With a surname like mine, you get used to misspellings and mispronunciations. “One ‘t’,” we wearily explain to people aware of the more numerous (and, we like to think, less exclusive) double-t branch of the clan. And that’s at home.
Abroad? In a fiercely Serbian part of Kosovo, I was once nearly lynched by a mob who thought “Whitaker” sounded like the Albanian acronym for their mortal enemies, the Kosovo Liberation Army. Elsewhere, blank incomprehension, apart from one place: Sicily. Not only do they know the name, they can spell it, too.
The reason, it turns out, is that in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Whitakers were the richest people on the island. The family weathered revolts, earthquakes, outbreaks of cholera and the rise of the Mafia to reap a fortune exporting Marsala wine, citrus, sulphur and anything else that could find a market. They built grand palazzos in the capital, Palermo, and entertained visiting royalty in the shape of Edward VII, George V and Kaiser Wilhelm II.
I knew nothing of this until a friend lent me a book. Then another, Robert Gullifer, researching the history of Anglican churches in Italy – an astonishing number were built, mainly during the Victorian era – discovered that the Whitakers had paid for the one in Palermo. But he was having trouble gaining access to the archives. Clearly it was time to join forces.
We rattled down from Rome on the overnight sleeper train to Sicily, which rolls on to a ferry to cross the Straits of Messina, before splitting in two to head for Syracuse and Palermo respectively. (The destination boards at Rome’s Stazione Termini mentioned only Syracuse, causing us no little anxiety until we could find someone to explain. Nor was the trip that restful; I would advise earplugs and your own pillow.)
We arrived slightly hollow-eyed at the grandest of the Whitaker residences, Villa Malfitano, set in lush grounds full of exotic shrubs and trees. But my surname worked its magic. I was asked to pose for photos with a visiting party of schoolchildren, and the family archives were opened up for Robert.
Delia, the last of the Sicilian Whitakers, died here in 1971. She never married, and the house is as she left it, still basking in the Belle Epoque. There are Brussels tapestries in the ballroom, Chinese antiques in the corridor, and an 18th-century Russian sleigh upstairs. In the entrance hall, a bust of the founder of the dynasty, Delia’s grandfather Joseph, looks sternly across at a portrait of his less diligent son. Also named Joseph, the family called him Pip, short for Peppino, and he was known locally as Giuseppe.
In her will, Delia arranged for the creation of the Giuseppe Whitaker Foundation, which looks after Villa Malfitano and the island of Mozia, off Marsala. Her father, as intent on spending wealth as Joseph Whitaker was in accumulating it, bought the island to indulge his passion for archaeology – more than two millennia ago, Mozia was one of the most important Phoenician sites in the Mediterranean – and the home he built there is now the G Whitaker Museum. Excavations continue, and the museum has been expanded more than once to display what has been unearthed.
On Mozia, a plaque celebrates Giuseppe’s “munificence, studies, perseverance”, while the gardens of both homes have identical busts of their creator, with his pointed beard and handlebar moustache. Each is inscribed simply “Giuseppe Whitaker 1850-1936”. The irony is that the Whitakers would never have achieved such status in Sicily were it not for a man who has far less there to commemorate him: Benjamin Ingham.
The Yorkshire-born founder of the enterprise that enriched the Whitakers arrived in 1806, and came to dominate Sicily’s commercial life. Through his liaison with the widowed Duchess of Santa Rosalia (there is no evidence that they ever married, apart from a somewhat dubious ceremony at the British consulate), Ingham was admitted to the Sicilian aristocracy, and by the mid 19th century Britain was the island’s main partner for both imports and exports.
But Ingham had no sons of his own. Although the duchess had three, he did not want them anywhere near his business. Instead he turned to his Whitaker nephews back in Yorkshire. The eldest, William, died early of a fever, and it is claimed, probably apocryphally, that Ingham wrote to his sister: “Your son is dead. Send me another.” That was Joseph, who proved so tireless and meticulous that he eventually took over the running of the business, which became known as Ingham Whitaker.
Ingham did build his own palazzo in Palermo, with the Holy Cross church in the garden, but it was long ago bought up, turned into the Grand Hotel et des Palmes, and extended in every direction. Robert showed me a section of mirrored panelling which once concealed a tunnel to the Anglican church, the theory being that Ingham’s duchess and her ladies could discreetly attend Protestant services without ruffling Catholic feathers. But the tunnel is now blocked, and the garden has disappeared beneath one of the busiest intersections in the city.
It is the same in Marsala. The mansion Ingham built is derelict, propped up by scaffolding in the middle of the disused compound, or baglio, where once the Marsala wine with his name on the label was produced and prepared for export. Like neighbouring baglios, it resembles a fortress, emphasising how volatile these parts used to be. When Garibaldi began his campaign to unify Italy, he landed in Marsala a stone’s throw from the wine establishments, though he promised to respect their neutrality.
Today this stretch of coast is a dreary sight. Only one baglio is still functioning, while the rest decay. The disused Anglican church is inaccessible behind high walls, with vegetation threatening to throttle it. Go north a couple of miles, though, and you come to the shallow lagoon, now a world centre of kite-surfing, with Mozia in its centre. Salt pans line the shore, local spas offer all kinds of saline therapies, and boats – one named Whitaker – carry a stream of visitors to the island. Apart from the ancient remains and the museum, there are vineyards growing the local Grillo grape, which goes into a very acceptable wine with “Fondazione Whitaker” on the label.
The connection between Sicily and our own isles goes back much further than the days of Ingham Whitaker, though. In the enchanting marble-paved streets of Marsala’s historic centre, the basilica in the main square is dedicated to San Tommaso di Canterbury. His statue on the exterior shows him, somewhat unusually, with a huge beard, holding a staff and martyr’s palm. Why such reverence here? One reason is that Joan, the daughter of Henry II, the man responsible for Thomas Becket’s death, married the king of Sicily in 1177. Like her father, she wanted to atone for the saint’s murder.
As for more modern links, just round the corner from another Whitaker mansion in Palermo which is now the police headquarters, I found the Modwear shop, “based on British culture”. In the window this was manifested by a portrait of Liam Gallagher and an Andy Capp T-shirt. But there was also a Lambretta-branded bucket hat, proving that long after we Whitakers left Sicily, the cultural influences still flow both ways. If only some of the Whitaker wealth had flowed into my coffers.
For more information on travel to Sicily, see Telegraph Travel’s destination guide.
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