HAVING NOW published threesuccessful books onLawrence, TheSvengali Press has decided to set up adivision devoted to publishing booksabout Lawrence by scholars andothers with something to say aboutDHL

In today’s tight world of bookpublishing, many authors withexcellent books about Lawrentiantopics are finding it difficult, if notimpossible, to find a traditionalpublisher willing to take on theirbooks. The traditional publishersclaim Lawrence is no longer ofinterest to the general public, but weat The Svengai Press look at thematter differently: we can target ourLawrence books to people who areinterested in Lawrence.

This is because we are in thevanguard of the New Publishing,producing not only printed copiesbut downloadable e-books andPrint-on-Demand (POD) versionsof our books so that they areavailable at a much-reduced priceall over he world. Moreover, ourexpert knowledge of Lawrence andhis works means that yourmanuscript will be treatedsensitively and carefully.

If you would like to know moreabout how the Svengali Press canhelp you, please email:

trilby@svengalipress.com.au

or visit our website:www.svengalipress.com.au

Sandra Darroch Publisher

The Svengali Press Pty Ltd and

Secretary of the D.H. LawrenceSociety of Australia

The Journal of the DH Lawrence Societyof Australia

ISSN No: 1039-9658 www.dhlawrencesocietyaustralia.com.au

No. 24, February 2017

THE SVENGALI PRESS: NICHE PUBLISHER OF LAWRENCE BOOKS

IN SEARCH OF LAWRENCE'S VILLA IN TAORMINA

By Michael Lester

Michael and Jill Lester

It is my destiny to wander (Lawrence)

IN LATE November 2015 Jill and I set out to visitthe “Villa Fontana Vecchia’ and locales frequentedby Lawrence and Frieda during their eighteenmonth stay in Taormina, Sicily from February1920. Ours alas, is a tale of frustration anddisappointment, not unlike Lawrence’s own deepfrustrations and often anger with his restless per-ipatetic travels in search of freedom andmeaning….

I particularly enjoy visiting the many places andhaunts that the ever-restless Lawrence had visited,lived and written in. We have been to the twocabins he rented on the Del Monte ranch house inthe hills outside Taos, New Mexico, where Friedaburied his ashes. We have also visited Zennor, thetiny Cornish village that was the scene of hisharassment as a supposed ‘spy’ for the Germans.We live in Cremorne, Sydney just round thecorner from where Lawrence visited Mosman Bayand Neutral Bay where he stayed visiting localcontacts that provided the material for hisAustralian novel, Kangaroo written in 1922. Thesevisits and familiarity with the places in which he

It is lined with the predominantly gently tintedwhite limestone buildings of the many ages andcultures that have invaded the island. Classical,medieval, renaissance and even baroque, stylesconstitute a virtual encyclopedia of architecturethrough the ages. The heritage is immaculatelymaintained, and actively in use for smallbusinesses and commerce, while the streets andpiazzas are proudly festooned and garlandedwith a colourful array of flowers. It is a sheerdelight that these days unfortunately enduresand it must be said, prospers, from the inevitableover-commercialization of mass tourism. They allcame, they saw, they paid…and then they left.

We sat in the warm late autumn evenings on ourterracotta paved terrace high above thewonderful sparkling waters of Castellamare Baywith its dazzling aquamarine hues, under a vastpellucid sky, sipping on our aperitifs of orangecoloured and flavoured Aperol Spritz and rosewine, and munching on the delicious localsalamis, olives and cheeses. It is easy to fallunder a certain spell of enchantment. Loominghigh above us to our far right was the smokingcone of Mount Etna the highest active volcano inEurope, immediately above us lay the medieval,crenellated walls of Castellamare, while behindand to our left nestled the wondrous remains ofthe Greco-Roman theatre possessed of surely thefinest setting ever for such a venue. Immediatelybelow lay the terraced public garden Giardini-Naxos with its sweeping views over the sun-bathed water and to a delightful design oftopiary, flowers, trees, ponds and follies.Sometimes called the Trevelyan Gardens it waslaid out in the English style in the late nineteenthcentury complete with small ‘follies’.

spent time and on which he drew in his writingadds to an understanding and appreciation of hiswriting; Lawrence indeed coined the phrase ‘spiritof place’. Many have remarked upon Lawrence’sremarkable genius among writers to ‘inhabit aplace at a glance’ and the remarkable simplicity ofhis apparently app-arently‘effortless reportage’.Yet he always moved on…

‘Sicily is not Italy’

‘Sicily is not Italy’ declare the tourism guides andposters as we made our way around thistriangular-shaped and very mountainous Italianisland, the second largest island in theMediterranean, on a car touring holiday for fiveweeks. The island’s symbol is the ‘Trinacria’ athree-corned figure, a Gorgon head Medea withsnakes for hair. Sicily lies off the coast of southernItaly, across the legendary Straits of Messina, andbetween the stunningly blue waters of the Ionianand Tyrrhenian Seas. Importantly in its history italso lies only one hundred miles north of theAfrican coast.

Due to its strategic location in the MediterraneanSicily has a unique and culturally diverse historyeven when set against the standards of its Italianmainland. It has been successively invaded andoccupied by the Phoenicians, Carthaginians,Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans,Swabian Germans, French, Spanish and Italians.Despite its tumultuous history it has a timeless andunchanging character captured so vividly by itsnative son Giuseppe del Lampedusa (1896-1957) inhis classic novel ‘The leopard’ set in the turbulentnineteenth century of the ‘Risorgimento’(Unification of Italy). They all came… and thenthey eventually left.

Taormina is like a ‘node’ in Lawrence’s travelsalongside Taos and Villa Mirenda outside Florence.In the immediate post-war years Lawrence had apattern of travel in Europe that would find himspending nine months a year in Italy until it justbecame too hot for him. He lived in Italy fromNovember 1919, when he left England, untilFebruary 1922, when he sailed for Ceylon; heremained outside Italy for three and a half years,returning in November 1925. His ‘dash’ toSardinia while living in Taormina inspired hiswonderful ‘The sea and Sardinia’ and sitsalongside his ‘Etruscan Places’, ‘Twilight in Italy’and a number of shorter ‘Italian essays’ as furthertestament to his remarkable powers of evocativeand innovative benchmark contributions to thegenre of travel writing. They stand alongsideGoethe’s classic “Italian Journey”(1816) and hisdescription of Sicily as ‘a little patch of paradise’.

Limestone buildings

Lawrence wrote in Sea and Sardinia: “Etna, likea white queen, or a white witch, standing there inthe sky; so magically beautiful, but I thinkwicked”. When he arrived in 1920 he read andwas enchanted by the writings of the preeminentnovelist of the region, the realist writer, GiovanniVerga (1840-1922) and fascinated by his spareand concise language. He set to translatingVerga’s works while in Taormina. Vergaprovided brutal details of local peasant livesdominated by toil and poverty but redeemed byspontaneous vitality, themes shared inLawrence’s own works.

‘a glossy sheen of glamour’

Taormina is proud of its artistic and literaryheritage as a famous watering hole for visitingEuropean and American celebrities over thedecades. There are signs at various locationsdisplaying photos of many of them in the hauntsthey frequented. The brochures sparkle withcelebrity names, from the days of the European‘grand tour’ in the late nineteenth century whenTaormina was ‘discovered’ by the glitterati of theday, including, Goethe, Dumas, Wilde, Wagner,Brahms, Klimt... Latterly came the Hollywoodstars, directors, writers and jet set, includingCapote, Hemmingway, Tennessee Williams,Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, MarcelloMastroianni, Ingmar Bergman, Cary Grant,Francis Ford Coppola, Marlene Dietrich, GretaGarbo, Frederico Fellini, Woody Allen….

Taormina has always had about it that ‘glossysheen of glamour’ that reflected the epithet ‘thepearl of the Mediterranean’. There is a large caféplastered with photos and names of celebrityvisitors. The grandest hotel in town, perched on ahigh point overlooking the sea at the far end of

The main Square

‘so magically beautiful’

The picturesque setting of Taormina was a sourceof immediate attraction to Lawrence despite hisabhorrence of its evident poverty and squalor. Hewrote Lady Chatterley while living there on thenorth east coast of the island, just down from theStraits of Messina that separate the island from thetoe of the mainland, the province of Calabria andthe poor regions of southern Italy. It is a beautifultourist ‘hill top’ village set on a rocky and steeppromontory overlooking the Ionian Sea. We basedourselves there for a week and it was on ouragenda to seek out and visit the house called VillaFontana Vecchia that he and Frieda rented.

The main street Corso Umberto wends its wayover a few hundred metres merging into theequally lovely Via Teatro Greci, adhering to asingle contour of the towering hills withpicturesque piazzas and inviting laneways, aboveand below.

the town and next to the Greco-Roman theatresite, closed for the off season when we were there,is marketed as the place for the in-crowd and isredolent with luxury viewed even from theoutside. In season Taormina hosts a dazzlingarray of cultural festivals, such as, film festivalheld for the past 60 years in the Greco-Romantheatre each June, the literary Tao Book festivaleach September, and the annual Tao Arte.

‘A nice big house at some distance above the sea’

Jill and I confidently set out on another brightsunny morning to find Villa Fontana Vecchia.Having read Lawrence’s description ourexpectations were fuelled : ‘a nice big house, withfine rooms and a handy kitchen, set in a biggarden, mostly vegetables, green with almondtrees, on a steep slope at some distance above thesea. It is beautiful, and green, green and full offlowers’.

We were armed with a local tourist map that toour delight showed a clearly marked Via DavidHerbert Lawrence further on up the hill justoutside the old town walls. Surprisingly however,the map, which marked the locations of houseslived in by visiting celebrities and writers,carried no indication of Lawrence’s house. In anyevent, this promised to be a lot easier anassignment than trying to track down the farmoutside Taos which we did find in due course,obligingly signposted by the University of NewMexico that now owns it; or his cottage in thesmall Cornish village of Zennor which eluded uscompletely; or indeed his rented house‘Wyewurk’ on the clifftops above the beach atThirroul on the south coast out of Sydney, thatwe did

continued over page

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In Search of Lawrence's Villa in Taormina (continuedfrom page 1)

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eventually track down though not able to enterbecause privately owned.

Suspicion and grubbiness

We decided anyway to enquire at the TouristOffice located within the town walls on the firstfloor of the beautiful predominantly 15th centuryPalazzo Corvajo, in a Renaissance courtyard, offthe lovely Piazza Santa Caterina . I approachedthe counter attended by three ladies busilyengaged in a lively discussion. After a while oneof them disengaged and smiling asked me howshe could be of assistance.

The Tourist Centre

Pointing at my little map and at the ViaLawrence I enquired whether they could directus to the location of Fontana Vecchia theLawrence house? Consternation ensued as sheconsulted her colleagues and it became evidentthat they had no knowledge of Lawrence, despitethe street, let alone of the villa. After furtherexchanges the best they could suggest was that wetry the Fontana Vecchia ‘bed and breakfast’establishment. I thanked them and we departed.

On reflection, this less than helpful experienceseemed to confirm our feeling in moving aroundSicily that the local people are inherently

Our closer inspection wasdisappointing; the house looked neitherold nor impressive enough, nor did ithave a view of the sea or a largeterraced garden filled with olive treesas we had read. After all, we had read,too, about how Lawrence wouldobserve the frolics of a local lady with adonkey-driving farm worker in theolive grove terraces below thehouse...or was that Freida herself? Hadthis been an inspiration for thecharacter of Constance Chatterley?But, hadn’t we read also, in researchingour visit that Lawrence’s villa hadindeed been converted in recent timesto a small and welcoming bed andbreakfast place? Our attempts toarouse a resident by repeated knockingon the door at the B&B entrance andcalling out were to no avail; the wholeplace looked sleepy and shut down inthis off-season. We were lost andconfused in welter of conflicting andseemingly unanswerable questions.

The B&B

Blissfully unaware, the road woundahead of us steeply in the growing heatof the day, and we inspected in greatexpectation a couple of the moresubstantial free standing houses alongthe way, especially those on thedownhill side of the street but to no

suspicious of strangers and unforthcoming, thatis, at least until they get to know you and feelthey can trust you. Their first reaction inresponse to a question is to deny any knowledge.No doubt this trait is one of self-preservation inthe face of a history of conquests and a culture oforganized crime so richly evoked in ‘Midnight inSicily’ by Peter Robb. Once you penetrate thisnatural wariness they are delightful andgenerous, proud to share with you their richculture.

Immediately you walk beyond the town wallsthrough the Porta Messina heading for viaLawrence the town takes on a less salubrious air,transitioning from the clean, historic and wellmaintained tourist center to the decidedly moregrubby and considerably less aestheticallypleasing streets and apartments of the regulartown dwellers. Sad to say, that driving roundSicily we were struck in a number of regions bythe frequent disparity between the idyllic if oftenrugged scenery of the island and the grubbinessof its contemporary man-made locales andhabitations; there is a widespread disregard forpublic amenity and cleanliness exemplified bynumerous roadside garbage dumps, scavenged bybirds, vermin and local dogs, of the most putridhousehold waste that appeared to be collectedinfrequently, at best, if at all. Might this wewondered be put down to a deep-seated history ofpoverty, a condition that persists to this day inSicily.

I was now having trouble reconciling this part ofthe scene with the picturesque setting I hadconjured in my mind for Villa Vecchia based onLawrence’s descriptions of the house, theneighbourhood and the scenic pastoral walks hewas accustomed daily to take. I can onlyconjecture that much has changed and for theworse since he visited here nearly one hundredyears ago. Perhaps not surprisingly thepopulation has grown considerably and themodern, cheap and unsightly apartment blockshave probably in filled the many green large plotsof land upon which must have stood the originaland grander villas such as Villa Vecchia on theslopes outside town. Mind you, it was alsoproving difficult to find many such examples.

Encountering disappointment

To our relief and growing sense of excitementafter a few minutes meandering around we cameacross via Lawrence. The street sign was clearenough, mounted on a post at the bottom of theroad heading up hill but alas in keeping with the

avail. Expectantly we would gaze up atthe walls half hoping to find a sign or aplaque, like those wonderful bluecircular plaques they use in London todenote residences of past famousinhabitants, or the similar historicmarker signs used on Paris dwellings,but not a sign was to be seen. No oneappeared in the sleepy street whom wemight ask for information, not that atthis stage we would have expectedanyone we had encountered to know orcare the first thing about Lawrence orhis house, or indeed willing to respondto our questions.

‘I am tired of it’

There was nothing for it but to admitdefeat, a defeat particularly frustratinghaving so readily and tantalizinglyfound Via Lawrence that had so raisedour expectations. Perhaps inevitablyand on a philosophical note, as Ruskinhas implied, we are doomed to never beable to fully appreciate and satisfy ourperception of place, and possess it forourselves.

Via David Herbert Lawrencr

Thus the tale of our thwarted quest forthe Lawrence house in Taormina mademore bitter by the subsequentrealization that is was there all the timebut marked as Capote’s residence. Whydid the Tourist office and the map notinform us of Lawrence? I seek someconsolation in our feeling in ourdisappointment an echo of thecontinual sense of frustration withplace that drove the lifelong peripateticjourneys of Lawrence. He was evidentlyin search of something, ‘his insatiablehunger for meaning’ which to his angerhe could never find in the physicalworld, despite his genius for capturing

general look of the neighborhood it was in a rustyand unkempt condition. Still, a promisingdiscovery buttressed by our seeing nearby a smallfountain in the middle of the cross road with theVia Vecchia; might this be the Fontana Vecchiaechoing the name of Lawrence’s villa whichsurely must lie close at hand, or did we recallreading that the fountain was in the grounds ofthe villa itself? At this stage our eyes alightedupon a sign on a nearby three storey, yellowstucco building called Fontana Vecchia ‘bed andbreakfast’; could this be the house we werelooking for?

Fountain with B&B in background

the fullness of the physical reality ofplace in the written word‘instantaneously and without effort’.Clive James sees in this the greatpathos of Lawrence’s ‘extraterrestrialun-belonging’.

Lawrence, after 18 months in Taorminacame to the conclusion that ‘theTaormina natives are as mean andcreeping as ever…..one must have donewith Italy…I have been hatingTaormina but one hates everywhere infits and starts”. And with his restlessspirit in search of the spiritual heinevitably decided to move on and leftin February 1922 for New Mexico viaCeylon and on to Australia where inwriting Kangaroo he once again showedhis mastery of quickly capturing aspiritual sense of place. Reacting tooagainst the growing fascist mood hewrote as he left Italy: “…the country issickening …I am tired of it.".

How fleeting too is the local fame of thevisiting celebrity even in a town thattakes pride in and promotes its artisticand literary heritage. Literary tastesand fashions come and go and it seemsthat at this juncture, in Sicily at leastLawrence is not a writer in vogue.

What does stay with me despite thedisappointment is the spirit of place, ofthe very beautiful landscape of Sicily, ofits difficult history and of its hardypeople and of the charms of the oldtown of Taormina which initially soenchanted Lawrence and Frieda. Andas for literary pilgrimages and thequest for places visited and lived in byLawrence I remain as committed asever. Such itineraries not only add to anappreciation of his work and character,but also serve to introduce us towonderful new places, cultures, andexperiences, initially through the eyesof Lawrence. My next call may be tovisit Eastwood in Nottingham in searchof his birthplace and other homesthere, or Metz among his first places,or Scandicci or Vence his last places,or…..….

“You need a change of soul rather thana change of climate’ (Seneca)