life dreaming in the Conca d’oro, an exquisite valley divided between 2 seas. The lemon groves and orange gardens were of such total perfection that I became a Pre-Raphaelite and abhorred the common Impressionists…Nowhere, not even in Ravenna, have I seen such mosaics. In the Palatine Chapel, which from the floor to the dome is all gold, you really feel as if you are sitting in the lap of a great honeycomb watching angels sing; and watching angels or at any rate people sing is much nicer than listening to them…You have heard of Monreale, with its cloisters and cathedral. We used to go there often by carriage, the coachmen being boys shaped in the most exquisite way. Breeding is seen in them, not in the horses of Sicily.

The favourites were Manuel, Francesco and Salvatore. I loved them all but I only remember Manuel. I also befriended a young seminarian who lived in Palermo Cathedral, with 11 others, in a small room under the roof, like birds.

Every day he would show me the whole cathedral and I would actually kneel in front of the massive porphyry sarcophagus in which Frederick II lies. It is a sublime thing, naked and monstrous, blood-coloured, and supported by lions, which caught some of the wrath of the great emperor’s restless soul.

At first my young friend, by the name of Giuseppe Lo Verde, gave me some information, but on the third day it was I who gave it to him and rewrote the story as usual and told him all about the supreme king and his court of poets, and the terrible book he never wrote. Joseph was fifteen years old and very sweet. The reason he had entered the church was singularly medieval. I asked him why he had thought of becoming a cleric and how. He answered: “My father is a cook and he is very poor and there are several of us at home, so it seemed good to me that in a small house like ours there was one less mouth to feed, because as thin as I am I eat a lot, too much, alas I fear.”-I told him to console himself because God often uses poverty as a means to bring people to Himself and wealth never, or rarely.

So Joseph was consoled and I gave him a little book of devotions, very pretty, containing many more figures than prayers, so very useful for Joseph who has beautiful eyes…

I am sending you a photograph I took in Palermo on Palm Sunday…

Kindest greetings to your dear mother.

Always yours 

Oscar.”