
from family archive
The Accidental Exile
For more than half a century, Daphne Phelps's Sicilian casa has been
a haven to such colourful characters as Tennessee Williams, Bertrand Russell
- and the local godfather
by Louette Harding for YOU magazine 18 April 1999
photographs Geoff Wilkinson
When she was 34, Daphne Phelps changed her life.
From a large and clever family, she was, I suppose, destined to marry
an academic or a lawyer, to bring up children in the shires, perhaps.
But a number of factors combined and off she went to Sicily where her
uncle had built a house - the most beautiful house in the beautiful town
of Taormina, whose medieval walls are stitched valiantly around the precipitous
curves of the cliffs above the sea.
There she has lived until the present day, running Casa Cuseni as a kind
of artists' retreat, so that Tennessee Williams, Bertrand Russell, Roald
Dahl and Caitlin Thomas pitched into her life. And there she camouflaged
herself among the Sicilians. She did this so well that the local mafia
godfather, Don Ciccio, placed her under his protection.

How come we have never heard of this mettlesome woman before? Now, aged
88, she has written a book about her house and her life in Sicily, and
I set off to interview her, a journey that culminated in a steep climb
through her exuberant garden, past a fountain cupped against a stone wall,
and up on to the terrace.
Daphne's uncle, Robert Kitson, picked the site for its views, to the
left over the rooftops to the bay, and to the right across the plains
to Mount Etna. The volcano is awake today, emitting papal smoke signals
by day, first white, then grey, and glowing beads of lava by night.
Daphne leads the way, slowly and determinedly on her stick, to some cane
seats. 'The number of books which have been written here and pictures
painted! And I always see that the inexperienced painters start with Etna.
The awful thing is at my age there are holes in one's memory. I think
my reasoning powers are as good as ever they were, but what I forget is
quite alarming.'
Daphne paid her first visit to Casa Cuseni in 1935. However thrilled
she was by the panorama from the terrace or by the perfect proportions
of the building, she was rather more nervous of her uncle, who was tetchy
and explosive. Then, during the war, he fled Italy for England, 'and I
got to know him over the washing-up sink'. He announced that he was going
to leave the house to her. A day after his return to Sicily, he was dead.
Daphne had no intention of settling there in his stead: 'My uncle had
told me it would be impossible.' Once duties had been paid, there was
not enough money left for running the house: she must sell. So she set
off, swapping the dishpan skies and restrictions of post-war England for
the vibrant clamour of Sicily, intending to stay for a fortnight.
Fifty-four years later, she ponders how her plans changed. She had been
working as a psychiatric social worker, but her boss, Dr Kate Friedlander,
died suddenly. 'I knew I would never work with another psychiatrist to
compare with her. She had been analysed by Freud himself, so why she needed
to be a chain smoker . . . ' Also, a romance had gone wrong: 'I couldn't
have the one I wanted and I didn't want second best: I've seen it in other
marriages and it doesn't work,' she says.
Finally, she thought of a way to earn enough to maintain Casa Cuseni.
'I saw a chance - taking my friends and their friends as PGs. That's probably
a very old expression and not recognised now: paying-guests. I never took
any total unknowns; I couldn't risk it. They had to be recommended. It
began with me taking in creative people, but then I decided I must have
some ballast - teachers or academics - otherwise it was just too fiery.'
She charged very little but it was enough for her own modest needs.
Problems came in plagues. The Italians, the Germans and the British had
occupied the house in turn. 'There weren't windowpanes in a great part
of it so the shutters had to be kept shut, but it really wasn't too bad.
It was watertight by the time I came,' she says.
'I don't think I've been in danger. I may have been blind to it.' She
puffs with laughter. 'I've had a great deal of help and affection, largely
because they loved my uncle so. I call them the little people, which,
I still prefer to the working classes, but it's not PC, is it?' Not at
all, I tell her. 'PC has developed since I've been here. I'm out of touch.'
Like her uncle, she has avoided the cocktail parties of the Sicilian
bourgeoisie. In doing so, she has made enemies. She was anonymously denounced
to the authorities for running a pensione without the necessary papers.
'Things were very bad after the war and the hotels were nearly empty.
They saw I was having a lot of guests. It was jealousy - well known as
a Sicilian vice; they are incredibly jealous in every way. The head of
police said, "I think you'd better have a licence," so I became
a locanda [guesthouse]. It was tiresome because of the officials coming.
In their uniforms,' she adds mischievously. 'With their revolvers in their
holsters.'
Her book-jacket blurb describes Daphne as 'modest', which is true in
many ways, but there are flashes of ego, too. Without it, she would not
have found pleasure in exile. At times, it was fun to stand out from the
crowd. In the early years, she caused a stir in her open-top car. 'It
was blond - "Blond like you," as they told me. I was the only
blonde. They're all blond now but there weren't any then,' she says, wryly.
Everywhere she went villagers would gather agog. 'They didn't believe
a woman was capable of driving. You call that chauvinism, do you? I call
it sheer ignorance,' she says.
Daphne's most extraordinary friendship was with the local godfather,
an uneducated man, wiry, scarred, with a penchant for handmade silk shirts.
Don Ciccio was proud of his power: he'd toss his cap on to the bonnet
and Daphne could leave her car unlocked on an isolated track. But he lived
simply, in the same poverty as the peasant farmers of his hillside village.
Daphne's descriptions of him are hugely romantic. 'What should be stressed
is that he has nothing to do with the modem Mafia, which is absolutely
foul. Don Ciccio was the Robin Hood thing. You see, if the state wasn't
giving the people justice, others stepped in. It was very popular - not
now, this was a long time ago.
'At our first meeting, he bowed, kissed my hand and said, "Signorina,
I place myself at your disposal. If there is any individual who is displeasing
to you, you have but to let me know." Any individual? I was thinking
of the neighbours. The lawyers had failed to settle a boundary dispute.
And then I envisaged the knife in his hand and the throat being slit.
So I never dared call him until some villages here were cut off by snow
and I'd collected warm clothing and food. I rang Don Ciccio on the only
line into his village and he was here the next morning. He was modest
enough to put the two holdalls on his back.
'I accompanied him to the gate, and he said, "It is for you I wish
to do something." I said, "That's very nice but I can't think
what." "Well," he said, "I will tell you the story
of the little Baronessina. She was very beautiful and rich. An elderly
lawyer wanted to marry her but he was not pleasing to her parents. He
kidnapped her. So they summoned me and within 24 hours she was returned
perfetta e completa. Of course, I hope that never... But if...' She mimes
Don Ciccio's Sicilian shrug and roars with laughter.
We move on to the subject of her famous PGs. She escaped Dylan Thomas's
widow, Caitlin, by the skin of her teeth. Caitlin arrived late at night,
a bottle in her basket glinting in the moonlight. Daphne scampered down
the hillside to find her a room, claiming the house was full. 'I had to
rush to the hotel next door. I was not going to have her here. She could
have smashed things!'
Tennessee Williams she took to a local restaurant, where he admired the
local waiter even more than the local food.
But her absolute favourite was Bertrand Russell. 'Oh, he was a very great
friend, once I'd controlled him - he couldn't keep his hands off any woman.
He was the wittiest person I'd ever met.' They went sardine fishing by
night with other friends. 'The wicked fishermen - this is a Sicilian thing
- they mixed the drinks, because they love seeing these enormously tall
- so much taller than them - foreigners drunk, which Sicilians never are.
They're very abstemious. So we all got wittier and wittier and Bertie
said, "This is disgraceful. I was a teetotaller until I was 45 .
. . I'm as drunk as a lord. But it doesn't matter - I am a lord."
That was typical of his wit.'
Anecdotes like these fall word perfect from Daphne's lips, almost exactly
as they appear in her book. This is indicative of her long practice as
a hostess, refining the best stories for her guests, but she lobs personal
questions away awkwardly. She is, perhaps, well suited to single life.
For years she lived without a telephone and even now says, 'I hate that
beastly thing ringing.'
She claims never to have felt isolated, mentioning that she is constantly
in touch with her '29 great niblings', her great-nieces and nephews. She
refused dozens of proposals of marriage from 'men who wanted to marry
my house'. (In local law, a woman's property became her husband's.) Her
house painter proved unexpectedly poetic on this subject: 'He said to
me, "You and I are two sensitive souls - too sensitive for the perils
of matrimony." '
But it was only when Concetta Genio came to be her housekeeper that Daphne
felt the future of the house was secure. 'I didn't feel so lonely about
it all,' she confesses. Concetta was the wife of Daphne's then gardener,
Peppino. 'I'd have taken her for her smile alone but I didn't realise
I was going to get one of the most capable people at anything she turns
her hand to. And she's barely literate because the fascists didn't educate
girls.'
Concetta and her family, including her daughter, a teacher, her son-in-law,
a doctor, and two grandchildren - the girl of three is named Daphne -
live in a house in the grounds. 'They have meant an immense amount to
me. My young sister, aged only 85, wrote only this week saying, "I
do so envy you having them there, somebody to talk to. I have days without
a word to anyone."
'It's invaluable for me to have a doctor in the family, so to speak.
I fall. The last time I fell, I dislocated two fingers and fractured one.
As my sister says, old age is not for sissies.' As she stumps ahead through
the garden and house, I remark on the birds, which are chirruping like
monkeys in a jungle. 'I can't hear birdsong any more,' Daphne says, momentarily
wistful.
Robert Kitson built his house in 1900. The three main rooms - with airy
ceilings and uneven oak floors - open on to the terrace. On one side is
the dining room, an Arts and Crafts jewel created by Sir Frank Brangwyn,
on the other, the library, lined with faded book spines. In the middle,
in the salone, pieces of beautiful old furniture stand in the shadows
and patches of sun are sifted through settling dust motes.

Robert Kitson
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The Salone
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The Front Door
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Pool with Papyrus
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There is something essentially English about the house and Daphne remains
'profoundly English'. Might she, by virtue of old age, have become an
honorary man to the Sicilians? 'I think they just think I'm odd. A woman
here in a place like this, not married when she obviously had many, many,
many chances,' she says.
Daphne would love one of her family to continue in her stead but, thinks
this unlikely. The Landmark Trust has expressed an interest in Casa Cuseni,
so its future is secure, 'It would have been levelled to the ground and
a ten-storey hotel built if I hadn't suddenly decided to fight for it,
not at all certain I should succeed,' she says. At her age, Daphne has
given up PGs, but, she says, between the visits of friends and family,
'I never know who's going to come up those steps. Which I enjoy.
'I'm still surprised to find myself here after 50 years,' she tells me.
I wonder. When she first discussed moving to Casa Cuseni, a colleague
- a psychiatrist - was alarmed. 'I warn you, Daphne,' he said, 'people
who settle in those out-of-the-way places become very eccentric.' Does
she think that's true? 'No. I think they become...1 was going to say exceptional.'
There is a pause, She decides the word 'unusual' will do,
The truth is, Daphne Phelps shrank from her neat, shires destiny. A house
in Sicily was her means of escape.
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