I have heard those skilled in amatory matters say that the novice will do well to confine his attentions to young girls, avoiding married women or widows. They, the older ones, are a bad school--too prone to pardon infractions of the code, too indulgent towards foreigners and males in general. The girls are not so easily pleased; in fact (entre nous) they are often the devil to propitiate. There is something remorseless about them. They put you on your mettle. They keep you dangling. Quick-witted and accustomed to all the niceties of love-badinage, they listen to every word you have to say, pondering its possibly veiled signification. Thus far and no further, they seem to imply. Yet each hour brings you nearer the goal, if--if you obey the code. Weigh well your conduct during the preliminary stage; remember you are dealing with a professional in the finer shades of meaning. Presumption, awkwardness, imprudence; these are the three cardinal sins, and the greatest of these is imprudence. Be humble; be prepared.
Her best time for conversation, Ninetta tells me, is after luncheon, when she is generally alone for a little while. At that hour therefore I appear with a shirt or something that requires a button--would she mind? The hotel people are so dreadfully understaffed just now--this war!--and one really cannot live without shirts, can one? Would she mind very much? Or perhaps in the evening ... is she more free in the evening?
Alas, no; never in the evenings; never for a single moment; never save on religious festivals, one of which, she suddenly remembers, will take place in a week or so.
This is innocent coquetry and perhaps said to test my self-restraint, which is equal to the occasion. An impatient admirer might exclaim----
"Ah, let us meet, then!"
--language which would be permissible after four meetings, and appropriate after six; not after two. With submissive delicacy I reply hoping that the may shine brightly, that she may have all the joy she deserves and give her friends all the pleasure they desire. One of them, assuredly, would be pained in his heart not to see her on that evening. Could she guess who it is? Let her try to discover him tonight, when she is just closing her eyes to sleep, all alone, and thinking about things----
There I leave it, for the present. Unless a miracle occurs, I fear I will have quitted Levanto before that festival comes round. True, they have played the fool with me--how often! Yet, such is my interest in religious ceremonies, that I am frankly annoyed at the prospect of missing that evening.
One would like to be able to stroll about the beach with her, or up to the old castle, instead of sitting in that formal little shop. Such enterprises are impossible. To be seen together for five minutes in any public place might injure her reputation. It is the drawback of her sex, in this country. I am sorry. For though she hides it as best she can, striving to impress me with the immensity of her worldly experiences, there is an unsophisticated freshness in her outlook. The surface has not been scored over.
So it is, with the young. From them you may learn what their elders, having forgotten it, can nevermore teach you. New horizons unroll themselves; you are treading untrodden ground. Talk to a simple creature, farmer or fisherman--well, there is always that touch of common humanity, that sense of eternal needs, to fashion a link of conversation. From a professional--lawyer, doctor, engineer--you may pick up some pungent trifle which yields food for thought; it is never amiss to hearken to a specialist. But the ordinary man of the street, the ordinary man or woman of society, of the world--what can they tell you about art or music or life or religion, about tailors and golf and exhaust-pipes and furniture--what on earth can they tell you that you have not heard already? A mere grinding-out of commonplaces! How often one has covered the same field! They cannot even put their knowledge, such as it is, into an attractive shape or play variations on the theme; it is patter; they have said the same thing, in the same language, for years and years; you have listened to the same thing from other lips, in the same language, for years and years. How one knows it all beforehand--every note in that barrel-organ of echoes! One leaves them feeling like an old, old man, vowing one will never again submit to such a process of demoralization, and understanding, better than ever, the justification of monarchies and tyrannies: these creatures are born to act and think and believe as others tell them. You may be drawn to one or the other, detecting an unusual kindliness of nature or some endearing trick; for the most part, one studies them with a kind of medical interest. How comes it that this man, respectably equipped by birth, has grown so warped and atrophied, an animated bundle of deficiencies?
Life is the cause--life, the onward march of years. It has a cramping effect; it closes the pores, intensifying one line of activity at the expense of all the others; often enough it encrusts the individual with a kind of shell, a veneer of something akin to hypocrisy. Your ordinary adult is an egoist in matters of the affections; a specialist in his own insignificant pursuit; a dull dog. Dimly aware of these defects, he confines himself to generalities or, grown confidential, tells you of his little fads, his little love-affairs--such ordinary ones! Like those millions of his fellows, he has been transformed into a screw, a bolt, a nut, in the machine. He is standardised.
A man who has tried to remain a mere citizen of the world and refused to squeeze himself into the narrow methods and aspirations of any epoch or country, will discover that children correspond unconsciously to his multifarious interests. They are not standardised. They are more generous in their appreciations, more sensitive to pure ideas, more impersonal. Their curiosity is disinterested. The stock may be rudimentary, but the outlook is spacious; it is the passionless outlook of the sage. A child is ready to embrace the universe. And, unlike adults, he is never afraid to face his own limitations. How refreshing to converse with folks who have no bile to vent, no axe to grind, no prejudices to air; who are pagans to the core; who, uninitiated into the false value of externals, never fail to size you up from a more spiritual point of view than do their elders; who are not oozing politics and sexuality, nor afflicted with some stupid ailment or other which prevents them doing this and that. To be in contact with physical health--it would alone suffice to render their society a dear delight, quite apart from the fact that if you are wise and humble you may tiptoe yourself, by inches, into fairyland.
That scarlet sash of hers set me thinking--thinking of the comparative rarity of the colour red as an ingredient of the Italian panorama. The natives seem to avoid it in their clothing, save among certain costumes of the centre and south. You see little red in the internal decorations of the houses--in their wallpapers, the coloured tiles underfoot, the tapestries, table-services and carpets, though a certain fondness for pink is manifest, and not only in Levanto. There is a gulf between pink and red.
It is essentially a land of blue and its derivatives--cool, intellectual tints. The azure sea follows you far inland with its gleams. Look landwards from the water--purple Apennines are ever in sight. And up yonder, among the hills, you will rarely escape from celestial hues.
Speaking of these mountains in a general way, they are bare masses whose coloration trembles between misty blue and mauve according to distance, light, and hour of day. As building-stone, the rock imparts a grey-blue tint to the walls. The very flowers are blue; it is a peculiarity of limestone formation, hitherto unexplained, to foster blooms of this colour. Those olive-coloured slopes are of a glaucous tone.
Or wander through the streets of any town and examine the pottery whether ancient or modern--sure index of national taste. Greens galore, and blues and bilious yellows; seldom will you see warmer shades. And if you do, it is probably Oriental or Siculo-Arabic work, or their imitations.
One does not ask for wash-hand basins ofsang-de-boeuf. One wonders, merely, whether this avoidance of sanguine tints in the works of man be an instinctive paraphrase of surrounding nature, or due to some cause lying deep down in the roots of Italian temperament. I am aware that the materials for producing crimson are not common in the peninsula. If they liked the colour, the materials would be forthcoming.
The Spaniards, a different race, sombre and sensuous, are not averse to red. Nor are the Greeks. Russians have a veritable cult of it; their word for "beautiful" means red. It is therefore not a matter of climate.
In Italy, those rare splashes of scarlet--the flaming horse-cloths of Florence, a ruddy sail that flecks the sea, some procession of ruby-tinted priests--they come as a shock, a shock of delight. Cross the Mediterranean, and you will find emotional hues predominating; the land is aglow with red, the very shadows suffused with it. Or go further east....
Meanwhile, Attilio hovers discreetly near the hotel-entrance, ready to convey me to Jericho. He is a small mason-boy to whom I contrived to be useful in the matter of an armful of obstreperous bricks which refused to remain balanced on his shoulder. Forthwith, learning that I was a stranger unfamiliar with Levanto, he conceived the project of abandoning his regular work and becoming my guide, philosopher and friend.
"Drop your job for the sake of a few days?" I inquired. "You'll get the sack, my boy."
Not so, he thought. He was far too serviceable to those people. They would welcome him with open arms whenever--if ever--he cared to return to them. Was not the mason-in-chief a cousin of his? Everything could be arranged, without a doubt.
And so it was.
He knows the country; every nook of the hills and sea-shore. A pleasanter companion could not be found; observant and tranquil, tinged with a gravity beyond his years--a gravity due to certain family troubles--and with uncommon sweetness of disposition. He has evidently been brought up with sisters.
We went one day up the valley to a village, I forget its name, that sits on a hill-top above the spot where two streams unite; the last part of the way is a steep climb under olives. Here we suddenly took leave of spring and encountered a bank of wintry snow. It forced us to take refuge in the shop of a tobacconist who provided some liquid and other refreshment. Would I might meet him again, that genial person: I never shall! We conversed in English, a language he had acquired in the course of many peregrinations about the globe (he used to be a seaman), and great was Attilio's astonishment on hearing a man whom he knew from infancy now talking to me in words absolutely incomprehensible. He asked:
"You two--do you really understand each other?"
On our homeward march he pointed to some spot, barely discernible among the hills on our left. That was where he lived. His mother would be honoured to see me. We might walk on to Monterosso afterwards. Couldn't I manage it?
To be sure I could. And the very next day. But the place seemed a long way off and the country absolutely wild. I said:
"You will have to carry a basket of food."
"Better than bricks which grow heavier every minute. Your basket, I daresay, will be pretty light towards evening."
The name of his natal village, a mere hamlet, has slipped my memory. I only know that we moved at daybreak up the valley behind Levanto and presently turned to our right past a small mill of some kind; olives, then chestnuts, accompanied the path which grew steeper every moment, and was soon ankle-deep in slush from the melted snow. This was his daily walk, he explained. An hour and a half down, in the chill twilight of dawn; two hours' trudge home, always up hill, dead tired, through mud and mire, in pitch darkness, often with snow and rain.
"Do you wonder," he added, "at my preferring to be with you?"
"I wonder at my fortune, which gave me such a charming friend. I am not always so lucky."
"Luck--it is the devil. We have had no news from my father in America for two years. No remittances ever come from him. He may be dead, for all we know. Our land lies half untilled; we cannot pay for the hire of day labourers. We live from hand to mouth; my mother is not strong; I earn what I can; one of my sisters is obliged to work at Levanto. Think what that means, for us! Perhaps that is why you call me thoughtful. I am the oldest male in the family; I must conduct myself accordingly. Everything depends on me. It is enough to make anyone thoughtful. My mother will tell you about it."
She doubtless did, though I gleaned not so much as the drift of her speech. The mortal has yet to be born who can master all the dialects of Italy; this one seemed to bear the same relation to the Tuscan tongue which that of the Basses-Pyrenées bears to French--it was practically another language. Listening to her, I caught glimpses, now and then, of familiar Mediterranean sounds; like lamps shining through a fog, they were quickly swallowed up in the murk. Unlike her offspring, she had never been to school. That accounted for it. A gentle woman, frail in health and manifestly wise; the look of the house, of the children, bore witness to her sagacity. Understanding me as little as I understood her, our conversation finally lapsed into a series of smiles, which Attilio interpreted as best he could. She insisted upon producing some apples and a bottle of wine, and I was interested to notice that she poured out to her various male offspring, down to the tiniest tot, but drank not a drop herself, nor gave any to her big daughters.
"She is sorry they will not let you stay at Levanto."
"Carrara lies just beyond the war-zone. I want to visit the marble-mines when the weather grows a little warmer, and perhaps write something about them. Ask her whether you can join me there for a week or so, if I send the money. Make her say yes."
She said yes.
With a companion like this, to reflect my moods and act as buffer between myself and the world, I felt I could do anything. Already I saw myself exploring those regions, interviewing directors as to methods of work and output, poking my nose into municipal archives and libraries to learn the history of those various quarries of marble, plain and coloured; tracking the footsteps of Michael Angelo at Seravezza and Pietrasanta and re-discovering that old road of his and the inscription he left on the rock; speculating why the Romans, who ransacked the furthermost corners of the earth for tinted stones, knew so little of the treasures here buried; why the Florentines were long content to use that greybigio, when the lordly blackportovenere, [2] with its golden streaks, was lying at their very doors....
The gods willed otherwise.
Then, leaving that hospitable dame, we strolled forth along a winding road--a good road, once more--ever upwards, under the bare chestnuts. At last the watershed was reached and we began a zigzag descent towards the harbour of Monterosso, meeting not a soul by the way. Snow lay on these uplands; it began to fall softly. As the luncheon hour had arrived we took refuge in a small hut of stone and there opened the heavy basket which gave forth all that heart could desire--among other things, a large fiasco of strong white wine which we drank to the dregs. It made us both delightfully tipsy. So passed an hour of glad confidences in that abandoned shelter with the snowflakes drifting in upon us--one of those hours that sweeten life and compensate for months of dreary harassment.
A long descent, past some church or convent famous as a place of pilgrimage, led to the strand of Monterosso where the waves were sparkling in tepid sunshine. Then up again, by a steep incline, to a signal station perched high above the sea. Attilio wished to salute a soldier-relative working here. I remained discreetly in the background; it would never do for a foreigner to be seen prying into Marconi establishments in this confounded "zone of defense." Another hour by meandering woodland paths brought us to where, from the summit of a hill, we looked down upon Levanto, smiling merrily in its conch-shaped basin....
All this cloudless afternoon we conversed in a flowery dell under the pine trees, with the blue sea at our feet. It was a different climate from yesterday; so warm, so balmy. Impossible to conceive of snow! I thought I had definitely bidden farewell to winter.
Trains, an endless succession of trains, were rumbling through the bowels of the mountain underneath, many of them filled with French soldiers bound for Salonika. They have been going southward ever since my arrival at Levanto.
Attilio was more pensive than usual; the prospect of returning to his bricks was plainly irksome. Why not join for a change, I suggested, one of yonder timber-felling parties? He knew all about it. The pay is too poor. They are cutting the pines all along this coast and dragging them to the water, where they are sawn into planks and despatched to the battle-front. It seemed a pity to Attilio; at this rate, he thought, there would soon be none left, and how then would we be able to linger in the shade and take our pleasure on some future day?
"Have no fear of that," I said. "And yet--would you believe it? Many years ago these hills, as far as you can see to right and left and behind, were bare like the inside of your hand. Then somebody looked at the landscape and said: 'What a shame to make so little use of these hundreds of miles of waste soil. Let us try an experiment with a new kind of pine tree which I think will prosper among the rocks. One of these days people may be glad of them.'"
"Well?"
"You see what has happened. Right up to Genoa, and down below Levanto--nothing but pines. You Italians ought to be grateful to that man. The value of the timber which is now being felled along this stretch of coast cannot be less than a thousand francs an hour. That is what you would have to pay, if you wanted to buy it. Twelve thousand francs a day; perhaps twice as much."
"Twelve thousand francs a day!"
"And do you know who planted the trees? It was a Scotsman."
"AScozzese. What kind of animal is that?"
"A person who thinks ahead."
"Then my mother is a Scotsman."
I glanced from the sea into his face; there was something of the same calm depth in both, the same sunny composure. What is it, this limpid state of the mind? What do we call this alloy of profundity and frankness? We call it intelligence. I would like to meet that man or woman who can make Attilio say something foolish. He does not know what it is to feel shy. Serenely objective, he discards those subterfuges which are the usual safeguard of youth or inexperience--the evasions, reservations and prevarications that defend the shallow, the weak, the self-conscious. His candour rises above them. He feels instinctively that these things are pitfalls.
"Have you no sweetheart, Attilio?"
"Certainly I have. But it is not a man's affair. We are only children, you understand--siamo ancora piccoli."
"Did you ever give her a kiss?"
"Never. Not a single one."
I relight my pipe, and then inquire:
"Why not give her a kiss?"
"People would call me a disrespectful boy."
"Nobody, surely, need be any the wiser?"
"She is not like you and me."
A pause....
"Not like us? How so?"
"She would tell her sister."
"What of it?"
"The sister would tell her mother, who would say unpleasant things to mine. And perhaps to other folks. Then the fat would be in the fire. And that is why."
Another pause....
"What would your mother say to you?"
"She would say: 'You are the oldest male; you should conduct yourself accordingly. What is this lack of judgment I hear about?'"
"I begin to understand."
Driven from the Paradise of Levanto, I landed not on earth but--with one jump--in Hell. The Turks figure forth a Hell of ice and snow; this is my present abode; its name is Siena. Every one knows that this town lies on a hill, on three hills; the inference that it would be cold in January was fairly obvious; how cold, nobody could have guessed. The sun is invisible. Streets are deep in snow. Icicles hang from the windows. Worst of all, the hotels are unheated. Those English, you know,--they refuse to supply us with coal....
Could this be the city where I was once nearly roasted to death? It is an effort to recall that glistening month of the Palio festival, a month I spent at a genuine pension for a set purpose, namely, to write a study on the habits of "The Pension-cats of Europe"--those legions of elderly English spinsters who lead crepuscular lives in continental boarding-houses. I tore it up, I remember; it was unfair. These ladies have a perfect right to do as they please and, for that matter, are not nearly as ridiculous as many married couples that live outside boarding-houses. But when Siena grew intolerable--a stark, ill-provisioned place; you will look in vain for a respectable grocer or butcher; the wine leaves much to be desired; indeed, it has all the drawbacks of Florence and none of its advantages--why, then we fled into Mr. Edward Hutton'sUnknown Tuscany. There, at Abbadia San Salvatore (though the summit of Mount Amiata did not come up to expectation) we at last felt cool again, wandering amid venerable chestnuts and wondrously tinted volcanic blocks, mountain-fragments, full of miniature glens and moisture and fernery--a green twilight, a landscape made for fairies....
Was this the same Siena from which we onceescaped to get cool? Muffled up to the ears, with three waistcoats on, I move in and out of doors, endeavouring to discover whether there be any appreciable difference in temperature between the external air and that of my bedroom. There cannot be much to choose between them. They say I am the only foreigner now in Siena. That, at least, is a distinction, a record. Furthermore, no matches, not even of the sulphur variety, were procurable in any of the shops for the space of three days; that also, I imagine, cannot yet have occurred within the memory of living man.
While stamping round the great Square yesterday to keep my feet warm, a Florentine addressed me; a commercial gentleman, it would seem. He disapproved of this square--it was not regular in shape, it was not even level. What apiazza! Such was his patriotism that he actually went on to say unfriendly things about the tower. Who ever thought of building a tower at the bottom of a hill? It was good enough, he dared say, for Siena. Oh, yes; doubtless it satisfied their artistic notions, such as they were.
This tower being one of my favourites, I felt called upon to undertake its defence. Recollecting all I had ever heard or read to its credit, citing authorities neither of us had ever dreamt of--improvising lustily, in short, as I warmed to my work--I concluded by proving it to be one of the seven wonders of the world. He said:
"Now really! One would think you had been born in this miserable hole. You know what we Florentines say:
SienaDi tre cose è piena:Torri, campane,E figli di putane."
"I admit that Siena is deficient in certain points," I replied. "That wonderful dome of yours, for example--there is nothing like it here."
"No, indeed. Ah, that cupola! Ah, Brunelleschi--che genio!"
"I perceive you are a true Florentine. Could you perhaps tell me why Florentines, coming home from abroad, always rejoice to see it rising out of the plain?"
"Some enemy has been talking to you...."
A little red-haired boy from Lucca, carrying for sale a trayful of those detestable plaster-casts, then accosted me.
Who bought such abominations, I inquired?
Nobody. Business was bad.
Bad? I could well believe it. Having for the first time in my life nothing better to do, I did my duty. I purchased the entire collection of these horrors, on the understanding that he should forthwith convey them in my presence to the desolate public garden, where they were set up, one after the other, on the edge of a bench and shattered to fragments with our snow-balls. Thus perished, not without laughter and in a good cause, three archangels, two Dantés, a nondescript lady with brocade garments and a delectableamorinowhose counterpart, the sole survivor, was reserved for a better fate--being carried home and presented as a gift to my chambermaid.
She was polite enough to call it a beautiful work of art.
I was polite enough not to contradict her.
Both of us know better....
This young girl has no illusions (few Tuscans have) and yet a great charm. Her lover is at the front. There is little for her to do, the hotel being practically empty. There is nothing whatever for me to do, in these Arctic latitudes. Bored to death, both of us, we confabulate together huddled in shawls and greatcoats, each holding a charcoal pan to keep the fingers from being frostbitten. I say to myself: "You will never find a maidservant of this type in Rome, so sprightly of tongue, distinguished in manner and spotless in person--never!"
The same with her words. The phrases trip out of her mouth, immaculate, each in full dress. Seldom does she make an original remark, but she says ordinary things in a tone of intense conviction and invests them with an appetizing savour. Wherein lies that peculiar salt of Tuscan speech? In its emphasis, its air of finality. They are emphatic, rather than profound. Their deepest utterances, if you look below the surface, are generally found to be variants of one of those ancestral saws or proverbs wherewith the country is saturated. Theirs is a crusted charm. A hard and glittering sanity, a kind of ageless enamel, is what confronts us in their temperament. There are not many deviations from this Tuscan standard. Close by, in Umbria, you will find a softer type.
One can be passably warm in bed. Here I lie for long, long hours, endeavouring to generate the spark of energy which will propel me from this inhospitable mountain. Here I lie and study an old travel-book. I mean to press it to the last drop.
One seldom presses books out, nowadays. The mania for scraps of one kind or another, the general cheapening of printed matter, seem to have dulled that faculty and given us a scattered state of mind. We browse dispersedly, in goatish fashion, instead of nibbling down to the root like that more conscientious quadruped whose name, if I mentioned it, would degrade the metaphor. Devouring so much, so hastily, so irreverentially, how shall a man establish close contact with the mind of him who writes, and impregnate himself with his peculiar outlook to such an extent as to be able to take on, if only momentarily, a colouring different from his own? It is a task requiring submissiveness and leisure.
And yet, what could be more interesting than really to observe things and men from the angle of another individual, to install oneself within his mentality and make it one's habitation? To sit in his bones--what glimpses of unexplored regions! Were a man to know what his fellow truly thinks; could he feel in his own body those impulses which drive the other to his idiomatic acts and words--what an insight he would gain! Morally, it might well amount to "tout comprendre, c'est ne rien pardonner"; but who troubles about pardoning or condemning? Intellectually, it would be a feast. Thus immersed into an alien personality, a man would feel as though he lived two lives, and possessed two characters at the same time. One's own life, prolonged to an age, could never afford such unexpected revelations.
The thing can be done, up to a point, with patient humility; for everybody writes himself down more or less, though not everybody is worth the trouble of deciphering.
I purpose to apply this method; to squeeze the juice, the life-blood, out of what some would call a rather dry Scotch traveller. I read his book in England for the first time two years ago, and have brought it here with a view to further dissection. Would I had known of its existence five years earlier! Strange to say, despite my deplorable bookishness (vide Press) this was not the case; I could never ascertain either the author's name or the title of his volume, though I had heard about him, rather vaguely, long before that time. It was Dr. Dohrn of the Naples Aquarium who said to me in those days:
"Going to the South? Whatever you do, don't forget to read that book by an old Scotch clergyman. He ran all over the country with a top-hat and an umbrella, copying inscriptions. He was just your style: perfectly crazy."
Flattered at the notion of being likened to a Scottish divine, I made all kinds of inquiries--in vain. I abandoned hope of unearthing the top-hatted antiquarian and had indeed concluded him to be a myth, when a friend supplied me with what may be absurdly familiar to less bookish people: "The Nooks and By-ways of Italy." By Craufurd Tait Ramage, LL.D. Liverpool, 1868.
A glance sufficed to prove that this Ramage belonged to the brotherhood of David Urquhart, Mure of Caldwell, and the rest of them. Where are they gone, those candid inquirers, so full of gentlemanly curiosity, so informative and yet shrewdly human; so practical--think of Urquhart's Turkish Baths--though stuffed with whimsicality and abstractions? Where is the spirit that gave them birth?
One grows attached to these "Nooks and By-ways." An honest book, richly thoughtful, and abounding in kindly twinkles.
Now, regarding the top-hat. I find no mention of it in these letters. For letters they are; letters extracted from a diary which was written on his return from Italy in 1828 from "very full notes made from day to day during my journey." 1828: that date is important. It was in 1828, therefore, when the events occurred which he relates, and he allowed an interval of forty years to elapse ere making them public.
The umbrella on the other hand is always cropping up. It pervades the volume like a Leitmotif. It is "a most invaluable article" for protecting the head against the sun's rays; so constantly is it used that after a single month's wear we find it already in "a sad state of dilapidation." Still, he clings to it. As a defence against brigands it might prove useful, and on one occasion, indeed, he seizes it in his hand "prepared to show fight." This happened, be it remembered, in 1828. Vainly one conjectures what the mountain folk of South Italy thought of such a phenomenon. Even now, if they saw you carrying an umbrella about in the sunshine, they would cross themselves and perhaps pray for your recovery--perhaps not. Yet Ramage was not mad at all. He was only more individualistic and centrifugal than many people. Having formed by bitter experience a sensible theory--to wit, that sunstroke is unpleasant and can be avoided by the use of an umbrella--he is not above putting it into practice. Let others think and do as they please!
For the rest, his general appearance was quite in keeping. How delightful he must have looked! Why have we no such types nowadays? Wearing a "white merino frock-coat, nankeen trowsers, a large-brimmed straw hat, and white shoes," he must have been a fairly conspicuous object in the landscape. That hat alone will have alarmed the peasantry who to this day and hour wear nothing but felt on their heads. And note the predominance of the colour white in his attire; it was popular, at that period, with English travellers. Such men, however, were unknown in most of the regions which Ramage explored. The colour must have inspired feelings akin to awe in the minds of the natives, for white is theirbête noire. They have a rooted aversion to it and never employ it in their clothing, because it suggests to their fancy the idea of bloodlessness--of anaemia and death. If you want to make one of them ill over his dinner, wear a white waistcoat.
Accordingly, it is not surprising that he sometimes finds himself "an object of curiosity." An English Vice-Consul, at one place, was "quite alarmed at my appearance." Elsewhere he meets a band of peasant-women who "took fright at my appearance and scampered off in the utmost confusion." And what happened at Taranto? By the time of his arrival in that town his clothes were already in such a state that "they would scarcely fit an Irish beggar." Umbrella in hand--he is careful to apprise us of this detail--and soaked moreover from head to foot after an immersion in the river Tara, he entered the public square, which was full of inhabitants, and soon found himself the centre of a large crowd. Looking, he says, like a drowned rat, his appearance caused "great amazement."
"What is the matter? Who is he?" they asked.
The muleteer explained that he was an Englishman, and "that immediately seemed to satisfy them."
Of course it did. People in those times were prepared for anything on the part of an Englishman, who was a far more self-assertive and self-confident creature than nowadays.
Thus arrayed in snowy hue, like the lilies of the field, he perambulates during the hot season the wildest parts of South Italy, strangely unprejudiced, heedless of bugs and brigands--a real danger in 1828: did he not find the large place Rossano actually blocked by them?--sleeping in stables and execrable inns, viewing sites of antiquity and natural beauty, interrogating everybody about everything and, in general, "satisfying his curiosity." That curiosity took a great deal to satisfy. It is a positive relief to come upon a sentence in this book, a sentence unique, which betrays a relaxing or waning of this terrible curiosity. "It requires a strong mania for antiquities to persevere examining such remains as Alife furnishes, and I was soon satisfied with what I had seen." Nor did he climb to the summit of Mount Vulture, as he would have done if the view had not been obscured by a haze.
His chief concern could not be better summed up than in the sub-title he has chosen for this volume:Wanderings in search of ancient remains and modern superstitions. To any one who knows the country it appears astonishing how much he contrived to see, and in how brief a space of time. He accomplished wonders. For it was no mean task he had proposed to himself, namely, "to visit every spot in Italy which classic writers had rendered famous."
To visit every spot--what a Gargantuan undertaking! None but a quite young man could have conceived such a project, and even Ramage, with all his good health and zest, might have spent half a lifetime over the business but for his habit of breathless hustle, which leaves the reader panting behind. He is always on the move. He reminds one of Mr. Phineas Fogg in that old tale. The moment he has "satisfied his curiosity" there is no holding him; off he goes; the smiles of the girls whom he adores, the entreaties of some gentle scholar who fain would keep him as guest for the night--they are vain; he is tired to death, but "time is precious" and he "tears himself away from his intelligent host" and scampers into the wilderness once more, as if the Furies were at his heels. He thinks nothing of rushing from Catanzaro to Cotrone, from Manduria to Brindisi, in a single day--at a time when there was hardly a respectable road in the country. Up to the final paragraph of the book he is "hurrying" because time is "fast running out."
This sense of fateful hustle--this, and the umbrella--they impart quite a peculiar flavour to his pages.
One would like to learn more about so lovable a type--for such he was, unquestionably; one would like to know, above all things, why his descriptions of other parts of Italy have never been printed. Was the enterprise interrupted by his death? He tells us that the diaries of his tours through the central and northern regions were written; that he visited "every celebrated spot in Umbria and Etruria" and wandered "as far as the valley of the Po." Where are these notes? Those on Etruria, especially, would make good reading at this distance of time, when even Dennis has acquired an old-world aroma. TheDictionary of National Biographymight tell us something about him, but that handy little volume is not here; moreover, it has a knack of telling you everything about people save what you ought to know.
So, for example, I had occasion not long ago to look up the account of Charles Waterton the naturalist. [3] He did good work in his line, but nothing is more peculiar to the man than his waywardness. It was impossible for him to do anything after the manner of other folks. In all his words and actions he was a freak, a curiosity, the prince of eccentrics. Yet this, the essence of the man, the fundamental trait of his character which shines out of every page of his writing and every detail of his daily life--this, the feature by which he was known to his fellows and ought to be known to posterity--it is intelligible from that account only if you read between the lines. Is that the way to write "biography"?
Fortunately he has written himself down; so has Ramage; and it is instructive to compare the wayside reflections of these two contemporaries as they rove about the ruins of Italy; the first, ardent Catholic, his horizon close-bounded by what the good fathers of Stonyhurst had seen fit to teach him; the other, less complacent, all alive indeed with Calvinistic disputatiousness and ready to embark upon bold speculations anent the origin of heathen gods and their modern representatives in the Church of Rome; amiable scholars and gentlemen, both of them; yet neither venturing to draw those plain conclusions which the "classic remains of paganism" would have forced upon anybody else--upon anybody, that is, who lacked their initial warp, whose mind had not been twisted in youth or divided, rather, into watertight compartments.
A long sentence....
After a glacial journey--those English! They will not even give us coal for steam-heating--I arrived here. It is warmer, appreciably warmer. Yet I leave to-morrow or next day. The streets of the town, the distant beach of San Rossore and its pine trees--they are fraught with sad memories; memories of an autumn month in the early nineties. A city of ghosts....
The old hotel had put on a new face; freshly decorated, it wears none the less a poverty-stricken air. My dinner was bad and insufficient. One grows sick of those vile maccheroni made with war-time flour. The place is full of rigid officers taking themselves seriously. Odd, how a uniform can fill a simpleton with self-importance. What does Bacon say? I forget. Something apposite--something about the connection between military costumes and vanity. For the worst of this career is that it is liable to transform even a sensible man into a fool. I never see these sinister-clanking marionettes without feelings of distrust. They are the outward symbol of an atavistic striving: the moderninfâme. We have been dying for sometime past from over-legislation. Now we are caught in the noose. A bureaucracy is bad enough. A bureaucracy can at least be bribed. Militarism dries up even that little fount of the imagination.
Another twenty years of this, and we may be living in caves again; they came near it, at the end of the Thirty Years' War. Such a cataclysm as ours may account for the extinction of the great Cro-Magnon civilization--as fine a race, physically, as has yet appeared on earth; they too may have been afflicted with the plague of nationalism, unless, as is quite likely, that horrid work was accomplished by a microbe of some kind....
In the hour of evening, under a wintry sky amid whose darkly massed vapours a young moon is peering down upon this maddened world, I wander alone through deserted roadways towards that old solitary brick-tower. Here I stand, and watch the Arno rolling its sullen waves. In Pisa, at such an hour, the Arno is the emblem of Despair. Swollen with melted snow from the mountains, it has gnawed its miserable clay banks and now creeps along, leaden and inert, half solid, like a torrent of liquid mud--irresolute whether to be earth or water; whether to stagnate here for ever at my feet, or crawl onward yet another sluggish league into the sea. So may Lethe look, or Styx: the nightmare of a flood.
There is dreary monotony in all Italian rivers, once they have reached the plain. They are livelier in their upper reaches. At Florence--where those citron-tinted houses are mirrored in the stream--you may study the Arno in all its ever-changing moods. Seldom is its colour quite the same. The hue of café-au-lait in full spate, it shifts at other times between apple-green and jade, between celadon and chrysolite and eau-de-Nil. In the weariness of summer the tints are prone to fade altogether out of the waves. They grow bleached, devitalized; they are spent, withering away like grass that has lain in the sun. [4] Yet with every thunder-storm on yonder hills the colour-sprite leaps back into the waters.
Your Florentine of the humbler sort loves to dawdle along the bank on a bright afternoon, watching the play of the river and drawing a kind of philosophic contentment out of its cool aquatic humours. Presently he reaches that bridge--the jewellers' bridge. He thinks he must buy a ring. Be sure the stone will reflect his Arno in one of its moods. I will wager he selects a translucent chrysoprase set in silver, a cheap and stubborn gem whose frigidly uncompromising hue appeals in mysterious fashion to his own temperament.
Whoever suffers from insomnia will find himself puzzling at night over questions which have no particular concern for him at other times. And one seems to be more wide awake, during those moments, than by day. Yet the promptings of the brain, which then appear so lucid, so novel and convincing, will seldom bear examination in the light of the sun. To test the truth of this, one has only to jot down one's thoughts at the time, and peruse them after breakfast. How trite they read, those brilliant imaginings!
For reasons which I cannot fathom, I pondered last night upon the subject of heredity; a subject that had a certain fascination for me in my biological days. The lacunae of science! We weigh the distant stars and count up their ingredients. Yet here is a phenomenon which lies under our very hand and to which is devoted the most passionate study: what have we learnt of its laws? Be that as it may, there occurred to me last night a new idea. It consisted in putting together two facts which have struck me separately on many occasions, but never conjointly. Taken together, I said to myself, and granted that both are correct, they may help to elucidate a dark problem of national psychology.
The first one I state rather tentatively, having hardly sufficient material to go upon. It is this.You will find it more common in Italy than in England for the male offspring of a family to resemble the father and the female the mother.I cannot suggest a reason for this. I have observed the fact--that is all.
Let me say, in parenthesis, that it is well to confine oneself to adults in such researches. Childhood and youth is a period of changing lights and half-tones and temperamental interplay. Characteristics of body and mind are held, as it were, in solution. We think a child takes after its mother because of this or that feature. If we wait for twenty-five years, we see the true state of affairs; the hair has grown dark like the father's, the nose, the most telling item of the face, has also approximated to his type, likewise the character--in fact the offspring is clearly built on paternal lines. And vice-versa. To study children for these purposes would be waste of time.
The second observation I regard as axiomatic. It is this.You will nowhere find an adult offspring which reproduces in any marked degree the physical features of one parent displaying in any marked degree the mental features of the other.That man whose external build and complexion is entirely modelled upon that of his hard materialistic father and who yet possesses all the artistic idealism of his maternal parent--such creatures do not exist in nature, though you may encounter them as often as you please in the pages of novelists.
Let me insert another parenthesis to observe that I am speaking of the broad mass, the average, in a general way. For it stands to reason that the offspring may be vaguely intermediate between two parents, may resemble one or both in certain particulars and not in others, may hark back to ancestral types or bear no appreciable likeness to any one discoverable. It is a theme admitting of endless combinations and permutations. Or again, in reference to the first proposition, it would be easy for any traveller in this country to point out, for example, a woman who portrays the qualities of her father in the clearest manner. I know a dozen such cases. Hundreds of them would not make them otherwise than what I think they are--rarer here than in England.
Granting that both these propositions are correct, what should we expect to find? That in Italy the male type of character and temperament is more constant, more intimately associated with the male type of feature; and the same with the female. In other words, that the categories into which their men and women fall are fewer and more clearly defined, by reason of the fact that their mental and moral sex-characteristics are more closely correlated with their physical sex-characteristics. That the Englishman, on the other hand, male or female, does not fall so easily into categories; he is complex and difficult to "place," the psychological sex-boundaries being more hazily demarcated. There is iridescence and ambiguity here, whereas Italians of either sex, once the rainbow period of youth is over, are relatively unambiguous; easily "placed."
Is this what we find? I think so.
Speculations....
I never pass through Pisa without calling to mind certain rat-hunts in company with J. O. M., who was carried out of the train at this very station, dead, because he refused to follow my advice. He was my neighbour at one time; he lived near the river Mole in relative seclusion; coursing rats with Dandie Dinmonts was the only form of exercise which entailed no strain on his weakened constitution. How he loved it!
This O---- was a man of mystery and violence, who threw himself into every kind of human activity with superhuman, Satanic, zest; traveller, sportsman, financier, mining expert, lover of wine and women, of books and prints; one of the founders, I believe, of the Rhodesia Company; faultlessly dressed, infernally rich and, when he chose--which was fairly often--preposterously brutal. Neither manner nor face were winning. He was swarthy almost to blackness, quite un-English in looks, with rather long hair, a most menacing moustache and the fiercest eyes imaginable; a king of the gipsies, so far as features went. Something sinister hung about his personality. A predatory type, unquestionably; never so happy as when pitting his wits or strength against others, tracking down this or that--by choice, living creatures. He had taken life by the throat, and excesses of various kinds having shattered his frame, there was an end, for the time being, of deer-stalking and tigers; it was a tame period of rat-hunts with those terriers whose murderous energies were apis aller, yielding a sort of vicarious pleasure. The neighbourhood was depopulated of such beasts, purchased at fancy prices; when a sufficient quantity (say, half a hundred) had been collected together, I used to receive a telegram containing the single word "rats." Then the pony was saddled, and I rode down for the grand field day.
We once gave the hugest of these destroyed rodents, I remember, to an amiable old sow, a friend of the family. What was she going to do? She ate it, as you would eat a pear. She engulfed the corpse methodically, beginning at the head, working her way through breast and entrails while her chops dripped with gore, and ending with the tail, which gave some little trouble to masticate, on account of its length and tenuity. Altogether, decidedly good sport....
Then O---- disappeared from my ken. Years went by. Improving health, in the course of time, tempted him back into his former habits; he built himself a shooting lodge in the Alps. We were neighbours again, having no ridge worth mentioning save the Schadona pass between us. I joined him once or twice--chamois, instead of rats. This place was constructed on a pretentious scale, and he must have paid fantastic sums for the transport of material to that remote region (you could watch the chamois from the very windows) and for the rights over all the country round about. [5] O---- told me that the superstitious Catholic peasants raised every kind of difficulty and objection to his life there; it was a regular conspiracy. I suggested a more friendly demeanour, especially towards their priests. That was not his way. He merely said: "I'll be even with them. Mark my words."....
There followed another long interval, during which he vanished completely. Then, one April afternoon on the Posilipo, a sailor climbed up with a note from him. The Consul-General said I lived here. If so, would I come to Bertolini's hotel at once? He was seriously ill.
Neighbours once more!
I left then and there, and was appalled at the change in him. His skin was drawn tight as parchment over a face the colour of earth, there was no flesh on his hands, the voice was gone, though fire still gleamed viciously in the hollows of his eyes. That raven-black hair was streaked with grey and longer than ever, which gave him an incongruously devout appearance. He had taken pitiful pains to look fresh and appetizing.
So we sat down to dinner on Bertolini's terrace, in the light of a full moon. O---- ate nothing whatever.
He arrived from Egypt some time ago, on his way to England. The doctor had forbidden further travelling or any other exertion on account of various internal complications; among other things, his heart, he told me, was as large as a child's head.
"I hope you can stand this food," he whispered, or rather croaked. "For God's sake, order anything you fancy. As for me, I can't even eat like you people. Asses' milk is what I get, and slops. Done for, this time. I'm a dying man; anybody can see that. A dying man----"
"Something," I said, "is happening to that moon."
It was in eclipse. Half the bright surface had been ominously obscured since we took our seats. O---- scowled at the satellite, and went on:
"But I won't be carried out of this dirty hole (Bertolini's)--not feet first. Would you mind my gasping another day or two at your place? Rolfe has told me about it."
We moved him, with infinite trouble. The journey woke his dormant capacities for invective. He cursed at the way they jolted him about; he cursed himself into a collapse that day, and we thought it was all over. Then he rallied, and became more abusive than before. Nothing was right. Stairs being forbidden, the whole lower floor of the house was placed at his disposal; the establishment was dislocated, convulsed; and still he swore. He swore at me for the better part of a week; at the servants, and even at the good doctor Malbranc, who came every morning in a specially hired steam-launch to make that examination which always ended in his saying to me: "You must humour him. Heart-patients are apt to be irritable."Irritablewas a mild term for this particular patient. His appetite, meanwhile, began to improve.
It was soon evident that my cook had not the common sense to prepare his invalid dishes; a second one was engaged. Then, my gardener and sailor-boy being manifest idiots, it became necessary to procure an extra porter to fetch the numberless odd things he needed from town every day, and every hour of the day. I wrote to the messenger people to send the most capable lad on their books; we would engage him by the week, at twice his ordinary pay. He arrived; a limp and lean nonentity, with a face like a boiled codfish.
This miserable youth promptly became the object of O----'s bitterest execration. I soon learnt to dread those conferences, those terrific scenes which I was forced to witness in my capacity of interpreter. O---- revelled in them with exceeding gusto. He used to gird his loins for the effort of vituperation; I think he regarded the performance as a legitimate kind of exercise--his last remaining one. As soon as the boy returned from town and presented himself with his purchases, O---- would glare at him for two or three minutes with such virulence, such concentration of hatred and loathing, such a blaze of malignity in his black eyes, that one fully expected to see the victim wither away; all this in dead silence. Then he would address me in his usual whisper, quite calmly, as though referring to the weather:
"Would you mind telling that double-distilled abortion that if he goes on making such a face I shall have to shoot him. Tell him, will you; there's a good fellow."
And I had to "humour" him.
"The gentleman"--I would say--"begs you will try to assume another expression of countenance," or words to that effect; whereto he would tearfully reply something about the will of God and the workmanship of his father and mother, honest folks, both of them. I was then obliged to add gravely:
"You had better try, all the same, or he may shoot you. He has a revolver in his pocket, and a shooting licence from your government."
This generally led to the production of a most ghastly smile, calculated to convey an ingratiating impression.
"Look at him," O---- would continue. "He is almost too good to be shot. And now let's see. What does he call these things? Ask him, will you?"
"Asparagus."
"Tell him that when I order asparagus I mean asparagus and not walking-sticks. Tell him that if he brings me such objects again, I'll ram the whole bundle up--down his throat. What does he expect me to do with them, eh? You might ask him, will you? And, God! what's this? Tell him (accellerando) that when I send a prescription to be made up at the Royal Pharmacy----"
"He explained about that. He went to the other place because he wanted to hurry up."
"To hurry up? Tell him to hurry up and get to blazes. Oh, tell him----"
"You'll curse yourself into another collapse, at this rate."
To the doctor's intense surprise, he lingered on; he actually grew stronger. Although never seeming to gain an ounce in weight, he could eat a formidable breakfast and used to insist, to my horror and shame, in importing his own wine, which he accused my German maid Bertha of drinking on the sly. Callers cheered him up--Rolfe the Consul, Dr. Dohrn of the Aquarium, and old Marquis Valiante, that perfect botanist--all of them dead now! After a month and a half of painful experiences, we at last learnt to handle him. The household machinery worked smoothly.
A final and excruciating interview ended in the dismissal of the errand-boy, and I personally selected another one--a pretty little rascal to whom he took a great fancy, over-tipping him scandalously. He needed absolute rest; he got it; and I think was fairly happy or at least tranquil (when not writhing in agony) at the end of that period. I can still see him in the sunny garden, his clothes hanging about an emaciated body--a skeleton in a deck-chair, a death's head among the roses. Humiliated in this inactivity, he used to lie dumb for long hours, watching the butterflies or gazing wistfully towards those distant southern mountains which I proposed to visit later in the season. Once a spark of that old throttling instinct flared up. It was when a kestrel dashed overhead, bearing in its talons a captured lizard whose tail fluttered in the air: the poor beast never made a faster journey in its life. "Ha!" said O----. "That's sport."
At other times he related, always in that hoarse whisper, anecdotes of his life, a life of reckless adventure, of fortunes made and fortunes lost; or spoke of his old passion for art and books. He seemed to have known, at one time or another, every artist and connoisseur on either side of the Atlantic; he told me it had cost about £10,000 to acquire his unique knowledge and taste in the matter of mezzotints, and that he was concerned about the fate of his "Daphnis and Chloe" collection which contained, he said, a copy of every edition in every language--all except the unique Elizabethan version in the Huth library (now British Museum). I happened to have one of the few modern reprints of that stupid and ungainly book: would he accept it? Not likely! He was after originals.
One day he suddenly announced:
"I am leaving you my small library of erotic literature, five or six hundred pieces, worth a couple of thousand, I should say. Some wonderful old French stuff, and as many Rops as you like, and Persian and Chinese things--I can see you gloating over them! Don't thank me. And now I'm off to England."
"To England?"
The doctor peremptorily forbade the journey; if he must go, let him wait another couple of weeks and gain some more strength. But O---- was obdurate; buoyed up, I imagine, with the prospect of movement and of causing some little trouble at home. As the weather had grown unusually hot, I booked at his own suggestion a luxurious cabin on a home-bound liner and engaged a valet for the journey. On my handing him the tickets, he said he had just changed his mind; he would travel overland; there were some copper mines in Etruria of which he was director; he meant to have a look at themen routeand "give those people Hell" for something or other. I tried to dissuade him, and all in vain. Finally I said:
"You'll die, if you travel by land in this heat."
So he did. They carried him out of the train in the early days of June, here at Pisa, feet first....
I never learnt the fate of that library of erotic literature. But his will contained one singular provision: the body was to be cremated and its ashes scattered among the hills of his Alpine property. This was his idea of "being even" with the superstitious peasantry, who would thenceforward never have ventured out of doors after dark, for fear of encountering his ghost. He would harass them eternally! It was no bad notion of revenge. A sandy-haired gentleman came from Austria to Italy to convey this handful of potential horrors to the mountains, but the customs officials at Ala refused to allow it to enter the country and it ultimately came to rest in England.
Another queer thing happened. Since his arrival from Egypt, O---- had never been able to make up his mind to pay any of his innumerable bills; the creditors, aware of the man's wealth and position, not pressing for a settlement. I rather think that this procrastination, this reluctance to disburse ready money, is a symptom of his particular state of ill-health; I have observed it with several heart-patients (and others as well); however that may be, it became a source of real vexation to me, for hardly was the news of his death made public before I began to be deluged with outstanding accounts from every quarter--tradespeople, hotel keepers, professional men, etc. I finally sent the documents with a pressing note to his representatives who, after some demur, paid up, English-fashion, in full. Then a noteworthy change came over the faces of men. Everybody beamed upon me in the streets, and there arrived multitudinous little gifts at my house--choice wines, tie-pins, game, cigars, ebony walking-sticks, confectionery, baskets of red mullets, old prints, Capodimonte ware, candied fruits, amber mouthpieces, maraschino--all from donors who plainly desired to remain anonymous. Such things were dropped from the clouds, so to speak, on my doorstep: an enigmatic but not unpleasant state of affairs. Gradually it dawned upon me, it was forced upon me, that I had worked a miracle. These good people, thinking that their demands upon O----'s executors would be cut down, Italian-fashion, by at least fifty per cent, had anticipated that eventuality by demanding twice or thrice as much as was really due to them. And they got it! No wonder men smiled, when the benefactor of the human race walked abroad.
Viareggio, dead at this season, is a rowdy place in summer; not rowdy, however, after the fashion of Margate. There is a suggestive difference between the two. The upper classes in both towns are of course irreproachable in externals--it is their uniformity of behaviour throughout the world which makes them so uninteresting from a spectacular point of view. A place does not receive its tone from them (save possibly Bournemouth) but from their inferiors; and here, in this matter of public decorum, the comparison is to the credit of Italy. It is beside the point to say that the one lies relatively remote, while the other is convenient for cheap trips from a capital. Set Viareggio down at the very gate of Rome and fill it with the scum of Trastevere: the difference would still be there. It might be more noisy than Margate. It would certainly be less blatant.
As for myself, I hate Viareggio at all seasons, and nothing would have brought me here but the prospect of visiting the neighbouring Carrara mines with Attilio to whom I have written, enclosing a postcard for reply.
For this is a modern town built on a plain of mud and sand, a town of heartrending monotony, the least picturesque of all cities in the peninsula, the least Italian. It has not even a central piazza! You may conjure up visions of Holland and detect something of an old-world aroma, if you stroll about the canal and harbour where sails are now flapping furiously in the north wind; you may look up to the snow-covered peaks and imagine yourself in Switzerland, and then thank God you are not there; of Italy I perceive little or nothing. The people are birds of prey; a shallow and rapacious brood who fleece visitors during those summer weeks and live on the proceeds for the rest of the year. There is no commerce to liven them up and make them smilingly polite; no historical tradition to give them self-respect; no agriculture worth mentioning (the soil is too poor)--in other words, no peasantry to replenish the gaps in city life and infuse an element of decency and depth. An inordinate amount of singing and whistling goes on all day long. Is it not a sign of empty-headedness? I would like the opinion of schoolmasters on this point, whether, among the children committed to their charge, the habitual whistlers be not the dullest of wit.
And so five days have passed. A pension proving uninhabitable, and most of the better-class hotels being closed for the winter, I threw myself upon the mercy of an octroi official who stood guarding a forlorn gate somewhere in the wilderness. He has sent me to a villa bearing the name of a certain lady and situated in a street called after a certain politician. He has done well.
A kindlier dame than my hostess could nowhere be found. She hails from the province of the Marche and has no high opinion of this town, where she only lives on account of her husband, a retired something-or-other who owns the house. Although convulsed with grief, both of them, at the moment of my arrival--a favourite kitten had just been run over--they at once set about making me comfortable in a room with exposure due south. The flooring is of cement: the usual Viareggio custom. Bricks are cold, stone is cold, tiles are cold; but cement! It freezes your marrow through double carpets. For meals I go to the "Assassino" or the Vittoria hotel; the fare is better at the first, the company at the other....
The large dining-room at the "Vittoria" is not in use just now. We take our meals in two smaller rooms adjoining each other, one of which leads into the kitchen where privileged guests may talk secrets with the cook and poke their noses into saucepans. At a table by herself sits the little signorina who controls the establishment, wide awake, pale of complexion, slightly hump-backed, close-fisted as the devil though sufficiently vulnerable to a bluff masculine protest. Our waiter is noteworthy in his line. He is that exceptional being, an Italian snob; he can talk of nothing but dukes and princes, Bourbons by choice, because he once served at a banquet given by some tuppenny Parma royalties round the corner.
The food would be endurable, save for those vile war-time maccheroni. The wine is of doubtful origin. Doubtful, at least, to the uninitiated who smacks his lips and wonders vaguely where he has tasted the stuff before. The concoction has so many flavours--a veritable Proteus! I know it well, though its father and mother would be hard to identify. It was born on the banks of the Tiber and goes by the name ofripa: ask any Roman. Certain cheap and heady products of the south--Sicily, Sardinia, Naples, Apulia, Ischia--have contributed their share to its composition; Tiber-water is the one and constant ingredient. Thisripais exported by the ton to wine-less centres like Genoa and there drunk under any name you please. A few butts have doubtless been dropped overboard at Viareggio for the poisoning of its ten thousand summer visitors.
Quite a jolly crowd of folk assembles here every evening. There is, of course, the ubiquitous retired major; also some amusing gentlemen who run up and down between this place and Lucca on mysterious errands connected, I fancy, with oil; as well as a dissipated young marquis sent hither from Rimini by the ridiculously old-fashioned father to expiate his sins--his gambling debts, his multifarious and costly love-adventures, and the manslaughter of a carpenter whom he ran over in his car. [6] My favourite is a fat creature with a glorious fleshy face, the face of some Neronian parvenu--a memorable face, full of the brutal prosperity of Trimalchio's Banquet. He told me, yesterday, a long story about a local saint in one of their villages--a saint of yesterday who, curing diseases and performing various other miracles, began to think himself, as their manner is, God Almighty, or something to that effect. The police shot him as a revolutionary, because he had gathered a few adherents.
"Rather an extreme measure," I suggested.
"It is. Not that I love the saints. But I love the police still less."
"Like every good Italian."
"Like every good Italian...."
News from Attilio. He cannot come. Both mother and sister are ill. He delayed writing in the hopes of their getting better; he wanted to join me, but they are always "auguale"--the same; in short, he must stay at home, as appears from the following plaintive and rather puzzling postcard, the address of which I had providentially written myself:
Caro G. N. Dorcola ho ricevuto la sua cara lettera e son cozi contento da sentire le sue notizzie io non posso venire perche mia madre e amalata e mia sorella Enrica era tardato ascirvere perche mi credevo che tesano mellio ma invece sono sempre auguale perche volevo venire ci mando dici mille baci e una setta dimano addio al Signior D. Dor.
But for the fact that, counting on a fortnight's trip to Carrara, I have asked for certain printed matter to be forwarded here from England, I would jump into the next train for anywhere.
Running along the sea on either side of Viareggio is a noble forest of stone pines where the wind is scarce felt, though you may hear it sighing overhead among the crowns. This is the place for a promenade at all hours of the day. Children climb the trunks to fetch down a few remaining cones or break off dried branches as fuel. A sportsman told me that several of them lose their lives every year at this adventure. What was he doing here, with a gun? Waiting for a hare, he said. They always wait for hares. There are none!
Then a poor thin woman, dressed in black and gathering the prickly stalks of gorse for firewood, began to converse with me, reasonably enough at first. All of a sudden her language changed into a burning torrent of insanity, with wild gesticulations. She was the Queen of the country, she avowed, the rightful Queen, and they had robbed her of all her children, every one of them, and all her jewels. I agreed--what else could one do? Being in the combustible stage, she went over the argument again and again, her eyes fiercely flashing. Nothing could stop the flow of her words. I was right glad when another woman came to my rescue and pushed her along, as you would a calf, saying:
"You go home now, it's getting dark, run along!--yes, yes! you're the Queen right enough--she was in the asylum, Sir, for three months and then they let her out, the fools--of course you are, everybody knows that! But you really mustn't annoy this gentleman any more--her husband and son were both killed in the war, that's what started it--we'll fetch them tomorrow at the palace, all those things,andthe children, only don't talk so much--they thought she was cured, but just hark at her!--va bene, it's all yours, only get along--she'll be back there in a day or two, won't she?--really, you are chattering much too much, for a Queen;va bene, va bene, va bene--"
A sad little incident, under the pines....
A fortnight has elapsed.
I refuse to budge from Viareggio, having discovered the village of Corsanico on the heights yonder and, in that village, a family altogether to my liking. How one stumbles upon delightful folks! Set me down in furthest Cathay and I will undertake to find, soon afterwards, some person with whom I am quite prepared to spend the remaining years of life.
The driving-road to Corsanico is a never-ending affair. Deep in mire, it meanders perversely about the plain; meanders more than ever, but of necessity, once the foot of the hills is reached. I soon gave it up in favour of the steam-tram to Cammaiore which deposits you at a station whose name I forget, whence you may ascend to Corsanico through a village called, I think, Momio. That route, also, was promptly abandoned when the path along the canal was revealed to me. This waterway runs in an almost straight line from Viareggio to the base of that particular hill on whose summit lies my village. It is a monotonous walk at this season; the rich marsh vegetation slumbers in the ooze underground, waiting for a breath of summer. At last you cross that big road and strike the limestone rock.
Here is no intermediate region, no undulating ground, between the upland and the plain. They converge abruptly upon each other, as might have been expected, seeing that these hills used to be the old sea-board and this green level, in olden days, the Mediterranean. Three different tracks, leading steeply upward through olives and pines and chestnuts from where the canal ends, will bring you to Corsanico. I know them all. I could find my way in darkest midnight.
Days have passed; days of delight. I climb up in the morning and descend at nightfall, my mind well stored with recollections of pleasant talk and smiling faces. A large place, this Corsanico, straggling about the hill-top with scattered farms and gardens; to reach the tobacconist--near whose house, by the way, you obtain an unexpected glimpse into the valley of Cammaiore--is something of an excursion. As a rule we repose, after luncheon, on a certain wooded knoll. We are high up; seven or eight hundred feet above the canal. The blue Tyrrhenian is dotted with steamers and sailing boats, and yonder lies Viareggio in its belt of forest; far away, to the left, you discern the tower of Pisa. A placid lake between the two, wood-engirdled, is now famous as being the spot selected by the great Maestro Puccini to spend a summer month in much-advertised seclusion. I am learning the name of every locality in the plain, of every peak among the mountains at our back.