In October 1834, Alexandre Dumas set off on what would turn into a two year
absence from Paris, accompanied by his friend the Geoffrey Jadin, the
painter, and an English bulldog with propensity for feline mayhem, Mylord.
In August 1835, Dumas was in Rome, and decided to visit the kingdom of
Naples, which was ruled by Bourbon monarchy, and encompassed Sicily and
Calabria. From his visit to Naples and Sicily, Dumas produced a travel
trilogy: Le Speronare,
Le Capitaine Aréna, and
Le Corricolo, published
after his return.
When Dumas attempted to get a passport (more like today's visa) to visit
the Kingdom of Naples, it was refused on two grounds: that he was the son
of General Mathieu Dumas (Minister of War in the former Bonapartist puppet
Government of Naples), which was false, and that he was a noted
republication who had left Paris on political business, which was at least
half true. Dumas then asked his friend Guichard to apply for a passport to
visit Naples, which was promptly granted, and Dumas traveled on Guichard's
passport to Naples by sea. In those days, passports included a description
of the holder, but no picture.
On arrival, Dumas discovered that he might have to wait as much as a week
for a steamer to depart for Palermo. Concerned about being detected by the
authorities, Dumas hired a "speronara" to take him to Palermo. A
"speronara" is a kind of small Italian sailing craft, which would probably
be best rendered into English as "lugger." From Dumas' sketchy
description, it appears to have been a single-masted, fore-and-aft rigged
vessel of about 50 tons displacement. Passengers slept in a kind of tent
pitched on the deck. The captain of the boat was Guiseppe Aréna, who gave
his name to the second volume of the trilogy, and whom Dumas would look up
when he next visited Calabria (in 1859), a visit he described in
On Board the Emma.
The speronara encountered a storm at sea, visited Capri, passed between
Scylla and Charybdis, visited Messina and Catania. Dumas landed and
ascended the volcano, Mount Aetna, and then went on to Siracusa (Syracuse).
From Siracusa, Dumas & company sailed south to visit the barren and
impoverished island of Pantelleria. They then sailed northward to Girgenti
(the classical Agrigentum). Dumas traveled overland from Girgenti to
Palermo, had an encounter with Sicilian bandits, and met the speronara
again in Palermo.
As is common in Dumas' travel books, the volume includes sections of
history (both contemporary and from classical times), travel, traveler’s
tales, descriptions of people and places, and two chapter-length short
stories, both ostensibly told to him by people he met along the way:
"Death in Life: A Living Tomb," about a family held prisoner in a secret
underground crypt, and "Colonel Santa-Croce," about a Sicilian bandit on
the point of execution cleverly rescued by the leader of his band.
