THE PERIPATETIC POLITICIAN—IN FLORENCE.
There is a mysterious power in this nineteenth century before which we all bow down and worship. Emperors have grown powerful by its support, and kings that know not how to please it become the laughing-stock of Europe. The highest are not beyond its reach, the lowest are not beneath its notice. The Secretary of State spreads lengthy despatches as peace-offerings at its shrine, and the parish beadle is careful not to put his hat on awry lest he fall beneath its censure. The idol has innumerable votaries; but its high priests, the exponents of its law, are the great authors and statesmen of the day. And they have a hard taskmaster to serve: they must do the pleasure of their lord before he has signified his wishes—they must anticipate his thoughts and be beforehand with his commands; obsequiousness and obedience alone will not suffice them; they may sacrifice every friend and every principle for his sake, and nevertheless disgrace and proscription await them, unless they can know their master’s mind before it is known to himself.
Public Opinion is the unknown master to whom all submit; listening anxiously but vainly for his commands, not knowing how or where to study his humour. There are Houses of Parliament, newspapers, clubs, mechanic’s institutes, pot-houses, prayer meetings—but which of all these speak public opinion? A weekly gathering of articles from daily papers is not public opinion. Opinion after dinner is not public. It is evidently necessary to apply some means specially adapted to the place and the time in order to discover the mood of public opinion. In Syracuse, Dionysius constructed an ear for the purpose; unfortunately this invention has been lost.
In London, it is popularly said that the only means to ascertain public opinion is to take a seat in the omnibus for the day and drive continually up and down.
In Florence, public opinion walks,—it cannot afford to drive. The people must be studied on foot. The reader will therefore have already understood that the title of this paper was chosen from necessity and not for the sake of the alliteration; that in order to catch a glimpse of Italian affairs as seen through Tuscan spectacles—in order to enter for the moment into the jealousies, the grievances, and the vanities of the provincial town of Florence—there is no resource but that of treating the question peripatetically—that is, of walking the streets.
This course is the more natural because in Florence the streets are—thanks to the high price of manure—remarkably clean. Accordingly the people live in the street; there they are to be met at an early hour lounging along talking or smoking, wrapped in cloaks that take an extra twist with every degree of cold. The street is their assembly-room; it is frequented by men of all sorts, as will be at once seen by a moment’s scrutiny of the stream of people creeping slowly along over the pavement.
There is the commercial dandy who affects a felt hat with mandarin button on the crown, a knobby stick, and a would-be English shooting-jacket. Behind him is the sober professional man, in a French great-coat which has wandered from Paris, making room for newer fashions. There, too, is the priest of portly figure and wasted garments, which show at once his devotion to the inner man, and his neglect of the outer world, walking along with a blessing on his lips and a green cotton umbrella under his arm. By his side is the peasant come to town for the day, cart-whip in hand, and a long coarse cloak trailing from his shoulders, embroidered behind with flowers in green silk. Every stitch will show character in one way or another. Italians wear green flowers where Spaniards would have crosses in black braid.
And who is there among all this crowd who would trouble his thoughts about Victor Emmanuel and his Ministers? Look at yonder corner-wall where there is a sheet of paper prominently pasted on a black board: one solitary passenger gives it a passing glance: that is the telegram just received, announcing the formation of the new Ministry. But farther on there are collected a little company of people, whose animated and intent looks show something really interesting to be going on: it is that two or three young men are practising in chorus a snatch out of the last street-ballad. Farther on the respective merits of different ballet-dancers are under discussion, and some of the company are pronouncing the stage-manager unfit for his post. In the whole crowd there is not one word, nor even a passing thought, bestowed on the Government which is going on at Turin. So universal is the carelessness with regard to the current affairs of the day, that, as a general rule, if a man be heard to speak about politics, or in any way show himself conversant with public affairs, it may at once be concluded, more especially if he speak in a disagreeable voice, that that man is a Piedmontese.[4]
In vain do loud-voiced criers hawk prints representing the murder of the Gignoli family by the Austrians in 1859; they offer them at half-price, at quarter-price, but find no purchasers. Even the photograph of the bullet extracted from Garibaldi’s foot has ceased to draw people to the shop-window.
Leaving the street for the moment, and turning the corner of the great Piazza, we find under the colonnade, opposite the picture gallery, an anxious crowd of people, eager and pushing. That is the entrance to the ‘Monte di Pieta,’ or municipal pawnbroking establishment (for private pawnbroking is illicit in Florence). There is a long table before the door, and on it are spread silver watches, coral bracelets, and other trinkets. Articles that have lain unredeemed are being sold at auction. The sale is well attended, but purchasers will not compete. There is much examination and very little bidding. This same scene has occurred regularly at stated intervals for the last several centuries.
In the time of the Medicis, public policy and private benevolence became copartners in founding a self-supporting pawnbroking shop on a large scale, to be kept under the supervision of Government. To a people who, whenever they begin to be pinched in circumstances, try to economise but never attempt to work, and exert themselves rather to save than to make money, it is no small object to have a public pawnbroking establishment where money is allowed at a fixed scale. If a Florentine have a bracelet too much, and bread too little, he has but to give the bracelet in pawn to the Government. In the same way, if he be troubled with a child too many, he proceeds to the infant asylum, rings the bell, and in the cradle which forthwith opens, he deposits the child for the Government to feed. Under the Governments which have prevailed in Tuscany for the last three hundred years, this is precisely the kind of political institution which the Florentines have learnt to value and appreciate.
The proper supervision of the pawnbroking shop, the maintenance of the foundling asylums and the hospitals (with which Florence is, in proportion, better provided than London), the grant made to the opera—these and other such questions are the matters of government in which a Florentine takes interest. To politics, in an Englishman’s sense of the word, they pay little or no attention. In the election of representatives to the Chambers at Turin the people appear to take little or no part. For instance: M. Peruzzi, the present Minister for the Interior, is one of the representatives of Florence. On accepting office he was of course obliged to appeal to his constituents. The seat was contested. On the day appointed for the election I had occasion to ask my way to the place where it was being held: several respectable citizens did not know that any election was to take place whatever. At last one man, better informed than the rest, had heard something about an election that week, but did not know where the elections were held. The election proved invalid for want of the legal complement of voters—namely, one-half the whole number. This is the general result of elections in Tuscany on the first trial. The second election is valid, provided only the same number of voters are present as attended the first. This is fortunate, otherwise it might occur that there would be a lack of representatives from Tuscany in the Parliament at Turin.
The fact is, and it needs repetition, the Florentines do not care about politics. They have accepted the revolution that was made for them, and on the whole are well contented with the change; at least we ought in justice to ascribe their general listlessness in political affairs to contentment and not to indifference.
To inquire, however, more exactly into the thoughts of those amongst the Florentines who do think about politics, it will be as well to obtain at once rest and information by sitting down for a few moments in the tobacconist’s shop, which may be called the centre of the political world. To begin with, the tobacconist is always himself by profession a finished politician, and he, moreover, enjoys the confidence of several distinguished friends, who keep him accurately informed of every word that passes in the Cabinets of Europe. The general burden of his conversation, which is a fair type of the talk at shops and second-rate cafés, is as follows:—The Pope-king is the father of all mischief; and how should it be otherwise? are not priests and kings always the promoters of every evil? and this man is a combination of both. Then follows a complaint against the Emperor Napoleon and his creatures, the Ministers at Turin, who, like true Piedmontese, are in secret jealous of the greatness of Italy, and treacherously keep in pay reactionary employés in lieu of filling the offices, as they should, with enterprising liberals. This sentiment meets with loud and general applause, and the company, waxing warm on this topic, forthwith launch into various prophecies as to the immediate future. French wars, Polish revolutions, Austrian bankruptcies, are all considered, and it is weighed what each might do for Italy. What the Italians themselves might do is a less frequent theme.
The Government, however, is blamed for its neglect of Garibaldi, which is only of a piece with its conduct in leaving the active and patriotic liberals of the country without employment while they are pensioning the reactionists—an opinion which usually serves as alpha and omega in the discussions of the Florentine liberals on the conduct of the Government.
Having exhausted this topic, our friend the politico-tobacconist resumes his seat, taking his scaldino (an earthenware vessel shaped like a basket, and filled with hot ashes) on his lap for the comfort of his fingers, and proceeds to draw the attention of visitors to various piles of newspapers, the sale of which is part of his trade. And as Florence produces, for a country town, a very respectable number of papers (some dozen daily papers, not to count two tri-weekly papers and other periodicals), which, moreover, have something of a national, or rather of a provincial character, it will be worth while to look over them before leaving the tobacconist’s shop. It is not every paper that will be found: for instance, the three retrograde papers will not be forthcoming. These have so extremely small a circulation that it is very difficult to hunt them up. It is only by favour, for instance, that a copy of the ‘Contemporaneo’ can be got, for, there being no public demand, there is no sale; a limited number of copies only are distributed among subscribers.
The newspapers to be found on the counter are all liberal, but of various shades of “colour,” as the Italians name party opinions.
The ‘Gazzetta del Popolo,’ which is strictly constitutional, has still the largest circulation of any (it prints about 3000 copies daily), though not half what it had. Its decline has been owing partly to general competition, partly to its having embraced the defence of the late Ratazzi Ministry, which unpopular course is said to have cost it in a few months nearly one-fourth of its circulation; partly, perhaps, to its sustaining the Piedmontese, who have not of late been growing in the favour of the Tuscans.
The other papers are all more “advanced,” that is, more opposed to Government. Among these the ‘Censor’ ranks first. This is a thoroughly Tuscan paper, and full of quaint, provincial expressions. In party politics it is red—a colour which evidently finds most favour in the eyes of the poorer citizens; for recently it lost no less than a fourth of its circulation by raising its price from three to five cents, that is, from about a farthing and a half to a halfpenny. In its columns, though not there only, may be seen a catalogue of indictments against the Piedmontese. The Tuscans voted annexation to Italy, it is said—not to Piedmont. With Rome unity, without it none. Does the unity of Italy mean the domination of Turin? Are we to accept from the most barbarous portion of Italy laws which are sent down to us written in a jargon which cannot even be called Italian? Tuscany is being fleeced by men so greedy of every little gain, that they supply all the royal offices with paper made only in Piedmont, in order that Piedmontese paper-mills may reap the benefit.
It speaks well for the Piedmontese that, with so much desire to find fault with them, these are the most serious charges brought forward.
In the Ratazzi Ministry the papers lost the most fruitful theme of declamation. The caricatures against this Minister were endless, representing him in every stage of official existence, from the time when he climbs the high ministerial bench by the aid of a little finger stretched out from Paris, to the moment when he is shown hiding his head under the folds of the Emperor’s train.
What is said against the Italian Government, however, is not said in praise of the Grand-duke’s rule. On the contrary, the Opposition papers—those at least that have any circulation—all lean rather towards the “party of action,” or the extreme Liberals. The most prominent paper of this description in Florence is the ‘New Europe,’ which is republican, and makes no mystery of its principles.
Indeed, the press is so outspoken, and is allowed such latitude, that it is difficult to understand for what purpose the Government maintains a censorship. Nevertheless, such is the case. It is not a very effective one. Every paper is bound to be laid before the Reggio procurator twenty-four hours before it is published; but that official is so little able to peruse them all within the specified time, that it has frequently happened that a paper has been sequestrated when it was a day old, and had been already read and forgotten. The right of sequestration, however, has been used pretty freely. The ‘Censor’ was sequestrated more than sixty times in the course of last year, and the ‘New Europe’ has been treated even more severely: on one occasion it was sequestrated for three days running.
It is, however, high time to turn from the ideal to the material world; that is, to leave the tobacconist and his newspapers, and dive into the recesses of some very dirty and narrow little lanes where the market is being held, in order to see whether the prices given and the business done prove any decline in the prosperity of Florence since the days of the Grand-duke.
Passing by the mountains of vegetables piled up ornamentally against the huge stones of the Strozzi Palace, the reader must pick his way carefully amidst the accumulated masses of cabbage-stalks, children, and other dirt beneath, avoiding at the same time the carcasses that hang out from the butchers’ stalls on either side, from poles projecting far into the passage, and stooping every now and then to avoid the festoons of sausages which hang down from above, garland-fashion, just low enough to come in contact with the nose of an average-sized mortal. If by strictly observing the above precautions he can make his way despite all these obstacles, he will on turning the next corner arrive safely in front of an old woman and a boy presiding over sundry emblems of purgatory in the shape of huge frying-pans fixed over charcoal fires. The boy is ladling a mass of tiny dainties out of a seething black liquid, which have an appearance as of whitebait being fished out of the Thames. It is, however, only an appearance; for these are nothing more than small cakes of chestnut-flour, by name “sommomoli,” fried in oil, from which they emerge copper-coloured, sweet, nourishing, and tasteless, costing half a centesimo, or the twentieth part of a penny, a-piece. The old woman is in person superintending a still larger frying-pan, in which are frizzling square cut cakes, resembling Yorkshire pudding, sometimes interspersed with small slices of meat. These, by name “ignochchi,” consist of nothing less than Indian corn savoured with hogs-lard. A penny (ten centesimi) will purchase ten of them—a larger quantity than most English, or any Italian stomach would find it convenient to dispose of at one sitting. A step farther on slices will be offered to the passer-by off a huge flat cake the colour of gingerbread, also made of chestnut-flour, and so satisfying that it would puzzle even an Eton lollypop-eater to consume a penny’s worth. There are yet other delicacies, one especially tempting, a kind of black-pudding or rather black wafer. It consists of a spoonful of hog’s blood fried in oil, and then turned out of the pan on to a plate, seasoned with scraped cheese, and devoured hot, at a halfpenny a-piece.
With street goodies at these rates, whatever rise there may have been in prices, it is impossible to believe that they are of a nature to press to any extent upon the people at large. But take the staples of the market; look into the baker’s shop; weigh the loaves sold over the counter, and the price of the best wheaten bread will prove to be fifteen centesimi (a penny halfpenny a-pound)—not to mention the sacks of maize-flour, of rice, and of millet on the threshold.
Nevertheless the Florentine market shows a general rise in prices, probably attributable in part to the increased facility for sending the products of Tuscany, this garden of Italy, into the adjacent provinces, in part, although indirectly, to increased taxation, by which is meant not merely Government taxation, but the municipal rates, which have considerably increased in Florence; for the corporation of the town, in common with many other municipalities and commonalties, are availing themselves of their greater freedom of action under the new Government to carry out numberless improvements, which it was difficult to execute before on account of the lengthy representations which were required to be laid before the Grand-ducal Government.
The increase of taxation consequently is very considerable. The “tassa prediale,” or property-tax, for instance, has been increasing in Florence since 1859 at the rate of about one per cent every year, and in some commonalties it is even higher. There are men in Florence who are now paying in taxes (local rates and all included) exactly four times what they paid in the Grand-duke’s day. It is true that this increase is not so oppressive as it would appear, because the taxation of Tuscany used to be extremely light, being under fourteen shillings per head compared with the population. Still the cheerfulness with which this increase has been borne is a hopeful sign of the general willingness of the people to support the Italian Government. No impatience even has been shown at the rapidly augmenting taxes, and this single fact deserves to be set against a multitude of complaints on smaller matters.
Taxation, however, probably enters for very little in the rise of market prices. The reason of this increase is to be sought in local causes. For instance, there have been several successive bad seasons for olives. This year the yield is better, and the price is falling. Wine is still very high, owing to the grape disease. Meat is nearly double what it was some years since, owing, it is said, chiefly to a drought last summer.
The rise in prices, however, has been counterbalanced, so far as the working population are concerned, by a rise in wages, which has been on the average from a Tuscan lire to a Sardinian franc, or about 20 per cent.
On the whole, comparing the rise in prices with that in wages, the real pay of the labourer would seem to have slightly improved. So far, therefore, as the people’s stomachs are concerned, the comparison is not unfavourable to the new Government. To persons residing at Florence on fixed incomes, however, the increase in both instances is unfavourable, and they not unnaturally regard that which is inconvenient to themselves as ruinous to the country.
The loss of the custom of the Court and its train, upon which so much stress has been laid, so far from having affected Tuscany, has not even really affected Florence. The amount taken on account of the “octroi” at the gates of Florence shows the consumption to be on the increase.
We may therefore leave the market with the conviction that there is no material pressure at work to cause discontent. Some tradesmen really have suffered from the absence of the Court, as the jewellers and milliners for instance; but trade generally has not felt the difference.
Continuing, however, our walk in search of public opinion, we come, in a street not far distant, to a real cause of complaint; and in Tuscany, where there is a cause, there will be no want of complaint. There are a couple of soldiers standing sentry before a large door, and all around knots of countrymen talking together in anxious expectation, or not talking, but silently taking leave.
The conscription is a grievance. It is the only act of the new Government which is generally felt to be a hardship, and sometimes murmured against as an injustice. Rather more than one in every five of the youths who this year attain the age of twenty-one are being drawn for the army. This is the proportion of those taken from their homes and sent to the depots of different regiments, for all are liable to military service under one category or another. Being inscribed and left at home, however, is no great hardship: it is the separation from home which is dreaded, and therefore the numbers of the first category in the conscription which have alone to be considered. This heavy conscription is something new to the Tuscans. In the palmy days of Grand-ducal Government, before 1848, exemption from military service could be obtained for something less than £4 English; after the Austrian occupation, the conscription having grown severer, the cost of exemption was about doubled; but now it amounts to a sum which none but the wealthy can possibly pay.
The young conscripts, however, become rapidly imbued with the professional pride of their older comrades; and it often happens that lads, who have parted from their home in tears, astonish their quiet parents a few weeks after with letters full of enthusiasm for the Italian army. Enthusiasm on any subject is a rare virtue in Tuscany; and if a military life for six years could infuse into the rising generation some energy and some habits of discipline, the army would prove a more important means of education than all the new schools which are to be introduced.
But how is it that throughout this perambulation of the town of Florence we have not come across a single sign of that touching affection for the late Grand-duke which has been so vividly and so often described in England?
The truth is, that although there is a good deal of discontent with the present Government, there is no regret for the last.
Of all the weak sentiments which exist in Tuscan breasts, loyalty towards the late Grand-duke is certainly the very weakest.
In order, however, that the reader may catch a glimpse of the “Codini” (or “party of the tail,” as the following of the late Grand-duke are called) before they are all numbered among the antiquities of Italy, it will be advisable to take one turn on the banks of the Arno in the “Cascine,” the fashionable walk, or “the world,” of the Florentines.
It is sunset, and the evening chill is making itself felt—in fact, to lay aside all romance about the Italian climate, it is very cold. The upper five hundred come out at dew-fall, when everybody else goes in, apparently for no better reason than because everybody else does go in. There are Russians driving in handsome droschkes, and Americans in livery-stable barouches of an unwieldy magnificence. But our business is not with these; the native gentility of Florence is just arriving—ladies in closely-shut broughams, and young gentlemen, some in open carriages, half dog-carts half phaetons; others, less fortunate, in open fiacres.
They drive down to the end of the Cascine, where old beggar women attend upon them with “scaldine” to warm their fingers over. There men and women alight and promenade at a foot’s pace, despite the cold, after which they all drive home again.
And what can they have been about all day before they came to the Cascine? The masters and mistresses have been sitting in their respective rooms, drawing such warmth as they might from a stove most economically furnished with wood; the servants have been sitting in the antechamber, holding their four extremities over the hot ashes in the “brasero,” a metal vessel something like an English stewpan on a large scale; for the Italian palaces are cold: the architect may have done well, but the mason and the carpenter have been negligent. The walls are joined at any angle except a right one; the windows do not close; the floors are diversified by sundry undulations, so that a space is left beneath the door, through which light zephyrs play over the ill-carpeted floor. Perhaps the lady of the house has been sitting in state to receive her friends; for every Florentine lady is solemnly announced as “at home” to all her friends one day in the week, so as to keep them out of the house all the other six.
This is the married life in the palace. The life of the young men, the bachelor life of Florence, is not a bit more active. In a word, the life of a Florentine in easy circumstances is a prolonged lounge. It is not that they loiter away their time for a few weeks, or for a few months—for “a season,” in short—that is done all the world over; but the Florentines do nothing but loiter. The most active portion of their lives is that now before us,—the life during the carnival. The carnival over, the rest of the year is spent in recruiting finances and health for the next winter.
Lest the reader should treat this description as exaggerated or unduly severe, it will be best to let the Florentines themselves describe their own manner of living, and give, word for word, the rules laid down in a Florentine paper[5]for any young gentleman who wishes to live in holiness, peace, and happiness (sic).
“On waking in the morning, take a cup of coffee in bed; and if you have a servant to pour it out, mind that she be a young and pretty one.
“Then light a cigar (but not of native tobacco; it is too bad), or, better still, take a whiff of a pipe.
“Clear your ideas by smoking, and, little by little, have yourself dressed by the person who undressed you the night before.
“After writing a meaningless letter, or reading a chapter out of a novel, go out, weather permitting.
“Should you meet a priest, a hunchback, or a white horse, return straightway, or a misfortune may befall you.
“After a short turn, get back to breakfast, and, this over, bid the driver put to and whip up for the Cascine.
“There go from one carriage to the other, and talk scandal to each lady against all the rest: this to kill time till dinner.
“Eat enough, and drink more; and should some wretch come to trouble your digestion by begging his bread, tell him a man should work.
“At night, go to the theatre, the club, or into society. At the theatre, should there be a new piece, hiss it; this will give you the reputation of a connoisseur; should there be an opera, try to learn an air that you may sing at the next party; should there be a ballet, endeavour to play Mæcenas to some dancer, according to the custom of the century.
“One day over, begin the next in the same way, and so on to the end.”
This, in sober earnest, is the life of a Florentine noble; except that, if rich enough, he spends all his superfluous energy and wealth in occasional visits to Paris. If unusually clever, he will become a good singer, or a judge of art—not of pictures and statues, probably, but of antique pots and pans. Otherwise he has no pursuit whatever, and his sole occupation is to persuade himself that he is an Adonis, and his friends that he is as fortunate as Endymion.
Such is the stuff which the Codini nobles are made of, and so let them drive home in peace. These are not the manner of men to make counter revolutions. Brought up as boys by a priest, within the four walls of a palace, they have never had an opportunity of gaining any experience of life beyond that afforded by the café, the theatre, and the Court, and they feel alarmed and annoyed to find growing up around them a state of things in which men will have to rank according as they can make themselves honoured by the people, and not according to the smile they may catch at Court. To this must be added, with some, a genuine personal feeling towards the late Grand-duke, but these are very few; they are limited for the most part to the courtiers, or “the antechamber” of the Court that has passed away, and even with them it is no more than a feeling of patronising friendship—nothing resembling the loyalty of an Englishman towards his sovereign. But most of the regret expressed for the late Grand-duke is nothing more than ill-disguised disappointment at being no longer able to cut a figure at Court and rub shoulders with royalty; and this is a form of politics not altogether unknown among our good countrymen at Florence.
It is cruel of reactionary writers and orators in other countries to draw down ridicule on the harmless and peaceful gentlemen who form the small band of Codini at Florence, by endeavouring to magnify them into a counter-revolutionary party.
The Codini at Florence would wish for the Austrians: they have a faint and lingering hope of a Parisian Court at Florence, under Prince Napoleon; but they do not even pretend that they would move a finger in any cause.
There are men in Tuscany, and even gentlemen, who will work and form themselves, let us hope, on the stamp of Baron Ricasoli; but these are not to be found among the clique of the Codini at Florence.
The intelligence and energy of the country is for Italy, and nearly all the great names of Florence—the names of republican celebrity, to their honour be it said—are to be found in the ranks of the national party. It is true their name is at present all that they can give to forward the cause.
Let us hope, however, that the ideas of ambition, and the wider field for competition which the new system offers, may awake in the children now growing up in Florence an energy which has been unknown to their fathers for many and many a generation. Then, perhaps, a walk in the streets of Florence thirty years hence will no longer show us electors who will not step a hundred yards out of the way in order to attend an election. The Florentines may, at their own pleasure, by taking a part in their own government and the government of Italy, virtually terminate that Piedmontese tutelage against which they fret, and without which they are not yet fit to carry out a constitutional system.
Florence,Feb. 2, 1863.